Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl's office declined today to fully address questions surrounding a recently announced competitive process for choosing Valentine's Day marketing consultants.

The program, announced in a late-morning press release, was billed as an effort to commemorate the city's so-called 250th anniversary. A release said the mayor is "asking for your answer to the question: Why do you love Pittsburgh?" It said authors of the 10 "most unique, exciting, romantic or unusual Pittsburgh Valentines" will get a "noontime reception" with Mr. Ravenstahl on Feb. 13. Their paeans to Pittsburgh will be posted on the city's Web site, a portal that has, in the past, been criticized for excessive adoration of the mayor.

"Everyone who knows me knows how much I love Pittsburgh," Mr. Ravenstahl said in his release. "We wanted to take advantage of the Valentine's Day holiday to mark our 250th anniversary in a way that both promotes Pittsburgh and includes our communities."

Entries are due Feb. 5, and can be submitted at www.pghgov.com or by mail to Pittsburgh Valentines, Mayor's Office, City-County Building, 414 Grant Street, Pittsburgh, PA, 15219. "No phone calls will be accepted," according to the release, for reasons that were not explained.

It was not immediately clear whether "noontime reception" is synonymous with "lunch," and if so, which line item in the $424 million city budget would be tapped to cover expenses related to the event. Though the city has a $100 million fund balance, the state-picked Intergovernmental Cooperation Authority has not voted on a Valentine's Day contest trust fund, and no such initiative appears in the five-year plan crafted by the Act 47 recovery team and approved by City Council in 2004.

Mayoral spokeswoman Alecia Sirk wrote that the administration is "hoping for a donation on the reception." The city has been negotiating with local nonprofit groups on their contributions.

The release did not provide the names of the mayoral staffers involved in the bid evaluation process. The mayor's office would not immediately say whether meetings at which the entries will be evaluated would be open to the public, as most decision-making gatherings must under the state Sunshine Act. Ms. Sirk indicated that the administration may not classify the process "in terms of a meeting," possibly evading the Sunshine Act.

State law does not require that municipalities reveal the details of proposals by losing bidders in competitive processes. However, Early Returns today consulted legal opinions to determine whether correspondence to the mayor, in response to a public solicitation of amorous prose, would fall within the Right-to-Know Act, allowing public access to the losing entries, and potential scrutiny of the administration's decisions and examination of whether they favored members of the Democratic Committee. The mayor's office stopped short of promising access to the losing entries.

Ms. Sirk said she'll "check with [city solicitor] George [Specter], but I guess when we call people re: their entry, we'll have to ask them if we can release their response to the media?"

Some city of Pittsburgh employees who checked their bank balances this morning may have been tempted to run out and buy a big-screen TV or put a downpayment on that boat they've been eyeing. And that's not because of the 2.5 percent raises a lot of them got.

A mistake in processing some computer changes that had to be made for the year's first payroll caused double payments to all of the city workers with direct deposit. That's nearly all of the city's 3,300 employees.

Ceridian Corp., the city's payroll contractor, tried to promptly retract the extra payments, and some banks were able to keep the accidental bonus from remaining in accounts. Other banks weren't as quick on the draw, according to mayoral spokeswoman Alecia Sirk, who didn't immediately know precisely how many employees still had extra money in their accounts as of this morning.

"It's all going to be remedied in the next day," she said. "There has been communication with the employees that this happened." An e-mail alerting them to the glitch went out this morning, she said.

For those that didn't check their e-mail but are reading this blog (which, as loyal readers know, is one of the few they can read on their work computers) Early Returns urges you not to touch the extra money, and ABSOLUTELY NOT to take it to bingo, poker, or a stockbroker.

Tourism is the second leading industry in Pennsylvania, after only agriculture. So Gov. Ed Rendell is planning a conference in early May on how to lure even more tourists -- and their money-- to see sites such as the Gettysburg battlefield, Fort Necessity, the Liberty Bell, the Hershey chocolate plant, the Lancaster Amish farms, the fountain at the three rivers in Pittsburgh, Presque Isle in Erie and other attractions.,

He's calling it "Destination Pennsylvania," and it will be held May 4-6 in Gettysburg.

"The future of Pennsylvania's great places depends, in part, on our ability to transform local economies and create jobs through tourism revenue," Mr. Rendell said.

The conference will bring together public and private officials, industry experts and media representatives from around the state.

"We are breaking the traditional conference mold with planned off-site visits to area attractions to provide attendees a look at working models for turning the character of a community into an economic development success," the governor said.

For more information, e-mail at destinationPA@state.pa.us or call 800-237-4363.

Sort of along the same lines is a public exhibit of paintings that depict Frank Lloyd Wright's architectural masterpiece, Fallingwater, which will open at the State Museum in Harrisburg on Jan. 30 and run through March 22. The museum is across the street from the Capitol.

The Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission will sponsor "Fallingwater en Perspective," with pictures done by Spanish artist Felix de la Concha. He spent more than a year at Fallingwater in Fayette County doing the paintings.

"The exhibition in Harrisburg is the first stop of a traveling display, which opened at the Barn at Fallingwater in Bear Run," said Barbara Franco, commission director.

Fallingwater was designed in 1935 for the Edgar J. Kaufmann family of Pittsburgh. Mr. de la Concha also has exhibited his work at four other Pittsburgh locations: the Carnegie Museum of Art, the Frick Art and Historical Center, the old Masonic Temple, and a work called The Last Supper at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center.