Pittsburgh controller pushes City Council to make private meetings more transparent

Pittsburgh’s fiscal watchdog on Thursday recommended that City Council make more transparent — but not eliminate — controversial private meetings its members occasionally hold to discuss public business.

The suggestion came in a performance audit released by Controller Rachael Heisler, which also recommended that council develop better policies to track members’ expenses.

Experts last year told TribLive the closed-doors “briefings” council has held for years may violate the spirit of Pennsylvania’s open meetings law.

The private gatherings prohibit public access, including to media, and have touched on a wide array of often benign topics, from deer management to the city budget.

“Transparency and public access are essential to good government,” according to a statement from Heisler. “As we continually monitor city services, we strive to make information clearer and easier for the public to find and understand.”

Heisler’s audit highlighted that there are no attendance sheets to track which council members attend briefings.

Council members have said they avoid a quorum — or a majority of members — in those private meetings to ensure they do not violate the Sunshine Act. Some good government experts have said such efforts may be problematic because they appear to deliberately thwart the law’s purpose: to ensure deliberations among a quorum occur in public.

While true briefings, in which information is presented to a passive audience, are permitted, council members have told TribLive that some of the private meetings involve discussions similar to what occurs during public meetings.

80% increase

Public records about the private sessions are sparse and typically limited to a brief description of the meeting topic and a date the meeting was held.

There are no public meeting minutes or records of what is discussed in such briefings, Heisler’s audit noted.

According to the controller’s audit, City Council held 27 briefings in 2023, an 80% increase from the 15 a year earlier.

Several of them are not listed on Legistar, the online platform that houses council agendas, minutes and legislation.

Heisler’s audit recommended that council develop a written, publicly available policy that explains the procedures of the briefings and restrictions on what cannot be discussed in such private sessions.

In a letter to Heisler attached to the audit, Assistant City Clerk Ashley Robinson said the clerk’s office requests that council members tell them which briefing they will attend but members do not always let them know.

Robinson specifically addressed executive sessions, which are permitted to be closed to the public for elected officials to discuss certain matters, including personnel and litigation.

“Because executive sessions can deal with confidential matters (legal matters; personnel matters; etc), we do not post more details, just the titles of the legislation that it deals with, or ‘personnel matters,’” Robinson wrote.

Procedures regarding executive sessions and briefings, Robinson wrote, are available on the clerk’s web page.

Many of the private briefings council holds do not seem to fall into Sunshine Act allowances for private executive sessions.

“For the briefings, I think the public has a right to know what we’re doing, the conversations we’re having, why we’ve come to the decisions we’ve made,” Councilwoman Theresa Kail-Smith, D-West End.

But Kail-Smith, who was council president during much of the period covered in the audit, said some council members prefer to ask questions privately before having public conversations.

The controller’s office also recommended that council’s meeting minutes include a description of what residents are discussing during public comment periods and that council members take advantage of free Sunshine Act trainings offered by Pennsylvania’s Office of Open Records.

Heisler said such efforts can help reinforce public trust.