The great merger debate.
To merge or not to merge, that is the question!
In the below article it is great to see that the young professionals group of Pittsburgh, which is called Pittsburgh’s Urban Magnet Project (PUMP) is involved in driving merger dialog in our neighboring state. Charleston’s Young Professionals Committee is pleased to host Erin C. Molchany, the Executive Director of PUMP at its June 23rd meeting. Erin is going to give our young professionals a look at how PUMP was started, how it works now, and what the plans are for the future.
Enjoy the following article from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
Local government merger is hot topic for leaders
Monday, June 05, 2006
By Rich Lord, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Leadership Pittsburgh's recent graduates want it. They said so Friday, when they released a blueprint for melting the city of Pittsburgh's government into Allegheny County's government.
Pittsburgh Urban Magnet Project members want it. In a survey taken last year, 80 percent said it was important to reduce the amount of government in the region, and 72 percent wanted to merge the city into the county.
The Allegheny Conference on Community Development, a business group that has driven many of the region's policies for 50 years, seems to want it. Reforming the local government structure is among its top priorities.
So is it possible that, a century after Pittsburgh stopped annexing its neighbors, there's a critical mass of interest in erasing the city, or some of the other 129 municipalities that make up the governmental tangle called Allegheny County?
At Point Park University on Friday, the answer seemed to be "yes."
There, four-dozen graduates of Leadership Pittsburgh's class for regional rising stars told a ballroom full of honchos that, after studying 10 cities and interviewing 60 local leaders, they believe the city can and should be merged into the county.
One of those graduates, the Pittsburgh Technology Council's chief lobbyist, Brian Kennedy, said he started out viewing such a move as "a bridge too far, with limited results." Now, he believes that it can and should be done, to improve economic development and planning, boost the region's clout, and improve efficiency.
That jibes with the findings of Jerry Paytas, director of Carnegie Mellon University's Center for Economic Development. In 2004, he published the results of a multiyear study of 285 metropolitan areas that found Pittsburgh to be the third most fragmented region. Only in the Philadelphia and Boston areas was governmental power more diffuse.
Perhaps not coincidentally, Pittsburgh ranked only 263rd in economic competitiveness.
Given such findings, you'd think that merging a few of the smaller municipalities would be an easy sell. Not so.
State Reps. Tom Stevenson, R-Mt. Lebanon, and Dan Frankel, D-Squirrel Hill, introduced a bill last year to make it easy for voters to initiate municipal mergers.
"It has never gotten to a floor vote," said Mr. Frankel. Municipal officials had "a visceral reaction" and lobbied to kill it.
Kilbuck Supervisor Russell Hardiman has been trying to merge his 2.35-square-mile municipality into neighboring Ohio Township for years, to no avail. His two fellow supervisors disapproved, and Ohio Township balked because it might have to help pay to repair a closed road, he said.
"I'm battle-weary, but I'm having some effect," Mr. Hardiman said. "They're talking about a regional [North Hills] police department."
If merging Kilbuck is tough, try melting the city, with its $840 million debt and half-billion-dollar pension shortfall, into anything else.
Having the city ask you to merge would be "like your poor, drunk uncle was going to come and live with you," said James Malloy, president of the Fraternal Order of Police, which represents 860 city officers.
"I have no fear of it," he said of a merger, which he figured wouldn't reduce the need for law enforcement. "I don't think you're going to see it happen for many, many years."
In a sense, though, it's hard to imagine better timing.
The city is in the third of at least seven years of state fiscal oversight, and the pressure is on to pass some of its functions to the county.
"We need more efficient, more effective government," said Barbara McNees, vice chairwoman of the state-appointed Intergovernmental Cooperation Authority -- called ICA -- and president of the Greater Pittsburgh Chamber of Commerce.
The ICA has told the city to merge much of its purchasing, plus its payroll and tax collection, with the county this year. It hasn't yet weighed in on getting rid of the city altogether.
County Chief Executive Dan Onorato would consider any level of government consolidation, from swallowing the city to creating a single countywide municipality, said his spokesman, Kevin Evanto.
As for Leadership Pittsburgh's freshly minted standard bearers, they're vowing to share their enthusiasm and make "municipal merger" more than wonkish buzzwords.
"Our role as leaders," said one grad, Bruce Russell, dean of Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania's College of Business, Information and Social Sciences, "is to go out and speak to groups as much as we can to clear up the misconceptions on what consolidation is."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(Rich Lord can be reached at rlord@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1542. )
To merge or not to merge, that is the question!
In the below article it is great to see that the young professionals group of Pittsburgh, which is called Pittsburgh’s Urban Magnet Project (PUMP) is involved in driving merger dialog in our neighboring state. Charleston’s Young Professionals Committee is pleased to host Erin C. Molchany, the Executive Director of PUMP at its June 23rd meeting. Erin is going to give our young professionals a look at how PUMP was started, how it works now, and what the plans are for the future.
Enjoy the following article from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
Local government merger is hot topic for leaders
Monday, June 05, 2006
By Rich Lord, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Leadership Pittsburgh's recent graduates want it. They said so Friday, when they released a blueprint for melting the city of Pittsburgh's government into Allegheny County's government.
Pittsburgh Urban Magnet Project members want it. In a survey taken last year, 80 percent said it was important to reduce the amount of government in the region, and 72 percent wanted to merge the city into the county.
The Allegheny Conference on Community Development, a business group that has driven many of the region's policies for 50 years, seems to want it. Reforming the local government structure is among its top priorities.
So is it possible that, a century after Pittsburgh stopped annexing its neighbors, there's a critical mass of interest in erasing the city, or some of the other 129 municipalities that make up the governmental tangle called Allegheny County?
At Point Park University on Friday, the answer seemed to be "yes."
There, four-dozen graduates of Leadership Pittsburgh's class for regional rising stars told a ballroom full of honchos that, after studying 10 cities and interviewing 60 local leaders, they believe the city can and should be merged into the county.
One of those graduates, the Pittsburgh Technology Council's chief lobbyist, Brian Kennedy, said he started out viewing such a move as "a bridge too far, with limited results." Now, he believes that it can and should be done, to improve economic development and planning, boost the region's clout, and improve efficiency.
That jibes with the findings of Jerry Paytas, director of Carnegie Mellon University's Center for Economic Development. In 2004, he published the results of a multiyear study of 285 metropolitan areas that found Pittsburgh to be the third most fragmented region. Only in the Philadelphia and Boston areas was governmental power more diffuse.
Perhaps not coincidentally, Pittsburgh ranked only 263rd in economic competitiveness.
Given such findings, you'd think that merging a few of the smaller municipalities would be an easy sell. Not so.
State Reps. Tom Stevenson, R-Mt. Lebanon, and Dan Frankel, D-Squirrel Hill, introduced a bill last year to make it easy for voters to initiate municipal mergers.
"It has never gotten to a floor vote," said Mr. Frankel. Municipal officials had "a visceral reaction" and lobbied to kill it.
Kilbuck Supervisor Russell Hardiman has been trying to merge his 2.35-square-mile municipality into neighboring Ohio Township for years, to no avail. His two fellow supervisors disapproved, and Ohio Township balked because it might have to help pay to repair a closed road, he said.
"I'm battle-weary, but I'm having some effect," Mr. Hardiman said. "They're talking about a regional [North Hills] police department."
If merging Kilbuck is tough, try melting the city, with its $840 million debt and half-billion-dollar pension shortfall, into anything else.
Having the city ask you to merge would be "like your poor, drunk uncle was going to come and live with you," said James Malloy, president of the Fraternal Order of Police, which represents 860 city officers.
"I have no fear of it," he said of a merger, which he figured wouldn't reduce the need for law enforcement. "I don't think you're going to see it happen for many, many years."
In a sense, though, it's hard to imagine better timing.
The city is in the third of at least seven years of state fiscal oversight, and the pressure is on to pass some of its functions to the county.
"We need more efficient, more effective government," said Barbara McNees, vice chairwoman of the state-appointed Intergovernmental Cooperation Authority -- called ICA -- and president of the Greater Pittsburgh Chamber of Commerce.
The ICA has told the city to merge much of its purchasing, plus its payroll and tax collection, with the county this year. It hasn't yet weighed in on getting rid of the city altogether.
County Chief Executive Dan Onorato would consider any level of government consolidation, from swallowing the city to creating a single countywide municipality, said his spokesman, Kevin Evanto.
As for Leadership Pittsburgh's freshly minted standard bearers, they're vowing to share their enthusiasm and make "municipal merger" more than wonkish buzzwords.
"Our role as leaders," said one grad, Bruce Russell, dean of Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania's College of Business, Information and Social Sciences, "is to go out and speak to groups as much as we can to clear up the misconceptions on what consolidation is."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(Rich Lord can be reached at rlord@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1542. )
posted by Charleston West Virginia Economic Development
@ 4:50 PM
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