The City of Pittsburgh saw increasing payroll costs last year, with the biggest rises coming outside of regular salaries, in back pay, negotiated longevity pay for first responders and other benefit payments.
The city gave its employees almost 40% more in what it termed “bonus” pay according to data provided to PublicSource in response to a public records request, though much of the funds were not bonuses in the traditional sense. The increase amounted to $3.6 million, coming as the city’s belt tightens ahead of what the mayor’s advisors predict to be lean years ahead.
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PublicSource’s annual review of city payroll data from 2024 found 21 employees received extra pay of more than $30,000, including two police officers receiving more than $100,000 and a City Council staffer who received $75,000 beyond salary and overtime. That’s a major change from 2023, when zero employees received $30,000 or more.
The city provided PublicSource with pay data categorized as base pay, overtime and bonus pay, with no further detail.
Patrick Cornell, the city’s chief financial officer, said the “bonus” category includes longevity pay for retiring police officers, paramedics and firefighters, buybacks of accrued personal time, and settlements from litigation or grievances.
He said the increase from 2023 to 2024 was likely out of the city’s hands.
“One of the things we cannot control is when someone retires,” Cornell said. “As people get older they have balances that can result in pretty large payouts when they leave the city. The year in which it hits the books is the year in which it hits the books.”
Police received more extra pay than any other unit at $5.4 million, an average of about $5,600 per employee and about 27% more than in 2023. Emergency Medical Services saw an increase of almost 84% from 2023 to 2024, from $691,000 to $1.3 million. The Bureau of Fire had a $962,000 increase, or 36%.
Of the top 50 extra payment recipients in the city last year, 33 were police, fire or EMS workers who left their jobs last year.
The top two extra payouts went to police officers who are still on the force. Sergeant Colby Neidig and Officer Neyib Velazquez received $176,000 and $133,000, respectively. The payments largely represent back pay for the pair: They were each terminated by the city for their roles in the 2021 arrest which preceded the death of Jim Rogers, and were later reinstated after arbitration.
Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 1 President Robert Swartzwelder said those payments represent money “owed” to the officers because the city’s “case was crap.” A judge ruled in September to overturn the reinstatement of another officer, Keith Edmonds. Swartzwelder said that decision is pending further appeal.
Swartzwelder added that the city had erred in classifying any payments to police as bonuses, and that many of them were likely longevity payments given to officers upon retirement, which are set in the union’s collective bargaining agreement.
The third largest payout was more than $75,000 to Daniel Wood, the chief of staff to City Council President R. Daniel Lavelle. Neither Wood nor Lavelle responded to requests for comment. Multiple city staffers who work with council said it’s commonplace for councilors to redistribute leftover personnel funds to aides when staff vacancies push extra work onto them and leave money that was earmarked for salaries unspent.
Top earners
All of the city’s top 10 base salaries were in public safety, including five police leaders. Former Police Chief Larry Scirotto was substantially ahead of the rest at $185,400, while the next nine fell between $159,000 and $138,000.
Scirotto didn’t collect his full salary last year, though, because he resigned in November following news that he had resumed refereeing college basketball during his off hours, sometimes hundreds of miles from the city.
Nine of the top 10 salaries belonged to men.
Mayor Ed Gainey earned $132,053. The nine City Council members each earned $86,970.
Base salaries little changed
The median base salary — reflecting pay rates set by legislation each year during the budget process — was little changed from 2023. In 2024 the median salary for city full-time workers was about $75,000, up less than 1% from the year prior.
As in past years, a lack of racial or gender diversity in the public safety bureaus has led to large disparities in median salaries between ethnicities and genders.
The median salary for white employees was $77,300, far above that earned by Black ($55,000), Hispanic or Latino ($70,600), Asian ($74,800) or multiracial ($58,300) employees.
Within the public safety bureaus, there is nearly complete pay parity among ethnic groups. But across the four bureaus, 83% of 1,935 employees were white last year, 10% were Black and no other group comprised more than one percent.
Across the broader city government, diversity more closely matches that of the city’s population, though white residents are slightly over-represented.
Charlie Wolfson is PublicSource’s local government reporter. He can be reached at charlie@publicsource.org.
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