Deputy Mayor Jake Pawlak quietly steers Pittsburgh through high-stakes decisions

In late December, Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey mugged for the cameras Downtown and pumped the hands of City Council members as he basked in the passage of his 2025 budget.

Hanging back in the mayor’s shadow, avoiding reporters and seeking no credit, stood the man most responsible for engineering the $665 million spending plan: Jake Pawlak, Gainey’s deputy and go-to problem-solver.

Unlike Gainey, who orates like a preacher and sometimes seems to revel in public attention, Pawlak cultivates a distinctly different image.

Reserved to the point of seeming stoic, eschewing the spotlight and speaking softly, the mild-mannered Pawlak is like a Gainey alter-ego, a shy Clark Kent to the mayor’s outgoing Superman.

Olga George, Gainey’s spokeswoman, joked she knows it’s been a rough day for Pawlak if his carefully knotted tie is even slightly askew.

Behind his restrained demeanor, the 36-year-old Pawlak has quietly risen to a position of power, becoming one of the most influential figures among Gainey’s top advisers. In addition to serving in Gainey’s inner circle, Pawlak also runs the city’s Office of Management and Budget, putting him in charge of spending the money and implementing the mayor’s policies.

With property tax revenue falling and pandemic-era federal aid running out, Pittsburgh faced serious questions coming into this year’s budget season about how the city would make ends meet while providing basic services, keeping its residents safe and continuing to attract development.

Overtime costs for public safety workers had soared, the number of police officers was dwindling, and financial reserves were sinking.

Gainey turned to Pawlak to craft a budget that would keep the machinery of the city running without raising taxes.

Like a player in Diplomacy, one of Pawlak’s favorite board games, the deputy mayor has had to figure out how to navigate competing forces in City Hall as he enacts Gainey’s agenda and crafts a realistic spending plan.

Time will tell if he has managed to pull it off.

Controller Rachael Heisler is skeptical. She predicted the budget will fall short by millions of dollars on funding for crucial overtime pay for first responders. And some officials are worried the city isn’t investing enough in its aging vehicle fleet, its bridges or its buildings.

The budget passed 8-1 with only minor tweaks from council.

South Side Councilman Bob Charland, one of the Gainey administration’s most vocal critics, voted for it.

Despite his support for Pawlak’s plan, Charland has other issues with the deputy mayor.

He accused Pawlak of failing to communicate with some elected officials and said he believes Pawlak has little respect for council members.

Often fueled by Cafe Bustelo coffee brewed in his Keurig and Pop-Tarts or sour candies purchased from a City Hall vending machine, Pawlak spends about 10 hours a day crunching numbers, sharing budget proposals with Gainey and hammering out final decisions alongside officials from the mayor’s office and various city departments.

Final decisions on the budget, Pawlak said, are reached collaboratively, in informal conversations with Gainey and other top advisers around the table in the mayor’s conference room.

Pawlak said he and the mayor work well together.

“We have a pretty collaborative decision-making structure,” Pawlak told TribLive during a November interview in his office, tucked at the end of a long hallway within the mayor’s suite and decorated with photos of his daughter, a portrait of William Pitt and a bookshelf lined with past years’ budgets.

“Because of what Jake Pawlak brings to the table, we are in a better condition from an equipment standpoint, from delivering basic city services [than] where we were when I took office,” Gainey told TribLive.

Gainey said the successes he likes to highlight — securing a bond to fund affordable housing, bolstering core city services and launching new police recruit classes — are all thanks, at least in part, to Pawlak.

They might not be sexy issues, but they are essential ones.

After a long day on Grant Street, Pawlak tries to make it back to his Highland Park home early enough to spend time with Freddie — short for Winifred — his 5-year-old daughter.

“That’s the best thing I find to unplug and disconnect — getting a solid hour of time with her,” Pawlak said.

And after Freddie goes to bed, Pawlak typically binge-watches Scandinavian crime dramas on Netflix and HBO.

‘Illegitimate’ title

The mayor often refers to Pawlak and Chief of Staff Jake Wheatley — nicknamed JP and JW to avoid confusion over the shared first name — as his two lieutenants.

As deputy mayor, Pawlak sometimes serves as a stand-in for the mayor during news conferences or public appearances. His role as head of the Office of Management and Budget has become increasingly important, too.

The office was launched with just three staffers, Pawlak said, but it’s now more than 10 times that size, a growth that started under previous administrations.

When Gainey took office, one of the first things he did was revamp the office, giving it additional responsibilities over coordinating daily functions of city government and collaborating with other departments on the mayor’s behalf.

Pawlak said his two roles are “deeply intermeshed.”

With the power and public attention Pawlak receives comes inevitable criticism.

Council members have criticized Pawlak over poor communication and a lack of transparency from the administration.

The issue came to a head recently when Pawlak admitted he had been aware for more than a year of a secret deal Gainey struck with former police Chief Larry Scirotto that allowed Scirotto to return to refereeing college basketball, despite public promises that he would focus full-time on his duties with the police force.

Council members have accused Pawlak of withholding information about a closed-door agreement the mayor made with the NFL to provide taxpayer dollars to support the NFL Draft when Pittsburgh hosts it in 2026.

Councilman Anthony Coghill, D-Beechview, often publicly butts heads with Pawlak, calling for better communication and more transparent leadership. But it’s not personal, Coghill said.

“I think he does his best to try to get things done,” Coghill said. “I have nothing bad to say about Jake. He’s a consummate professional with me.”

Coghill said the objections he raises with Pawlak during tense council meetings come because of larger problems he has with the Gainey administration.

Charland, the South Side councilman, told TribLive that he does place the blame on Pawlak. He accused Pawlak of failing to communicate with other elected officials and said he believes Pawlak has little respect for council members.

He also said he believes Pawlak’s use of the deputy mayor title is “illegitimate” because the Home Rule Charter provides for a deputy mayor only when the mayor is out of town or incapacitated.

“He feels he is in charge of everyone when no one actually elected him,” Charland said.

Pawlak, however, noted that other Pittsburgh mayors have appointed people to use the title similarly.

Sal Sirabella held the deputy mayor title under Mayor Tim Murphy, who led the city from 1994 to 2006. Murphy also considered Tom Cox a deputy mayor, and the two split responsibilities.

Sirabella said that while “pretty powerful,” he wasn’t as influential as the mayor.

Sirabella met frequently with Murphy and the city’s various department heads. He was responsible for resolving conflicts in city departments, worked with council to shepherd legislation and frequently acted as a spokesman for the city.

Prior mayors, including Sophie Masloff, had appointed deputies, too, Sirabella said. And mayors who didn’t give someone that title have had other key advisers, such as a chief of staff, to perform the same functions.

Every mayor relies on trusted advisers, Sirabella said, “whatever title you want to call it.”

Pittsburgh ‘nerd’

Pawlak said Charland’s criticisms don’t bother him. He countered that he generally has a positive relationship with council members, but people hear about that relationship only when mishaps strain it.

Although Pawlak acknowledged transparency is critical, he said sometimes problems arise with council because members want information before the administration is ready to provide it.

“When something is not fully baked, there’s only so much you can share about it,” he said. “That’s part of the natural give and take between branches of government.”

Pawlak said he’s fine with taking criticisms on behalf of the administration.

Council members aren’t the only ones to struggle to get the administration to share basic information. The Allegheny County District Attorney’s office had to resort to issuing a subpoena to get documents it sought for an investigation into alleged misuse of a city credit card.

Though Pawlak wasn’t involved in the scandal, he was the one left fielding questions from the media and publicly admitting the district attorney was probing the incident.

Grant Gittlen, chief of staff for Allegheny County Executive Sara Innamorato, works closely with Pawlak, but the men have been friends since 2010. That’s when they worked together on a political campaign trying to get former Allegheny County Executive Dan Onorato elected governor.

Gittlen, originally from Hershey, said Pawlak was the first person he met in Pittsburgh who had the city’s flag hanging in his apartment.

When they first met over a decade ago, Gittlen said, Pawlak loved to talk about the city charter and local government — and that hasn’t changed.

“He is one of the biggest city of Pittsburgh nerds that I have ever met,” Gittlen said.

Pawlak’s mind is never far from the job and the skills it requires, Gittlen said. The pair often join friends to play Diplomacy, a strategy game where players have to negotiate with one another and form alliances to win control of strategic hubs in a post-World War I Europe.

Pawlak’s interest in government can be traced to his high school days at Bishop Canevin High School, where he wrote about politics as the editor of the school newspaper, The Leonid.

While studying at the University of Pittsburgh, he spent a semester in Washington, D.C., thinking he might want to land a job in the nation’s capital after graduating. But after a semester there, he changed his mind.

“I did not like how remote from the issues or the impact that I was,” he said. “I wanted to be doing it here, where I’m from.”

Pawlak is a lifelong Pittsburgher — kind of.

He was raised in Mt. Oliver Borough, an independent municipality surrounded by the city of Pittsburgh. He spent some of his teenage years living in Brentwood.

After graduating from college, he and his wife lived in various neighborhoods in Pittsburgh’s East End before settling in Highland Park.

Pawlak said he considers himself “a lifelong Pittsburgher in a general cultural sense,” but he joked that his wife, Amber Quick, gets mad when he says he was raised in Pittsburgh.

He and Quick technically moved into the city on the same day when they started school at Pitt, where they met.

Getting his start

Pawlak said his opposition to the Iraq War propelled him to work in politics. He landed his first political job in 2010, working on Onorato’s unsuccessful bid for governor.

Kevin Kinross, who hired Pawlak as Onorato’s campaign manager, said Pawlak started off in the field knocking on doors to try to garner support for the campaign.

Right away, Kinross said, “Jake was a real star.”

Kinross quickly moved Pawlak to a more demanding position, tasking him with organizing a hectic campaign schedule and communicating with the candidate and campaign staffers.

“He was able to keep it all together in terms of logistics,” Kinross said. “It was a hard job for a young guy who’d never done it before.”

Kinross would later recommend Pawlak to his friend Matt Smith, who hired Pawlak to lead his successful campaign for state Senate. Smith then hired Pawlak as his chief of staff when he took office in 2012.

Pawlak’s first day in Harrisburg was also the first day in the state Legislature for Gainey, who had just been elected as a state representative. The two started to bump into each other in Harrisburg and back in Pittsburgh, where Gainey represented Highland Park.

They continued to cross paths when Pawlak went to work at the city’s Urban Redevelopment Authority while Gainey sat on the authority’s board and when Pawlak served as government affairs manager at the Pittsburgh Water & Sewer Authority.

As Gainey was considering a run for mayor, he called friends and colleagues — including Pawlak — to discuss the idea. Pawlak was quickly on board and served as Gainey’s transition director.

Matt Barron, a longtime friend of Pawlak’s, said Pawlak hasn’t changed much since they first met about a dozen years ago. The pair have crossed paths professionally as Barron worked for the city under Mayor Bill Peduto and now for the Heinz Endowments.

Barron said he thinks Pawlak’s personal interests have helped him in local government. When Pawlak spends time with Barron — often hiking in local green spaces — their favorite conversation topics include books, local history and contemporary politics.

“It’s part of what makes him good at his job because he does understand the context of why things are the way they are, what led us to where we are today,” he said. “He’s able to take the long view because of his understanding of that context and history.”

Kinross described Pawlak as a quiet, private person, but one who cares deeply for the city.

“He’s very committed to doing good,” Kinross said. “That’s one of his best qualities.”