Committee Of 70 Ignores Voters’ Rights

BY JOE SHAHEELI/ A loose hand-grenade has been dropped into the laps of the City Council Members by Councilman Frank DiCicco, just before that chamber went on summer recess.

The bill calls for the Council to pass on a charter amendment to eliminate the offices. Stand on your head or do whatever you want, in the 60-year-old history of the City charter, only one Council-passed amendment failed and that was, “Should a Mayor be able to hold the office for a third term?”

The Mayor in question then was Frank Rizzo. The major media and everyone worried about Rizzo managed to get out a huge “No” vote.

DiCicco’s reasons are his to explain, but they did not relate to whether or not the City could materially save a couple of million dollars or discharge a few duties more efficiently by eliminating the three row offices that are the Register of Wills, the City Commissioners and the Sheriff.
The bill leaves it to the voters to vote ‘yes’ or ‘no’ for their elimination, without any reasons.

Happy to see this happen is Zachary Stalberg, the highly paid president and CEO of the Committee of 70. He’s now able to get good-government types and his surrogates to begin haranguing the Council Members to move on the bill.

Yet he has failed to honestly document, line by line, any supposed cost savings, where the efficiencies will come in should the row offices be eliminated. He does not address if the Mayor could better handle their magnitude of responsibilities through lieutenants he will need to appoint at expensive salaries to replace the elected officials.

The bill is a godsend for the self-proclaimed election watchdog, the Committee of 70. It justifies 70’s continued existence as a good-government vehicle”, drawing more than enough financial support to insure Stalberg continues to enjoy his $248,733 annual salary and his Vice President Attorney Ellen Mattleman Kaplan her $115,115 salary. It’s possible his Board might give both of them bonuses.

Now let’s look at the foundation on which the Committee of 70 has based its campaign to eliminate these three offices. It’s a report from the Pennsylvania Intergovernmental Cooperation Authority, dated Nov. 2, 2009, entitled A History We Can No Longer Afford: Consolidating Philadelphia’s Row Offices.

Found on the third page of the report was this statement: “Past studies have suggested that consolidating the administrative functions of the row offices would lead to better oversight, a reduction in unnecessary layers of management, and cost savings. In 2004, the report of the Philadelphia 21st Century Review Forum, created by Mayor John F. Street, who understood how to use the powers of the Mayor, recommended the formation of a task force to evaluate whether row offices should be ‘reorganized abolished, or merged into City government. In March 2009, the Committee of 70 issued a report claiming numerous problems with the row offices and recommending their merger into other agencies of the City and 1st Judicial Dist.”

So PICA based its report, which called for the termination of the row offices, in part on earlier charges by the Committee of 70.

On the same page, PICA admitted proponents of maintaining the current system had merit. “These proponents stated the functions of each of these political entities have a policy component and require interaction with other elected positions. Hence only elected leadership can assure necessary independence.”

The PICA report also states, “The City already has the ability to provide oversight and insure accountability via the City Controller, the Civil Service Commission, a Board of Ethics and the Inspector General. City Council, State and Federal agencies also provide financial and programmatic oversight as well.”

The meat of PICA’s critique was based on comparisons to other counties, especially Allegheny, the second-most-populous in Pennsylvania, showing how the change from row offices to management control there reduced costs and increased operating efficiencies. Total saving was $1.2 million annually.

But Philadelphia is not Allegheny Co. Our city is bigger, and has much-bigger headaches.

The Committee of 70 then relied on City Controller Alan Butkovitz’s audits over several years. One of the offices continues to receive an “A” rating from the Controller. Butkovitz’s audits are follow-ups of earlier audits making specific recommendations. The other row offices have put into effect some of his recommendations, although not all.

The Sheriff’s Office, handling millions of dollars annually in revenue, has experienced difficulties in the control of its varied accounts, but continued to make progress with implementing the Controller’s recommendations.

Nevertheless, PICA found the Sheriff’s per-capita costs are only moderately high when compared with other large counties in Pennsylvania. Yet costs, for a sheriff, are not driven by total population. The volume of law-enforcement activities and the volume of property-tax defaults are what really matters. Philadelphia, a large city with high crime and low income, is bound to have a busy Sheriff’s Office, rather than a cheap one, no matter who runs it or how they are chosen.

It is interesting to note the City Controller, now in his second term, has earned wide admiration for the way he has handled his office. It should be noted through all of his audits, Butkovitz has never called for the elimination of any of these three offices.

Since Philadelphia’s wheelers and dealers know each other and meet often at various city and state political and social events, Stalberg wouldn’t be the top newsman he is without using every opportunity to shape PICA’s report in the direction sought by the Committee of 70.

But PICA’s findings weren’t really strong enough to support its recommendations to eliminate these offices. That conclusion must be left to the voters of this City, not the Committee of 70, to decide “whether the need to improve service delivery and achieve long-term fiscal stability outweigh a desire to maintain” the row offices.

City Council has the power to keep the DiCicco bill in Committee, should its sponsor not recall it. Let the voters decide. If there are problems with the row offices, they alone have the right to pass judgment on their officers, every Election Day. The Committee of 70 needs to stop trying to take that prerogative away from them in the name of “good government” while it continues to raise millions for its own coffers.

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