A potential showdown between Mayor Bill Peduto and Allegheny County Controller Chelsa Wagner, with the VisitPittsburgh board caught in the middle, was averted when the mayor withdrew a request for an additional $25,000 in contributions from the taxpayer-funded tourism nonprofit related to his appearance on a reality show last year.
The board of VisitPittsburgh, whose $11 million yearly budget comes largely from a hotel tax collected by the county, voted in October to contribute $25,000 to Mr. Peduto’s December appearance on CBS’ “Undercover Boss,” during which the mayor doled out cash payments and one promotion to needy city employees. The board was to consider a second payment Wednesday, but Mr. Peduto told them the money had been found elsewhere.
“Unfortunately you have become an unintended target of negative publicity for pursuing your core mission to promote our city,” the mayor wrote in a letter dated Tuesday. “Since the time of my original request we have secured sufficient funding, so I am writing today to withdraw my second request to you for $25,000 in promotional funds.”
Tim McNulty, Mr. Peduto’s spokesman, said a $10,000 commitment from Huntington National Bank and $15,000 from a group of alumni from the Central Catholic Alumni Association “make additional support from the promotion and tourism body unnecessary.”
VisitPittsburgh’s contribution to the roughly $155,000 Mr. Peduto pledged to the employees had come under scrutiny by Ms. Wagner, who had asked the board to withhold the second payment. The other contributors were PNC, Esmark, First National Bank, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 5, UPMC, Highmark and Eat’n Park in amounts that varied from $2,500 to $25,000.
Ms. Wagner initially sought to withhold about $682,000 in hotel tax money from VisitPittsburgh after the first payment was revealed and threatened to do so again if it made a second contribution, questioning the use of tax dollars and the distribution of the money to individual city employees.
At the first vote, the board was unaware Mr. Peduto had claimed on the broadcast, shot in October, that he wasn’t using tax money and that the contribution was going to individual city employees.
“On this round, I commend the mayor for not putting them in that bad position,” she said.
First Published: February 18, 2015, 6:22 p.m.
Updated: February 19, 2015, 3:37 a.m.