Hello everyone, thanks for joining us for another recording of our podcast.

We have a great show tonight.

But first I'm Valerie and that's David, and this is our Gen X Pittsburgh podcast.

Tonight our guest is former Allegheny Count executive Rich Fitzgerald.

Wow.

What a week.

I know.

What a week.

And it's only Tuesday, right?

No.

Right.

Right.

I mean, first of all, to b interviewing Richard Fitzgerald is a huge get for us.

Yes it is.

I mean, this is just the guest we've been able to get for this podcast have been unbelievable.

It's on you.

It's.

It hasn't been me.

This one has been.

Amy Downs, let's thank Amy Downs.

Right, right.

And while we're doing that, I wanted to mention that, you know, we've been really lucky this week.

We've been in the Tribune Review.

We were on Talk Pittsburgh today.

And one of the things that talked Pittsburgh didn't allow us because you know, it's a moving show.

It's really quick really.

But we didn't have the opportunity to I wanted to thank Brent Isaac, Kim Rullo theyre, the the team behind us and putting this podcast together.

I want to thank and Potomac Station, which, you know, are our sponsors and really help us get this done.

So I just want to make sure that those people were aware that we're aware how important they are.

They are without you guys, right.

Andrew and Leah, we we we didn't say her name.

So their name.

So I want to make sure that everyone knew we really appreciate it.

Yes yes yes.

Thank you.

Thank you guys.

Yeah yeah.

So we like you said we were on KDKA Talk Pittsburgh today and that was a lot of fun.

It was yeah.

This is my second outfit today guys.

Big deal for me right.

He thought he looked fat on TV this morning so he went home and changed his clothes.

I also crouched a little bit too much.

So I'm not going to do that today either.

But there's nothing like putting a short fat guy on a couch to really make him look great on TV, right?

Welcome back.

We are back in with.

Thank you so much for joining us today.

Good to be here And it's good to be in Dormont.

Yes it is.

It's always good to be in Dormont.

Yes I got two elected officials looking me over, so I got to be.

I hope I don't get a parking ticket.

Right.

We all hope that.

Right.

Well, Rich, you went to Central Catholic and CMU.

You were on county council and you were the Allegheny County Executive.

Is there a more Pittsburgh story than that?

I mean, really, how did this happen?

Well, it probably gets eve better about my I grew up here.

I grew up in Bloomfield, Garfield area of Pittsburgh.

And when I graduated from college, like an awful lot of Pittsburghers, I couldn't find a job.

Even with an engineering degree at CMU in 1981, things weren't very good, so I had to move away.

But like a lot of Pittsburghers a couple of years away, I couldn't wait to come back.

And I and I did come back and been here ever since.

Yeah, yeah.

What are some of your most memorable memories from growin up here in like, the 60s, 70s?

80s would take us back a little bit.

What were some of the things that you really cherish from your childhood?

Well I probably took a lot of things for granted that, you know, Pittsburgh was a good city to grow up in.

And, you know, people were working.

My father had a job.

And, you know, we lived a fairly good lifestyle.

I and I was a big baseball fan.

My grandfather was an usher at Forbes Field and used to take us, you know, me and my cousin over to the games and then obviously then Three Rivers Stadium.

And so growing up in the 70s, that was the golden era for Pittsburgh sports.

The Pirates were in in the World Series a couple of times.

The Steelers were winning Super Bowls, and it was kind of a magical time.

And I guess I didn't realize the economic displacement that was starting to happen in the late 70s, early 80s, until I went to go for a job and then realized during that time, not only did I have to move away to get a job, but so many of my friends and colleagues and family member had to do the same thing as we literally went through.

You have to call it an economic depression, even though maybe people don't consider it that way.

But, you know, our unemployment rate hit almost 20% as the mills were closing, you know, one after the other, and people were losing their jobs.

And it just it was a difficult time for Pittsburgh.

Sure.

So talk to m then about what was the impetus.

Was that the impetus for you to start your own business?

Talk to us about that, because I know Valerie was really interested.

I had to start my own business because I couldn't get a job in Pittsburgh.

I tried to get jobs in Pittsburgh and nobody would hire me.

And what when I learned when I was away working for industrial industrial water treatment company, I learned the business, so to speak.

So when I came back, I decided to start my own business, and it was at a time in which I didn't have any kids.

I didn't have any rea responsibilities.

At that time.

I was in my early to mid 20s so I figured I would give this a shot and luckily for me, it worked.

Yeah, and I also wanted to come back because my wife was still in school.

She was at Pitt.

So far, you Pitt fans out there, we did marry a Pitt girl.

And you know, we settled down and she's from Greenfield.

I'm from we didn't want to leave Pittsburgh.

We wanted Pittsburgh to be our home.

So we started our family here and and did that.

And I you know, I never really thought about government or politics.

It was really about like making my business work, you know, raising a family.

And then it was really as I got into my 30s, that having kids in the Pittsburgh public schools and paying a mortgage and all the things that were happening that, you know, I decided to enter the the realm of, of government and politics.

And you were first o city council, is that correct?

No, I ran for city council and lost.

And then the very then the very next year, the county commissioners were going to change the form of government.

Old timers might remember we didn't have a county executive and county council.

We had three county commissioners the way most counties in Pennsylvania have.

And there was a hom rule charter drafting committee.

And to try and sell this in 1998 I became one of those volunteers to go around and say we should change our form of government because we're losing people, we're losing population.

Things aren't going well.

And it passed.

And then in 1999, I decided to run for one of those those seats in the Squirrel, Squirrel Hill, where I, where my home was in that district.

And I served on the beginning of county council.

So for 24 years, I served 12 years on counci and then 12 years is executive.

So for the first 24 years of that government, I was part of it.

Right.

But while you're doing all this, you're also raising eight children and six of them are girls.

So I think that adds little bit more to the equation.

But how did you do it with eight children?

Well, the first of all the 12 years of county council.

It was a part time job.

It was not a full time job, so I was still able to do.

But from what I understand, you worked a lot.

You would do so much in a day.

Something like, you know what I mean?

Like I was doing some research on you and you'd start like at six in the morning.

You come home at night.

That's not a part time job.

Yeah, well, you did so many things in your day.

I might have bee a little more than others did, but I enjoyed the job.

My wife is also a ver organized, hardworking person.

She was working full time at the at the time.

She's a pharmacist at Children's Hospital.

And so between the two of us, we just and we also had we were lucky that our families were here and were able to help support us.

So her sisters, between her sisters and my brothers and my our, our the grandparents of those kids were were very helpful.

So we had a lot of family support that allowed that to happen.

And being a lifelong Pittsburghe you know, again, lots of cousins, lots of family members and a lot of support that that came our way.

And my wife and I, I gues you could say we're both Type-A personalities that we just we do a lot of things.

Yeah.

But I also went, okay, so we talke about how you are so Pittsburgh.

Okay.

And again, I was doing some research and I read an article about how you met your wife.

And that is such a Pittsburgh story.

Okay A disco on the Gateway Clipper.

I mean, you can't get much more Pittsbrugh than that.

That is fantastic.

Well, we kind of knew each other, and she would have a group of friends that would that would go down to the.

It was like a Friday and Saturday night on the Gateway Clipper.

They had this big event and me and my friends would go down and we kind of like her friends, and my friends and a few of our friends ended up together and me and her ended up together.

Yeah, I love it.

Exactly.

And so talk to me about a little bit about the time from when you joined council then.

Because this I mean, a lot of people listen to our podcast, our, our age in their 50s, but the younger generation, I don't think they're aware of just how tenuous things were in Pittsburgh, in the county at the time.

Right?

I mean, the county, especially because you had all these places like McKeesport, Duquesne, there were all I mean, if Pittsburgh was recovering, these other places weren't.

So what was it like taking the helm of the ship and trying to study it?

No, you're exactly right.

There were many communities, particularly steel mill communities, Mon Valley and river, river towns that did hollow out.

You think about a time like McKeesport that at one point had maybe 50,000 people living in McKeesport, and they got down to like 15 or 16,000 people.

These towns were literally their own cities.

McKeesport, for example, had its own newspaper.

It had its department stores.

It had you didn't have to com to Pittsburgh to do the things, you know, they would have thei own shows, you know, whatever.

And that that went away.

And one of the thing that I think the Pittsburgh was, we're very fortunate that we had a lot of, I call it old money.

Philanthropy that kept some of the cultural amenities our opera, our symphony, our museums our cultural amenities together.

But it was a very difficult time.

And it really our Eds and meds in many ways, the universities Pitt and CMU and the UPMC and AHN, they kind of propped up a lot of things that that, that we started to do.

But it was, you know I think the form of government changing was almost a form of desperation for people like, well this old system is not working.

Let's try something new.

And so they decided to try something new.

And the newness was they wanted to put one person in charge.

I liked that system.

Yeah.

Not knowing I was going to be in it like 13, 14 years later.

But I thought it was the right thing to do where one person could go out sell this region and make a deal and bring business and economic growth to the to the region.

And that's that's why I supported it.

I also like the fact that that a county council that represented all corners of the county from up in, you know, Pine Township or West Deer or down at Upper Saint Clair had representation because the way the old system worked, the three county commissioners pretty much were all from Pittsburgh.

Right?

So I think people from the far flung parts of the county didn't feel lik they really had representation, that they could they could go to somebody and say, fix up this road, fix up our parks, whatever it might be.

So was that difficult?

Because one of the things that people might not be aware of is that part of your job as county executive is to actually sell the county, to go out and get businesses to move in to get, you know, manufacturing or educational systems or or whatever else you want to talk about to move into the county.

And while, you know, everybody's doing that, the mayor is doing it right.

They're worried about one particular area.

You have a whole county that you're trying to get people to to move into.

Well, one of the things that I always believed in, and even when I was kind of executiv and now I have a job that really allows me to do this, but I always felt regionally.

So if a company was going to come into this region, even if they were goin to go into Westmoreland County or Washington County or Beaver County, it was good for the region because when we hollowed out, when we lost the steel mills we lost steel mills in Latrobe and in Aliquippa and in Beaver Falls and in Butler.

And I mean, all these other places went through the sam deindustrialization that we did.

So whether you lived across the line, you weren't immune to the economic issues that were happening to our to our region.

So, you know, the fact is, when if we're going to if we're going to grow, we're going to grow together.

And one of the biggest things that I was as county executive was, was instrumental in working on was the cracker plant in Beaver County.

You know, Governor Corbett was the governor at the time, and he did a lot to get get it to happen.

But I wanted to support that and I tried to get my colleagues on the Democratic sid at the time and to support the legislation that woul that would allow that to move, move forward.

And again it wasn't in Allegheny County, but it was a multi-billion dollar investment.

That foreign investment was going to come i and put a lot of people to work.

And I thought it was something that that we needed to have happen.

Yeah.

Somebody told me somebody talk about your passion for the county airport o and just how important that was.

And they said they've been harassing you.

And I guess anybody else that will listen that it should be called the Rich Fitzgerald Airport.

And I don't know if you remember your response to them.

Yeah.

Well, that usually happens once you're gone.

So that's exactly right.

Thats when they build statues after you or name things after you.

Yes.

But yeah.

Well that was one of the first things that when I came into office or was running for office, that peopl were literally screaming about, because when, and Im going to move back a little bit, we had an old airport called Greater Pitt that served us fairly well, but as we were growing, it needed work and it needed fixed up.

And the county commissioner at the time, Tom Forster, was working o something that if we got a hub or if we got a headquartered airport here, we could grow jobs.

So he made a deal with US air at the time, US Airways, and they brought, I don't know, 10,000, 15,000 jobs.

And at the time in the late 80s, early 90s, that was a godsend to this, to this region.

So we had this beautiful airport that we built.

And but for the Pittsburgher, it wasn't really for us.

It was further away.

You had to get on a train to get to your gate.

You had to go on a walking sidewalk.

It just wasn't convenient for the local Pittsburgher.

But we found like, well, that's okay, because we got all these jobs and all this corporate headquarters.

Well, that all went away in like 2003, 2004 after it was open for about ten years, when 9-11 happened, US Air went bankrupt.

They got out of the lease.

So now we've got this airport that we got to pay for for the next 30 years, maybe 20 years at this point, but we don't have the revenues to help pay for it.

So it became the thing I needed to work on, not just because the airport was maybe going into receivership, but because we couldn't get anywhere.

So the business community, if they were going to thrive and they couldn't get the Silicon Valley where our tech industry was starting to grow, it was going to hurt us economically.

I mean, you think about you go back a century when railroads came through towns, the towns that flourished were the ones that were connected through the rail system.

And then later on the internet, the the interstate highway system.

So transportatio and connections are so critical and so important.

So I had to spend a lot of time working on the airport.

Do you look at issues differently than other politicians because you're an engineer?

I look at any situation as if it's not working, what can we do to make it work?

Solving problems or building solutions is something, whether it's fixing up the airport or whethe it's fixing up the park system or fixing up the budget or whatever it might be, you got to put a plan together.

And I was very, very fortunate in that I had some really, really to flight people who came to work.

And, you know, county manager William McKain, chief of staff, the name of Jennifer Liptak and a communication director, Amy Downs sitting over there.

And they were so good and so smart that they would come up with these strategies.

And my job was then to sell it.

My job was to go out and talk about what we're going to do.

But they fixed the finances, they fix the parks, they we fixed the airport.

We did all these all these things.

But it was about solving a problem.

It wasn't about right wing left wing, liberal conservative.

It was about how do we ge the money to fix up these roads?

How do we get this company to move here?

Why would they move here?

Not because of my belief in foreign policy or, you know, social issues, but like, what can we do to help you thrive, to help your business grow with workers, with tax policy, et cetera, etc.?

And how do you figure out what is the fire that needs put out?

Right.

Because you have the airport going, you know, with USA, but at the same time you also have brownfields that need work done, and you have cities like Duquesne that are losing population.

Right.

How do you decide as a team?

This is what needs to get done first so that the county can move forward.

Well the one thing you better learn is you better learn how to wal and chew gum at the same time.

You're often doing 7 or 8 things at once.

You're, you know and you have hopefully you have, you know, directors, people in place that can that can do those things.

And I think about another way to talk about elections.

You know, the county runs elections.

So why you're doing all these other things.

And we've been seeing over the last few years, you know, are elections rigged?

Are they cheating?

Are they doing it right?

Or so you know, you got to do that while you're doing all these other things.

You've got to run Human Services.

You got to run a jail.

You got to run you know, a police department.

You got you got to do all thes different, different activities.

So it's not just one thing.

And, you know, Amy could she could tell you, you know, would show up in the office, you know, 8 or 9:00 and you think, okay, I got these three meetings.

It changes during the day and immediately you don't know what crisis is going to come up and whic bridge is going to be in trouble or which, you know, there's going to be maybe a rio somewhere or something goes on.

So you just never know you better.

You better be ready.

Right.

Better be ready.

So we have these beautiful rivers.

Yes.

What can we do to utilize them or what?

Like.

And by the way, I think they're more beautifu than they've been in many years.

And I give again that's one other thing that we worked on was ALCOSAN and the wet weather issues that would often run, you know, raw sewage into our rivers.

It's not perfect yet, but they've made, you know, continue to make improvements.

And I do think we have started to see more and more development along our river fronts.

Those of u who grew up in a certain area, we're told by our parents, stay away from the river, you know, they're dirty, they're this, they're that.

And and some of them are cut off by the by the trains, the train tracks.

But now we've built these beautiful, beautiful trails up and down our rivers.

In fact, we have a trail that goes all the way from the point to Washington, D.C., and now we're working on one.

It goes from the point up to Erie.

So, you know, utilizing our rivers.

And I think you're going to see more and more development along our rivers, maybe even marinas, that you can pull your boat up and have a drink, you know, get something to eat, have a cup of coffee.

I think we'll see more and more of that as we'r as we're cleaning up our rivers.

What about the regatta?

Can't we get a regatta?

That was a topic on top of Pittsburgh.

We got to bring that back.

I heard that.

Heather wants to d a speedboat down the Ohio.

So the regatta was was a great, great event.

And it ran into som financial issues a few years ago and then then the pandemic, and it just hasn't come back.

But I do think there an it wasn't run by the government.

It wasn't run by the city of Pittsburgh.

It wasn't run by county or the state.

They were supportive of it, but it was really started by, I think it was started by Mr.

Conley years ago from the Gateway Clipper, was instrumental in like, how do we promote our rivers?

And they do speedboat races and anything can float and all the, all the thing that we're we're a lot of fun.

But I do think you're going to see more and more of that as time goes on.

You may remember a couple of years ag we actually had a Friday night in which for one year out of 40 or whatever, the Pirates were actually in a race in September.

And Friday Night Football was used in western Pennsylvania, as most of us know.

But there were hundreds of thousands of people in downtown Pittsburgh to see a yellow duck floating there.

Yeah, nobody's going to show up to see that.

Whoa.

It was.

So I think we're we are drawn in a natural way to the water, to our rivers.

And that's just one example.

But I think, you know, maybe maybe the regatta, you know, mayb talk to the gateway or whoever, maybe they can be, you know, brought back.

So are you, I think that I'm not I'm not sensationalizing a situation here when I say that the area has this sort of arcane laws, the system of laws that have prevented the city from expanding the county from you know, from sharing services or becoming.

Was that frustrating?

And is that somethin that we need to try and correct is going to bring up by one big failure?

Oh, I'm sorry.

So in Allegheny County we have 130 cities, 130 municipalities, obviously Pittsburgh being the biggest but Pittsburgh is a little over 300,000 people in a county of 1.25.

So 900,000 or so people live outside of the county, even though we all call ourselves Pittsburghers who root for the black and gold and Steelers, Penguins, Pirates.

There are some municipalities, particularly in some of these towns, that have been the deindustrialized, that don't have the tax base to have police services, public work services, road paving, all the basic services that people need.

So we thought a system of voluntary disincorporation where they could, you know, in essence give up their government, meaning their mayor, their council to become part of county government.

And we came pretty close to getting it done.

Harrisburg had to allow this to happen.

The governor at the time, Governor Wolf, was supportive of it.

In the Senate, people like Senator Costa and Senator Fontana and Senator Vulakovich were helpful in getting it passed in the Senate, 49 to nothing.

And we just it didn't it stalled out because we couldn't get it run in the house even though we had support.

So I think it is something I know Senator Pisciottano has kind of resurrected that now again, and it might be something that they'll bring back, but it's an inefficient way of dealing with it.

And it was all voluntary, like you weren't going to get rid of, say, I'm not Lebanon or McCandless or Upper Saint Clair.

They have a tax base that can support their basic form of government.

But and I'm not going to name the names but we all know where, you know, some of these towns really have a difficult time supporting basic services.

And it's not fair.

To me, it's not fair to their, their residents.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well in 2021 population had grown 2.2%.

That's a pretty proud moment.

That was one of my proudest moments, if not my.

Yeah, but that in the airport probably those two things because we had been declining in population every decade since the 1950s.

Sometimes we went dow 8%, sometimes 3%, sometimes 2%.

But during that period of time, from from the teens, we actually grew for the first time and we grew with young people.

Yeah, that was a big thing.

Our 25 to 34 year old work cohort grew by double digit, double the national average.

So we have become a much younger population, younger, probably more educated with technology around robotics and AI and life sciences and energy and those type of things.

So it is a different Pittsburgh than what I grew up in.

So and we also became more diverse.

Our Hispanic population, our Asian American population also grew very over over 80% in both in both instances.

So Pittsburgh you know, at all as changed.

And that is a proud moment.

I think we backslid a little bit during Covid, but I think now it's starting again to continue in a positive direction and also in the job that I do now, I am also seeing our rural communities Butler, Washington, Westmoreland, Beaver starting to grow with young people again.

Their net migration has not, has improved.

So they're doing well.

And now that you're seeing some of these things with data centers and some of the things that are happening in places like Beaver County with the Cracker plant, Homer City, now with the big plant that they got growing, there's some opportunities that didn't really occur outside of kind of our innovation district here in Pittsburgh.

I know that one of the knocks against the county was always the age, right?

You talked about the the slowing population, but but it was also the age.

Oh, Allegheny County is the oldest one other than whatever in Florida.

Right.

But I know that over the las few years that's really changed.

And the and the count and the city are very vibrant.

I know that I've interviewed people.

I've written stories about new people, young people moving to the city who aren't even aware tha we were a steel center.

Right.

That's got to speak to the leadership of not just you but Bill Peduto and sort of that second or third generation of leaders that were really focuse on a vision to bring Pittsburgh because we were beyon the steel mills at that point.

Right So now it's what happens next?

And it seems like that generation you, Bill, some of the people that were on the county for the city and the county were so focused and so good about making this happen.

I mean, you have to take credit for that.

But but what does that mean to you that that's happened?

Well, almost by force.

There were politician who ran maybe 20 or 30 years ago who we're going to bring back the steel mills, we're goin to bring back the steel mills.

And it was really a fals just it wasn't going to happen.

There were there were some leaders.

We were very fortunate.

And I'll use a guy by the name of Mike Doyle.

Mike Doyle was a perfect example He joined something in Congress called the Robotics Caucus because he realized, even though his father and grandfather worked at Edgar Thompson Works at the Carrie Furnace, that those days weren't coming back.

And leaders like Jay Costa in Harrisburg again, we're all the kind of the same generation.

While we aren't happy that it went away, we also realized we had to turn a page.

We have to be futuristic.

And I think in many ways, yo mentioned that old population.

A lot of us wanted to kind of hang on to, like, weren't things so wonderful in the 50s and 60s and 70s, when the Steelers were winning Super Bowls and the Pirate were winning the World Series?

But those days weren't weren't happening anymore in this new generation.

You're right.

They don't even realize that along Second Avenue was a JNL steel mill or, you kno you know, Carrie Furnace wasn't a place to go, recreate and go have an event.

It was actually a major, major, you know, we built more steel in that area.

And Hazelwood Gree wasn't all that green back then.

It was.

I like to say where I grew up in, in Friendship, I played Little league ball at Mellon Field, which was across the street from the Nabisco, which is now Bakery Square.

I think I was the only little leaguer that played in a Little league that smelled good when I was a kid, because they were baking Chip Ahoy cookies when we were right.

Everybody else smelled soft sulfur and rotten egg smell throughout throughout this region because that's just what we were in Pittsburgh.

So that changed.

There is a generation of people that have that may not have an appreciation for for what we have.

But, you know, we're moving on, right?

That's so funn you say that because I used to I went to Point Park and, you know, you'd wake up in the morning and you could go to Market Market Square, and Jenny Lee's Bakery was there, and and that smelled wonderful.

Right.

But I lived on the north side.

I was living in an apartment on the north side.

So you'd walk past Woolies in the middle of the summer, which didn't smell so well, and then you'd get across the 16th Street Bridge and the Heinz plant and everything smelled like vinegar.

So even after the sulfur, Pittsburgh was still fighting some of the smell that were making the city great.

Right But what about growing up here, made you want to stay here and raise your family here?

You know, it just I always thought it was just a wonderful, wonderful place.

And, you know, having a lot of family here, having a lot of support.

Grandparents, cousins, uncles, aunts.

It just it was the place to be.

And it is a great place.

I mean, we do have all these wonderful amenities and, you know, major league sports we have the cultural amenities that we sometimes take for granted, wonderful science centers and museums and art galleries and all those things.

And, and it's one of the greenest places that, that people don't until they come and visit here.

They don't really realize.

And I'll tell you, somebody who actually told me that one time, somebody got to know a little bit was President Obama.

He came to Pittsburgh a lot and we'd go visit him, you know, we'd go meet him at the airport, and a couple of times we'd ride in with him.

And I remember him saying to me and Mayor Peduto, one time hes from Chicago, he says, I never realized how green this city is.

I always thought it was brown and rusting and, you know, to hear from somebody like that, to say, what beautiful.

You know, how beautiful it is.

And you know you can liv right in the middle of the city and still be in a wooded area.

You don't have to be up and, you know, up in Butler County or Washington County.

You could be in I mean, Schenley Park, Frick Park, I mean right in the middle of the city and obviously the North Park and South Park.

We have such beautiful, beautiful places to live.

And it just never, never wanted to go anywhere else.

Yeah.

What do you conside some of the high points of your, your term as executive the growing of the population, the turning around of the the decline of young people moving here and then saving the airport.

I mean the airport, it wasn't just the building peopl want to focus on the building, but it was the fact that we only had like 30 some cities you could get to directly.

And that was just not enough.

We had gone from over 100 when US Air was the hub to to down to 30 and growing that back again and bringing Christina Cassotis, who's just a dynamic leader at the airport, bringing her in and and keeping her for a decade.

She was only going to stay for a couple of years and move on to something bigger and better.

But something about Pittsburgh, it kind of draws you in and makes you want to stay and makes you kind of have an affection for this place.

And we see that, you know, I know, you know, if we watch the Steelers or the Pirates when they're on the road, you know, half the fans are waving those towels there and they live there.

You know, they moved to Denver, they moved to L and they moved to these places.

But while they left Pittsburgh 20 or 30 years ago because they had to to get a job, Pittsburg really never left them.

Right.

And you see that you probably saw it during the draft when so many people came back to town to see the NFL draft, or when the Steelers are when the Steelers are playing a home game.

Christina will tell us the airport is packed with ex-Pittsburghers who just want to fly into town, whether they get tickets to the game or go to their local bar or watch it with their cousins in the game room, they want to be part of being back home again.

Yeah.

If we followed you around on your day off, what would surprise people the most about you?

Well, I don't know.

You'd be surprised.

What I enjoy doing now is, you know, got a couple of grandchildren and spend some time watching watching our grandchildren.

I do like to ride my bike on the trails.

I still do that a lot.

Get to a certain age.

You can't.

I can't play basketball or jog or play tennis like I used to, but being able to bike is not impactful, so I like doing that.

Kathy and I have been doing a little more traveling.

We bought a place up in the Allegheny River, up in Armstrong County in Parker, PA that we get to go to once in a while.

So I get to have my schedule is a little different than it was for 12 years, when it was a 24-7 type of schedule, but my weekends are a little freer now these days.

I also, many people may not know about me.

They see me as a politician.

I'm actually pretty handy.

Like I can fix things.

So having all these kids who have old houses, who have some painting needs and some carpentry basic stuff, I'm not.

I can't rewire the house or anything like that.

But every once in a while I'll do something.

I'll tell you a quick story.

So my my son owns a bar over, over in Lawrenceville and I one Saturday he calls me up.

He says, dad, I got a broken pipe down in the basement.

Can you you know, you know how to do that?

I went over as a plastic pip and I went over, glued together, put it back together.

And it was one of those days where there was there a big soccer bar.

People go to watch the.

And with the World Cu coming to town, it was packed.

I couldn't even walk in there with a couple tools.

So I go walk in, I go down the basement.

It doesn't take me very long.

I go walking back out, I go back home and somebody comes up to my son and says, hey, Tanner, your maintenance ma looks an awful lot like the guy who used to be the count executive.

So.

Well, I have to warn you, now that we have your number on our phone, my wife has just texted me saying, we need to get you over the house to help with some repairs that we have.

So, you know, we'll be talking again soon, I'm sure.

All right.

Put the dropcloth and put the paintbrush down.

But having, you know my kids, six of my kids are now out of my eight kids.

I live here in Pittsburgh, which I'm very, you know, Kathy and I feel very fortunate about that.

And and some of them own some different houses and yeah, they need, you know, that'll work a little work here and there.

So yeah I enjoy doing that.

What is the Gen X Pittsburgh podcast?

Let me take you back.

Remember when coffee was king and pizza bagels ruled on the corner of 14th and Carson at The Beehive?

Or how about that tim you stumbled upon Art all night?

How cool was that?

Or when your evening started instead of at 10 p.m.?

Yeah, we miss those days too.

So we're bringing them back one Gen-X story at a time.

Join David Rullo and I, Valerie Christofel, as we sit down with the movers and shakers, the artists and the voices who helped shape Pittsburgh back in the early 90s.

Subscrib to the Gen X Pittsburgh Podcast.

Welcome back to the Gen X Pittsburgh Podcast.

We have Pittsburgh Magazine's 2022 Pittsburgh of the year, Rich Fitzgerald.

That was quite an honor.

Yeah, I bet.

I bet.

Well, you know, so you served 12 years, three terms as the Allegheny County Executive.

You're termed out.

You can't do it anymore.

And then I'm the only person in Allegheny County who's ineligible for running.

That's right.

That's right.

And then instead of taking time to spend all your time with your grandkids or your wif or or to fly around the country and do whatever else you might do, you decide.

Nah, I think I'm going to take a bite out of the whole southwestern Pennsylvania.

Right.

Can you tell me?

Because I don't know.

What does the Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission do?

What your day look like?

What are your goals?

Well, as I mentioned earlier, I was always very regional, and maybe it was from the business I had and the job I had that I would travel throughout, you know, southwestern Pennsylvania.

And when the cracker plant had an opportunity and some other opportunities, whether it was in Cranberry or whether it was in South Point in Washington County I was always supportive of it.

So there was as I was leavin office, there was an opening for something called the Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission, which is the ten county federally designated transportation infrastructure and economic development organization.

It's made up of all the ten Greene County, Washington County, Fayette County, Indiana County, etc.

around, around us.

And when that opening came about, I applied for it.

I went for that job, and I wasn't ready to retire.

I just, you know, my surprise you.

But I can't just sit still.

I like to be.

I like to be doing things.

I like to be, you know, working on things that can be improving, you know, improving the community.

And I, the county commissioners luckily decided to hire me.

And the irony, the ironic thing is most people thought of me like, oh, he's a Democrat.

He's a Democrat.

He's a Democrat.

Nine of those ten counties are run by Republicans, and they're the ones that had to hire me.

So I was very fortunate, and I was always bipartisan when it came to economic development and infrastructure and things along those lines.

So I guess what I can say righ now, if you want to yell at me when you see an orange barrel that you get behind, or orange cones that tie you up with the construction project, our commission has voted on that.

We'll be voting on our four year plan, and it's all the county commissioners that will be doing tha when the parkway closes in July.

On the other side of the Squirrel Hill tunnel, that'll be somethin that we've been involved with.

So being able to work with with the rural counties and help them in some ways, using some of the experiences that I've learned in my caree in government and in business, I wanted to be able to continue to do that.

I will say again, for 12 years you know, and Amy can tell you, she didn't get to sleep too much either, because we were in the morning until late at night on the phone emailing, you know, just there were always things going on.

I absolutely love the job.

I absolutely loved it I wouldn't trade those 12 years for anything.

But it feels good to get home at 4:00 right now or 5:00 in the afternoon and see my grandchildren go out to dinner with my wife and do a little more travel than I got to do before.

So it's not a part time job, bu it feels like it compared to the job I had before.

Well I'm fascinated.

You said you interviewed for the job.

What's it what's it look like for Rich Fitzgerald?

I have to imagin it looks different than my job interview where I walk in and they go, we don't know who you are, right?

Everyone has to know who you are.

Well, they did it.

They did.

And there were probably some prominent people that maybe applied for the job.

Yeah, yeah.

There were there are going to be people in this region that are going to, for better or worse.

He's got these kind of qualities that are going to be good.

Or maybe they these qualities we don't think would be good, whatever it might be.

So that was fortunate.

And I do enjoy doing it.

I also with me now is Jennifer Liptak, who was my long time chief of staff, who really said everything up within our government.

You know, she was leaving.

I will tell this story.

So I didn't want to take her away right away.

Even though we had an opening for the chief operating officer at the SPC, because I know the next count executive, Sarah, was coming in.

And, you know, the transition isn't always easy, especially when you hadn't served in county government.

So Jennifer was very instrumental for a few months to help help that transition.

But then we finally interviewed her.

There was a whole bunch of people within my office that interviewed her, and they picked Jennifer and I, you know, I called her into the office and I said, Jennifer, congratulations, you got the job.

And I thought she was just goin to jump up and die.

Wonderful.

Hold on a minute.

I mean, hold on a minute.

Did I rub you the wrong way?

And other question was, how often do you call your staff at home at night and on the weekends?

Because for 12 years, she lived that life where if something was happening if there was a riot somewhere or a flood somewhere.

She had to deploy people.

And I said, Jennifer, here's what you get to do.

At 4:00 or 5:00, you go home to your family, you go home to your husband, you go to your kids.

And she said, I'll take the job because I don't think people realize, first of all, being an electe official, you have all kind of.

But I served 12 years in a legislative body in 12 years in an executive body.

There's no comparison with your time and your responsibilities when you are the executive, whether you're the mayor, the county executive or the governor, you're on for 24-7.

When you're a legislator, you kind of get to pick and choose which issue.

If you care about public safety or you care about educatio or care about roads and bridges, you know, things like that.

Yeah.

Well, thank you for everything you've done for for us.

This is.

Yeah.

I'm I'm just so excited that we were able to talk to you.

Yeah.

And really to give us a picture of what the county executive does on a daily basis.

It's been really interesting for us.

But you don't get to leave that that easy.

Oh, we have to have some fun wit you.

Okay.

We have one more segment here.

We do.

It's called rapid fire rewind.

So we're jus going to ask you some questions that we're interviewing yo to become the new commissioner of the Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission.

Right.

And and these are your questions.

Very interesting.

Okay.

Iron City or Rolling Rock?

Probably Rolling Rock.

Okay.

Favorite band?

John Cougar Mellencamp.

Oh, okay.

Three Rivers or Heinz Field?

Heinz Field.

Favorite movie?

All the President's Men.

Turner's or Schneider's?

They're both great.

If you put them in front of me and then blind test, I don't know if I could.

I could do it.

Did you watch Saturday morning cartoons?

Yes, absolutely.

What were your favorite?

I like Jonny Quest.

Oh, yeah.

I like I liked all the Mel Blanc stuff.

Okay, the Looney Tunes.

They were They were all Woody Woodpecker.

You know, I got, Im old.

You know, I don't know, but they were all pretty good, the Jetsons.

Yeah.

Love the Jetsons.

Yeah.

Okay.

Donzis and Chaunceys or Metropol and Rosebud?

Okay.

Id say Metropol.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

What about your first concert?

Oh, boy.

Probably Bob Dylan.

Oh, wow.

Southside Beehive or Oakland Bee Oakland.

Really?

Yeah.

Okay.

We didn't cross rivers.

Im an East Ender.

True Pittsburgher.

Right.

How am I going to get over there?

Atari or Nintendo?

Atari.

That was a little bit before I was a pinball guy.

I got you.

I was a pinball guy.

Kennywood or Sandcastle?

Kennywood.

Primantis or Pamela's?

Oh, boy.

That's.

Well, for breakfast, it's going to be Pamelas but for lunch and dinner, it's going to be Primanti's.

Let me go back.

And it's not like an old timer Sandcastle or Kennywood.

I think the best one of all was Westview.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

Do you remember Westview Park?

You never heard of it?

No, no.

They had the best roller coasters of them all.

Yes.

Really?

Yes.

It was a nice, small little small.

Kennywood was great too.

Yeah, yeah.

Wow.

Yeah.

Well, again Threw you a curve there.

Yeah.

Like.

What's that?

In fairness, Valerie is from Ohio.

Oh, okay.

We got a cut her a little bit of slack.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yes.

Yes.

But thank you so much.

Been amazing.

Yes.

And thank you.

Thank you everybody.

For watching and joining us here tonight at Potomac Station Coffee House We will see you guys next week.

The Gen X Pittsburgh Podcast hosts are David Rullo and Valerie Christofel Executive producer, David Rullo.

Producer and graphic designer, Kim Rullo.

Producer, Valerie Christofel.

Video production and Brent Isaac.

Music by NeoStem.