The Case of Latrice Bryant

Mayor Nutter was elected on a platform that promised to attack corruption in city hall. In the fall of 2008, an aide to city councilman W. Wilson Goode (son of the former mayor who bombed his own city) was caught by Fox 29 attending to personal business (including visits to Goode’s home) while clocked in at city hall. Bryant then responded by calling the Fox 29 reporter racist, and W. Wilson Goode made some racially charged comments himself. Later in the scandal, some pictures of Goode and Bryant on a romantic vacation together became public. This raised questions as to what exactly Bryant was doing to earn over $90,000 per year in city taxpayer money.

You may have seen the reports here or read about the top city council worker who last week accused Fox 29 News and investigative reporter Jeff Cole of racism.

The claims were made as Cole tried to question Latrice Bryant about her work hours.


It's 6:10 p.m. on July 2 near Love Park, and there's the longtime municipal employee moments after leaving her city council staff job at city hall.

Bryant is deputy chief legislative aide to City Councilman W. Wilson Goode Jr., a third-term, Democratic councilman. She has worked for the city since 1995, nearly nine years for Goode.

Bryant makes $90,000 a year -- $54,000 more than when she started in 2000. In fact, she got two raises totaling $13,000 this year.

She also made an unsuccessful primary run for the Pennsylvania General Assembly in 2004.

On July 2, we saw Bryant arrive at work at 12:15 p.m. and leave just after 6 p.m. Even though she has apparently worked less than six hours, she's going to get a full day's pay.

How do we know? Fox 29 Investigates obtained her handwritten and signed timesheets that show she logged in at 8:30 a.m. and left at 6 p.m.

http://www.myfoxphilly.com/dpp/news/news_other_1/Fox_Investigates_Aide


The sad thing in all of this is that Nutter has been stunningly silent on the topic. I guess some things never change.



“I’m not sure what I would have called for an investigation into,” Nutter said. “I think to this day there seems to be not any clarity into the relationship. I’m not sure then what there is for me to say about it.”

Nutter was also asked if the city should have a policy barring personal relationships between supervisors and staffers.

“It’s one of those things, I’m sure we can certainly take a look at it. I have no idea if it’s any kind of a widespread problem,” Nutter said. “I’m not sure what I can do from a purely legal standpoint of imposing any rules in that regard on City Council as an independent body of the government.”

http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/cityhall/Latrice