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It may seem crazy at first: County Executive Rich Fitzgerald essentially taking his own government’s legislative branch to court? Asking a judge to invalidate a minimum-wage ordinance passed by fellow Democrats? WHAT IS HAPPENING TO THIS FAMILY?
The answer is simple: What’s at stake isn’t just about what the county pays to its workers. It’s about who gets to be the boss.
The ordinance in question, passed by county council over Fitzgerald’s veto earlier this month, would boost the minimum wage for county employees to $18 an hour next year, and to $20 by 2026. Fitzgerald says he’s seeking a declaratory judgment — in which the court determines the rights and responsibilities of two parties — to determine whether the law is valid.
“There is a legitimate disagreement on whether the executive branch or the legislative branch has the legal authority to set wages,” he said in a statement. “The resolution of this lawsuit will have a lasting impact upon future executives and councils.”
This is just the latest squabble in a long-running fight between Fitzgerald and a council majority, and critics accuse him of lashing out at a bill he couldn’t stop on his own. (“When he doesn’t get his way, he throws temper tantrums,” contended council President Pat Catena.) This time, the two sides have each furnished dueling legal opinions about the issue.
The county’s top lawyer, solicitor George Janocsko, sided with Fitzgerald, arguing that only the executive branch can set wages and that the bill is “an attempt by council to aggregate to itself a power that it does not possess.” But council’s own solicitor, Frederick Frank, crafted an opposing opinion, arguing that the county charter grants “council … the authority to adopt and amend as needed the personnel system for county employees.”
Frank also drafted an opinion earlier this spring that accused the county jail of violating a voter referendum that bars the use of solitary confinement.
A judge may well decide who has the right argument on the wage hike. But what the dispute already demonstrates is that municipal law is often politics by other means.
Solicitors like Janocsko represent the government as a whole, advocating for it in the courtroom and advising officials on how to avoid getting sued at all. But legislators often regard those attorneys as serving the executive who appoints them — particularly when the solicitor sides with the executive in a dispute between branches.
“I don’t have any say over who the county solicitor is,” said Bethany Hallam, the county councilor who drafted the minimum-wage bill.
Not surprisingly, Hallam prefers Frank’s approach — though she says he merely “looks at the letter of the law.” (Still, fans of political intrigue will note that Frank’s law firm was a contributor to the county executive campaign of John Weinstein, who has both a rivalry with Fitzgerald, and ties to the council majority.)
“Having a solicitor who is independent is huge,” she said, “because we need everything we can get to fight the people who have the power and the money.”
Council’s ability to have a solicitor at all was hotly debated from the earliest days of the executive-and-council form of county government. Back then, council Democrats wanted their own advice in the event of differences with the county’s then-executive, Republican Jim Roddey. But even when the relationship between branches is friendlier, legislators may bemoan a lack of resources.
Pittsburgh City Council hired its own solicitor, Dan Friedson, a year ago. He was one of a handful of new staffers to help council deal with challenges such as homelessness at a time when Ed Gainey’s mayoral administration was taking the reins.
The dynamic has been far less confrontational than at the county level. City Council President Theresa Kail-Smith stresses that council was laying groundwork to hire an attorney well before Gainey took office. Friedson and city solicitor Krysia Kubiak have “a very healthy relationship, and we don’t want to undermine that,” she said. Friedson’s main role, she said, is to help council navigate the law to achieve its goals, not to gainsay the Gainey legal team.
But legislative wariness of administration lawyers has been a feature of prior administrations. And Kail-Smith said the county “I think has different politics going” these days.
That’s not just a matter of the personalities involved. Ever since the executive-and-council form of government was established by voter referendum a quarter-century ago, county council has been treated like local government’s Island of Misfit Toys.
A mere four staffers currently serve the full 15-member body, whose members all serve part-time. For years, county councilors were the only local officials in the region barred from seeking another office: A “resign-to-run” provision in the original home rule charter meant that even school board members were allowed to harbor greater ambitions. Councilors were given few resources or obligations beyond churning out proclamations for Eagle Scouts and octogenarians, but they were instructed not to think of the office as a stepping stone for something bigger.
But after repeated attempts, council members cast off the “resign-to-run” rule with a public referendum in 2022. Calls to make budgets more transparent were a leitmotif of races for county executive, county controller and county council itself this spring. Frank’s willingness not just to give advice but to help council make its case is another means of asserting independence.
There’s an argument that council isn't meant to be a policy-making body — that its original function was largely to weigh in on the county budget. But Hallam says the real obstacle isn’t an absence of authority but of capacity: “We have more authority than we’ve used because we’ve been restricted in other ways.”
Ultimately, she wants council to have additional staff to draft laws and provide better constituent service.
So the argument today may be about whether council can set wages. But someday it may want to do some hiring of its own.
