December 25, 2002

Article from Pittsburgh City Paper about City Council denying a public hearing on library leases which had a hidden purchase option that allows the library board to buy the City owned buildings for $100 each whenever they want.   Dave drafted the pleading for an injunction request which he filed as the lead plaintiff to stop the vote on the leases until after a public hearing could be held. Judge Gallo said the City did not have grounds to proceed, but he said the petitioners wanted something different than what the Mayor wanted and he did not want to "take sides," so in allowing the City to proceed, he sided with the Mayor.

Thursday, June 30, 2005

Pittsburgh City Paper article on the kick off for the summer 2005 petitioning to place the Pittsburgh Open Government Amendment on the fall 2005 ballot.

Saturday, August 14, 2004

P-G article about the case organized by David Tessitor, in which he won the ability for all politically active individuals to get the Allegheny County voter database for free.   For years, the County had charged minor political parties and independents $1000 for voter information it was giving to the Democratic and Republican parties for free.   Dave asked for the charge to be lowered to the cost of making a copy, which is what the law requires, and when the County refused, Dave oorganized a legal case for the ACLU to sue the County.

Wednesday, August 10, 2005

P-G article announcing the candidacy of David Tessitor for mayor and the continuation of the effort to place the Open Government Amendment on next year's ballot.

Lawsuit says approval procedures not followed

Saturday, April 24, 1999

P-G article about Dave stopping the demolition of the historic Greater Pittsburgh Airport terminal building.

Addendum:   The judge subsequently received an employment contract from one of the County's law firms worth over $1 million, then effectively reversed the decision 10 days after this article was published.   The case was accepted for review by US Supreme Court Justice David Souter, who according to his clerk was extremely interested in the case.

Michael Baker Engineering provided an affidavit saying the rotunda was unstable and had to come down immediately.   Justice Souter backed off not wanting to create a safety hazzard, after which demolition of the rotunda stopped and was instead shifted to the other ends of the building.   According to news accounts, left to the last, they then had a hard time taking the rotunda down because it was effectively too stable.   Passersby will notice that Michael Baker Engineering now has its headquarters on the same site in a subsidized new building.

All it cost the public, besides the millions of dollars in public subsidies, is the loss of a grand historic masterpiece worth hundreds of millions of dollars, which if reused could have been a major asset to our region.   Instead we got more subsidized real estate speculation in the form of a typical suburban commercial strip.

Friday, June 11, 2004

P-G article about the closing of Three Rivers Free-Net (TRFN) by the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh and David Tessitor starting PittsburghFree.Net (PghFree.Net).

The article presents the Library's reasons for cancelling TRFN as being that the number of accounts on TRFN had dropped.   However, it does not mention that Carnegie Library had cut and eventually eliminated TRFN's staff, had closed its training facilities and stopped its web training programs, had not accepted any new applications for several years, and had closed a number of accounts which had yet to publish their websites.

Tuesday, August 17, 2004

Common Pleas President Judge Joseph M. James issued an injunction stopping the county Elections Department from levying a $1,000 fee for computer disk copies of the files.

City Neighborhoods

Wednesday, June 22, 2005

P-G article on the start of the 2005 petition drive for the Open Government Amendment to the Pittsburgh City Charter.

Wednesday, March 03, 1999

This is the story about placement of the PANDA sign which started a political effort that continues to this day.   The P-G dubbed the area PANDA Park after the Pittsburgh Area New Direction Alternative.   The article incorrectly identifies PANDA as a group, when in actuallity, it was a platform of public policy proposals, as close to 180 degrees from current policy as is reasonably possible, and was designed to show potential political candidates how things could be done differently.

Tuesday, March 16, 1999

City ban means no more signs or holiday creches.