Hospitality PAC works to defeat drink-tax backers - Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

Hospitality PAC works to defeat drink-tax backers - Pittsburgh Tribune-Review A new political action committee opposed to Allegheny County's 10 percent drink tax is targeting officials who supported it.

I heard Brenda Frazier, my former county council representative, on a KDKA radio interview today. She said that people in her campaign were calling the political action committee from the hospitality industry was 'illegal.' Furthermore, an ethics complaint was being filed.

This is the second time the media is reporting upon complaints that are being filed to the PA Ethics Commission.

Fraziers folks seek to make a statement about the PAC.

And, Luke Ravenstahl asked for an ethics review about the gifts to Pat Ford and his wife, also the mayor's former press secretary.

Folks, complaints to the Ethics Commission are to be kept CONFIDENTIAL. It is un-ethical to blab about the filing of a complaint to the ethics commission. It is part of the process. Part of the form. CONFIDENTIAL.

To be under a cloak of confidentiality means you should NOT talk to the reporters.

I have problems with these confidentiality clauses. I filed an ethics complaint to the Pittsburgh Ethics Hearing Board against the Pgh Ethics Hearing Board concerning its bogus rule that required confidentiality. The principle of the matter was what I was fighting.

So, in a small way, I'm glad to have helped in making the confidentiality clause requirement to go up in smoke. The confidentiality clause is not being enforced and it is now made meaningless.

If I was put onto the Pgh Ethics Hearing Board -- I'd undertake a major re-write of all the rules of that body. And, I'd work to strike down the state-wide requirements of confidentiality too.

Told ya.