Robinson, William Russell, February 7, 2002, tape 2, side 2

Michael Snow: Before the tape stopped. You were talking about Caliguiri, didn't get the chance to go into the neighborhoods.

William Russell Robinson: Right. Well, he didn't get an opportunity to really follow through because he died. And I think, Renaissance three, is what Dick Caliguiri wanted to bring about and he began to work on it. That's what it was called, Renaissance three. And I never forget meeting with Dave Mather and he said, you know, we're going to the next level and the next level is Renaissance three. And that was sort of like the precursor to some of the things that Tom of--Tom Murphy's doing. Sophie was a caretaker, and I don't think there's any doubt that Sophie Masloff was a caretaker mayor. And I--think she realized that one term was more than enough. And so Tom Murphy was able to come in and fulfill much of the promises of Renaissance three. The next step, the infrastructure, the big projects, the Monday Night Football kind of thing, the stadiums. One of Murphy's greatest challenges is, how does he do the Penguin deal and the neighborhood deal? Because the Penguin deal is probably the last part of that Monday Night Football thing. It probably should have been done at the same time. But the Penguins weren't ready. They had some financial problems, etcetera, etcetera.

Robinson: Now, Murphy has to find a way how to be helpful to them, to put another jewel in the crown of the city and at the same time deal with the inevitable neighborhood issues in an economy that's in a downturn, Snow: Right. Robinson: in an economy that's been shaken to its knees by Osama bin Laden. I mean, how do you do that? It's a challenge. It's a daunting challenge. But he's got four years. He beat Bob O'Connor twice. Each time he got fewer votes than he got before Murphy. So he's not a very popular mayor. But O'Connor couldn't turn the corner. O'connor couldn't convince people that he could do a better job than Murphy because it wasn't sufficient to say, We'll take Bob O'Connor instead of Tom Murphy. Tom Murphy made the case, Look, I did these things. I'll stand behind them. I believe they're good for the city. And as far as the other guy. He essentially supported everything I was doing. And if that's not true. Turn on the tape. And I think O'Connor just didn't want to be insulted and embarrassed and made a fool of, if he if he really started attacking the mayor.

Snow: With the neighborhoods. I was just wondering if you had been able to, as a city official, to look at like where the URA home improvement loans were going? Where are they going to all over the city or just too targeted? Robinson: Well, there was. Snow: census tracts that were more poor and African American.

Robinson: I think-I think if you look at the work of the URA, you will find that their-their work is targeted Snow: Is it? Robinson: because they're trying to do certain things in certain communities. They often make the case that they spend millions and millions and millions and millions of dollars in the Hill District. That's probably true. And if we break it out in terms of where they spent it and how they spend it, we get a clearer picture of what that means. A lot of it is in salaries. Some is infrastructure, some is housing. And I don't think you can take anything away from the URA as a government agency working on behalf of the citizens. But they represent all the citizens. They don't represent developers. They represent the citizens of their political jurisdiction. That's clear in state law. They weren't created to accommodate developers. They were created to accommodate the people of the city of Pittsburgh. So lots of money has been put into Pittsburgh. And I think one of the things that a mayor has to do is he has to make or she has to make the hard decisions where the money is spent after it's appropriated. And so I think if you looked at it, you would see that you don't have maybe the results that many people in the Hill District would like to have, that maybe there's some better results than some other communities, some that relates to the weakness of our politics and our politicians.

Robinson: Some of it relates to the weakness of our plan and our concept. Some of it relates to the fact that some of the strong institutions in our community, like our various churches, have not worked together as much as they should, and so we don't get the same result. But that's the way it is across America. In basically African American communities, you don't get the same result. One of the--Most unsettling phenomenon is, I think in this country, is what's happening in Prince George's County, right outside Washington, D.C. A county that is overwhelmingly African American, controlled over one, but African-American. They have a major problem with racial profiling in Prince George's County. That has a county executive who's black, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. They have a major problem with police profiling. What's up with that? So oftentimes, even when black people are in charge, the problems that black people have do not go away.

Snow: Also in that period, the home rule charter for Pittsburgh that was put into effect by about 1976, Robinson: Mm hm. Snow: I believe it had formed community advisory boards Robinson: Yes. Snow: so that citizens could bring their complaints to the, to these various boards and have another voice. I was just wondering how that played out.

Robinson: There was difficulty in sustaining them. Snow: Was it? Robinson: They couldn't find a real niche. You couldn't find people to run for those boards. You couldn't find the political support for them. And so therefore, they basically became defunct. I don't know if any of them are functioning now.

Snow: I haven't heard either.

Robinson: People just said, okay, it's a good idea. Yeah, we need to have them. Yeah. And I don't know, maybe we'd be better off if we said the mayor and council has to appoint all these people and, you know, each councilman can point to it or cronies. You probably got a better result than you have now. It was. It was competition for the Democratic Party. It was competition for the Republican Party. It was competition for elected officials. There really wasn't a organized constituency base for it. It's sort of like when you try to organize consumers who-who-who's organizing consumers. And so it just fell apart. Great idea. But it's not functional.

Snow: What of your legislation from that period are you most proud of?

Robinson: There's a lot of legislation I probably have introduced and had passed more legislation than any councilman in the history of the city of Pittsburgh, because I worked at it real hard. Probably two pieces stand out. Three pieces stand out. One, the creation of the legislation that created group homes. A possibility of group homes being spread more evenly in the city of Pittsburgh. I was the author of that legislation. The legislation that created the Women and Minority Business Enterprise Review Committee, which still exists. And the idea was to find a way to make sure that women and minorities were part of the economic growth of this city. The third one would be--the legislation which created for the first time in the history of the city an opportunity for--minority bond counsel and underwriters to participate in a major bond issue in the history of the city. And it was done by simply saying to the URA, when you go out on this next bond issue, you need to have folks let you know how they would make provision for the participation of minorities and women, because in the history of this city they never had an opportunity and there are plenty, plenty of qualified people. And so they were able to do that. Now, the next time they went on a bond issue, they didn't do it. Snow: they didnt? Robinson: So for about three years there were minorities. And again, I think that nagging racism, that nagging resistance to progress, that nagging resistance to creating opportunity, but those are the three things that I was really pleased with. The residential parking program was something that was sort of languishing, and I pushed through the legislation to create the residential parking program to help people who lived in neighborhoods where there were--hospitals and other major institutions where citizens could have some ability to park in their own daggone neighborhood.

Robinson: So those are a few of the things. In fact, before that, Minority Business Enterprise Review Committee was created, I was able to influence the development down in PPG Place by putting in a provision, the first provision in the history of this city where you had to have a plan for the inclusion of minorities and women. And it was in that PPG project. You had to put something in writing as a developer. Tell us what you were going to do. Tell us how you were going to make this happen. One of the buildings down there was built by Beacon Construction Company. It also, my legislation helped local businesses stay in that complex if they wanted to be there. Cast plumbing and carpenters, Catholic bookstore there directly because of my efforts to make sure small business people were able to stay in that complex down there. And I felt very, very, very good about that, about being able to do that. I mean, the more I think about it, there are probably a lot of things that I worked on. Those are some of them, because I took great pride in trying to push things through, fighting those-those tough battles down there. I created the first alternate budget, alternative budget for the city of Pittsburgh. Literally just went through and cobbled together a budget. I forget who helped me do it and presented it and say, Hey, here's an alternative to what's been presented by the administration. There's something else that'll come back to me here in a minute. Something else I was involved in down there.

Snow: They seemed to fit very well in your-your philosophy about people doing things on their own. Robinson: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Snow: And then what pushed you out of city council?

Robinson: Lost an election. Lost an election in 1985. The return of Jeep DePasquale [Embert note: 'Jeep' refers to Eugene DePasquale]. Jeep was the candidate that I think I lost by 3000 votes. Jeep. He had been off the council and he came back and he replaced me and some of my supporters, mainly several of the black ward chairmen, decided not to support me, and they supported Jeep DePasquale instead. Snow: Did they really? Robinson: Yeah. And so I was out of council. I never forget that day. It was like the very moment that the new council was sworn in was like, I felt something cold right here in my heart. And I was out. I was gone. It was history. And it was a period of adjustment because I did not land softly. I made no provision to land and it was difficult. And I was out of work for about a year. And I started to just relax. So when I became introduced to ESPN, I saw a lot of basketball and football, spent a lot of time hanging out, spent a lot of time trying to figure out what I really wanted to do and realizing that I had not made provision to leave, whether it was on my terms or someone else's terms, and that there were few, if any, people who were going to reach out and help me. Snow: Wow.

Robinson: So I decided to come back to politics, but to come back when I was sure of what I was doing and when I was sure that this was the life that I wanted. And once I made that decision, I simply waited for an opportunity. I kept my nose clean. I got lots of sleep. I met a lot of people. I made a lot of friends. I used to have a long list of enemies. You know, I put people's names on my-my enemies list, and the list was getting real long. And I said, Man, this list is long. And I looked over at my friends list and it wasn't very long. So I decided in this game, what you want to do is make friends. And so I folded up my enemies list, put it in my pocket, and I start writing a list of friends. And now that list is pretty long and it has served me well in some pretty tough times.

Snow: How did you add people to that list?

Robinson: Consciously looking at people who I felt I needed to-to-to, support me, support my philosophy, support my re-entry into politics. Just being a nicer person day to day. Stopping and taking time with people who I cared about before I was rushing to a meeting, I was concerned about something that Bill Robinson wanted to do that, you know, I had the right idea and I just stopped and talked to people. And so a play on Davie Roberts. I mean, Dave Lawrence, this is a story supposedly true, that Dave Lawrence sometimes at night would walk through the city of Pittsburgh and touch the buildings to get a sense of reality just by himself, just sort of walk around town and touch his city. And I had a chance to just stop and talk to my city, to talk to people. I was no longer a councilman to see who was a friend and who was an enemy, who cared and who didn't care. And I remember one time a guy walking, crossing the street, so he wouldn't have to talk to me. I won't mention his name. It was like that hurt more than anything else. He and I had had a disagreement about something and it hurt.

Robinson: But uh.

Robinson: Being out hurt. It was like I was lost. Like I had no connection, Like people didn't care. I guess that's maybe way athletes feel when they're out of the sport. Maybe why some of them try to come back. It's like, what's the connect? What do you do now? What do you do for an encore? Who cares about you.

Snow: When they no longer are celebrities?

Robinson: Yeah. I never forget how I used to get, these, you get invitations to things and there's some overlap after you're out of office. And so I'd go to certain events, things that I liked. And then at a point, they stopped coming. And I remember senators and probably telling the story once when he left the Senate one Christmas, his wife asked him, Where's the wreath that they used to get every year? And they used to hang it on the front of their door. Says, I don't know. So he said he's driving down the street and he went past Buddy Boylan's house, the guy that replaced him, he saw the wreath. So he went back home and said to his wife, I found a wreath. She said, Where is it. He said, Down on Buddy Boylan's door. He says another time he's out golfing and this guy beats him who he'd been beating all the time. He said, Damn, you must have got awful good. He says, the first time you ever beat me. And the guy looks at him and says, You're not a senator anymore. [laughter]

Robinson: That's where it goes.

Snow: And then you were serving on the Human Relations Commission.

Robinson: I worked there. I was an investigator. When I was out of work I got to a point where I said I need to find a job. My mother looked in the paper one day and said, hey, here's a job. Human Relations Commission, paying $18,000 a year. And she said, Why don't you apply for this? I don't want to. She said, You don't have a job. Why not? Went down, applied and Connie Wellons and Alma Fox, who were two of the commissioners, spoke on my behalf, and the rest is history. Mayor Caligiuri wasn't very helpful and neither was one of his staff people whose name will remain anonymous. He's still active in politics. They tried to stop me and Connie and Alma just looked this guy in the eye and said, Why are you trying to stop this man? You know, the mayor doesn't want him to have the job and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. She said the man got family, got responsibilities. He's qualified. He's our friend. We're going to help him. That's how I got the job.

Speaker3: Wow. What did entail?

Robinson: Investigating claims of discrimination and preparing the cases. I wasn't very good at that. Snow: No? Robinson: I wasn't good at--I'm not very good at the detail work. My staff probably doesn't believe as many details I get in, but I couldn't get into it. Conceptually, I could, but the reports and the investigation, it was grinding and I couldn't wait to get out. I was looking for a way out. I was grateful for the job. I was looking for a way out. And then when Leroy Irvin said he was retiring, it was like a light went off in my head. And I just said to myself, Are you ready? And I said, Yes, this is it. You got to go. You got to do this. And I did it. Snow: Wow. Robinson: Yeah, did it. Campaigned on my own time, day and night, Saturdays. Some people who had not supported me the last time I was out for political reasons came to me and said, We'll support you this time. I said, Thank you. The rest is history. Some even asked me, Do you want to go back to the city council? Snow: Did they? Robinson: Yeah. I said, We'll support you to go back to city council. But if you go down there, you know, sort of be quiet. And I said, I said to myself, That ain't me. And I said to them, I appreciate your help and I need your help. But I didn't leave anything down there. My eyes were in the front of my head. Nothing to be gained. I'll go to the legislature. [background voices]

Snow: How are you doing for time? We haven't covered your office. [background voices]

Robinson: I'm fine. Let me just.

Snow: You were telling me about the issues that you've worked on and how your philosophy has been about taking on the smaller thing to keep your eye on the big things, too.

Robinson: Think big, but always recognize that--those little things lead to medium sized things that lead to big things. And some things are very big and you might be able to do them. Some are medium sized, some are very small, and little people will always make you big. Big people will never make you big. Marion Charles told me that, one of my mentors, Marion Charles, said, Remember, little people make you big. Big people don't make you big. There's a cartoon that I have around here and I had blown up and it shows Mickey Mouse in a portrait on a wall and two mice standing down below looking up at him, and they say a legend in his own time, but what did he do for his people? Snow: Wow. Robinson: And that, to me is the question that needs to be asked. And it's a question that I ask myself. Okay, I'm going to be a legend in my own time, but what does that do for my people? And so I take very seriously these-these things that oftentimes politicians cobble together as our legacy, as the reason people should vote for us. You know, and probably there are those you could tell them 20 things you did that you think are significant and they could come up with one thing you didn't do and say, Yeah, but you didn't do nothing for me or you didn't do enough for my community. So I'm very conscious of that every time I run and very humbled each time that no one person, certainly not myself, is capable of addressing all issues, all constituencies, and those of us that try find ourselves woefully inadequate.

Snow: So what key issues have you focused on with success.

Robinson: Since I've been in the legislature?

Snow: Yes.

Robinson: Oh, I think by far the biggest issue was the 1999 capital budget, which produced funding for stadiums in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia and other major sports and recreation venues across the state. The Karn [??] Robinson legislation, Karn, Robinson, one and two. Representative Andrew Karn. And I--I think there was no doubt we were out ahead of the curve on the issue. I don't think there was any doubt that we were out there on behalf of the average person. I don't think there's any doubt we were out there on behalf of the taxpayers. There's no doubt we were out there asking for accountability. We reshaped that whole deal. We made it something that it wasn't supposed to be. We did one hell of a job for the citizens of Pennsylvania. At the end of the day, though, Andrew Karn and I were not able to get passed one piece of legislation that we proposed, but we reshaped the whole deal. We reshaped the whole deal. The governor, Tom Ridge, said we reshaped the deal, that there were things that he did and thought about because of what Andrew Karn and Bill Robinson were doing. And we stood firm. We had a concept. We did the research. We had political tenacity. We took on our own party. We took on the Republican Party. We took on the labor unions. We took on the business community. We took on the ball teams. We put legislation up and we moved forward with it.

Robinson: And we were steadfast and we were together. Andrew is no longer in the legislature, and some probably think because of his positions on the stage, that's why he's not in the legislature. That may be part of it because all politics is local. And he was fighting some battles back at home. But that to me has been the most outstanding overall contribution I've made, is taking on that issue of taxpayer protection and accountability. I got a bill passed that allows people now to buy items that heretofore they could only rent televisions, washing machines, things of that type. Was able to get an amendment into a bill to make that possible. I was responsible for finally getting into the law in Pennsylvania, a definition of identity theft. I had been victimized myself and went off on a crusade to try to stop identity theft and certainly try to right the wrong that had been done to people whose credit was damaged due to no fault of their own. And then their credit was ruined for life. Those are-those are three areas where I feel I've had a significant impact in the General Assembly. I'm fighting the battle around eminent domain now. My position is private property should not be taken from one individual and turned over to another. Case law. The United States Constitution and the state constitution clearly say that-that can be done, that government does have a right to take property from one private individual and turn it over to another.

Robinson: I think the way eminent domain is utilized by governments today in urban America in particular, is-is wrong. It's tilted too much towards developers, it's too anti citizen, it's too anti small business, it's too much geared towards having people's backyards literally confiscated and turned over to major business interests for parking lots. And I think in the spirit of true American capitalism, if a major corporation wants my backyard for a parking lot, let them negotiate an honest deal with me. Don't use my government against me. And I think that's what happens too often. And it happens far too often in so-called poor communities or the African American community. And just because the people who are doing it are black doesn't make it right. And I don't buy that notion that if the head of an agency is black and his lawyer is black and his staff is black, how could he be a racist? Give me a break! This is America. We're all, We've all been soaked in racism and negativism and integration. We've all grown up in a certain culture. Just because you're white doesn't mean you're a bigot. And just because you're black doesn't mean you're not a bigot. Wrong headed behavior, wrong public policy. It's just that, it's wrong. And I think the manner in which eminent domain is being used today by governments, particularly here in Pittsburgh, is wrong.

Snow: Which project spurred you into this position?

Robinson: I think the stadium's project really, to build a two new stadiums and a convention center, really brought this to a head for me. The manner in which small businesses were taken. The manner in which some concerns the International Brotherhood of Electrical workers were able to trade land on the south side for land on the north side. I mean on the north side for land on the south side. Fine. Okay. But they couldn't have done that without the help of the Murphy administration and without our Urban Redevelopment Authority. Fine. Not against progress, but other people found themselves in the way of the stadiums, in the way of the convention center, and there were attempts to run them over in the name of progress. No. I just think the average person deserves better. When I first ran for public office, my motto was leadership for everyday people. Tom Murphy and Mona Murphy probably remember that because I had these posters, I had these signs, and I remember they sort of said, Well, I don't know if you want to use that. I said, What do you mean? That's what I'm trying to do. Leadership for everyday people, trying to provide everyday people with leadership. And I got that phrase from the song by Sly and the Family Stone, the song Everyday People. And I thought that song was just so much reflective of what I was all about. I can walk with kings and queens and still have the common touch, and I thank God for that ability.

Snow: When you were talking about the ability to buy products, was that from rent to own or rental places?

Robinson: Rental places, there used to--situations used to be in Pennsylvania. If you rented a TV, you couldn't buy it.

Speaker3: Really.

Robinson: Couldn't buy it. In other states surrounding us, you could, but you couldn't buy it in Pennsylvania, so you could rent it forever. The industry wanted to change, and I worked with some of the people in the industry. They wanted people to have an opportunity to do so. But it was obvious that you had to put some restrictions in there. You had to. Some of the labor unions were supportive because many of their members got involved in a lot of rental kind of operations. So now in Pennsylvania, you can buy an item if you rent it, and there's some you know, we work towards fairness to protect the seller of the product as well as the person who uses it. You buy, use it for a certain period of time and then there's like a trigger mechanism. You want to buy this thing, you can buy it. You know, you want to keep renting, you can keep renting it, but you have a chance to buy it. Give me so much money based on what you've already paid and it's yours.

Snow: Hm.

Robinson: It's worked. And I was very happy to to be able to do that because it was very consumer oriented kind of thing. And I felt very, very good about it. Another real big issue I'm trying to push, and this is probably a political watershed for me. I believe that non-union workers and non-union contractors ought to have an opportunity to work on public jobs. That is a position that flies in the face of what unionism, at least in the construction trades, is all about. And I suspect that they will fight tooth and nail, not just me, but they will fight independent contractors and independent workers on this issue. Unions represent about 15% of the working people in America. That means 85% of the people are not in unions. And historically, unions have made a significant contribution to America. But America is a different place, and I don't see any justification of having a few well paid workers benefit and the rest of the people go wanting. I do, I believe that when you have a society, when too many people, too few people have plenty and too many have nothing. We got a problem. Snow: I see. Robinson: We got a problem. And I think the Enron situation is an example. What in the world were those people at Enron at the top going to do with those millions of dollars that they got? What were they going to spend it? Who are they going to give it to? They were pretty damn selfish that why were they going to screw all those workers? Why? To get a few million dollars. Wasn't there enough to go around? Sure, there's enough to go around. But the system says to you, the people who win or the people who have the most.

Robinson: I understand that. But here's a prime example in my opinion of capitalism gone amuck. Capitalism gone amuck. Money becomes the God. Get all the money you can, worship at the altar of wealth. You end up destroying thousands of lives. But I don't blame it all on Ken Lay and those top guys. I blame some of it on the people who put their life savings in Enron and who thought they were going to sail off to the South Seas and leave the rest of the people back here with little or nothing. Trees grow to the sky, but none ever touch. Snow: Hm. Robinson: The lucky people are the ones that got out, not those corporate executives. They were going to get out their contract, let them out. Snow: Right. Robinson: The people who got out when Enron was going to the top who said, hey, I got enough Snow: Right. Robinson: or I don't want to take more risk or I want to enjoy some of it. The ones that stayed in there, I only have a certain amount of sympathy for them. But they shouldn't have been. They shouldn't have been. It shouldn't have happened that way. That's the way things go down. And people should be more careful. Yeah, I know all that. But if the guys at the top who are running the place are not having weekly meetings with you telling you what's going on and they tell you, guess what, I'm getting ready to parachute. But don't worry, everything's okay. I should say I should have a right to get a parachute, too. Snow: Right. Robinson: Maybe I want to get out. Snow: Right. Robinson: You probably know some. I don't know. Because I hired you to run this place. Well, you know, I just think it's.