Sara Innamorato was sworn in one year ago as Allegheny County’s chief executive, becoming the first woman to hold the position and making her the most powerful local official in Western Pennsylvania.
In a wide-ranging interview with WESA, she discussed her first 12 months on the job, which included a lawsuit seeking a forced countywide reassessment, changes in juvenile justice and a budget fight that ended with the county’s first tax increase in more than a decade.
“It's interesting being on the outside looking in when you're campaigning, and then you really get a chance to look under the hood and see what's going on,” Innamorato said.
In October, she introduced a $1.2 billion spending plan that called for a property tax rate increase of 2.2 mills.
At the time, Innamorato said the proposal was “fiscally responsible and moves our county forward.” And though County Council ultimately adopted a compromise hike of 1.7 mills, Innamorato said the county is now “on the right path to solve some financial issues that the county's been having and put us on stable footing for the future.”
“That budget was not everything that we wanted but it was everything that we needed in order to avoid layoffs and program cuts and to ensure that our Department of Human Services was funded,” she said.
A wary approach to reassessments
During her campaign, Innamorato called for regular property reassessments at a time when one hadn’t been conducted in more than a decade. But she later backed away from that proposal.
And even after Pittsburgh Public Schools filed a lawsuit last spring asking the county’s Court of Common Pleas to force a reassessment, Innamorato said she will “stick to [her] promise — we will not pursue a reassessment unless we have protections in place.”
When she was a member of the state House of Representatives, Innamorato supported legislation to create long-time owner occupant tax-exemption programs (also known as LOOP), which freeze property taxes for homeowners who own and live in their homes for a designated period of time (typically anywhere from five to 15 years.) She’s advocated for similar protections in Allegheny County.
At times, Innamorato still sounds like someone making the case for a reassessment. “What it would do is give us more accurate data. It would make the system more fair,” she told WESA. “And it would also rebalance and give the people who want to do business here or purchase a home here a better, more transparent reflection of what the actual property values are.”
But she said that a countywide reassessment “would not solve our financial issues,” since a state anti-windfall provision restricts the amount of revenue that property reassessments can generate.
The year ahead
Innamorato is expected to soon hire a new warden for the Allegheny County Jail, though the candidate’s name has not yet been released. The next warden be the first person to hold the position full-time since Orlando Harper retired in September 2023. Former acting Warden Shane Dady stepped down in November, and current acting Warden Jason Beasom plans to leave for another job in January.
Just before Innamorato took office, her predecessor, Rich Fitzgerald, and the Court of Common Pleas decided to reopen the Shuman Juvenile Detention Center under the management of outside nonprofit Adelphoi. Innamorato was critical of that plan on the campaign trail, but told WESA Adelphoi’s performance has been “without incident” thus far.
Officials will also begin work on the Allegheny County comprehensive plan, which lays out a map for the region’s future economic growth. The plan was last redone in 2008.
“When we were introducing the budget and the tax increase, a lot of people said, ‘Well, we need to grow as a region.’ And I couldn't agree more,” Innamorato said. “But you don't just speak those words and it magically happens … You have to be strategic.”
The 12-to-18-month process includes community engagement and identifying “how we best utilize the assets that we have,” including local universities, the county park system and local cultural assets.
The goal, Innamorato said, is to “make them work for shared goals of growth, but also of shared prosperity and making sure that those who've been left out and shut out for too long also get a chance to participate.”
