Citing evidence that the administration is “internally dysfunctional” and rife with “widespread nepotism,” a state judge in Chester’s rare bankruptcy case on Tuesday called for “major changes” in the way the financially distressed city is governed, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. In a sharply worded 45-page ruling, Commonwealth Court Judge Ellen Ceisler described “a pattern of city officials’ taking care of their own and intentionally turning their backs on wrongdoing within their departments.” She stopped short of granting the request by state-appointed receiver Michael Doweary to essentially take control of the government but did agree to limiting the powers of City Council members by stripping them of their department-head duties, including oversight of the city’s finances. Chester’s situation is a rarity: Only 31 of the nation’s 36,000 municipalities have filed for bankruptcy in the 85 years that the option has been available. Ceisler said that she was “extremely troubled” by the fact that the council member who also was the chief financial officer failed to tell the receiver that the city had lost $400,000 in a phishing scam until three months after it happened. She said that Mayor Thaddeus Kirkland had appointed department heads “based on their loyalty to City Council and the mayor’s own inclination in a particular year, rather than on the person’s actual qualifications.”
