By Marcia Gelbart and Jeff Shields
The Philadelphia Inquirer
PHILADELPHIA — A power struggle over the future of the Philadelphia Sheriff’s Office has pitted the Nutter administration against the First Judicial District, with tensions running high as officials scramble to meet a timetable to return to selling foreclosed properties by March.
Common Pleas Court President Judge Pamela Pryor Dembe has proposed leaving the Sheriff’s Office largely intact and appointing an advisory board to recommend reforms. But the Nutter administration seeks a significant role in daily oversight of the office.
The clash reached the Pennsylvania Supreme Court last week, when Dembe sent Chief Justice Ronald D. Castille a draft agreement of her proposed changes to the office and its handling of real estate transactions. Her draft acknowledged that the mayor and sheriff could reach their own agreement outlining changes not involving the courts.
The Sheriff’s Office provides courtroom security and transfers prisoners, but the function that has come under scrutiny is its court-directed sale of foreclosed properties.
City Controller Alan Butkovitz blasted the Sheriff’s Office in October for not providing basic records of $53 million connected to property sales. Longtime Sheriff John D. Green postponed his retirement to cooperate with Butkovitz but ultimately retired on Dec. 31; Green’s top deputy, Barbara Deeley, became acting sheriff.
Butkovitz then launched a forensic audit of the department, and Deeley cut off the main computer contractor and fired the four staff members who ran the real estate operation. The office now has almost no access to its own data to run sheriff’s sales with any reliability.
Nutter, who has said the sheriff’s post should not be an elected office, has recommended that other city departments assume various Sheriff’s Office responsibilities.
Deeley signed off last week on the draft agreement with the courts, but Nutter was not a party to it despite weeks of meetings among officials.
The most recent draft agreement proposes a role for the mayor and his administration that is greatly diminished from the one Nutter put forth last month.
“We envision cooperation with, but not control of, your real estate sales operations,” Dembe wrote in a separate letter Wednesday to Deeley. “We see no need to become involved in issues which are strictly between you and the executive branch.”
In December, Dembe halted foreclosure sales of owner-occupied homes set for January, and she later canceled February sheriff’s sales, too. It appears increasingly unlikely that Deeley will be able to hold sheriff’s sales in March.
The agreement Nutter proposed in mid-January would transform the Sheriff’s Office - an independent agency run by an elected officeholder - into an unofficial department under mayoral control.
That plan would subject the office to many of the same financial and legal rules as other city departments, with its own assigned city lawyer and a finance aide to act as the sheriff’s interim budget officer. All Sheriff’s Office contracts would have to be approved by the city under Nutter’s plan.
The city also sought to assign staff from its Department of Technology to help sheriff’s employees assess information-technology needs, including many related to sheriff’s sales.
Those proposed changes would be made in consultation with court officials, who with the sheriff and administration would appoint a steering committee to look at Sheriff’s Office reforms.
The mayor’s draft proposal, however, was not well received from the start by Dembe.
“It was clear as the meeting went on that whatever was there would be changed,” she said of Nutter’s proposal a few days after meeting with the mayor and his top aides.
Dembe’s proposal would put the Sheriff’s Office under the supervision of an advisory board similar to Nutter’s proposed steering committee.
The seven-member board would be composed of representatives appointed by the sheriff, the Philadelphia courts, the mayor, the bar association, and the state Supreme Court.
It would be required to issue a report by Sept. 12 outlining administrative and technology changes needed to have the Sheriff’s Office functioning as a 21st-century agency.
Everett Gillison, deputy mayor for public safety, said Deeley had requested assistance from the city with information-technology and financial issues.
“We are trying to work in collaboration with both the sheriff and the courts to make sure we can support the sheriff,” Gillison said.
One challenge for the Sheriff’s Office is fashioning a computer system in order to conduct sales by March.
Dembe’s draft agreement approves the sheriff’s hiring of Lexington Technology Auditing - the same company Butkovitz sent in to gather data from the Sheriff’s Office computers - to implement a temporary system. Sources familiar with the proposal said it would cost about $650,000.
Administration officials have raised concerns about awarding that contract on an emergency basis, and Butkovitz said on Friday there was no good reason to award a contract for the work without a bidding process.
“That,” he said, “is not going to happen.”
Copyright 2011 Philadelphia Newspapers, LLC