The Bill Comes Due

Pittsburgh closed 2025 with an $8.6 million operating deficit on a $693 million operating budget—modest in percentage terms, but the trajectory was alarming. The city had already drawn an estimated $44 million from its reserves. Federal ARPA relief funds that had cushioned budgets since 2021 were running out. Premium pay across all departments hit $59 million—$21 million over budget—with police, fire, and EMS each blowing past their overtime allocations. Controller Rachael Heisler called the city’s spending trajectory “unsustainable” and its finances “precarious.”

Pittsburgh has been here before. The city spent 14 years under Act 47 state financial oversight, emerging from distressed status only in 2018. For most of the decade that followed, council ran on consensus. Across 108,394 votes spanning 25 years, members said “no” less than 2% of the time—though much of that unanimity reflects routine business like approving minutes and accepting reports, where dissent is near zero. On ordinances—the legislation that actually changes law—the dissent rate is 7.3%, and on mayoral appointments it is 8.8%. Still, the trend was clear: public fights fell steadily from 2010’s post-Act 47 tensions to a historic low of 0.79% in 2023. Committee chairs workshopped ordinances and counted votes in private. Public meetings were ratification ceremonies.

The fiscal crisis ended that. Council identified a $20–30 million gap in Mayor Ed Gainey’s proposed 2026 budget—a figure Gainey’s administration disputed, maintaining the submitted budget was balanced. In December 2025, council approved a 20% property tax increase on a 6–2 vote—the first hike in over a decade, expected to raise roughly $28 million a year. Councilor Warwick had initially proposed 30%. Kail-Smith, in one of her final votes before leaving council in January, said the city was already asking too much: “You can’t get blood from a rock.” Councilor Charland, who voted for the hike, said bluntly: “I don’t believe we were handed an honest budget.” Gainey, acknowledging council had a veto-proof majority, let the budget take effect without his signature. By January 2026, he was out of office entirely—Corey O’Connor, a former council member whose own voting record appears in our data, defeated Gainey in the May primary and was sworn in as mayor.

Ninety-seven Pittsburgh residents signed up to testify on the city’s inclusionary zoning expansion—Mayor Gainey’s proposal to extend affordable-unit mandates from four pilot neighborhoods to all of Pittsburgh. Councilor Bob Charland introduced a competing, scaled-back version. The principle was not new. From 2018 through 2022, council had passed every inclusionary housing measure without a single dissenting vote, six times running. The policy was settled law.

The hearing made clear it was no longer settled. A Lawrenceville resident testified that longtime neighbors had been priced out as rents climbed sharply—citywide, median rents rose roughly 26% over the same period, but individual blocks in gentrifying neighborhoods saw far steeper increases. Steve Mazza of Carpenters Local 432 warned that the mandates would kill construction jobs; building trades unions later withdrew endorsements from Gainey over the issue. Residents from Manchester and the Hill District described watching their blocks empty out, arguing that affordable housing requirements without enforcement amounted to nothing.

Charland’s version failed 3–6 in December 2024. A revised version passed 6–3 the following week. By March 2025, the margin had tightened to 5–4, and it stayed there—through the October vote that bundled inclusionary zoning with the elimination of parking minimums, through December, through the new year. The same policy that passed without opposition six times now survives by a single vote every time it comes up.

Behind the deficit lies a number that has frustrated three successive mayors: $4.3 billion in tax-exempt property as of the 2021 joint controller report. UPMC, Highmark, the University of Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon, Duquesne—the institutions that anchor Pittsburgh’s post-steel economy pay no property tax on the land they occupy. They pay payroll taxes, purchase services, and fund voluntary payments in lieu of taxes—but the largest employer in the region and the largest landholders in Oakland, the neighborhood where Pitt and Carnegie Mellon sit side by side, contribute nothing to the property tax base that funds police, fire, and roads. Councilman Coghill, who represents Brookline and Carrick and has long advocated for voluntary payment-in-lieu-of-tax agreements with nonprofits, told a committee hearing that the math was simple: the city provides full municipal services to campuses that generate zero property tax revenue.

The chart below flips the consensus story on its head: instead of measuring how much members agree, it shows where they disagree. The alliances are fluid. On overall voting, Lavelle, Strassburger, and Wilson agree on more than 99% of everything—but Wilson broke ranks to vote against the tax hike alongside Kail-Smith, and Strassburger authored the amendments that weakened mandatory inclusionary zoning. Gross votes with Warwick, Lavelle, and Mosley on housing mandates, then sides with Kail-Smith on fiscal restraint. No stable two-bloc split explains Pittsburgh’s council. Instead, the same nine members reshuffle depending on whether the question is taxes, housing, or zoning. The widest gap—Kail-Smith and Warwick at 3.9%—may sound trivial across 4,000 shared votes, but it concentrates on exactly those issues.

The council’s recent split votes read like a referendum on Pittsburgh’s identity. The 20% property tax increase passed 6–2 on December 21, 2025. Reducing minimum lot sizes to encourage infill housing squeaked through despite warnings about neighborhood character. The inclusionary housing overlay failed 3–6 in its first vote, passed 6–3 a week later, and has survived on 5–4 margins ever since. Every close vote lands on the same fault line: who bears the cost of a city that spent two decades deferring hard choices.