Pittsburgh created an infrastructure commission after the collapse of the Fern Hollow Bridge in 2022, but no one has been appointed to it. Although it appeared that city leaders would finally begin this week to fill the board, members of City Council on Tuesday declined to take up Mayor Ed Gainey’s nominations.
“Council needs time to absorb some of the [nominees],” Council President Theresa Kail-Smith said during council’s meeting. Kail-Smith declined to specify which appointees gave her pause, but she said she had heard concerns from several council members about the list Gainey submitted to council late last week.
City Council created the Commission on Infrastructure Asset Reporting and Investment in March 2022 as the city looked for ways to prevent another incident like the Fern Hollow Bridge collapse earlier that year. Under terms of the bill that established the commission, it would comprise 21 members and would include representation from council, the mayor’s office, several city departments and some trade union and diversity groups. Council must approve appointees to the council.
Gainey last week submitted a dozen names for the commission, including representatives of several labor groups, such as the Laborers Union — some of whose members work for the city and whose leadership has been closely tied to Gainey in the past — and the International Union of Operating Engineers.
Other nominees included city employees from the city departments of Mobility and Infrastructure, and Management and Budget.
Lisa Frank, the city’s chief operating and administrative officer, was selected by the mayor to represent his office. If Gainey’s nominations are approved, Councilor Erika Strassburger would represent council on the commission. Pittsburgh Fire Chief Darryl Jones would represent the Department of Public Safety.
The legislation that created the commission requires the city to appoint four members who advocate for diversity as part of the group’s priorities. It requires representation from the National Society of Black Engineers; the A. Philip Randolph Institute; the Southwestern Pennsylvania Engineering Outreach; and the African American Chamber of Commerce of Western Pennsylvania.
Gainey’s first round of nominees includes Doris Carson Williams, president and CEO of the African American Chamber of Commerce of Western Pennsylvania. Spots remain open for representatives from the other groups.
Though Gainey sent his nominations to council more than a year after the commission was first created, Kail-Smith said she wanted to give council members more time to suggest other appointees and ask questions about how Gainey's administration selected the first nominees.
“Some of my colleagues had some concerns and some suggestions,” Kail-Smith said about the list. “What we want to do is make sure we're doing our due diligence and getting the right people on the commission that are going to be able to move projects.”
Kail-Smith declined to specify which nominees spurred concerns from council members, but she stressed that “there wasn’t just one.”
Gainey’s nominations include Carrie Lewis DelRosso, a former state representative from Oakmont who ran for lieutenant governor as Doug Mastriano’s running mate in the 2022 Pennsylvania gubernatorial race. Although she is a Republican, DelRosso has been supported by some labor groups. DelRosso has become a lobbyist for the Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney law firm.
When asked about that nomination, Gainey's spokesperson Maria Montaño said DelRosso brings experience in pursuing state funding for local projects.
“We felt like this would be an opportunity for us to reach across the aisle, to have someone who can connect with Republicans in Harrisburg, to be able to say, 'Hey, like this is really important for our region,'” Montaño said.
City Councilor Barb Warwick, however, said DelRosso’s name stood out to her as a surprise. Citing DelRosso’s co-sponsorship in the state House of legislation to ban colleges from allowing transgender athletes to compete in sports that align with their gender identity, Warwick said she had questions about why the Gainey administration nominated her.
“I think we make choices as political leaders about who we’re going to be and what we’re going to say,” Warwick said. “The message that we want to present… [it] filters down into everything we do.”
That bill passed both chambers of the state legislature before former Gov. Tom Wolf vetoed it in 2022.
Warwick expressed relief that council members will have time to meet with the Gainey administration about its selections before moving forward.
Montaño — a trans woman herself — could not be reached for comment about DelRosso's anti-trans rhetoric in regard to the 2022 legislation.
What took so long?
Council pumping the brakes on moving the nominations forward prolongs an already long wait to empower the commission.
When the bill that created it was first introduced in early 2022, former Councilor Corey O’Connor said it was critical to help the city be more transparent with residents about the maintenance of its major infrastructure, such as bridges. Furthermore, O’Connor said the commission “will also bring experts to the table to provide guidance on our immediate infrastructure needs and prioritizing long-term strategic investment.”
Montaño described the commission as one of several solutions bandied about after the collapse of the Fern Hollow Bridge. Ultimately, she said, the administration “felt we needed to have a deeper understanding of the state of the city's own bridges … before empowering a commission to do work about how we are going to care for those bridges.”
In the 16 months since the commission was created, the city commissioned a study that depicted a city with urgent infrastructure maintenance needs intensified by a lack of structure to understate new problems as they arise. The city found 32 city-owned bridges were rated in poor condition. The Charles Anderson Memorial Bridge in Oakland closed shortly after the report was released due to safety concerns. The Swindell Bridge in the North Side closed last week for a beam repair, but a timeframe for the larger rehabilitation of the bridge has not been set.
Now that the city has its bridge asset-management program in place, Montaño said officials are better able “to inform our commission members about the state of the cities on bridges where they might be able to tap in to help us be more aggressive in pursuing funding.”
