In covering Mayor Ed Gainey’s bold restructuring of nearly all City Hall communications efforts, Post-Gazette reporters did what thorough, even-handed journalists do: They gathered the facts from numerous sources, laid them out clearly and provided input and analysis from a variety of experts.
The Gainey administration did what it does best: avoidance.
That means it’s City Council’s turn.
Council members have filled the Gainey void before. As an incisive PG editorial noted Monday, Councilwoman Erika Strassburger represented Pittsburgh on MSNBC the day of the verdict in the Tree of Life massacre, while Mayor Gainey’s office was silent for more than four hours — except to Tweet and re-Tweet his decision to officially rename our city “Swiftsburgh” in honor of Taylor Swift’s weekend of sold-out shows. Cuz, priorities!
Perhaps council members saw this kind of tone-deaf incompetence coming back in December when they rejected the mayor’s budget request to absorb the city’s cable channel into his brand-new Office of Communications.
The channel’s primary function is broadcasting council meetings. Its members strongly opposed the move, several of them publicly stating that the mayor’s office should not represent them or control the flow of information for all parts of city government.
The mayor, however, has reportedly done this anyway. Multiple anonymous sources report that the cable channel has been operating under his office’s authority since December — the month that the 2023 budget was passed.
In Washington, D.C., when the executive branch usurps the power of the legislative branch, it often ends up at the Supreme Court. For that to happen, a person or entity damaged by the executive action has to challenge it — e.g., Missouri suing over the Biden administration’s student debt-relief plan. The Court determined that Missouri had standing to sue, since the Biden plan would have wiped out the state’s independent loan-assistance program, and that the plan went too far, essentially usurping Congress’s role.
In Pittsburgh, we may not get such clarity. We the people won’t know what information is missing or distorted unless we — or an independent media — compare the Gainey administration’s output (or lack thereof) to painstakingly reported reality.
When the PG asked local experts on government and media for their take on Mayor Gainey’s communications consolidation, one of them — from the Committee of Seventy, a nonpartisan good-government group — said, “At the end of the day, what’s most important are the outcomes city government is delivering, and whether government will continue to be accountable and open.”
“Continue to be?” Unfortunately for this administration, “accountability” depends on its own willingness to participate in the process — which means responding when challenged. But as the PG dutifully noted, “Mr. Gainey’s office declined to comment for this article.”
Absent the administration’s willingness to be held accountable, those harmed must speak out. Besides the ill-served public, the next party injured by Mayor Gainey’s excessive grasp is City Council. Its authority — the power of the purse — has been quietly defied. Nothing will change if council members avoid confrontation.
As reporters Hallie Lauer and Adam Smeltz investigated this issue, “current and former Pittsburgh officials” spoke to them “on condition of anonymity to avoid jeopardizing relationships with the administration.”
I understand — for now — anyone’s reluctance to go on the record. These are early days, 18 months into a four-year administration. Expressing one’s concerns anonymously rather than launching open warfare could be a form of good will.
Some sources speculated that the mayor is moving boldly now to consolidate his position for a re-election campaign. That opinion is bolstered by the observation — from Point Park University professor Ed Meena — that centralizing communications is an attempt at “controlling the narrative.”
Unless there’s observable improvement in those communications or in delivering the basics of city government, “all this will be is organized stonewalling.”
The Washington Post’s motto is “Democracy dies in darkness.” It also dies from disinformation, uninterest, and disdain. Mayor Gainey’s administration needs to make some serious progress — first, by respecting council’s legislative authority.
If the mayor does not, then City Council steps up. If council doesn’t, it will be the voters’ turn.
Ruth Ann Dailey is a columnist for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: ruthanndailey@hotmail.com. Her previous column was “Liberty is difficult to keep.”
First Published: July 12, 2023, 9:37 p.m.