Gainey aide defends administration over controversial contractor payments

The top spokeswoman for Pittsburgh’s mayor acknowledged Tuesday that city employees broke in-house rules by using a municipal credit card to charge thousands of dollars in payments to a former worker after he became a private contractor, but she rejected suggestions that the hiring itself violated the state’s ethics law.

Maria Montano defended Mayor Ed Gainey’s administration in the wake of recent comments by Pittsburgh’s controller, who has launched an investigation into payments to Mario Ashkar.

“The city did not violate the state ethics act,” Montano told reporters during a news conference at city hall.

Controller Rachael Heisler, however, is seeking a second opinion.

On Tuesday, the controller told TribLive that her office plans to forward the matter to the State Ethics Commission in Harrisburg.

“Our office is continuing to investigate,” Heisler, the city’s independent fiscal watchdog, told TribLive after the news conference. “It’s unclear to me how this person became a contractor for CitiParks … and I don’t know the circumstances around their separation from city employment.”

“I would hope that documentation can be provided,” Heisler added. “There are more questions than answers.”

Technical violation

Ashkar, 36, of the North Side, worked from June 2022 to November 2022 as a special events coordinator in the city’s Department of Public Safety, Montano said.

He earned a base salary of $48,549 in 2022, according to city payroll records. Ashkar was listed as a special events coordinator.

After leaving the city, Ashkar became “a contract employee,” providing support for farmers’ market events, Montano said.

The city paid Ashkar $18,460 while he was a contractor, sending the money to his PayPal account and billing it to city credit cards, known as procurement cards, or p-cards.

Montano acknowledged that paying Ashkar that way was “technically” a violation.

The payments to Ashkar appear to be for professional services, which is “explicitly forbidden” in the city’s p-card policy, Heisler has said. It wasn’t clear what specific services Ashkar provided.

Procurement cards are meant to be used for minor expenses such as food purchases, subscriptions and conference registrations. The city’s policy lists professional services as expenses that never should be charged on one of the cards.

During the news conference, Montano called the payments to Ashkar, which have been made since August 2023, “an isolated incident.”

Montano said city employees involved in making the payments to Ashkar will face “standard” disciplinary actions. She declined to elaborate, however, and did not identify the employees or say how many were involved in paying Ashkar.

Montano said the city Office of Management and Budget is “working to make sure this doesn’t happen” again.

It remained unclear Tuesday if all the payments to Ashkar were made using one or more procurement cards, who authorized them or whether multiple departments were involved.

Pennsylvania Ethics Act

Heisler said she was investigating whether the timing of certain payments violated the Pennsylvania Ethics Act, which forbids former municipal employees from working as contractors for their former public employers for at least a year.

Montano claimed that the payments from the city’s parks department don’t meet the requirements for an ethics investigation by the state.

The state ethics commission couldn’t confirm Tuesday if a complaint had been filed about Ashkar.

The Harrisburg-based agency fields an average of 250 to 400 complaints a year, said Mary W. Fox, its executive director. It can take up to 60 days to conduct a preliminary inquiry on a complaint and up to 360 days to complete a full investigation.

The commission can issue advice or orders. It can also hand down civil penalties, including restitution, Fox said.

The city’s Ethics Hearing Board also could not confirm whether an inquiry into the Ashkar payments is taking place, executive director Leanne Davis told TribLive on Tuesday.

Heisler has not accused Ashkar of any wrongdoing, and it was not clear what role if any he played in payments made to him by the city beyond being a recipient.

Murky circumstances

Heisler said she became aware of the payments after Pittsburgh police charged Ashkar in connection with several ethnic intimidation incidents.

Montano confirmed Tuesday the city employee and the ethnic-intimidation suspect were the same person.

Pittsburgh police charged Ashkar in connection with several incidents in April in Pittsburgh’s Mexican War Streets neighborhood. Police accused Ashkar of snatching an Israeli flag from a home and painting “For Blood and Soil” — a nationalist slogan adopted in Nazi Germany — on a sidewalk.

He is charged with ethnic intimidation, criminal mischief, theft by unlawful taking and disorderly conduct. Ashkar faces a preliminary hearing June 17.

Montano declined to comment on the circumstances surrounding Ashkar’s separation from the city.

“All I know is he is no longer an employee,” Montano said.

But on Monday, Emily Bourne, a Pittsburgh public safety spokeswoman, said Ashkar had been terminated.

$1,200 payment

On Wednesday morning, City Council is set to address a pending $1,200 payment to Ashkar, a staffer for Councilwoman Erika Strassburger told TribLive. Strassburger chairs council’s finance and law committee.

The payment is part of the governing body’s weekly review of expenditures on p-cards.

That $1,200 expenditure by the Department of Parks and Recreation is for 40 hours of work by Ashkar under the listing “farmers market coordination efforts,” Heisler told TribLive.

Heisler has urged council members to not approve the expense, according to an email sent Friday and obtained by TribLive.

Councilman Bob Charland, D-South Side, said he would support pausing the payment while Heisler’s office investigates further.