The top spokeswoman for Pittsburgh’s mayor acknowledged Tuesday that city employees broke in-house rules by using a municipal credit card to charge thousands of dollars in payments to a former worker after he became a private contractor, but she rejected suggestions that the hiring itself violated the state’s ethics law.
Spotlight PA hosted a virtual discussion on Jan. 25 about the corruption case in DuBois, Pennsylvania, and what it revealed about ethical conduct and fiscal responsibility in local government.
A state appeals court has upheld the City of Pittsburgh’s campaign-finance reporting law, despite a challenge by former city councilwoman Darlene Harris.
Veteran civil-rights activist Tim Stevens says he didn t authorize his appearance in this attack ad.
The first real attack ad of Pittsburgh’s mayoral campaign aired by the kind of outside-spending group that local politicos have been expecting landed this week. And one of the people feeling stung by it isn’t even a candidate.
“We felt like our credibility was at stake,” said Tim Stevens, a longtime Black civic leader and founder of Black Political Empowerment Project, after seeing himself appear in an ad attacking Bill Peduto.
Stevens appears for about two seconds in the spot, created by a union-backed committee called Pittsburgh Justice for All.” Though he is not named in the spot, he can be seen asking “for whom is [Pittsburgh] most livable?” a statement Stevens says was excerpted from a 2019 press conference on health outcomes for Black women in the city. The ad strings that together with news clips and newspaper headlines to conclude “After eight years
Tribune-Review
TribLIVE s Daily and Weekly email newsletters deliver the news you want and information you need, right to your inbox.
A former Pittsburgh councilwoman’s fine for refusing to file financial disclosure reports in 2019 and the law requiring those reports was upheld Tuesday by an Allegheny County judge who concluded the city is within its powers to require them.
“We’re looking at appeal options,” said Jim Burn, the attorney for former Councilwoman Darlene Harris, on Wednesday. “We respect the judge’s opinion, but we respectfully disagree.”
Harris was fined $4,150 for not filing reports with the city’s Ethics Hearing Board by the first business day in each of the three months prior to the election in 2019. The law requiring those reports was spearheaded in 2010 by then-councilman Bill Peduto, who now is the city’s mayor.