The two candidates for Allegheny County executive agreed Tuesday that public safety is a major issue facing the county, but differed on how to address it — including the future of the Shuman Juvenile Detention Center, the county jail, and policing outside Pittsburgh.
Democratic nominee Sara Innamorato and Republican rival Joe Rockey also clashed on property reassessments, abortion, and other issues during a televised debate Tuesday on WTAE. It was their second debate in less than a week, and it came five weeks before the Nov. 7 general election.
Mr. Rockey, a former PNC executive, has called for increasing county police ranks by 10%, or about 21 officers. On Tuesday, he said police aren’t being allowed to do their jobs, leading to Downtown Pittsburgh becoming an “open-air drug market.”
Ms. Innamorato, a former state representative, said police are part of the solution, and that hiking their pay could attract more officers. But there's more to addressing crime than policing, she said.
“That does begin with making sure that we aren't vilifying police as a profession. … We need to make sure that we are also addressing root causes, like investing in housing and remediating blight and making sure there's enough youth programs and green spaces and all of these things,” Ms. Innamorato said. “All of these conversations, they cannot come in a silo.”
Mr. Rockey also said Tuesday that he would support a gun buyback program at county police locations, 365 days a year.
“There are so many illegal guns on the street. … What we have to do is create an environment where the guns that are in the population can be bought and taken out of the population, where there is an opportunity,” Mr. Rockey said.
Ms. Innamorato said she tried as a state representative to pass legislation including universal gun background checks and extreme risk protection orders. But she blamed Harrisburg Republicans for blocking those efforts — even as she promised to use the “bully pulpit” of the county executive’s office to keep trying.
Mr. Rockey initially challenged Ms. Innamorato to a series of five debates. It’s a common tactic for challengers or candidates in weaker positions to seek more debates against incumbents or better-positioned rivals. In Ms. Innamorato’s first run for state House in 2018, she challenged then-incumbent Democratic Rep. Dom Costa to debate. The two never debated and Ms. Innamorato went on to win. (She resigned from the seat in July to focus on her campaign for county executive.)
In Allegheny County, where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by about two-to-one, Ms. Innamorato has been widely seen as the frontrunner — though Republicans hope her progressive profile and Mr. Rockey’s positioning as a “centrist” give him their best chance at winning the county’s top elected office in two decades.
In their first debate last week, both candidates softened their opposition to the county reopening the Shuman Center under a contract with an outside social services provider. Ms. Innamorato and Mr. Rockey both indicated that they would support using a contractor for a short period of time to get the facility up and running.
When it was first announced that the Shuman Center would reopen under a contractor, Mr. Rockey said the county should “not outsource the custody of its children.” Ms. Innamorato called for the opening of a “highly specialized, publicly run juvenile detention center.”
She appeared to go a step further Tuesday, saying she would support an oversight board for Shuman, similar to the county’s Jail Oversight Board, which oversees operations at the county jail. That board would help determine if the contractor is following proper regulations and standards, she said.
Mr. Rockey said Tuesday that a juvenile detention center, no matter who runs it, is vitally important. Some children currently in the county jail, he said, are accused of attempted murder or other violent offenses. There needs to be a place for those young residents who may have committed “heinous” crimes to be rehabilitated, he said.
Both candidates declined to call for full-scale property tax reassessments during last week’s debate, saying the current system — which has long been embroiled in legal battles — isn’t working.
Mr. Rockey has staunchly opposed a new county-wide reassessment as a backdoor tax increase on homeowners, a stance he repeated Tuesday. Ms. Innamorato last week called for a redesign of the whole assessment system, and said a reassessment could be possible under the right circumstances. That was a shift from her unequivocal support for doing a reassessment in the past. During the May Democratic primary election, Ms. Innamorato called for a reassessment.
Ms. Innamorato, while acknowledging the current system is flawed, said Tuesday that regular assessments could be pursued if they resulted in fairer outcomes.
“When I'm looking at data from other cities and across the nation,” Ms. Innamorato said, “when you do not do regular property tax rate assessments, what you have is a scenario that harms working-class people and specifically Black homeowners.”
In what was again a relatively tame affair, the candidates rarely engaged each other directly. But that wasn’t the case on the issue of abortion — and its relevance to the job of the county executive and their race against each other. Ms. Innamorato and her campaign have increasingly tried to focus attention on abortion, tying Mr. Rockey to his party’s opposition to abortion access.
“My personal opinion on abortion is not relevant because the Allegheny County executive does not set policy for abortion,” Mr. Rockey said Tuesday. “I will enforce the law, whatever that law is that the state or federal government gives us.”
Ms. Innamorato disagreed. She pointed to abortion providers in Allegheny County and said the county executive needs to ensure services are provided to county residents and thousands of government employees, including reproductive health care.
Both candidates said Tuesday that they came from tough backgrounds — Ms. Innamorato losing her father to the opioid epidemic, and Mr. Rockey growing up in a family below the poverty line that needed food stamps.
And with a new Republican-allied group spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on TV ads supporting Mr. Rockey and attacking Ms. Innamorato, Ms. Innamorato braced for more incoming fire.
“You're gonna see a lot of negative ads about me,” Ms. Innamorato said.
Mr. Rockey pointed to his experience at PNC, likening his former job to what is required in the county executive’s office.
“This election is about leadership,” Mr. Rockey said. “It's about the tactics and the day-to-day decisions that are going to run a county government that supports 1.25 million people, that spends $3 billion, and has 7,000 employees. In my history, I have had jobs bigger than that.”
A third and final debate is expected to air Oct. 15 on WPXI.
First Published: October 4, 2023, 1:59 a.m.
Updated: October 4, 2023, 5:45 p.m.
