Laurels & lances: Fined & fired

Laurel: To accountability. You can get almost anything at a good mall: jeans, televisions, candles, cinnamon rolls.

It’s hard to get much of anything at the Pittsburgh Mills mall. Most stores stand empty, and the parking lot is a mix of craters and overgrown plants. But Namdar Realty Group, the mall’s owner, picked up a hefty load of fines in district court in July.

District Judge Michael Girardi rang up more than $1.8 million in fines for 36 of 400 citations filed by Frazer Building Inspector Bill Payne in April and May. Namdar pleaded guilty to those violations at a cost of about $50,000 apiece.

The remaining infractions will be addressed in an Aug. 21 hearing. That does not include the public nuisance criminal case filed against Namdar subsidiary Pitt Galleria LLC by the Allegheny County District Attorney’s Office in April.

This isn’t the end of issues at the Mills. It’s barely the middle. Being fined and paying a fine, for instance, are very different things. There are also civil suits in the system.

But with some malls, if you can’t find what you want, you take what you can get.

Lance: To the same old song. Once again, Westmoreland County is having a staffing issue.

County commissioners have fired the director of the county’s tax office. Sarah Minnick was suspended without pay in mid-June, according to payroll records. Her termination was made official Thursday.

Commissioners, as frequently happens, did not say why Minnick was let go. Their comments were more about the nature of the office and its importance.

“The tax office is our biggest source of revenue, and it needs to run effectively and efficiently,” said Commissioner Sean Kertes. “We need to make sure we are providing enough information to the public, and it really needs to be shored up and modernized for the 21st century.”

Minnick had been in the role for only a year, taking over after her predecessor, Denyel O’Brien, was fired. Minnick was the tax director in Fayette County for more than a decade.

Will this make the tax office the new revolving door agency in Westmoreland County, like the election bureau was? That would have huge implications, as the $100 million collected annually is indispensable to county operations.