What difference can two days make?

In the great scheme of government, two days is usually not a big deal. Government generally moves at a sloth-like speed with the number of committee meetings and debates and questions and sending things back to the start before decisions are made. It’s like a particularly frustrating board game where no one ever wins.

When two days can make a difference, it’s usually about deadlines. Deadlines really motivate elected officials. It’s why budget talks always drag until late December or June, when the start of the calendar year or fiscal year forces someone to do something. It’s why the federal government can seem to accomplish little until it approaches that budget cliff or shutdown line in the sand.

But two days should have meant nothing to Pittsburgh City Council on Saturday.

There was no reason that the vote on council salaries had to be passed that day.

So why did there have to be a special meeting to pass these salaries? A special meeting with an executive session closed to public eyes and ears even for those few who might attend on a weekend?

The short answer is: There didn’t have to be.

The 2022 budget had a plan from former Mayor Bill Peduto for a 15% increase that would give the council members $83,000 paychecks. The new plan could be spun as a salary reduction because the final number comes in at upping them just 6.3% to $76,544. It was unanimous.

Why it seems a bit unwholesome is that the number proposed had been $74,377. The difference of $2,167 isn’t a big sum, but multiplying it across the council adds up.

Council President Theresa Kail-Smith said there was adequate discussion in open meetings leading up to the vote. She said there was no concern expressed to council members.

But it stinks to have council get credit for saving on that big pay raise by saying they were going to go for a tiny one, only to switch it up to midsize when no one — or at least fewer people than would attend a regularly scheduled meeting — was looking.

To Kail-Smith’s point, the law doesn’t say that if an issue has had plenty of discussion and no one gripes to an elected official that a vote doesn’t have to be totally open and public. Sunshine laws demand open windows.

There was a deadline. But instead of waiting until the last possible moment, council should have scheduled a vote during the previous week. Instead, they snuck it in on a weekend.

This is why open meetings and transparency matter. It isn’t just about having access to the information and the decisions and the data. It’s about seeing what information isn’t provided, or what decisions are made in the dark, or what data is obscured.

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