Pittsburgh city council members say they were unaware of police chief's deal with mayor about referee job

By Megan Guza / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Pittsburgh City Council members on Tuesday excoriated members of Mayor Ed Gainey’s administration for their complicity in what members believe was a closed-door deal made last year between the mayor and outgoing police Chief Larry Scirotto regarding a side gig as a college basketball official.

One member floated the idea of a formal investigation and another asserted they’d been duped by the chief and he’d been “hired under false pretenses.”

Numerous city officials — Deputy Mayor Jake Pawlak, Chief Operating Officer Lisa Frank, Public Safety Director Lee Schmidt — told council members they were aware of the deal between the mayor and the chief, who was sworn in in June 2023, to revisit at a later date the possibility of Chief Scirotto returning to officiating. 

Mr. Pawlak said that deal was verbalized, not written, prior to Chef Scirotto’s nomination last year.

None of the city officials could articulate why council members were not made aware of it at the time, particularly since they were under the impression the chief had permanently left officiating upon being named head of the police bureau.

“Did he lie?” Councilman Anthony Coghill asked Mr. Pawlak.

“I can’t answer that question for him,” Mr. Pawlak said.

The informational meeting was scheduled early last week after a surprise announcement from Chief Scirotto that he would return to officiating NCAA games on a part-time basis while holding down the helm of the police bureau.

The original intention was to talk through with the chief how he planned to manage both jobs as well as how the agreement with the mayor came to be. On Friday, however, the chief suddenly announced he would retire effective Nov. 1. Council members kept the meeting on the schedule to further probe that agreement and ask questions of soon-to-be Acting Chief Christopher Ragland.

Chief Scirotto did not attend despite an invitation from council. In a memo sent to city officials Oct. 25, the chief gave notice that he would be out of the office through Nov. 1 — that is, beginning the day he announced his retirement through his retirement date. Chief Ragland was in attendance.

The city previously canceled a planned press conference with the chief days after his officiating announcement.

Mr. Gainey and Chief Scirotto have both said it was always the plan for the two to “revisit” the chief’s officiating after his first year at the helm. Mr. Pawlak, Mr. Schmidt and Ms. Frank all indicated to council that they, too, were aware of the agreement.

“Yet nobody informed council,” Mr. Coghill said.

“Yeah,” Mr. Pawlak responded after a brief but pregnant pause. “That’s correct.”

He said no deal or agreement between the chief and mayor was put into writing; rather, he said, it was a conversation prior to Chief Scirotto’s nomination by Mr. Gainey.

Mr. Coghill called it unconscionable.

That was among the two points that council members hammered in particular: Why was council kept in the dark about the agreement, and why did they find out from media reports that the chief had returned to officiating?

Mr. Pawlak said no conscious decision was made to keep council in the dark, and the intent had been to publicly announce Chief Scirotto’s officiating the week after the news broke on Oct. 17. He insinuated it was the fault of the media for reporting on the issue ahead of that time.

“I don’t have a lot of confidence that was the plan,” Councilman Bob Charland told the deputy mayor; Mr. Pawlak told him that was his prerogative.

The councilman, who represents much of the city’s South Side and hilltop neighborhoods, asked if there were “any remnants” of the planning process “that prove that is something you were actually doing.” Ms. Frank said likely not.

She said she might have had something on her calendar and, “if you looked in my datebook, you’d see a big circle around it.”

Mr. Charland asked to see the datebook.

“We’ve got a lot of work to do to build trust here,” he said as Ms. Frank briefly rummaged through her bag. She ultimately told the councilman, “I don’t think I have anything to show you that’s going to prove what you’re hoping to prove.”

The chief worked for the bureau for 23 years until his first retirement in 2018. His pension at that point would have been about $50,000 based on formula in place, Mr. Coghill said — 50% of the salary at which he retired. His one year as chief means a pension bump to roughly $92,500.

“Chief Scirotto sat at this table and told me and told council that he would not referee games,” he said. “Are you willing to take legal action to secure and protect our pension? Because we hired him under false pretenses as far as I’m concerned.”

He said he understood that those were the guidelines dictating the chief’s pension but pointed to the fact the city’s pension fund would be paying Chief Scirotto $92,500 annually “for the rest of his life for 18 months of service.” Had council known of the agreement from the start, Mr. Coghill said, it’s possible they’d not have approved the chief’s nomination.

Councilwoman Theresa Kail-Smith asked the members of the administration if they’d be willing to answer these questions under oath if council elected to hold a formal investigation. Mr. Pawlak, Ms. Frank, Chief Ragland and Mr. Schmidt said yes.

‘It was a surprise’

Chief Ragland, for his part, answered questions as best he could.

“Right now, moving forward, I want to reiterate that the mission is always the mission,” he said. “I think the goals that [Chief Scirotto] had set forth are very similar to the goals that I have and want to continue moving forward. Violent crimes — bring that down. Recruitment, retention, officer wellness — those are all of the things that I believe.”

He said he’d reached out to the command staff to take their temperatures following the chief’s retirement announcement. He said most responded, and he knows that he needs to build relationships with those that didn’t.

After the meeting, Chief Ragland said he didn’t know ahead of time that Chief Scirotto would retire amid the controversy.

“It was a surprise to me just as much as it was to anyone else,” he said. “I didn’t expect chief to leave.”

The immediate focus, he said, is on the upcoming general election — keeping order and curbing violence while allowing the First Amendment to play out as it should.

Chief Ragland joined the bureau in 1994 as a patrolman in Squirrel Hill, and he was promoted to lieutenant in Zone 1 — the city’s North Side — in 2001. When he was promoted to commander in 2015, he was assigned to Zone 6 in the West End which, at the time, also housed the bureau’s Special Deployment Division.

He was key in establishing the public safety substation in the Northview Heights neighborhood on the North Side, which included getting the buy-in from other officers and from the community members.

He said that when he was tapped as commander for Zone 1, it was a “career rebirth” of sorts.

“I met a lot of tremendously good partners who sat me down and kind of say, ‘Hey, what are your aspirational goals,’” he said. “I actually sat there and laughed because no one had ever asked me that before in the 24 years [of] my being a police officer.”