Legislation addresses Pa.'s distressed cities
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A key state senator on urban issues suggests that legislation to address arbitration salary awards for municipal employees and tax-exempt property could result from a bipartisan effort to help fiscally distressed cities like Scranton.
Sen. Jane Earll, R-49, Erie, chairwoman of the Senate Community, Economic and Recreational Development Committee, identified the arbitration awards process under Act 111 and the inability to collect property taxes on land owned by charitable organizations and nonprofits as "cost-drivers" hindering efforts by cities to shake off the impact of the recession and regain fiscal health.
In a Senate Republican podcast last week, Earll said her efforts to help cities in 2012 could focus on rewriting both Act 111, which governs collective bargaining by city employees, and the public charities law. This focus would be in addition to an update of Act 47, which governs the distressed municipalities program. The senator said an effort to help cities reduce costs reflects a reality that state government can't provide more financial aid because of its own problems.
"It's not as if the state is sitting on a pile of money," she added.
Earll's comments came in the wake of two joint House-Senate committee hearings last fall on the future of Act 47.
The sense of urgency over this issue was reinforced by the state takeover of the city of Harrisburg, the state Supreme Court ruling that Scranton must pay back arbitration awards to city firefighters and police officers despite its distressed status, and the prospect that more municipalities may seek Act 47 status.
Another committee chairman, Rep. Chris Ross, R-158, Unionville, who chairs the House Urban Affairs Committee, has already said that one solution may lie in amending Act 111 to set standards to help arbitrators determine if a city has the ability to pay a proposed arbitration award.
In testimony before the committees, an official of the state Department of Community and Economic Development recommended amending Act 111 to resolve collective bargaining and arbitration matters more quickly.
"Provide a maximum time period for arbitrations and require the arbitration panel to render their award no later than six months from the commencement of the arbitration process," said Fred Redding, executive director of the Center for Local Government Services.
He suggested the tax exempt issue could be addressed by having cities either collect a payroll tax for nonprofits or establishing something similar to the existing state tax that utilities pay in lieu of local property taxes.
(Swift is Harrisburg bureau chief for Times-Shamrock Communications newspapers. E-mail rswift@timesshamrock.com.)
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