Ex-Saidel aide to take on Butkovitz

Brett Mandel, executive director of the civic-reform group Philadelphia Forward, appears ready to challenge incumbent City Controller Alan Butkovitz in the May 19 Democratic primary.

"With the city in fiscal crisis, the incumbent hasn't done enough to root out waste, fraud and mismanagement," Mandel said in an interview yesterday. "He's refused to opine on the [city's] five year [financial] plan as required by state law, and is woefully behind on departmental audits.

"If he were doing the job, I wouldn't be running."

Mandel planned to meet with supporters last night to make a final decision about running, but it appeared likely that he would take on Butkovitz, who won the office in 2005.

Butkovitz said last night that he's ready to defend his record.

"We've done close to 40 performance audits since I've been in office," Butkovitz said. "They've led to significant improvements in the delivery of services, including such life-and-death matters as rescue-squad response time. And they've enabled us to identify hundreds of millions of dollars in savings and efficiencies."

Mandel has been director of Philadelphia Forward, a group that promotes tax and ethics reform, since 2004.

For eight years before that, he served as an assistant city controller under Butkovitz's predecessor, Jonathan Saidel.

Mandel performed staff work for the Charter Reform Commission in 1993 and '94, and has also written two books about baseball.

Mandel said that he wants to move from being a civic voice to someone who can directly affect city policy. As an example, he cited an issue that he's raised in the past - the Philadelphia Eagles' failure to pay $8 million that the city says that the team has owed for years for skybox rentals at Veterans Stadium.

"As an outsider I can complain about the Eagles not paying what they owe," Mandel said. "As city controller, I could refuse to sign off on payments [to the team], and make them pay."

Politically speaking, Mandel will have an uphill fight, since Butkovitz has support among many Democratic elected officials, and has a $170,000 war chest, according to campaign finance reports. *