State oversight of city has grown wearisome

Let my gaming money go! As rallying cries go, this one probably needs work. Mayor Bill Peduto’s efforts to get a state oversight committee to release its grip on the city’s casino cut — more than $11 million and rising — is nonetheless one of those only-in-Pittsburgh stories that we ought to be watching.

The money is being held back by the ironically named Pittsburgh Intergovernmental Cooperation Authority. It’s an oversight group created by the state 11 years ago to pile atop the Act 47 oversight program, because why should government pay for just one group of watchdogs when we can spring for two?

The ICA, as the insiders call it, was the bipartisan brainchild of a group of state senators from Allegheny County, most of whom have left office (not all willingly) since. These senators neither trusted nor much liked then-Mayor Tom Murphy, who’s been gone almost a decade himself.

Millions of state dollars have gone into the ICA in the past 11 years, and recently departed board member Ann Dugan, appointed by former Gov. Tom Corbett, said, “I am confused as to why it does still exist.’’

“Sometimes [government entities] continue to exist on paper well beyond the time they’ve been useful,’’ Ms. Dugan said.

The Peduto administration has gone further, filing suit last month to have the ICA release the city’s share of state gaming revenue. The city also asked the state Department of Community and Economic Development last week to dissolve the authority.

That should happen, the city says, because under the ICA’s founding legislation in 2004 it was supposed to last at least seven years but vanish after the city had “annual operating budgets and five-year financial plans approved by the board for at least the three immediately preceding years.”

Haven’t budgets been approved each year? Didn’t the ICA, after much wrangling, sign off on yet another city budget just last December? So why does the ICA still exist?

Well, not to go all “Animal House’’ on you, but evidently there’s a little-known codicil in the ICA code that amounts to indefinite double-secret probation for the city. All those approved budgets and five-year plans? “Every approval has been conditional,’’ ICA executive director Henry Sciortino said.

That means they don’t count.

The money the ICA is holding back won’t be held back forever, Mr. Sciortino said. It has to be used for very specific purposes, such as reducing the city’s debt and its unfunded pension liabilities. When the ICA is satisfied the city has met its conditions, it will release the money, Mr. Sciortino said.

“There’s nothing simple about any of this and oversight isn’t very popular,’’ he said.

That could be the one thing on which he and the mayor agree. As to why the city needs two separate overseers, Mr. Sciortino says those Act 47 guys haven’t had enough leverage to force cities down the right road.

So the state paid the ICA $250,000 this past fiscal year, the lion’s share of which went to Mr. Sciortino, who makes $12,000 each month.

The ICA claims a lot of credit for the city’s fiscal recovery. Pittsburgh has shaved hundreds of millions of dollars in debt and upgraded its bond rating from junk status to A+ these past 11 years. But it’s impossible to know how much of the credit goes to the city, ICA or Act 47.

It’s that uncertainty that has kept an extra tier of oversight dragging on from unelected Harrisburg appointees. Mr. Peduto is asking state Auditor General Eugene DePasquale, a fellow Democrat, to investigate the ICA for “obvious” awarding of no-bid contracts to “politically connected firms.’’

Mr. Sciortino says he doesn’t know what contracts Mr. Peduto is talking about, because “he doesn’t say what they are.’’

Nicholas D. Varischetti, the ICA chair who was unavailable for comment Friday, told the city in a July 2 letter that his board would not be “bullied.’’ But bullies, like beauty, are in the eye of the beholder. If this unelected board doesn’t cough up the gaming money the city has gotten in the past, the city will have to find that money someplace else. Someplace else is where city taxpayers live.

Eleven years on, the ICA needs to make a better case for its continued existence, because it’s become one very expensive extra layer of government.