As part of his 2018 budget address Monday morning, Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto said he is sending a letter to the Commonwealth seeking the removal of the city from Act 47 financially distressed status and ICA oversight, of which it’s been under since 2004.

In his message to Gov. Tom Wolf and the Department of Community and Economic Development Secretary Dennis Davin, Peduto laid out his plans to cement the fiscal reforms learned through the Act 47 process to protect the city from entering the distressed status again.

With several weeks behind the signing of Act 5 of 2017, some leaders of public employee labor unions are reflecting on their role in the process and what they did differently from other pension-reform attempts that eventually led to the enactment of this legislation.

At the beginning of June, the Senate-advanced Senate Bill 1—a pension reform plan that overhauled the current pension system that was used in the commonwealth—was created after six or seven drafts from ongoing negotiations.

The bi-partisan legislation was created through agreement from all four legislative caucuses as well as Gov. Tom Wolf and his administration. 

The state General Assembly wrapped up another legislative session week. 

Here's what the Pittsburgh and Allegheny County delegations were up to. 

The City of Pittsburgh announced Thursday that its city pension fund is at its highest funded ratio in the last seven years, currently sitting at 60 percent.

 

The funding ratio is the highest since the Commonwealth took over management of the fund in 2010; it also reflects a five percent increase in the funding ratio since the last meeting of board overseeing the fund, which was held in February.

Just this past Wednesday, the US Senate voted 50-49 to roll back an Obama-era Department of Labor rule that allows cities and counties to develop retirement security plans for private-sector employees not already benefiting from an employer-run plan.

 

A similar rollback of a rule allowing states to develop these plans has not yet been subjected to a vote in the Senate, though it has passed the US House of Representatives overwhelmingly and could be voted on at any time.