11 Investigates: $2M owed to City of Pittsburgh. Where’s the money?

pITTSBURGH — 11 Investigates discovered that the City of Pittsburgh is owed nearly $2 million in unpaid invoices dating back several years.

The city claims they sent the bills.

So, where is the money, and why haven’t the invoices been paid?

Chief Investigator Rick Earle uncovered all of this after filing a right to know request with the city and obtaining a spreadsheet of all of the unpaid invoices.

And Earle said this involves the same pot of money that landed a former Pittsburgh Police Chief in federal prison.

Earle sat down with Public Safety Director Lee Schmidt to talk about the money.

Earle: It shows invoices dating back to 2022. Why have those invoices not been collected? 

Schmidt: I think we had to look at the current collection process.

Schmidt acknowledged problems with hundreds of unpaid invoices by companies that hired Pittsburgh police officers for secondary employment. 

Some of the invoices are three years old.    

Earle: How did it get so bad? 

Schmidt: Again, I think it was a lot of the staff changes.

11 Investigates obtained the list of all 576 outstanding bills, totaling $1.8 million.

Of the bills, 460 are older than four months and more than 100 were due in 2022.

“I know $2 million is a significant amount of money, but we’re confident we’ll be able to recover a majority of that,” said Schmidt.

Schmidt blamed it on several factors, including the sale of the company that handled secondary employment to a new company in 2022. The transition, he said, caused some accounting issues.

And he said only one city employee has been responsible for collections.

“I’m disappointed that those problems haven’t been addressed,” City Controller Rachael Heisler said.

Three years ago, the controller’s office audited the Secondary Police Employment Trust Fund and found that the “internal controls for reviewing and collecting balances are insufficient.”

The report also indicated that the bureau should “devise a formal process for the review and collection of balances. 

“Folks need to be notified. Are they notified that they owe 90, 75, 100 thousand dollars to the police fund? My big concern is just making sure that we’re getting those accounts to current,” Heisler said.

Schmidt said he’s made some changes after former Chief Chris Ragland brought it to his attention.

Schmidt’s assistant public safety director is now overseeing all collections.

And he said they’ve already recouped a couple hundred thousand dollars.

He also said clerical errors, unfortunately, led to some companies being listed as delinquent.

“They show proof of payment, and then we confirmed with finance to make sure they did receive it and just didn’t get marked in the system as paid,” said Schmidt.

Secondary employment funds have come under scrutiny for more than a decade after Police Chief Nate Harper went to federal prison for using it as a personal slush fund.

And just last year, an officer facing criminal charges resigned after allegedly getting paid for details he never worked.

“None of us want to go back to the issues that occurred in the past around how secondary employment works,” Schimdt said. 

The current secondary employment contract is up in June. Schmidt said he’s looking for a company that, in addition to scheduling and tracking officers’ hours, will use geo-fencing to make sure officers are working and take over all collection duties.

“We want to make sure we’re being efficient and effective with taxpayer dollars,” Schmidt said.

In yet another effort to clean up the accounting mess, the city stopped accepting checks this month. They will now only take electronic payments online.

The city hopes to have an improved process for collecting money and tracking officers in place sometime this summer.

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