Donna Reed Miller will not seek 5th Philadelphia Council term

City Councilwoman Donna Reed Miller will not seek reelection in the Eighth District this fall, leaving a wide-open contest to represent a string of neighborhoods from North Philadelphia to Chestnut Hill.

Miller, 64, made the announcement Friday morning after weeks of speculation that she had neither the financial support nor the enthusiasm to seek a fifth term.

"It is time to give another person the opportunity to represent this wonderful district," Miller said in a news release. "I never believed this position to be a lifetime job, and though I know I have the political and physical ability to serve, it is the right time for me to move into another type of public service."

Miller, who has diabetes-related problems, was first elected in 1995 as a protege of State Rep. David Richardson, who died before she took office in 1996.

Miller has a mixed record representing a district largely divided between the poorer neighborhoods of Germantown, Logan, Nicetown, and Tioga, and the affluent neighborhoods of Mount Airy and Chestnut Hill.

Her tenure has been marred twice by convictions of staffers on federal corruption charges. In 2008, former aide Theresa Pinkett pleaded guilty to bribery. In 2005, Steven Vaughn, Miller's chief of staff, was convicted in a scheme to generate a $60,000 collection fee for a company owned by Muslim cleric Shamsud-din Ali.

And the community development corporation Miller was most closely associated with, Germantown Settlement, went bankrupt and was dissolved in December after spending millions of taxpayer dollars on failed projects.

Though sometimes targeted by critics as a weak link on Council, the soft-spoken Miller has taken on issues dear to some of her constituents - from public safety to prisoner reentry and minority hiring.

She paired with Councilman Darrell L. Clarke in 2007 and 2009 on a host of laws regulating gun ownership, three of which survived court challenges.

One requires the reporting of lost and stolen handguns, another prohibits gun ownership for anyone under a domestic-violence restraining order, and the third restricts ownership of firearms for those decreed a danger to community.

In December, Miller presided over hearings on allegations of police misconduct, offering the public a chance to comment publicly on police issues.

"As mayor, it has always been clear that Councilwoman Miller worked hard and cared passionately about her constituents," Mayor Nutter was quoted as saying in Miller's release.

Miller took on her most visible role in a 2007 face-off with the building trades unions over minority hiring, when Council threatened to withhold approval for the $786 million Convention Center expansion without a public breakdown of unions' minority makeup.

She largely lost that battle, as the two most powerful unions - the carpenters and electricians - refused to make their numbers public.

But working with the Convention Center Authority board of directors, Miller may have won the war. The authority has met or exceeded its minority inclusion goals, said William Nesheiwat, Miller's legislative director.

The experience showed that "if the owner of the project is on board, then we'll succeed," Nesheiwat said.

Miller has managed to win reelection in part because her critics consistently split the Democratic vote. In 2007, she won the primary against three competitors with just over 30 percent of the vote.

"She is awesome in the street," former Mayor John F. Street, a political ally, said of her political acumen. "The people in her part of the district practically worship the ground she walks" on.

Of Miller's three challengers in 2007, Cindy Bass, a policy adviser to U.S. Rep. Chaka Fattah (D., Pa.), has committed to run for the seat. Former ward leader Greg Paulmier said he's in, and Legal Services lawyer Irv Ackelsberg said he would announce his intentions soon.

They will have competition from Verna Tyner, a community leader in Tioga and former aide to Council members David Cohen and Bill Greenlee, and Andrew Lofton, a Mount Airy native making his first run for office. Also expressing interest are Latrice Byrant, aide to Councilman W. Wilson Goode Jr., and Derek Green, legislative counsel to Majority Leader Marian B. Tasco.

Miller will keep her seat as leader of the 59th Ward in Germantown. She said she would endorse a candidate for the primary.

Miller came into office as an underdog in 1995, unseating Alvin Stewart, who won a special election in 1994 to fill the term of Herbert DeBeary, who died in office. Stewart remains a ward leader in the district.

Miller was scheduled to retire in January as a participant in the city's Deferred Retirement Option Plan. A number of her colleagues, however, are expected to take their lump-sum DROP payments and return to work if reelected.

She had done little fund-raising, and had only $12,000 in her account, according to a campaign-finance report.

By all accounts, Miller was not looking forward to a campaign in which she would be maligned for taking a $195,782 DROP payment.

Her decision leaves at least three of 17 Council seats open in the 2011 elections, with Democrat Joan Krajewski out and Republican Jack Kelly almost certainly headed for retirement.

Miller, in her release, said she had never planned to be a politician while working for Richardson, a pioneer of the city's black political movement.

"Though we have made great progress, Dave and others still would not be satisfied," Miller said. "I can only hope my successor will learn the lessons of the past as they chart our course in the future."