Increasing the number of Allegheny County’s police officers, attracting new jobs, and blocking a county-wide property tax reassessment. Those have all been key policy planks in Republican nominee Joe Rockey’s campaign for county executive.
Mr. Rockey, a former PNC executive, has taken pains to run as a moderate Republican, often saying that “the only R in this race is Rockey.” He touts his plans as being a “common-sense” alternative to those of his opponent, progressive Democratic nominee Sara Innamorato.
Ahead of the Nov. 7 general election, the two will face off in a pair of debates, the first of which airs Thursday at 7 p.m. on KDKA. The second will be Oct. 3 on WTAE.
Here’s what to know about some of Mr. Rockey’s policy positions before the two take the debate stage. Click here to learn more about Ms. Innamorato’s policies.
Expanding the Allegheny County police force
As part of Mr. Rockey’s public safety plan, he wants to increase the county’s police force by 10%. With about 215 officers currently, that would add about 21 more cops.
The goal of growing officers’ ranks, he says, is so the county can offer support to municipalities with understaffed police departments. Mr. Rockey has also indicated he would offer policing resources to the city of Pittsburgh.
But because Mr. Rockey has also pledged to not increase taxes on residents, he says the money for additional cops would come from “overall management of the county budget.”
The county government has an operating budget of about $1 billion. The police budget is more than $40.2 million — about $29.6 million of which goes to salaries.
But adding more cops isn’t just a one time cost, said John Brenner, executive director of the Pennsylvania Municipal League, which advocates for local governments. The police budget would have to grow to pay not only their salaries, but also additional costs for the duration of their employment, such as benefits like health insurance and pension once they retire.
“That’s a lot to manipulate into a budget,” said Mr. Brenner, a former mayor of York. “I’m not saying it’s impossible, with a county that size they might be able to do it… but they have to look at [the] long-term.”
Rather than raising taxes to offset the costs, Mr. Brenner said, the county could pursue grants from the state and federal government.
A spokesperson Mr. Rockey’s campaign said he would “pursue any possible outside funding” if elected, and that this issue is “something that we cannot afford to not do.”
Bringing a ‘job renaissance’ to the county
A large part of Mr. Rockey’s campaign has centered on what he calls the need for a “job renaissance” in Allegheny County.
“It’s time we stopped managing decline and reimagine growth by leveraging our workforce, resources, and tradition as a center of innovation and manufacturing,” Mr. Rockey said earlier this month.
Mr. Rockey has promised to visit 100 businesses during his first year in office to promote Allegheny County as a place for companies to invest. His plan includes capitalizing on federal laws — such as the sweeping climate and health care law called the Inflation Reduction Act — to bring jobs to the area, and leveraging Western Pennsylvania’s natural resources to attract companies.
Mr. Rockey says his experience working for and with large corporations puts him in a position to successfully lobby firms to move to the county.
“Allegheny County should have had an important share of those federal dollars and a Rockey administration will fight —and fight hard — to redirect our tax dollars back into Allegheny County to create good jobs,” Mr. Rockey said.
No county-wide property reassessments
As thousands of property assessment appeals play out in court, the next county executive will face pressure to conduct a county-wide reassessment — and pressure from elsewhere not to. The county hasn’t reassessed on a large scale since 2012, and doing so could mean bigger tax bills for some property owners.
Ms. Innamorato supports doing a county-wide reassessment. Mr. Rockey does not. Instead, he supports creating a better formula for what’s known as the common-level ratio — a number used to determine the taxable value of a property.
Last year, a county judge ruled that the county’s ratio had been miscalculated and inflated, and the judge lowered it. In March, that ruling was affirmed by a state court.
“The last reassessment cost middle-class families money,” Mr. Rockey said on social media earlier this month. “The next reassessment could force them out of their homes. I will not support another costly reassessment.”=
Prior to the May primary election, Mr. Rockey said it’s important to “get the backlog of appeals behind us,” and that the assessment process should be carefully looked at before it’s used to reevaluate the entire county.
But Mike Suley, a newly appointed member of the Allegheny County Board of Property Assessment Appeals and Review, who has worked on the issue for nearly 30 years, said putting off an assessment is a “recipe for disaster.” He said that, generally speaking, county-wide reassessments lead one third of people to see bigger tax bills, a third get smaller bills, and a third see no change.
If the assessment raises property taxes, Mr. Suley said, local millage rates — the number used to calculate property value — would have to come down based on legislation that prohibits taxing bodies like school districts or municipal governments from profiting off taxes. When the county last re-assessed in 2012, millage rates went down.
Mr. Rockey’s campaign disagreed.
“The recipe for disaster is doing a reassessment that results in a stealth tax hike,” spokesperson Dennis Roddy said. “People on fixed incomes are not going to win this.”
Despite the nuance, Mr. Suley said, ultimately “it doesn’t matter what the county executive does.”
As the appeals process plays out, the county and local school districts could be on the hook for millions of dollars in tax refunds, and the lower the common-level ratio, the less tax revenue for those entities. Those two factors combined could lead school districts to take legal action against the county.
“Some school district will sue the county and will win,” he said, “and [the county will] be court ordered to reassess.”
A new youth detention center not called ‘Shuman’
Ever since the 2021 closure of the Shuman Juvenile Detention Center, local officials have discussed next steps ranging from a privatized facility to no facility at all.
Earlier this month, the Fifth Judicial District of Pennsylvania announced that the Shuman Center would reopen under the management of Adelphoi, a Latrobe-based social services provider — a decision Mr. Rockey and Ms. Innamorato have both criticized. County Council has also moved to sue Mr. Fitzgerald over the contract.
“Allegheny County should not outsource the custody of its children,” Mr. Rockey said on social media in September.
But during a debate Thursday, Mr. Rockey said he was fine with using a private company temporarily to “get it off the ground” — not with a five-year contract.
Rather than contracting a private company to run the center, Mr. Rockey has supported creating a new youth detention center that also focuses on rehabilitation.
“I think we’ll throw away the name Shuman, because there’s a lot of bad connotation around it,” he has said.
“It is imperative to give our judges the opportunity to give somebody a place to go that isn’t putting an ankle bracelet on them and sending them back to the same environment that led them to do the violent crime in the first place,” Mr. Rockey said in July. “There is a need to put a child somewhere where they can separate from the environment that has led them to where they are and give them a chance to engage in rehabilitation.”
Hallie Lauer: hlauer@post-gazette.com
Correction: An earlier version of this article misstated who made the announcement regarding the reopening of the Shuman Center.
First Published: September 28, 2023, 9:30 a.m.
Updated: September 29, 2023, 1:45 p.m.
