Pittsburgh Councilors Propose Budget Reforms: Quarterly Budget Meetings, Public P-Card Dashboard
Pittsburgh is a city in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. In the wake of a tight draft budget for 2027 and worrisome fiscal predictions for the city's future, Pittsburgh City Councilors introduced a package of reforms at a midday press conference on Tuesday, October 6, aimed at making the city's budget process more transparent and sustainable. The reforms are a mix of yet-to-be-introduced bills and internal policy changes related to financial practices.
"Fixing our structural budget issues requires a whole-of-government approach, and we expect these measures to tighten fiscal accountability and our spending habits," City Councilor Erika Strassburger said. "These reforms will not solve all of our problems that we face, but they are important to improve residents' trust in city government."
The reforms include an upcoming bill requiring the Council to gather quarterly throughout the year for meetings on the city budget. Council has already been doing so for the past year, but a bill mandating the meetings would make the practice official, so revenue shortfalls or cost overruns come to light ahead of time. Council's budget office is also working on training for Councilors and their staff on budget processes.
Among the internal changes is an agreement between Mayor Corey O'Connor's office and City Controller Rachael Heisler's office to share more city budget data with the controller. Heisler's office would gain access to Questica, the City's budgeting software, which it has not had access to before. "The information that this will provide our office will allow us to see problems more quickly," Heisler said. "At the end of the day, this is a really good thing for city residents, for city taxpayers, and also for vendors who do business with the city."
Also forthcoming are internal policy changes to how the city handles p-cards, or city credit cards, focused on avoiding redundancies and clarifying what is appropriate for reimbursement, plus a public p-card dashboard with data on spending by department, vendor, amount and date. Other internal changes would encourage departments to spend down their allocations each year before the next budget period starts.
Council also expects legislation that will clarify Council's role in approving certain kinds of contracts. Councilor Barb Warwick said her bill would clarify the handling of co-op agreements — "agreements where another body of government already has a contract for a given good or service and the city 'piggybacks' onto that agreement." She said: "We want to make sure that when the numbers are large for those, or that those agreements are going on for multiple years, that council is seeing that and is voting on that just like we do for all other spending."
The moves come as city officials reckon with a 2027 draft budget, proposed by Mayor Corey O'Connor, that projects a series of deficits which, unless addressed, will empty out the city's savings account within the next few years — reflecting concerns with how fiscal matters were handled under former Mayor Ed Gainey.
The proposals were co-sponsored by Warwick, Councilor Anthony Coghill and Strassburger, with Councilors Khari Mosley, Kim Salinetro and Bob Charland joining them at the press conference. "I think it's just important to show that we're all pushing for accountability, we're all pushing for transparency, and we're all pushing for collaboration and communication amongst the various branches of government, because ultimately it's about the public trust," Mosley said. Mayor O'Connor also stood with councilors in support: "These are great bills. These are great changes that needed to probably happen 20 years ago. Shame on us for not doing it a long time ago. In order for us to turn this around, it's transparency that's going to help in the long term."
Source: 90.5 WESA.
Source: GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图片来源：Wikimedia Commons，Cbaile19 摄，CC0 授权（匹兹堡市县大楼实景）
