Exclusive: Pitt discloses additional $30 million in expenses for fiscal year 2021

Pitt has released an updated version of its annual, state-mandated financial disclosures for fiscal year 2021, which now include an additional $30 million in expenses, following what University officials described as a “data processing error.”

The University’s updated disclosures include 358 new transactions, for everything from $1,085 from the provost’s office to Apple, to $2,344,352 from the Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences to Fisher Scientific Company, LLC.

The revised disclosures also include higher dollar amounts for 239 transactions, such as a spike of about 20%, or $2 million, in the amount paid by Business and Auxiliary Services to the Wyndham hotel on Lytton Avenue. The disclosures contain lower dollar amounts for 14 transactions, such as a roughly $5,800 drop in a School of Medicine payment now totaling about $4,200 to Aqua Filter Fresh, Inc.

Total reported expenses, which include all purchases for goods or services worth $1,000 or more, jumped about 8% from about $363 million to more than $393 million.

Pitt spokesperson David Seldin said due to the error, a number of items relating to COVID-19 mitigation efforts were “unintentionally omitted” from the original disclosures. He added that the process to compile the disclosures is “being reviewed to prevent future errors.”

The Pitt News first reached out to the University in late January, after the original disclosures contained no expenses for COVID-19 test provider Quest Diagnostics. Pitt said in a statement that it had omitted $1.3 million in expenses with the company. Officials said at the time that “a certain code that would have identified” the Quest expense was “inadvertently omitted when the report was run.”

Community members can search the updated disclosures through Ledger, a tool custom-built by The Pitt News.