Pittsburgh police have been over budget for years, particularly regarding overtime.

Mayor Ed Gainey’s proposed budget all but ignores the cost of overtime in a manner that, frankly, makes no sense. Go to any pizza shop, corner store, hospital or university, and keeping overtime under control is a priority for management.

So how does the spending plan for the second-largest city in Pennsylvania approach overtime with an attitude of blindfolded optimism?

TribLive’s reporting on Pittsburgh’s moonlighting program suggests that it might not be unrealistic hopefulness. Maybe it’s just bad bookkeeping.

The moonlighting program is the system by which businesses or organizations will contract with the city for off-duty police officers to provide security or traffic control. The officers get extra hours. The city gets a fee.

In theory, everybody wins.

In practice, the city has done an atrocious job of managing the program. Invoices have been sent but not collected and often not even pursued, while the same organizations use police manpower over and over.

Yes, some of these are nonprofits, like the Rodman Street Missionary Baptist Church or the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh. But that claim can’t be made about Duquesne Light, Target or the holder of the biggest bill. Cheerleaders Gentlemen’s Club racked up about $105,400 in fees. That’s hardly a charitable deduction.

Has the program had red ink in previous administrations? Yes. Under Bill Peduto’s mayorship, it was under $200,000. Under Gainey, the peak hit $3 million in 2024.

How? Police union leader Robert Swartzwelder hit the nail on the head.

“You’re either blatantly incompetent, or there’s some level of corruption here,” he said.

It’s hard to see a third option.

Although the messy accounting does make incompetence look like the culprit, we again ask how that can be.

Under Gainey’s watch, the focus on the Bureau of Police, its revolving door of leadership, and well-documented issues and questions about overtime have been a repeated refrain.

And this is not a new issue. There were previous problems with the moonlighting program. Former police Chief Nate Harper went to prison over misuse of these same funds. Should that not have kept a spotlight on potential mismanagement?

Perhaps the responses of Gainey’s director of the Office of Budget and Management, Jake Pawlak, points to the overall issue with the administration’s repeated faux pas over the years. Pawlak shrugged it off as a small amount of the overall $666 million budget, just less than 3% of the whole.

If we don’t care about this $3 million, there will be another $3 million we don’t care about — and another and another. That’s how red ink floods a city.

Police departments are supposed to care about the little things. They are supposed to watch the broken windows so they don’t become vandalism and the pickpocketing so it doesn’t become armed robbery.

How can the city be depended upon to collect tax money when it can’t even ask a strip club to pay its security bill?

Pittsburgh will soon have a new mayor. Corey O’Connor will need to address this rapidly. His resumé as Allegheny County Controller will really not give him cover in the event of financial missteps. That is his wheelhouse, and he will need to get it in hand.

This seems like an issue of accounting — and it is — but it also reeks of a need for real and consistent accountability.

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