COUNTY EXEC. CANDIDATES PLEDGE CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORMS

ASTHE RACE to replace outgoing Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald increasingly centers on allegations of misconduct, candidates are scrambling to present themselves as upright reformists.

Executive hopefuls Dave Fawcett and Sara Innamorato have both issued loud calls for campaign finance reform in the past week, while Michael Lamb is promoting a “Pledge of Good Governance” for all current and aspiring officials.

Fawcett and Innamorato criticized Allegheny County’s lax campaign finance laws which set no limits on how much an individual donor can contribute to a campaign. They have suggested instead that the county follows Pittsburgh in pegging donor limits to those set by the Federal Elections Committee.

They also criticized the long gaps between campaign contribution reports filed by county political candidates under the current calendar. Innamorato says she’s taken initiative by uploading to her website a live list of all individual donations received by her campaign.

“I want to create an honest, trans- parent, and responsible county government,” she said. “And I’m not just here to talk about it.”

Fawcett was the first to come out on the finance reform agenda, holding a press conference March 17 where he took aim at frontrunner John Weinstein’s deep war chest.

“There should be reasonable limits on campaign contributions in Allegheny County, and as county executive I’ll get that done,” he said.

Weinstein, who was accused of leveraging campaign support for a vote to maintain his endangered ALCOSAN board seat, recently turned the tide on Lamb, announcing during a press conference Friday that the city controller and county executive hopeful employs a staffer who lives outside the city.

Weinstein has also denounced the allegations against him as “rumors, outright falsehoods, and innuendos slung by competitors.”

Also this week, executive candidate Liv Bennett announced she has dropped out of the race. The primary election will take place on May 16.