For the first time since 1991, more people moved to the Pittsburgh metropolitan area than left. Even with this migration, the population of the Pittsburgh area still declined by about 400, continuing a steady trend of population decline that has been constant since the 1980s.
Importantly, this decline in population has not translated into a similar decline in the size of local government; indeed, the city of Pittsburgh’s operating budget for 2010 is more than $100 million greater than that of 2001. The decline in population and commensurate growth in local government creates redundant services that need to be consolidated in order to save taxpayer money.
In 2006, Dan Onorato and Luke Ravenstahl created a citizen’s advisory committee to examine this issue of city-county consolidation and create a comprehensive list of recommendations for moving forward. Chaired by University of Pittsburgh Chancellor Mark Nordenberg, the committee released a report in 2008 – the Nordenberg Report – that advocated consolidated services, noting that the economic climate had shifted in the area.
The study provides a number of examples of successfully consolidated services including the consolidation of 911 call centers and a trash-collection contract between Wilkinsburg and Pittsburgh – in this specific example, Wilkinsburg saved about $1 million per year and Pittsburgh gained $800,000 in yearly revenue.
Although the report’s suggestion to increase functional consolidation of services was on the right track, it quickly devolved into a political rather than a budgetary document. The chief aim of this report was not saving taxpayer dollars through service consolidation, but rather the creation of a unified “regional leadership” that would govern the county and city.
In order to justify such a consolidated government, the committee proposed the segregation of Pittsburgh’s legacy costs and the creation of two separate tax zones – an “urban” zone and a “general” zone – whereby tax rates in the city would be much higher than those in the rest of the county. Creating a region administered by one government but split into two tax zones would give area businesses every reason to flee from the city and operate outside the limits of the higher “urban” tax area.
Similarly, the already devastating population drain experienced in this city would only be exacerbated as residents moved from the higher urban tax zone to the lower general one.
Another important problem with the Nordenberg commission is that it did not have a mandate to examine the consolidation of school districts; therefore, the report advocates the full consolidation of government without impacting the 43 school districts existing in Allegheny County. To consolidate some programs like public works but not school districts would still keep many programs far too large for their own good.
Clearly, the political consolidation advocated by the Nordenberg Report does not serve the best interests of this city, its residents or its businesses. Moreover, the Nordenberg Report’s myopic focus on governmental consolidation has done a great disservice to the debate surrounding city-county consolidation, a debate that should be primarily concerned with the consolidation of redundant services.
That being said, this city has too large of an infrastructure with too little of a tax base to keep on functioning the way it is. For this reason, the city and county must work toward a more true consolidation of services while accepting the fact that neither city nor county residents will vote for a fully consolidated government.
Giles Howard is the president and Jacob Brown is a student fellow at the Publius Foundation.