PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Philadelphia voters will once again get to decide whether city officials should have to resign their job in order to run for another public office, under a bill voted out of City Council committee on Wednesday.
Voters have twice rejected changing the charter so that city officials could keep their jobs while running for a new one. But the bill’s sponsor, Councilmember Isaiah Thomas, has changed the proposal somewhat, in hopes of making it more palatable.
“City elected officials can only keep their job to run for state or federal seats,” he explained. “If you’re looking to run for a city seat, you still have to resign.”
Thomas argued that the only seat any city official has resigned to run for in the last 55 years was mayor. That’s a city seat, so the “resign to run” rule would still apply. He also argued it would bring uniformity to elected office, since state and federal elected officials don’t have to resign to seek a new office.
“I think it’s fair to put City Council members in the exact same position as state [representatives], state senators, members of Congress and other legislators.
The Board of Ethics, though, sees it differently. Its general counsel Jordana Greenwald testified that the proposed changes could weaken campaign finance laws, lobbying laws and political activity restrictions on city employees.
“These transparency and ethics laws that the Board administers were all written and drafted with the premise that nobody who was a city employee or officer could run for office,” she said.
“The drafters of the charter saw the political activities provision as a core value and we believe it really is critical to take great care in making any changes to this provision.”
Committee chair Katherine Gilmore Richardson indicated she’d be more willing to change all of those laws rather than keep “resign to run.” “This is not a situation where we’re not able to make the correction,” she said.
The committee voted unanimously to advance the bill anyway. It now goes to the full council.