Editorial: The city stinks and only you have the Febreze

It’s in vogue to have a certain level of cynicism about the government.

Never-ending fights about the size of the government prevent progress in Washington. Big money dominates political campaigns. The overall level of discourse seems to be declining.

There seems to be room to be cynical about local politics in Pittsburgh as well. A new scandal is emerging from city hall that calls into question the integrity of Mayor Luke Ravenstahl, his security detail and the police department.

Only last week, police Chief Nate Harper was forced to resign after an FBI investigation revealed that city contracts were awarded to a private security firm in which he maintained personal interests.

After marching out of the Police Bureau headquarters on the North Side Feb. 12 with boxes of documents, federal agents also discovered an unauthorized bank account with a local credit union that the mayor’s security detail could access through issued debit cards. Because the account isn’t one of the 15 authorized recipients of city funds, it remains unknown how these funds were used. While the mayor claims they were used for legitimate city businesses, as of Friday, access to the account has been denied because it is a “non-city account.”

Regardless of the exact nature of the circumstances that might emerge, the mere existence of the account is in violation of city rules. It isn’t hard to sympathize with City Controller and mayoral candidate Michael Lamb’s assessment: “This process has been subverted, purposefully, with intent, and the mayor needs to understand and explain … why he thinks that was OK.”

But before dismissing this saga as just another display of government ineptitude and another symptom of dysfunction and corruption, there is room for hope: The democratic primary takes place in less than three months.

And while the gears of national government lie hundreds of miles away, separated from the individual voter by special interest groups, pressure from corporations and financial institutions and millions of other voters, the political landscape within Pittsburgh is much clearer.

Because of the large democratic advantage within the city, the next mayor will be determined during these May 21 elections. And because the Pittsburgh mayoral race occurs in the off-off year of the election cycle, turnout is quite low. Ultimately, less than 70,000 voters typically decide the mayor.

With Ravenstahl facing two strong candidates, City Councilman Bill Peduto and Lamb, it is conceivable that only a couple thousand Democratic voters within the city will determine the election.

A couple thousand voters. That’s all.

At these numbers, the potential power of just a couple activists is magnified beyond what it might be during a national election. Moving past the murk of insider politics and backroom deals — an almost impossible task nationally — is just a question of moving a couple of votes.

Keep this in perspective as we move toward the election. History suggests that most college-aged voters who are eligible to vote in the primary will not.

If this pattern of administrative mismanagement repeats, you will not be able to blame unions, the illuminati, the environmental lobby, the industrialists, the rich or the powerful for continued misbehaving within city hall.

You will only have yourself to blame.