City leadership continued its push during budget hearings Tuesday to move the city’s cable bureau into the mayor’s office under the communications umbrella, but some council members remained resistant to the idea, noting that future administrations might not have the same noble intentions as the current administration says it has.
Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey’s proposed 2023 operating budget includes plans to move the cable bureau under his office’s control along with the city print shop and other communications-based positions.
“The idea of communications existing solely in one branch of government … is not really in the best interest of the population as a whole,” said Councilman Bruce Kraus, who represents the city’s third district, which includes the South Side and portions of the Hilltop neighborhoods.
Representatives from the mayor’s office said departments and positions that deal in communications should fall under one umbrella — in this case, a newly formed office of communications within the office of the mayor.
Jake Pawlak, deputy mayor and director of the city’s office of budget and management, said the city would be better served if the cable bureau were “connected to the work of other communications professionals and ultimately supervised by a communications professional who understands that entire scope of work.”
The cable channel is currently part of the Office of Innovation and Performance.
“Innovation and Performance — they don’t do communications,” Mr. Gainey said, noting that the cable bureau is “in the wrong place.”
“In order to be in the right place, (it should be) in the office of communications, because that’s what they do,” he said.
The proposed budget includes a number of newly budgeted communications positions. Previous operating budgets had two or three communications positions within the mayor’s office; Mr. Gainey’s proposed budget includes 14, though some of those are for positions that would have previously fallen under other departments, like the print shop and the cable bureau.
Positions include a communications manager as well as both a press secretary and press officer. There is a budget line for a “city correspondent,” too.
Mr. Pawlak said the channel should be a place “in which we relay, on behalf of all departments, to the public the work of city government itself.”
The administration has also proposed moving the city’s 3-1-1 line into the Office of Neighborhood Services, which is also under the umbrella of the mayor’s office. The non-emergency line is also currently under Innovation and Performance.
“If we agree that (keeping 311 under Innovation and Performance) doesn’t make sense, how can we not agree that not having communications under communications makes no sense?” Mr. Gainey said.
Council President Theresa Kail-Smith already said that council would likely reject the idea.
“We appreciate that there needs to be a communications office, especially nowadays with Twitter (and) social media,” she said during a Nov. 16 budget hearing that included the Office of Innovation and Performance. “We definitely want the mayor to have his office that he wants, but what we want to do is make sure that we have what we need as well, because they don’t communicate for us.”
Ms. Kail-Smith said the same sentiment stands for the city print shop.
“As much as we want to work with the administration, we don’t want somebody controlling our communications as well,” she said at the time.
First Published: November 29, 2022, 10:33 p.m.
Updated: November 30, 2022, 11:39 a.m.
