Rachael Heisler warned time and again that Pittsburgh was heading for trouble.
The mayor’s office kept insisting the city’s 2026 budget was fine — no need for a tax hike, no need to cut services.
But Heisler, the city controller, wasn’t convinced. So she did what any responsible elected official might: She went public.
Arguing then-Mayor Ed Gainey’s spending plan contained “glaring omissions” and was “not an honest document,” Heisler urged the mayor and City Council to make big changes — otherwise Pittsburgh and its taxpayers risked trouble.
“If they don’t, you know, that’s on them,” Heisler said recently.
It was a tough-love approach from Pittsburgh’s fiscal watchdog, the independently elected auditor-in-chief who was suddenly taking center stage trying to save the city from itself.
By setting budget honesty as her polestar, Heisler fulfilled the pledge she made when she was sworn in to take over an office whose origins date to the mid-1800s. During her January 2024 induction, she promised a standing-room-only crowd she would work every day to ensure the city’s fiscal health.
As head of a 57-member team that scrutinizes every dollar and ferrets out waste and fraud, Heisler views her role as “the check and balance on the rest of city government.”
She’s not wrong. She and her staff pay the city’s bills, audit spending and reassure taxpayers their money is being handled properly.
Heisler’s responsibilities range from the mundane, such as making sure each of the 6,000 blue recycling bins the city recently bought were delivered, to more high-profile duties, such as calling out the almost universally derided spending plan put forth under Gainey.
By late December, City Council had enough. It took charge, reworked the budget and tacked on a 20% property tax hike.
Heisler’s consistent and measured predictions of impending doom eventually found a receptive audience in the mayor’s office: Pittsburgh’s new leader, Corey O’Connor. He was a kindred spirit, having been Allegheny County’s controller.
“It’s an oversight role that is needed,” O’Connor said. “Somebody in that role needs to be vocal about issues and take a stand. She’s done that since she started. Credit to her for being out in front of those issues and letting taxpayers know what the actual situation is.”
The mayor said he and Heisler discussed their respective audits when he was county controller from 2022 through 2025. In the mayor’s office, he said, his administration has connected with her staff to “double check on the math” of the budget. So far, O’Connor said, he and Heisler are seeing the same issues.
After directing his team to root around in the budget during the first few months of his term, O’Connor announced the plan that had been passed Dec. 21 by council was still so problematic it needed to expand by another $28 million to meet the city’s needs.
For Heisler, who watched in person as O’Connor spelled out his budget concerns during an address at City Hall, it was vindication — though she didn’t do any crowing.
Others, though, did.
“She pretty much nailed this,” Joseph Sabino Mistick, who served as deputy mayor to former Mayor Sophie Masloff, told TribLive after O’Connor announced the budget was tens of millions of dollars short. “She told everybody what the problems were. I think Controller Heisler sounded the alarm.”
Serious student
Though Heisler loves her job, it’s not the career she dreamed of as a child.
She wanted to be a Spanish teacher.
Heisler, 41, grew up in Mechanicsburg, a small Cumberland County borough about 8 miles west of Harrisburg. Her father was a salesman, and her mother was a schoolteacher. Her younger brother, Andrew, would go on to spend 13 years in the Navy.
Her sixth grade teacher, Evonne Uhrich — Heisler calls her “Mrs. U” — recalled her as a serious student with “a love of learning.”
Uhrich’s husband, Tom, also had Heisler in his middle school classroom. He recalled her using her lunch period to help special-needs students.
“Middle school kids don’t do that. They huddle together with their own little clique-y peer group,” he said. “If you’re an adult, you’re a teacher, and you stand back and you watch that, you think, ‘What a child, what a heart, what a care for people.’ ”
Heisler left Mechanicsburg for the University of Pittsburgh, where she became involved in Democratic groups, motivated by her belief George W. Bush was a “bad president.”
She switched her major, pivoting to political science and sociology. After Hurricane Katrina’s devastation in 2005, Heisler dedicated one spring break to help with volunteer cleanup in New Orleans.
That made an impression on Jon Hurwitz, one of her political science professors.
“I was so impressed she took a week out of her life when her colleagues took a week off in the sun,” Hurwitz said. “She is devoted to helping people.”
Hurwitz still grabs the occasional breakfast or lunch with Heisler. A few days after they dine, he’ll receive a handwritten note in the mail from her, thanking him for sharing a meal.
“It’s almost like she was born in a different time period when people did things like that,” Hurwitz said.
Federal experience
Heisler has mostly considered Pittsburgh home since college — though she did move to the nation’s capital for a while — and calls herself a “Pittsburgher by choice.”
She has lived in six Pittsburgh neighborhoods and is in the midst of moving from a house in the North Side’s Mexican War Streets — the very one once occupied by Ferris wheel inventor George Ferris — to Squirrel Hill.
After leaving Pitt, Heisler took a job in 2007 with Jason Altmire, then a Democratic congressman from McCandless.
Altmire said Heisler “demonstrated a lot of political savvy” and waded into the minutiae of government finances. He was particularly impressed with her ability to connect with people of any background, in any setting.
After Altmire left office, Heisler spent seven years with the bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.
Maya MacGuineas, president of the group, described Heisler’s energy as “unrivaled” and praised her ability to breathe life into discussions about budgetary policy.
“She has a deep understanding of why it matters so much and a courage to push forward to try to make things better,” MacGuineas said.
Heisler has used her platform to advocate not only for sound financial practices, but also to call for investments in public safety, support workers and stand up for the Jewish community even though she’s not Jewish.
Heisler said she feels the Jewish community experiences more hate than any other group in Pittsburgh. The city in 2018 witnessed the deadliest antisemitic attack in American history when a gunman killed 11 people and wounded six at a Squirrel Hill synagogue.
Jordan Golin, president of the Jewish Family & Community Services of Pittsburgh, said Heisler has provided financial expertise as the nonprofit’s board treasurer.
“Antisemitism and anti-Jewish activity in this country (have) been rising for years. It’s not something the Jewish community can address by itself,” Golin said. “So when prominent leaders outside of the Jewish community — like Rachael — when they speak up, it gets attention in a way it might not otherwise get attention.”
Adding pressure
Heisler, an energetic early riser and fitness buff, tries to hit the gym by 4:30 a.m.
She likes to arrive at her Downtown office on the first floor of the City-County Building around 7:45 a.m., settling in behind a desk piled high with financial reports and thick copies of the city budget.
Surrounding her are family photos, a framed quote titled “The Woman in the Arena” and paintings of her grandfather, smoking a cigarette on the sideline of a Chartiers-Houston WPIAL football game he coached in the 1970s. (She felt so sheepish about depicting smoking at a high school football game, she almost didn’t hang the paintings.)
A firefighter’s jacket — still smelling faintly of smoke — hangs near the door, a memento from February, when she joined a training session to learn how to combat deadly flashovers.
From that nerve center, Heisler has raised the profile of the controller’s office during the past year’s budget debacle and earned credibility.
Councilman Anthony Coghill, D-Beechview, credits Heisler for “always bringing things to the forefront.”
“As far as being that watchdog, her voice is good,” Coghill said. “It adds pressure, whether it’s this administration or the last one.”
No shrinking violet
Heisler hasn’t been shy about using her platform when she deems it necessary, most prominently when she spoke out about the city’s fiscal challenges.
She criticized misuse of a city credit card during the Gainey administration, a scandal in which an outside vendor was improperly paid about $23,000.
And she dug into a convoluted vehicle maintenance contract, withholding payments last summer to a company that failed to provide proper invoices.
Not everyone was happy with her. The Gainey administration blamed garbage collection delays on Heisler.
At the time, Olga George, then a spokeswoman for Gainey, claimed the payment pause led to extended wait times for vehicle repairs, causing a refuse truck shortage that backed up trash pickups.
No evidence surfaced that Transdev had stopped maintaining garbage trucks, but Heisler wanted to see for herself. She took a field trip to a city garage to see firsthand.
Others have clashed with Heisler. By statute, the controller conducts audits for Pittsburgh Public Schools, though with a smaller staff of eight.
A recent report that flagged how the district could save money cited correspondence from a former school board member, Kevin Carter.
Carter criticized the controller’s office for resurrecting five-year-old emails in the report and claimed the office never talked to him before publishing his messages.
Heisler noted her audits are nearly always retroactive but declined to comment on Carter’s complaints.
While Gainey’s office sparred with Heisler, her old boss, former controller Michael Lamb, appreciates her willingness to call things like she sees them.
Lamb, for whom Heisler served as deputy, said his successor has ramped up the office’s public profile and been forthright about the challenges facing the city.
Such efforts, he said, are “more necessary” now than they had been in recent memory, considering Pittsburgh ended last year with a nearly $9 million operating deficit.
“She happened to be in a place at a time when she needed to say something,” Lamb said.
Lots to say, but little power
Councilwoman Erika Strassburger, D-Squirrel Hill, said Heisler has been willing to have tough conversations and partner with other officials to tackle tricky financial problems.
Strassburger, who serves as council’s finance chair, credited the controller for “her dedication to our city’s fiscal health and demonstrating we are a city that wants to earn public trust.”
During an interview with TribLive, Heisler rattled off various tactics to alleviate budget problems such as seeking more contributions from nonprofits and growing the tax base.
She paused to print out a spreadsheet that detailed how Pittsburgh brings in less grant money from foundations and the federal government than other cities, such as Erie and Philadelphia.
More aggressively seeking grants is another strategy the city could employ to help balance the budget without overburdening taxpayers, Heisler said as her printer churned out the document.
Heisler has plenty of thoughts on the budget — but little control over it. The controller is responsible for certifying revenue projections to ensure they seem realistic, but that’s the only formal role she plays in the budgeting process.
“From my perspective, the whole reason I ran for office is because I believe in government,” Heisler said. “I fundamentally believe in government. I believe it is a force for good in this world — and I want people to have confidence in it.”