A lawyer for Tommie St. Hill, a consultant to electricians union Local 98, told a city judge this afternoon that he was not the owner of a laptop on which he created a flyer attacking Mayor Nutter during last year's mayoral primary race.
So who was? St. Hill wouldn't say. Nor would his lawyer, Lewis Small. "That's something for another day," Small said.
But both men told reporters, after a contentious court hearing, that the laptop also did not belong to anyone affiliated with Local 98. "It has nothing to do with the IBEW," Small said, referring to the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 98, which is led by state Senate candidate John J. Dougherty.
The ethics board has apparently been looking into whether the union created, produced or generated 125,000 of the flyers, which violated campaign finance law by not stating on them who paid for them.
The flyers took aim at Nutter's "stop and frisk" anti-violence proposal by showing a 1970s photograph with six men suspected of being Black Panthers being strip-searched by police. The text beneath it read: "A vote for Nutter is a vote for racial profiling."
St. Hill, a Local 98 consultant, told the ethics board during a deposition last summer that he created the flyer on his own. The board later learned that Local 98 paid him $22,500 in the weeks before and after the primary, and is trying now to get receipts and vouchers from the union detailing what those payments were for.
As part of the investigation, Judge Jane Cutler Greenspan last week granted an order allowing the ethics board to examine the laptop and other computer equipment in St. Hill's Center City office. But St. Hill disclosed afterward that the laptop was stolen months ago.
The ethics board also has been unable to examine the desk top computer since St. Hill's office has been found locked on each of three occasions that the board has sent its computer experts there with the understanding from St. Hill or his attorney that they would be allowed access.
Even so, Greenspan this afternoon refused to hold St. Hill in contempt of court for blocking the ethics board. But the judge did order St. Hill to let the ethics board examine the computer Wednesday, at 9 a.m.
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