Continuing in her efforts to make Allegheny County government more transparent, county controller Chelsa Wagner announced two new programs at a press conference Thursday — OpenGov Allegheny and Allegheny County Contracts Online.

“What I’m particularly excited about is I believe these [programs] signify a new day for transparency in county operations,” said Wagner. “As you know, since 2011, I’ve advocated for greater transparency in county government, with the authorities and beyond.”

OpenGov is a service that’s partnered with 700 governmental agencies across the U.S. to make government financial information accessible online. This information can be broken down by yearly budget, vendors' reports, payments, wages and benefits, salaries, and the number of employees.

Within each category is a set of filters that organizes the information. For example, employee data can be broken down by age, ethnicity, pay status, union status, employment status, benefit group and job type. Financial results are depicted in graphs and a search bar is also provided for specific searches.

“The employee count [number of employees] is going to be especially interesting,” Wagner said, "because you’ll really see some of the trends in the different departments; and countywide where there are fewer employees doing a little bit more work, or a lot more work in certain situations.”

Wagner said the department’s working to have data dating back to 2002 on OpenGov by the end of the summer. The program is operated in-house.

“By providing these user-friendly tools to the public, we will now have more eyes on county government operations,” said Wagner. “This alone will make county government more responsive and more efficient. Taxpayers will be able to see and search exactly how their dollars are used with budget reports updated monthly and contracts added upon our office’s receipt of them.”

In addition to OpenGov’s financial information, County Contracts Online grants access to government contracts with the click of a mouse. They can be accessed by department, contract number, vendor name or by searching key terms.

Contracts pass through the county controller’s office for review and are scanned and uploaded to the site, where they are available for download.

“This is a way that we can take action now without waiting for the state legislature, which may take many years to ensure that our authorities are more transparent and responsive,” said Wagner.

  
Both OpenGov and County Contracts are available for use at the county controller's website.

“This offers unprecedented public access to spending and other data from Allegheny County,” said Wagner. “With this we’re able to shine a light on the approximately $1.5 billion county budget. That alone is a major advance”

With the state’s largest employer, health-care giant UPMC, announcing they will be raising their minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2021 and even Pa.’s Democratic candidates for U.S. Senate debating wildly about the minimum wage last night, Allegheny County Council has also thrown its hat into the minimum wage debate.

Yesterday, council passed a motion urging the Pa. General Assembly to increase the state's minimum wage to at least $10.15 an hour by a vote of 10-4 with one abstention. (Yays were all Democrats; Nays and abstention were all Republicans). The motion has no effect on Allegheny County’s minimum wage, and instead asks that state legislators increase the minimum wage with "deliberate speed."

Democratic county councilor Nick Futules of Oakmont was the prime sponsor of the motion and said “this is us agreeing that $7.25 does not cut it anymore.” He told council an anecdote of visiting one fast-food establishment for breakfast and meeting a young woman who worked there. He later grabbed some dinner at a different fast-food restaurant for dinner and ran into the same young woman. She told Futules she worked two shifts a day to make ends meet.

“I believe the state and federal government should at least follow the cost of living guidelines and increase the minimum wage,” said Futules during the meeting.

Futules says he has received support from Pa. House minority leader Frank Dermody, who represents the state's 33rd legislative district and shares many constituents with Futules, and that he was following Gov. Wolf’s lead, when Wolf signed an executive order granting state workers a minimum wage of $10.15 an hour.

Republican at-large councilor Sam DeMarco voted in opposition to the bill. He commended Futules for paying more attention to the minimum wage law, but said that increasing the state minimum wage would result in the loss of thousands of jobs. He also noted that the market is already making some minimum wage decisions for itself, citing the recent news that UPMC is raising their minimum wage.

However, some of the motion’s biggest supporters, Democratic councilors Michael Finnerty of Scott and DeWitt Walton of the Hill District, disagreed with DeMarco’s claims.

“To say that jobs have decreased as part of minimum-wage increases is totally false,” said Finnerty. “It depends on what stats you are looking at.”

Finnerty went on to say that the driving force behind minimum wages not rising has been billionaires refusing to share their profits with workers. “If a corporation is making millions and billions, they should be thinking of sharing some of that.”

Walton also criticized large corporations that have low minimum wages for workers and said he would discourage those kinds of corporations from moving to the region. “If there is a corporation paying poverty wages that is coming to Allegheny County, I would stand up and say ‘don’t come,’” said Walton at the meeting. “I will not let companies continue to pile on the poverty problem.”

The next Allegheny County Council meeting will be held at April 19 at 5 p.m. in the 4th floor Gold Room at the Allegheny County Courthouse in Downtown Pittsburgh.

The walk from Penn Avenue in Garfield to the top of hill and Garfield Commons Apartments is a doozy. For every 10 feet you walk, you gain a foot of elevation. That's one-and-a-half times as steep at the Bates Street hill from Second Avenue to Boulevard of the Allies in South Oakland, and twice as steep as the Penn Avenue hill from Doughboy Square in Lawrenceville to Bloomfield. And on the weekends, Garfield residents without cars have no choice but to walk it.

Transit-advocacy group Pittsburghers for Public Transit (PPT) has been requesting Port Authority for months to reinstate weekend bus service for route 89, the route that serves the hills of Garfield. Recently it got help from some public officials.

Newly elected Allegheny County Councilor Denise Ranalli-Russell, of Brighton Heights, sponsored a motion urging PAT to reinstate weekend service for the 89 bus route. Garfield is in her council district.

“You can see why this area definitely needs a means of transportation,” said Ranalli-Russell during the meeting. “To restore this bus service would make life a little easier for Garfield residents.”

The top of Garfield hill is home to two Pittsburgh Housing Authority complexes for low-income residents, including one specifically for senior citizens. Ranalli-Russell said she wanted to advocate for Garfield residents because she did not have someone advocating for her while raising her children as a single mother.

The motion was unanimously supported by the 15 members of council, especially Councilor James Ellenbogen, of Banksville, a Garfield native who walked up and down the hill during his four years attending Peabody High School (now Obama Academy) in East Liberty.

Molly Nichols of PPT says that about 400 people have submitted requests for weekend service on the 89, and she thanks Ranalli-Russell for sponsoring the motion.

“Residents in Garfield have been tirelessly advocating for this service to be reinstated,” wrote Nichols in an email to City Paper, “and they appreciate getting this show of support from their elected officials. The support gets us closer to ensuring that all communities get the transit service they need.”

Nichols, who spoke at the council meeting, asked the council to also use the occasion to consider new funds that could bolster the Port Authority budget, including requesting funds from corporations. Currently the county contributes a 15 percent match of state funds toward Port Authority’s budget, but public-transit entities are allowed to receive funds from organizations, corporations and municipalities under the transportation bill, Act 89, passed in 2013. (A micro-transit agency in Robinson receives funds from businesses and nearby towns.)

PAT spokesperson Jim Ritchie said in November 2015 that service suggestions will be evaluated by the PAT board through an equity-score process, which CP wrote about here. The board will release its annual service report in May, according to Ritchie.

In other PAT news, a major rail-replacement project for the light-rail line in Beechview has been altered to accommodate more residential parking on Broadway Avenue and limit the burden on local businesses, according to a PAT press release. The change occurred thanks to broad community input and recommendations from public officials, including Pittsburgh City Councilor Natalia Rudiak and county Councilor Ellenbogen.

“We heard loud and clear from the community and its elected leaders about the desire to address these key concerns in our work plan,” said PAT CEO Ellen McLean in a press release. “This change ensures there will be more on-street parking options for residents and less impact on businesses.”

Originally, construction was set to occur along the entire stretch of Broadway Avenue, but work will now be broken up into smaller areas; only sections that are being worked on will lose parking. Also, construction in the business area is expected to be “consolidated” and completed within three months. Work is scheduled to start on March 27 and will continue for six months, with crews working Monday through Saturday from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. 

It’s no secret that last year was a bad year for the Allegheny County Jail. Two deaths in one day in May (the culmination of 11 deaths over less than two years) led Allegheny County Chief Executive Rich Fitzgerald to announce the county would not be renewing the contract of Corizon, the jail’s for-profit health-care provider.

These deaths also caught the attention of another then-county government member, former county councilor Terri Klein, who represented District 11. Klein began to participate in jail-related activities while serving on council, including speaking at a public forum regarding health care at the jail.

Klein, who did not run for re-election last fall, has now been nominated by Fitzgerald to serve on the county’s Jail Oversight Board and was positively recommended by the appointment committee on Feb. 10.

“I am very interested in the health department within the jail and making sure there is timely care given to inmates,” says Klein.

Klein, who holds a degree in public health and works as a physical therapist, says she has a special interest in women’s health and would bring that to the board. She also said she would like to see the jail focus more attention on diversionary programs implemented at the jail, so non-violent offenders don’t necessarily have to serve their terms inside jail walls.

She adds that she is pleased to see Allegheny Health Network (which provided physicians to the county jail under the new agreement) has increased visit frequency compared to Corizon.

Advocacy group Allegheny County Jail Health Justice Project relaunched their efforts last month and continues to call for the firing of warden Orlando Harper. Julian Johnson, of the Justice Project, also questioned in January why the jail has not installed an electronic medical-record system, something that Corizon failed to implement.

Also nominated to serve on the Jail Oversight Board, and positively recommended by the appointment committee, is Rev. Earlene Coleman, of Bethlehem Baptist Church in McKeesport.

Coleman says she became interested in goings-on at the jail after being asked to give a speech for a jail GED graduation ceremony. She says this made her passionate about recidivism, something she wants to focus on if appointed.

“I would like to look at the process of rebuilding inmates to go out successfully into society, not come back to the jail,” says Coleman.

County council will vote on the approval of Klein and Coleman at the Feb. 16 council meeting at 5 p.m. in the Gold Room of the Allegheny County Courthouse.

The county’s Jail Oversight Board meets the first Thursday of every month at 4 p.m. in Conference Room 1 of the county courthouse. Meetings are open to the public.

Since the May 2015 announcement that the Allegheny County Jail was discontinuing services with its former for-profit health-care provider, Corizon, there have been no reported deaths inside the jail walls.

During Corizon’s two-year tenure there were 11 deaths, more than twice the national average in jails. The county took health-care operations in house staring in September 2015, with help from Allegheny Health Network and a $3 million increase in the jail's health-care budget.

But the Allegheny County Jail Health Justice Project, which launched in protest of the high death toll, is far from done advocating for inmates’ rights. Tonight, the group is relaunching its efforts to maintain accountability for the alleged mistreatment of inmates by county officers and health-care professionals.

Activist Julia Johnson, who heads the health-justice project, says that tonight's meeting will review the group’s accomplishments, update people on new goals, and recruit people for outreach efforts. Johnson says a new documentation project will gather stories of medical abuses within the jail from former and current inmates and their family members and friends.

“There have been significant leaps forward,” Johnson says regarding health care at the jail. “But we are still very critical that the county is not listening to citizens' requests. We feel they are still being ignored.”

The relaunch will also focus on continuing initiatives by the justice project. Johnson says the group is still calling for the firing of Allegheny County Jail warden Orlando Harper and for a large review of correctional officers' practices. 

Johnson says that there some issues at the jail that have not been addressed, like the implementation of electronic medical records. According to the minutes of the December 2015 Jail Oversight Board meeting, an electronic medical-record system has not been implemented and "currently, everything is hand written on paper," even though an electronic system was supposed to be created back when Corizon was the health-care provider.

Johnson says that without an electronic system, records and medical information for inmates change hands too slowly and that such delays could have been a factor in the death of Frank Smart, who died in January 2015 after one day in custody, after not receiving his seizure medication.

“We need to put pressure from all sides to let the county know that this is important and people need to be held accountable,” she says.

The jail health-justice meeting begins at 6:30 p.m. at New Voices Pittsburgh offices, 5907 Penn Ave. Suite 340, East Liberty.

Allegheny County no longer has a set-aside revenue source for public art. At a Nov. 17 county council meeting, an amendment to the county’s public art rule was passed 11-4, striking the two percent allocation from public construction projects that is suppose to go to a fund financing public art projects. The law was passed in 2005, but has never been enforced. 

Renee Piechocki, director of the Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council’s office of public art, was one of more than a dozen speakers who spoke in protest of the council considering stripping the potential funding. She said she was “disappointed” with the vote and suggested to the council that “rather than go back to zero, simply amend the bill so it functions better and then actually do it.”

She added that many public art jobs can be considered construction jobs for local workers. “Could you imagine amending a bill that does not support construction jobs?” she asked county council members.

Carnegie Mellon University art professor Andrew Johnson also spoke to the council and asked council to postpone the vote until a large discussion with stakeholders could be had.

Johnson submitted a letter to council signed by four professors at CMU and the university’s dean of the college of fine arts. “As artists, educators and residents of Allegheny County, we are mystified as to why a vote on our current percentage for the arts law is being held tomorrow night with little notice to key players in the arts, including members of the City of Pittsburgh Art Commission,” read the letter, which was sent to CP from CMU faculty.

Democratic Council member Michael Finnerty of Scott, says he has “great regards for art” but added that he does not think that the council “should have tax-payer money set aside” for public art.

“We should establish a committee where the public can come forward and ask council for funding,” said Finnerty speaking on a project by project basis.

At-Large Repulican Council member Heather Heidelbaugh was one of the four dissenting votes for the removal of the funding stream and said that “public art is important to the psyche of the people.” Democrats Amanda Green-Hawkins of Stanton Heights and William Robinson of the Hill District, one of the original sponsors of the 2005 public art ordinance, also voted to reject the amendment.

Democratic Council member Terri Klein of Squirrel Hill, introduced new legislation after the vote that would reestablish a revenue source for public art. Her ordinance would differ slightly from the old ordinance and set aside a smaller percentage of county construction projects.

“I have spoken to my constituents and they firmly support public art,” says Klein, who voted no on the amendment. “I think it is a fair question for the taxpayers [to vote on].”

Carolyn Speranza of PGH4ART, an advocacy group, says she was upset with the decision by excited by the possibility of Klein's new ordinance. "Out of this, you could see a bunch of artists go out and knock on doors and get people to sign petitions for public art," she says.

Klein’s ordinance was sent to the committee on government reform, where it will discussed further before potentially being sent back up to county council for a vote. The committee on government reform typically meets on select Wednesdays at 5:00 p.m. in Conference Room 1 of the first floor of the county courthouse. Check alleghenycounty.us for schedules.

Allegheny County Chief Executive Rich Fitzgerald said Tuesday that he considered relieving for-profit health-care provider Corizon from its duties administering health care at the county jail in May. He ultimately decided doing that would put inmates at further risk. 

At that time the county was taking fire from activists and inmates over several inmate deaths that occurred during Corizon's tenure at the jail. The county instead decided to take over health-care service at the jail when the  company's contract expired in September. But many people took Fitzgerald to task for not immediately removing Corizon from the jail.

In a meeting with a City Paper writer and reporter, Fitzgerald said there needed to be a “transitional period” to ensure the safety of the inmates. "I wanted to do that," Fitzgerald said when asked if he considered dumping the company in May. "But we realized it just would have made a bad situation even worse.

Fitzgerald discussed several topics including the transition of health care at the county jail. The county took over as the primary health-care provider for jail inmates — with partnering efforts from Allegheny Health Network — on Sept. 1, thus ending Corizon's controversial, two-year tenure.

“If we would have broken the contract, we would have put a critical population in danger,” said Fitzgerald’s chief of staff Jennifer Liptak, who added there would have been no immediate health care at the jail if the contract had been broken immediately. "We had to build a hospital from the ground up in four months."

Fitzgerald said the process involved consulting many medical sources, like Dr. Arthur Levine of University of Pittsburgh’s Medical School and hospitals like AHN and UPMC. 

"We wanted to clean house," FItzgerald said. "But we had to do it the right way or there could have been more deaths."

The county has also increased the budget for health care at the jail by $3 million dollars for 2016. Liptak says that this increase will mostly be applied to increased staffing, among other areas.

Now, according to Fitzgerald, the county has much more control and has established a local supply chain for jail health care. Fitzgerald says that medicine for inmates is provided by the Kane Regional Centers (the county-run nursing home system), which has led to a “more reliable” supply of medication. County Manager William McKain says that Corizon shipped in their medication from Tennessee, which is where the company is based.

Fitzgerald also addressed the outcry from activists calling for reform at the jail. Some critics want to see an activist as part of the county’s Jail Oversight Board. Currently there are three citizen members of the oversight board and, according to the county’s website, two citizen seats will expire at the end of this year. The county executive will appoint their replacements.

Additionally, the Allegheny County Jail Health Justice Project is calling for the firing of warden Orlando Harper. Also, the two candidates for the Allegheny County Council District 13 seat, Denise Ranalli-Russell and Khalid Raheem, also believe Harper should be let go.

However, Fitzgerald defended Harper and said he has no intention of firing him. “This warden has done a terrific job,” says Fitzgerald. “I can’t think of a harder job than he has.”