It hasn’t exactly been a slow news cycle of late, huh? Amid the cascade of headlines, you might have missed that, after being convicted of public corruption in two of three high-profile federal trials, John Dougherty was finally sentenced to prison. There wasn’t a ton of coverage, though it’s worth noting the reporting on pre-sentencing pleas to the judge to go soft on Dougherty from prominent Philadelphians, including, disappointingly, former Governor Ed Rendell and legendary homelessness advocate Sister Mary Scullion.
And soft the judge went — sentencing Dougherty to six years when prosecutors were asking for up to 14. Remember the outrage of one of the jurors upon listening to the Dougherty wiretaps in the first trial, and their La Cosa Nostra “nice little MRI machine you got there, CHOP, it would be a shame if something happened to it” motif: “This was a real lesson in Philadelphia civics and how Philadelphia government works — and it was appalling,” a member of the jury that convicted Dougherty and Councilman Bobby Henon of bribery and other charges told the Inquirer. (The juror was not named in the story — get this — “for fear of retribution from supporters of Dougherty and Henon.”)
If only the Judge and Philadelphia’s permanent establishment had that juror’s sense of commonsense outrage. Dougherty, through the use of his acolyte Henon, had weaponized our government — your government — for his private and political gain. Rather than speak for his bilked citizens (not to mention the union members Dougherty would ultimately be convicted of stealing from), our then-mayor expressed sadness for the criminal, his longtime political benefactor. You might think that now that Dougherty’s been sentenced, we’re entering into a new era of cleaner Philadelphia politics.
Sadly, it looks like you’d be wrong.
Stealing from all of us
This week, we learned that Councilmember Jimmy Harrity had hired Marita Crawford as his legislative director. Crawford was Dougherty’s political director at Local 98, allegedly his mistress, and his partner in crime. She pleaded guilty to wire fraud and stealing from the union and spent 15 days in prison — a sentencing slap on the wrist by U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Schmehl. “She did her time,” Harrity, a longtime Democratic party apparatchik, told the Inquirer. “Sometimes when you work for different people, you have to do what you have to do.”
Okay. Deep breath. It’s hard to engage such moral obtuseness. Silly me; I thought we were way past the time when “just following orders” could be offered up as some type of justification for illegal or immoral acts. Democrats are right to lambaste Trumpian corruption, but they’re oddly tolerant of it in their own backyard. Last year, Philly was found to be the nation’s eighth-most corrupt city, which has to make one wonder just what’s going on in the top seven. (Chicago is the dubious champion for four years running. Talk about your dynasties; the 90s Bulls pale by comparison.) We’ve had Henon. Kane. Williams. Fumo. McCord. Estey. Tartaglione. Fattah. Johnson-Harrell. (For a complete list, check out our Public Corruption All-Star Cards — trade ’em with your friends!)
What Harrity and, sadly, Schmehl don’t seem to get is that our bad public actors steal from all of us, and they erode democracy itself. Keep in mind the 2014 study from Indiana University and the University of Hong Kong, which found that the average Pennsylvanian pays a $1,300 yearly “corruption tax.” Dougherty and Crawford contributed to our epidemic of public corruption, and are complicit in its concomitant rise in voter cynicism.
You might think that now that Dougherty’s been sentenced, we’re entering into a new era of cleaner Philadelphia politics. Sadly, it looks like you’d be wrong.
When democracy is under attack everywhere we turn, we need judges to serve as the last line of defense in the battle for the soul of the body politic. Purists would say that judges ought not to be “sending messages” in their verdicts. But surely, lawmakers who violate the public trust — and those enticing or abetting them — deserve extra opprobrium, no?
Contrast Judge Schmehl’s ho-hum sentencing with the attitude expressed by U.S. District Judge Paul Diamond seven years ago, when disgraced District Attorney Seth Williams pled guilty in his courtroom to charges of bribery and fraud.
“I have a guilty plea from the highest law enforcement officer in the city,” said Diamond, a protégé of the late, no-nonsense former prosecutor Senator Arlen Specter, a man of sizable rectitude. “He betrayed his office and he sold his office. I am appalled by the evidence that I have heard.”
And then Diamond broke from precedent and declined to grant Williams time to get his affairs in order while awaiting sentencing, a courtesy granted by other judges toward the likes of former State Sen. Vince Fumo and former Rep. Chaka Fattah when they’d been convicted of violating the public trust. Instead, Diamond ordered the former DA carted off, handcuffed, into immediate custody. Perhaps the image of Williams cuffed and taken directly to prison would make the next tempted politician think twice.
Well, now we see what the alternative gets us, a public servant blithely hiring a convicted felon to serve essentially the same public she helped rip off. Harrity argues that everyone deserves second chances. I’m all for that. But ought said second chance be in pretty much the exact same realm where the lawbreaking took place to begin with? We don’t let convicted child molesters teach in our schools, after all. Should lawmakers be hiring law breakers? Yes, it is legal in PA for a convicted felon to serve on the public payroll. But maybe it shouldn’t be? Crawford has every right to be employed again after serving her time — just not in public service. Yo, Jimmy and Marita: There’s this thing called the private sector, you know?
Does Los Angeles have the answer we need?
But let’s not place all the blame on those who cross the lines. Others among us are complicit in blurring them. Dougherty, Crawford, Henon et al.? They’re the Scorpion in the old fable: “I can’t help myself. It’s my nature.” We’re the frog, naively expecting the transactionalists who betray the public trust to suddenly act with conscience. The Dougherty corruption machine has been abetted by a weakened and stenographic media, by a timid business and nonprofit leadership class that turns a blind eye to public transgressions out of narrow self-interest, and by a shoulder-shrugging citizenry that figures this is just the way things are. Bad things do happen in Philly.
Well, elsewhere, there is some civic uprising against the purveyors of business-as-usual corruption. In Los Angeles, where the City Council rivals ours for sheer dysfunction and corruption, six educational anchor institutions came together to propose solutions. The best and brightest from UCLA, USC, Pomona College, California State University Northridge, Loyola Marymount University, and the Pat Brown Institute for Public Affairs at California State Los Angeles joined with regional leaders to form the LA Governance Reform Project. Funded by private philanthropy, the group’s mission sounds like something that’s desperately needed here, where we default to hoping that government can heal itself: To produce independent nonpartisan reform recommendations informed by research and practice that not only informs the policy making process but helps inform broader civic and community engagement.
Last December, after more than a year of rigorous research, the group released its final report, Toward a Better Governed City of Los Angeles. “Corruption and scandals in Los Angeles City Hall have produced a crisis of confidence and public trust in local governing institutions,” the report reads. “At the root of the problem are weak or ineffective governing institutions that threaten local democracy in myriad ways, causing Angelenos to have little confidence that the current structure of governance is capable of working in the public interest.”
Among its many recommendations: the establishment of an independent redistricting commission for both Council and the Los Angeles Unified School District; reducing the size and influence of District Council seats by increasing their number from 15 to 25 and capping Council’s budget at 0.5 percent of the city’s general fund; requiring Council to take up legislation submitted by the Ethics Commission, while giving the Ethics Commission the power to hire independent legal counsel and get its recommendations on the ballot for a public vote.
If you agree that Johnny Doc and his minions — like Vince Fumo and Buddy Cianfrani before him — were allowed to run roughshod over good government norms because people who knew better looked the other way, then the model in Los Angeles offers at least some hope for change.
The report goes into far more depth, but you get the idea: Commonsense, good governance reforms. Many of its proposals were part of a City Charter reform package advanced by the city’s Ethics Commission in the spring. But, alas, there has been no movement as of yet. That ought to come as no surprise. Reform in local government — particularly where one party controls all 15 seats of Council — is often akin to tanker-turning.
To be clear: What is right for Los Angeles might not exactly be what’s necessary to rid ourselves of the Dougherty stench. After all, who did Democrats essentially anoint to take over disgraced Kevin Boyle’s state house seat? Johnny Doc’s nephew, Sean. I’ve heard good things about the 30-year-old, but is another Dougherty the best we can do? Remember, we still have Sean’s father, Kevin, on the Supreme Court. He wasn’t charged in any of his brother’s trials, but there was some testimony in trial number two raising questions about just what he knew about Local 98 footing the bill for $7,500 worth of painting and drywall in his own house. After his brother had come under FBI investigation, it was alleged that Justice Dougherty paid the bill — five years after the work was done.
If you agree that Johnny Doc and his minions — like Vince Fumo and Buddy Cianfrani before him — were allowed to run roughshod over good government norms because people who knew better looked the other way, then the model in Los Angeles offers at least some hope for change. For our purposes, what is revolutionary is that, there, six educational anchor institutions even waded in at all. Imagine if Penn, Drexel, Temple, St. Joe’s and LaSalle all dispatched their best and brightest political scientists and ethics philosophers and asked them to remake the broken wheel that is our local government.
Imagine a set of ideas that take on councilmanic prerogative, that argues for term limits, that maybe even heralds ranked-choice voting. Imagine if the Chamber of Commerce were on board. Imagine the press conference, where, in his opening remarks, the still-relatively new Temple President John Fry proclaimed this a new day for transparency in Philadelphia politics and welcomes Ryan Boyer and his Building Trades’ support for these reforms, alongside business and civic leaders like Michael Forman, Jerry Sweeney and Madeline Bell. That’s how you move politicians to act. Change doesn’t come via government so much as through the petitioning of it.
A fella can dream, can’t he?
The Fix is made possible through a grant from the Thomas Skelton Harrison Foundation. The Harrison Foundation does not exercise editorial control or approval over the content of any material published by The Philadelphia Citizen.
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