At a time of change at the top of its org chart, Allegheny County government’s workforce shows signs of stabilizing from years of pandemic-era turmoil.
The end of 2023 brought the first change in the county executive’s office since 2012, with former Executive Rich Fitzgerald exiting and new Executive Sara Innamorato taking office in January.
During Fitzgerald’s final 12 months — and for the first time since before the pandemic — the county hired more employees than it lost (729 to 629), finishing the year with 5,142 people on its roster. Departments that have struggled under staffing shortages, like the county jail, human services and emergency management, saw more hires than losses.
County Communications Director Abigail Gardner wrote in an email to PublicSource that the county has hired more than 250 people since Innamorato took office in January, but significant vacancies persist in the Kane Community Living Centers, medical units at the jail and caseworker ranks at the Department of Human Services.
Jail, DHS make gains
The Allegheny County Jail was the subject of intense criticism and media attention during the latter part of Fitzgerald’s tenure due to poor living conditions, COVID outbreaks and deaths in the facility that raised alarm from elected officials and prompted the county to hire an outside entity to conduct an audit.
Why does the jail have such grave issues? The answer depends in part on who you ask – with administrators and advocates giving different answers – but both sides have agreed that staffing in the lockup has been inadequate for years.
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A shortage of correctional officers drove Brian Englert, president of the correctional officers’ union, to complain regularly to the Jail Oversight Board that it placed officers in dangerous situations and forced an unhealthy amount of overtime. And jail reform advocates, including county councilor and oversight board member Bethany Hallam, have drawn attention to the lack of adequate medical personnel, which they say leads to dangerous situations for those confined there.
The county made modest progress last year. The jail began the year with 352 correctional officers, hired 42 and lost 33. That still leaves the county well short of the 433 COs it had on staff at the end of 2019.
Englert said the slim increase in staffing has not improved conditions much, and officers are still forced into dangerous amounts of overtime. He added that of 18 people who completed training in December, five have since left, and at least five others have retired in 2024.
“You still have correctional burnout,” Englert said. “It’s not getting better.”
He said the county should invest more in recruitment, including in other counties, now that there is no residency requirement for correctional officers.
Gardner wrote that the jail has staff members dedicated to recruiting new correctional officers and medical staff, and the positive trend in correctional officers is “movement in the right direction.”
But in medical roles, like nurses, mental health specialists and medical assistants, the jail lost two more people than it hired. And of 19 jail medical hires last year, 11 departed those jobs before the year ended.
Two legal aid nonprofits and a law firm reached a settlement with the county in March related to the jail’s mental health care, including stipulations that the county meet minimum staffing levels. One California-based psychiatrist deposed in the lawsuit called the jail’s mental health treatment “shockingly substandard.”
The county’s Department of Human Services — its largest department — did not increase its number of caseworkers in the Division of Children, Youth and Families [CYF]. After bleeding dozens of caseworkers, eventually dropping to 100 short of a full complement in 2022, the county essentially treaded water last year, hiring 32 and losing 33.
DHS overall, though, hired 113 people last year and lost just 83.
The only department that sustained major losses was the Kane Community Living Centers nursing homes, which lost 40 more employees than it hired. County officials in past years said it became much harder to hire for the facilities after the pandemic began. The Kane Centers finished 2023 with 36% fewer employees than it had at the close of 2019.
Gardner wrote that staffing medical positions has been a struggle for years in the public and private sectors and that the county supplements its medical staff at both the Kane Centers and the jail with outside agencies when needed.
“We have put an emphasis on recruiting into these positions and are looking at some new strategies for recruitment to help fix this issue in the long term,” Gardner wrote.
A representative for the United Steelworkers, the union that represents many Kane employees, did not respond to a request for comment.
A new wage floor
Innamorato’s first official act was to raise the minimum pay for full-time county workers to $18 per hour for 2024, with plans to go to $22 by 2027. The plan is similar to one that county council adopted last year but Fitzgerald went to court to overturn.
The immediate consequences of the plan may not be huge: 324 county employees last year earned below $18 per hour or the equivalent annual salary of $37,440 at 40 hours per week. Most of those were short of that threshold by $2,000 or less — and some may have received raises after 2023 ended.
In an echo of PublicSource’s analysis of 2022 data, those earning less than the proposed (and now official) $18 minimum pay rate in 2023 were disproportionately Black individuals and women.
Raising the minimum pay to $22 per hour, or $45,760 per year, would affect far more employees based on 2023 data. More than 1,500 full-time employees earned less than that in 2023, comprising around 27% of all full-time staff.
A third of those work in the Kane Centers, 11% in human services and 8% each in health and parks.
Well-paid police
The county Police Department received more attention than usual in 2023, partly because it patrolled Downtown on occasion as media and public attention fixed on safety concerns in the business district, and partly because it became a chess piece in the campaign for county executive. The Republican candidate, Joe Rockey, pledged early in the campaign to expand the force by 10%, and Democrat and eventual winner Innamorato late in the race said she would consider doing the same.
Gardner said the administration is not planning an expansion at this time.
“The request for additional support at municipal levels needs to come from the municipal level, and then we are happy to engage in discussion to see if our agency can offer support,” she wrote.
The department is different from municipal forces, such as the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police, which have more visible roles in the daily life of communities. County police are primarily responsible for patrolling airports and county parks, and often assist municipal departments in homicide investigations.
The department began last year with 270 officers, hired 25 and lost 24. The median salary of uniformed officers was $103,000 — about 20% higher than that of Pittsburgh police officers. City and union officials say that’s a big reason Pittsburgh’s officers are leaving the force for county and suburban departments.
Highest earners
All of the county’s three highest base salaries in 2023 went to people who are no longer employed there: former Health Director Debra Bogen, who was appointed Pennsylvania Secretary of Health; longtime County Manager William McKain, who left toward the end of Fitzgerald’s term for a job at the Allegheny Conference on Community Development; and Medical Examiner Karl Williams, who announced his retirement in February.
Other highly paid departees worked closely with Fitzgerald for a long time: Director of Economic Development Lance Chimka, County Solicitor George Janocsko and Budget & Finance Director Mary Soroka.
Of the top 25 base salaries, 24 went to white employees, 17 went to men and two went to elected officials: Fitzgerald and District Attorney Stephen Zappala.
The county paid $32.9 million in overtime last year, a slight downturn from 2022. Of this sum, 21% went to jail workers, 17% to Kane workers and 18% to emergency management.
The highest individual overtime earner was a Kane Centers licensed practical nurse who was originally hired in 1995 and racked up almost $114,000 in overtime last year, an amount more than double the employee’s base salary.
The next 10 highest overtime earners, each accruing between $77,000 and $100,000, worked for the jail, sheriff or police.
Charlie Wolfson is PublicSource’s local government reporter and a Report for America corps member. He can be reached at charlie@publicsource.org.
This story was fact checked by Delaney Rauscher Adams.
