Feb 17, 2024 3 min read

Answers needed on why City Mission request was pulled from LSA list

It’s the time of year when the Washington County Board of Commissioners approves grants to municipalities and local nonprofits from the local share account that is filled each year with gambling revenue from the Hollywood Meadows Casino in North Strabane Township.

This year, there was $9.2 million to divide up, and the committee that sifted through the requests before presenting it to commissioners approved grants for a number of worthwhile endeavors, including a veterans memorial in Donora, park renovations in Mount Pleasant Township and interior upgrades to the Canonsburg Area Senior Center.

On a preliminary list that was shared with Commissioner Larry Maggi on Feb. 2, $500,000 was earmarked for a shelter for homeless women that Washington’s City Mission hopes to start building this spring. Then, without explanation, it was removed before the LSA committee voted to make its recommendations on Feb. 6 and the $500,000 was rolled back into the local share account. Despite pleas from City Mission officials and supporters at Thursday’s commissioners meeting, the women’s shelter funding was not put back on the list and, again, no explanation was offered for why it was removed.

Absent such an answer, we’re left with the assumption that it was all about payback.

Here’s why: In a couple of weeks, former commissioner Diana Irey Vaughan will become the new president and CEO of the City Mission, and denying the grant to the shelter was a way to settle some scores. Irey Vaughan defied the orthodoxy of the local Republican Party and stood up to her GOP colleagues in recent years.

Maybe whoever decided to take the City Mission off the list thought they were being clever. Maybe tough, too. Perhaps they thought they were sending a message that you’d better toe the line or face consequences.

Instead, they merely looked small and petty.

State Rep. Bud Cook, who represents Greene County and the Mon Valley, has long held that there needs to be more transparency when it comes to decisions about how local share money is awarded. By yanking the money from the City Mission, Cook now has a powerful piece of evidence to support his argument.

We’ve been told again and again that if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.

Along those same lines, if something looks like a vendetta, and certainly carries the odor of a vendetta, then it probably is a vendetta.