Clout: Mayor wants a clearer view of the DRWC
IT'S NOT an easy task, taking a long-secretive agency and injecting a dose of transparency. But that's what Mayor Nutter says he wants for the Delaware River Waterfront Corp., which replaced Penn's Landing Corp. this year. Joe Brooks, the agency's acting president since 2004, is out at the end of the month after 20 years on the job.
IT'S NOT an easy task, taking a long-secretive agency and injecting a dose of transparency.
But that's what Mayor Nutter says he wants for the Delaware River Waterfront Corp., which replaced Penn's Landing Corp. this year. Joe Brooks, the agency's acting president since 2004, is out at the end of the month after 20 years on the job.
A new president is expected to be named next week.
Some members of the new board are now grumbling that the incoming president - we hear it's Tom Corcoran, of the Cooper's Ferry Development Association in Camden - was chosen with little chance for review or input.
Corcoran's name was presented as the mayor's choice by the board's executive committee in a private meeting last week.
Donn Scott, who took over as chairman of the DRWC this month, declined to identify the new president after the board voted Wednesday to give him the authority to negotiate a contract. He hopes to publicly announce the candidate by Tuesday.
Scott said the executive committee, along with an outside recruitment firm working for free, was asked by then-chairman Andy Altman to find a new agency leader. Altman, the city's commerce director, left Philly this summer for a job in London.
A list of 100 candidates was narrowed to 20 and then six and finally to two, who interviewed with Nutter. The mayor picked the winning candidate.
Scott said the secrecy was meant to protect the candidates, who have other jobs and concerns about publicity.
"We had to balance transparency with the confidentialities of the candidates," he said. "Trust me, that was not an easy thing to do."
Corcoran, who is out of town this week, did not respond to requests for comment.
Avi Eden, a DRWC board member, abstained from the vote to give Scott the power to negotiate a contract, not because he didn't approve of the candidate but because he had never met that person. Eden calls the selection process a good learning experience about openness for the agency.
"How do you take an opaque organization and make it transparent?" Eden asked. "That's the battle we're wrestling with."
Board member Alan Hoffmann said he didn't have a problem with the candidate chosen but had concerns about the process used along the way.
"We were given the candidate kind of as a fait accompli," he added.
Some board members said they also have concerns that Bill Hankowsky, a close friend of Corcoran's who worked with him in Camden, provided information to the recruitment firm about what it should be looking for.
Hankowsky did not respond to requests for comment.
Scott said Hankowsky "had no impact of the outcome" on who got the job.
The old boss has his humor
Even as he's pummeled at town-hall meetings on health care, Arlen Specter retains a healthy sense of humor. During a campaign fundraiser this week at the Harrisburg home of Walter Cohen, formerly a state welfare secretary and acting state attorney general, Specter was introduced by Cohen and Gov. Rendell.
They were legal interns in summer 1966, when Specter was Philly's district attorney.
Cohen was a second-year law student at Penn and Rendell, a first-year law student at Villanova. Cohen was paid $50 a week and Ed was paid nothing.
Specter then cupped his hands to his mouth and called out, "And they were both overpaid."
Cohen and Rendell later joined Specter's D.A. staff.
Knox not messing with hair
Want to know how serious Tom Knox is taking his new, naturally gray hair while running for governor? We ran an item on PhillyClout.com this week with an old picture of Knox sporting less-natural brown hair. His campaign manager quickly e-mailed us two up-to-date pictures and politely asked for a substitution.
Quotable:
"You know, honestly, after I asked the question, I was so just - I don't know. I didn't hear half of what he said, to be honest with you. I mean I heard him say that he does legislate by the Constitution. But that's a bold-faced lie."
- Katy Abram of Lebanon, Pa., when Sean Hannity of Fox News asked at a town-hall meeting if she was happy with Sen. Arlen Specter's answer on health-care reform.
Staff writer John M. Baer contributed to this report.
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