Elected with more than 87% of Pittsburgh’s vote, Corey O’Connor has a mandate. Here’s how people across the city want him to use it.
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Corey O’Connor will become mayor in January with an unusual opportunity to reset Pittsburgh’s agenda. It starts with the momentum he gets from nearly 80,000 votes — more than 87% of those cast — but doesn’t stop there.
New Pittsburgh mayors usually have to battle the inertia created by multi-term predecessors. Mayor Ed Gainey will be done after one term, meaning he has had limited time to put his stamp on the city’s workforce, boards, power structure and physical landscape.
O’Connor’s familiarity with Grant Street’s operations from a decade-plus on City Council and three years as Allegheny County Controller suggest he could plug in quickly.
And he stands to bring a mix of experienced staffers and connections from prior administrations, potentially stretching back to his father Bob O’Connor’s eight-month tenure in 2006. He said Tuesday night that Dan Gilman, who served as chief of staff to Mayor Bill Peduto, will take an important role in the incoming administration.
Weighing against instant impact, though, may be fiscal constraints, a divided Harrisburg that could make it hard to win legislation or state funding, and the unpredictability rippling from Washington, D.C.
Pittsburgh’s Public Source reached out this week to voices across Pittsburgh’s civic landscape and asked what they thought might change with the mayoral switch. Here’s what they told us.
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Public safety
Gainey achieved a new police union contract and a drop in complaints against officers, but had trouble naming, and then holding on to, a police chief.
O’Connor plans to get a quick start on reshaping the police bureau. He said he plans to announce his pick for police chief before he takes office — a sharp contrast with the current administration, which took almost a year after inauguration to land on a choice after a public-facing, deliberative process. O’Connor did not detail any public element to his selection process, and said Tuesday he had already identified “a number of good candidates.”
O’Connor campaigned mainly on stabilizing the police force rather than drastically changing it, promising to install a permanent chief after years of turnover at the position and to bolster the department’s recruiting numbers. It’s a contrast with Gainey’s 2021 campaign, which emphasized police reform, “demilitarization” of the force and rebuilding trust between police and residents.
Miracle Jones, an activist with 1Hood Power who supported Gainey for reelection this year, said she hopes O’Connor will select a chief who is committed to enforcing “punishments and standards” for police officers.
“The hope will be for the O’Connor administration to recognize the deep-seated pain that a lot of communities have and to find someone who is not a part of that system, to find someone who has a record of holding people accountable and to find someone who has a different view of crime and policing that exceeds the ‘broken windows’ policing strategies that don’t work for our communities,” Jones said.
Bob Swartzwelder, the president of Pittsburgh’s Fraternal Order of Police union, has often criticized city leadership, including Gainey. He said he doesn’t yet know what to expect from O’Connor.
“We have to let the new mayor get his feet wet and give him an opportunity to lead the city,” Swartzwelder said.
More on O’Connor
He accused Gainey of violating the union’s collective bargaining agreement by forcing officers to work overtime to staff major events like parades, the marathon and Light Up Night.
“Those are all parties,” Swartzwelder said. “If you don’t have the staffing to staff the event, you don’t have the right to violate the CBA so you can have a party.”
He said the city can solve the problem by listening to his repeated calls to hire and retain more officers. Otherwise? “Don’t have the event.”
City finances
The city’s finances slowly eroded in recent years, as COVID-19 and a court case on property assessments depressed tax revenue from Downtown towers. Gainey will, in his closing months, try to win council approval for a $680 million budget that slashes mayor’s office jobs but is nonetheless razor-thin and predicts that the city’s bank balance will shrink for years. O’Connor could make revisions after he takes office in January.
City Controller Rachael Heisler, who at times has criticized the Gainey administration’s revenue and overtime projections, said this week that she hopes O’Connor engages in “honest and realistic budgeting.”
“If we’re realistic now, I think we can get through the next few years without cutting essential services,” Heisler said. “We need to be realistic about what’s essential and what isn’t, and we need to have a mayor who can communicate that in an honest way.”
O’Connor acknowledged during the primary that the next administration will have little budgetary wiggle room, saying the city was heading for a “financial cliff.” O’Connor has not laid out specific steps for augmenting the budget, but said late Tuesday after winning the election that Gainey had already invited him and his team into City Hall to get up to speed on the situation.
“We don’t have enough revenue coming in,” said City Councilor Erika Strassburger, who chairs council’s Finance and Law Committee and heads up the legislative budgeting process. “That’s the biggest challenge.”
She said the next mayor may have to make unpopular fiscal decisions.
“Anything having to do with increasing revenue is going to make people upset,” Strassburger said this week. “On the flip side of that, anything having to do with honesty about services that [the city] can provide, or the cutting of services, is going to make some people upset.”
She floated the possibility of suspending annual transfers into trust funds, which could include the Stop The Violence Trust Fund or the Housing Opportunity Fund, and suspending parks and recreation programming.
Economic development
Gainey tried to be the affordable housing mayor, and late in his losing Democratic primary bid said he “delivered” 1,600 units. His push to take inclusionary zoning citywide to compel developers to include affordable units in new housing complexes, though, has been watered down and delayed.
Some housing advocates continue to hold out hope for inclusionary zoning.
“We want to continue to strive to make sure a percentage of new housing is dedicated to affordable housing,” said Chris Rosselot, director of policy at the Pittsburgh Community Reinvestment Group. “That process is underway. It’s going to continue but we don’t know what the finished product is.”
Others are keen to see O’Connor side with development.
John Petrack, executive vice president of the Realtors Association of Metropolitan Pittsburgh, said RAMP supported O’Connor because “he basically said he’s going to do all he can to speed up the permitting process in Pittsburgh. From our point of view it helps consumers.”
Permit processes can delay housing construction by six months, Petrack said. Time is money in construction, so faster permitting would make housing “a little less expensive if the developers and builders didn’t have to pay the interest during construction for as long a period of time as they ended up doing.”
Rosselot said he hopes the new administration will “continue elevating small and community-centered developers.”
Cooperation with eds and meds
The city regularly works with its universities and hospital systems on their building development plans, but under Gainey hit a wall in its decadeslong efforts to get financial contributions from the big nonprofits. He filed legal challenges to make some parcels taxable, with limited results.
Previous administrations have tried, largely unsuccessfully, to squeeze tax revenue from the city’s large nonprofit institutions, including UPMC and the University of Pittsburgh and Highmark Health, the parent company of Allegheny Health Network (AHN).
O’Connor has indicated he’s going to continue pursuing contributions from tax-exempt institutions, albeit in a manner closer to Peduto’s “OnePGH” plan, which brought investments from the large nonprofits to address a range of city priorities, including a $40 million commitment from UPMC for affordable housing. That plan did not focus on payments directly to the city, but to a nonprofit pursuing initiatives that matched some city needs. Gainey called the effort “a slush fund.”
O’Connor has said he would aim to channel money directly to the city, but tell nonprofits how the money be spent on up front, pointing to Peduto’s plan as proof that “if you point out where the money is going to go, all our universities and all our nonprofits are willing to pay.”
“I think it just takes a leader that is going to say, ‘OK, your money’s going to go to buying ambulances, plowing streets, whatever it might be.’”
Public Source asked UPMC about its willingness to work with O’Connor to address — and fund solutions to — the city’s biggest problems. A spokesperson wrote it “looks forward to” collaborating with the new administration “to advance the health and wellbeing of our communities” and “being a strong partner in building a vibrant, accessible and thriving Pittsburgh.”
A Highmark Health spokesperson said the system, which includes the Allegheny Health Network, looks forward to working with O’Connor “to improve the health and well-being” of Pittsburgh communities. Like UPMC, the health care group has said for years that it would make a contribution if other large nonprofits did the same.
A CMU spokesperson congratulated O’Connor and said the university “look(s) forward to working with him on a variety of fronts when he takes office.” Pitt did not return a request for comment by publication time.
Some local academics aren’t sure how that will play out.
“I wouldn’t say I saw anything from Mayor-elect O’Connor either in his time on council or his time with the county or in this campaign that leads me to think that anything will be radically different in this area,” said Chatham University political science professor Jennie Sweet-Cushman. She added, though, that “pressures around the budget are certainly going to be pulling him towards, ‘Where can I get money?’ and all options have to be on the table, at least initially, to be able to close budget gaps.”
Pitt law professor Michael Madison said UPMC should be the main focus of the contribution conversation because of its size. He added that he would be surprised if such contributions are a “high-priority item” for the soon-to-be mayor.
To the Pitt professor, the more pressing question is: “How does the entirety of the region benefit from Pitt’s presence and contributions in health sciences? If I’m the mayor, those are the high-priority agenda items in my conversations with local leadership.”
Sweet-Cushman said O’Connor could have a difficult time taking decisive action on the strained housing market in Oakland, because of the stances he has taken on land use and his ties to developers who backed his campaign. “How much are you going to be pushing on [university] administrations to be thinking about how they can be part of that solution?”
Madison said that adding affordable housing into the universities’ community responsibilities may be a “bridge too far.”
Union activity within the two health systems has surged over the past two years, with nurses and other hospital staff winning unprecedented concessions, such as a starting wage for Allegheny General Hospital (AGH) nurses that will reach $40 an hour by the end of their contract. Experts told Public Source in February that the wave of organizing is a response to a longstanding staffing crisis — exacerbated by the pandemic — in the region’s hospitals.
State and local elected officials, including Gainey, backed the workers — a show of support that AGH nurse Myra Taylor would like to see O’Connor continue.
“We would appreciate if he would assist us workers in making sure that we all have the right to form a union, as well as to negotiate good contracts,” said Taylor, one of the nurse representatives on the executive board of SEIU Healthcare Pennsylvania and a leader in the AGH union’s endorsement process.
Speaking as an individual and not on behalf of her employer, she noted that “good jobs” are an essential part of quality health care in the region, but “all workers, not just health care workers” deserve better working conditions.
Public education
Public education leaders and advocates are calling for stronger and more consistent communication with the city’s incoming administration.
Pittsburgh Public Schools solicitor Ira Weiss, a longtime influence in school politics, said he hopes for a new chapter in what he deemed historically “less than a cooperative relationship,” even after a modest improvement under Gainey.
“There’s just no communication, and in certain areas where the city does interact with the school district in terms of building permitting issues and other enforcement issues, it’s been a very inconsistent record,” Weiss said.
For Allyce Pinchback-Johnson, co-founder of Black Women for a Better Education, stronger collaboration between the city and PPS is “absolutely imperative.” She said the lack of collaboration in the district’s Future-Ready Facilities Implementation Plan delivered last week was glaring.
Looking forward, she said the district and the city could work together to redevelop closed school buildings into affordable housing.
“PPS cannot continue to operate as an island. They can’t operate in a vacuum,” she said. “We need to be thinking collectively about what it’s going to take to support students.”
The mayor has no formal role in K-12 education, but Gainey worked with PPS Superintendent Wayne Walters on a workforce development initiative. They did not reach agreement on one longstanding bone of contention: PPS’ desire to end a two-decade-old arrangement that shifted a fraction of the district’s wage tax to the city when the latter was in financial distress.
When the city faced insolvency in the early 2000s, the ensuing financial restructuring included the diversion of PPS’ 0.25% share of earned income tax to the city. The arrangement has continued since the city emerged from the state’s oversight in 2018, to the consternation of some school officials.
PPS Board President Gene Walker hopes to address the disputed tax stream, valued at more than $25 million a year, which he called the “elephant in the room.”
Weiss said he has found O’Connor approachable and willing to discuss solutions to common problems. He said he hopes to discuss the impact on PPS of the tax diversion and eliminate it over time.
Walker said he would like to see quarterly meetings between the city and the district leadership to solve community issues such as safety for young students.
Community relations
Pittsburgh’s LGBTQ+ community is among those facing increasing hardships under the second Trump administration.
In January, President Donald Trump issued an executive order that threatens to pull federal funding from hospitals, medical schools and other institutions that provide medically necessary gender-affirming care for gender dysphoria to people under age 19. Some large health systems around the country — including UPMC — began turning away young trans and nonbinary patients seeking this kind of care. Advocacy groups including TransYOUniting on the North Side and the Pennsylvania Youth Congress organized protests in recent months outside UPMC’s Downtown headquarters.
Gainey attended protests and told Public Source his administration is exploring legal avenues to force UPMC to provide care. O’Connor didn’t attend the rallies and was criticized by some advocates for being quiet on the issue.
Dena Stanley, the executive director of TransYOUniting, congratulated O’Connor at his victory party Tuesday and is in talks with his transition team to “have a sit-down conversation” later this year. Urging the administration to work to restore access to gender-affirming care will be at the top of her priority list during that meeting.
“They are taking away health care for children,” she said. “So hopefully the administration understands that, and they will come to the table and really help us combat what’s happening.” She noted that O’Connor has shown support for the city’s LGBTQ+ community in the past and attends Pittsburgh Pride events each year.
Pittsburgh’s Black community had never before had one of its number in the mayor’s chair until Gainey’s win. Some of his backers have said they fear their community will suffer from a lack of attention after Gainey’s exit.
Miracle Jones, an activist with progressive group 1Hood Power who backed Gainey in the primary, said O’Connor has yet to win her trust after a spring campaign she said was marred by “antiblackness” on the part of some O’Connor allies.
“He can understand that how he got elected was through antiblackness and anti-Black women, he can say that’s not how he’s going to govern, that Black people will have a place to live and stay within the City of Pittsburgh,” Jones said.
O’Connor said in a statement emailed to Public Source that he spent time listening to community members throughout his campaign and he is confident he is “united” with residents on his goals.
“I will be a mayor for every Pittsburgher in every neighborhood and will work every day to fulfill my commitments to our city and its residents,” O’Connor said.
Khari Mosley, an East End city councilor who backed Gainey and represents one of two majority-Black districts, said conversations with O’Connor have left him “comforted” that his priorities seem to be shared by the incoming mayor.
“There’s definitely a grief in the African American community being that Pittsburgh was one of the last major cities to see African-American ascent to the mayoralty,” Mosley said. “There is work that needs to be done in that area, fences that need to be mended.
“I think the incoming administration understands that and understands that many of [Gainey’s] priorities are priorities that the African-American community thinks are very important and it’s going to be important for the new administration to have an agenda that responds to that.”
Charlie Wolfson, Maddy Franklin, Lajja Mistry, Eric Jankiewicz and Venuri Siriwardane contributed.
This article first appeared on Pittsburgh’s Public Source and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.