Zack Stalberg

Zack Stalberg, president and CEO of the Committee of Seventy

by Andrew Thompson

The Office of the Clerk of Quarter Sessions, which is tasked with keeping track of bail records, has of late been raked over the local media's coals as a pristine example of Philadelphia's epic bureaucratic waste. Last week, the City Controller's office announced that the CQS did not report $1 billion in unpaid bail money. But the CQS is but one of four city "row offices," antiquated agencies, such as the Sheriff's Office and the three city commissioners, run by six elected officials who provide services easily performed by other agencies. The city considered shuttering them last year to save money amid its budgetary meltdown. It didn't. We spoke with Zack Stalberg, president and CEO of good-government watchdog the Committee of Seventy, about these row offices and what possible reason the city has for taking them off the chopping block.

City Paper: Have the row offices ever served any legitimate purpose?

Zack Stalberg: Some of them date back to William Penn, and there may have been a good argument for them at some stage, but not any longer. When the city of Philadelphia and county of Philadelphia were consolidated in early 1950s ... somebody cut a deal, and a few of the row offices remained.

CP: What other row offices exist?

ZS: Most important is probably the city commissioners. There are three elected city commissioners — one is always guaranteed to the minority party — and they're supposed to run elections. Unfortunately, they're political creatures themselves. In this case, they're all ward leaders. ... The other two offices that perform kind of basic functions [that] could probably be done more cheaply are the Register of Wills Office and the Sheriff's Office.

CP: Why weren't they shut down during the budget crisis?

ZS: First, the amount of money estimated to be saved from shutting them down from is [between $12 million and $14 million], and that becomes a significant amount of money when other city services are being eliminated. The biggest barrier is that the six individuals who run these four offices are elected, and in most cases, they have a fair number of patronage employees, so the political machine has a vested interest in keeping them around.

CP: Who would take over their responsibilities?

ZS: CQS could easily go into the court system, and be run much more cheaply or for free. Much of what the sheriff does is transport prisoners, so that could be done by the police or others. So there's a separate solution to each of these problems. The most complicated one is figuring out a process for trying to find the individual who would fairly run elections without regard to partisanship.