Pittsburgh police chief takes pay cut to keep NCAA basketball referee job

PITTSBURGH – Pittsburgh Police Chief Larry Scirotto says he will take a $20,000 pay cut to cover the salary of a new deputy chief who will lead the department when Chief Scirotto will referee 60 to 65 NCAA basketball games this season.

Chief Scirotto told Post-Gazette news partner KDKA-TV that he offered to take the pay cut and Mayor Ed Gainey took him up on the offer, saying the mayor “thought it would help put the residents we serve at ease and at the same time to compensate the deputy chief. (Christopher) Ragland in his new role (as deputy chief).”

Reached directly by the Post-Gazette, the chief declined requests for comment and referred questions to Gainey’s office. Mayoral spokeswoman Olga George, when reached by phone earlier this week, said the mayor’s communications staff would not respond to a list of detailed questions from the PG. She cited an ongoing labor dispute involving some of the newspaper’s employees.

According to the mayor’s preliminary budget, the chief would earn $187,254 in 2025, a slight increase from this year’s $185,400. He was hired in 2023 with a budgeted salary of just under $160,000.

Some in the city council were under the impression that Chief Scirotto would not continue to act while at the helm of the Pittsburgh Police Department.

“We’ve had a conversation about this, and at this point he won’t do that,” Gainey said on May 3, 2023, as he introduced Chief Scirotto as his choice for top cop.

Two weeks later, during public City Council interviews with Chief Scirotto, Councilman Anthony Coghill asked him to reaffirm his commitment to putting that job aside.

“I know you’ve agreed not to pursue that profession while you’re here as police chief in Pittsburgh, right?” Coghill asked.

Chief Scirotto responded, “Correct.”

But Gainey and Chief Scirotto have both indicated that the plan was always to revisit the NCAA appearance once the chief had settled in and made changes both to the department and to the city’s crime statistics.

“That was my intention at the time,” Chief Scirotto told WTAE-TV of his response to Coghill last year. “The mayor and I have had very clear conversations. There was no ambiguity about (whether it would change) if this department looked different, if this city was in a different state, if we were safer.”

A post-agenda or information meeting is scheduled for Tuesday at 1:30 p.m. in the city council chambers. It was called by Coghill, who said the council needed to hear from the chief before approving his 2025 salary.

The Chief announced last week that he would return to college basketball as a referee, something he had done days earlier while working an exhibition game in Marquette, Michigan, between Michigan State and Northern Michigan.

He told local NPR affiliate WESA that the game was becoming increasingly popular.

“There are no secrets, and there never have been,” he told the channel on Wednesday. ‘And that will never happen. I am very clear with my schedule, the mayor and director of public safety know which days I will be gone.

“They also know who will be in charge when I’m gone,” he said.

That person will be Assistant Chief Ragland, who will have the new title of deputy chief – a position that was eliminated from the city budget several years ago.

The $20,000 pay cut for the chief will serve to increase Assistant Chief to Chief Ragland’s $146,000 salary in his new role.

“No one in this city should have to worry about their safety while Deputy Chief Ragland is in charge,” Chief Scirotto told WESA about what could happen if he is on the field as a crisis unfolds in Pittsburgh.

The chief said he will use his nine weeks of accrued vacation time and normal days off — Friday, Saturday and Sunday — to make time for his office and related travel.

“It’s not like I’m going or needing to find another time to do this,” he told the radio station. “It’s a time contractually given to me.”

Gainey said in a statement last week after his chief’s announcement that Chief Scirotto “approached us about the possibility of him having to step down from his role to continue this part-time refereeing gig…”

The chief told WESA he did not give the mayor an ultimatum; if serving in office made him “a distraction to the agency” – or meant he “could not perform in the manner we both expect for the agency” – he would have retired.

He also said his return to office will help facilitate a new youth program he plans to launch in partnership with the HEAR Foundation called Refs and Rooks. The idea, he said, is for officers and youth to train together as referees and become certified by the end of the program.

“They go to training together. They grow together. They learn together. They referee together,” he told the radio station. “How cool will that relationship be to see them develop together for something that could be a career in either field, whether it’s policing or civil service?”

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