novelnext Chapter 91 Shift of Contradiction
Chapter 91 Shift of Contradiction
Chapter 91 Shift of Contradiction
Steve Wagner looked into Leo's unwavering eyes.
Suddenly, like a punctured balloon, my whole body went limp.
He was a smart man, or rather, a survivor who had spent many years navigating the treacherous waters of officialdom.
He understood what Leo meant.
This is not a matter for discussion.
Wagner's shoulders slumped, and his once straight back hunched over.
"Mr. Mayor—I'm sorry."
Wagner's voice dropped eight octaves, his previous imposing manner vanished, leaving only an almost pleading tone.
"I was a little out of control just now, I apologize."
He reached out and took the sheet that was stuck to his chest, his fingers trembling slightly.
"However, you must understand my difficulties."
"I really have no other choice."
Wagner looked up, a bitter smile appearing on his fleshy face, his eyes filled with helplessness.
Outsiders all think that the Ministry of Public Works is a lucrative position, and that I am powerful and influential.
"But you are the mayor, you should have seen the financial statements."
"My total annual budget here is indeed 15 million US dollars, which sounds like a big number."
Wagner stretched out his chubby fingers and began to calculate the accounts for Leo.
"But of that money, six million is fixed personnel expenses."
"There are also four million in fixed maintenance contracts that were signed long ago. The electricity bills for the streetlights, the maintenance of the snowplows, and the landfill costs are all fixed amounts."
"The total amount of general funds that ended up in my hands was less than five million."
Five million dollars.
Wagner spread his hands, his face filled with despair.
"It's about managing the repairs and maintenance of every street in Pittsburgh."
"Now that asphalt prices and labor costs are rising, I have to be very careful with the money I have to use to fill potholes on the main road."
"You've suddenly shoved four thousand forms into my hands."
"Even if I sold myself, I couldn't raise that much money to fix it."
"It's not that I want to disobey orders, I really—I really have no other choice."
Leo listened quietly.
He knew Wagner was telling the truth.
Leo didn't really intend to completely break ties with Wagner.
He wanted a knife, not a corpse.
Seeing Wagner's disheveled appearance, Leo's fierce aura gradually subsided.
He sighed softly.
"I know, Steve."
Leo's voice softened, and his tone became calmer.
"I know it's difficult."
"I've also seen the budget report, and I know you're dancing in shackles."
Leo walked around the desk and leaned against the edge.
He casually picked up a bottle of mineral water from the table, unscrewed the cap, and handed it to Wagner.
"Have a sip of water and calm down."
Wagner took the water, drank a large gulp, and his emotions finally calmed down a bit.
"It's not your fault that you don't have enough money."
Leo looked at Wagner and spoke in a persuasive tone.
"I want to help you too, Steve."
"We need to be reasonable."
"These complaint forms, although collected by me, are based on real issues, right?"
Wagner nodded.
The manhole cover is indeed missing, and the streetlight is indeed broken. These are facts that cannot be denied.
"According to the municipal management procedures, since we have received a legitimate complaint, we cannot turn a blind eye to it."
"We need to handle this."
"Even if it's just to avoid going to jail for ourselves, we have to deal with it."
Wagner wiped the sweat from his forehead, rolled his eyes, and tentatively began to speak.
"But, Mr. Mayor, you are also familiar with the procedure."
"Four thousand applications, each one needs on-site verification, engineering assessment, and risk calculation. I only have a few people working under me, and they also have to do fieldwork."
While observing Leo's expression, he carefully extended his finger to indicate the name.
"At the normal administrative pace, completing this process would take at least six months, or—eight months?"
Leo didn't speak.
He merely squinted slightly as he looked at Wagner.
Wagner's heart clenched.
His survival instinct instantly took over his mind.
"No! Of course not!"
Wagner slapped his thigh suddenly, his voice rising abruptly, filled with a sense of justice.
"Six months? That's practically a crime!"
"Our people are suffering terribly! That manhole with the missing cover could swallow a child at any moment! That extinguished streetlight could be a target for robbery at any time!"
"Making citizens wait even a minute longer in danger is a disgrace to our Public Works Department!"
Wagner waved his arms indignantly, as if he were the most concerned official about people's livelihood in all of Pittsburgh.
Then, his tone shifted abruptly, and the sense of justice on his face quickly crumbled, replaced by a bitter expression of helplessness.
"But I don't have any money!"
Wagner unfolded the crumpled piece of paper and steered the conversation back to where it started.
"To get things done quickly, you need money. To repair them, you need materials."
"The city council has blocked all large expenditures. I have to fill out three forms and wait two weeks to apply for an emergency fund of 30,000 dollars."
After saying that, he looked at Leo pitifully.
"right."
Leo snapped his fingers.
"That's the problem."
"I have no money."
"But Steve, you need to understand a logic."
Leo leaned forward, lowered his voice, and began to coax him gently.
"Whose fault is it that we don't have money?"
"Is it your fault?"
Wagner paused for a moment, then subconsciously shook his head.
"Of course not, I'm just an executive officer."
"Is it my fault?" Leo pointed to himself. "I wanted to give money, I wanted to implement the revitalization plan, I wanted to allocate millions to your department, who was stopping me?"
Wagner's gaze involuntarily drifted out the window, toward the city council building across the street.
"so."
Leo spread his hands.
"Since it's neither your fault nor mine, why are we making things difficult for each other here?"
"Why don't we pass this hot potato to the person who should really be responsible?"
Wagner put down the bottle of mineral water.
"you mean----"
"process."
Leo uttered the word.
"Isn't the essence of a bureaucratic system simply processes?"
"Since the city council requires strict approval for every budget, and since they say they are accountable to taxpayers."
"Then we'll give them the opportunity to approve it."
Leo stood up, walked to the door, and waved to the outside.
Ethan Hawke walked in with ten young interns.
Each of them was holding a laptop.
"Steve, these are the people I borrowed from the mayor's office."
"They have all received professional training in administrative document writing."
"You don't need to go and fix the road yourself; you don't even need to leave this office."
"You only need to do one thing."
Leo picked up the crumpled report from the table.
"Regarding every complaint, every pothole, and every broken streetlight here."
"Draft a standard emergency supplemental funding request."
"Stamp your director's seal in the applicant's section."
"Transfer all of these applications to the City Council's Budget and Finance Committee without exception."
Wagner was stunned.
His mind raced, calculating the consequences of this action.
Four thousand grant applications.
Each application needs to be received, registered, preliminarily reviewed, scheduled, discussed, and voted on by the city council.
Given the efficiency of those city council gentlemen in processing five documents a day, these four thousand applications would keep them busy until the next century.
"This—will this work?" Wagner hesitated. "Moretti will kill me. He'll think I'm deliberately picking a fight."
"No, Steve."
Leo patted Wagner on the shoulder.
"How could you be picking a fight?"
"You're strictly fulfilling your duties as bureau chief."
"You've received complaints from citizens and discovered safety hazards, but you don't have any money."
"So you followed the legal procedures and submitted a funding application to the city council, which has the power to control the budget."
"This is completely compliant, completely legal, and completely in accordance with the procedures that Speaker Moretti has been emphasizing."
Leo said slowly, "As long as you submit the application."
Whether that pit is repaired or not is none of your business.
"If the city council approves the money, then you go and fix it; that will be an achievement for you."
"If the city council doesn't approve the funding, or drags its feet on it."
"If someone were to fall into that pit and break their leg someday, you could confidently present that application receipt to the judge, the media, and the injured citizen."
"Look, I applied a long time ago, but the city council won't give me the money."
"The responsibility is not mine."
"The responsibility lies with them."
"I'm setting up a firewall for you, Steve. I'm helping you avoid liability."
Wagner looked at Leo.
He suddenly realized that this young mayor was far more terrifying than he had imagined.
Defeat bureaucracy with bureaucracy.
Using procedural justice to block procedural justice.
But he must admit that this plan is, for him, the only way out at present.
Even if it's a trap, he has to jump in.
Offending Speaker Moretti? That would be very troublesome.
Moretti controls the purse strings; he can humiliate him at the hearing, cut off his department's budget, and even make his future life extremely difficult, forcing him to beg and plead for a few hundred dollars in office expenses every day.
However, Moretti could not fire him.
The city council is a legislative body; it only has the power of approval and oversight, but not the power of personnel appointment and dismissal.
Even if Moretti hated him to the core, all he could do was curse in the meeting room or make things difficult for him on the budget.
But Mayor Wallace in front of us is different.
Pittsburgh has a strong mayoral system.
As the head of administration, Leo wields absolute power over personnel appointments. Ultimately, the position of head of the street maintenance bureau is a political appointment by the mayor.
Leo Wallace didn't even need a complicated hearing process; a simple executive order was enough to get rid of him immediately.
If he refuses Leo today, he will receive a termination notice before even tomorrow morning.
If he had cooperated with Rio, he would have simply passed the buck to Moretti, and could even have used "following the rules" to whitewash himself.
Being scolded by the speaker is a work-related issue.
Being dismissed by the mayor is a matter of survival.
Anyone who isn't a fool can tell which is more important, the lighter or the lighter.
Since someone has to suffer, let that old guy who's been sitting in an air-conditioned room for too long suffer.
"Better to sacrifice your friends than yourself"—that's the first rule for bureaucrats to survive.
Having figured this out, Wagner took a deep breath.
He undid his shirt and straightened his tie.
The bureau chief's authority has returned.
"it is good."
Wagner nodded.
"Mr. Mayor, you are right. We must be responsible for the safety of our citizens."
"I will have my secretary cooperate with your people."
"We'll start working today."
"very good."
Leo nodded in satisfaction.
"Ethan, let's get to work."
The meeting room of the Street Maintenance Bureau was temporarily requisitioned.
Ten laptops were lined up in a row.
Two high-speed printers were moved in.
The assembly line started operating.
Application Number: PW-0001
"Application for repair of missing manhole cover at 452 Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue, Hillside District"
Budget: $850
Risk assessment: Extremely high, involving municipal legal liability.
The keyboard clattered and clicked.
The printer spewed out paper with the rapid, continuous sound of a machine gun.
One after another, meticulously formatted budget application forms were printed out.
Each document was accompanied by the original notification sheet with the photo attached.
Wagner sat at the head of the table, holding the company seal in his hand.
"Snapped!"
stamp.
Next one.
"Snapped!"
stamp.
His movements became increasingly skillful, even carrying a hint of vengeful pleasure.
He recalled Moretti's condescending and indifferent attitude every time he went to the city council to ask for a budget.
I was reminded of Linda Rossi from the Budget and Finance Committee, her nitpicking and finding fault with him like she was holding a magnifying glass.
"Since you like reviewing documents."
Wagner thought viciously to himself.
"Then I'll let you interrogate me to your heart's content!"
"Snapped!"
Another red stamp was applied.
A whole day.
In the office of the street maintenance bureau, papers were piled up like mountains.
Four thousand applications.
Each one is a bullet aimed at the city council.
Five o'clock in the afternoon.
It's time for the city hall to close.
A street maintenance department van pulled up at the back door of the city council office building.
Several young and strong employees carried a dozen or so huge plastic crates into the document receiving area.
Behind the counter, the receptionist on duty was a middle-aged man with a receding hairline. He was staring at the clock on the wall, his hand already on the pull cord of the blinds, ready to end this tedious day.
"Hey, hey, guys, stop."
Upon seeing the group of people, the receiver immediately frowned and tapped the sign in front of him that read "Office Hours".
"Today's deadline for receiving applications has passed. Please come back at 9:00 AM tomorrow."
"Urgent document, must be filed today."
The lead employee didn't stop at all, and directly directed his subordinates to place the heavy boxes heavily on the receiving counter, making a dull "thud".
He took out a three-copy administrative handover form from his pocket and slapped it in front of the receiving clerk.
"An emergency supplemental funding application submitted by the Department of Public Works for the investigation of potential infrastructure hazards throughout the city."
"This is the first batch, a total of four thousand copies."
The receiver's hand, which was about to pick up a pen, froze in mid-air. He looked at the boxes in disbelief, then at his expressionless colleague in front of him.
"How many?"
"Four thousand copies."
"Are you all crazy?!"
The receiver's voice became shrill with shock; he pointed at the boxes and almost jumped up.
"The secretariat of the Budget and Finance Committee only has three assistants! And one of them is on maternity leave! You sent in four thousand applications all at once? How can they possibly process them all?"
"That's their problem, not ours."
The lead employee shrugged, his face completely businesslike.
"These are urgent documents personally signed by our bureau chief, and each one involves potential threats to the lives and safety of citizens. According to municipal regulations, you must sign for them and complete the registration and distribution within 24 hours."
He shoved the pen into the receiver's hand and pointed to the signature column.
"Please sign for this, sir. We need to rush back to handle the next batch."
The receiver looked at the pile of boxes that was almost blocking the window, and his Adam's apple bobbed with difficulty.
He knows the rules.
As long as the document conforms to the format and is stamped, he has no right to refuse to accept it.
He cursed, tremblingly signed his name on the handover form, and stamped it with the "received" seal.
The staff took the receipts back and left.
The receiver looked at the boxes with despair.
Each box had a prominent red "Urgent" label on its side.
Ma Zike.
Mayor's Office.
Leo stood in front of the floor-to-ceiling window, watching the empty car drive away downstairs.
"The first wave of the offensive has begun."
He spoke to his servant in his mind.
"This is just the beginning."
There was a hint of amusement in Pfaff's voice.
"Four thousand documents could cripple their secret service, burn out their copy machines, and turn Moretti's lunch room into hell."
"But that wasn't enough to make him surrender."
"He will try to fight back; he will try to return these documents or find a reason to veto them in bulk."
"Leo, you're engaging in political maneuvering now. Yes, you're using some tactics and tricks."
Busford's voice became loud and powerful.
"But everything you've done wasn't for your own selfish interests."
"You are fighting for the safety of those walking on dilapidated streets, you are fighting for the voices that have been ignored by bureaucracy."
"You are using the momentum of the people to attack a decaying fortress."
"Remember, child."
"As long as you always stand on the side of the people, and as long as every action you take is for their benefit."
"Tan Yao, no matter how strong your opponents are, no matter how cunning they are."
"You will never be Qi."