Thump!

If you haven’t been paying attention, that loud thump you heard on Monday was the sound of a Philadelphia’s political titan hitting the ground like a felled redwood tree. Vince Fumo, was convicted on federal corruption charges for abusing his position as a state senator and could spend more than 10 years in jail. So, it’s not surprising that we are all still grappling with questions like “what does this mean for the future Philly politics?”

Jill Porter, a columnist for the Philadelphia Daily News, wonders if the guilty verdict of Vince Fumo will do anything to curb the city’s pay-to-play culture. She remains pessimistic on this one.

So why do I still feel so cynical? I have lingering disgust not just for Fumo but also for the morally bankrupt culture in which this town’s business and politics are conducted, which was highlighted during the trial.

Pay-to-play isn’t news, of course.

But to hear a phone-company executive testify that Fumo allegedly tried to shake him down - and that he negotiated a deal rather than report the alleged extortion - is confirmation of a sorry picture.

Monica Yant Kinney, a columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer, hopes that ambitious young politicians will see Fumo’s fall as a warning sign of how not to do business. She even called up former Philadelphia City Councilman Rick Mariano for his thoughts on the verdict. He’s currently in prison serving a 6 1/2 year sentence on corruption. It sounds like they had a brief conversation before he hung up, but he did share one of his first encounters with Philadelphia’s mighty political machine.

“I remember when I turned 18, the ward leader came to my house and said, ‘Rick, you’re going to register to vote, right?’ ” Mariano recalled. “He had the form all filled out, with my name and the Democratic Party checked. That’s how stuff got done back then.”

I missed this one from Ben Waxman yesterday from his blog It’s Our Money. He reminds us that the more every day citizens understand the way government works, the less likely it will be that corrupt politicians will be wheeingl and dealing behind closed doors.

It’s important to remember that Fumo’s reach extended far beyond his own Senate staff. He was a master of the state budget process and used his expertise to steer money towards political allies. Fumo’s control of state finances was predicated on keeping the public in the dark. If more people understood how the system worked, it would have been impossible for Fumo to wield such tight control.

Ultimately, the solution is to stop someone like Fumo before any laws are broken. The only way for this to happen is more transparency and more public engagement. Elected officials will not be able to abuse our trust if we are watching closely. Fumo’s abuses of power remind us that we all have a responsibility to be watchdogs.

While not everyone can be a Committee of Seventy (government watchdog group), I do think we should take this moment to remember that as we’re watching the demise of the newspaper industry as we know it, it was an investigation by the Philadelphia Inquirer that broke the original story that ultimately led to the federal investigation that exposed Fumo’s spending spree with “other peoples money.”