PITTSBURGH — 11 Investigates sat down for an exclusive one-on-one interview with city controller Rachael Heisler, just days after she was caught in the middle of a controversy over delayed payments and broken city garbage trucks.
Heisler told Chief Investigator Rick Earle that she’s being made the scapegoat in all of this.
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She said she’s just doing her job and safeguarding the taxpayers’ money.
Heisler said the delay in payments had nothing to do with the trash not getting picked up in some neighborhoods, like Oakland, last week.
“The reason the fleet is causing issues with environmental services is because the fleet is old. It has nothing to do with this discrepancy in payment,” Controller Heisler told Earle.
Pittsburgh City Controller Heisler is pushing back against the administration’s claims that unpaid invoices led to delays in repairing garbage trucks and, ultimately, trash not being picked up in neighborhoods last week.
Heisler said that was unfair because she didn’t get any invoices from the repair company, TransDev, until April, four months into the year.
“We didn’t get any invoices from TransDev until April of this year, so when they say we’ve been sitting on these contracts for six months, that’s false,” Heisler said.
Heisler said she paid the actual costs for repair services, even though she says the bills don’t contain detailed information about the work being done, but she’s refusing to pay the higher fixed costs.
TransDev returns 80% of the overpayments to the city, but keeps 20%. Heisler said she has a problem with that arrangement.
“Every other city contract we pay for work done, and paying above and beyond that seems unreasonable to me given how vague the contract language is to me,” Heisler said.
Heisler said the garage has also had staffing issues dating back to earlier this year, when she received a call that the garage was short-staffed.
She told Earle she has requested payroll data to make sure that’s not the underlying issue.
While the contract indicates TransDev must pay a living wage, Heisler said she doesn’t know what that means.
“Are you paying these people enough? I can’t answer that question. We’ve requested it multiple times,” Heisler said.
The controller believes the city should consider using $10 million allocated to the Urban Redevelopment Authority to buy new vehicles.
Heisler said that money is currently sitting in an account because the URA, according to Heisler, hasn’t been able to spend it all.
“Public safety and public works, keeping people safe and keeping things clean, and if we can’t do either of those things, shame on us, but we need vehicles to do both of those things, and the fleet is old.”
The administration disagrees with some of Heisler’s contentions.
The deputy mayor has said the contract calls for the city to pay that fixed monthly payment.
He said that payment also covers any overhead costs incurred by TransDev while working at the city maintenance garage.
Heisler told Earle she’s waiting for an opinion from the law department.
If she’s required to pay that higher price, she said she’ll go to the city council and ask them to amend the contract.
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