An Our Philadelphia Report
Hurry Down Sunshine Reform for Philadelphia
Think of the scaffolding that has moved around the walls of City Hall in recent years as the building was cleaned. Every part of the exterior was cleaned, not just the face you see from the Convention Center, or the face that tourists see from the steps of the Art Museum. This is what we need to do government itself. Philadelphia must do more to clean up its act, cast a bright light on the inner workings of city government, and make the reforms promised by Michael Nutter and other elected officials a reality.
In December, an Ethics Task Force created by the Mayor made a number of recommendations that would help hold city officials to higher ethical standards, and empower ordinary citizens to expose the role that campaign contributions and corporate lobbying playing in shaping public policy. Troublingly, no member of City Council came to the press conference at which the Task Force issued its report, and Philadelphia's "reform election" of 2007 is starting to seem like a long time ago. "Hurry Down Sunshine" explains why cleaning up our city's culture of corruption can wait no longer.
Findings
To shine a bright light on the inner working of our government, Our Philadelphia has taken all of the old paper records of campaign contributions to our Mayor and City Council, converted them to electronic form, and combined them with records of more recent contributions to reveal the top five donors to each of their campaigns. We have also done this for state representatives and state senators form Philadelphia by obtaining records of all of their campaign contributions from the Pennsylvania Department of State. Over the next year, Our Philadelphia will endeavor to make all of this information available to the public in an easy-to-use database so that we can all better work together to hold our elected officials more accountable.
Recommendations
Common Cause recommends changing the annual limit on campaign contributions to a limit on contributions made during each four-year election cycle. Limiting contributions on an annual basis greatly advantages incumbents, who are better positioned to raise money than challengers in the early part of an election cycle. Incumbents can more easily raise the annual limit during each year of an election cycle—something a challenger might only be able to do if he or she were running a full-bore campaign for the four years preceding an election. Encouraging candidates to get their donors to “max out” every single year also has the effect of lengthening campaigns and forcing incumbents and challengers alike to run perpetual campaigns.
Secondly, Common Cause/PA recommends improvements to the city’s online campaign contributions database. As designed, the system is very friendly to a candidate or campaign treasurer who understands contributions in terms of reporting cycles and filing deadlines. However the system could be greatly improved to be more accessible and usable to citizens seeking information about contributions.
Third, Philadelphia should join other major city's in requiring lobbyists to register and report their expenses. We are all equal on election day, with a vote to hold our elected officials accountable, but few people can afford to hire their own lobbyist to fight for them in City Hall or in Harrisburg every day of the year.
Detailed Data Downloads
To learn more, download the full report files.