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https://www.pghcitypaper.com/pittsburgh/my-understanding-is-that-philadelphia-is-the-only-first-class-city-in-the-state-and-pittsburgh-is-the-only-second-class-city-what-would-we-h/Content?oid=1338612

It's just a legal classification. Not sure there is much benefit for being one or the other.

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Allegheny is way too big area wise for it to work. It’s 5x the size and includes everything from skyscrapers to hundred acre farms.

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Most of the people live in the county vs city- by a very wide margin.

Allegheny probably doesn’t need 130 municipalities, but probably does need more than 1.

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Philadelphia City is also Philadelphia County. Allegheny County is Pittsburgh an a bunch of other communities. In Philadelphia they have both Municipal authority and county authority.

City of Philadelphia Police have state-wide jurisdiction like the State Police.

Philadelphia can (and do) set their own firearms control laws that affect the entire County.

Philadelphia has economic advantages closer to the Commonwealth's advantages over say the City of Erie's economic advantages, allowing Philadelphia to offer more in the way of tax incentives for incoming and current businesses.

Philadelphia maintains a higher level of representation in PA's state government than any other city.

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Class One cities in all states run a bit different. More like classical City-States within their respective state/Commonwealth structures.

>Philadelphia can (and do) set their own firearms control laws that affect the entire County.

This only applies to carry laws - Philly requires a permit for both open and concealed, while the rest of the state only requires a permit to conceal. Philly PD is known to harass people who openly carry.

Otherwise, the state's preemption law still covers just about everything. They actually got sued recently after the mayor banned guns at public pools, and the court struck it down under the preemption law.

Philly would have an AWB and mag cap limits in a heartbeat if they could.

As a city, Pittsburgh is just too small. A lot of Allegheny county is actually rural. Philadelphia county OTOH is completely urban.

>Allegheny probably doesn’t need 130 municipalities, but probably does need more than 1.

There's a lot of purple/red territory outside city limits. People would have a shit fit if they tried to form a unified city-county government. Personally I'd move just because I don't want to be under the city goverment, regardless of who's in charge.

Oh I think the city would get smacked down hard if it was a countywide operation. It would be 900k vs 300k.

Other than perhaps the boroughs that butt right against the city most don’t view Pittsburgh as the pinnacle of governance and keeper of the public trust. The way things have gone with plowing every year has ensured that.

Win an NBA championship

Philly would ban all firearms except those carried by their own uniformed thugs (police) if they could. All while ignoring all of their far, FAR more obvious problems.

And this is coming from a trucker who once got shot at down by the Eddystone Port facilities because his TRUCK was the wrong color!

>Philly would ban all firearms except those carried by their own uniformed thugs (police) if they could. All while ignoring all of their far, FAR more obvious problems.

Could say that about pretty much any government body

And you would be speaking the truth.

Government fears an armed populace ALMOST as much as it fears an EDUCATED populace.

And an armed, educated populace? Post-apocalyptic nightmare fuel right there.

Shoot, a lot of long-term residents don't know a lot of this stuff.

I remember when I lived in Philly a lot of landlord/tenant stuff was handled by the city where the rest of the Commonwealth it is done through the magistrates office.

Like it or not, open carry freaks a lot of people out. Even in the rural areas it is silly and unnecessary.

PA is a unique place I find. A lot of ways it runs a lot like a New England state. Unless you live in Bloomsburg we don’t live in towns we live in boroughs. I swear there are more accents and dialects in PA than any other state if you have a good ear for accents.

A lot of people would agree with that. Wilkinsburg has a proposal to merge with Pittsburgh:

https://wilkinsburgmerger.org/

There is a lot of consolidation of services with Pittsburgh in Allegheny County that don't include annexation. Waste disposal and policing in particular. EMS, not so much. IIRC, a lot of municipalities in Allegheny County maintain their own volunteer fire dept.

Also, this is such a great question. Have you checked in with r/urbanplanning to discuss the classification issue? I worked for a small neighborhood association for a few years, and we were qualified for certain CDBG grants because of our demographics. I am sure that there are other economic opportunities that are offered to 1st class tiers that aren't offered to all classes. Some of those would be infrastructure opportunities, like airports, interstate roads, and consumer rail development.

That's beside the point, like it or not.

> Philadelphia maintains a higher level of representation in PA's state government than any other city.

Considering that it's the largest, and by itself is 1/8 the total population of the state, this makes sense.

It would be asinine for Philadelphia and Lancaster to have the same amount of representation

True, but there could be a greater sense of separation between the representatives from Philly itself and the surrounding communities that have been by and large enveloped by Philly.

But I'm from the western edge of the state. We're pretty resigned, generally speaking, to being essentially either ruled by Philly or ignored in favor of Philly.

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If you guys want to have “mah freedum” that’s fine but you need to understand there is no such thing as the “right to be liked” or the “right to be popular.” I’m just getting tired of conservative shitheads constantly crying that people don’t like them or think they are dumb.

I think so, too.

Philly stopped having any benefits around 1812

Slide on greased up light poles

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> City of Philadelphia Police have state-wide jurisdiction like the State Police.

I’ve never heard this. Do you have the statute for that?

> Philly would have an AWB and mag cap limits in a heartbeat if they could.

What percentage of gun crime is committed in Philadelphia with legally owned guns?

I'd be surprised if it's over 0.001%.

Learned it in an Intro to Criminal Justice class about 20 years ago. May be outdated information.

I grew up before the internet. I'm more accustomed to relying on memory than anything else.

Philadelphians are jagoffs.

I don’t think that was accurate now or 20 years ago.

This is the statute that allows for limited statewide jurisdiction for municipal police officer (Philly PD is a municipal PD). There are no special carve outs for Philly or first class cities.

https://www.legis.state.pa.us/cfdocs/legis/LI/consCheck.cfm?txtType=HTM&ttl=42&div=0&chpt=89&sctn=53&subsctn=0&mobile_choice=suppress

It’s largely pointless. I’ll never carry open and when I see someone do it( or even worse carrying it tucked in to the pants/waist band), they are exactly the type of person you want to avoid if they start to actually shoot.

What? This is one of the dumber things you hear constantly from people in rural areas.

Simply look at who has majority in the PA since Senate and House since 2000. PA GOP has has the majority in the Senate since 1990 and all but 2 years in the House and the upcoming session this year.

Governor’s office has gone back and forth between both parties but the only PA Governor from Philly or the Philly area in the last 50 years (I’d have to look back further) was Rendell.

Did I say anything about the Governor? No, I did not. I said we often feel ignored on the western side in favor of Philly and the regions surrounding Philly.

Most of the state's money seems to funnel into the East, specifically the SouthEast.

But you make it purely a political party thing because you can't think past Red and Blue. Really shows the level of critical, reasonable thought you are capable of.

PA residents endless complain about local property taxes.

Too many school districts and way too much dinky municipalities yet same residents refuse to merge with adjacent municipalities to have a broader tax base and reduce need to increase property taxes.

Local residents complain loudly about local property taxes.

Repeat cycle of stagnation. Change is always hard but it seems extra super hard in most parts of PA.

You complained that you felt ruled by Philly. This simply isn’t true by representation in Harrisburg and then complain about money spent in SE PA yet these areas contribute more tax revenues than they receive back per capita because they support the state financially and are growing.

You made the second most common thing you hear the rural voters say - that their taxes dollars support the welfare takers in Philly when ITS THE EXACT OPPOSITE especially in rural counties with aging and older demographics.

Should the state do more to help rural counties regarding actual sustainable, long-term economic development and not letting natural gas and pipelines (both parties) dominate state politics especially in rural counties? Yes.

Isn’t what you remotely argued though.

I argued that western PA gets ignored. You are going on about various issues.

You obviously are bored and looking for a fight, or are just an asshole.

Either way, goodbye. Fucknut.

You’re just a rube and have personal beliefs that aren’t grounded in political or economic fact.

Most rural PA voters seem to share that.

I don’t know about rural. West Moreland is rural but not a lot of Allegheny County

I always wondered about the accents. I would say we have about 6 classes of accents, and some variation within them, but I always wonder if I only notice because I'm here and familiar with it. If I lived in Oklahoma would I be more in tune with their differences?

I grew up in the “coal region” there is a highly distinct accent and culture there.

That's by state law, and applies to any city of the first class. It's in section 6109.

Philadelphia is not allowed to make its own firearms laws.

Agreed. There's also a very distinct Delco accent, an accent for the sort of Chambersburg to Altoona stretch, one for Lancaster/dutch country, one for Pittsburgh, one for Philly, and then sort of an "all the rest" accent.

As an Allegheny county resident for over 25 years I disagree. The outlying suburban communities have sparser population, more undeveloped areas and a large amount of wildlife. I'm not just talking about the deer problem in Mount Lebanon or reports of coyotes in the county parks but the fact that the further west (Oakdale, Burgetstown) or south (Elizabeth, South Park, Pleasant Hills) you get from the city the sparser the population and generally sparse roadways that are in ill repair Also, consider that more affluent areas like Sewickley or Upper Saint Clair are not going to be willing to defer to an already overburdened city police force.

> A lot of Allegheny county is actually rural.

 
None of Allegheny County is rural, if you ask the census bureau.

Pittsburgh can't forcibly annex other municipalities. Sadly.

Yes, population gets sparser the further you move away from any city in America.

Jacksonville FL is larger than all of Allegheny County.

Yes, but typically in larger cities that is usually well outside the county line. The city of Philadelphia literally occupies all of its county.

You're aware that those lines are arbitrary, right? Allegheny County is over five times the size of Philadelphia county.

 
There is no natural law governing county lines and how much of the county a city should fill.

It all comes down to money and manpower then. Allegheny county would basically have to absorb the city of Pittsburgh, not the other way around - along with all the outlying townships.

For example, the city has been losing police personnel to the outlying townships. They left for a reason. Even social services are all all county-based. OTOH all the major highways are maintained by the state. The city OTOH struggles to maintain the city streets.

It's a called a "merger" instead of "annexation" for a reason.
 
The city has ~300K people, the county another 1m outside of city limits. If Pittsburgh were allowed to grow via annexation like any other city, it would have absorbed most of that million people a long time ago.
 
The second class city law of 1901 fucked Pittsburgh over bad and turned this county into a total mess. There is no reason to have 120 or so separate municipalities and 40 different school districts for 1.3m people.

Having had to deal with the county regarding behavioral health and various different school districts I agree. There are lots of municipalities that would benefit from this, but I simply don't think that the "merger" would go smoothly. I think a lot of the bigger, more affluent municipalities would fight it tooth and nail because they'd lose their affluence.

Yep, that's the entire problem, every little local mucketymuck wants to keep their fiefdoms.
 
As much as Texas annoys me, they had the right idea with their consolidated school districts and hospital districts.

And? It’s also hundreds of miles from Allegheny and had a development pattern nothing like it.

> Allegheny is way too big area wise for it to work.

 
This is provably false since cities larger than Allegheny County exist.

Yeah except they didn’t previous have 130 separate municipalities inside them dimwit.

Most of them were formed via annexation of surrounding communities, dimwit.

 

https://www.houstontx.gov/planning/Annexation/docs_pdfs/HoustonAnnexationHistory.pdf

That isn’t Jacksonville chief

It's another city around Allegheny County's size that was formed by annexing other municipalities, chief.
 
Quit being dumb.

Oh was it 130 municipalities in 2023? No?

So. Weird.

You're working very hard at being extremely stupid for zero gain.

Okay guy. Maybe go creep on my profile some more then delete the comments after…

lol, you're the moron from before? Makes sense now.
 
> Maybe go creep on my profile

 
It isn't creeping when you publicly post it, you fucking dunce.
 
No wonder your wife left you.

I’ll just wait for you to delete your comments. Nothing further is necessary.

Your wife left you because your brain is all fucked up.

 
I hope she got the house.

Yea of course. And you are a shut in incel. We already covered this ground.

I've been married for twelve years, my man. That's a feat you couldn't manage. For obvious reasons.

Uh huh…maybe you’ll meet a nice gal on the bus.

This sort of brain damage is why your wife left you and why you're alone.

 
(My wife also rides the bus.)

Wife? No. You mean your Mommy rides the bus.

It's wild how much you people hate public transit