The mailroom in the basement of City Hall.

Several flatbed handcarts blocked the hallway.

They were piled high with securely sealed, brown corrugated cardboard boxes.

A number was written on the side of each box with a black marker. They were budget requests sent over from the Department of Public Works.

The Chief Secretary of the Budget and Finance Committee stood in the aisle, looking at the mountain of requests, and felt a migraine coming on.

He casually pulled a document from an open box.

It was a standard municipal application form with a brightly colored photo attached: a deep pothole on Fifth Avenue in the Hill District.

"Emergency appropriation request for road surface repair. Budget: 800 US Dollars."

The Chief Secretary read the words aloud and scoffed.

He turned to face the council speaker, Thomas Moretti, who had just walked in.

"Mr. Speaker, that young Mayor must be insane."

The Chief Secretary tossed the document back into the box.

"He’s trying to paralyze our system with this low-level ’administrative overload.’ Four thousand applications. If we actually try to process them, the Budget and Finance Committee wouldn’t be able to finish even if we hired ten more temps."

"I suggest we send them all right back."

The Chief Secretary produced a pre-written rejection letter.

"I’ve already thought of the reason: ’Bulk submissions do not conform to fiscal approval regulations. We recommend bundling them into a quarterly budget proposal for resubmission.’"

It was a standard bureaucratic response.

Compliant, reasonable, and it passed the buck as far away as possible.

Moretti stood before the pile of cardboard boxes.

He didn’t speak immediately.

He reached out and picked up the document the Chief Secretary had tossed aside.

He looked at the water-filled pothole in the photo, and at the signature in the applicant field.

"Hold on."

Moretti waved his hand dismissively.

His brow furrowed, a flicker of suspicion in his eyes.

"Don’t take Wallace for a fool."

Moretti’s voice was low.

"He beat Carter Wright, won the primary. He’s not some rookie who just throws tantrums and spams people to annoy them."

"He went to all this trouble." 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝙚𝔀𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝒐𝒎

Moretti pointed at the boxes.

"He mobilized thousands of citizens to take photos, fill out forms, and go through this entire tedious administrative process."

’There must be another motive here.’

Holding the document, Moretti turned and walked out of the mailroom.

He returned to his spacious office on the third floor.

He placed the document on his desk and began to pace around the office.

He was running through scenarios, trying to deconstruct the true intention behind Leo’s move.

’This isn’t an overload.’

Moretti stopped pacing, staring out the window at City Hall.

’It’s a public opinion trap.’

’He’s doing this on purpose.’

Moretti thought he had seen through it all.

"He wants me to reject them."

"As soon as I do what you just suggested—send these documents back or simply ignore them..."

"The very next day, he’ll be standing in front of those damn cameras, holding up these rejected applications."

"He’ll bring all the citizens who filled out the forms in front of the cameras."

"He’ll hold up my rejection letter and tell everyone in Pittsburgh: ’Look, I want to fix your roads. The money is ready. But Speaker Moretti won’t approve it!’"

"He’s directing all the animosity toward me."

Moretti let out a cold laugh.

"This is his roundabout way of asking me for money."

"He wants to use the citizens’ anger to force my hand, to make me sit down and negotiate with him to quell the public outrage. He wants me to pass the budget for his ’Phase Two Revitalization Plan.’"

"He’s playing a game of blackmail with me."

Standing to the side, the Chief Secretary put on an exaggerated expression of sudden understanding at just the right moment.

As an old hand who had been navigating the council for years, he had, of course, seen through the ploy long ago.

But he was even clearer on his own rules for survival: never appear smarter than your boss. The boss needed his moments to shine, to display his wisdom. The secretary’s job was to play the fool who set up the punchline, the supporting actor who provided the steps for the star to ascend.

And so, he played along, furrowing his brow and feigning a look of anxiety and helplessness.

"So that’s what it is! I was almost fooled by that kid’s superficial trick."

The Chief Secretary leaned forward, his tone full of feigned humility as he sought guidance.

"But what should we do, then? If we don’t send the documents back, are we really going to assign people to review them? There are four thousand of them! We could work the entire Finance Committee to death and still not get through them."

"It’s better if we can’t get through them."

Moretti sat back down in his chair, a confident smile spreading across his face—the look of a man in control of the situation.

He felt he had found the perfect solution to break the stalemate.

"We can’t reject them. Rejecting them would be handing him a weapon."

"But we can’t approve them, either. Approval would be surrender. It would be admitting that he’s the one who calls the shots in this city."

Moretti picked up a pen and scribbled a few lines of instructions on a memo pad.

"Notify the mailroom. Create a file for every single application, and send an official receipt to every complainant who filled out a form."

"Make the receipt sound good. Say something like: ’Your request is being given the highest priority by the City Council, and we will begin the review process immediately.’"

The Chief Secretary hesitated. "But if we accept them, we’ll have to process them..."

"Who says we have to process them immediately?"

Moretti cut him off, his tone dripping with cynical mastery of the rules.

"’Given the enormous volume of applications and the city-wide budgetary adjustments involved, the City Council has decided to form a Special Task Force for Infrastructure Hazard Verification.’"

"You go arrange it. Find a few retired engineering auditors, then pick a few of the slowest workers from our own people."