Taxpayer-Financed Campaigning and the State Ethics Commission

Once again, as he has done on a number of previous occasions, Pittsburgh's interim mayor, Luke "Flip Flop" Ravenstahl, is using our tax dollars for his own political campaiging. As discussed over in the Post-Gazette's Early Returns blog, city mailboxes are again being carpet-bombed with another round of 311 telephone response line advertisements, all prominently featuring the interim mayor's name and a simply enormous photograph of his smiling face. Meanwhile, as described over at 2 Political Junkies, the Ravenstahl campaign recently unveiled its website, which prominently features the now ubiquitous hands-on-hips image of Master Ravenstahl which appears on the garbage collection schedule sent to every last household in the city, as well on a number of billboards around town.

It's disgusting. It's an in-your-face use of public funds to advance a private political campaign. It goes far beyond the normal benefits of incumbency. But what's a little guy (or gal) like you or me going to do about it? Our city has no means for a regular citizen to address issues such as this one. Our Ethics Board hasn't met for years, and the Ravenstahl administration is seemingly doing everything in its power to ensure that it won't form a quorum prior to the May 15th Democratic primary.

But, as citizens of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, perhaps we have other ways of dealing with this unethical behavior. Even though there is no local Ethics Board for us to work with, we do have the option of filing complaints with the State Ethics Commission. The necessary information can be found on their website, and the form required to file a complaint can be downloaded right here. In fact, should you feel so angry as to file a complaint yourself, allow me to help you fill in the form. You can just copy the text right out of The People's Republic and paste it directly into the PDF complaint form from the state.

1. Person you are complaining about:

Name:
Luke Ravenstahl

Address:
City-County Building
Fifth Floor
414 Grant Street
Pittsburgh, PA 15219

Position or Title::
Mayor, City of Pittsburgh

Work Phone Number: (no spaces allowed)
4122552626

Home Phone Number:
I think we can leave this one blank

2. Explain in detail why you believe he may have violated the Ethics Act. Note that the PDF form from the state accepts only a limited number of characters, and that my own explanation won't fit on the form all in one go. You will need to paste the first paragraph onto the form separately, and then paste the rest onto a separate piece of paper to be sent to the Ethics Commission. Note also that the links I've included below won't transfer onto the paper form, but that's fine. The links are more for your use than theirs. And feel free to edit and alter the text as you see fit to reflect your own style and degree of outrage:

As a candidate for election as the Mayor of Pittsburgh, Mr. Ravenstahl has repeatedly used taxpayer-funded materials to advance his political campaign. In late October 2006, the City of Pittsburgh launched a new 311 telephone system. Simply by dialing 311, city residents could report problems with and request information about city-provided services. As part of the campaign to advertise this service to its residents, the City of Pittsburgh began mailing large postcards to most, if not all households within the city limits. Each of these postcards contained a large color picture of Mayor Ravenstahl, and referred to this new telephone number as "Mayor Luke Ravenstahl's Response Line". A copy of this postcard also appeared in every copy of the city's refuse collection schedule, which was sent to city households in January and February of 2007.

While this advertising campaign may have constituted a sensible use of city funds when the 311 telephone number was first introduced, it's continuation raises serious ethical concerns. The 311 service has now been active for nearly five full months, and most city residents have already been informed about it in several previous mailings. The city's Democratic primary election, on the other hand, is just two months away. Yet in just the past few days, even more of these 311 announcement mailings have arrived in the mailboxes of city residents. The continued use of these postcards, published and mailed at taxpayer expense, increasingly appears to be more motivated by the desire to influence voters than to inform city residents.

In addition these postcards, this past week brought another example of Mr. Ravenstahl's use of publicly-funded materials in his mayoral campaign. At the moment, Mayor Ravenstahl's campaign website prominently features a large color photograph of him standing with his hands on his hips. This exact same image, however, has been used on countless billboards, city-funded mailings, and on a section of the city's official website. It seems likely that this photograph was taken at taxpayer expense, and it has also appeared on taxpayer-funded mailings, such as a December 2006 mailing about garbage collection and the refuse collection calendar described above.

The use of this photograph, and of numerous other images on the Ravenstahl campaign website, poses significant ethical questions. At least some of these images appear to be official photographs which have been paid for by the public, and thus should not be used for political campaigns. Other images have been used on official city government documents or on the City of Pittsburgh's website, and are thus also inappropriate for use in the mayor's campaign. These actions seem more than worthy of investigation by the Pennsylvania State Ethics Commission.

3. Attach or make references to any documents, materials, minutes, etc. which support your allegations. I have a PDF copy of the garbage collection schedule from the city website, along with JPEG images of the Ravenstahl campaign website. It would be nice to have some scanned images of the 311 Response Line postcard. If anyone has one, please email it to me. If you want copies of the files I have, shoot me an email and I'll send them along to you.

Here's where things get a bit difficult, but if you as outraged as I am, it shouldn't be all that much trouble for you to go through. You will need to fill in your name, address, and telephone numbers. Then you will need to print everything out, take it all to a notary, and sign your complaint form in their presence. Then you will need to mail it to:

State Ethics Commission
309 Finance Building
P.O. Box 11470
Harrisburg, PA 17108-1470

Yes, the notary thing is a bit of a pain in the ass. But if that's the price we have to pay for demanding quality governance, so be it. It's worth it to me. I hope that it's worth it to you, too.