Posted on Tue, Nov. 3, 2009
The Board of Revision of Taxes' long tradition of ignoring the state Sunshine Act continued with its decision last month to put itself out of business, the city solicitor has concluded.
Solicitor Shelley R. Smith, in a memo last week, wrote that the board's decision to turn its most important function over to the city with Finance Director Rob Dubow as its executive director "clearly" violated state law.
All six board sitting board members voted unanimously at an Oct. 7 meeting to sign an agreement with the city to appoint Dubow and to shift the job of determining city property values to the Finance Department, Smith noted. The meeting was not advertised and no members of the public were present, she noted.
"Under these facts, a violation of the [Sunshine] Act clearly occurred," Smith wrote in her legal opinion, written at the request of City Councilman Bill Green.
That means the landmark agreement between the Nutter administration and the BRT could be invalidated if challenged in court, Smith wrote. Mayor Nutter originally defended the process behind the deal, which put Dubow in charge until a permanent director is hired.
That agreement came five months after an Inquirer series documented a history of political cronyism and mismanagement that has left the city with an unreliable property valuation system, according to administration officials. The series also laid out the BRT's penchant for taking action behind closed doors in violation of the Sunshine Act.
How can the BRT validate its deal with Nutter? The agency need only advertise and conduct a public meeting to formally take action, Smith wrote.
In a letter sent to the BRT yesterday, Green asked BRT chairwoman Charlesretta Meade to do that.
While calling the memorandum of understanding reached with the city "a productive first step in addressing some of the significant problems with the BRT's performance of its assessment function," Green said the board must publicly validate its action with a public meeting.
"The purpose of sending the letter to Charlesretta Meade is to get them to have a meeting so anyone who wants can come there and have input in the process," Green said last night.
Meade did not return a message left at her office yesterday.
At the time of the announcement Oct. 7, Green and others questioned how it came about. Smith wrote in her opinion that the board members held another closed-door meeting on Aug. 25, but since any action at the subsequent meeting would have superseded previous actions, she did not address that. Only three of the six sitting board members signed the agreement with the city.
"I did think it was an odd way of doing it, and I guess the city solicitor agrees," Councilman James F. Kenney said last night.
Nutter, otherwise a champion of transparency, shrugged off questions about the BRT's secretive process at the time. He told reporters on Oct. 7 that two government entities - the BRT is an independent board whose seven members are currently appointed by the city's Board of Judges - were permitted to enter into such an agreement in private.
He apparently changed his mind when confronted with his lawyer's opinion.
"The mayor acknowledges the procedural misstep, and encourages the correction to be made so we can get on with the business of reforming the BRT," the mayor's spokesman, Doug Oliver, said yesterday.
"There was no bad intention on their part but, of course, legal steps and procedures should be followed, and we expect the BRT will likely correct the mistake," Oliver said. "But it does not derail the intent of the [memorandum of understanding] and the goal remains the same - to clean up and professionalize the BRT."
Council is considering a bill to abolish the BRT, and hearings are being scheduled. The bill would establish a board responsible only for hearing appeals of the assessments set by the city, and take appointments away from the Board of Judges and put them in the hands of the mayor and Council.
Contact staff writer Jeff Shields at 215-854-4565 or jshields@phillynews.com.
Staff writer Joseph Tanfani contributed to this article.
Post a comment
today's 
