Who Needs Local Government Anyway? Dissolution in Pennsylvania's Distressed Cities

Pennsylvania is home to an exceptionally high number of small, fiscally troubled local governments — each one a monument to the decline of American manufacturing and its middle class jobs. The state has 2,561 municipalities and townships, and most of them govern areas with tiny populations, extremely low tax revenue, and sagging real estate values. An extraordinary 98% of cities and 67% of boroughs in the state experienced a decline in their relative fiscal health between 1970 and 2003. The struggling Monongahela River Valley, for instance, is carved into more than a dozen boroughs, towns, and cities that have been draining away businesses, jobs, and residents for several decades of steel industry decline. Each town’s borders are rooted in distinct histories as bedroom communities for this or that handful of industrial complexes, but in the present day their small size and fiscal vulnerability raise a difficult question: Should each of these municipalities continue to have its own municipal government? Dissolution of troubled cities has risen on the political agenda in Pennsylvania. Recently enacted Public Law 2983, No. 199 (Act 199) amends the state’s fiscal receivership law, Act 47, to permit economically distressed municipalities to dissolve their borders and hand local management over to a state appointee. This article comments on the proposed legislation, arguing that, unfortunately, a mismatch between the problem and the Act 199 solution makes the law look unlikely to be used or useful.