novelnext Chapter 92 The Price of Arrogance
Chapter 92 The Price of Arrogance
Chapter 92 The Price of Arrogance
The underground mailroom of the city council building.
Several flatbed handcarts blocked the passage.
The top was piled high with tightly sealed brown corrugated cardboard boxes.
Each box had a number written on its side in black marker; it was a budget request form from the Department of Public Works.
The Secretary-General of the Budget and Finance Committee stood in the aisle, looking at the pile of application forms, and felt his migraine about to flare up again.
He casually pulled a document out of an open box.
It was a standard municipal application form with a brightly colored photo attached: a pothole on Fifth Avenue in the Hills.
"Emergency funding request for road repairs, budget $800."
The secretary-general read the words aloud and let out a sneer.
He turned around and looked at Speaker Thomas Moretti, who had just walked in.
"Mr. Speaker, that young mayor is probably insane."
The secretary-general threw the document back into the box.
"He's trying to cripple our system with this kind of low-level administrative overload. Four thousand applications—even if the Budget and Finance Committee hired ten more temporary workers, we couldn't finish processing them all."
"I suggest we just return these items."
The Secretary-General produced a pre-prepared letter of refusal.
"I've already come up with the reasons: Batch applications do not comply with fiscal approval regulations; I suggest packaging them into a quarterly budget proposal and resubmitting it."
.
This is a standard bureaucratic response.
It's compliant, reasonable, and allows you to pass the buck far away.
Moretti stood in front of the pile of cardboard boxes.
He didn't speak immediately.
He reached out and picked up the document that the secretary-general had thrown away.
He looked at the deep, waterlogged pit in the photo, and at the signature in the application section.
"Wait a minute."
Moretti waved his hand.
His brows furrowed, and a hint of suspicion flashed in his eyes.
"Don't treat Wallace like a fool."
Moretti's voice was low.
"He beat Cartwright, he won the primaries. He's not the kind of rookie who just throws tantrums and spews spam to disgust people."
"He went through so much trouble."
Moretti pointed to the boxes.
"He mobilized thousands of citizens to take photos, fill out forms, and go through this tedious administrative process."
There must be some other purpose behind this.
Moretti took the document, turned around, and walked out of the mailroom.
He returned to his spacious office on the third floor.
He put the documents on the table and began pacing around the office.
He was analyzing and trying to decipher the true intentions behind Leo's move.
"This is not overload."
Moretti stopped and stared out the window at the city hall.
"This is a media trap."
"He did it on purpose."
Moretti thought he had seen through everything.
He wants me to refuse.
"Once I do as you just suggested, return these documents or ignore them."
"The next day, he'll be standing in front of those damn cameras with these rejected applications in his hand."
"He will invite all the citizens who filled out the forms to be in front of the camera."
"He would hold up my rejection letter and tell all of Pittsburgh: 'Look, I want to build roads for you, the money is all ready, but Speaker Moretti won't approve!'"
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"He's directing all his hatred at me."
Moretti gave a cold laugh.
"He's trying to get money from me indirectly."
"He wants to exploit the public's anger to force me to sit down and negotiate with him in order to quell public discontent and to pass his second phase of the revitalization plan's budget."
"He's playing blackmail with me."
The secretary-general stood to the side, his face displaying an exaggerated expression of sudden realization.
As a seasoned veteran of parliament, he naturally saw through the tricks of the trade long ago.
But he understood his own survival rule even better: never appear smarter than your boss. Bosses need moments to showcase their wisdom, while he needed to be the goofy supporting character, the one who offered the right opportunity at the right time.
So he frowned and pretended to be anxious and helpless.
"So that's how it is! I was almost fooled by that kid's appearance."
The secretary-general leaned forward, his tone full of humility and a desire to learn.
"But what should we do? If we don't return these documents, do we really have to assign people to review them?"
Four thousand cases! Even if everyone on the Finance Committee worked themselves to death, they still couldn't finish reviewing them all.
"It would be better if the review never ended."
Moretti sat back in his chair, a confident smile on his face that suggested he was in control.
He felt he had found the perfect solution to this deadlock.
"We can't refuse; to refuse would be to hand him a knife."
"But we can't approve it either, because approving it would be surrendering, admitting that he's in charge in this city."
Moretti picked up a pen and wrote a few lines of instructions on a sticky note.
"Notify the mailroom to create a file for every application and send a formal receipt to every complainant who fills out a form."
"The reply slip should be written nicely, saying: 'The city council takes your request very seriously, and we will immediately initiate the review process.'"
The secretary-general hesitated for a moment: "But if we accept it, we have to deal with it—"
"Who said that once received, it has to be processed immediately?"
Moretti interrupted him, his tone full of mockery of the rules.
"Given the large number of applications and the fact that they involve citywide budget adjustments, the City Council has decided to establish a special task force to investigate potential infrastructure risks."
"Go and make arrangements to find a few retired engineering auditors, and also pick a few slow workers from our team."
"Tell them that the audit work must be rigorous and meticulous, and that they must be responsible for every penny of taxpayers' money."
"Every potential hazard must be investigated on-site."
"The depth of each pit must be measured with a ruler."
"We have to compare the prices of three suppliers for each bag of cement."
Moretti leaned back in his chair and comfortably spun around.
"drag."
"As long as we are following the procedures, he cannot accuse us of inaction."
"We are conducting a responsible audit."
"At this standard, reviewing three documents a day is fast."
"Four thousand applications?"
"A review process that takes a year or two is normal administrative efficiency."
"By the time we finished the trial, the citizens' anger had long since subsided, and he had already served half of his term as mayor."
"He wants to play by the rules? Then I'll play by the rules with him."
After listening, the secretary-general showed an expression of admiration.
That's what a shrewd politician is like.
It neither gives the opponent any leverage nor concedes any benefits, and it can use this legal procedure to neutralize the opponent's offensive invisibly.
"Understood, Speaker." The Secretary-General picked up the notepad. "I'll make the arrangements right away."
"Go."
Moretti waved.
He watched the secretary-general's departing figure, feeling quite pleased.
He picked up the road repair application from the table and casually tossed it into the to-do list basket next to him.
The basket was already very full.
Moretti believed this was a battle over budget and public opinion.
He thought that as long as he didn't refuse and as long as he showed the right attitude, he would be invincible.
He was completely unaware.
This is a battle over tort law.
The moment he gave the order to "officially accept" and "send a receipt".
He personally confirmed a fatal fact on a legal level: actual notification.
He acknowledged that the city council was aware of these dangers.
Instead of fixing it immediately, they choose to use cumbersome procedures for review and delay.
So what if any accident occurs at these locations?
The city council, which has the power to approve the budget, will bear full legal responsibility for "failure to report" and "deliberate delay".
He personally moved four thousand time bombs into his office and wound them up.
At the same time.
Mayor's Office.
An official letter from the city council was placed on Leo's desk.
The official letter had a very long title: "Regarding the Receipt of Street Maintenance Budget Application Forms from the Public Works Department and the Initiation of a Special Verification Process."
The notification of the order.
Ethan Hawke stood at the table, his brow furrowed.
"Leo, he's stalling."
Ethan pointed to the terms on the official letter.
"Establishing a special verification team, conducting on-site inspections, and cost assessments—this process alone would take at least a year and a half to complete."
"He didn't reject us, but he threw our application into the freezer."
"We won't get the money."
"Our revitalization plan will still be stalled."
Ethan originally thought that the four thousand applications would force Moretti to comply, but he didn't expect that the old fox's skin was thicker than a city wall, and he directly played the soft resistance.
Leo sat in a chair, holding the official letter in his hand.
He looked at Moretti's cursive signature above.
He smiled.
Not only did he laugh, but in his mind, Roosevelt also let out a pleasant laugh.
"The perfect prey."
Roosevelt's voice carried the satisfaction of a hunter watching his prey walk into his trap.
"He not only swallowed the bait, but he also swallowed the hook himself."
Leo slammed the official letter on the table and looked at Ethan.
"The money will come soon."
"And it's a lot of money."
Ethan paused, then asked, "What do you mean? He's clearly stalling."
"Look at this sentence," Leo said, pointing to the first line of the official letter. "The city council has officially received and registered it."
"What does this mean?"
"This means that from this moment on, Moretti admits that he knows."
"He knew that the pothole on Fifth Avenue in the Hills could break a person's leg."
"He knew that a broken streetlight in Brooklyn would lead to robberies."
"He knows everything."
"But instead of immediately allocating funds to fix it, he chose to set up a damn task force to investigate."
"Now, those four thousand danger points have all become time bombs."
"As long as one bomb explodes."
"If even one citizen is injured at any of these locations..."
"Moretti's political life will be blown up."
"But, Leo."
Ethan suddenly interrupted him, his brow furrowed.
"Are we really going to sit here like cold-blooded gamblers, watching innocent civilians get hurt and bleed in those places?"
"Leaving aside how morally cold-blooded this is, from a purely political perspective, it's far too passive; it's practically offering your neck to be chopped off."
"If the media digs into this matter and says that the mayor's office had a list of four thousand danger points but stood by and did nothing, just to scheme against the city council, the public's anger will burn us first."
"The citizens won't care who didn't approve the budget; they'll only see that you're the mayor, and that you knowingly created problems but didn't address them. This kind of attitude makes you too vulnerable to attack."
"You're right, Ethan."
Leo nodded.
"Passive waiting is suicide; it's leaving our fate to chance. Therefore, we cannot wait for the bomb to explode on its own."
"We must keep the detonator in our own hands."
Leo opened the drawer of his desk.
He took out a crumpled piece of paper from it.
That was the phone number the old sanitation worker on Grant Street had left him.
The old man's wife broke her leg after falling into a pit.
Although that happened before this application was submitted, he had submitted a repair notice before, not to mention that the pit was also included in this application list.
Moreover, that pit still hasn't been repaired.
Leo took the note and stood up.
"The first victim is right here."
"Ethan, get me in touch with the best personal injury lawyer in Pittsburgh."
"I want to help a citizen with a lawsuit."
"A lawsuit against the municipal government for inaction."
Ethan looked at the note in Leo's hand, then at the official letter on the table.
He finally realized what was happening.
Leo wasn't after the millions of dollars in road construction money at all.
This is to create a legal precedent.
"That move—" Ethan gasped, "That was ruthless."
"This is the only way to deal with thugs."
Leo picked up the phone and dialed the number.
"Good evening, is this Mr. Smith?"
Leo's voice was steady and powerful, exuding an unquestionable authority.
"I am Leo Wallace."
"Mayor of Pittsburgh"
"You told me that your wife broke her leg because of that damn pothole in the road, and that you complained to the city hall a hundred times but no one paid any attention."
"I'm calling you now to discuss this matter."
"I checked the records, and the pit is still there, your wife is still suffering, and the city hall still hasn't compensated you a single penny."
"That's not fair, Mr. Smith."
"Therefore, I have already connected you with the best personal injury lawyer in all of Pittsburgh."
"I want to help you with a lawsuit."
"We are going to sue Pittsburgh City Hall."
"That's right."
"Although I am the mayor, I will stand on the side of the people and sue Pittsburgh City Hall."
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