Nutter chooses finance chief
Rob Dubow, who heads the state agency that monitors city finances, was the mayor-elect's first cabinet appointment.
Highlighting his focus on all things fiscal, Mayor-elect Michael Nutter yesterday named Rob Dubow the city's next finance director, making him the first appointee of the new administration.
It was an unsurprising choice, but an excellent one, said a host of city fiscal experts and political observers. Less pleased were labor leaders like lawyer Deborah Willig, who worries the appointment augurs a tough Nutter line on contract negotiations with city employees.
Dubow, 48, is widely considered one of the foremost municipal-finance experts in the region. Few can match his encyclopedic knowledge of Philadelphia's budget, and fewer still have viewed it through so many different lenses: as city budget director, as chief financial officer for Pennsylvania, and as executive director of the state agency that oversees the city's financial planning.
"I developed a tremendous respect for him when he was budget director for the city. We went at it day after day after day," Nutter said, referring to his frequent grilling of Dubow, then Mayor Street's budget director, in City Council chambers. "The guy didn't waver. He's rock solid. That's what I want."
In his post at the Pennsylvania Intergovernmental Cooperation Authority, Dubow led a series of comprehensive analyses of the city's most pressing fiscal challenges, including increasing pension and benefits costs, underinvestment in infrastructure, and rising prison expenses.
"To actually have the opportunity to work with the mayor-elect on tackling these issues is a great opportunity that doesn't come by that often," said the soft-spoken Dubow, adding that he was in agreement with Nutter on all the "major issues facing the city."
Chief among those issues is the price of pension and health-care benefits for city employees. Dubow and PICA have been outspoken about the crimp those liabilities will put on the next administration, and now that Dubow is a part of that team, he can be expected to make cutting those costs a priority.
And that displeases Willig, who criticized PICA at a forum on pensions and benefits last week.
"I'm trying to be tactful here," she said, when asked what she thought of Dubow's appointment.
"When Rob Dubow volunteers to run into a burning building, or when Rob Dubow takes care of 150 foster children as a social worker, or goes into the Badlands to protect society against crime, or walks five miles a day collecting trash, then he'll have the standing to tell my clients he's cutting their pensions and benefits," she said, staking out a position for the contract battle she'll wage with Dubow and the rest of the Nutter administration next year.
For the most part, though, Dubow's appointment was greeted warmly.
"I would rate this pick an A-plus," said Charles McPherson, Council's chief financial officer. "Rob's a very conscientious individual. He will answer our questions; he won't evade them."
For all of Dubow's experience, his job as finance director represents a big step up. Brett Mandel of Philadelphia Forward, an organization that promotes tax cuts and budget reform, likened it to playing offense instead of defense.
"As budget director, your job is to stop people like me from assaulting the budget," Mandel said. "Now he'll get the chance to play offense, to help enact aggressive tax reform, to build an open and transparent budget process, to find a way to expand funding for the parks, for additional police."
It has been a big week for the Dubow family. Rob Dubow's wife, Alice Beck Dubow, was just elected a Common Pleas Court judge.
At the news conference where he introduced Rob Dubow, Nutter demurred when repeatedly asked when he would announce further appointments, including police commissioner.
Nutter is also already trying to create a little wiggle room on his pledge to declare a "crime emergency" on day one of his administration.
Now he says that's a call he'll have to run by the yet-unnamed police commissioner.
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