My Afternoon With Doug Shields

A couple weeks ago, URA Executive Director Pat Ford resigned in an e-mail to Mayor Luke Ravenstal's Chief-of-Staff Yarone Zober. In this e-mail, he accused the Ravenstahl administration of a "culture of corruption" and political retaliation.

Ford's lawyer Lawrence Fischer elaborated (though without specifics):

[P]olitical contributions to the mayor seem to be rewarded in the awards of contracts.

Ouch, resignations! Uh-oh, retailiations! Oooo, a whiff of corruption!

We all know what happened next:

Pittsburgh's Urban Redevelopment Authority settled today with Pat Ford, its former executive director, by agreeing to pay him approximately $90,000 in salary plus benefits to close out his employment contract nearly four months early, forego a potential lawsuit and end what had become a bitter public standoff.

And Ford's replacement? Take a look:

"We like people who get things done, and Rob Stephany is one of those people," said URA Board Chairman Yarone Zober. "He's a man of vision, a man of integrity."

Wow - Yarone gets around, huh? I had no idea. In any event, today a friend of ours wasn't happy:

Pittsburgh Council President Doug Shields formally asked the U.S. Attorney and the state Attorney General to investigate city development affairs today, in the wake of yesterday's settlement between the Urban Redevelopment Authority and its former executive director, Pat Ford, who has broadly alleged deception, corruption and retaliation by Mayor Luke Ravenstahl's administration.

The Trib had more details about the deal:

The Urban Redevelopment Authority agreed Thursday to pay former executive director Pat Ford about $100,900 in salary and benefits to go away quietly.

The city authority's five-member board of directors unanimously voted to give Ford his $117,875 a year salary and about $800 a month in health benefits through June 30, 2009, a deal that runs six months longer than Ford's request in his resignation letter.

In exchange, Ford would be legally bound by a "non-disparagement" agreement that prohibits him from publicly criticizing the URA or the city -- a theme of his Aug. 27 resignation letter in which he claimed the city's administration had "a culture of deception and corruption."

I got a few minutes this afternoon with Council President Shields. Needless to say he had a few things on his mind.

"Enough is enough," he said criticizing Ravenstahl for saying that the settlement was "protecting the public" while not actually saying what the mayor was protecting the public from. Shields guessed that the mayor's office "felt panicked" by Ford's resignation letter and questioned Ravenstahl's description of a "settlement of potential claims." What claims? he asked. Ravenstahl claimed that Ford's letter was a lie. If that's the case, then why the settlement? Shields asked rhetorically.

I devil advocated and asked about the eventual Ravenstahl counter: that it's all a political attack from someone running for mayor and that we should all see the attack through that filter. Shields reiterated he's not running for mayor and, in fact, is reluctant to even think about it. "There's only one guy running for mayor," he said so maybe the public should view his response through the filter that he's running for mayor.

"I think they just paid someone to go away," he said and that there are enough questions that someone has to investigate. While the City Council isn't an investigatory body, it can trigger an inquiry elsewhere, he said. Thus the letters to the State Attorney General Tom Corbett and the local US Attorney, Mary Beth Buchanan. Shields has every intention, he said, to meet with both Attorney General Corbett and USAttorney Buchanan. If the inquiries find nothing bad, he said, then fine. But then the questions will have been asked and answered. He said this is substantive.

"It's not about an SUV with BBQ sauce with charcoal dust" on it, he said.

He added that the people have a right to know what the mayor meant by "potential claims" when he says that the settlement was done to protect the city from those claims.

During our conversation, Shields got a phone call from his mother who suggested he quit his job and get a Starbucks franchise. He also said that if the mayor somehow got him the same deal as Ford (pay for the rest of the year plus an extra five months) he'd be more than happy to quit.

"Then the mayor can protect the public from me," he snarked.

UPDATE: Embarrassing (for me) spelling error has been fixed. Thanks, Gary.