Disclosure

UPSET ABOUT the Marcellus Shale tax vote, and Pennsylvania campaign finance in general? Take action: GET ANGRY. Go to www.commoncause.org/pa and download their report on campaign contributions and natural gas drilling in Pennsylvania, "Deep Drilling, Deep Pockets. " DEMAND REAL-TIME DISCLOSURE from elected officials. Call or e-mail your state representative or senator (see on Committee of Seventy Web site, http://guide.seventy.org ) and tell them that you expect them to disclose - within one business day - any donations they accept between Sept.

IT'S BECOMING increasingly clear how much of a toll that natural gas extraction from the state's Marcellus Shale formation is taking on the environment and potentially on human health. It's also increasingly clear why it's taking so long for state lawmakers to return the favor, and impose a tax on drillers. A new report from the Pennsylvania Land Trust Association found that Marcellus Shale drillers in the state have piled up 1,435 violations in the last 2 1/2 years . The great majority - 66 percent - have the potential for direct impact on the environment.

CARL GREENE WANTS to keep his mortgage problems private. And who can blame him? It's bad enough to be facing foreclosure, but it has to be devastating to be running the fourth-largest public housing agency in the country and have your own roof about to cave in and your financial difficulties the subject of public debate. But this is our business. We need to know why his financial woes - troubles that not only include impending foreclosure, but also an IRS tax lien for four years of unpaid taxes (the lien has been paid)

Former U. S. Sen. Norman Coleman, chief executive of a Republican-oriented "action network" that hopes to pour $25 million into this year's congressional campaigns, said yesterday that the group does not intend to disclose its funding sources. Reached by telephone at the Washington headquarters of the group, the American Action Network, Coleman said that federal law doesn't require public disclosure of its contributors and the organization doesn't intend to disclose anything more.

Philadelphia Newspapers L.L.C., parent company of The Inquirer, Philadelphia Daily News, and Philly.com, was given a boost Thursday in its efforts to see whether anything untoward was behind a senior lender's attempt to tape a meeting with company officials. Chief Bankruptcy Judge Stephen Raslavich ordered the senior lenders to turn over any documents they might still have pertaining to the Nov. 17, 2008, incident. The order was less than the company had sought, however. Raslavich stopped short of permitting company attorneys to take depositions as part of their inquiry or seek a much broader range of documents.

The city's campaign-finance ordinance serves an important public purpose, and the Philadelphia Board of Ethics has made every effort to help political candidates follow it. When the Board of Ethics was given the charge of enforcing the new campaign-finance ordinance in 2006, we quickly set out to educate political candidates and their campaign treasurers. Letters explaining the ordinance were sent to all 79 candidates for city office months before the 2007 primary election. Candidates and treasurers were also invited to attend training seminars.

About two years ago, candidate Barack Obama made a series of promises to the radical antiwar crowd so he could outflank Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary. It worked. Last week, President Obama was justly pummeled for proudly announcing that he was keeping one of those promises by disclosing the details of our interrogation techniques to our enemies. I guess that is one way to make sure an administration won't get accused of failing to connect the dots after a terrorist incident: Setting policies that guarantee it won't have any dots to connect.

We should all have friends like these. Former State Sen. Vincent J. Fumo disclosed from the witness stand yesterday that in 2000 a good friend had given him a big gift - $1 million. Fumo was going through a rough divorce that left him financially squeezed, so multimillionaire Stephen Marcus stepped up to help. Previous witnesses have testified that Marcus also gave Fumo a $500,000 jet-powered Hinckley Picnic Boat. Fumo volunteered the existence of the generous gift after being asked why he hadn't reported, in his annual income-disclosure forms, the spending done on his behalf by a South Philadelphia nonprofit he founded.

The rush to pump natural gas from the hills surrounding the Upper Delaware River in Pennsylvania and New York has hit a regulatory speed bump. In a move applauded by environmentalists, the Delaware River Basin Commission will require disclosure of chemicals used by natural gas drillers - a demand fought by the industry elsewhere - before it approves drilling in a layer of rock known as Marcellus shale. "That's information our staff is going to need to know to review the application," Clarke Rupert, spokesman for the four-state commission, said yesterday.

It's not over. Despite some recent relief for financial stocks, Oppenheimer & Co. analyst Meredith Whitney says the financial markets won't be able to stabilize until there is more truth-telling. Rather than trickling out write-downs and sour news, Whitney says, banks need to "get real" about their "true asset values. " She thinks they are still embracing an overly cheerful outlook and valuing their mortgage-related assets too high. As a declining housing market takes its toll on their mortgages, she expects "bank stocks to head lower.