‘Reclaiming hope’

Officials to propose plan for disbanding financially distressed municipalities

Frank Lucchino knows dropping the term “voluntary municipal disincorporation” doesn’t exactly make him the life of the party.

“Eyes tend to glaze over,” he said.

The former Allegheny County controller long studied the concept of disbanding financially distressed municipalities and turning responsibility for them over to county government. In 1994, he wrote an entire report about the topic called “Reclaiming Hope.”

And now the idea has reemerged, backed by some heavy hitters. “It’s only taken 23 years to get it this far,” he said. “I’m ecstatic.”

County Executive Rich Fitzgerald, former top county administrators Jim Roddey and Dan Onorato, and former University of Pittsburgh chancellor Mark Nordenberg will present a new report Thursday on voluntary disincorporation and discuss its recommendations and future steps. Mr. Nordenberg is now chair of Pitt’s Institute of Politics.

Mr. Fitzgerald wouldn’t discuss the findings in advance of the event. But Mr. Lucchino recalled a day in the early 1990s when he was working as the county’s fiscal watchdog. While “minding my own business, sitting in my office,” he got a call from a resident of Wall concerned about how the tiny Mon Valley borough could stay afloat with a shrinking tax base and a population of only 500 or 600, most elderly.

Unlike other states, every square inch of land in Pennsylvania is incorporated. The controller’s office pushed for a bill that would allow a majority of a community’s residents to vote to dissolve their municipal charters and become unincorporated county territory with services such as police and road maintenance provided by the county.

But it never made it out of

committee. The biggest criticism he heard then was that the “voluntary” nature of the plan was just a precursor to forcing them to disband.

If it had passed, the county would collect from a borough or township wishing to disband a fee to provide police, snow-plowing and other services. But the county “doesn’t want to be in the long-term business to run them” so the goal is to encourage a merger with nearby communities.

Wilmerding and Turtle Creek bristled at the idea of a merger, the caller said, by Mr. Lucchino’s account. But if the county had offered Wilmerding new sewer lines, for example, maybe they’d reconsider.

“We will now find a way to treat you better because you did that. That’s kind of the way we always envisioned it to be.”

For some tiny boroughs and townships, their ability to function is at stake, Mr. Lucchino said. He noted a time Glenfield needed street repairs, but no one found such a small job worth it.

“Sometimes there’s nobody that wants to run for office,” he said.

In a 2015 report for the Widener Law Journal, Michelle Wilde Anderson, a professor at Stanford Law School, said dissolution should be among the “list of tools available to struggling municipalities” so long as their territory is merged into that of another elected government.

“As I have found in previous research, counties are no panacea when it comes to the management of concentrated poverty, but at least they are democratic bodies subject to some level of public accountability. ...

“If the Legislature wishes to add a meaningful dissolution law to the toolkit for troubled cities, as it should do, state legislators should go back to the drawing board — the one that Frank Lucchino drafted for them years ago.”

Officials will present a new report Thursday on voluntary disincorporation and discuss its recommendations and future steps.