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Ethics complaint accuses Boston Consulting Group, William Penn Foundation of violating lobbying code
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Advocacy groups will file a complaint with the Philadelphia Board of Ethics Wednesday charging the Boston Consulting Group with violating city code by failing to register as a lobbyist while proposing that the School District close down traditional public schools, possibly accelerate privatization through charter expansion and increased private management, and bust blue-collar unions. The William Penn Foundation, it charges, also violated the code by failing to register as the principal on whose behalf, along with the undisclosed anonymous donors they solicited funds from, BCG was lobbying.
"This complaint is fundamentally about the public understanding that the controversial plan by the Boston Consulting Group was funded by narrow private interests with a specific agenda," said Parents United co-founder Gerald Wright in a press release. "They have been allowed unprecedented access to information and data denied to the public, and they have had unprecedented access to lobby top decisionmakers without ever identifying as lobbyists."
BCG and William Penn denied the allegations.
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Republican State Rep. Mike Fleck is Pennsylvania's first openly gay legislator, coming out to The Huntingdon Daily News in an interview published Saturday. Interestingly, State Senator John Eichelberger, whose senate district encompasses Fleck's house district, is one of the most anti-gay legislators in Pennsylvania.
Eichelberger was the lead sponsor of a proposed constitutional amendment to define marriage as between one man and one woman. He explained why in 2009, calling same-sex marriage "dysfunctional" and saying that it could ultimately cause "polygamy" and "marrying younger people." Gay people, he said, don't need rights: they should just be happy that America is "allowing them to exist."
"They’re not being punished," Eichelberger told Democratic State Senator Daylin Leach during a debate on WHYY's Radio Times. "We’re allowing them to exist, and do what every American can do. We’re just not rewarding them with any special designation."
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Politicians and journalists, breathtaking egos notwithstanding, depend mightily on research undertaken by outsiders: organizations, think tanks, academics. This is probably true now more than ever as legislators spend much of their time raising money and reporters fight to survive in shrinking newsrooms. Information and ideas have serious political consequences. The American conservative movement understood this first, the resource-poor left much later.
The Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center, a progressive research and advocacy group based in Harrisburg, is throwing its five-year anniversary celebration today in Philadelphia (details below). PBPC grew out of the Keystone Research Center, founded in 1996 to combat The Commonwealth Foundation, the Pennsylvania branch of a powerful conservative brain trust that stretches from coast to coast.
In the 1960s and '70s, conservatives became fixated by the perceived liberal dominance of universities and foundations. Corporations and wealthy donors began to pour money into the think tanks, academic departments and, of course, media to promote the agenda of reaction.
The William Penn Foundation and Jeremy Nowak "mutually agreed that he should step down as its president," according to a short post this morning on the Philadelphia Business Journal website.
Since taking over the $1.9-billion foundation in June 2011, Nowak pushed to support charter school growth and sideline traditional public school advocates. He announced plans to stop funding progressive groups like the Philadelphia Student Union while funneling millions of dollars to a controversial Boston Consulting Group study for the School District of Philadelphia, which initially called for increased outside and potentially private management of schools, school closings, and privatization of much of the District's blue-collar workforce.
He directed $15 million to The Philadelphia School Partnership (PSP), a two-year-old pro-charter organization that exercises increasing clout in local school politics.
"It became clear that the Foundation and Nowak have differences in approach regarding implementation of the [new strategic] plan and both agreed that a change in leadership at this time made sense," according to a William Penn press release.
City Paper profiled Nowak in a July cover story. It sparked, and continues to spark, debate.
More soon.
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Vision for Equality, which provides services and advocates for people with intellectual disabilities, is this morning set to thank Republican Governor Tom Corbett and Department of Public Welfare Secretary Gary Alexander "for their efforts to increase funding to programs that help individuals with intellectual disabilities," according to a press release from the governor's office.
Disability rights activists with the organization ADAPT, known for performing civil disobedience in wheelchairs, will be protesting the governor's large-scale cuts to programs for people with disabilities outside the event (10:45am, 718 Arch Street, Philadelphia).
"We're pretty upset," says ADAPT organizer Nancy Salandra, who first heard about the event yesterday afternoon. Among other things, Corbett has eliminated cash assistance for people with disabilities and kicked tens of thousands of Pennsylvanians off Medicaid. "Because what he's done to people with disabilities is outrageous."
"We're going to be talking about some positive things with Vision for Equality. Those topics aren't on the agenda," says DPW spokesperson Anne Bale when asked about the funding cuts. Corbett's 2012-13 budget, she says, provides additional funding for the thousands-long waiting list for people with intellectual disabilities who need funding for community-based services."They have a right to protest, and we respect that. But today's going to be a positive event."
No one from Vision for Equality could be reached for comment.
Disability rights and service organizations have spent the last two years protesting Governor Corbett. Last year, the administration quietly kicked about 130,000 Pennsylvanians off Medicaid, prompting a public outcry and federal investigation. Many could be reinstated thanks to a recent legal settlement, but it's unclear whether the payments will be retroactive. Corbett also eliminated the adultBasic insurance program, which covered 40,000 poor Pennsylvanians who weren’t quite poor enough to qualify for Medicaid.
This year, Corbett and legislative Republicans slashed funding to county-administered social services by 10-percent and instituted a block grant program that activists say will pit them against each other in a desperate fight for funding. And he eliminated General Assistance, $205 in monthly cash assistance that overwhelmingly served people with disabilities.
"He hasn't done a damn thing for people with physical disabilities," says Salandra. "People that got cut off of General Assistance, $205-a-month. People are getting evicted from their apartment, can't pay for drugs. It's crazy. So I'm shocked at what Vision for Equality is doing."
Indeed, disability rights groups across the state are currently suing Corbett to block the elimination of General Assistance and the county block grants, including: Disability Rights Network of PA, Pennsylvania Mental Health Consumers' Association, the Mental Health Association in Pennsylvania, the Mental Health Association of Southeastern Pennsylvania, The Philadelphia Alliance, the Drug and Alcohol Service Providers Organization of Pennsylvania, and the Pennsylvania Community Providers Association.
Now, Corbett is flirting with the idea of refusing a large-scale Medicaid expansion, largely paid for by the federal government, under the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare). That could deny care to up to 682,880 currently ineligible poor Pennsylvanians,
"He's going to destroy people on Medicaid, which includes people with intellectual disabilities...So we don't know what's going on," says Salandra. "He doesn't come to Philadelphia much because most people hate him here. He should just be prepared."
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The Chicago Teachers Union's September strike focused unprecedented national attention on the fight over the future of public education, crystallizing for the first time widespread concerns of charters, privatization, high-stakes standardized tastes and the demonization of teachers and organized labor. After years of corporate-model school reformers dominating a conversation about "accountability," Chicago teachers put the emphasis on adequate funding, poverty, racial segregation and inequality.
Now, they're coming to Philly to share their experience. The event is Saturday, Nov. 17, at Science Leadership Academy, 22nd and Arch streets at 1 p.m.
Philadelphia, which has the largest portion of public school students enrolled in charters of any major city nationwide, has suffered severe cuts under Gov. Tom Corbett and been the site of a bitter confrontation over a radical restructuring and privatization plan advanced by the state-controlled School Reform Commission and backed by the powerful William Penn Foundation.
Chicago teachers were successful because militant grassroots leadership: The Caucus of Rank and File Educators (CORE), took over the union in 2010 and worked hard to educate and organize their members — and to build unprecedented community and parent support. On Sept. 22, hundreds gathered to found the Philadelphia Coalition for Advocating for Public Schools (PCAPS), a broad union-community coalition set to counter the Boston Consulting Group-drafted restructuring plan. The discussion that dominated the day was: How did Chicago do it?
The event is sponsored by the Labor Work Group (created during Occupy Philly) and the progressive Teacher Action Group (TAG).
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It's now a family affair at The Inquirer and Daily News.
The daughter of famous/notorious South Jersey Democratic political boss and newly minted owner of both papers George Norcross is listed on the masthead as a "Director" of Interstate General Media LLC. Alessandra T. Norcross is, according to a September report, 25 years old.
Likewise with "Director" Drew A. Katz, Interstate General Media co-owner Lewis Katz's son. The junior Katz is also the CEO of the similarly named Interstate Outdoor Advertising. Katz's partner Nancy Phillips, formerly an Inquirer investigative reporter, is now reportedly a special assistant to the publisher. But she is nowhere to be found on the corporate masthead. City Paper has not, to be clear, received any complaints about the work ethic of any of the three. Newsroom ire has instead focused on what many journalists and the Newspaper Guild charge is an effort to push out older reporters.
IGM management has consistently declined to speak to City Paper about internal affairs.
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It's official: Philadelphia voters cast 27,100 provisional ballots on Election Day 2012, about twice as many as in 2008. It's not yet clear what caused the problem, which forced droves of angry citizens to use a less dependable form of ballot. But the data finally confirms what should have been obvious to local media (but was not) for nearly a week: A problem surely did exist.
By Tuesday afternoon, reports from election workers and voters citywide indicated that large numbers of registered voters mysteriously not showing up on the rolls were being forced to cast provisional ballots. City Paper's story was posted at 2:17 p.m. Not so at Philly.com, the shared e-home of The Inquirer and Daily News, which resembled the homepage priorities at Fox News: a mural about Barack Obama was accidentally not covered up at a Northeast Philadelphia school cafeteria polling place. It dominated coverage all day. All. Day. Long.
Both papers included provisional ballot stories in their Wednesday editions, but editors seemed mysteriously resistant to acknowledging the story's importance — perhaps following the lead of the City Commissioners, who downplayed the issue all day on Tuesday.
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Speaker John Boehner is boasting that, Republicans having maintained their majority in the U.S. House of Representatives, there is "no mandate for raising tax rates." But it might not be true that a majority of Americans voted for a Republican House: the right may have stole the House, quite legally, through gerrymandering.
In 2010, Republicans took control of a record number of state governments just in time for the every-10-years redrawing of congressional district maps. And they drew them to make it extraordinarily difficult for Democrats to win, partaking in the shameless but ancient practice of gerrymandering.
Pennsylvania's (still somewhat incomplete) congressional election results are a case in point: 2,702,901 Pennsylvanians voted to send Democrats to the House, and just 2,627,031 voted for Republican candidates; yet an astonishing 13 of 18 Pennsylvania House seats were won by Republicans. In other words, Democrats won 50.7 percent of the House vote in Pennsylvania, but just 27.7 percent of House seats.
City Commissioner Stephanie Singer, who replaced decades-long incumbent Marge Tartaglione in last year's city Democratic primary and became the commission's new chairwoman was ousted today in a motion by Republican City Commissioner Al Schmidt.
The motion, which established Schmidt as co-chair with Democratic City Commissioner Anthony Clark, was supported by the latter.
The move isn't totally surprising — there's been friction, to say the least, between commissioners Schmidt and Singer for some time. Singer dismissed a report earlier this year by Schmidt claiming to have found hundreds of voter "irregularities" (none of which amount to the specter of voter impersonation often cited as a reason for voter ID), and the two have clashed over other issues as well.
(Updated: CP) Following the Commissioners public meeting today, Singer cited tension between herself and Schmidt over the salary of Deputy Commissioner Dennis Lee, who works for Singer.
Singer said today that Schmidt (and Clarke) had blocked a raise of $12,000 she wanted to give Mr. Lee when he was promoted by Singer to the position of Chief Deputy — an amount Singer says would have simply brought Lee's pay in line with his predecessor, Noel Kugelmass, whose salary Schmidt had signed off on. Singer also noted that she felt it in appropriate to pay Lee, who is black, less than his predecessor, who was white.
In an email, Schmidt countered that Kugelmass had been "Chief of Staff of the Commission," and that Mr. Lee is a "Chief Deputy Commissioner," and as such makes $10k more than his counterparts in Clark's and Schmidt's offices. Singer says that Mr. Lee does "exactly the same job" as did Mr. Kugelmass.
Check back here for updates. Follow Isaiah Thompson on Twitter.
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