Pittsburgh looks to formalize guard rails for Stop the Violence fund

Pittsburgh officials are looking to formalize “guard rails” to ensure accountability and proper use of the Stop the Violence fund.

Legislation before City Council aims to ensure organizations receiving grants from the fund report to the city on how it spends the cash. It outlines the responsibilities of a steering committee to oversee the program and requires that organizations receiving funding are based in communities with high need or are headed by people who live in such neighborhoods.

The measure earned council’s preliminary approval Wednesday. Council will likely take a final vote on it next week.

Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey on Wednesday railed against people who criticize or threaten to defund the Stop the Violence initiative. It provides money for independent organizations to conduct violence prevention work and funds the Office of Community Health and Safety, which employs social workers who respond to some 911 calls and help people who are homeless.

Smaller portions of the fund support the Department of Parks and Recreation and programs to provide legal support for renters facing eviction.

Some officials have raised concerns about accountability given that millions of dollars from the fund go to outside organizations.

The city allocates the equivalent of 10% of the annual police budget — up to $10 million — to the fund, which was created in 2020 to prevent violence.

The mayor on Wednesday said any cuts to the program could harm public safety. Gainey held a press conference at City Hall on Wednesday to push against any potential funding cuts. Dozens of supporters told City Council the fund had important ramifications for violence prevention, arguing it should not be stripped away.

Gainey has often credited the Office of Community Health and Safety and outside organizations receiving Stop the Violence funds for helping to drive down homicide rates.

Homicide and nonfatal shooting rates decreased in the city last year, mirroring national trends. But homicides increased countywide last year.

“We’re fighting to protect something essential: the Stop the Violence Trust Fund and the lives it was created to save,” said Felicity Williams, the mayor’s deputy chief of staff.

Farooq Al-Said, director of education at 1Hood, an organization that has received money from the program, accused council of “taking some of this money for yourselves to go back to your districts for demolition and snowplows and all these other things, trying to hover over this fund like vultures, trying to cut and carve this money up because you don’t trust Black people to reshape our own communities in our image.”

But it was unclear who, if anyone, has proposed slashing funding.

Gainey did not take questions at his press conference, leaving the podium with a call for council members to, “Shut up, vote it in and let’s go.”

Olga George, a spokeswoman for Gainey, told TribLive after the press conference that it would become clear during the subsequent City Council meeting who proposed to cut the funding.

Councilman Anthony Coghill, D-Beechview, said he wondered if such comments were aimed at him. He said he had talked about potentially pulling some money from the fund to pay for the police bureau’s mounted unit, which saw its funding cut in the 2025 budget.

But Coghill said he has not moved ahead with that idea, “not yet anyway.”

“I was confused,” Coghill said of the hours of public comment — delayed further by a fire alarm that forced the City-County Building to be evacuated — railing against any movement to defund the program. “I felt like somebody gave the wrong impression to the folks who came down today.”

Coghill said he was supportive of the initiative, though he would like to see more accountability.

Councilwoman Theresa Kail-Smith, D-West End, said she felt council has been “nothing but supportive of this program” since its inception.

Council President R. Daniel Lavelle, D-Hill District, co-sponsored the package of amendments that tweaks the way the fund operates with Councilman Khari Mosley, D-Point Breeze.

“In many respects, when we initially created the Stop the Violence fund, we didn’t give it all the guiderails for it to steer correctly,” Lavelle said, explaining that the initial legislation did not specify the composition or role of the steering committee that oversees it.

The bill Lavelle and Mosley proposed aims to codify some practices already in place, ensure more consistent reporting and improve accountability.

“This bill today is really good governance, in my opinion,” Lavelle said.

The city already has created reporting requirements to track how the money is spent, though some officials have said they don’t feel they get enough information from some of the recipients.