Policy director Ellen Mattleman Kaplan to leave Committee of Seventy

Ellen Mattleman Kaplan, who has been with the Committee of Seventy for nearly 10 years, will leave the government watchdog group at the end of the month.

"I'm exhausted, after doing [former director Zack Stalberg's] job and my job for the last few months," Kaplan said Friday.

Kaplan, 60, the group's policy director, has been serving as interim president of the organization since July, when Stalberg retired and moved to New Mexico.

Kaplan made a bid for the permanent job, but the board last month chose David B. Thornburgh, executive director of the Fels Institute at the University of Pennsylvania and a son of former Republican Gov. Dick Thornburgh. He takes the helm in December.

"David should have his own executive team," Kaplan said. She started shortly after Stalberg became the committee's president in 2005.

Another Stalberg confidante, Loretta Depka, the committee's vice president for development and operations, stepped down on Wednesday.

During her tenure at the Committee of Seventy, Kaplan helped push for the ban on cash gifts to city employees and led a statewide campaign against the voter ID law.

"I've had so much fun," she said.

She said she wasn't sure what she would do next.

Though she has fielded some calls about working in the administration of Gov.-elect Tom Wolf, Kaplan said, she wasn't sure she wanted to be in Harrisburg. As for latching on to next year's race for mayor?

"I don't know that I'm so enamored with any one [of the candidates] that I feel I need to go work for them," she said.

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