Confidentiality

City Council's smoldering distaste for the Board of Ethics it created three years ago erupted yesterday as Council Majority Leader Marian B. Tasco called for the ouster of its executive director. Tasco demanded the removal of J. Shane Creamer Jr., the only person to hold the post, based on his admitted violation of the board's confidentiality code last month when he discussed an investigation of Democratic district attorney candidate R. Seth Williams with a Philadelphia Daily News reporter.

In an unusual action, the Philadelphia Board of Ethics has fined its own executive director $500 for violating a city rule on confidentiality. The violation, disclosed in a news release at 5 p.m. Friday, occurred in the days leading up to the May 19 primary election for district attorney. The fine represented "nothing more than the fact that we are trying to be even-handed even with our own, and that if there are mistakes, we will deal with them," Ethics Board chairman Richard Glazer said yesterday.

Comics Guy had planned on reviewing a book that has hit much of comicdom like an atomic bomb and (almost) broke the Internet in half, but that will have to wait until next week. This week, I would like to highlight a book that has flown under the radar: "Batman Confidential. " For the first year of its publication, I questioned the necessity of this title's existence. The first story arc was mediocre at best, was made worse by artist Whilce Portacio's horrific depiction of the Dark Knight and featured - yawn - Lex Luthor as the villain.

A prominent researcher who reviewed a critical study on the diabetes drug Avandia for a major medical journal leaked the findings before publication to the drug's maker, GlaxoSmithKline P.L.C., according to the journal Nature. The reviewer, Steven M. Haffner, a professor of internal medicine at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, breached confidentiality rules of the New England Journal of Medicine by faxing the study to a friend working for GlaxoSmithKline, in Upper Merion.

Formula One's spying scandal took another twist yesterday when Renault was accused by the sport's governing body of possessing confidential information belonging to rival team McLaren. FIA has summoned Renault officials to a hearing of the World Motor Sport Council on Dec. 6 in Monte Carlo, Monaco, to answer a charge of having "unauthorized possession of documents and confidential information" of Mc-Laren cars between September 2006 and October 2007. The information includes "but [is]

Even as lawmakers boast that open-records legislation pending in the Capitol would greatly expand access to government documents, legislators are moving to make Pennsylvania the only state in the nation to keep all e-mail confidential. A bill scheduled to be voted on later this month in the House of Representatives would make e-mail by public officials and employees protected records, no matter how routine the subject. Lawmakers contend this is necessary to allow unfettered policy-making and constituent service.

It's the American dream to go out on your own and build a company, but it's the American reality that you can end up in court over it. David Paul headed development of spine products at a Chester County orthopedic-device company when he resigned in 2003 to create a rival enterprise. Now his growing firm, Globus Medical Inc., is on trial in federal court in Philadelphia, accused by Paul's former employer, Synthes (USA) L.P., of benefiting from the use of trade secrets and confidential information, including product designs, manufacturing methods and regulatory strategies.

None of the six private groups hired to manage 41 Philadelphia public schools - including for-profit Edison Schools Inc. - has shown "sufficient" academic progress, and the district should consider axing them when their contracts expire in June, according to an internal school district report obtained by The Inquirer. At best, only 14 - about a third - of the schools run by the groups deserve contract renewals, the report said. Those schools met federal targets for academic improvement in 2005, 2006 or both, according to the report.

None of the six private groups hired to manage 41 Philadelphia public schools - including for-profit Edison Schools Inc. - has shown "sufficient" academic progress, and the district should consider axing them when their contracts expire in June, according to an internal school district report obtained by The Inquirer. At best, only 14 - about a third - of the schools run by the groups deserve contract renewals, the report said. Those schools met federal targets for academic improvement in 2005, 2006 or both, according to the report.

Citing his wife's confidential salary agreement, U.S. Rep. Chaka Fattah yesterday became the only one of Philadelphia's five major mayoral candidates to decline to release his recent income tax returns. Fattah said he cannot disclose the returns he files jointly with his wife, NBC10 anchorwoman Renee Chenault-Fattah, because her contract bars her from revealing her salary. After the Daily News yesterday published a headline calling Fattah's confidentiality claim "bogus," Chenault-Fattah agreed to an Inquirer request to provide a copy of the non-disclosure clause of her television contract.