Regionalization of public services is seen by many officials as the key to survival for small towns across the state.
As populations shrink and costs grow for municipalities to providing services, local governments are left with a smaller tax base and fewer solutions to pay those costs.
That’s where municipal authorities come in.
Though the creation of authorities dates as far back as 1935, the entities exploded in popularity since then — more than doubling in number across the state — and continue to branch out, taking on new tasks that were once left to local government. In addition to the familiar water and sewer authorities, the popularity of entities to provide things such as fire or ambulance services is growing amid financial pressure on those services.
Other authorities locally and across the state oversee services that include bus and other public transportation, public parking and redevelopment of vacant or abandoned property.
What are municipal authorities?
Authorities are independent organizations formed by one or more local governments to provide a specific public service.
Once an authority is created, the organization becomes largely independent of the elected officials who created it. Local governments might appoint members to an authority’s board of directors, but managing operations, setting a budget — and billing the public directly for services — is handled by the authority, for the most part without needing approval from elected officials.
While authorities in Pennsylvania do not have taxing power, they do have authority to make their fees for service mandatory and to halt those services for lack of payment.
Authorities, throughout their history, were seen as a way to battle demographic and economic shifts in society.
“The growth of municipal authorities is less about policy preference and more about structural reality,” said Tarentum Manager Dwight Boddorf, who served two years on the steering committee of the newly formed Alle-Kiski Emergency Services Authority, which will provide ambulance service in Tarentum, Brackenridge and Harrison.
Exploding numbers of authorities
The popularity of authorities is undeniable.
Since 1990, the number of authorities in Pennsylvania has grown about 227%, from about 550 to about 1,800 today, according to the International City/County Management Agency, an association of local government professionals.
In Allegheny County, the number of authorities has more than doubled since 1990, from 90 to 200, according to the state’s Department of Community and Economic Development website. Data for Westmoreland was not available.
“Many regions across Pennsylvania were built for populations and industrial tax bases that no longer exist,” Boddorf said. “At some point, it becomes a math problem that individual municipalities can’t solve on their own.”
By spreading costs across multiple communities, reducing equipment duplication and pooling specialized staff, municipalities can stabilize essential services.
The Westmoreland County Transit Authority, formed in 1978, combined service that was previously provided by multiple private bus companies throughout the county.
Ashley Cooper-Brounce, deputy executive director, said the mission of the mass transportation authority speaks to its impact — providing safe, reliable, stable transportation and helping improve residents’ quality of life.
The authority operates a fleet of 41 buses that connect people to work, appointments and recreation in Greensburg, Latrobe, New Kensington and Pittsburgh.
“As a municipal authority, our focus is serving the public by providing an essential service that the private market may not be able to sustain on its own,” she said.
Pooled resources provide reliability
The Municipal Authority of Westmoreland County (MAWC) is one of the oldest and largest in the state and serves two-thirds of the county with 123,000 connections to homes and businesses.
It has been acquiring fragmented water systems and linking them for more than 80 years, starting with the Vandergrift and Westmoreland water system, near Greensburg, and adding Scottdale shortly after.
It added sewage into its business model in 2001.
Today, the crisscross of lines comprises two mammoth regional systems, Indian Creek and Sweeney, interconnected by 19 miles of 48-inch water main, allowing them to support one another in an emergency.
“You can’t have a functioning community without water service,” said Matt Junker, the authority’s public relations specialist.
“The fact that we’re self-supporting and that our tax-exemption acts to keep down operating costs means that what we generate (in fees) goes into serving the public.”
Consolidation directly benefits the 250,000 people served by the authority, Junker said.
“We don’t generate dividends or profits for shareholders,” Junker said. “The money that we gain from water bills and other charges is poured back into improving the system or repairs or generally servicing customers.”
Jennie Shade, senior director of government relations for the Pennsylvania Municipal Authorities Association, said the model is a way for towns to provide services “outside of municipal government itself.”
Creating a municipal authority can lighten a municipality’s load and redirect duties to field professionals.
“There’s a lot of work that municipalities do,” Shade said. “They can have public services taken off their plate.”
It’s also a way to provide services across political boundaries, she said, and make them regional in nature, which helps with economies of scale.
While autonomous, rates, Shade said, are typically similar under a municipal-run system and an authority-run system.
“If the municipality sells it to a private company, that’s when you can see a jump,” she said. “And this way, the community still owns the infrastructure.”
Oversight for municipal authorities does not fall to the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission, as it does for electricity and natural gas.
Rate oversight and dispute resolution are generally handled by the county Court of Common Pleas, except in cases where service is provided to a customer who lives outside the founding municipality’s limits.
Also, if a municipal utility system is acquired by a private PUC-regulated public utility, such as Pennsylvania American Water or Aqua PA, it would fall under PUC rate regulation.
The lack of direct, outside oversight for many authorities has not escaped the attention of watchdog groups in the state.
The League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania, for example, has long held the position that municipal authorities, while valuable, should be subject to greater oversight by elected officials.
According to the League’s position on authorities, reached in 1987 after the League performed a study on municipal authorities, the state should move to put more authorities that provide a utility under direct PUC oversight.
The league also cautions against forming authorities solely to reduce the costs of providing a public service and feels the state should have a consumer advocate available at the state level to handle complaints against municipal authorities.
Key to sustainability
Boddorf said regional models provide more reliable coverage, less redundancy and stronger long-term planning. Instead of each municipality carrying the full operational and financial risk alone, it’s shared in a structured and predictable way, he said.
In March, Tarentum joined with Brackenridge and Harrison to approve the Alle-Kiski Emergency Services Authority. It merged Eureka Community Ambulance in Tarentum and Citizens Hose EMS in Harrison, both of which had more than 90 years in business.
Leaders, including Boddorf, said it was the only viable solution to salvage ambulance service for the three communities.
The authority, to be funded by insurance payments and a household fee paid by residents, is expected to ensure that, when residents call 911, a provider will answer, chiefs of Eureka and Citizens said.
A preliminary fee for property owners is $85 a year.
“It’s no longer, ‘Can we survive on volunteers and donations?’” Shade said of the new EMS service. “It put into effect a structured system.”
The local funding crisis is similar to those across the state and country, with multiple ambulance services closing in recent years because of insufficient insurance reimbursements, growing operational costs and unsteady municipal, state and federal funding. According to a report from the PA House Republican Caucus, 47 ambulance companies closed across the state during 2023-24.
An EMS authority allows municipalities to work together under a single structure and to establish a stable funding mechanism to support a ready service, Boddorf said.
“Regional authorities aren’t about consolidation for its own sake,” Boddorf said. “They’re about keeping essential services functional when the old model no longer makes sense.”
Funding gets a boost
Multimunicipal cooperation often grows the chances for funding.
In Oakmont, the water authority last week announced more than $360,000 in state funding for a new Advanced Metering Infrastructure system, which serves 18,000 properties in Oakmont and Verona, as well as parts of Penn Hills, Plum, Indiana Township, Harmar, Middlesex and West Deer.
The new system replaces quarterly billing cycles with monthly options and adds early leak detection to protect customers against undetected water loss that otherwise would show up on their bills.
The Fawn Frazer Joint Water Authority also launched a major project with help from the state.
Construction of a $2.4 million water line project on Bull Creek Road in Fawn began June 1 and is expected to alleviate line breaks, which have caused costly repairs, authority Chairman Ed Adams said.
The original water lines were covered with fill in the 1970s during construction of the Route 28 interchange at Tarentum. The authority was awarded a $1.65 million state grant, with funds from the Commonwealth Finance Authority’s H2O PA program, to help with construction costs.
In Westmoreland, an $11 million project is underway to replace up to 1,000 potentially dangerous lead and galvanized pipes over the next three years. It’s funded through a low-interest state loan and grants from the state and federal governments. Properties in Leechburg, West Leechburg, Vandergrift, North Vandergrift, East Vandergrift, West Vandergrift, Hyde Park, Apollo and North Apollo are targeted.
MAWC estimates about 3% of its water system, up to 10,000 service lines, is made of lead or galvanized metal, although water quality testing has found no evidence that lead has leeched into the water system. A federal mandate was put out to every water provider in the country to remove lead pipes by 2037.
Without the municipal authority, these types of major projects could be difficult for individual communities.
Decision-makers at the state level favor regionalized projects when doling out grants or loans because of the ability to affect more residents with a single project. The state Department of Community and Economic Development, one of the main state agencies to help fund local projects, released a statement supporting regionalized efforts.
“DCED is aware of the challenges facing our communities today, including limited resources and funds. By encouraging them to work together through multi-municipal efforts, both local and state dollars go much further in the communities who receive funding through our agency.”
“Authorities help preserve service levels that would otherwise become unreliable or unaffordable if each municipality tried to operate independently,” Boddorf said.
“Instead of each municipality carrying the full operational and financial risk alone, that risk is shared in a structured and predictable way.”
About municipal authorities
Founded in the 1930s during the Great Depression, municipal authorities were pegged as a fiscal recovery tactic. The federal government granted money to states and municipalities for public works construction to stimulate employment and provide needed facilities.
The money was supposed to be matched, but many states and local towns weren’t able to pay.
Pennsylvania was among three states to create authorities to borrow outside constitutional debt limits by using revenue bonds.
The 1935 act was repealed and replaced in 1945, giving greater flexibility in operation and financing.
There are about 1,800 municipal authorities across the state that govern water, sewer, redevelopment, parking, transportation, EMS and more.
Source: Governor’s Center for Local Government Services