National Park Service: Mayor Nutter

Showing posts with label Mayor Nutter. Show all posts

Monday, November 29, 2010

A Growing Chorus for Transparency at the Independence Visitor Center Corporation

Calls for openness at the publicly funded Independence Visitor Center Corporation ("IVCC") are increasing. In recent months, several elected members of the Pennsylvania Legislature have requested that IVCC adopt and abide by both the Pennsylvania Right to Know Law and Sunshine Act. Pennsylvania State Representative Michael O'Brien, Pennsylvania State Senator Anthony Williams, and Pennsylvania State Senator Lawrence Farnese have all written to Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter and Pennsylvania Governor Rendell, asking them to make the Independence Visitor Center transparent and to heed the Final Determinations of the Pennsylvania Office of Open Records by releasing documents related to the IVCC.

On September 21, 2010, Representative O'Brien wrote to both Mayor Nutter and Governor Rendell:

"As you know this entity [IVC] is located in my district and I feel it is important that such an entity located in the heart of the historic area should be beholden to the values [...] our country was founded on [...]"

On November 22, 2010, Senator Williams wrote to both Mayor Nutter and Governor Rendell, saying:

"I would request your leadership in abiding by the Sunshine Act and the Pennsylvania Right to Know law [...] It is my understanding, the requests under the Right to Know law are being denied. Since the IVC receives funds provided by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, it would be appropriate to have this request fulfilled."

On November 23, 2010, Senator Farnese wrote to both Mayor Nutter and Governor Rendell, also issuing a call for open operations:

"Compliance with the Right to Know Law and the Sunshine Act would provide openness and accountability to this publicly-funded entity and its operations [...] I ask for your leadership in following both the letter and spirit of open records laws in dealing both with Mr. Bari and any other citizen requesting information in the future."

Elected public officials are attempting to make the IVCC transparent. These elected officials have acknowledged the need of the IVCC to become accountable to the public which funds it.

It is time for Mayor Nutter and Governor Rendell to relent in their protection of the secretive business practices at the IVCC. It is time for Mayor Nutter and Governor Rendell to release the requested records as ordered by the Pennsylvania Office of Open Records and to demand transparency and accountability at the Independence Visitor Center Corporation.

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Exhibits:
Letter from Representative Michael H. O'Brien to Governor Rendell, 9-21-2010

Letter from Representative Michael H. O'Brien to Mayor Nutter, 9-21-2010

Letter from Senator Anthony Williams to Governor Rendell, 11-22-2010

Letter from Senator Anthony Williams to Mayor Nutter, 11-22-2010

Letter from Senator Lawrence Farnese to Governor Rendell, 11-23-2010

Letter from Senator Lawrence Farnese to Mayor Nutter, 11-23-2010

Friday, August 20, 2010

Statement on the DRPA and Independence Visitor Center Corp.

We applaud Governor Rendell, Governor Christie, John Estey, Chairman of the Delaware River Port Authority (DRPA), and the rest of the members of the Board of Commissioners of the DRPA in adopting resolutions for improvement, including abiding by both the Sunshine Act and Pennsylvania Right to Know Law.

Reform is a journey and not a destination. As such, reform has to continue going forward, and reform must include changes to the culture of the DRPA. The DRPA must prove to the taxpayers that the reforms adopted are not merely superficial concessions designed to quell a brief media uproar, enabling self-serving business interests to permeate its operations. Moreover, similar changes must occur at other taxpayer supported public trusts with commonalities to the DRPA.

For example, if Mr. Estey believes that the DRPA should adopt the Sunshine Act, abide by the Pennsylvania Right to Know Law, and conduct business in a transparent and fair manner, then the Independence Visitor Center Corporation (IVCC) should as well.

The Boards of Directors of DRPA and IVCC are both chaired by John Estey, Esq., senior partner at Ballard Spahr and Governor Rendell's former chief of staff. Both the DRPA and IVCC use Ballard Spahr as outside counsel; Ballard has billed DRPA almost $3.1 million in legal fees from 2000-2010.

Both DRPA and IVCC operate essential public facilities. Both the DRPA and IVCC have an insular culture that does the public’s business in private. Both the DRPA and IVCC are taxpayer supported public trusts that are rife with patronage. Both the DRPA and IVCC are stuck in a time warp because both the DRPA and IVCC have been quite clandestine in terms of their operations and corporate governance. Both the DRPA and IVCC are heavily influenced by Governor Rendell (Rendell personally appointed most of the Pennsylvania commissioners to DRPA and he appointed the "Governor's Representative" to the IVCC).

On information and belief, the DRPA gave the IVCC $1.8 million in 2010 in an economic development grant, although there is no information available as to the details of those funds from either the DRPA and IVCC.

Nonetheless, as reported in The Philadelphia Inquirer on August 20, 2010, Mr. Estey claims, "It's [IVCC] not a public entity [...]"

To the contrary, the IVCC is absolutely a public entity given the massive public funding which the IVCC receives, the federal land on which the Visitor Center stands, the federal employees stationed within, and the federal legislation that authorized its creation.

Both the DRPA and IVCC maintain a sense of entitlement, an attitude that they can do no wrong, that they answer to no one and are certainly in no way accountable to the public which funds them. Unless Mr. Estey and Governor Rendell (Mayor Nutter also serves on the Board of Directors of the Independence Visitor Center Corporation), extend the resolutions for the DRPA to other secretive public organizations, like the IVCC, the proposals for change will be exposed as political smoke screens, enabling business as usual to continue without restriction or public oversight.

Jon Bari
The Constitutional Walking Tour of Philadelphia

Exhibits
*Article published in The Philadelphia Inquirer: "Now, [John] Estey should get the Visitor Center to open up," 8/20/2010

*Letter from John Estey to Governors Christie and Rendell discussing proposed changes at the DRPA, 8/4/2010

*Letter from Jon Bari to Mayor Michael Nutter calling for transparency at the IVCC, 8/13/2010

*Letter from Jon Bari to Governor Rendell calling for transparency at the IVCC, 8/17/2010

Monday, July 19, 2010

What is Mayor Michael Nutter Hiding?

Mayor Nutter serves on the Board of Directors of the Independence Visitor Center Corporation, a private company, which runs the visitor centers at Independence Park, City Hall and Fairmount Park.

Under the Pennsylvania Right to Know Law, The Constitutional Walking Tour requested records regarding Mayor Nutter's role on the Board of Directors of the Independence Visitor Center.

The City of Philadelphia denied the release of the records.

The Constitutional appealed, and the PA Office of Open Records issued a legally binding Final Determination for the City to release the records stating, "If a public official [Mayor Nutter] serves on a private board in an official capacity, the public has a right to know the extent of that service and see records associated with it."

The City refused to release any records! Instead, the City is spending taxpayer dollars to sue The Constitutional to block the release of public documents despite the City hemorrhaging cash, raising taxes and cutting services.

The City is requiring my small business to allocate our scarce resources to fight the appeal. Mayor Nutter promised that transparency and accountability would govern his Administration. Now it looks like Mayor Nutter has something to hide.

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Exhibit:
PA Office of Open Records, Final Determination, Jonathan Bari and The Constitutional Walking Tour vs. City of Philadelphia, Docket No.: AP 2010-0157, 4/7/10;
"Minutes of a non profit organization on which the mayor sits in his official capacity as the mayor, record of the agency"

Background on The Constitutional’s disputes with the NPS and Independence Visitor Center

The Constitutional Walking Tour of Philadelphia (“The Constitutional”) offers guided walking tours of the Independence National Historical Park area by providing a primary overview of Independence Park and visiting more than 20 of Independence Park’s most historic sites including the Liberty Bell, Independence Hall, Carpenters’ Hall, Declaration House, etc.

From 2005 to 2010, the Independence Visitor Center Corporation sold tickets for The Constitutional’s various tours only at the IVC’s main information and sales desk. The IVCC has received a 20.0% (twenty percent) sales commission on each ticket that it has sold for The Constitutional (ranging on average in gross price from $12.50 to $17.50). Since 2005, The Constitutional has requested to also license a dedicated ticket sales booth from the National Park Service and IVCC on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms commensurate with Ride the Ducks and Philadelphia Trolley Works, for example. Additionally, since 2005, The Constitutional has requested to also license marketing opportunities and commercial use authorizations from the National Park Service and IVCC on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms.

The Independence Visitor Center (“IVC”) is owned and operated by the United States of America - National Park Service (“NPS”), which then sub-contracts with the Independence Visitor Center Corporation (“IVCC”), a taxpayer supported public charity, to manage the IVC.

The IVCC and NPS have preferenced third parties including Ride the Ducks and Philadelphia Trolley Works, and the IVCC and NPS have discriminated against The Constitutional Walking Tour. The National Park Service has enabled the creation of this unfair business environment. The National Park Service and the IVCC have ignored and circumvented Federal management and concessions laws for the sale of goods and services at Independence National Historical Park that require open, transparent, competitive and appealable processes awarding concessions contracts for the sale of goods and services including tours.

To facilitate the administration of the National Park Service System, the Secretary of the Department of the Interior, acting through the NPS, is authorized under the National Park Service Organic Act (“Organic Act”) to carry out twelve categories of activities, none of which include transferring administrative responsibility to a private party [i.e., IVCC] or engaging in cooperative administration with a private party [i.e., IVCC]. 16 U.S.C. § 1a-2(a)–(l). Rather than grant the NPS discretion in its dealings with park concessioners, Congress established “carefully controlled safeguards against unregulated and indiscriminate use” of the parks in the National Parks Omnibus Management Act of 1998 (“Management Act”), which governs all national park public accommodations, facilities, and services. 16 U.S.C. § 5951 et seq.; see also 36 C.F.R. Part 51.2 (“policy underlying concessions contracts”). The safeguards are not limited to nationwide policy: Congress also manages the parks with significant visitor traffic on a park-by-park basis. See, e.g., 16 U.S.C. §§ 21–40c (Yellowstone), §§ 91–110d (Mount Rainier), §§ 212–218a (Abraham Lincoln’s Birthplace), and §§ 410z–410z-5 (Boston National). One of the dozens of national parks managed by specific statutes is Independence National Historical Park (“INHP”). 16 U.S.C. §407m–407s. As such, compliance here going forward would require the NPS, first, to reassume from the private IVCC the NPS’s duties “to administer, operate, manage, lease, and maintain” properties at INHP pursuant to 16 U.S.C. § 407s; second, to award “all proposed concessions contracts … through a competitive selection process” pursuant to 16 U.S.C. § 5952; and, third, to issue commercial use authorizations in a rational manner pursuant to a reasonable interpretation of 16 U.S.C. § 5966(c).

The IVCC and NPS have arbitrarily and randomly selected business partners in a non-competitive and clandestine manner; as such, the actions of the NPS and IVCC have from an economics perspective stifled competition, innovation and consumer choice. Ultimately the IVCC’s actions have enabled prices to increase for its preferred vendors to strengthen the for-profits’ financial performance. Visitors to Philadelphia will be better served when the IVCC’s management, manners and methods are fundamentally changed. This would include having the National Park Service abide by Federal concessions management laws. Specifically, this will entail only having the NPS award concessions sales contracts and not having the IVCC involved in any of the selecting, awarding, contracting and managing of Independence Park’s third party concessions, including inside the Independence Visitor Center. This is the model that is practiced in virtually every other of the 390 (three hundred ninety) National Park Service units across the United States (in 49 states) including at Yosemite, Yellowstone, Statue of Liberty, etc. Additionally, visitors and all stakeholders will be better served once the operation of the taxpayer funded IVCC is totally transparent and accountable. While part of the issue centers on a publicly funded charity competing against the private sector (i.e., by offering guided tours and services), it more so has to do with the manner in which the IVCC and NPS operate and discriminate against third party concessionaires, tour operators and vendors in a random and arbitrary fashion (i.e., with the licensing and leasing ticket sales kiosks by the IVCC to third party companies, for example).