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Nutter expands ethics rules for most city workers

Mayor Nutter on Tuesday announced new and expanded ethics rules for executive branch employees, no longer expecting City Council to enact what would be similar but permanent regulations for workers citywide.

Mayor Nutter on Tuesday announced new and expanded ethics rules for executive branch employees, no longer expecting City Council to enact what would be similar but permanent regulations for workers citywide.

The rules expand provisions in existing laws relating to a gift, food and drink ban, outside employment by city workers, and sexual harassment. They also create the city's first anti-nepotism policy, though it builds upon existing conflict-of-interest rules in the Philadelphia Code.

"The four executive orders I signed today strengthen current ethics provisions and reinforce the message that public servants are held to the highest standards," said Nutter, who made stronger government ethics a cornerstone of his 2007 campaign.

But as executive orders, they don't impact City Council, the Sheriff's Office, the City Commissioner's Office, the Registrar of Wills, the City Controller, or the District Attorney's Office.

Consequently, the orders in effect set up two categories of city workers - those 23,294 who work for the executive branch (representing 87 percent of the city workforce) and who must abide by the new restrictions, and those who do not. Also, the Philadelphia Board of Ethics has no authority to oversee executive orders.

Nutter's action came more than a year after the completion of a report by his appointed task force on ethics and campaign finance reform, which took 14 months to study the issues and make recommendations.

It also follows inaction by Council last spring on essentially the same ethics issues. Council has the sole authority to establish rules for all Philadelphia employees.

Councilman Frank Rizzo introduced several bills that languished in committee after the committee chairwoman, Marian B. Tasco, failed to act on them.

"From my perspective, it appeared, at least at the moment, that a legislative bill was not going to move through the process," Nutter said Tuesday. "All in all, covering 87 percent of employees is better than zero."

But in an interview Tuesday, Rizzo also said he received little support from Nutter in advancing the legislation, which was unpopular with many Council members. "The mayor was one that wanted these ethics bills when he was a councilman, and I saw the administration basically not being helpful when it came to lobbying on the bills' behalf," he said.

As a whole, the executive orders are a "big step forward," and are "a way for him to control the people whom he directs," said Ellen Mattleman Kaplan, policy director and vice president at the nonprofit government watchdog Committee of Seventy. But, she added, "it seems the mayor gave up on pushing these reforms through City Council."

On Tuesday, though, Nutter urged Council, as well as other independently elected officials, to adopt the changes he ordered, and he sent all of them copies of the new rules.

Among other things, the executive orders strengthen existing rules prohibiting employees from accepting any gifts, food, and drinks, in part by extending that ban to board and commission members.

As far as outside employment, current rules require certain city officials, for instance, to report outside income and potential conflicts of interest. Also, a civil service regulation outlines conditions under which outside employment is allowable, but affecting only civil service employees.

Nutter's order does not ban outside employment, but requires employees to receive written approval for it, and to report those additional jobs to the Department of Human Resources.