Tag Archives: Rental cars

In a new audit the City Controller takes the City’s rental car policy to task, noting that Pittsburgh is paying much more for renting similar type vehicles than Allegheny County does, even though there have been opportunities for the City to join the County in a combined bid.

Perhaps there are good reasons why the City stayed put with its current vendor, the same one it has had since 2006, rather than going with the County. There’s no response contained in the audit from the people in charge of the City’s rentals (most of them are for police and parks) so it is hard to speculate. But one has to wonder what it could be when for the price of a four month minivan rental for the City equates to over eleven months for the County under their contract. The Controller also stated that "oversight by City personnel of these invoices appears minimal".

It basically boils down to (1) looking for savings and (2) watching the bottom line. Ironically, the audit points out that the City in 2008 "had an opportunity to join the County in its request for bid (RFB) issuance, but declined". That is the same year when the Task Force on how to merge the City and the County released their report in favor of the concept. That report wanted a clear commitment from the Mayor and the Executive to further efforts at cooperation.

The Allegheny Institute commented on the rental car issue over the summer in a media interview.