Sunday’s vote on the Pittsburgh budget wasn’t Anthony Coghill’s first rodeo.
The Pittsburgh councilman, who was just elected to a third term, has voted on budgets each year since 2018.
That track record is tarnished now.
When the time came for a final City Council vote on the $693 million budget and its controversial 20% property tax hike, the Beechview Democrat was nowhere to be found.
Coghill had cast a preliminary vote opposing the tax increase. He had sat through hours of deliberations about the city’s 2026 spending plan. He was hardly a newbie to the budget process.
But as the final votes were cast, Coghill’s chair at the council table sat empty.
In the end, the budget sailed through 6-2. Coghill’s opposition to the tax hike wouldn’t have changed the outcome.
But the veteran councilman expressed chagrin Monday about being absent for the pivotal vote.
“I’m sick that I missed that,” Coghill told TribLive Monday morning. “I’m replaying it in my head and I’m like, ‘Wait, did I miss the final vote?’ My head was spinning by that time. I did not want to miss it.”
Coghill didn’t realize his goof until he read a TribLive report that stated he had been absent.
On Monday, he said he was confused by the unusual proceedings a day earlier.
Council, up against a tight deadline to pass a budget by year’s end after months of debate, had to hold preliminary and final votes on the same day.
They started with a standing committees meeting, where officials deliberated, amended the budget and took preliminary votes. Then they recessed to update budget figures.
After the recess, Coghill returned for the second half of that meeting, believing it was a whole new session when the final vote would be cast.
Instead, council took a series of budget-related votes during an unusually chaotic process.
When the second meeting actually began, Coghill was gone.
“I guess my brain was thinking the second half of the standing committee meeting was the regular meeting,” he said. “I just kind of lost track, I guess.”
A sheepish Coghill told TribLive he would look into whether he could add his no vote to the record after the fact.
“If I can register that vote, I would love to get that on the record,” he said.
