Philadelphia Magazine's blog, The Daily Examiner, got some dirt about a possible "almost-appointment" to the Nutter administration:
According to a source close to real estate tycoon Dan Neducsin, mayor-to-be Michael Nutter recently asked the “man who saved Manayunk” if he’d be interested in becoming his deputy mayor.
Both sides in this story deny that such a conversation took place and according to the Examiner's source, "Neducsin politely turned it down."
That's just a preview of the game that the media (including, admittedly, this site) will be playing in the coming weeks. Namely, who can be the first outlet to announce a major appointment to the new administration? Many of the items that appear on blogs will most likely have this "he said, he didn't say, he turned it down anyway" format. In fact, I was told weeks ago about a someone who was approached by the Nutter group to be a part of the administration and turned it down. That kind of thing is hardly important.
Let's just all keep in mind that the process of determining these folks is just as important, if not more so, than the people who get appointed. If the process is open, involves community and expert input and takes qualifications into account (not political qualifications, job qualifications) then we should be able to trust that the person who gets the job was the most qualified for it.
For those of you who want to see this Dan Neducsin in action, he was part of one of our Next Mayor Community Forums last year:
You can see all 6 excerpts from this forum here. The entire hour is available on Comcast Video OnDemand in the Get Local section.