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Law360 (March 17, 2021, 5:13 PM EDT) -- Employees in Pennsylvania's second-most populous county won't have access to paid sick leave just yet, after the county executive vetoed a bill that would have required employers of a certain size to offer the leave, over fears that the legislation wouldn't survive legal challenges.
In a veto message that his office made public Tuesday, Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald said he supported paid sick leave but needed to reject the Paid Sick Days Act because of concerns that the county council had gone through the wrong process to approve the legislation.
"This process needs to follow the promulgation of rules and regulations by the Allegheny County Health Department via the Board of Health," Fitzgerald said in the veto letter. "As you are all aware, this process was not followed."
The county must approve a paid sick leave ordinance in a way that "withstands any legal challenge," Fitzgerald said in the letter.
Fitzgerald explained in the letter that he was vetoing the ordinance on Tuesday because the regulation should have followed provisions of Pennsylvania's Local Health Administration Law.
Fitzgerald was not alone in having these concerns, according to his letter. The county solicitor had written a confidential memo to the council expressing fears that the council had not used the appropriate procedure to pass the legislation, Fitzgerald wrote.
"This issue is too important to our community, and particularly to those workers who would have protection in the form of paid sick leave, for it to be done the wrong way," he wrote in the veto letter. "It's simply not fair to give employees in our county false hope that they're protected when the process followed by council jeopardizes that."
Fitzgerald now plans to ask local health officials to come up with paid sick leave regulations under the Local Health Administration Law, according to his letter.
The council, which had passed the legislation on March 9, can override the veto.
The ordinance would have given employees of employers of a certain size one hour of paid sick time for every 35 hours worked, up to 40 hours, unless an employer offered more time. Employees could have used the sick time due to their own mental or physical illness, injury or health condition, or a family member's, among other possible uses.
The veto came a year and one day after a paid sick leave policy went into effect in Pittsburgh, Allegheny County's most populous city.
The Pittsburgh ordinance faced legal challenges until a divided Pennsylvania Supreme Court gave it the green light.
A spokesperson for Fitzgerald declined to comment further.
A representative for the county council did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
--Additional reporting by Danielle Nichole Smith. Editing by Vincent Sherry.
For a reprint of this article, please contact reprints@law360.com.
