Philadelphia Ethics Board fines former city prisons chief
In 2015, then Philadelphia Prisons Commissioner Louis Giorla is shown speaking to reporters. (Tom MacDonald/WHYY)
Former Philadelphia Prisons Commissioner Louis Giorla has agreed to pay the city Ethics Board a $2,000 fine after profiting from a contract he’d awarded while running the prison system.
When Louis Giorla was the city prisons commissioner, he approved and extended a contract for Corizon Health to provide medical services for inmates who were being released. After Giorla left the city in 2015, he became a $4,000-a-month consultant for Corizon, according to a settlement agreement with the Ethics Board. He earned $36,000 under that agreement.
Ethics Board Executive Director Shane Creamer said that arrangement violated city conflict of interest rules which prohibit officials from benefitting from any of their official actions for two years after leaving city employment.
“We want to make sure the city’s getting the best deals when they enter into contracts,” Creamer said in an interview, “and that vendors aren’t being approved who have made some kind of side agreement with city officials to hire them in the future and to benefit from that contract financially.”
The Ethics Board said Giorla cooperated in the investigation, and Creamer said it found no evidence he’d arranged the consultant work before leaving the city.
As part of his settlement with the Ethics Board, Giorla agreed to end his work with Corizon.
Election hijinks
The Ethics Board also announced that the campaign committee of Manny Morales has agreed to pay $6,000 in fines for campaign finance violations related to his unsuccessful bid to unseat City Councilwoman Maria Quinones Sanchez in the 2015 Democratic primary. Morales himself will pay a $750 fine.
The violations stem from support the Morales campaign got from two other political committees, LUPE PAC and the 7th Ward/Friends of Angel Cruz PAC.
The committees spent more than $60,000 on Morales campaign in coordination with Morales’ campaign manager, according to a settlement agreement with the Ethics Board.
Because those efforts were waged in coordination with Morales’ campaign and not independent efforts, the board concluded they amounted to in-kind contributions to the Morales campaign, well in excess of the city’s $11,500 limit on PAC contributions to a candidate campaign committee.In addition, the board found, the committees failed to report their efforts as in-kind contributions on their own campaign finance reports.
WHYY is your source for fact-based, in-depth journalism and information. As a nonprofit organization, we rely on financial support from readers like you. Please give today.