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Keystone Crossroads: Rust or Revival? explores the urgent challenges pressing upon Pennsylvania's cities. Four public media newsrooms are collaborating to report in depth on the root causes of our state's urban crisis -- and on possible solutions. Keystone Crossroads offers reports on radio, web, social media, television and newspapers, and through public events.Our partner stations are WHYY in Philadelphia, WPSU in State College and witf in Harrisburg. Read all of the partner stories here.Pittsburgh’s WQED joins the collaboration as an associate partner. Support for this project comes from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Capitol Recap: Proposed Municipal Pensions Fix Would Allow Skipping Public Bids

Emily Previti
/
Keystone Crossroads

The exemption would apply to 98 percent of Pennsylvania's municipal retirement systems.

Susquehanna Township's figured out a way to save $40,000 a year, every year.

That's three percent of their budget, freed up. Without compromising anything for residents, or firing anyone.

But to public officials in the 25,000 person community, getting there was almost not worth the trouble.

The $40,000 savings was reached through hiring a new investment manager for the township pension funds. In Pennsylvania, municipalities have to follow a very specific process to do that. The goal is transparency and protection. But the execution, critics say, overwhelms some officials and seems to discourage some financial professionals from doing business with them.

So there's a push to get rid of the public bidding rules through a bill (House Bill 414) - that, opponents say, goes too far and is "not good  public policy." (words of State Sen. John Blake, D-Lackawanna)

"How to make it a little easier? I don’t know. Is there a medium ground between doing nothing and overdoing it?" says Susquehanna Township Manager Gary Myers. "You want to have protections, but don’t want to go to the point of the absurd."

For more on this report, visit the site of our partnerKeystone Crossroads