Sara Innamorato Responses
Q: Will you promote rooting out the conflicts of interest which weaken the ability of ACHD to do its job effectively?
A: Yes. I will start by appointing members to the Board of Health who have environmental, public health, and medical credentials and ban representatives from polluting industry from sitting on the Board and advisory committees. ACHD should have one role: to protect the health and safety of our residents and to facilitate and provide high-quality medical care. It should NOT be in the business of protecting polluting industry.
Q: Will you ensure the new ACHD Director has public health credentials?
A: Absolutely. I will work with the Board of Health to find and hire someone who is clearly qualified for this job and has recognized environmental and public health credentials commensurate with the incredible, unique power of ACHD. It is a disservice to Allegheny County residents to require anything less.
Q: Will you ensure that the Clean Air Fund is used to help those in environmental justice communities and others who suffer from toxic emissions, and that the County meets its obligation to adequately fund our air pollution enforcement arm?
A: Yes. I am strongly opposed to the diversion of Clean Air Fund money to cover more of the costs of ACHD operations. That money is to remediate harm caused by polluters and that is what the money should be used for. Not to renovate buildings, not to pay staff, to repair harm in communities that need it most. I will also make the fund accessible and transparent and allow nonprofit organizations to apply directly to the fund in a public process. I will not allow closed-door decision making about how the fund is allocated. I will also actually get money out the door, something the current leadership of ACHD and the County Executive have failed to do.
Q: Will you support funding for a system that is easier to use, while ensuring open and timely communication regarding air quality issues?
A: We have incredible resources developed by our universities and funded by our philanthropic community that ACHD should be using and should be working in partnership with these organizations to further develop, fully deploy, and make actionable. I will provide the funding to ACHD necessary to do this, will work with ACDHS to help get ACHD onto their award-winning technology platforms, and will leverage every available bit of funding and knowledge from our university, nonprofit, and philanthropic communities to make it happen quickly. For example, ACHD failed to communicate risks to the public for two weeks during the Clairton Works fire in 2018. That will never happen under my watch. The public has a right to know what is happening around them and I will work tirelessly to put in place systems to provide rapid information across multiple modes.
Q: Will you support improving ACHD operations by taking advantage of the tremendous 21st century technological assets that exist in our region?
A: Absolutely. As stated above I will partner directly with the CREATELab, the Breathe Project, FracTracker Alliance, our universities, and our philanthropic community to make this happen.
Q: Are you open to the exploration of life or death scenarios aimed at increasing preparedness on the part of ACHD?
A: Yes. The derailment in East Palestine is just one example of the dozens of derailments that happen in our region on an ongoing basis. We do not currently have a plan in place to address these potential disasters and I will make it a top priority to develop a plan with risk management, emergency response, medical professionals, scientists and toxicologists, and other experts who will help us ensure that what happened across the border will never happen here. The primary responsibility of a County Executive is to keep our residents safe and I take that extremely seriously.
Dave Fawcett Responses
Will you promote rooting out the conflicts of interest which weaken the ability of ACHD to do its job effectively?
DF: The conflicts of interests all across Allegheny County’s appointed positions are unacceptable. I emphasize that I am the only candidate in this primary that is not a career politician and therefore the only candidate in this primary that will not take the County Executive reins with an expectation of preserving pre existing alliances by handing out appointments to those connected with my supporters. This gives me the freedom to really vet appointees and make good-faith decisions about who gets to do the job. We can’t keep allowing unqualified individuals to grab and maintain this sort of power just because they are friendly to elected officials. I will make appointments based solely on qualifications and demonstrated commitment to good governance.
ACHD is being led by an interim-director without public health or medical training.
Will you ensure the new ACHD Director has public health credentials?
DF: Yes, absolutely. This is the bare minimum. ACHD should have a director with both public health and management credentials.
The ACHD is critically underfunded, having just approved diverting 25% of the Clean Air Fund composed of fines paid by polluters to fund its own operations. These funds should be used to directly help those in environmental justice communities who live closest to major sources of toxic emissions, and the ACE must provide adequate funding for ACHD to do its job.
Will you ensure that the Clean Air Fund is used to help those in environmental justice communities and others who suffer from toxic emissions, and that the County meets its obligation to adequately fund our air pollution enforcement arm?
DF: Yes. We are seriously failing to properly enforce air pollution regulations in SWPA and marginalized communities are suffering as a result. The County’s weak enforcement arm is hitting us in two places: first, it allows pollution to be swept under the rug, and second, we are failing to collect fines and shorting the Clean Air Fund. As County Executive, I would establish a Department of Environmental Enforcement (DEE) to take the load of air and water quality regulation off of the health department. We need a county executive who is willing to crack down on polluters and enforce these laws. I will make it a priority to do so.
ACHD’s online county air pollution complaint system is far too complicated to navigate, given today’s open communication capabilities.
Will you support funding for a system that is easier to use, while ensuring open and timely communication regarding air quality issues?
DF: We absolutely have the ability and agency to drastically improve public communication systems in this day and age. We lose out on opportunities to improve air quality as well as opportunities to collect fines. And, the bottom line is that the County has a responsibility to enforce the law, and it is not doing so adequately. We need to find the funding to enforce the law and protect our environment.
ACHD has not responded to over 70,000 Smell Pgh app complaints since 2016, even though ACHD collaborated with Create Lab at CMU in the app’s creation.
Will you support improving ACHD operations by taking advantage of the tremendous 21st century technological assets that exist in our region?
DF: Yes! Allegheny County has the potential to be a beacon of sustainability and innovation. Our government can and should lead the way on that, and the Health Department is one of the most essential and impactful apparatuses under the County. We have to be willing to step into the 21st century and embrace innovation at the public level. We are lucky to have such brilliant tech and educational institutions here in Allegheny County, and we should collaborate with them to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of Health Department operations.
Addressing the catastrophic potential of an East Palestine-type disaster happening in Greater Pittsburgh requires immediate preventive action.
Are you open to the exploration of life or death scenarios aimed at increasing preparedness on the part of ACHD?
DF: Yes. Right now, I am the only candidate for County Executive that is discussing the very real possibility of a serious train derailment happening in Allegheny County. There is a Norfolk Southern line that runs right along the Allegheny River in Pittsburgh and Shaler. If a derailment were to happen there, it could have catastrophic damages on a major source of our County’s drinking water. When I was on County Council, I passed an ordinance allowing the County to acquire riverfront property (including that of Railroad tracks) for the purpose of creating a Countywide Riverfront Park. That ordinance was part of a set of ordinances authorizing the creation of such a park.
The train derailment has opened up a discussion of what we can and should expect our government to do to protect our air and water. The reality is that technology fails on occasion, despite regulations, and it will fail again. The capacity to move hazardous railroad tracks away from major water supplies should be, at the least, a part of the discussion surrounding the
derailment and its local impact. Though it is frightening and challenging to imagine this sort of disaster happening in our own background, the next County Executive has a real responsibility to equip the ACHD with the tools to prevent and prepare for an environmental disaster happening here.
Michael Lamb Responses
Will you promote rooting out the conflicts of interest which weaken the ability of ACHD to do its job effectively?
Absolutely. I have dedicated my career in public service, as well as this campaign, to shining a light on conflicts of interest and corruption that lead to inefficiency and injustice. If our public officials do not hold themselves accountable, there is no hope of creating a government that is accountable to its citizens. I have spent the last 15 years in the controller’s office auditing departments in our city government as Pittsburgh’s fiscal watchdog. I have called for ethics reforms of our pension board specifically around conflicts of interests and who gets to pocket our retiree’s money. I pushed for the elimination of my own position as Allegheny County Prothonotary because it was the right thing to do for the people of the county. I plan to continue to fight for more accountable, responsive, and efficient county government and its departments and that includes at the ACHD.
ACHD is being led by an interim-director without public health or medical training.
Will you ensure the new ACHD Director has public health credentials?
Yes. It will also be critical that whomever is appointed is a champion for abortion rights. While the county has tangential influence on our laws around abortion in this state, we need to recognize this position for what it is: the chance to advocate for bodily autonomy as the leader of Western PA. We need the County Executive who will use that office as a bully pulpit to defend the rights of women and people across this state. It is the duty of our county executive to ensure that people have the right to adequate and necessary healthcare not only through a strong relationship with statewide and federal leadership, but also through appropriate appointments within the county like at our Department of Health. As County Executive, I will make sure that we have strong and outspoken abortion rights and environmental justice advocates leading the departments in charge of protecting people’s health and wellbeing in Allegheny county.
The ACHD is critically underfunded, having just approved diverting 25% of the Clean Air Fund composed of fines paid by polluters to fund its own operations. These funds should be used to directly help those in environmental justice communities who live closest to major sources of toxic emissions, and the ACE must provide adequate funding for ACHD to do its job.
Will you ensure that the Clean Air Fund is used to help those in environmental justice communities and others who suffer from toxic emissions, and that the County meets its obligation to adequately fund our air pollution enforcement arm?
The key to cleaning up our air and water is empowering our ACHD and keeping Clean Air Funds monies in the communities it is meant to serve. I led the fight to keep our parking authority public in order to save our pension board, which went from 20% funded to 70% funded. There are funds currently available at the county, funds we can get in creative ways, and funds that we can draw down from state and federal reserves.
To draw down federal funding, you must apply for it. We need to recognize that we are in competition with all other counties also fighting for this money. We need somebody in the county executive seat who has a knowledge of how the county works and a deep understanding of how environmental investment pieces fit together to concretely demonstrate how those dollars will be used.
ACHD’s online county air pollution complaint system is far too complicated to navigate, given today’s open communication capabilities.
Will you support funding for a system that is easier to use, while ensuring open and timely communication regarding air quality issues?
Like I mentioned above, I have worked to create open communication with residents at the controller’s office. I created tools like Open Book Pittsburgh and Fiscal focus so people could actively engage with government by using our public and searchable databases of all campaign, lobby, and contract dollars. I would bring this model to ACHD to make sure obstacles from an open line of communication and accountability are removed.
ACHD has not responded to over 70,000 Smell Pgh app complaints since 2016, even though ACHD collaborated with Create Lab at CMU in the app’s creation.
Will you support improving ACHD operations by taking advantage of the tremendous 21st century technological assets that exist in our region?
Absolutely. There are technological advances that have improved operations in many of our departments. As an example, when I was first elected to the Prothonotary’s office, we took an office that looked like something from a Charles Dickens novel to the most technologically advanced court recording office in the state. There is no reason these tools should not also be used at the ACHD.
Addressing the catastrophic potential of an East Palestine-type disaster happening in Greater Pittsburgh requires immediate preventive action.
Are you open to the exploration of life or death scenarios aimed at increasing preparedness on the part of ACHD?
Yes. We have to recognize the damage that money and corporations do when it comes to our health. Over 250 trains derailed in the last decade and almost half contained hazardous materials. The Dept of Transportation has jurisdiction over safety standards, which are quite weak due to lobbying by railroad company lobbying. We need to stand up to corporations, something I have done my entire career, to ensure the safety and wellbeing of our community.