Oversight

Last week's financial news included reports of a monster investment loss at JPMorgan and new rules for salvaging failed banks. Here are some sites for tracking banks' health and oversight. Who's in charge? This chart at the Fiscal Times website might simply confirm many folks' worries that bank oversight is so complicated that it makes no sense. Various commissions, departments and bureaus oversee certain activities of banks, while an assortment of agencies, now including the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, try to look after consumer interests.

For weeks now, politicians and business leaders have been talking, some with almost lip-smacking glee, about how the new state oversight board will restore reason to the city budget, deleting wishful revenue projections and slashing waste. Well, turnabout is fair play, as the saying goes. In a confidential draft of an agreement of cooperation with the board, the Goode administration proposes that the overseers submit to a little oversight themselves. Specifically, the administration wants a chance to review the board's budget each spring and object if its spending seems out of line.

The Rutgers University president and its athletic program were sharply criticized in an independent report, which cited lack of oversight on issues involving the football coach's salary and a sports marketing firm. A committee appointed by president Richard L. McCormick to review the program also criticized the athletic director and Board of Governors for failing to properly oversee "an increasingly successful and fiscally complex athletics program. " The group of business leaders, judges, lawyers and Rutgers officials was appointed in July after a series of reports in the Star-Ledger of Newark detailed undisclosed contract sweeteners for coach Greg Schiano and the award of a no-bid contract to a sports marketing firm that employed the son of athletic director Robert Mulcahy.

More corner offices are being cleared out at the city-owned Philadelphia Gas Works, as PGW execs jump - or are pushed - following the Philadelphia Daily News' disclosures about top managers' free-spending ways. Gone is PGW boss James Hawes 3d, under whose stewardship the utility spent $1.4 million on relocation costs for employees - including more than $550,000 on Mr. Hawes and his top deputies, chief operating officer Gregory D. Martin and chief financial officer Ramon N. Sharbutt.

NOTE: This article has been corrected from an earlier version. THE CITY Commission, which oversees elections in Philadelphia, is thinking about giving the Office of Inspector General authority to investigate its employees and contractors in a "memorandum of understanding. " The three-member board might also need a counselor to help two reform-minded new commissioners reach an understanding with the lone survivor from the old political machine. City Commissioner Anthony Clark, who won a second term last year, clashed in a meeting yesterday with new Commission Chairwoman Stephanie Singer when he tried to make a motion on a subject not on the agenda.

Thirteen hours before the end of the fiscal year, Camden City got its 1997-98 budget - good for half a day. City Council unanimously adopted the $116 million spending plan for the fiscal year that ended yesterday. It included $15 million in state aid, retroactively plugging a gaping city deficit. The $15 million, though, came with a catch: As lawmakers in Trenton approved the money, they also approved a proviso in Gov. Whitman's new budget that authorizes state officials to take control of Camden's finances.

Federal, state and local officials today will announce the formation of a new board designed to oversee most of the funding that Camden gets from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, sources said. HUD Secretary Henry G. Cisneros and Mayor Arnold W. Webster, who met unannounced in Camden on Friday, will make public the plan to monitor the funding at a City Hall news conference, the sources said. The plan's major component is the creation of a board that will "consolidate the oversight of HUD's investment" in Camden, sources said.

City Council is scheduled for a rare Saturday session today to make some progress on the city's financial problems. But don't expect to see a full house. The 1 p.m. Council session will likely draw just one or two Council members and last only a couple of minutes - as long as it takes Councilman John Street to introduce a piece of legislation. The legislation is a proposed agreement between the city and the Pennsylvania Intergovernmental Cooperation Authority (PICA), the agency set up by the legislature last June to help the city borrow money.

Ask anyone what the symbols of suburbia are, and the popular picks would be the automobile, the shopping mall, and the single-family lawn. My picks, however, are the volunteer fire company and emergency medical services unit. Sure, the car, mall and lawn have the highest profiles, but the fire and EMS companies are distinctly suburban, especially in Southeastern Pennsylvania, because of their volunteer character. In Philadelphia, tax-supported city employees provide fire protection and comprehensive emergency medical services.

Commuters who pay the tolls to cross the Delaware River have reason to worry that their money is being wasted. Cascading media accounts have found evidence of self-dealing, mismanagement, absurd perks, petty theft, excessive spending, and poor planning at the Delaware River Port Authority, which collects and decides how to spend $300 million a year in tolls and fares. The DRPA's irresponsible conduct has been shielded from view by an insular culture that allows public business to be done in private.

HARRISBURG — After the latest scandal involving the Philadelphia Housing Authority, State Rep. Michael P. McGeehan wants to slow down the return of local control over the agency until federal authorities have finished multiple investigations. "We have no idea where these federal investigations are headed, how deep or broad they will run, or who or how many will be ensnared by their conclusion," McGeehan, (D., Phila.) said Tuesday at a news conference in the state Capitol. On Friday, an insurance broker, Kobie T. West, pleaded guilty to defrauding the PHA of $2.3 million in a scheme involving a housing authority accomplice.

Last week's financial news included reports of a monster investment loss at JPMorgan and new rules for salvaging failed banks. Here are some sites for tracking banks' health and oversight. Who's in charge? This chart at the Fiscal Times website might simply confirm many folks' worries that bank oversight is so complicated that it makes no sense. Various commissions, departments and bureaus oversee certain activities of banks, while an assortment of agencies, now including the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, try to look after consumer interests.

State governments lack transparency and accountability to citizens and remain at high risk for corruption, according to a new study of all 50 statehouses. The state doing the best? New Jersey. Not a single state received an A in the State Integrity Investigation ranking, a product of the Center for Public Integrity, Public Radio International, and Global Integrity. "It's telling that no state received an overall grade of A," said Caitlin Ginley, a staff writer for the Center for Public Integrity and a project manager on the study.

A third-floor classroom door was shut tight, its windows sealed off with black construction paper. Inside, a small group of students were taking state exams. Daniel Piotrowski zoomed in. What was going on in there? Were the tests being administered according to protocol? He swung open the door. "Any room I see that has a closed door or a window covered, I'm going in," said Piotrowski, the Philadelphia School District's accountability and assessment director. After a few minutes in the room, Piotrowski saw that things were on the up-and-up, and he moved on. It was just part of his job as one of more than 100 district monitors charged with deterring cheating on the state reading and math exams being taken this week and next in city schools.

NOTE: This article has been corrected from an earlier version. THE CITY Commission, which oversees elections in Philadelphia, is thinking about giving the Office of Inspector General authority to investigate its employees and contractors in a "memorandum of understanding. " The three-member board might also need a counselor to help two reform-minded new commissioners reach an understanding with the lone survivor from the old political machine. City Commissioner Anthony Clark, who won a second term last year, clashed in a meeting yesterday with new Commission Chairwoman Stephanie Singer when he tried to make a motion on a subject not on the agenda.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Thursday said that one of the Limerick nuclear units in Montgomery County would receive additional oversight after a determination that the operators followed inadequate safety procedures. An NRC inspection found that two main feedwater system valves failed to fully close during the start-up of Unit 2 in April, resulting in a safety system being inoperable for a month. The partially open valves created a path that would have prevented the majority of water from the reactor core isolation cooling system from reaching the reactor during an accident, the commission said.

TRENTON - Mayor Tony Mack headed to the White House on Friday to ask for help protecting the state's capital city, which has laid off a third of its police force, demoted officers to save money, and scaled back on overtime. "Trenton needs your help!" Mack, a Democrat, wrote to President Obama last month after Trenton narrowly missed out on a federal grant awarded to a dozen other New Jersey cities - including Camden - that will share nearly $21 million from the U.S. Department of Justice to hire police officers or avoid cuts.

Pedro Ramos, a lawyer and partner in the firm Trujillo Rodriguez & Richards L.L.C. in Philadelphia, is a former city solicitor and managing director. He served on the Philadelphia School District's Board of Education from 1995 to 2001, including two years as president. In June, Gov. Corbett nominated Ramos to the School Reform Commission. Still awaiting state Senate confirmation, Ramos, 46, spoke to staff writer Melissa Dribben about his prospective role as a member of the commission, which has had quite a stormy year.

By Jonathan Zimmerman Advocates of the extraction process known as "fracking" say it's safe, yielding vast quantities of natural gas without polluting our land and water. So, they say, federal environmental regulators should back off. And that, my friends, is what philosophers call a non sequitur. Let's hope it's a nonstarter, too. Fracking, short for hydraulic fracturing, involves pumping chemical- and sand-laden water deep into the ground to break up rock formations and release gas. If it's as safe as its supporters say it is, they should welcome federal oversight.