Allegheny County manager warns council that rejecting proposed tax hike would be ‘catastrophic’

Allegheny County’s manager is warning County Council that failure to approve a property tax hike near the level proposed for next year could be disastrous.

Council members, led by President Pat Catena, began pushing back immediately after County Executive Sara Innamorato in October proposed a 46.5% tax hike to help balance her $3.1 billion budget.

But in a memo to council obtained by TribLive, Manager John Fournier cautioned that it will be difficult for county government to stray from the proposed 2.2-mill increase without making severe cuts.

Such drastic budget-cutting, Fournier warned, would lead the county to close all four county pools; eliminate after-school programs for thousands of children; and lay off hundreds of workers, including police officers, 911 dispatchers, health care professionals, park rangers and snowplow drivers.

There are about 6,000 county employees.

“The truth is that if we stray even moderately far from a 2.2-mills increase, the cuts required to keep the budget balanced become very uncomfortable very quickly,” Fournier wrote in a memo sent out Friday.

Catena, D-Carnegie, opposes the proposed increase and said there aren’t enough votes to support it. He called Fournier’s memo “insulting” and said it was fearmongering to sway public opinion and council members’ votes.

“What we saw there is absolutely the worst-case scenario, and I am not sure that is where we are going to end up,” Catena said.

Tax hike is unavoidable

Catena has said in the past the county’s budget deficit is too large to completely avoid a property tax increase, but that there aren’t enough votes to support a hike as big as Innamorato wants.

He wouldn’t estimate what kind of a tax increase is realistic.

“Wherever 10 votes can get to is where we will end up,” he said.

Innamorato’s tax increase proposal — the first in more than a decade if enacted — is meant to cover an anticipated $100 million-plus budget deficit.

The county has been operating under a budget deficit for the past three years caused by declining tax revenue and increased costs driven largely by inflation.

Federal funding and the county’s reserve fund plugged the hole in the interim.

But with federal pandemic aid expiring, the county is facing a $133 million budget hole if revenue is not boosted.

Allegheny County’s property tax rate is 4.73 mills. Innamorato’s proposal would raise it to 6.93 mills.

A mill equals $1 in taxes for every $1,000 of assessed value.

That proposed rate, coupled with a proposal to increase the homestead exemption, would increase annual property taxes by roughly $182 — or about $15 more a month — on a house assessed at the county’s median value of $110,400.

Life under a 1-mill hike

In his memo, Fournier told council a 1-mill increase, less than half of what Innamorato is proposing, would generate about $95 million less in county revenue.

That would lead to approximately $250 million in cuts to the budget, according to the memo.

“The resulting county operating budget would require intolerably deep cuts that would be catastrophic to county operations and to the many tens of thousands of individuals who directly rely on county services,” Fournier wrote.

Fournier spoke with county directors and row offices about what cuts they would need to make under a 1-mill increase.

The answer: about 1,000 job losses, including 400 layoffs, to be made before this fiscal year. That would include laying off 40 police officers, 100 staffers from the Department of Human Services, 17 emergency dispatchers, all of the county’s park rangers and more.

County workers’ wages would be frozen for at least one year, perhaps longer.

The parks department would be hit particularly hard because none of its services generate revenue, said Fournier.

The county’s swim, skate and hockey classes would be eliminated. Allegheny County would no longer put on free movies in the parks or host free concerts or holiday events. The county would close the farm in Round Hill Park in Elizabeth Township and the South Park buffalo preserve.

Allegheny County’s criminal justice system also could be gravely impacted under a budget based on a 1-mill tax increase, according to Fournier and information from the District Attorney’s Office.

The DA’s office would not have enough resources to staff preliminary hearings with prosecutors; domestic violence victims would have no contact with a prosecutor until months after an assault; and gun violence cases would not be reviewed by prosecutors until they reached trial, according to Fournier’s memo.

Overall, the results would create a backlog for defendants waiting to be assessed for treatment programs, leading to higher jail populations, the memo said.

The District Attorney’s Office did not immediately return a request for comment Monday.

Everything ‘on the table’

Catena said council is working to craft a “responsible budget” but did not offer details of what cuts would be proposed or how much property taxes would increase.

“Nothing is off the table. We are still evaluating,” he said. “We are close to having something ready to go, and it will probably be ready within the next week.”

Fournier’s memo hinted that something below a hike of 2.2 mills could be manageable, but anything significantly lower would cause major problems.

“At one mill, everything must be on the table. The cuts are too severe across the board to avoid radically diminishing or disfiguring every department in the county,” he wrote.

“At a certain point, however, we could be more strategic about where cuts land in the county in terms of freezing pay, closing positions or eliminating some important programming.”

Council must propose a final budget by Dec. 4.