Open Book Pittsburgh

Over at the City Paper Slag Heap, Chris Potter recently highlighted Open Book Pittsburgh, which I was entirely ignorant of. It seems like a pretty cool site put forth by my favorite City Controller, Michael Lamb, to enlighten us on all sorts of money passing through our local government's hands. My first cursory search was for the big bucks - any city contract over a million dollars.

The latest multi-million dollar contract?

A $3 Million contract for AON RISK SERVICES CENTRAL, INC. to cover risks associated with the G20.

3 Questions

1. Can Pamela's get a piece of that? Or was the city only covering its own behind at the expense of our local businesses?
2. Is this going to get reimbursed? And where will the reimbursement show up in Open Book?
3. What kind of deductible do you have when your insurance premium is $3 Million? I hope it's pretty low.

So, yes, Open Book Pittsburgh is a great concept. But I find that right now, it creates more questions than it answers.

Breaking News: Duplication in City Services

Yet another audit has emerged by my favorite controller, Michael Lamb. He says that there's waste in the Housing Authority and the city would save money by such measures as:

"The authority could use the city's computer backbone, purchase utilities jointly with the city and county, better collaborate with the city on public works and senior and youth services, and join the city's recycling program."

Seriously, the housing authority doesn't participate in the city's recycling program??? What novel ideas.

Why do I feel like every time Mr Lamb does an audit, he says a lot of the same things? Do all the authorities think they're unique? That it's okay for them to waste taxpayer money? These are basic tenets and every single authority in the city should be merging these basics. The city needs one tech support team, one billing department, and one account with utility companies.

There have been a lot of audits over the past year and I'd really like to start to see some results. I have a feeling that if all these audits were promptly responded to that the Act 47 problems would diminish.

And The Winner Is?

Last month, the request for consultants was sent out with a March 20 deadline of applying to be a consultant for stepping the city through the complexities of leasing the parking garages. It's been 6 days since that deadline. Did anybody apply? Maybe I should have. I have a few suggestions.

Recommendation #1: I echo Dowd in demanding that we have a complete and properly staffed Parking Authority board.

Recommendation #2: Don't do it now. The State Auditor is currently questioning the recent attempted "fire sale" of a downtown building. Michael Lamb, our County Auditor will inevitably pipe up with an equally practical audit requesting that we not "fire sale" our parking garages in time of economic downturn. Let's cut this off before we spend oodles of cash on a consultant that will inevitably be the uncle of a big city political contributor.

Needless to say, I didn't discover any information on the Parking Authority's website, but I was delighted to learn that they're currently hiring.

Snow Days

When does Lamb get to run for County Executive? Can't he run for mayor? I seriously love this man. He performs audits on the snow plowing in the city. How cool is that??? Of course, this is on top of his audits for Pittsburgh City Council and emergency services and who knows what else.

Not too surprising he found that lots of streets in the South Hills get the shaft because they simply don't exist in the plowing routes. Whoops. He did acknowledge (and I've seen first-hand report of this) that the city's new smaller-fleet is addressing some of the issues for these smaller streets. For instance, my street was plowed during the last storm - all the way down to the bottom - within 12 hours of the "storm" starting.

However, there is no two-way communication within the Department of Public Works. As far as I can tell, one calls 311, makes a snow removal request, and the request goes into the void of the DPW. If you call back, they make another request. This "strategy" back-fired for me 2 storms ago when the salt truck neglected to make it all the way down my street. It took them 5 days (and many 311 calls, emails, etc.) to return.

The jury is still out on this "storm."