County Executive Rich Fitzgerald proposed his eighth budget and 2020 Comprehensive Plan Fiscal Plan to Allegheny County Council in their Tuesday meeting.

Fitzgerald presented a $959.8 million budget; a $27 million increase from the previous year. According to Fitzgerald the current budget is the 18th time in 19 years that the annual capital and operating budget balanced without any increase in the property tax millage rate.

After a week where climate change was discussed in Pittsburgh City Council chambers and by Gov. Tom Wolf, Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto announced the Steel City would become the second city in the U.S. to adopt the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals into its policymaking and planning for the future. 

This means committing to 17 goals including eliminating poverty, clean water, affordable and clean energy, and gender equality. 

In 2016 Pittsburgh City Council joined the ranks of fifteen other states and the District of Columbia by banning conversion therapy on minors. Months after the initial proposal, Allegheny County Council remains divided on following suit for a ban in the county as a whole. 

During an emotionally charged meeting in March Council President John DeFazio (D-Shaler) and County Councilman Paul Klein (D-Point Breeze) introduced legislation banning conversion therapy, meaning the practice of removing homosexuality on the belief that it’s a mental illness. 

Pittsburgh City Controller Michael Lamb released a performance audit of the city’s Department of Finance Tuesday afternoon. The audit found that the city’s public sales process is lacking in transparency and contains a process open to fraud. 

In an audit that examined the department’s property acquisition, disposition process, the role of the Urban Redevelopment Authority, and the Pittsburgh Land Bank, findings included that city-owned property is priced by the URA, however those prices aren’t publicly disclosed until later in the process. Furthermore no formal agreement exists between the authority and the city for the prices set for city properties.

Pittsburgh City Controller Michael Lamb released an audit of the Pittsburgh Police Confiscated Narcotics Proceeds Trust Fund and Imprest Fund on Thursday. The good news, according to Lamb, is that there’s no sign of missing funds. The bad news: the controller’s office found some bookkeeping issues.      

The narcotics trust fund was established by Pittsburgh City Council in 1985 with the imprest fund following in 1987. Its purpose was to provide a place for money seized in narcotics investigations.