Should Municipal Employees Be Required to Live Inside City Limits?
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Tupungato / Shutterstock.com
Residency requirements for Pittsburgh police officers prompted a legal dispute.
The topic of residency requirements for municipal employees can be a tricky subject. In one sense, it’s logical that city-level employees should live in the jurisdiction where they perform their public service—it creates a strong, rooted homegrown connection and provides important local context when making decisions and administering programs.
But the realities of imposing residency requirements can be difficult for some employees, especially teachers, law enforcement and firefighters, and the governments they work for. Many cities have high costs of living and municipal salaries often can’t keep up. In other cases, a strict residency requirement can be a hiring obstacle when trying to recruit top talent from neighboring jurisdictions who might not want to move for financial or personal reasons.
In cities that have residency requirements, rules can be structured depending on rank or responsibility. In the District of Columbia, for instance, agency heads who are part of the D.C. government’s Executive Service and those who fall under some other employment categories, are required to live in the District. And if they don’t, those executive managers and employees subject to the requirement have 180 days to establish and provide proof of residency following their appointment.
In 2014, The Boston Globe found at least 50 municipal employees with the city of Boston living in other local jurisdictions and that “there may be hundreds more violating the spirit of the law, if not the letter.”
Boston’s residency requirements for city employees have been in place for four decades, but there are now plans for a waiver system creating residency exemptions under discretion by the mayor.
In Pittsburgh, all city employees are required to live within the city limits. And in November 2013, Pittsburgh voters approved a referendum making the city’s residency requirement for city employees part of the city’s Home Rule Charter.
But that requirement came under fire from the city’s police union, which argued that a change in Pennsylvania state law left some wiggle room to renegotiate the residency requirement for its members.
As the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette explained last April:
Pennsylvania law for years required Pittsburgh police officers to live within the city limits. An amendment in 2012 changed the language of the law to say the city “may require” officers to become residents “as a condition of employment” rather than “shall” require officers to live in the city. The police union argued that change triggered a re-opener in their contract that allowed them to hold negotiations with the city over the residency requirement.
A lower court had ruled in favor of the Fraternal Order of Police in the matter.In a ruling last week, a Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court overturned the lower court’s decision and sided with the city of Pittsburgh in dispute, upholding the city’s residency requirement for police officers.
“The City respects the collective bargaining process. But residency and other workplace issues should be subject to good-faith negotiations and not made through back-door deals in Harrisburg. The people of Pittsburgh must have a seat at that table,” Mayor Bill Peduto said in a statement.
“Police work is a calling, and Pittsburgh is blessed with officers who go far beyond their official duties and volunteer their own time to improve our neighborhoods and help our people. I and others citywide know our police, and their families, have long been good neighbors with personal investments in our communities.”
Michael Grass is Executive Editor of Government Executive’s Route Fifty.
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