Council fails to override veto of campaign reform bill

Council fails to override veto of campaign reform bill Mr. Shields said the vetoed legislation 'begins to build a house of reform. . . . The great thing about politics and baseball is that there's always tomorrow.'

Doug digs deep to come up with that expression. "There is always tomorrow."

Doug sums up the best of what happens in Pittsburgh's political scene.

There is always a tomorrow -- except when you die. Sadly, there will not be a tomorrow for the mom of Rev. Ricky Burgess. So sorry about the loss. Funeral is slated for 11 am on Thursday.

There will be no tomorrow for Schenley High School -- after graduation on Saturday -- if Mark Roosevelt has his way. Gone. Extinct.

The hope of tomorrow is burning less bright for the city itself. The city may die. It already has two sets of OVERLORDS.

So, in politics, there is not a guarantee of tomorrow.

Back to the news to sustain the discussion:

The mayor said he supports the posting of all contributions, and of big donors' relationships with the city, online. He said he would also back a ban on no-bid contracts for anyone who contributed more than a certain threshold amount to a campaign.

"I have no plans currently, or haven't necessarily worked on it, but I think it's something that we would be willing to do," he said. "Full disclosure, 100 percent transparency, is something that we could do, or work towards doing, as quickly as tomorrow." He said he could work with council to get new rules in place in time for next year's city races.

He said council's legislation -- hatched in January and the subject of a public hearing, a special meeting, and repeated council discussions -- was passed prematurely. "Maybe they were interested in just passing something before they went on their summer vacation, just to pass it, to say that we were a city that had campaign finance reform," he said.

Here is the deal, Luke. There should NEVER be ANY no-bid contracts. I'd outlaw all no-bid contracts. The public funds need to be protected. Bids insure honesty and value for the spending.

Every contract that the city enters into should be supported by a bidding process.

As to the full transparency, the solution to that is called transparent PAC accounts. If a local bank wanted to help the situation by offering TRANSPARENT PAC ACCOUNTS as a product offering to candidates, campaigns and political action committees, we'd have a most elegant, private market solution.

The legislation from Bill Peduto was NOT hatched in January. We worked in past years on this bill. The work with the experts began in 2004.