Copyright 2006 P.G. Publishing Co.
By RICH LORD
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Pennsylvania)
A revised city of Pittsburgh spending plan may boost the Fire Bureau’s budget, a state fiscal overseer said yesterday.
Dr. John Murray, chairman of the state-appointed Intergovernmental Cooperation Authority, or ICA, said city officials plan to increase the firefighting allocation to $48 million from $43 million.
The bureau spent $53.6 million last year as a result of overtime pay to keep stations manned despite mass retirements.
Joe King, president of International Association of Fire Fighters Local 1, has said $43 million was unrealistic and would lead to a year-end shortfall. The $48 million is “a good projection,” he said yesterday.
The increase could complicate the city’s long-term planning. Five-year projections call for the bureau’s budget to dip below $42 million by decade’s end. It’s not clear how the city would cover higher fire spending.
Mayor Bob O’Connor would not discuss specifics, but promised “a solid, no-nonsense budget” late this week or early next week.
Dr. Murray said he’d like to see a final budget by week’s end.
In addition to the Fire Bureau increase, his staff is reviewing a proposed boost in the Police Bureau’s $64.6 million budget, reflecting a new method of calculating overtime payments.
Faced with a lawsuit by the Fraternal Order of Police, the city agreed to include longevity and late shift bonuses in its calculation of overtime rates. Union President Michael Havens Jr. said that could add $600,000 a year, retroactive to 2004.
Dr. Murray said he has no objection to administration plans to merge the General Services Department into other parts of the bureaucracy, primarily the Public Works Department.
“A resolution is probable,” he said, to a dispute over health insurance premiums for around 400 nonunion employees. The ICA rejected the city’s budget last year because it did not pass premium increases on to those employees, who have weathered multiyear wage freezes.
By operating with a rejected budget, the city could face a loss of state aid and revenue from new taxes. The state law that created the ICA gives a new mayor until the end of March to submit a revised budget.
Mr. O’Connor aimed to revise the budget by the end of January, and then by the end of February.
“It’s been a little longer than we thought, but that’s because we’re getting it right,” he said.
At a Senate hearing in Harrisburg yesterday, state Budget Secretary Michael Masch said the city isn’t ready to emerge from financial oversight under Act 47, imposed in December 2003.
“We have some important initiatives yet to do,” he said, such as improving waste collection and workers’ compensation and seeking “more cooperation between the city and [Allegheny] County,” including transferring city purchasing authority to the county.
A City Council resolution asking the state to remove the city from Act 47 oversight is scheduled for debate in two weeks.