Recruiting Community Support
The Committee of Seventy continued to monitor elections in Philadelphia throughout the 1940s and 1950s. As Seventy began to recruit hundreds of high school and college students, for its election day efforts, it was able to patrol the City's polling places more thoroughly. Seventy also worked to ensure the accuracy of the election count by sending staff and volunteers to inspect municipal voting machines prior to each election and to observe the official recounts of election returns. Election fraud remained in Philadelphia : in 1945 and 1953, Seventy's investigations uncovered thousands of fraudulent signatures on the nominating petitions of various candidates. In 1952, Seventy sponsored a successful voter registration drive, bringing 162,000 new Philadelphians into the electoral process. In 1956, Seventy prompted a federal investigation of illegal voting in one city ward and was able to compel the purging 136,000 invalid registrations citywide.
Working Through Philadelphia ’s Economic DistressBy the 1940s, Philadelphia was in desperate financial straits as was the rest of the country after the unbelievable blow of the Great Depression. This correlation between Philadelphia ’s wellbeing and the state of the rest of the country was expressed in the Committee’s 1941 literature piece, “What Makes It Tick?” “History shows that in times like these, when the public’s attention is centered on national affairs, local governments have been able to take unwise steps in the administration of their affairs because of the relative lack of public interest. The cost and results of these unsound actions is usually felt for many years after the national emergency is over. Our Committee is an effective brake against this type of opportunism” (What Makes It Tick?)
Burdened by its huge $500 million debt and a $44 million budget deficit, the City was spending almost half of its revenues to service its debt. Inefficient management of municipal government worked to waste the remaining revenues. Seventy continued to advocate sound fiscal planning for the City. It fought the City's attempts to impose unfair taxes on the population and proposed specific methods by which the City could improve the operation of its government. When the Mayor and City Council commissioned a thorough investigation of Philadelphia's financial situation in 1947, Seventy carefully monitored its progress. This investigatory group, "The Committee of Fifteen," uncovered a web of embezzlements, bribery, vice, and ties among machine politicians and city officials that confirmed Seventy's own findings. The revelations of the Committee of Fifteen prompted the radical reshaping of Philadelphia government under the 1951 Home Rule Charter.
As one of the premier civic reform groups in the City, Seventy had a prominent role in the formulation of the Home Rule Charter. It rallied public sentiment for the new charter, testified several times in the hearings of the Charter Commission, proposed a comprehensive plan for reorganizing the government of Philadelphia, and lobbied hard for the implementation of its recommendations. Ironically, the passage of the Home Rule Charter represented both the culmination of Seventy's municipal reform work and Seventy's greatest defeat.
Representatives of Seventy found themselves outnumbered by those who favored the strong-mayor form of municipal government and the Charter Commission rejected a substantial portion of Seventy's recommendations. Even so, after the passage of the Home Rule Charter in 1951, Seventy demanded enforcement of the provisions of the new Charter and helped to defeat three separate attempts to amend it.
In the 1940s, Seventy expanded its focus from elections and municipal finances to a general concern for the structure and function of Philadelphia government. Its work on the Home Rule Charter is but one example of this evolution into a public policy organization. Seventy first emerged as a general civic watchdog when it challenged the city's Civil Service Commission in 1938. Throughout the next decade, Seventy battled this agency to institute uniform hiring practices for municipal employees and to eliminate inaccurate scoring of the civil service examinations. Later, in the 1950s, Seventy launched a vigorous but unsuccessful campaign to reform Philadelphia 's Traffic Court .
Reform Through EducationBeginning in the 1940s, Seventy also made a major effort to educate Philadelphia 's youth and adults about their civic responsibilities. Voter turnout in the City's elections was low and public support for municipal reform was waning, Through its educational outreach, Seventy sought to teach Philadelphians about their local government and to increase the number of active voters, leading to the election of more competent City officials. To reach the City's students, Seventy worked with the school district to develop a comprehensive program of civic education for its students.
In 1943, Seventy developed a series of local radio debates on civic issues featuring panels of high school students—the "Junior Town Meetings of the Air." These debates won national acclaim and were soon duplicated in 160 cities across the country. Several of Seventy's members also helped to establish the Youth Civic Council, a civic reform organization for high school and college students. For adults, Seventy produced a' series of radio broadcasts entitled Your Right to Vote for station KYW, published a series of articles in the Germantown Courier, and offered a course in Practical Politics free of charge to civic and professional organizations. In 1943, Seventy began to publish a monthly newsletter called Civic Affairs, which discussed issues of local government. By 1952, Seventy distributed almost five thousand copies each month. The Committee of Seventy celebrated its 50th anniversary in 1954 and was awarded the Lane Bryant Award in that year for public service to the citizens of Philadelphia.
Reorganizing and Revitalizing the Election Process: 1960-1969
In the 1960s, Seventy's energies were directed towards winning two major improvements in Philadelphia’s electoral system: the realignment of the City’s wards, and the reapportionment of the state legislative districts. The Reapportionment Act of 1965 gave Philadelphia voters equal representation in the Pennsylvania General Assembly, a privilege long denied the City by a state legislature biased against urban areas. The Ward Realignment Plan of the same year increased the number of wards, loosened the grip of Center City ward leaders on the Democratic and Republican parties, and enabled residents of other areas of the City to have a greater voice in party affairs. Both of these reforms were enacted only after years of political and legal battles, and considerable effort on Seventy's part.
Taking an Academic Approach: 1970-1989
In the 1970s and 1980s, Seventy's commitment to civic education took on a new form. Seventy sought to educate Philadelphians about their government and about elections primarily through its publications: the Governance Studies, the How to Run for Political Office handbook, the How to Vote and Guide to the Conduct of Polling Places pamphlets, and Seventy's annual Election Calendar, which is distributed to over 50,000 voters in the Delaware Valley. Representatives of Seventy also furthered its non-partisan education efforts through speaking engagements, radio, and television appearances. Seventy also began its partnership with the International Visitors Council, serving as a professional resource for the State Department’s Leadership Program which brings rising international leaders to the United States to discuss a wide range of issues, including the democratic process, municipal governance, and economic development policy.
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Seventy acted as civic watchdog on two recurring issues. The organization worked to defeat several attempts by City Council to increase its own salary and pension benefits, and joined with other good government groups to denounce the proposed increases as unnecessary and overly generous. Seventy has also taken action many times to ensure that municipal employees refrain from engaging in partisan political activity, as mandated by Philadelphia’s Charter.
Preservation of Democracy instead of Choosing SidesOver the years, Seventy had established such a reputation of non-partisan activism that it was called upon by both sides in the highly-charged 1976 effort to recall Mayor Frank Rizzo to supervise the counting of the recall petition signatures. In 1978, Seventy launched an all-out campaign to save the Charter from those who sought to change it, and emerged as a leading voice in one of the most important political battles of the time. Nearing the end of his second term, Mayor Frank Rizzo advocated amending the charter provision limiting the Mayor of Philadelphia to two terms. Some believed that this move was Rizzo's attempt to secure a third term in office.
However, Seventy had long opposed this type of piecemeal Charter change, and it viewed the situation as a strong challenge to the integrity of the Charter, and to comprehensive reform efforts. It began a two-year program of research, radio and television appearances, public speeches, and non-partisan info informational pamphlets discussing the proposed amendment. The electorate of Philadelphia ultimately voted to defeat the amendment in referendum. By focusing attention on the merits of the proposed Charter change rather than on its political implications, Seventy shaped public debate on the two-term limit.
In the late 1970s, Seventy sought an additional electoral reform: the redrawing of Philadelphia's voting divisions to reflect recent shifts in the City's population. This reform was intended to equalize the number of voters in each division, and save money for the City. When the City would not redraw its voting divisions voluntarily, Seventy sued. Seventy won the lawsuit after an eight-year legal battle, and the new divisions were established in time for the April 1988 Presidential Primary.
Conducting Studies
Seventy moved into a new phase of activity in 1979 when it began an intensive research project on municipal governance in Philadelphia . Studies in this "Governance Project" identified the major problems in the structure of the City's government, evaluated the problems, and proposed solutions. Studying each municipal department and agency in turn, Seventy amassed a comprehensive body of objective information on the way government functions in Philadelphia . Governance studies on economic development, housing, the port, municipal utilities, civil service and personnel, transportation, and the state judicial system were published. Seventy also published advocacy pieces on the Philadelphia school system and the port. To improve its research efforts, Seventy initiated a program called the “Practicum” in 1976. This program hired salaried student interns each year to research and report on matters of political and governmental importance in the City. Each of Seventy's Governance Studies originated in the Practicum.
In 1983, The Committee of Seventy finished its first statewide governance study, the Judicial Selection Governance Study. To carry on the work of statewide judicial reform that it first addressed in this study, Seventy helped to create a permanent, independent, statewide organization, Pennsylvanians for Modern Courts, to work for long-term structural reform in the judicial system of Pennsylvania. The new organization began its first full year of operation in 1988 and is still thriving to this day. Seventy remains active in this endeavor as the group continues to grow.
By the 1980s, Seventy had recognized that the mechanical voting machines it had successfully advocated for in the 1930s were nearing the end of their useful life and it was time to upgrade to state of the art voting technology. This would therefore provide a higher degree of reliability and greatly reduce the cost of maintenance and storage. Thus began the long campaign of public education, research and consensus building which would be necessary to get both city officials and citizens to approve of a significant public expense for equipment which is used just twice per year, but whose reliability is an essential component in choosing a legitimate democratic government.