Allegheny County should let Clean Air Fund money flow to projects, audit says

Allegheny County should loosen its grip on Clean Air Fund spending, enabling the millions of dollars amassed through its emissions control initiatives to support community projects related to air quality, according to an audit released by the county controller on Tuesday.

The Allegheny County Health Department’s [ACHD] Clean Air Fund collects fines and penalties from polluters in the county that violate regulations or exceed permitted emissions. The money is designated to help educate the public on air pollution and improve county air quality via reduction or prevention projects and conduct research, along with other efforts.

Following a PublicSource story on the distribution of the fund, Allegheny County Controller Corey O’Connor conducted a performance audit of the Clean Air Fund.

Examining the period from January 2021 through September 2023, the audit showed that more money went toward ACHD’s normal Air Quality Program operating costs than to community projects.

“Every dollar that we spend counts on helping marginalized areas where there’s been pollution that’s occurred for years,” O’Connor said in an interview. “There’s a good list of money that’s gone out … and it’s great. Pat yourself on the back for giving some money out, but we still have a long way to go to solve this problem.”

A spokesperson for new Allegheny County Executive Sara Innamorato said in a statement that the department “has taken steps to improve the fund in the past few years, [but] there is still more to do to ensure expenditures are effective and impactful.” The administration plans to work “to ensure the fund is used for its stated purpose of improving air quality in Allegheny County.”

Operating over community

The audit reported that the fund’s cash balance has hovered around $10 million. Even as penalty collections have increased, the portion spent on air-quality-related community projects has plunged to 1.6% in 2023.

The Air Quality Program is permitted to use 5% of the preceding year’s Clean Air Fund balance to cover operating costs. Last year, the department proposed to use 25% of the Clean Air Fund on operations, but the Board of Health did not approve .

The audit found that the program has repeatedly gone over its 5% allocated portion of the Clean Air fund.

From 2019 through 2022, the program received 44% of the total Clean Air Fund expenditures, adding up to nearly $2.1 million.

Costs permitted to the Air Quality Program from the Clean Air Fund included partial salaries of an attorney and two air quality engineers, transcription services, a forensic examination and other “miscellaneous professional services,” the controller found. While these costs are acceptable and relevant, according to the audit, they could have been fundable from other sources.

The audit indicates that these costs likely wouldn’t have occurred “if the ACHD had used all or substantially all of the Clean Air Fund’s financial resources to fund air-quality-related projects.”

“The whole point is to get this money out,” O’Connor said. “These are marginalized communities [impacted by air pollution] that need this money spent. If you’re just holding it, it’s not doing anybody in the county any good.”

The audit reported nine penalties that were not collected by the ACHD, amounting to $28,555, between 2021 and 2022.

Making funding widely available

According to the audit, one reason the Clean Air Fund isn’t funding enough community projects is an application process that some advocates have characterized as opaque.

“ACHD management advised us that it has taken this approach because it is attempting to discourage the submission of inappropriate Clean Air Fund project applications,” the audit reported.

ACHD has not made the electronic application form widely available to the public, nor publicized the amounts of funding involved, according to the audit. The Clean Air Fund’s web page provides only a link to a contact form for the department’s Air Pollution Control Advisory Committee .

“This is obviously an important fund, supposed to go out to marginalized communities who have been hurt by pollution,” O’Connor said. “The county does do projects, and there’s a list of things they’ve funded with this but the thing that really stood out, and we heard this from a lot of groups, was, ‘How do I apply for the money? Where do I go?’

“This needs to be open,” he continued. “I know that $10 million can go fast when you’re talking about projects, but people need to know that they have access to these funds.”

Organizations must fill out a form to apply, and applications are reviewed by multiple boards and committees. The audit found that project applications took months to be approved.

Angelo Taranto, co-founder and secretary-treasurer of Allegheny County Clean Air Now, said ACCAN attempted to get clean air filters using the fund, but was unsuccessful.

“It hasn’t been an easy process and some of the things that we would like to get funding for haven’t been considered eligible,” Taranto said.

Moving forward

O’Connor’s audit recommended that ACHD engage in “more impactful Clean Air Fund projects,” transfer money that now sits in another fund, and strengthen allocation efforts.

In an 8-page response, ACHD faulted the audit’s findings, saying it omitted information “regarding important reforms and innovative practices.”

Patrick Dowd, acting director of ACHD, wrote in the response that “partnerships with organizations to more directly and expeditiously make grants to the impacted communities” were excluded from the audit.

Dowd wrote that the department recognizes the need to be “aggressive” in encouraging applications, and has moved toward “actively soliciting the community applications for projects in response to requests for proposals.”

Taranto said the audit “does bring the discussion out into the public much more than it has been, and given the fact that the whole process has been opaque and there’s been so much dissatisfaction, I think that a yearly audit overview for at least a few years will be appropriate. I think that would be kind of addressing a need there that hasn’t been addressed for a long time.”

Briana Bindus is an editorial intern at PublicSource and can be reached at briana@publicsource.org.

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