Ethics

CITY CONTROLLER Alan Butkovitz and Brett Mandel, one of his two foes in the May 21 Democratic primary election, used a debate yesterday afternoon to accuse one another of ethical violations. Mandel, who finished third in the 2009 primary for controller, claimed that Butkovitz is under investigation by the Philadelphia Board of Ethics for using brochures produced with city money in his campaign for a third term. "Alan has been using his staff and his resources to produce materials that he distributes at campaign events as if they were political material," said Mandel, who later said he based his claim on an account from one person questioned in the investigation.

IT IS DISAPPOINTING to see the city's Board of Ethics undermine its own reputation for solid work by its adoption of the ethical stinkbomb called the DROP program. Evan Meyer, general counsel for the Board of Ethics, signed up for the city's Deferred Retirement Option Plan, which meant that in exchange for agreeing to retire by a certain date, he would get a special payment of some of his pension benefits in a lump sum. Meyer was allowed to take advantage of the program's most unseemly loophole by retiring for a day in order to collect the lump sum, and then getting hired back at his former salary.

HERE IS our handy Daily News ballot you can take to the polls . . . oops, the primary was last week wasn't it? Today, there is a vote that will have a bigger impact on the city than a new slate of judicial candiates: the vote in City Council on a significant ethics reform bill. This bill changes how no-bid contracts are awarded and may be voted on by Council today. A slew of other ethics bills are currently in committee, and all could be voted on before Council recesses in June.

In your June 22 article on surrogate mothers, research on embryos (unborn human beings), and related issues, Dr. Michael Birnbaum is quoted as saying, "The ethical questions are always there, but the minute we stop doing something because of ethics, we stop going forward and start going backward. " He seems to be saying that if scientists possess the knowledge and ability to perform a given act, they should do it regardless of the consequences. This is precisely the attitude that disturbs many people, including me. The divorce of ethical considerations from science can only result in the most horrible abuses of human rights.

Paul Contillo's home town of Paramus in Bergen County was a boom town during the 1970s, and in the rush to build shopping centers and other developments, Contillo saw some troubling things in municipal government. "We had tremendous pressure on the planning board and the board of adjustment for considerations for developers, and the boards were filled with insurance adjustors and plumbers and people like that," recalled Contillo, then a Paramus councilman and now a Democratic state senator.

TODAY, WITH ALL eyes fixed on the budget, Council could move to pass a package of "ethics" bills, not all of which are especially ethical. One part of the package, a proposal to require lobbyists to register with the city and disclose their activities, is a good idea. Unfortunately, it's lumped together with another bill that would lift a longstanding ban on political activity by city employees. This would depend on public approval of a charter change that would give Council authority to set political-activity rules by ordinance, rather than seeking voter approval.

We have a problem in this country with what our President might call "the ethics thing. " We have also been made aware in recent years that we have a massive problem in our school systems. Let us call this second problem, just to keep things neat, a matter of "this thinking thing. " The graduates of our schools - even our elite business and professional schools - don't seem to be very good at solving ethical or moral problems. And the graduates of all our schools - but especially our public secondary schools - don't seem to be very good at any kind of thinking.

There are two kinds of responsibility. There is moral responsibility, powerful and immutable. And legal responsibility, which is negotiable. There are also two kinds of ethics. There are moral ethics, which are grounded solidly, and legal ethics, subject to the kind of interpretation that would make an eastern European figure skating judge blanch. For instance, NBC-TV was morally irresponsible when it put igniters in a truck for a show on General Motors' pickup trucks, which seem to have a disquieting tendency to blow up. It was ethically dubious as well, so NBC fired a bunch of people, fell all over itself apologizing and replaced its news boss.

The Haverford Township Board of Commissioners has pledged to adopt a code of ethics, but has not determined a method or time by which it will do so. Unanimous approval of the intention came Monday night after the board rejected, by the surprisingly close vote of 5-4, a specific code proposed by Commissioner Ben Kapustin. In most cases, a proposal by the board's lone Democrat would have been soundly defeated. Kapustin first offered his code six months ago. In the face of indifference and hostility from other board members, he dropped the plan until two weeks ago, when the proposed code came under heavy criticism.

JOHN McDANIEL, former campaign manager for City Councilwoman Blondell Reynolds Brown, was sentenced yesterday to one year in federal prison for stealing more than $100,000 from her campaign account. McDaniel, according to documents filed in the case, has cooperated in local and federal investigations since his indictment in February. The question left unanswered: What did that cooperation entail? Assistant U.S. Attorney Paul Gray declined to comment after the hearing about a letter he filed under seal with the judge.

CITY CONTROLLER Alan Butkovitz and Brett Mandel, one of his two foes in the May 21 Democratic primary election, used a debate yesterday afternoon to accuse one another of ethical violations. Mandel, who finished third in the 2009 primary for controller, claimed that Butkovitz is under investigation by the Philadelphia Board of Ethics for using brochures produced with city money in his campaign for a third term. "Alan has been using his staff and his resources to produce materials that he distributes at campaign events as if they were political material," said Mandel, who later said he based his claim on an account from one person questioned in the investigation.

The music on Kurt Vile's new album, Wakin on a Pretty Daze , is deeply relaxed and absolutely confident in its laid-back, stretched-out, fingerpicked trance vibe. So much so that it would be perfectly reasonable to assume that the Philadelphia rocker is a prototypical stoner dude. Reasonable perhaps, but incorrect. Sure, Kurt Vile - yes, that's his real name - looks the part. He's the guy with the past-his-shoulders hair to rival The Addams Family 's Cousin Itt, and who sat down to talk on a recent morning at the Rocket Cat Café in Kensington, up the street from the four-story-tall mural that provides the cover image for Wakin (Matador ***1/2)

Funny and gritty and deeply troubling, Bruce Graham's courageous new play, North of the Boulevard , continues the Philadelphia playwright's dramatic examination of the really tough issues of our times. In this play, being given its world premiere by Theatre Exile, he tackles nothing less than Right and Wrong and the shifting ethical ground underfoot. Act I plunges us right into a world, a beat-up auto-body shop with a partially dismantled car taking up much of the floor space and a branch growing through the plaster wall ("Last tree in the neighborhood and it's got to come through my wall")

TRENTON - The federal prosecutor who busted more than 130 corrupt politicians became governor based in part on New Jerseyans' belief, and hope, that he could clean up government. But despite a sweeping ethics package that Republican Gov. Christie proposed in his first year in office - and despite continued political corruption in all corners of government - Trenton during the Christie administration is where ethics reforms have gone to die. None of the governor's ethics proposals dating to September 2010 have been passed by the Democratic-controlled Legislature.

THE TASK FORCE that was charged with reviewing ethics policies in the Philadelphia school district assessed the district's image problems, however diplomatically, in a report obtained Tuesday by the Daily News . "Far too few district employees or members of the general public appear to have a high degree of confidence that district business is conducted in the most ethical manner," read the report, dated December 2012. The nine-member Ethics Task Force, which convened at the request of School Reform Commission Chairman Pedro Ramos in January 2012 and was led by Common Pleas Judge Ida K. Chen, found that several factors contributed to the perception, including: * Severe reductions in auditing and compliance staff at every level of the district, leading to sporadic oversight.

  Former Philadelphia School Reform Commission Chairman Robert L. Archie Jr. violated state ethics law when he voted to ratify a contract that benefited his firm, a state ethics panel announced Tuesday. Archie was cleared of multiple other infractions. In 2009, Teach Productions Inc. - the production company responsible for a Tony Danza reality show shot at Northeast High - agreed to pay the Philadelphia School District's legal fees related to the show. Those legal fees ultimately went to Duane Morris L.L.P., where Archie is a partner.

A long-running lawsuit between lawyer Daniel McCaffery and the city Board of Ethics ended Wednesday with the panel agreeing to pay $2,000 for an advertisement saying McCaffery did not act intentionally to violate the city's campaign finance law in his 2009 campaign for district attorney. The lawsuit, filed in December 2009, accused the board and its executive director, Shane Creamer, of "frivolous, misleading, and false statements about McCaffery," made to "sabotage McCaffery's campaign, to embarrass McCaffery, and to tarnish his name and reputation in the eyes of the voting public.

There is an electrical box in Franklinville that looks different from most in the area. It is dented and marked up and has the signature of Josh Awotunde, who also used the blank canvas of the box to profess his NFL dreams. Awotunde is probably not going to the NFL. He did start at quarterback for Delsea, the Group 3 state champion, but his future is in another sport: track and field. Last season as a junior, Awotunde won the discus and finished fourth in the shot put at the state Group 3 championships.

NEW YORK - Mike Knuble has played 1,058 games in the NHL. Even after finding himself on the wrong side of Peter Laviolette's lineup card for the Flyers' previous two games, Knuble didn't see any reason to change what worked in his first 1,057 before Tuesday night's contest at Madison Square Garden. No professional athlete wants to be a healthy scratch - but especially not a 40-year-old veteran trying to make one more go of it at the game's highest level. "I'm not going to beat myself up. I am what I am," Knuble said, humbly.