Darlene Harris leaving City Council with a roar
You had to know she wouldn’t just ride quietly (perhaps on a circus elephant) into the North Side sunset.
In what is otherwise one of the most tranquil periods that Pittsburgh government has seen in a quarter-century, Darlene Harris sauntered like an urban raccoon through her final month on City Council, knocking over everybody’s trash cans as she hunted for tasty policy morsels and (literally) gathered shiny objects.
In December alone, Ms. Harris:
• Secured passage of new rules on reptile ownership.
• Voted against a motion to kill legislation written specifically to bolster her pension.
• Introduced a resolution (which failed) to christen; Riverview Park’s soccer pitch “Ravenstahl Field.”
• Sued the city in an effort to torpedo its campaign finance ordinance.
• Confirmed that she took home items given as gifts by visiting dignitaries and long stored in council’s display case, after council President Bruce Kraus reported it to the police, prompting an ongoing investigation.
It was a remarkable (final?) chapter in a political career that included four years (2010-2013) as council president, during which she was next in line of succession to the mayor, and a failed 2017 campaign for the city’s top office.
Monday’s council meeting likely caps four decades of community involvement that started, she said in a December interview, when neighbors put their trash in a dumpster she had rented, prompting her to get active.
“I want to take a little time — and you can’t blame me. Over 45 years I’ve been dedicated to the community,” she said, adding that she has treated council as a seven-day-a-week job. “I have five grandchildren, and I want to spend more time with them . ... I think my family deserves to have me around a little bit.”
Will she be missed in city hall?
“Some, I don’t think would think that,” she said, in an obvious nod to Mayor Bill Peduto and Mr. Kraus.
The outgoing councilwoman has had a herd of beefs with Mr. Kraus, including a dispute over a manger scene.
In recent years, she has been best known as a frequently solitary council critic of a mayor who has largely had his way with the city’s nine lawmakers.
Mr. Peduto and Ms. Harris served together on council, and she traces their falling-out to his successful 2013 run for mayor.
“I told him that I could not support him, that I was supporting Jack Wagner,” she said. “Sometimes Bill takes it to heart, like you’re upset with him.”
Since he has been mayor, she said, they “talk civilized” — but not frequently. “We don’t interact too often because he’s not here,” she said, “... because he travels so much.”
Mr. Peduto was not available for comment Friday.
At a Dec. 2 council meeting at which Mr. Peduto appeared to explain the mayor’s office budget, Ms. Harris stood out among council members, urging him to pay police more, asking him about violence, and calling the shortage of crossing guards “a real issue.”
Earlier in the year, Ms. Harris was among three council members who voted against a raft of mayorbacked gun-related rules spurred by the 2018 Tree of Life synagogue massacre.
“It was good to know that she was asking questions,” Councilwoman Theresa Kail-Smith said. “You don’t want to just rubber stamp things.”
A lifelong North Sider, Ms. Harris studied to be a dental assistant before involvement in the Spring Hill Civic League and the North Side Leadership Conference led her toward politics. She became the chairwoman of the 26th Ward Democratic Committee and worked for state Sen. Leonard Bodack. She served eight years on the Pittsburgh Public Schools board, ending in 2003.
After Luke Ravenstahl ascended from the council presidency to become mayor upon the 2006 death of
Mayor Bob O’Connor, Ms. Harris won his seat. She won three re-election bids largely by drilling deep into every city department and relentlessly advocating for her neighborhoods.
“I called her Miss Marple, because she would just dig, dig, dig, and would find all of this stuff that needed to be fixed,” said Doug Shields, who served with her on council and later worked for her office on a consulting basis.
He added that Ms. Harris could also play politics, and outmaneuvered Mr. Peduto in pursuit of the council presidency in 2010.
As she sat in a box-strewn office on the Monday before Christmas, with a sack of Pup-Peroni on her desk, Ms. Harris said she’s proud of her work revamping the city’s nuisance property ordinance, addressing graffiti, opposing fracking, and putting security cameras throughout the North Side. And she was quick to note that she led council when, in a 2010 holiday-season frenzy, it saved the city’s pension fund without privatizing the public parking assets.
By pledging future parking revenue to the retirement fund, the city averted a state pension takeover. It was her biggest break with Mr. Ravenstahl, who supported parking privatization.
“She was able to work that situation to the benefit of the taxpayers,” said city Controller Michael Lamb, who collaborated with her on the pension fix. “She was stellar in the way that she handled council and the way that she handled unions” which were involved because the pensions of many of their members were at stake.
Ms. Harris, in recent days, cited that success as she watched, with frustration, the flame-out of a measure that likely would have doubled her pension payment.
“The city don’t pay much the way it is, and when you start taking benefits away, you do not get the people you need to work in the positions and do the job right,” she said.
She was most animated, though, in describing her legislation on behalf of animal welfare.
“When I’d see something that seemed wrong, or people were complaining, then I would look into it or I would be talking to somebody that also worked with the animals to tell me what they thought, and would start putting something together,” she said.
She left many a mark on city code:
In 2007, she moved the Bureau of Animal Control from the Department of Public Works to the Department of Public Safety, and changed its name to the Bureau of Animal Care and Control.
In 2011, she revived a program in which the city covered the costs of spaying and neutering residents’ dogs and cats, and some feral animals.
In 2014, she created a program that pays $500 a year toward the feeding of retired police dogs, plus the costs of their veterinary care.
Also in 2014, she wrote an ordinance barring owners from leaving dogs outside in weather below freezing or above 90 degrees, and governing tethering practices and dog house construction.
In 2015, she led the charge to ban the trapping of wild birds to prevent their sale by “pigeon brokers” who supply them for shooting events.
This year, she pushed through legislation requiring that dangerous reptiles be kept in secure cages and registered with the city.
In 2017, though, when Mr. Kraus proposed a ban on the use of painful instruments on wild and exotic animals — viewed by some as a ban on circuses that feature animals — she joined two other members in voting no.
“I was the only one that went up there and spent a whole day behind the scenes with the circus,” she recounted in December. “There were no problems with any of those animals. They were taken care of well.”
“I got in trouble because I was riding on the back of an elephant,” she added, referring to the criticism she received, during her mayoral bid, after she posted online photos of her sitting atop a pachyderm named Tracey.
This year, Mr. Peduto joined numerous labor unions in backing Bobby Wilson over Ms. Harris in the Democratic primary. She said she is unlikely to attend his swearing in on Jan. 6.
“When Mr. Wilson takes over, it’s going to be interesting to see how independent he can be, given the support he has gotten from the mayor,” Mr. Lamb said. “The concern that people have is, will there be an independent voice on council,” without Ms. Harris. “Right or wrong, she’s been independent.”