Nutter selects leaders for his transition team

A judge, a university president, a minister and a banker are among the co-chairs of Mayor-elect Michael Nutter's transition team, announced yesterday.

The team will help prepare Nutter to take office in 2008, analyzing city operations and making personnel decisions.

Attorney Dick Hayden, a longtime Nutter adviser who will serve as counsel to the effort, noted that the co-chairs were a diverse group.

"The mayor-elect's charge was to look at people who represented different sectors of the Philadelphia community," said Hayden. "None of them would strike you as members of the political class."

The co-chairs announced yesterday are:

* Honorary chairman, Rev. Albert Campbell, pastor of Mount Carmel Baptist Church, West Philadelphia;

* Common Pleas Judge Ida Chen, the first Asian-American woman to serve as a jurist in Pennsylvania;

* Daniel Fitzpatrick, president and chief executive of Citizens Bank's operations for Eastern Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware;

* Amy Gutmann, president of the University of Pennsylvania;

* Bishop Richard Norris, who oversees the First Episcopal district of the African Methodist Episcopal Church;

* Lynette Brown-Sow, vice president for marketing and government relations at the Community College of Philadelphia. She also served as a deputy mayor in Ed Rendell's mayoral administration;

* Nilda Ruiz, president and chief executive of Asociación Puertorriqueños en Marcha.

Tricia Enright, who served as Nutter's campaign manager during the general election, will be executive director of the transition team.

Hayden said the transition effort has several moving parts.

Continuing Nutter's efforts over the summer to look at "best practices" in other cities, an operations committee will review city departments, looking at what improvements could be made.

Another group is handling hiring decisions. All the hires may not be made before Nutter takes office. And policy committees will look at issues Nutter would like to work on - such as sustainability and economic growth.

That work will stretch into 2008, Hayden said. *