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Nutter dodges some Goode questions during ethics-reform news conference

Mayor Nutter introduced his task force on ethics and campaign-finance reform yesterday, but then spent most of his news conference fending off questions about Latrice Bryant.

Mayor Nutter introduced his task force on ethics and campaign-finance reform yesterday, but then spent most of his news conference fending off questions about Latrice Bryant.

Nutter clearly didn't want to discuss City Councilman W. Wilson Goode Jr. or Bryant, Goode's chief legislative aide, but reporters kept peppering him with questions.

Bryant has been in the media spotlight after holding up signs in Council last month accusing Fox 29 News of racism for investigating her work hours. The station last week broadcast photos of Bryant and Goode looking cozy on a 2005 Jamaica vacation.

"I don't think there is anything that I can do about a staff person in a separate branch of government or about another elected official," Nutter said.

Goode has said he has a "social relationship," not a romantic relationship, with Bryant and declined to comment about the vacation photos. He has also said that a problem with how Bryant's work hours were recorded has been corrected.

Council President Anna Verna said she would consider a call from the Committee of Seventy, a political-watchdog group, to convene Council's Committee on Ethics to investigate Goode and his relationship to Bryant. She later told reporters she doubted that Council would go for it.

"I can't remember the last time that Council ever investigated one of their own," Verna said.

The late Councilmen David Cohen and W. Thacher Longstreth were married to or living with their chiefs of staff, Verna noted.

"Did anybody do anything about that? I don't think so," said Verna, adding that Council office relationships were a bad idea. "Would I do it? Absolutely not."

Goode yesterday said that the Committee on Ethics has authority to investigate violations of the Philadelphia Code, which is the collection of the city's laws.

"I have not violated the rules of Council," Goode said. "I have not violated the Philadelphia Code."

No city authority - the Board of Ethics, the Commission on Human Relations, the District Attorney's Office or the city solicitor - has taken any action on Bryant's signs in Council or the ensuing controversy about Goode.

Zack Stalberg, president of the Committee of Seventy, said Council should step up on the issue.

"There are 16 other members of Council who can and should have a point of view on this," Stalberg said. "They're choosing a cowardly way out, which is to stay away from it all." *