Ethics updates

• Today brings the votes in City Council on the new ethics bills being sponsored by Michael Nutter. They seem to be in good shape, with even Blackwell signing on to a subset yesterday. The Inquirer editorial page applauds these bills and encourages Council to act on them (they also stump for business tax cuts). The Daily News wonders whether Rick Mariano will be voting on these measures, given that the indicted councilman is due back in chambers for the first time today. Never a dull moment.
  
  Update: PhiladelphiaWillDo reports that Mariano voted, things passed, nobody giggled.
  
  
• Meanwhile, over in the Sheriff's office (see previous round-up here) the aid suspected of real estate shenanigans has been reinstated, but stripped of the subset of duties that might create a conflict of interest, and with the sheriff putting together a new set of ethics guidelines and oversights for his staff. The Daily News watchdogs aren't quite ready to let go of the issue, however, noting that the investigator who cleared this staffer had some problems of his own at his previous job, and made some documentable mistakes in the current investigation. Lovely.
  
  
• In other bureaucratic unseemliness, the gambling oversight czar is backed up by her colleagues.

  "I would characterize these allegations as chicken crap," said Thomas A. "Tad" Decker, chairman of the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board.

  ok, then. The appearance that she filed for unworked overtime at her previous job may just reflect some numerical discrepancies of the sort often found in an annual audit. Unfortunately, a different regional hiree, the one hired to run next summer's Welcome America bash, has been found to have some genuine fraud in her past (inventing a Harvard degree). The details of this story have all the earmarks of a cozy little Philadelphia backrub fest.