Dueling editorials: Who should be the next City Controller? | Philly

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Monday, October 26, 2009

Dueling editorials: Who should be the next City Controller?

Alan Butkovitz gets the DN's endorsement

The Inquirer yesterday endorsed Republican Al Schmidt for City Controller. The crux of the editorial's argument is that the city needs someone outside the entrenched Democratic party to serve as a fiscal watchdog. To have a Democratic ward leader monitoring a largely Democratic City Hall, it says, basically amounts to the fox guarding the hen house:

"A ward leader who employs patronage hacks and is beholden to the dominant political machine isn't the best fiscal watchdog to mind City Hall."

Meanwhile, our friends/co-workers/mentors on the Daily News editorial board endorsed incumbent Democrat Alan Butkovitz this morning. The logic of the board's argument is twofold:

1) Butkovitz and Schmidt disagree about the central function of the Controller's office. Schmidt believes that the Controller should perform fiscal audits of every city department, as the city charter requires. Butkovitz says he can't afford those audits, and that, anyway, they're not that helpful: He instead prefers more in-depth, targeted "performance audits" of specific agencies. The board did some reporting and found that Schmidt's preferred audits would not have caught the employees recently charged with stealing funds from various city agencies. Butkovitz, the board concludes, is correct in this central dispute.

2) The controller's job is not just to do fiscal monitoring, but to make recommendations that get implemented. And the board worries that any recommendations made by Schmidt would be "dismissed as partisan potshots." Butkovitz, it says, is "not afraid to be unpopular" and so will prove more effective.

The only observation I'd like to add to all this is that, if Alan Butkovitz is re-elected, it seems to me that he should either a) make a LOT of noise about getting more funding for the fiscal audits he's supposed to do, or b) advocate for the charter to be changed -- it's ridiculous to have a charter provision that just isn't followed.

Tell us which argument makes sense to you in the comments below.

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Posted by Doron Taussig @ 11:20 AM Permalink | 3 comments

Comments

Posted 12:12 PM, 10/26/2009

fafafooey

There's no way both papers would have endorsed a Republican. I knew the union-owned paper would have to hedge it somehow with their party. It's the Democrat-Media Complex. Not that it matters - the Philly robo-voters will just vote for who their union goons and reverends tell them to vote for. It beats thinking.

Posted 01:50 PM, 10/26/2009

benwaxman

I love people who see conspiracies around every corner. Guess what? The carpenters union (who partially own PNI) don't influence editorial content in any way. Also, check their PAC statement. The carpenters probably give more money to Republicans than any other union.

Posted 05:14 PM, 10/26/2009

bill at

The Snooze actually said about Schmidt; "We suspect he's also made incumbent Alan Butkovitz raise the level of his game." Think about that for a second. What was Butkovitz actually doing before somebody FINALLY came along and yelled that the emperor has no clothes? These endorsements don't matter since the mind-numbed lemmings in Filthadelphia would vote for Hitler if he had a (D) after his name. But one would expect something better from a group of educated 'watchdogs' than "Well, maybe he'll do better next time."

3 comments

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Ben Waxman reports and blogs for “It's Our Money.” Before joining “It's Our Money,” he was a regular contributor to the Philadelphia Daily News op-ed page and former contributor to the blog Young Philly Politics. He studied political science at Juniata College in Huntingdon, PA.

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