For sale, to some

Process for selling city-owned homes is full of holes

The city’s real-estate manager, Aaron Pickett, sold himself an under-priced taxdelinquent property in a process that short-circuited other bidders. The internal investigation that followed — one that cleared Mr. Pickett of violations — was a joke.

Heads, especially Mr. Pickett’s, should roll.

Instead, the administration’s response has been downright anemic. Mayor Bill Peduto did order the Office of Municipal Investigations review, which concluded that Mr. Pickett did nothing wrong. But nothing more happened. Officials overseeing the real-estate office couldn’t muster the energy to do any follow-up investigation of Mr. Pickett’s actions themselves. If they had, they would have learned what the Post-Gazette’s Rich Lord just did.

In June, Mr. Lord reported that Mr. Pickett paid $2,500 for the 1,912square-foot house on a 10,720-squarefoot lot in Beechview. At the time, officials said they advertised for other bidders but got none.

However, in a follow-up story Wednesday, Mr. Lord reported that at least two other prospective bidders, Daniel Hellmann and Peter Bussey, both of Upper St. Clair, were interested in the property. Mr. Bussey said he was prepared to spend up to $40,000 for it but couldn’t get the city to communicate with him.

City finance director Margaret Lanier said she knew nothing about other prospective bidders until Mr. Lord told her about them this week. Mr. Lord based his information on documents he obtained from the city through a right-to-know request. In other words, if they had bothered to investigate Mr. Pickett’s purchase after questions were raised in June, Ms. Lanier or other officials could have learned about the other interested parties themselves.

Mr. Lord’s follow-up also raised the question of why the interest from Mr. Hellmann and Mr. Bussey failed to trigger a court-supervised auction of the property. That should have happened, but didn’t. Ms. Lanier said she didn’t know why.

Now, confronted with information about the other potential buyers, mayoral spokesman Tim McNulty said “the city will want to look at this.” Hopefully, that won’t mean another referral to the Office of Municipal Investigations, which cleared Mr. Pickett because the city ethics code doesn’t prohibit city employees from purchasing city-owned properties.

The code prohibit employees from using their positions to secure advantages the public lacks. Mr. Pickett manages the process by which his office determines the sales prices of city-owned properties, including the one he bought. That is an advantage the public doesn’t have.

Mr. Pickett also signed papers as the seller and buyer of the property; the average person couldn’t do that either.

The city owns thousands of tax-delinquent properties, and interest in them is bound to surge given Pittsburgh’s healthy economy and growing reputation.

Fortunately, city Controller Michael Lamb sees this as the important issue it is. He said he’s “putting a priority” on an audit of the property sales process and wants city council to suspend all sales until he completes his review. Council should agree to his request.