David B. Glancey, former chairman

Glancey, a lawyer, devoted amateur actor, and former Democratic Party chief, ran the BRT for nearly two decades, making most of the important decisions himself. He left in 2007, but the current BRT chair still refers to him as "the chairman."

Glancey, 64, whose grandfather was the GOP's 38th Ward leader when the Republicans controlled City Hall, grew up in Germantown and went to St. Joseph's College and Villanova Law School.

He worked in a series of political jobs and was active in the campaigns of Mayor William J. Green III and Gov. Bob Casey. In 1979, when Glancey was 35, Green named him the city's Democratic Party chief.

In 1983, after a failed run for Congress and with his term expiring as the city's Democratic leader, Glancey benefited from a long political tradition and won a seat on the BRT. He became acting chairman in 1988 and took over the job two years later.

Glancey took on a far bigger role than had past BRT chairs. He said he turned the seat into a full-time job and ran it as though he were a corporate CEO.

"He did the best he could with what he had," said former City Controller Jonathan Saidel, who repeatedly criticized the BRT in audits.

Glancey eventually set out to fix the agency's opaque and out-of-whack assessments, preaching at community meetings that the BRT's values should be the same as real market values. City Council blocked that effort, but Mayor Nutter and the BRT have vowed to implement it.

In his current job as a government-relations specialist at the University of Pennsylvania, Glancey has appeared before the same board that he once headed, but now he is helping university officials argue for lower property taxes.