Harris continues fight against city’s campaign finance report ordinance
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto will be sworn in for another term in just a couple weeks. His rival Darlene Harris, meanwhile, still is fighting a battle dating to the 2017 Democratic primary.
Ms. Harris appeared with her attorney, former state Democratic Party chair Jim Burn, before the city’s Ethics Hearing Board Tuesday afternoon, challenging a city ordinance that requires candidates to file monthly campaign-finance reports before an election.
“The foundations that were built through this process … are built on unstable ground,” Mr. Burn said.
The dispute dates back to the spring, when Ms. Harris and three candidates in City Council District 4 did not file the city reports, though Ms. Harris did file separate reports with the county as required by state law.
In written briefs this fall, Mr. Burn argued that the city’s campaign-finance laws were pre-empted by state law, which has a different schedule for reporting campaign-finance activity. But former county Common Pleas Judge Bill Ward, who has acted as a hearing officer in the matter, rejected that argument. Mr. Burn raised a new concern Tuesday: that the board’s executive manager, Linda King, had a “conflict of interest,” because she brought the complaint and carried out the board’s directives in handling it.
The city’s campaign-finance rules allow the board “to hear complaints from City of Pittsburgh residents regarding violations.” Ms. King is a city resident, and the city code allows the hearing board to investigate potential ethics problems “on its own initiative.”
But Mr. Burn said Ms. King should have recused herself, since having her bring the complaint and help handle it “would be like me being the judge, jury and executioner.”
Falco Muscante, who represented Ms. King, said the situation is not unusual, likening it to a school district making personnel decisions on the recommendation of a superintendent. The board also had notified candidates by mail about the ordinance, he noted, and Ms. Harris “was part of the process of adopting this ordinance [and] was well aware of the requirements.”
At his own Tuesday hearing, one-time City Council hopeful Mark Johnson argued that other candidates weren’t so lucky.
The city ordinance requires candidates to use campaign-finance forms used by state and county officials — forms that include a totally different reporting schedule. “It certainly makes it confusing,”said Mr. Johnson.
Mr. Johnson’s District 4 candidacy was short-lived. By the time he learned of the reporting requirements, he already was out of the race because of problems with his petitions. “I wasn’t presented as a candidate to voters,” he said, but the board “had the audacity to persecute me.”
Mr. Muscante called that claim “disingenuous.” The board sent letters to Mr. Johnson, a lawyer, advising him of the requirements in the spring, yet Mr. Johnson had still not done so. “Many other candidates filed that form and have never been brought to this panel,” he said.
Six of the board’s nine members heard the cases: Ms. King said it likely would release decisions before the end of the year.
Two other District 4 candidates, Cletus CibroneAbate and Gary McBurney, have been fined by the board for failing to file reports of their own, but the fines have been stayed amid the challenges to the ordinance’s viability.
Those challenges may not end soon. Mr. Johnson said if the board rules against him, he will appeal to Common Pleas Court. “They’re using it to hold up people who aren’t even presented to voters. If I could change that, Iwouldn’t mind.”