A Pittsburgh medic earned double the mayor’s salary, and fewer police cost more money

(Illustration by Natasha Vicens/PublicSource) PublicSource’s annual review of Pittsburgh payroll data shows that Mayor Ed Gainey’s administration has improved diversity in hiring, though not in the better-paid public safety bureaus. by Charlie Wolfson, PublicSource Two years into his first term as Pittsburgh mayor, Ed Gainey’s mark on city government is beginning to take shape. A PublicSource review of city payroll data shows that employees hired by the city since Gainey took office in 2022 are more diverse than the city’s workforce overall.& And while the police force has gone down in numbers since Gainey took over, the city is spending more than ever before on policing, both in base pay and overtime. View the full dataset here. The city’s 3,400-strong workforce — the people who respond to emergencies, pave streets, pick up trash and process permits and taxes, among other things — was about 73% White at the end of 2023. But of the 620 people hired to full-time roles since Jan. 3, 2022, when Gainey was sworn in, just 56% are White. Most of the difference appears in an uptick in Black representation; 31% of the new hires, or 191 of them, were Black. “The mayor upon taking office...