Ethics panel likes proposed Phila. gift limits - sort of
Philadelphia City Council's bill limiting gifts to city employees and officers, while not perfect, is better than what's on the books, the Board of Ethics said Wednesday.
Philadelphia City Council's bill limiting gifts to city employees and officers, while not perfect, is better than what's on the books, the Board of Ethics said Wednesday.
So the board plans to support the legislation - replacing a decades-old ethics law many say is vague and hard difficult to enforce - at a scheduled Council hearing Monday.
The bill would ban cash gifts, and cap the total value of other gifts such as flowers or dinner, at $99 per year from anyone with "a financial interest" that the gift's recipient could "substantially affect through official action."
The $99 cap is nearly twice what the board had wanted. The bill, introduced in January, came on the heels of the Ethics Board having agreed on gift regulations that included, among other restrictions, a $50 limit on all non-monetary gifts.
"Overall, I'm thrilled that council is going to revise the ordinance," board member Brian McCormick Jr. said at Wednesday's meeting. "But we voted on $50, we had legitimate reasons for that and I think informing City Council we did that and why we did that is within our responsibility and obligation."
But the board's director of enforcement, Michael Cooke, said the ethics staff and council staff had worked behind the scenes on the bill for several weeks and though the $50 limit was proposed, it did not win a line in the bill.
So on Monday, the ethics staff will push for other fixes in the bill - such as limiting gifts from anyone seeking official action, and not just from people with a "financial interest" the recipient could affect.
Ouside ethics advocates, too, are not completely happy with the bill. Patrick Christmas of the Committee of Seventy said the watchdog group considers the proposal "too lenient." He didn't elaborate but said that the group's vice president, Ellen Mattleman Kaplan, who was out of town Wednesday, would be testifying at Monday's Council hearing.
The city's inspector general, Amy Kurland, who had vehemently argued against some proposed gift regulations during the Ethics Board hearings, said she was pleased with Council's bill and thought it could be strengthened with new regulations.
If the bill passes in the next several weeks, the board would start debating a new set of regulations given the new law, officials said Wednesday. But if the bill stalls, the board could still pass its own proposed regulations.
The current law, which can be changed only by City Council ordinance, says no city official or employee shall solicit or receive any gift, gratuity, or service of "substantial economic value" that could influence that officer or employee in the discharge of official duties.
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