Candidates for Philadelphia City Controller (from left), Democrat Alan Butkovitz, Republican Mike Tomlin and Democrat Rebecca Rhynhart, listen to a question from Philadelphia Magazine’s Holly Otterbein at the Chestnut Hill Local’s City Controller debate on Thursday, April 27. (Photo by Brendan Sample)[/caption]

by Brendan Sample

In what turned out to be a heated affair, the three candidates vying for the Philadelphia City Controller position discussed issues such as pension liabilities, control of the Philadelphia Parking Authority and scrutiny of the Sheriff’s Office at their debate on Thursday.

Incumbent Democrat Alan Butkovitz is seeking his party’s nomination against challenger Rebecca Rhynhart, former Chief Administrative Officer under Mayor Kenney, for the May 16 primary. Whoever secures the nomination will go on to challenge Republican Mike Tomlinson on Nov. 7.

As with the District Attorney debate last month, the Controller debate was held at Springside Chestnut Hill Academy and was sponsored by the Chestnut Hill Local. Editor Pete Mazzaccaro once again served as a moderator, and was accompanied by Holly Otterbein, a senior writer at Philadelphia Magazine.

From their opening statements, the candidates made it known that they would not be taking it easy on each other, as the hostilities ran particularly deep between Butkovitz and Rhynhart, who accused Butkovitz of not auditing each city department every year and focusing too much on politics instead of getting results. He challenged those claims while also accusing Rhynhart of lying, saying that he does in fact have records of department audits from the past few years.

While this sort of argument would continue to pop up throughout the evening, the candidates still found plenty of time to focus on the issues, one of the most important of which was the city’s pension system and the unfunded liability it is facing, which is estimated to be more than $5 billion. As a member of the pension board, Butkovitz, who has had specific insight into this issue during his 12-year tenure, said that he was the one who pushed the board to be more honest than they had been before he started.

He also described his proposed plan to buy out those who worked for the city between 1967 and 1987, which he said had the potential to save the city up to $500 million, with the difference between their current pensions and pensions provided under the current collective bargaining agreement.

“Everybody’s been talking about pension deficits and symbolic solutions,” Butkovitz said. “One reason I love this job is because we have to deal with real numbers and real truth and get at solutions to problems and not just issue feel-good statements, and that’s what we’ve done.”

Rhynhart focused on the need to put more emphasis on the returns of the pension fund and also expressed how important she felt it was to continue working with unions make advancements.

Tomlinson was highly critical of the current pension plan, saying that it was misleading the public with an “absolute lack of transparency.” He said he felt that it had to be audited to prevent passing on a major liability to future generations.

Butkovitz also said that Rhynhart should be “embarrassed” to talk about her financial background, while she retaliated by accusing Butkovitz of lying to distract from his own failures.

The candidates also addressed the issue of the Philadelphia Parking Authority and whether it should be transferred from state control back to city control. Though Republicans were initially responsible for the department becoming state-run, Tomlinson said that the change was a disgrace and that the Parking Authority needs to be returned to the city and audited.

“The Philadelphia Parking Authority’s nothing but a sea of corruption,” Tomlinson said. “It was an absolute disgrace and it is still a disgrace. It’s like an unlevied tax in this city. You can’t drive your car without getting a ticket.”

Butkovitz has been accused of being soft on the Parking Authority, a claim which he directly denied by claiming to be the only outside agency that audited the department. Pointing out that the Parking Authority was a state department, he referred main audits over to the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office, which is currently six months into an audit. Rhynhart accused Butkovitz of not auditing the Parking Authority since 2009 and said that she would focus on auditing the department.

One of the last major issues discussed was how the candidates would handle the recent problems posed by the Sheriff’s Office and whether it is currently operating effectively. Although Rhynhart did not have previous oversight of that department, she promised to look into it while also accusing Butkovitz of waiting for news stories to begin his audit instead of starting it earlier.

“I think that there are city funds that are still not flowing through the city’s coffers, and they should be,” Rhynhart said. “This is one of many examples of the incumbent doing audits of things that have already hit the press and had numerous articles instead of looking at things that actually press upon existing power structures that people don’t know about.”

Butkovitz responded by claiming that the press was talking about the Sheriff’s Office because of the work his office was doing.

Tomlinson expressed his frustration concerning people pointing fingers over the department missing millions of dollars and said that the Controller should have a representative in the Sheriff’s Office every day to look over all the incoming money.

Some of the other issues the candidates discussed concerned expenditures from the Mayor’s Fund for Philadelphia, recent changes to property taxes and values and issues with auditing the school district. While all three had differing opinions on most of the major topics, they were all in agreement that police officers should be held completely accountable for misbehavior, current District Attorney Seth Williams should resign and the Philadelphia City Council should be required to publicly describe and defend its spending at budget hearings like all other departments.

Brendan Sample can be reached at brendan@chestnuthilllocal.com