Embattled Pittsburgh Urban Redevelopment Authority Executive Director Pat Ford today strongly suggested that he was "smeared" about his receipt of gifts from a billboard executive as a result of his efforts to blow the whistle on Pittsburgh Housing Authority practices.

At an interview in the Downtown office of his attorney, Lawrence Fisher of Cohen and Willwerth, Mr. Ford laid out a chronology tying the emergence last week of news stories regarding his friendship with Lamar Advertising Real Estate Manager Jim Vlasach to an April 8 meeting he had at the Allegheny County District Attorney's office at which he laid out what he described as "irregularities" in spending and project management.

"Within 20 hours, I am smeared by everybody after 20 years of exemplary public service," he said, shaking his head. "I'm temporarily excused from being the executive director of the URA pending an ethics investigation of a $200 gift from a friend."

Mr. Ford is now on paid leave pending a State Ethics Commission review of his receipt of the gifts including a surround sound system, neckties and cigars to determine whether they comply with state rules. In December, Lamar won a controversial permit to put a sign on the Grant Street Transportation Center, Downtown, which is now the subject of a zoning appeal filed by five members of Pittsburgh City Council.

The gift story broke in part because Mr. Ford's wife, former mayoral press secretary Alecia Sirk, mentioned her receipt of a surround sound system from Mr. Vlasach on her Internet blog.

Mr. Ford was chairman of the board of the Housing Authority before resigning from that post last week, under pressure from federal officials. Today he chronicled a bureaucratic battle with that agency's executive director, A. Fulton Meachem Jr., that preceded the news stories on the gift and the investigation.

Since early March, Mr. Ford has been seeking a "forensic audit" of the Housing Authority's spending and practices. He said Mr. Meachem and board allies resisted that audit, and he could not get a resolution to conduct it on the agency's agenda.

Mr. Meachem denied any resistance to an audit. "To my knowledge, there's no criminal behavior, no misconduct at this agency," said Mr. Meachem.

Mr. Ford said that when he arrived at the authority board's March 27 meeting, he was presented with a legal opinion dated two days earlier suggesting that his service on that panel was a conflict of interest, because the URA does business with the authority. So he did not attend the meeting.

The federal Department of Housing and Urban Department followed up with a letter of April 7 saying he should leave the board due to the conflict.

Mr. Ford said that on April 8, he "blew the whistle on the Housing Authority and I approached the District Attorney's office." He said he reported "irregularities in spending, inappropriate lobbying of board members for lucrative contracts, reckless mismanagement of a multi-million-dollar project in Garfield, where I had to step in at the last minute to keep it from [having severe financial problems]." He said people knew for some time before that he was prepared to expose what he viewed as problems in the agency.

"A day later, my wife's [Internet] blog mysteriously appears after six months [when it was not readily available online], and my wife was contacted and threatened that if she did not, or I did not comment on the entries in the blog, then they would be released publicly."

He would not say who threatened him. It has previously been reported that Internet blogger Bram Reichbaum first approached Ms. Sirk about her blog entry describing the gift of the surround sound system.

Mr. Reichbaum said he never made anything resembling a threat. He said he asked about her blog, and he is a news blogger. "The implication was that I was at least thinking about writing about it."

Mr. Meachem said the authority "hasn't done anything and will not do anything to jeopardize" Mr. Ford. The agency didn't know about the gifts until after the media reported about them, he said.

The anonymous Internet blogger known as The Burgher today released a chronology described as pointing to "significant holes in Pat Ford's story that he was 'smeared' because of his efforts to blow the whistle on Pittsburgh Housing Authority spending."

The blog The Burgh Report got a copy of Ms. Sirk's blog from an anonymous source in February, and then shared it with some media members, prior to any public calls for an audit of the authority, The Burgher wrote.

The Burgh Report author indicated that he learned from sources "unrelated to the Housing Authority" that a gift from Mr. Vlasach was referenced in the blog. Mr. Reichbaum then interviewed Ms. Sirk at around 2 p.m. on April 7, the day before Mr. Ford approached the district attorney.

The Burgher and Mr. Reichbaum heard that the media was working on the story, and decided to hold off on putting it on their blogs. Then Mr. Ford went to the Tribune-Review and offered up his side of the story of his relationship with Mr. Vlasach.

Mr. Ford said his leave of absence hasn't been handled as well as he'd hoped by the administration.

He said the URA agreed to help him file a request for an inquiry with the State Ethics Commission, but then the agency went ahead and filed it without his input. Instead, he said, his wife got a phone call "telling Alecia that Pat Ford needs to follow up with the General Counsel of the URA because he has already filed the paperwork and he didn't even contact me."

"Pat sought the [Ethics Commission] determination himself to clear his name on the issue of gifts, a good idea and one that the URA board accepted on his recommendation," said city Chief of Staff Yarone Zober, who is also the board chair of the URA.

Mr. Ford said his access to the tools of doing his job was shut off abruptly. "Phone's turned off. I can't even get to my calendar where I keep my doctor's appointments," he said. He said he hasn't been able to access his e-mail.

"Once he voluntarily took his paid leave pending the determination, we discussed his use of Authority property and he agreed" to relinquish a publicly owned vehicle he used and other tools, said Mr. Zober. "We sympathize with Pat and his family as this must be an extraordinarily difficult time for them."

Mr. Ford said he will cooperate fully with the ethics probe. "I just want the chance to get my job back," Mr. Ford said. "I have nothing to hide."