"The Rick Mariano Investigation"
Editorial | Break the silence, City Hall
The often-boisterous Philadelphia City Council has been as silent as a mummy about one of its own becoming the focus of a federal probe into City Hall corruption.
An FBI investigation has rocked the Street administration for more than a year, leading to several federal convictions. A former city treasurer and several businessmen who had City Hall contracts were convicted. A Council aide pleaded guilty.
Yet, Council has passed only one notable piece of ethics reform in the scandal's wake.
Silence on the subject is the only thing that body has expressed since it was reported months ago that the U.S. Attorney's office had subpoenaed financial records from Councilman Rick Mariano's office. It has been way too quiet around City Hall. Someone ought to be shouting for action. Mariano owes it to his constituents to speak.
The councilman (who represents parts of Kensington and Northeast Philadelphia) got a July 21 letter from the U.S. Attorney's office informing him that he is a "target" of a federal grand jury probe. The investigation centers on allegations that Erie Steel Ltd. paid off Mariano's credit card debt in exchange for his vote to give that firm special tax breaks in his district.
This allegation could lead to a formal charge of "honest services fraud," the same charge leveled against convicted former city treasurer Corey Kemp, who has been sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Why isn't Council saying something about that?
Remember how loud Councilman David Cohen became last year, demanding that Mayor Street offer a public explanation for receiving a mysterious check for $10,000 in 1998 from a Boston insurance company that later got city business? Since then, Cohen's loudest act has been to bottle up ethics reform bills in the Council committee he chairs.
Or, remember how loud Street (a close pal of Mariano) became in 1980 when, as a young councilman, he demanded explanations from then-Council President George X. Schwartz, a target in the FBI's Abscam investigation. Street said the possibility of criminal prosecution was "irrelevant" to whether Schwartz owed the public an explanation.
Mariano owes the city an explanation, too. This investigation threatens to paralyze his effectiveness as a councilman. He needs to tell the people he represents what's going on.
There hasn't been a peep by the new city Board of Ethics, chaired by Charisse Lillie. It was May when Mayor Street named J. Shane Creamer Jr. as the board's interim executive director. If it's performing its duty to "review ethics questions concerning the conduct of elected officials," why hasn't the board said anything about Mariano?
The least the ethics board could do is conduct a public hearing on Mariano's refusal to answer questions about his personal finances on the required annual disclosure form. Mariano invoked his constitutional right to not incriminate himself. The state Supreme Court, in a 1987 case involving judges, ruled that the Fifth Amendment could not be used to avoid filling out disclosure forms.
Zack Stahlberg, head of the watchdog group Committee of Seventy, says if Mariano is the stand-up tough guy he presents himself to be, then the councilman ought to honor a moral obligation under the city code to disclose his income sources. "To me, it's that simple," said Stahlberg.
Mariano needs to hear that not just from the Committee of Seventy, but from the people in his district as well. They deserve honesty, no less.
And City Council needs to stand up for the city code, declaring loud and clear that none of its members are exempt from a law needed more now than ever to keep Philadelphia public officials free of conflicts of interest | 
