City Bookkeeping on the Brink of Collapse

News accounts quote the City Controller as saying, "We are talking potential calamity here…" referring to the City’s accounting system. The City’s ability to pay bills or even know where its money and other assets are could be lost. How utterly Pittsburgh this is; totally irresponsible when it comes to managing itself. Little wonder the City is in financial distress, it apparently cannot even concern itself with the most basic of management priorities-making sure the bookkeeping is done accurately, securely and in a timely manner.

Back in 2006 the Intergovernmental Cooperation Authority demanded that improvements be made to the teetering accounting system. But of course City officials have been far too busy working on crucial matters to deal with something so mundane as the accounting system. Matters such as getting a new hockey arena underway, arguing over whose streets gets plowed first, debating how large billboards can be, and raising money for the Pittsburgh Promise to help offset the failures of the Pittsburgh School system.

What is the city doing to correct the problem? Negotiating with the County over whether the City should pay the $2 million to $3 million it would cost the County to install its updated accounting system in the City’s computers. Rather than deal with this responsibly and quickly, apparently City officials are willing to risk a virtual government shutdown if their system does fail as warned by the Controller for a $2 million-a tiny fraction of the city’s budget. After failing to fix the problem years ago as demanded by an oversight board, Pittsburgh is still dawdling.

Same old Pittsburgh attitude. Not to worry. If something bad happens, the county or state will ride in and fix it.