Letters | What Williams accomplished

MAYOR-ELECT Nutter's recent appointments included Amy Kurland as Philadelphia's new inspector general. Her lack of political baggage and credible track record as a federal prosecutor makes it clear that the mayor's intention was to fill this slot with someone who is "no nonsense" and practiced at taking down those who abuse the system for their own enrichment.

But we shouldn't overlook the individual who took this office from a virtually unknown and certainly unused city agency and put aggressive investigative policies and recommendations into the headlines.

Williams took an agency where the IG himself was a violator of the very regulations he was mandated to enforce and with that kind of approach from the top, virtually nothing was done to enforce the mandate of the office. Williams replaced others, brought in additional prosecutorial experience, retrained personnel, and within a short two-year span brought some headline-grabbing examples of costly reckless and flagrant manipulation and self enrichment to the headlines.

This office is no longer the obscure an ineffective token it had become and the appointment of someone with the track record of Ms. Kurland only underscores the point that Mayor Nutter expects more of the same.

Williams himself is approaching the point where he will start another run for the office of the district attorney and would have been required to resign early in the year to begin that process.

His ideas on decentralized law-enforcement and prosecution of gun dealers made headlines in the last race and, along with other fresh concepts, were ahead of the curve if we are going to bring crime and its prosecution to the level of effectiveness this city sorely needs.

Nutter and Williams are clearly the type of individuals that bring a much-needed breath of fresh air to city politics.

Jim Foster, Philadelphia