PENNSYLVANIA Butler keeps fingers crossed that it won't be designated as 'distressed'

The city is hoping to enliven its downtown with more specialty stores.
BUTLER, Pa. (AP) -- This city's local property tax rates are maxed out and it may not make payroll by year's end.
A state-sponsored economic study has suggested cutting nearly a third of its 23-officer police department and switching to part-time or volunteer firefighters instead of 20 paid full-timers.
All of this makes Butler a prime candidate to be designated a distressed city under Act 47, a state law that allows for state oversight of municipal or county finances. The state is providing financial advice to Butler and 10 other local or county governments in the same leaky boat.
The governments of Luzerne County and four municipalities in it -- Nanticoke, Plymouth Township, Pittston and Wilkes-Barre, account for half of the other 10. The others are Lackawanna County and one of its cities, Carbondale; Glassport and Wilkinsburg boroughs in Allegheny County; and the Blair County city of Altoona.
On any given day, about 120 county or municipal governments out of 2,632 in the state meet at least one of 11 criteria needed to qualify for Act 47, said Fred Reddig, deputy director of the Governor's Center for Local Government Services, who oversees Act 47. Those criteria range from chronic budget deficits to payroll defaults.
Officials in Butler are hoping they'll never have to apply for the list.
Weak comparisons
"A lot of people look at our downtown ... through the eyes of what it was like 30 years ago. Those days are gone. But we have specialty stores, and that's what we need," Councilman Joseph Bratkovich said.
The Troutmann's Department Store, a regional chain that was gangbusters a generation ago, is now a motorcycle shop; the old J.C. Penney now houses a dollar store; and the corner lot where Woolworth's sat for decades has been vacant for 12 years.
"Yes, we see the faults; yes, we see the vacant buildings. But we are still alive," said Bratkovich.
Glassport, in Allegheny County, isn't as fortunate. The older, poorer community is wracked by the 1970s shutdowns of a steel foundry, glass house and copperweld operation that employed 5,000 to 6,000 combined.
"We had 9,500 people in the 1960s and now we're down to about 4,800," Mayor Thomas Urbanski said.
"We've probably had two new houses built in the last six years and maybe 10 garages," Urbanski said. "But the jobs ain't here, and you're not going to get the young people to build here."
Carnegie Mellon University economist Robert P. Strauss said Act 47 can't change those realities. Massive municipal consolidations and revamping local government accounting practices are long-term answers, he said.
Mergers
The state, faced with a large number of failing school districts, took a "shotgun-wedding" approach to consolidating 2,500 districts to 501 over the past 30 years or so. But making the case for municipal consolidations is more difficult, partly because the state doesn't require standard accounting rules for all municipalities, Strauss said.
For example, under Act 47, state officials do not count the income or debts of Pittsburgh's various city authorities in determining its financial status; but a separate state oversight board appointed by the Legislature does. Pittsburgh was given distressed status under Act 47 in December.
"That's really troubling," Strauss said. "Because until you define the problem -- how much in the red is Pittsburgh, and what changes in policy need to be made?"
Many small municipalities don't even require independent audits. Their finances are overseen by an appointed board of auditors -- a system dating to the 18th century.
"Local government is centuries behind where it should be in many parts of the state -- the consolidation and taking advantage of economies of scale that could occur ... could do an enormous service to the economic health of the state," Strauss said.
Dealing with differences
Without accounting for reforms and consolidations, Act 47 will become overwhelmed as the number of distressed communities grows, Strauss said.
Act 47 includes incentives for municipal mergers and shared services, but some were removed in favor of a 1994 law that makes such incentives available even to those communities not under the act.
But Reddig and other state officials say municipal mergers aren't the answer.
"It's just one of these issues like abortion and gun control that are very emotional," said Michael Gasbarre, executive director of the Legislature's Local Governments Commission.
"It would be very difficult at the state level to tell a Mount Lebanon [an affluent Pittsburgh suburb] 'Well, you have to take in a Clairton,'" a neighboring Act 47 community, Gasbarre said. "That's a local issue."
Butler isn't considering a merger, though bolstering fire coverage through mutual assistance agreements with neighboring communities is on the table.
Some hope
And Bratkovich believes the city isn't far from recovery despite deficit projections of up to $500,000 by 2006.
Bratkovich proudly points to a handful of shops that have defected from a nearby mall to the downtown because of cheaper rents. Meanwhile, the city has managed to keep some "jewels" like the century-old Cummings Candy & amp; Coffee Shop.
Barry Cummings, 35, the store's fourth-generation proprietor, stands behind the stainless steel soda counter and beneath the molded tin ceiling that call to mind the early 1900s. But he's hand-squeezing an orange juice, next to a chalkboard menu of flavored coffees: 21st century fare.
"You just don't find this anymore -- it's unique," Cummings said. "That's what we've got to be all about."
In the past 10 years Cummings has scaled back his closing time from 11 p.m. to 5 p.m., but hopes a plan to renovate a vacant movie house as part of a burgeoning cultural district will change that.