Recommended changes at L&I slow to come
Six weeks since Nutter vowed to fix L&I, no one has yet been named to the implementation committee and the administration hasn't even said how it will go about hiring the new chief safety officer.
It's been six weeks since Mayor Nutter announced the creation of a new administrative positive: Chief Safety Officer.
At that same news conference on Sep. 25, Nutter said he would create an implementation committee to look into a special report on the city's Department of Licensing and Inspections. That committee is supposed to file its results to the mayor by Dec. 31.
However, no one has yet been named to the committee and the administration hasn't even said how it will go about hiring the new chief safety officer.
"We're not there yet on either the position or the committee … but close," Nutter's spokesman Mark McDonald said in an email.
The blue-ribbon report - the result of a 10-month examination of the department by a 22-member panel - said L&I should split into two new departments focusing on building safety and business compliance, respectively. The report also said the often-criticized agency is underfunded and overworked.
Nutter commissioned the panel at the suggestion of city Treasurer Nancy Winkler, whose daughter was killed in the June 5, 2013, building collapse at 22d and Market Streets that killed six people and injured 13.
The commission was tasked to review L&I - a department with more than 300 employees and an annual budget of $27.6 million - and its role in the collapse. An L&I inspector responsible for checking the demolition of the building that collapsed committed suicide soon after the tragedy.
During his September news conference announcing the completion of the special report, Nutter said that effective that day L&I would be under the city's public-safety umbrella and away from commerce.
But aside from that administrative move, it's unclear whether any of the commission's recommendations have yet to be implemented.
Glen Corbett, a fire-safety expert at John Jay College of Criminal Justice of the City University of New York who served as chairman of the blue-ribbon panel commission, said he and the rest of the commission members are on "stand-by," to assist with any questions on the recommendations. So far, he hasn't heard from anyone.
"I would hope that somewhere in the process, they would call us," Corbett said Wednesday. "The ball is in their court now."
Corbett said he is not concerned about the slow process.
"We're waiting until the end of the year to see what happens," he said, adding that he is confident the mayor and his team "are working on this."
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