Nutter transition reaches to non-politicos

With far more resumes in hand than jobs to fill, Mayor-elect Michael Nutter yesterday named seven cochairs to oversee his transition committee and help identify which of the 3,033 applicants will be selected to create the Nutter administration.

The seven represent a diverse group of civic, business and religious leaders. Two also come from the world of higher education. Four are women. Three are African American, one is Asian and one Latino.

They are: Amy Gutmann, president of the University of Pennsylvania; Lynette M. Brown-Sow, a former deputy mayor under former Mayor Ed Rendell and now a vice president at the Community College of Philadelphia; Nilda Ruiz, president of the Asociacion Puertorriquenos en Marcha; Daniel K. Fitzpatrick, regional president of Citizens Bank; Common Pleas Court Judge Ida Chen; Bishop Richard Norris, of the First Episcopal District of the African Methodist Episcopal Church; and Nutter's pastor, the Rev. Albert F. Campbell of Mount Carmel Baptist Church in West Philadelphia, who is the committee's honorary chairman.

The idea was to "draw prominent people from different disciplines in the city," but "to not stock this with political people," said lawyer Richard Hayden, a chief Nutter adviser who will serve as counsel to the transition committee.

This was Nutter's fourth major announcement since his Nov. 6 victory, and is designed to keep building a sense of momentum as the former city councilman prepares to become Philadelphia's next mayor in roughly six weeks.

While he has highlighted several planned initiatives, Nutter and his advisers have been tight-lipped about how his administration will be organized, and whether power will be divvied up among several deputy mayors and commissioners, or concentrated in the hands of Nutter and one or two senior aides.

The work of the transition committee will be split into two parts. The first, named the Operations Team, will include about 100 people who will be assigned to subcommittees that will compile written analyses of each of the city's operating departments (police, water, streets and so on). This will include a review of personnel, ongoing contracts and initiatives, and customer-service delivery.

In the end, it will amount to "very, very detailed Cliffs Notes for whomever will be appointed" to take over, said Tricia Enright, Nutter's former campaign manager, who was named executive director of the transition committee.

In addition, the committee will include "New Way Policy Teams" - Nutter on Election Night promised "a new day, a new way" - that will be less typical of transitions, Hayden said. Those will be staffed by upward of 50 architects, venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, and others not normally involved in such work to do more long-range planning.

For example, there will be a "Foundation Partners for Progress" team that will consider how the city government can better draw upon the resources and work of groups such as the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Another team, "Emerging Sectors: Fostering Growth," will ask investment professionals to focus on how to keep graduates of Philadelphia universities from moving to other cities. The members of these teams "are our dreamers," as Hayden put it. In all, there will be seven such teams, and the work of each will continue well into Nutter's first year, he said.

The budget for the largely volunteer transition effort is expected to be about $400,000, Hayden said, with the money contributed to a nonprofit that is being created for that purpose.

"It is refreshing to see that Michael is reaching out as broadly as possibly," said Carl Singley, one of five transition cochairs for Mayor Street in 1999. "Symbolically, he seems to be moving in the direction of bringing people who are not political back into government."