City Controller

The Job

The City Controller is an independent elected official who heads the City's Auditing Department and serves on a number of City Commissions. The Controller is responsible for auditing the financial operations of the City, including the Mayor's Office and City Council, and has the authority to approve or disapprove of all payment requests before the payments are made by the City's Office of the Director of Finance. He or she will be elected to a four-year term.

Alan Butkovitz and Al Schmidt Debate

You can stream the debate here, or download it here.

Alan Butkovitz (Democrat)

Alan Butkovitz currently serves as the City Controller. Prior to his election in 2005, Mr. Butkovitz served 15 years in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives. As a freshman lawmaker in 1991, Mr. Butkovitz led to the successful repeal of a tax that required senior citizens to include social security, pensions and veteran's benefits as taxable income. While serving as a State Representative, Mr. Butkovitz worked to create harsher penalties for drunk drivers who kill, led an investigation into violence in Philadelphia public schools and authored legislation creating the Office of the Safe School Advocate, which fights for victims of school violence.

Mr. Butkovitz was born and raised in Philadelphia, he is a graduate of Overbrook High School, Temple University and Temple University School of Law. Mr. Butkovitz is an attorney who lives with his wife Theresa and their two children Rachel and Edward in Northeast Philadelphia.

Articles and Endorsements

Al Schmidt (Republican)

Al Schmidt is a former senior performance analyst at the non-partisan U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), known as the “investigative arm of Congress.” In that capacity he assisted members of Congress in conducting oversight of federal agencies, programs, and policies – anywhere that taxpayer dollars were spent – to identify waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement. Prior to joining GAO, Mr. Schmidt served as a policy analyst for President Clinton’s “Commission on Holocaust Assets in the United States.”

Mr. Schmidt received his B.A. from Allegheny College and his Ph.D. in political history from Brandeis University. Mr. Schmidt lives in East Falls with his wife, Erin, and daughter, Maggie.