Restore Credibility
- The City will establish a system of public finance for municipal campaigns to eliminate the corrosive role of money in local politics.
- The City will establish anti-nepotism laws to discourage familial favoritism from influencing government hiring, policy or operations.
- The City will establish a policy concerning outside employment for elected officials. If being an elected official in Philadelphia is a full-time responsibility, then those elected should not perform outside employment during their full time working hours. Those seeking additional employment or those who are already engaged in another job must provide evidence that the job is not a conflict of interest in the performance of their duties. An independent committee will be established to review each written request, make a timely decision, and allow an appeals process. The citizens of Philadelphia will be informed of the requests and the results.
- The City will amend the Philadelphia Home Rule Charter to limit the terms of City Councilpersons to no more than three consecutive terms.
- The City will study and report on campaign financing reform in other municipalities and take steps to eliminate the corrosive role of money in local politics.
- The City will establish enforced rules concerning elected city officials serving as party officials, e.g., ward leaders. The City will recognize that incumbency has a value and that a force multiplier such as this reinforces the structural competitive disadvantage often faced when seeking elected office.
- The City will amend the Philadelphia Home Rule Charter so that elections are administered by an independent and non-partisan Board of Elections constituted according to nationwide best practices instead of Philadelphia City Commissioners whose members serve as both party officials and elected city officials. The non partisan board will be throughly investigated to determine their fairness, expertise, complaints, and outcome of prior elections.
- The City will establish a non-partisan Redistricting Commission after the next Census to oversee the redistricting process rather than allowing City Council to determine council districts.
- Public Safety is essential to the City's social and economic well-being. The City will study "best practicies" of other major cities regarding successful strategies and action-steps for policing their communities, and adopt those that will most benefit Philadelphia. As first steps in this direction, the City will examine the structure, culture and leadership capacity of the Philadelphia Police Department(PPD), conduct a nationwide search for a new police commissioner, and implement systemwide changes necessary to make the new commissioner's efforts effective in modernizing and professionalizing the Police Department. Of critical importance to those steps, a City Charter change will be put forward that will allow the Police Commisisoner to be able to select the appropriate number of subordinates commanders (at the rank of Captain and higher) from inside or outside the department essential to implement and sustain the systemwide improvements. To ensure public accountablility within the Police Department, the city will appropriately staff and empower the Integrity and Accountability Office of the Philadelphia Police Department. The City understands that civilian and community oversight of the Philadelphia Police Department is important to its overall accountability and performance.
- The City will appoint public finance professionals based solely on professional competence, expertise and value to the City.
- Four suggestions for improving and increasing voting democracy: 1) Election day should be a holiday. It is pertinent to the quality of life and freedoms of all citizens. 2) Same day registration (successfully done for about 30 years in some states) increasing voter turnout. 3) Register 16 year olds; in some states they can marry and obtain a driver's license and have definite interests impacted by public policy; this builds a habit of voting and balances a large over-50 voting bloc. 4) Instant runoff to eliminate spoilers and enhance the ability to have more choices for citizens, encouraging diversity in candidates.
- Change the City Charter to eliminate the ROW Offices they could easily be incorporated into existing city departments and the courts.
- It is essential that Philadelphia voters have confidence that our elected officials are acting solely in the interest of the puiblic. In order to have good government, it is necessary for elected officials to be free from conflicts of interest. The only way to ensure that elected officials are free from the influence of private campaign contributions is to have election campaigns paid for by the voters through full public funding. Therefore, the City must adopt this method of funding elections, called "Clean Elections", which is proven to work well and is already in use in a number of other states and municipalities. The cost to the taxpayer of Clean Elections will be more than paid for by the elimination of taxpayer dollars being spent for special favors to reward campaign contributors. This reform will do more to promote good government in Philadelphia than any other single change that could be made.
- The City will equip all of its polling places to produce a voter verified paper record. This is absolutely necessary to ensure that the votes are counted accurately.
- The City will develop a presentation and suggest that an independent study of alternative voting such as proportional representation, request and report on the recommendations of the independent body. This will give individuals a clear view of the constituencies of minority party candidates, and grant civil rights to those whose voices deserve to be represented within any democratic empowered municipal government.
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Public Safety
A big part of improving public safety is improving the relationship of trust between the police department and the community - particularly, the minority communities of Philadelphia. Accountability and transparency help foster that trust. In addition to the Office of Integrity and Accountability (OIA) which served as an internal auditor of the police department (and which has remained vacant since February 2005, despite formal requests to the Mayor and Managing Director that the vacancy be filled), the Philadelphia Police Advisory Commission provides accountability in the form of outside, civilian oversight of police. The Commission investigates and reports on individual citizen complaints against the police, holds public hearings, and makes findings and recommendations to the Police Commissioner, Mayor and Managing Director. In addition, the Commission works with police to educate the community on its rights and responsibilities in police-civilian encounters, and has assumed some of the internal auditing role of the OIA in auditing and participating in internal investigations.
But the Commission exists only by Executive Order and can be eliminated by any successive Mayor. In addition, the Commission is undermined by a tiny annual budget ($350,000), a staff of 6 -- in a city with 7000 sworn officers, and a population of 1.4 million - and which budget and staff has remained the same for the last 13 years - even as its mission and mandate has expanded over the same time. By comparison, the civilian police review board of Oakland, CA (with a population of 395,000 and 766 sworn officers), has 6 staff and a $1.1 million budget; San Francisco (population 739,000, and 2,200 sworn officers) has a board with 30 staff and $2.5 million budget; Washington, D.C. (population 550,000, 3,800 sworn officers), has a staff of 20 and $1.75 million annual budget.
Restoring public trust in the Police Department requires a long term commitment to principles of civilian oversight and accountability, and the Police Department still has a long way to go to restore the trust eroded by historical incidents such as dropping a bomb on a city neighborhood, the Rizzo years (nightstick in Mayor's cummerbund, public strip searches, etc.), and a lingering public perception that the police remain unable to adequately police themselves.
Thus, a reform-minded commitment to Public Safety should include creating a new Police Advisory Commission that exists as a permanent city agency under the City Charter and that is fully funded to be able to meet its mandate and functions of improving police-community relations, increasing accountability and fostering trust - and ultimately improving the public safety and lowering the amount of civil rights judgments paid out of tax payer money.
Robert S. Nix
Chairman, Philadelphia Police Advisory Commission
Public Safety
Public safety is the goal here. Merely conducting another "blue-ribbon panel" study of the PPD, adding staff to oversight offices and moving around boxes on its org-chart is not enough. A full empowering of the next Police Commissioner is essential to optimize the department's fucntioning and accountability. Greater flexibility in appointing, assigning and removing mid- to upper-level management will foster efficiency, effectiveness and accountability. I agree that public trust is essential to moving public safety forward. The Integrity and Accountability Office is one piece of the puzzle, and the PAC has a role to play, as well. Likewise, the District Attorney's Office must also be engaged in more timely decision-making about police misconduct cases under its review.
However, all of the above must work in concert with the Police Commissioner, not at loggerheads. And, arguably, real accountability can only come from strong internal leadership. An excessive reliance on external oversight is no substitue for the accountability fostered by an engaged and accountable Police Commissioner and command staff.
Bullets 1, 5 and 13
These are addressing the same issue but advocating different steps, which makes it unclear what is being proposed.
Appointment of finance professionals
To what level of the city's financial structure shall we enforce this? Will this impact the present civil service system. "The City" appointing such persons comes down to real people, i.e., the mayor. If a person fitting the stated criteria happens to be a close associate of the mayor or managing director how shall this relationship be weighted against the candidate's qualifications?
Public finance of municpal elections
Does this erode citizens' free-speech rights. Like it or not, spending is a form of speech. Federal campaign finance laws are clearly unconstitutional ian this regard. If such laws are not working at the Federal level, can we do better at the local level? And will such public financing survive constitutional challenge? This part of the agenda needs to be fleshed out. The net result of this may be to centralize, rather than de-centralize, a key aspect of the electoral process.
Other employment for city officials
Will this compel government officials to live within their means, or tempt them to receive payment surreptitious employemnt - what we call "working under the table"? If Rick Mariano put in a few hours every week as a union electrician instead of "working the system" he wouldn't be in jail today.
Will this prohibition skew the pool of government candidates to weealthy persons who can maintain their lirfestyles independent of a city paycheck? Would we prohibit speechs, lectures, and faculty positions (especially at public insitutions such as CCP)?
Prohibition against elected officials serving as party officials
--This is only meaningful if we remain an entrenched 1 or 2 party city, we need to change the election process so that Independent and small party candidates have a chance at winning.
--Blocking elected officials from also holding party positions may be unconstitutional.
Campaign Finance
This is the most anti-democratic and the best thing that can happen to the established big money politicians. Look at Federal Election Finance. The two major parties each recieve $80 million for nominating a presidential candidate, the three other nationally organized parties don't get a thin dime out of the FEC. The answer is to make money less important. I support a 30 day advertising blackout before the election day, but this is unconstitutional to enforce. We need to look at ways of making low budget campaigns more effective. -- How is this anti-democratic?
City Council
The solution is to get rid of the full time council.
nepotism
Nepotism is a problem, but I see it as a symptom of corruption rather than a cause. We need details about how you
are going to discourage it.
nepotism
No city government contracts shall be awarded to any entities owned, controlled, or employing in any manner whatsoever, any family members, no matter how attenuated, of any elected city officials.
Nepotism
Anti-nepotism law should include rules against non-married couples working as well as married and family members.
The City will appoint public
The City will appoint public finance professionals based solely on professional competence, expertise and value to the City.
City Council
Let's not have politics as a career in Philadelphia. Let's set term limits in order to help nepotism and the pay-to-play format that has been ruining this city. Term limits will do that be ensuring that no one official is in Council long enough to have that much clout. Also, require Council members to be independent contractors so that they have to pay the business priv. tax. Maybe if they see what a burden this is on freelancers and businesses, this lunatic tax will come to an end.
Valid problems, poor solutions
Term limits are the wrong solution to solving the problem of the strength of incumbency. It's a way for the voters of today to dictate to the voters of the future.
It is far better to solve the problem by enacting strong ethics reform and transparency, and by enacting a city-wide 311 program so that city services are not primarily accessed through council offices, we can create an environment where elections aren't so heavily skewed in favor of incumbents.
Inducing the City to violate federal employment law is again the wrong solution for the problem of our toxic taxation environment for freelancers.