WAM! Bam! Thank You, Vince!



Voter promoter: Election watchdog Fred Voigt says he’s not been compromised by Senator Vince Fumo’s behind-the-scenes financial aid. photo: Sarah Peters

A state grant reveals another funding channel between Fumo and the city’s election watchdog group.

by Noel Weyrich

The Committee of Seventy got the help of State Sen. Vince Fumo last year to secure a $15,000 grant from a controversial state program that has been a frequent target of criticism from good government advocates.

State records provided to the City Paper last week show that, in March 1999, the Ridge administration fully funded an unusual grant request from the independent election-monitoring group for something called the "electronic voting implementation program."

The grant came from the Community Revitalization Program, which normally provides supplemental funding for cultural organizations and community improvement projects. The Committee of Seventy grant application made the somewhat unique claim that the group needed state assistance to do advocacy work — namely, to help push Philadelphia’s city government toward buying new electronic voting machines.

The Committee of Seventy’s executive director, Frederick L. Voigt, confirms that his grant application was approved with Fumo’s support.

"He was helpful," says Voigt of Fumo’s role in landing the money. Voigt says he can’t recall if the Committee of Seventy has ever received similar support from other elected officials, "but I don’t want to be categoric about that. There may have been occasions when we did." He is adamant, however, in rejecting any suggestion that Fumo’s help might mar the Committee of Seventy’s independent image.

"I can assure you that Senator Fumo is exerting zero influence, zero pressure on what we do or how we do it," says Voigt. "Period. Never has. Never will. No one source of revenue is going to control what we do or don’t do. We have no donor, past or present or future, who will ever decide [that] for us."

Committee of Seventy’s board chairman, attorney Herbert Bass, echoes Voigt’s expression of confidence. "Everybody on the committee knows where this [money] is coming from," says Bass. "Senator Fumo has been a friend to the Committee of Seventy. He’s been a speaker at our quarterly meetings, and he’s just generallly interested in the type of work we do. I don’t believe he’s ever asked the committee for anything, or to do anything."

In some of its press materials, the 95-year-old Committee of Seventy states that its role, in part, is to "ensure the basic fairness of the [electoral] process." The group claims it teams with the District Attorney’s office "to enforce fair practices during each election." By contrast, Fumo’s partisan interest in city elections is fairly stark. Not only does he count at least four City Council members as either allies or protégés, but he practically ran the Marty Weinberg mayoral campaign last year, is the prime force between the state House candidacies of Mike Stack and Jacques Lurie and he is believed to be preparing Councilman Jim Kenney for a run at the mayor’s office in 2003.

Voigt, however, says he sees little difference among his various funders, including Fumo, although the Fumo name is absent from the honor roll of individuals, blue chip companies and law firms listed as Committee of Seventy supporters on its website.

"We have sought out money from a variety of different sources, none of which, we think, are inappropriate," Voigt says.

Long regarded as a prime source of political pork in Harrisburg, Community Revitalization grants have been nicknamed WAMs, short for legislative "walking around money." They have come under fire frequently by those who point to evidence that Gov. Ridge awards the grants solely on the basis of the political pull possessed by their legislative sponsors. The Harrisburg-based government reform group Common Cause has repeatedly denounced the Community Revitalization program, while Auditor General Bob Casey, Jr. and the legislature’s Joint Budget and Finance Committee have both issued reports in recent years condemning the program’s lack of an objective evaluation process for determining grant awards.

In his grant application, Voigt promised that his group would use the state funds to "advise, advocate and educate the public and elected officials" during the process of preparing bid requests for voting machine manufacturers. Even if one accepts that state economic development dollars should help an independent group do advocacy work in City Hall, the value of Committee of Seventy’s effort is still somewhat questionable. After all, 78 percent of city voters already approved the purchase of electronic machines during a November 1998 referendum and state law mandates that the city move forward on the basis of that vote.

Further, the Committee of Seventy’s grant request shows that almost all of its $15,000 state grant was absorbed by existing staff salaries for activities the group was already undertaking. More than a third of the grant, $5,035, went directly toward offsetting a portion of Voigt’s $102,600 annual salary.

"This has been a huge process, not without controversy," Voigt says of his work to promote electronic voting. "It has taken up not only my time, but a lot of staff time over a period of years."

The city is currently negotiating with a manufacturer to purchase the voting machines at an estimated cost of $20 million. Voigt says that the new machines, similar to ones already in use in Montgomery County, will be easier to move and simpler to operate than the outdated 900-pound "electro-mechanical" monsters that have been in use for decades. Because tabulating the results will be quicker and more accurate, he predicts that electronic voting will bring an end to cumbersome recounts and legal challenges to election results.

"The benefit to this community is going to be huge," says Voigt. "You’ll be in a situation where [someone] can lose by 84 votes and not say a word, because he knows for certain that’s what happened."

State officials gave City Paper a copy of the Committee of Seventy grant application last week after questions arose concerning Fumo’s financial support for the independent group. Voigt previously claimed that Fumo had provided the Committee of Seventy with a state government grant to analyze the elections of appeals court judges. But when a search of state records only turned up the $15,000 grant to promote electronic voting, Voigt declined to discuss the discrepancy and refuses further comment on the subject. A spokesman for Fumo likewise declines to comment. The Committee of Seventy has yet to complete its 1999 tax statement, which would establish the group’s level of government funding for that year. After two filing extensions, Voigt says, the tax statement will be sent in this month.

"My board is aware of all the sources of money we receive," Voigt says, "but I am not identifying any source of revenue for the record, other than the fact that we have received monies without any quid pro quo whatever. We never disclose our sources of revenue. We’re not required to. There’s too many people who don’t want their names known."