When Sara Innamorato became Allegheny County executive in January, she took on responsibility for roughly 50 county boards, some rich with people who have served 10 years or more.
Those panels make important decisions in areas from the environment to transit to housing to sanitation, and many are tracked through PublicSource’s ongoing Board Explorer transparency project.
County-related boards heavy on long-serving members include the Board of Health, the Air Pollution Control Advisory Committee and the Allegheny County Sanitary Authority [ALCOSAN]. In the civic and educational realm, the Allegheny Regional Asset District [RAD] and the Community College of Allegheny County [CCAC] have long-tenured members. And the lesser known Agricultural Land Preservation Board and the MBE Advisory Committee also have longstanding members.
Many of the volunteers were appointed early in Rich Fitzgerald’s 12-year tenure as executive, and others date back to the administrations of Dan Onorato and Jim Roddey, or even to the prior three-commissioner system of government.
BoardSource, an authority on board leadership focused largely on the nonprofit sector but with many governmental members, puts the average board tenure at seven years. Anne Gingerich, executive director of the Pennsylvania Association of Non-Profit Organizations [PANO], said there is no one-size-fits-all rule on board tenure, and what is right for one board may not be the right fit for another.
Innamorato, though, has laid out a governing approach, which her administration says applies to board membership decisions, called co-governance.
“Boards and commissions play a very important role,” wrote Abigail Gardner, the county communications director, in response to PublicSource’s questions about the administration’s philosophy toward appointments. “Co-governance isn’t just about bringing new voices to the table, it’s about empowering leaders with the opportunity to drive real change within their communities.”
Gardner said the administration’s Talent Committee, established as part of its transition team, has received information from well over 100 people eager to be considered for board slots.
By mid-April, the process of restocking county boards was well underway: The administration had submitted 39 appointments to County Council for its approval.
Gardner wrote that replacement of a current member “shouldn’t be interpreted as a negative reflection of anyone’s time serving on the board/commission.” She noted that sometimes individuals indicate their willingness to roll off due to personal or professional circumstances, adding that some turnover is related to the executive’s “desire to elevate new and diverse voices who align with her vision for the region.”
As the process continues, the administration will need to consider trade-offs between new blood and institutional knowledge, in an area in which there are no specific guidelines. Here’s how the process is playing out across several important boards.
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Dan Griffin — once a social worker, then a health club business owner, and now a nonprofit consultant — has served 26 years on the RAD board and chairs the panel responsible this year for distributing $139 million in sales tax revenue.
During his time on the board, he has been at the center of the implementation of free-event-filled RAD Days, the reinvention of the agency’s logo, the development of the slogan ‘RAD Works Here’ and a massive library improvement initiative.
Griffin suggested — and the board approved — a limit on chair terms, so no one can serve more than two two-year terms in that position. Before this practice went into effect, chairs typically stayed in that role until they left the board, as happens on many panels. “And that’s not helpful,” Griffin said.
Two RAD board members rolled off in late April and were replaced with Monica Malik, an executive with Citizens Bank, and Jamilah Ducar, of the University of Pittsburgh.
The flip side: Innamorato renominated, and council confirmed, RAD board Vice Chair Dusty Elias Kirk, an attorney who has served since 2006, to a new term ending in 2028.
County boards have limits on the length of a term and those vary by board. None, however, appear to have limits on the number of consecutive terms a member can serve.
The Innamorato administration is not looking to impose any limits.
“When it comes to specifics around term limits or limits on terms, it is difficult to be too prescriptive,” Gardner wrote. “If people are contributing in a meaningful way, have a passion for the work, bring great ideas and talent, we don’t want to push them away because of an arbitrary limit on the time they can serve.”
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Gingerich said tenure, in and of itself, isn’t a problem. “It is only an issue when a person checks out or operates on autopilot or insists on business as usual.”
“Institutional knowledge that a longtime member like myself or Dusty Kirk can bring can be abused,” Griffin noted. “If you go on cruise control and [say], ‘OK, nothing’s gonna change, this is the way we’ve always done it’ … then you probably shouldn’t be on the board.”
Airport Authority: A refreshed terminal and a veteran board
The Pittsburgh International Airport is piloted by a board that has seen little turnover, until recently.
The seven-member Allegheny County Airport Authority [ACAA] oversees a $148 million operating budget and a $76 million capital budget amid a $1.5 billion airport renovation.
David Minnotte, who had been the longest-standing member of the ACAA, departed at the end of April after 20 years, including service as board chair for 12.
A business owner in the construction industry, Minnotte’s service dates back to the Roddey administration. He will be superseded by Daniel Connolly, whose nomination was approved by county council on April 24.
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Connolly, a Pittsburgh-based attorney, has dedicated his career to transportation and infrastructure after his life was tragically impacted by aviation with the loss of his father in the Flight 427 crash in Hopewell in 1994. He aims to bring his experience with airport renovation in Orange County, California, to bear on sustainability aspects of the current PIT renovation project, which is expected to be done next year.
Every board nominee is interviewed by council’s Committee on Appointment Review and typically directed to share a summary of skills and experience, to describe interest in being on the board, and to state any perceived or real conflicts of interest.
Councilor Bethany Hallam regularly asks appointees if they held any other county appointments or were seated on any other boards or authorities. Connolly shared that he also sits on the Finance and Development Commission, a position he has held since 2012. At the committee meeting, Hallam was the lone vote against his nomination. She later voted to confirm him at the April 24 regular council meeting.
Other ACAA board members are nearing the end of their terms. Vice Chair Matt Smith and Cynthia Shapira, both appointed to the ACAA board under Onorato, will see theirs lapse at the end of this year and next year, respectively. A third colleague’s term, Rudolph P. Vulakovich, also runs out at the end of 2025. In all, four of the eight members have served for a decade or longer.
“Our board members draw upon their career-long skills, knowledge and experiences in contributing to strategic and generative discussions but always keep the mission and the constituents they serve foremost in mind,” Shapira wrote in an email response to PublicSource’s inquiries.
Shapira wrote that she is not aware of any changes in approach coming down the pike with the new administration.
“All good boards”, she wrote, “balance the value of institutional memory and experience with new perspectives and ideas.”
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CCAC: A new center guided by experience
CCAC’s Board of Trustees is one of the largest county boards with 16 members, including one student representative. The student board seat is new, only in its second year. Annually, the Student Government Association elects a different student to serve. Seven of the other members have more than 10 years on the board.
State Senate Democratic Leader Jay Costa Jr., of Forest Hills, said he’s been an engaged member of the board for the entirety of his 20 years on it. “I serve as treasurer and chair of the Finance Committee and Audit Committee. I rarely miss a meeting. Given all the other work I do, I set aside my first Thursdays of the month [for CCAC]. I am engaged because I have strong feelings towards the college.”
Costa first joined in 2004, after he told Onorato that no one on the board was actually a graduate of CCAC. Costa, a graduate of the college, found that puzzling. Two weeks later, Onorato called him, said there was an opening and added, “‘I am putting you on it,’” Costa recounted. “And I have been here ever since.”
He said his relationships and connections have helped with fundraising for projects, including a new workforce training center.
Justin Bushmire, CCAC’s student trustee, said Costa “had a big role in that” and “does great things.”
Bushmire, who leaves the board this summer, is proud of two accomplishments he led during his short tenure: securing $190,000 for an extension of a laptop loaner program and finding $50,000 for upgrades to CCAC’s Homewood-Brushton Center. He said the board is fairly diverse, that student ideas are well received and that “experience is definitely valued when it comes to the board.”
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Drawing parallels from his experience with the Student Government Association, Bushmire said that with massive turnover, leadership is lost. “You kind of need that guidance and mentorship, maybe, to know that it’s a safe situation to speak your mind.”
Costa said every board he has been on has had a core group of people who are committed to the cause. He pointed to the relentless work and commitment of the longest-serving CCAC trustee, Mardi Isler, who is slated to serve 23 years by the end of her current term in 2027.
Innamorato has not yet nominated anyone to the CCAC board.
Pittsburgh’s model for board transition
After Ed Gainey was elected Pittsburgh mayor in 2021, the Pittsburgh Foundation and the Heinz Endowments* commissioned a Pittsburgh Government Guidebook authored by the Thomas Consulting Group. City spokesperson Maria Montaño said the guidebook’s recommendations led the administration to conclude that it needed to better understand the makeup of the city boards and commissions.
Spearheaded by three members of the Gainey administration — Deputy Chief of Staff Felicity Williams, Administrative and Project Coordinator Darius Wallace and Inclusion Diversity Equity and Access Manager Adrianna Branin — the city issued a voluntary survey to all board members, asking about their place of residence, economic status, race, gender and sexuality. The city has received around 100 responses, and final results are still outstanding.
The administration wants to see whether some neighborhoods are overrepresented or underrepresented, learn whether the city is utilizing the panels as vehicles to help think through policy, and determine whether they are effectively advising the mayor. The survey will be used in tandem with the Engage PGH public feedback portal to solicit volunteers for board service. The administration is coupling this with a new tracking system to know when board members are reaching the end of a term.
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“We are hoping through this process we are able to connect community to a board they are interested in but also to reimagine roles,” Montaño said.
She said a lot was learned from the recent dissection and reassembly of the Gender Equity Commission. The administration looked at what the commission needs, from staff support to representation. This examination also led to ongoing work with Carlow University to explore what “we, as a city and as the Gender Equity Commission should be looking at, to see, as we do policy, as we make investments in the communities, is it having an impact on real quality of life?”
Montaño also talked about making sure voices are heard outside of the echo chamber of any one commission. For example, she said, if education is part of any commission’s platform, someone who works at Pittsburgh Public Schools should probably have a seat.
The county administration hasn’t, to date, surveyed its boards in a targeted way. It has, however, conducted its All in Allegheny Survey of some 19,000 county residents, leading to an All in Allegheny Action Plan. That plan calls for new partnerships involving some boards and creation of a Housing Advisory Board within the Health Department.
The emergence of two new administrations in a few years, led by political allies, has paved the way for people to serve on multiple boards for both governments.
For instance, Kyle Chintalapalli, the city’s chief economic development officer, now sits on the Redevelopment Authority of Allegheny County and has been approved to sit on five other county panels that oversee finance economic transactions. Diamonte Walker, a former city Urban Redevelopment Authority official who is now CEO of Pittsburgh Scholar House, serves on the city’s Gender Equity Commission and has been confirmed to serve on the same boards as Chintalapalli.
Chintalapalli told the county’s Appointment Review committee that his multiple nominations are “emblematic of the opportunities to have better city-county coordination and cooperation.”
Councilor Michelle Naccarati-Chapkis, chair of the committee, asked Chintalapalli, as she did most multipanel appointees, if he felt he would have enough time to give. He did not think it would be a problem.
Gardner said it’s “important to routinely bring fresh ideas and perspectives in and, over the course of this administration’s first year, we expect there will continue to be turnover where people leave boards who are in expired terms, for example, so we can make way for new public servants.”
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“Everyone here appreciates the value of a representative government — in fact, we even had a little tea party about that years ago,” said Councilor Jack Betkowski, who on April 24 voted against the reappointment of Councilman Paul Klein to the ALCOSAN board. Betkowski argued that the ALCOSAN board is short on suburban ratepayer representation, but council confirmed Klein, who lives in Pittsburgh and has served on the board since 2022.
Council, though, rejected another of Innamorato’s appointments.
On March 15, the executive renominated Councilor Bob Macey to the Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission. He has served on it since 2009.
Council was later presented with a petition of about 200 signatures opposed to the nomination, citing statements he made at a contentious March 5 council meeting that some immigrants may have come “with a hidden agenda.”
During heated debate over Macey’s renomination on April 24, Councilor Suzanne Filiaggi cited critics of the nominee who called for “a fresh face in that position, and it’s not Bob Macey.” Joining just four other members in voting for the doomed renomination, she noted that the recommendation came from Innamorato, who she called “the freshest of faces” — suggesting it may have come in recognition of the importance of Macey’s experience.
Christine Graziano is a freelance reporter and can be reached at studio.cgm@gmail.com.
This story was fact-checked by Miranda Jeyaretnam.
*Heinz Endowments and The Pittsburgh Foundation provide funding to PublicSource.
