In mid-July, about 20 weeks into the pregnancy, she had an ultrasound that showed a healthy baby. Innamorato decided to break the news during her quarterly address to County Council on July 14 and make it part of her efforts to persuade more people.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI will be so disappointed in myself as the first county executive who will give birth in office to not be able to provide parental leave for other families who are struggling every day and just want that time to recover and to bond and to build their family,\u201d she told council.<\/p>\n
The good news didn\u2019t dampen fierce public debate about the proposal. It received more than 1,400 submitted comments, a majority of them positive, but including 400 staunchly opposed and around 150 seeking changes before they could support it, according to an analysis by Pittsburgh\u2019s Public Source.<\/p>\n
The fierceness of the opposition, even if it is just a vocal minority, suggests that Innamorato may need to make changes to the proposal to get something passed. Doing so could require some difficult choices about which workers get left out to reduce the costs.<\/p>\n
The high visibility of Innamorato\u2019s pregnancy and the parental leave proposal could now come to define her first term, as she pushes the boundaries of what kinds of progressive policies are possible. But if some version of the policy passes, it could give her a signature issue \u2014 to go along with a portable new campaign companion due in November \u2014 as she begins her 2027 reelection bid.<\/p>\n
“I’m going to have one child and my partner has three. Yeah, I’m going to continue to run for this role.\u201d<\/p>\n
Allegheny COunty executive Sara innamorato<\/p>\n
And the implications may expand well beyond Allegheny County\u2019s borders. This kind of proposal could catch on, said Chris Borick, a professor of political science at Lehigh University. Local leaders tend to borrow ideas from each other, he said. And parental leave is popular enough that it could catch on in cities like Memphis, Houston or Kansas City, where liberal leaders have to contend with conservative state legislatures.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have some very blue islands in some very red political seas,\u201d Borick said. \u201cAnd those islands, they’ll be watching.\u201d<\/p>\n
A local proposal with national implications<\/p>\n
Innamorato\u2019s support for parental leave is not new. She pushed for a paid leave proposal in Harrisburg as far back as 2019<\/a>. In 2024, she said she implemented a 12-week parental leave proposal now in place for the roughly 6,000 county employees. \u201cWe had to walk the walk first as an employer,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd we actually had no universal paid leave policy.\u201d<\/p>\n Innamorato has seen parental leave proposals wither in Harrisburg and get tossed aside in Washington<\/a> and she thinks that\u2019s one of the reasons many people are so disillusioned with politics. \u201cWe have these wildly popular programs like parental leave that the nation wants Congress to take up, but they do not,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd so that erodes trust in the long term.\u201d<\/p>\n But there is no precedent for what Innamorato\u2019s Health Department has proposed \u2014 a county requiring businesses to pay for parental leave by themselves. There are 14 states and Washington, D.C.<\/a>, that have mandated paid leave, but they all have legislatures that were controlled by Democrats. Pennsylvania\u2019s legislature, by contrast, is divided. And the county isn\u2019t allowed to institute a payroll tax to pay for parental leave, as states have.<\/p>\n The novelty of this policy idea is a product of Innamorato\u2019s political calculus: She believes voters want politicians who will find a way rather than make excuses. \u201cYou can come up with a million reasons why you shouldn’t do something. But as Democrats, as progressives, we need to think about how we can move what is popular amongst the communities that we represent and do it in a way that builds a coalition that allows it to become reality,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Samuel Chen, a Republican strategist in Pennsylvania, doesn\u2019t think every form of parental leave is as popular as Democrats suggest. Typically, Chen said, progressives try to fund their proposals with taxes on millionaires and billionaires, which can be popular. But Innamorato\u2019s version of parental leave could backfire, he said, because it is asking so much of small business owners who make up a large voting block in Allegheny County. \u201cRepublicans are going to jump all over this,\u201d he said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n “The challenge that this wave of progressive office holders has is not that their policy agendas are too progressive or too radical for the electorate, it’s that they’re hard to get done.\u201d<\/p>\n Jake Pawlak, former deputy mayor of Pittsburgh<\/p>\n But if a more moderate version of the policy passes, Chen said he could see some Republicans trying to pass parental leave policies. \u201cI think you’re going to see a lot of other cities think about trying this,\u201d he said. \u201cThey’re going to see there’s an opportunity to not have to wait for their state or for the country to act.\u201d<\/p>\n The biggest risk Innamorato faces is not pushing for a policy that is too progressive for voters, but failing to pass any policy at all, according to Jake Pawlak, the former deputy mayor of Pittsburgh. \u201cTo me, the challenge that this wave of progressive office holders has is not that their policy agendas are too progressive or too radical for the electorate,\u201d he said. \u201cit’s that they’re hard to get done.\u201d<\/p>\n Last year, Pawlak\u2019s former boss suffered the first electoral loss of what had previously been a steady rise of progressive politicians in Allegheny County. \u201cMayor Gainey\u2019s loss had a lot more to do with the challenges we ran into in executing on his policy agenda than they did that agenda being too aggressive,\u201d said Pawlak, now the Pittsburgh-based director of strategic policy initiatives at the Keystone Research Center<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cRepublicans are going to jump all over this.”<\/p>\n Samuel Chen, Republican strategist<\/p>\n So the biggest challenge for Innamorato now is to get at least eight members of the county council to vote for some version of the policy, Pawlak said. \u201cThen that is what her re-election campaign gets to talk about, which is the achievement of this historic reform.\u201d<\/p>\n County Council has scheduled a public hearing on the proposal on Thursday<\/a>, even though it hasn\u2019t yet passed the Board of Health, whose vote comes first.\u00a0<\/p>\n Progressive tradeoffs and pragmatic vision<\/p>\n Innamorato has been clear that the Board of Health\u2019s initial proposal would likely require \u201cedits\u201d and that they still had to \u201cwork out the details<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n But the outcry from local business leaders, nonprofits, educators and many others who have to make their books balance<\/a>, has made it increasingly likely that changes to the initial proposal could be substantial. \u201cHow do we get a policy that strikes a balance between the economic impact and the public health impact?\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Because this was the first parental leave policy brought under a public health framework, Pawlak said, it made sense that it was more generous and universal than state policies. \u201cThe people who are or don’t have access to leave now are more likely to be lower income,\u201d Pawlak said. \u201cThey are also the ones who are more likely to bear the individual and public health consequences of the lack of leave.\u201d<\/p>\n This puts Innamorato\u2019s administration in a bind: The more trade-offs she makes \u2014 exceptions for small businesses, a longer period to become eligible, fewer weeks of leave \u2014 the more vulnerable people will be left out. Low-income workers fill many of the jobs that small businesses hire; and low-income workers will be less likely to take time if the generosity of the pay is reduced. \u201cA 50% or even 20% reduction in your wages or income means a lot more to someone who’s living paycheck to paycheck than someone who is comfortable and has savings,\u201d Pawlak said.<\/p>\n Dan Grzybek, a county councilor from Bethel Park, said on Facebook that he supports parental leave in principle but doesn\u2019t think small businesses and nonprofits can afford what is currently proposed<\/a>. So he\u2019s asked Innamorato\u2019s administration to consider exemptions for small businesses and a requirement that employees work for more than 30 days before they are eligible. \u201cThe goal here is to get families this benefit while making sure we don’t unintentionally hurt the small employers who are the backbone of our communities,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n Innamorato is listening to ideas from businesses about how to modify the policy, but not ones that want to scrap it, she said. \u201cIf you’re a business and you support the concept, but you’re worried about the implementation and the cost, we can work from that because we fundamentally agree that new parents deserve that time to heal and to bond.\u201d<\/p>\n At the end of the day, she said, the policy that will come before the Board of Health will \u201cstill be generous, it will still be data-backed and it will also take into consideration the realities that businesses are facing,\u201d she said. \u201cThat’s what governing is: It’s constantly taking these multiple competing interests and saying how do we actually come up with a path forward where maybe everyone loses a little bit, but overall as a society we win.\u201d<\/p>\n A young woman vs. the old boys<\/p>\n Being a young woman was central to Innamorato\u2019s political identity<\/a> when she first took on the old boys club of Allegheny County politics and unseated state Rep. Dom Costa in 2018<\/a>. She ascended amid a wave of female anger<\/a> during the first Trump administration, which led many women in Pittsburgh\u2019s northern suburbs, like Ross Township in her district, to shift their support to Democrats<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n She joked with Congresswoman Summer Lee, who also won a seat to the state House that year, that they had achieved \u201cwhite men named Dan\u201d parity. Allegheny County\u2019s state-house delegation at the time included only men, two of whom were named Dan.<\/p>\n![\"Allegheny](\"https:\/\/www.publicsource.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/DA_PPLInnamorato-Morrison-6.jpg\")
Allegheny County Executive Sara Innamorato, 40, reads “All Are Neighbors” to children at Estelle S. Campbell Boys & Girls Club on Aug. 28, in Lawrenceville. (Photo by Danny Arensberg\/Pittsburgh\u2019s Public Source)<\/p>\n![\"Allegheny](\"https:\/\/www.publicsource.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/InnamoratoAirQualityPresser-edited-1.png\")
Allegheny County Executive Sara Innamorato talks with County Manager John Fournier before a press conference about air quality three days after announcing her pregnancy. (Photo by Oliver Morrison\/Pittsburgh’s Public Source)<\/p>\n
![\"County](\"https:\/\/www.publicsource.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/DA_PPLInnamorato-Morrison-8.jpg\")
Allegheny County Executive Sara Innamorato, 40, speaks to a child at Estelle S. Campbell Boys & Girls Club on Aug. 28, in Lawrenceville. (Photo by Danny Arensberg\/Pittsburgh\u2019s Public Source)<\/p>\n