When is a political event not a political event?

When everything is very carefully phrased.

On Tuesday, Pittsburgh sat at the intersection of politics and money. Carnegie Mellon University was the site of the Pennsylvania Energy and Innovation Summit. It was coordinated by U.S. Sen. Dave McCormick, R-Pittsburgh. President Donald Trump and Gov. Josh Shapiro attended. The leaders of tech and energy companies like Westinghouse, Google, First Energy and more announced more than $90 billion in planned investments for the Keystone State.

But that wasn’t all that happened. After the summit, there was a dinner and “fireside chat” with McCormick and his wife, Dina Powell McCormick, former Trump deputy national security adviser. That was held inside the Carnegie Museums in Oakland.

Is that an issue? The museum is the site of private events all the time. The debutante affair Cinderella Ball was held there last month. The various Carnegie museums are among the most high-end wedding and party locations in Pennsylvania. An event with politicians and captains of industry? It makes sense to have it at a luxe venue.

But was it a post-summit social gathering or was it something more political? That can make a difference between what is appropriate and what isn’t.

The Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh is a nonprofit organization. Tax code prevents nonprofits from “directly or indirectly participating in” political campaigning. This is understood. The museum has outlined it.

“When the post-summit reception was booked, we were assured both verbally and in writing that this would not be a partisan event or a political fundraiser, and we agreed to book on that understanding,” Carnegie Museums President Steven Knapp said in a letter Wednesday.

So let’s talk about fundraising. The dinner was linked to another nonprofit — PA Rising, which issued a statement saying that the after-summit gathering was really two different events. There was a reception hosted by the McCormicks. That was then followed by the dinner, hosted by PA Rising. Except the invitation was a little vague on that distinction.

It was quite clear about the costs: $5,000 per person to attend the dinner and chat, and a series of higher costs from there, up to $500,000 for “marquee event sponsor” with 24 dinner tickets plus six tickets to a private kickoff event, invitation to quarterly PA Rising events in Washington and more.

It is incumbent for a nonprofit like Carnegie Museums to make sure it is playing by the rules regarding what is and isn’t political and partisan, just as it would be for PA Rising — and McCormick.

But the rules regarding tax code, nonprofit status and politics are a knotted nest of narrowly written loopholes and plausible deniability. While this may walk like a duck and quack like a duck, it’s possible that one can argue it’s a bird and that would be accurate.

The problem is that fixing that would require the cooperation of legislators to write laws that would better police fundraising. That would be more rare than a priceless museum artifact.

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