Ranking the Mayoral Candidates_Ethics
1
S everal years ago, Philadelphia was so mired in a cul- ture of quid pro quo that it was barely governable. A federal investigation into former Mayor John Street’s adminis- tration yielded 24 convic- tions, but it did not eradi- cate the culture. Although Mayor Nutter has done much to clean it up, the next mayor cannot relent. One key sign of a mayoral candidate’s commitment to honest government is sup- port for a more powerful, in- dependent government watchdog through a perma- nent city Inspector Gener- al’s Office. A 2013 proposal to accomplish that was dropped like a cash-stuffed envelope when it went be- fore City Council. That’s part- ly because an inspector gen- eral enshrined in the City Charter could investigate Council. Since 2008, the Inspector General’s Office has saved taxpayers more than $50 mil- lion and forced more than 200 badly behaving city em- ployees off the payroll. But the office operates under an executive order and there- fore could be dropped by a future mayor. In response to an Editori- al Board questionnaire, all the mayoral candidates say they support making the In- spector General’s Office per- manent (except Milton Street, who did not partici- pate). However, former Dis- trict Attorney Lynne Abra- ham hedges on changing the City Charter, saying that question “should be evaluat- ed by a commission to con- sider the charter as a whole.” Her full answer, and those of the other candi- dates, are featured on to- day’s op-ed page. Former Judge Nelson Diaz advocates the addition- al step of combining the functions of the city’s inspec- tor general, chief integrity of- ficer, and Ethics Board into a sort of ethics czar position. The plan is worth consider- ing as long as the watchdogs remain independent. As a former city council- man, Jim Kenney is the only candidate who had a chance to advance the cause direct- ly. He deserves credit for sponsoring a bill to include the inspector general in the charter, though he could not persuade his colleagues to pass it. Marketing consultant Me- lissa Murray Bailey, the lone Republican in the field, pro- poses a welcome extension of the inspector general’s reach to other city offices, including those of the dis- trict attorney, city controller, sheriff, and register of wills; former Philadelphia Gas Works executive Doug Oliv- er also suggests an expan- sion of the office’s purview. These agencies have long operated without sufficient independent oversight. State Sen. Anthony Will- iams and Diaz offer an addi- tional ethics proposal, say- ing they would prohibit offi- cials from taking outside jobs with city contractors. It’s an idea that is overdue as well as a jab at Kenney, who worked for an architec- tural firm that did work for the city while on Council. Nutter has set Philadel- phia on a course toward government that puts the city’s interests before spe- cial interests. Now voters have to hold the candidates responsible for continuing the journey. H.F. “Gerry” Lenfest PUBLISHER Mark Frisby ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER Stan Wischnowski VICE PRESIDENT, NEWS OPERATIONS William K. Marimow EDITOR Sandra M. Clark MANAGING EDITOR / FEATURES, OPERATIONS, AND DIGITAL Gabriel Escobar MANAGING EDITOR / NEWS AND DIGITAL Tom McNamara DEPUTY MANAGING EDITOR / SUNDAY AND SPORTS Harold Jackson EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR Acel Moore ASSOCIATE EDITOR EMERITUS J im Brulte, California’s Re- publican chairman, has so- bering but useful words for his party’s leaders and 2016 candidates: If they don’t learn from what happened to the GOP here, they may doom them- selves to repeating its decidedly un- pleasant experience. “California is the leading edge of the country’s demographic chang- es,” Brulte said in an interview. “Frankly, Republicans in California did not react quickly enough to them, and we have paid a horri- ble price.” One measure of the cost: In the three presi- dential elections of the 1980s, California voted twice for Ronald Reagan and once for George H. W. Bush. The state has not gone Republican since, and it won’t get any easier in 2016. The hole is deep enough that Brulte has concentrated his own en- ergies on rebuilding the party from the bottom up. He has enjoyed some real successes at the local and county levels, and the GOP eliminat- ed the Democrats’ veto-proof major- ities in the state legislature in the 2014 midterms. But the Republicans are still vast- ly outnumbered in both houses — 25-14 in the state Senate, 52-28 in the Assembly — and the Democrats picked up a seat in 2014 in the U.S. House of Representatives. They have won all of California’s state- wide offices in three of the last four elections. The last time that hap- pened: 1882. The principal cause of the GOP’s troubles is its alienation of Latinos, Asian Americans, and African Amer- icans in a state whose population is now majority nonwhite. Republi- cans can win in 2016 without carry- ing California, but the party’s strug- gles here highlight the extent to which the GOP is making its life in presidential years very difficult with its increasingly hard line on immigration, its image as a bastion of older, white conservatives, and its solicitude of Americans with very high incomes. When House Re- publicans in Washington voted to repeal the estate tax last week, they were helping all of 5,400 of the wealthiest households in America, not exactly a move with mass ap- peal. As has often been the case in American history, California is sim- ply the harbinger of changes — in this case demographic — that are happening more slowly elsewhere. “The one thing no one can stop,” says Rep. Ted Lieu, a Democrat who was elected to Congress in the Los Angeles area in 2014, “is that every month, the rest of America looks more like California.” The Republicans’ prob- lem with Latino voters is especially pronounced here. The passage of Proposition 187 in 1994 with the strong support of Republi- can Gov. Pete Wilson — the ballot measure barred illegal immigrants from a variety of state services — simultaneously alienated Hispanic voters from the GOP and mobilized many of them into the political pro- cess. The same thing is now happening nationally. The growing anti-immi- grant sentiment in the GOP has cut the Republicans’ share of the Latino vote from the 40 percent range for George W. Bush to 27 percent for Mitt Romney in 2012. The party’s strenuous opposition to President Obama’s executive actions on immi- gration will only make this problem more acute. But even more remarkably, Re- publicans have also suffered severe declines among Asian Americans. According to the exit polls, a majori- ty of Asian Americans voted for George H.W. Bush in 1988. But in 2012, Romney won only 26 percent of their ballots. Rep. Xavier Becerra, a Democrat whose Los Angeles district includes Koreatown, Little Tokyo, China- town, and Historic Filipinotown, notes that when he was first elected to Congress in 1992, a large share of Asian Americans leaned Republi- can. That’s no longer true, and both Becerra and Lieu pinpointed the im- migration issue as the primary cause for the shift. Republican opposition to the Dream Act, designed to give relief to illegal immigrants brought to the United States as minors, especially rankled Asian Americans, Lieu said: “Republicans were saying, ‘Come support us, we like you, but we want to deport your children.’ ” Brulte thus takes particular pride in his outreach efforts to Asian Americans. His party’s victorious legislative candidates last year in- cluded state Sen. Janet Nguyen, a Vietnamese American, and Young Kim, the first Korean American Re- publican woman to serve in the Cali- fornia Legislature. But this was only a start, and as 2016 approaches, every GOP candi- date should tack this reminder from Brulte on a headquarters wall: “In 2012, Mitt Romney carried 59 percent of the white vote and he carried independents. In 2004, this would have elected him president. In 2000, it would have given him an Electoral College landslide. In 2012, it gave him second place.” E.J. Dionne is a Washington Post columnist. +[email protected] "@EJDionne Amy Kurland, the city’s inspector general. File EDITORIAL BOARD Harold Jackson EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR Josh Gohlke DEPUTY EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR Kevin Ferris ASSISTANT EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR Russell Cooke SENIOR EDITORIAL WRITER Cynthia Burton EDITORIAL WRITER Trudy Rubin COLUMNIST By Renee Amoore L ists of the most important inventions of the past 115 years include the afford- able automobile, the electric lightbulb (along with the grid to power it), and the Internet. While advances in technology have made today’s cars far faster, safer, and more fuel-efficient than their distant relatives that first rolled off the assembly line, the basics of most cars are the same: four rubber tires, an internal com- bustion engine, a steering wheel, a windshield, and so on. It’s been 135 years since Tho- mas Edison received a patent for a lightbulb, but only recently have they begun to evolve from their incandescent roots into LED bulbs. But the concept re- mains the same: You screw a lightbulb into a socket (imagine trying to get that through the maze of safety and consumer agencies today!) and, voilà, light. The Internet, however, has evolved far more quickly. The first Internet message was sent in 1969 from a computer at the University of California, Los An- geles, to a computer at Stanford. Those two computers were the first two — the only two — nodes on the Internet. Today the Internet is a worldwide techno- logical wonder that we nearly take for granted. According to the Internet Society, there are more than three billion — billion — Internet users around the world. During that time, the Internet has gone from a tool for the gov- ernment and academic institu- tions to a toy for hobbyists to (following the passage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996) a basic system to move information among people, insti- tutions, and businesses. Since 1996, when the Internet became available for commer- cial use, the growth, penetra- tion, speed, bandwidth, and ser- vices available have all been funded by publicly traded com- panies. With the Internet’s rapid development, there has also been infinite possibility. When I founded the nonprofit Ramsey Educational Develop- ment Institute (REDI) in 1998, we envisioned a way to unite the affordability and accessibility of the Internet to empower individ- uals. Today, we provide vocation- al, educational, and life skills to help more than 5,000 people im- prove themselves and the lives of those around them. REDI is only one small example of the power that can be harnessed when people — not the govern- ment — are permitted to let an idea and the Internet come to- gether and grow. There are countless other examples of how the Internet is helping develop ideas, industries, and jobs in our region and around the country. To show how important the In- ternet has been to the common- wealth economically, consider that the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis estimated the gross domestic product of Pennsylva- nia in 1997 — in the infancy of the Internet — at $3.5 billion. It estimated Pennsylvania’s GDP in 2013, with the Internet in full flower, at $6.4 billion. That is an increase of nearly 83 percent. Unfortunately, in February, the Federal Communications Commission, chaired by Thomas Wheeler, took the astonishing step of removing the Internet from the hands of the organiza- tions that have built it into the most important information ser- vice in history and declared it a “telecommunications service,” meaning it will fall under the same regulatory concept as tele- phones when the new rules go into effect in June. With the government’s involve- ment, we risk making the Inter- net less accessible and more ex- pensive. Do we really want to make people who are already struggling to gain Internet ac- cess struggle more? The future of the Internet should not be in the hands of three unelected commissioners. Nor should the Internet’s future be tied up in the inevitable court proceedings that are taking shape as a result of the commis- sion’s unilateral action. The change is too massive; the ser- vice is too crucial. Instead, Congress should make it clear that it has the authority to shape the future of the Inter- net. And currently there are bills — with Democratic and Republi- can support — working their way through House and Senate com- mittees to do just that. Rather than allowing perhaps years for the FCC’s unilateral de- cision to work its way through the federal courts, Congress can solve this in a matter of months. If not, it is likely that the invest- ment necessary to maintain the consistent innovation and inven- tion that has created the Inter- net we know today — and the Internet we can’t even imagine tomorrow — will slow to a trick- le as investors wait to see how it all comes out. Congress should act soon. The Internet is too important to its three billion users — including the parents, children, and sib- lings who rely on it for life-im- proving training and skills at REDI — to be stuck in the courts. Renee Amoore is president of the Amoore Group. +[email protected] COMMENTARY E.J. DIONNE "@EJDionne Inquirer.com/opinion "@PhillyInquirer MONTE WOLVERTON / Cagle Cartoons A watchdog with teeth Don’t let FCC slow innovation of the Internet FCC Chairman Thomas Wheeler testifying before Congress. Bloomberg Calif. trends should worry GOP George H.W. Bush, in 1988, was the last GOP presidential candidate to win California. Associated Press | EDITORIAL A permanent, independent Inspector General’s Office is crucial to honest city government. A14 | THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER | TUESDAY, APRIL 21, 2015 C | PHILLY.COM
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Transcript of Ranking the Mayoral Candidates_Ethics
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Several years ago,Philadelphia wasso mired in a cul-ture of quid proquo that it was
barely governable. A federalinvestigation into formerMayor John Streets adminis-tration yielded 24 convic-tions, but it did not eradi-cate the culture. AlthoughMayor Nutter has donemuch to clean it up, the nextmayor cannot relent.One key sign of a mayoral
candidates commitment tohonest government is sup-port for a more powerful, in-dependent governmentwatchdog through a perma-nent city Inspector Gener-als Office. A 2013 proposalto accomplish that wasdropped like a cash-stuffedenvelope when it went be-fore City Council. Thats part-
ly because an inspector gen-eral enshrined in the CityCharter could investigateCouncil.Since 2008, the Inspector
Generals Office has savedtaxpayersmore than $50mil-lion and forced more than200 badly behaving city em-ployees off the payroll. Butthe office operates under anexecutive order and there-fore could be dropped by afuture mayor.In response to an Editori-
al Board questionnaire, allthe mayoral candidates saythey support making the In-spector Generals Office per-manent (except MiltonStreet, who did not partici-pate). However, former Dis-trict Attorney Lynne Abra-ham hedges on changing theCity Charter, saying thatquestion should be evaluat-ed by a commission to con-sider the charter as awhole. Her full answer, andthose of the other candi-dates, are featured on to-days op-ed page.Former Judge Nelson
Diaz advocates the addition-al step of combining thefunctions of the citys inspec-tor general, chief integrity of-ficer, and Ethics Board intoa sort of ethics czar position.The plan is worth consider-ing as long as the watchdogsremain independent.
As a former city council-man, Jim Kenney is the onlycandidate who had a chanceto advance the cause direct-ly. He deserves credit forsponsoring a bill to includethe inspector general in thecharter, though he could notpersuade his colleagues topass it.Marketing consultant Me-
lissa Murray Bailey, the loneRepublican in the field, pro-poses a welcome extensionof the inspector generalsreach to other city offices,including those of the dis-trict attorney, city controller,sheriff, and register of wills;former Philadelphia GasWorks executive Doug Oliv-er also suggests an expan-sion of the offices purview.These agencies have longoperated without sufficientindependent oversight.State Sen. Anthony Will-
iams and Diaz offer an addi-tional ethics proposal, say-ing they would prohibit offi-cials from taking outsidejobs with city contractors.Its an idea that is overdueas well as a jab at Kenney,who worked for an architec-tural firm that did work forthe city while on Council.Nutter has set Philadel-
phia on a course towardgovernment that puts thecitys interests before spe-cial interests. Now votershave to hold the candidatesresponsible for continuingthe journey.
H.F. Gerry Lenfest PUBLISHERMark Frisby ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER
StanWischnowski VICE PRESIDENT, NEWS OPERATIONSWilliamK.Marimow EDITOR
SandraM. Clark MANAGING EDITOR / FEATURES, OPERATIONS, AND DIGITALGabriel Escobar MANAGING EDITOR / NEWS AND DIGITAL
TomMcNamara DEPUTY MANAGING EDITOR / SUNDAY AND SPORTS
Harold Jackson EDITORIAL PAGE EDITORAcelMoore ASSOCIATE EDITOR EMERITUS
Jim Brulte, Californias Re-publican chairman, has so-bering but useful words forhis partys leaders and 2016candidates: If they dont
learn from what happened to theGOP here, they may doom them-selves to repeating its decidedly un-pleasant experience.California is the leading edge of
the countrys demographic chang-es, Brulte said in an interview.Frankly, Republicans inCalifornia did not reactquickly enough to them,and we have paid a horri-ble price.One measure of the
cost: In the three presi-dential elections of the1980s, California votedtwice for Ronald Reaganand once for George H. W.Bush. The state has notgone Republican since,and it wont get any easier in 2016.The hole is deep enough that
Brulte has concentrated his own en-ergies on rebuilding the party fromthe bottom up. He has enjoyedsome real successes at the local andcounty levels, and the GOP eliminat-ed the Democrats veto-proof major-ities in the state legislature in the2014 midterms.But the Republicans are still vast-
ly outnumbered in both houses 25-14 in the state Senate, 52-28 inthe Assembly and the Democratspicked up a seat in 2014 in the U.S.House of Representatives. Theyhave won all of Californias state-wide offices in three of the last fourelections. The last time that hap-pened: 1882.The principal cause of the GOPs
troubles is its alienation of Latinos,Asian Americans, and African Amer-icans in a state whose population isnow majority nonwhite. Republi-cans can win in 2016 without carry-ing California, but the partys strug-gles here highlight the extent towhich the GOP is making its life inpresidential years very difficultwith its increasingly hard line onimmigration, its image as a bastion
of older, white conservatives, andits solicitude of Americans withvery high incomes. When House Re-publicans in Washington voted torepeal the estate tax last week, theywere helping all of 5,400 of thewealthiest households in America,not exactly a move with mass ap-peal.As has often been the case in
American history, California is sim-ply the harbinger of changes in
this case demographic that are happening moreslowly elsewhere.The one thing no one
can stop, says Rep. TedLieu, a Democrat who waselected to Congress in theLos Angeles area in 2014,is that every month, therest of America looksmore like California.The Republicans prob-
lem with Latino voters isespecially pronounced here. Thepassage of Proposition 187 in 1994with the strong support of Republi-can Gov. Pete Wilson the ballotmeasure barred illegal immigrantsfrom a variety of state services simultaneously alienated Hispanicvoters from the GOP and mobilizedmany of them into the political pro-cess.The same thing is now happening
nationally. The growing anti-immi-grant sentiment in the GOP has cutthe Republicans share of the Latinovote from the 40 percent range forGeorge W. Bush to 27 percent forMitt Romney in 2012. The partysstrenuous opposition to PresidentObamas executive actions on immi-gration will only make this problemmore acute.But even more remarkably, Re-
publicans have also suffered severedeclines among Asian Americans.According to the exit polls, a majori-ty of Asian Americans voted forGeorge H.W. Bush in 1988. But in2012, Romney won only 26 percentof their ballots.Rep. Xavier Becerra, a Democrat
whose Los Angeles district includesKoreatown, Little Tokyo, China-
town, and Historic Filipinotown,notes that when he was first electedto Congress in 1992, a large share ofAsian Americans leaned Republi-can. Thats no longer true, and bothBecerra and Lieu pinpointed the im-migration issue as the primarycause for the shift.Republican opposition to the
Dream Act, designed to give reliefto illegal immigrants brought to theUnited States as minors, especiallyrankled Asian Americans, Lieusaid: Republicans were saying,Come support us, we like you, butwe want to deport your children. Brulte thus takes particular pride
in his outreach efforts to AsianAmericans. His partys victoriouslegislative candidates last year in-cluded state Sen. Janet Nguyen, aVietnamese American, and YoungKim, the first Korean American Re-publican woman to serve in the Cali-fornia Legislature.But this was only a start, and as
2016 approaches, every GOP candi-date should tack this reminderfrom Brulte on a headquarters wall:In 2012, Mitt Romney carried 59
percent of the white vote and hecarried independents. In 2004, thiswould have elected him president.In 2000, it would have given him anElectoral College landslide. In 2012,it gave him second place.
E.J. Dionne is a Washington [email protected]"@EJDionne
Amy Kurland, the citysinspector general. File
EDITORIAL BOARDHarold JacksonEDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
Josh GohlkeDEPUTY EDITORIALPAGE EDITOR
Kevin FerrisASSISTANT EDITORIALPAGE EDITOR
Russell CookeSENIOR EDITORIAL WRITER
Cynthia BurtonEDITORIAL WRITER
Trudy RubinCOLUMNIST
By Renee Amoore
L ists of the most importantinventions of the past 115years include the afford-able automobile, the electriclightbulb (along with the grid topower it), and the Internet.While advances in technology
have made todays cars far faster,safer, and more fuel-efficient thantheir distant relatives that firstrolled off the assembly line, thebasics of most cars are the same:four rubber tires, an internal com-bustion engine, a steering wheel,a windshield, and so on.Its been 135 years since Tho-
mas Edison received a patentfor a lightbulb, but only recentlyhave they begun to evolve fromtheir incandescent roots intoLED bulbs. But the concept re-mains the same: You screw alightbulb into a socket (imaginetrying to get that through themaze of safety and consumeragencies today!) and, voil,light.The Internet, however, has
evolved far more quickly. Thefirst Internet message was sentin 1969 from a computer at theUniversity of California, Los An-geles, to a computer at Stanford.Those two computers were thefirst two the only two nodes on the Internet. Today theInternet is a worldwide techno-
logical wonder that we nearlytake for granted. According tothe Internet Society, there aremore than three billion billion Internet users around theworld.During that time, the Internet
has gone from a tool for the gov-ernment and academic institu-tions to a toy for hobbyists to(following the passage of theTelecommunications Act of1996) a basic system to moveinformation among people, insti-tutions, and businesses.Since 1996, when the Internet
became available for commer-cial use, the growth, penetra-tion, speed, bandwidth, and ser-vices available have all beenfunded by publicly traded com-panies. With the Internets rapiddevelopment, there has alsobeen infinite possibility.When I founded the nonprofit
Ramsey Educational Develop-ment Institute (REDI) in 1998,we envisioned a way to unite theaffordability and accessibility ofthe Internet to empower individ-uals. Today, we provide vocation-al, educational, and life skills tohelp more than 5,000 people im-prove themselves and the livesof those around them. REDI isonly one small example of thepower that can be harnessedwhen people not the govern-ment are permitted to let an
idea and the Internet come to-gether and grow. There arecountless other examples of howthe Internet is helping developideas, industries, and jobs in ourregion and around the country.To show how important the In-
ternet has been to the common-wealth economically, considerthat the Federal Reserve Bankof St. Louis estimated the grossdomestic product of Pennsylva-nia in 1997 in the infancy ofthe Internet at $3.5 billion. Itestimated Pennsylvanias GDPin 2013, with the Internet in fullflower, at $6.4 billion. That is anincrease of nearly 83 percent.Unfortunately, in February,
the Federal CommunicationsCommission, chaired by Thomas
Wheeler, took the astonishingstep of removing the Internetfrom the hands of the organiza-tions that have built it into themost important information ser-vice in history and declared it atelecommunications service,meaning it will fall under thesame regulatory concept as tele-phones when the new rules gointo effect in June.With the governments involve-
ment, we risk making the Inter-net less accessible and more ex-pensive. Do we really want tomake people who are alreadystruggling to gain Internet ac-cess struggle more?The future of the Internet
should not be in the hands ofthree unelected commissioners.
Nor should the Internets futurebe tied up in the inevitable courtproceedings that are takingshape as a result of the commis-sions unilateral action. Thechange is too massive; the ser-vice is too crucial.Instead, Congress should make
it clear that it has the authorityto shape the future of the Inter-net. And currently there are bills with Democratic and Republi-can support working their waythrough House and Senate com-mittees to do just that.Rather than allowing perhaps
years for the FCCs unilateral de-cision to work its way throughthe federal courts, Congress cansolve this in a matter of months.If not, it is likely that the invest-ment necessary to maintain theconsistent innovation and inven-tion that has created the Inter-net we know today and theInternet we cant even imaginetomorrow will slow to a trick-le as investors wait to see how itall comes out.Congress should act soon. The
Internet is too important to itsthree billion users includingthe parents, children, and sib-lings who rely on it for life-im-proving training and skills atREDI to be stuck in the courts.
Renee Amoore is president of theAmoore [email protected]
COMMENTARY
E.J. DIONNE"@EJDionne
Inquirer.com/opinion"@PhillyInquirer
MONTE WOLVERTON / Cagle Cartoons
A watchdogwith teeth
Dont let FCC slow innovation of the Internet
FCC Chairman Thomas Wheeler testifying before Congress. Bloomberg
Calif. trends should worry GOP
George H.W. Bush, in 1988, was thelast GOP presidential candidate towin California. Associated Press
| EDITORIALA permanent, independentInspector Generals Office iscrucial to honest citygovernment.
A14 | THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER | TUESDAY, APRIL 21, 2015 C | PHILLY.COM
