Races for Allegheny County Council likely won’t attract the same scrutiny or passion that election contests higher on next year’s ballot will draw. But nine of the part-time body’s 15 seats will be up for grabs next year, and the results may demonstrate whether voters want council to continue to assert itself after years of being treated as an afterthought.
Among the candidates hoping to solidify a more assertive role for council is Dan Grzybek, a Bethel Park school board member who wants to fill the District 5 seat being vacated by Tom Duerr in the South Hills suburbs of Bethel Park, Dormont, Mt. Lebanon and Upper St. Clair.
Grzybek is a chemical engineer who grew up in Hampton Township, but he says during and after college, he “got exposed to a lot of things that I didn’t in the bubble of Hampton” — people struggling with college tuition bills and health care that he never had to worry about while growing up.
“I saw how things like universal health care and free college tuition really can benefit people,” he said.
Such issues are typically above the pay grade of a county councilor, but Grzybek said there is an opportunity to act on local concerns such as conditions at the Allegheny County Jail — “it’s inexcusable that our death rate is twice the already-far-too-high national average," he said — or the impact of industrial pollution.
Grzybek now works at the Bettis Atomic Power Laboratory in West Mifflin, but he says earlier corporate experience suggested that “it wasn't necessarily environmentalists that were driving [polluting employers] out. It’s really business conditions.” And while he lauds the county's Health Department for stepping up enforcement of some facilities, too often fines for polluting are “almost like the price of doing business.”
Councilors representing communities near those plants may be more in touch with such concerns than an executive with a countywide focus, Grzybek said. And while some of those concerns may seem remote from the leafy enclaves common to District 5, pollution can cross municipal boundaries. And while “maybe the likelihood of being subjected to living conditions in the jail is not as high” in prosperous communities, Grzybek said, “overwhelmingly the people I talk to are appalled by those things.”
Support for some of these positions is not limited to progressives: Concerns about management of the jail have grown in recent months, for example. But part of what's at stake in next year's elections is an effort — one Grzybek supports — to have council become more assertive in shaping policy.
For much of its history, council played a subordinate role to the county executive; its very part-time structure arguably hamstrung its effectiveness at times, as did a sense that while the body would provide oversight for the county’s budgets, it would leave policy decisions to the executive. That’s changed in recent years with the arrival of a progressive faction led by at-large councilor Bethany Hallam and her allies, who have challenged County Executive Rich Fitzgerald on a range of health and other policies.
“We finally started to see county council get some teeth,” said Grzybek. Still, he added, “We’ve seen there are still members that maybe don’t want council to be as strong of a check on the county executive.”
Grzybek is an ally of Hallam, who sometimes tangled on council with Duerr, the incumbent. Duerr himself has backed Chris Rieger, a Dormont attorney in private practice who also foregrounds concerns about criminal justice and the environment. The open seat makes the South Hills a key battleground as progressives seek to expand their numbers on council.
Grzybek cites his own tenure on the Bethel Park school board, a position that is rare for someone in their 20s but that he sought after district rankings dropped and he believed many board members were concerned with tax rates to the exclusion of educational concerns. He says the district has added a number of social-support services as a more broad-minded majority has taken hold on the board.
Council, too, could expand its sense of what is possible, he said. “I think it’s important to push those boundaries [and] actually make county council be on level footing with the county executive.”
