Nutter switches L&I from commerce to safety

Following on the recommendations of a task force created to examine the Department of Licenses and Inspections, Mayor Nutter on Thursday moved the department under the public-safety umbrella and away from commerce.

To add to the message that L&I's main priority and focus should be public safety, Nutter created a new position, chief safety officer.

The mayor, however, did not address the panel's foremost recommendation: to split the agency in two, an act that would require changing the City Charter.

Nutter said he needed "to better understand that recommendation" - and would form another committee to study that and the other recommendations.

"Splitting the department apart is a pretty significant step and requires a lot more discussion than just reading the report," Nutter said at a news conference. "There are legal implications, labor implications, certainly financial implications."

Having L&I report to Deputy Mayor for Public Safety Everett Gillison, who also is the mayor's chief of staff, is not likely to change day-to-day operations any time soon.

"I'm just taking a deep breath," Gillison said. "It's another responsibility, and the mayor has entrusted in me. I don't think they [L&I employees] will directly see things that will change tomorrow, but I have ideas."

The mayor made his proposals on the same day that Council President Darrell L. Clarke introduced legislation that would create a cabinet-level Department of Planning and Development to take over functions now handled by seven unrelated entities, including L&I, the Planning Commission, the Historical Commission, and the Housing Authority. L&I would be placed under the new department.

Clarke said his proposal, which would also require a charter change, has been in the works for more than a year and was unrelated to the blue-ribbon panel's findings.

Clarke's spokeswoman, Jane Roh, said the mayor's and the council president's proposals were not "incompatible."

Nutter commissioned the panel in response to the June 5, 2013, building collapse at 22d and Market Streets that killed six people and injured 13.

The commission was tasked to review L&I - a department with more than 300 employees and an annual budget of $27.6 million - and its role in the collapse. An L&I inspector responsible for checking the demolition of the building that collapsed committed suicide soon after the tragedy.

Nutter said he asked for a full independent assessment "with the goal of improving public safety. Public safety, first and foremost, must always be our goal and our responsibility."

L&I Commissioner Carlton Williams said he would be working closely with the implementation committee "to continue what we've already started."

If Nutter were to embrace the blue-ribbon panel's proposal to do away with L&I and replace it with a Department of Buildings and a Department of Business Compliance, he would likely need some serious political maneuvering.

First, two-thirds of Council would have to approve to get the charter-change question on the ballot. And the voters would have to approve it.

On top of that, he would be competing with Clarke's proposal to create a Department of Planning and Development.

Neither Nutter nor Clarke commented on the other's proposal, both saying they had not seen the documents.

The blue-ribbon report - the result of a 10-month examination of the department by a 22-member panel - also says L&I is underfunded and overworked. The mayor did not address those assertions.

Councilwoman Maria Quiñones Sánchez, who served on the blue-ribbon panel, said Thursday that she did not support the charter-change idea.

"I don't think the report makes a good case for the need," Quiñones Sánchez said. "That's the one area I believe it contradicts itself, because it says it needs more collaboration, and yet we are going to set up another bureaucracy."

Former L&I Commissioner Bennett Levin agreed with the councilwoman.

"Splitting the department is not the answer," he said recently. "Sometimes, doing nothing is better than rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic."

Some of the other main points in the special commission's report include having a licensed professional engineer or registered architect head the new Department of Buildings and transferring fire-safety inspections to the Fire Department.

Source: Philly.com