Amid the surge in murders and shootings that plagued Philadelphia following the pandemic, City Hall directed millions of dollars to dozens of nonprofits to try to stem the violence.
But an Inquirer investigation in 2023 found the city’s $22 million anti-violence program devolved into a politicized process that steered funding to nascent nonprofits that were unprepared to manage the funds. A city controller’s report the following year backed the reporting.
Now, along comes another Inquirer investigation, this time detailing the rapid rise and financial struggles of a nonprofit that received millions in taxpayer funds from the same program.
Soon after the nonprofit New Options More Opportunities, known as NOMO, received a $1 million grant to combat gun violence in 2021, city grant managers raised red flags about the lack of financial records and controls, the recent investigation by Inquirer reporters Ryan W. Briggs and Samantha Melamed found.
The story detailed a number of issues surrounding NOMO, including multiple eviction filings, an IRS tax lien, and five lawsuits regarding unpaid rent. But even as problems mounted, money from city, state, and federal sources continued to flow.
In a lengthy statement to the Editorial Board, Rickey Duncan, NOMO’s executive director, denied any wrongdoing. He said that NOMO “faced difficulties” several years ago, but they have been addressed. He stressed that all the funds received by his organization had been properly spent.
Rickey Duncan, the CEO and executive director of the nonprofit New Options More Opportunities, or NOMO, on South Broad Street, in 2023.
Since 2020, NOMO has received roughly $6 million in city, state, and federal funds. Duncan’s salary has increased from $48,000 to $145,000. His profile grew, as well: In November 2023, Mayor-elect Cherelle L. Parker named Duncan, a former volunteer at NOMO before he began leading the group, to her transition team.
According to The Inquirer investigation, NOMO was one of only two organizations in 2021 to get the maximum grant of $1 million, which was roughly triple its operating budget. The report found that a nonprofit the city contracted to manage the grant program raised immediate concerns that NOMO provided no balance sheet or audited financial statement.
Over the years, NOMO expanded its gun violence prevention efforts to include youth after-school programs and a short-lived affordable housing initiative.
At one point, NOMO leased an apartment complex near Drexel University’s campus at a cost of more than $500,000 a year. But it appears no one questioned how the housing plan fit with the organization’s core anti-violence mission, according to The Inquirer report.
In fact, the city tried to give NOMO more money. Last year, the city wanted to award NOMO a $700,000 contract for homelessness prevention, but the organization couldn’t meet the conditions, so the funds were not disbursed.
In January 2025, the city drew the line when Duncan tried to get reimbursed $9,000 for season tickets to the Sixers. He said the tickets were “an innovative tool for workforce development.”
But a grant program manager responded: “Season tickets to the Sixers are not an acceptable programmatic expense.”
From left, Rickey Duncan, Dawan Williams, and Rasheed Jones discuss a T-shirt design during a workshop on how to create clothing designs hosted at the NOMO Foundation in October 2021.
The entire saga may underscore the need for stronger vetting and oversight of fledgling organizations that are well-intended but lack the practical experience to manage a program entrusted with hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars.
Adam Geer, Philadelphia’s chief public safety director, stressed in an interview with the Editorial Board that the Parker administration has implemented stronger oversight and support systems that did not exist when the initial anti-violence grants began.
He said those safeguards helped flag problems and put a stop to some of the spending that concerned city officials. Geer conceded there were “growing pains” when the anti-violence program launched, but he argued that nonprofits like NOMO played a key role in the steep drop in shootings in Philadelphia.
Duncan defended his organization’s anti-violence track record.
“There’s a reason why the city has continued to support the work NOMO is doing,” he wrote. “We are having a real, positive impact on people’s lives.”
Indeed, gun violence prevention programs can work — but the organizations charged with putting them in place must have the proper screening, support, and oversight.
When Josh Shapiro first ran for state attorney general in 2016, I asked him during a meeting with The Inquirer Editorial Board what he thought about the spread of legalized gambling in Pennsylvania.
He gave a thoughtful and passionate response detailing the reasons why he hated gambling and thought it was bad public policy. It was music to my ears, which is why I still remember it nearly 10 years later.
So it is sad to see now-Gov. Shapiro roll out another state budget that proposes taxing skill games. For two decades, lawmakers in Harrisburg have turned to new ways to boost gambling tax revenues.
Funding the government with billions of dollars in gambling losses from individuals is beyond scuzzy. And of all the exploitative and predatory forms of gambling that exist, skill games are among the scuzziest.
Shapiro said as much years ago, but Harrisburg is hooked on gambling. It is a problem Shapiro inherited, but now he’s helping to fuel more gambling. Last year, Shapiro signed a bill designed to grow the lottery, and an agreement that allowed online poker players in Pennsylvania to compete with those in other states.
Screen shows skill games and cannabis regulation and reform as Gov. Josh Shapiro makes his annual budget proposal in the state House chamber in Harrisburg Tuesday, Feb. 3, 2026.
Here is why the gambling monster keeps growing: Gambling interests are among the biggest donors in Harrisburg and hold huge sway over lawmakers. Meanwhile, lawmakers reluctant to raise taxes find it easier to bleed more gamblers.
The latest golden goose is skill games.
Despite the name, there is not a lot of skill involved. The games are similar to slot machines, but only worse because of how they disproportionately target poor and working-class communities.
Like slots, skill games can be addictive. The Pennsylvania Council on Compulsive Gambling has received more than 400 calls about skill games since 2021, including from many already enrolled in casino self-exclusion programs, according to Josh Ercole, the gambling council’s executive director.
Skill games operate in a gray area. They are not taxed or regulated, but they have proliferated to nearly every corner of the state.
Unregulated gaming devices known as “skill games” in a gas station connivence store in Philadelphia in August.
There are more than 70,000 skill game machines in Pennsylvania. They can be found in bars, restaurants, gas stations, truck stops, VFW halls, and even at the end of a food aisle in a convenience store. By comparison, Pennsylvania has about 25,000 slot machines in 17 casinos.
The tax rate on slot machine revenues is 54%. Shapiro proposed a 52% tax on skill game revenues, while Senate Republican leaders backed a plan to tax skill games at 35% of gross revenue.
It is mind-boggling that Harrisburg is trying to tax and regulate skill games after allowing them to spread across the state. If lawmakers cared about protecting vulnerable communities, a better policy would be to ban skill games. That is what Kentucky did in 2023.
But Harrisburg has long turned a blind eye to the unsavory aspects of gambling.
Some of the initial slots licenses were awarded to politically connected operators who had never run casinos, including one man who had pleaded guilty to fraud and was later charged with lying about ties to mob figures. The charges were dropped.
Meanwhile, skill games have been allowed to operate in the shadows, even as they attract crime that has led to killings and a recent police shooting. Philadelphia City Council banned skill games in 2024, but the court lifted the measure while it is on appeal.
Pace-O-Matic, the leading developer of skill games, spends millions of dollars lobbying lawmakers in Harrisburg. The company’s former compliance director, who was also an ex-state police corporal, recently pleaded guilty to accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in kickbacks in return for quashing complaints about illegal gaming machines.
Despite the sleaze and legal trouble, Harrisburg remains addicted to gambling. Since 2004, the state has legalized more and more gambling, starting with slot machines, then adding table games in 2010, and online gambling, sports betting, and mini casinos in 2017.
Pennsylvania rakes in more tax revenue from gambling than any other state in the country. In the last fiscal year, Harrisburg collected a record $6.4 billion from gambling.
The state celebrates the record tax haul as if it were a public good. The sad reality is that people lost billions of dollars. State lawmakers helped make their constituents poorer.
Casinos add little value to the local economy. In fact, they subtract dollars that could be spent on other goods and services.
Las Vegas, at least, attracts tourists who spend money on other things. Most of the gambling losses in Pennsylvania come from locals. Few tourists plan getaways to the casino in Chester or King of Prussia.
But here is the worst part: The business model for all forms of gambling largely depends on addiction. Casual players are not the target audience.
Casinos actively try to lure customers back with incentives, from free meals to free play certificates. Slot machines, which generate the majority of profits for casinos, are designed to addict users, research professor Natasha Dow Schull found.
A study in Massachusetts found 90% of casino revenues came from problem and at-risk gamblers. The industry argues addiction rates are low, but that is for the general population, not the customer base.
An entrance at Mount Airy Casino Resort in Mount Pocono, Pa. One study found that 90% of casino revenues came from problem and at-risk gamblers.
Years ago, an executive at the Parx Casino in Bensalem boasted that many of its customers visited more than 200 times a year — or five times a week.
That is quaint compared with online gambling. Smartphones allow people to bet 24/7. Gambling sites are engineered with sophisticated and predatory techniques, including frequent notifications, designed to keep users betting.
The Philadelphia region is the No. 1 market for online gambling companies, topping Las Vegas and New York. Since 2021, the number of calls about online gambling problems has increased 180% in Pennsylvania and 160% in New Jersey.
Harrisburg lawmakers are too busy counting the tax revenues and campaign contributions to consider the lives destroyed by legalized gambling.
An executive who helped run a large Black fraternity headquartered in Philadelphia pleaded guilty in 2022 to charges after embezzling nearly $3 million to fuel his gambling addiction.
That same year, a bookkeeper at the Delaware River Waterfront Corp. was sentenced to more than four years in prison for stealing more than $2.6 million to pay for her gambling addiction and trips.
A former judge in Chester County pleaded guilty in 2021 to stealing thousands of dollars in campaign funds to fuel a “six-figure” gambling habit at area casinos.
An attorney at a major Philadelphia firm who had a gambling problem was convicted in 2019 of stealing $100,000 from an 88-year-old client. A priest in Delaware County was sentenced to eight months in prison in 2018 after stealing $500,000 from a fund to care for aging priests that was used to cover gambling losses and pay for trips.
Most stories don’t make the police blotter, as thousands of other gamblers struggle in silence. Studies show that gambling problems lead to increased bankruptcies, suicide, and divorce.
The state Gaming Control Board website has a special section dedicated to the hundreds of people a year who leave their kids locked in cars or hotel rooms while they gamble for hours at a time. That is not entertainment; that is a problem.
Has anyone in Harrisburg ever wondered if the tax dollars are worth the harm?
Obviously, each person is responsible for their actions. But state lawmakers take an oath to protect the citizenry. Yet, they enabled the proliferation of gambling that has ruined many lives.
The same goes for the online sites and casinos that actively market to keep people gambling.
Just listing a toll-free number for people to call to get help is as disingenuous as the latest effort to tax predatory skill games.
When we first meet Bok High graduate Ozzie Phillips — one of three protagonists in Sadeqa Johnson’s latest novel, Keeper of Lost Children — a block party on South Philadelphia’s Ringgold Street is just winding down. In between the last dollops of creamy potato salad and sips of clear corn liquor, Ozzie’s friends and family wish the young serviceman a bon voyage.
He spends the last few weeks with his girlfriend, Rita, picnicking at the Lakes in FDR Park and walking through Center City department stores like Wanamaker’s and Strawbridge’s. One night the couple go to Ridge Avenue’s Pearl Theater to see Pearl Bailey perform.
The next morning, Ozzie’s Uncle Millard picks him up in a Vagabond-blue Oldsmobile and the two cruise down Broad Street, Count Basie tunes playing on WHAT AM. Uncle Millard circles City Hall, depositing Ozzie at Reading Terminal Station, where he hops on a train to Trenton’s Fort Dix Army Base before embarking on a steam boat to Germany.
It’s Ozzie’s time in Germany that fuels the plot of the sentimental historical novel.
“It’s such a joy for me to write the Philly scenes,” Johnson said, during a recent video chat. The book publicist turned New York Times best-selling author was born in South Philadelphia, grew up in North, and graduated from George Washington Carver High School of Engineering and Science. Today, the married mom of three writes from her home in Virginia, right outside Richmond.
“I left Philly when I went to Marymount Manhattan College in New York,” Johnson said. “But where you grow up is always in your DNA. Philly is in my soul. When I sit down and paint pictures of historical moments in Philadelphia, I get to go home.”
Cover art for Sadeqa Johnson’s 2026 novel, “Keeper of Lost Children” One of the main characters, Ozzie Ozbourne grew up in 1940s South Philadelphia.
Johnson has six books out in the world. She self-published her first,Love in a Carry-On Bag, in 2012.
Her books center young Black women in old-school and modern times trying to do the best with what they got. But in most of her works — especially the captivating historical fiction novels through which she’s made a name for herself on BookTok, podcasts, and traditional bestseller lists — her heroines face overwhelming odds.
Take theYellow Wife’s Pheby Delores Brown. Set in antebellum Virginia, Brown’s story is based on the harrowing real-life experience of enslaved woman Mary Lumpkin, who is forced into a relationship with her enslaver for whom she bears five children.
“I have this propensity to tell the story of young women 15, 16, 17, who are in a situation that feels insurmountable,” said Johnson, who, until 2023, taught creative writing in Drexel University’s master’s of fine arts program. “And I really love developing those stories that show how those young women get to the other side.”
The House of Eve, a 2023 New York Times bestseller and a Reese Witherspoon Book Club of the Month pick centers 1950s North Philadelphia teen Ruby Pearsall who falls in love with a Jewish boy whose family runs a corner store. In the book, Ruby must choose between a free ride to Cheyney University and motherhood.
“I love the research,” Johnson said. “I love learning interesting things about this city that I was brought up in.”
In Keeper — released this month by 37 INK, a division of Simon & Schuster — Ethel Gathers, a journalist and wife of an Army officer, also stationed in post World War II Germany, is the central character. There, she chances upon a group of multiracial children who she learns are the offspring of Black servicemen and German women.
Gathers, whose story is based on the life of journalist Mabel Grammer, adopts eight of the “Brown Babies” and starts an adoption agency, ultimately placing hundreds of the children with Black families in the United States. In the book, Grammer visits Philadelphia from her Washington home and books a room at the Divine Lorraine, the country’s first fully racially integrated hotel.
“I stumbled upon Ms. Grammer while researching The House of Eve,” Johnson said.“And in that moment, I knew I wanted to tell that story.”
Johnson breathes life into her fictional characters through extensive research, adding vivid details that take the readers back in time and thrust them into the rich tapestry of her story. Fans will often find connections to characters from previous books where they least expect it.
Ozzie’s military time and South Philly swag is based on Johnson’s great-uncle, 94-year-old Edgar Murray, who, like Ozzie, grew up in South Philly and spent the latter part of the 1940s in Germany. (For the record, Johnson said, her uncle didn’t suffer with alcoholism like Ozzie does in the book.)
It was Murray who suggested Ozzie live on Ringgold Street and take his date to the Pearl Theater.
“I like the factual things she puts in there,” said Murray, who lives with family in Denver, Colo. “It makes it more interesting.”
Philadelphia readers with an eye for history will enjoy seeing the city unfold through Ozzie’s eyes after his 1952 return.
He leafs through The Philadelphia Inquirer, reading detailed accounts of white veterans securing “large mortgages and moving out to lofty suburbs” on the GI bill that he too applied for. He works a job at the Navy Yard, gets married at Tasker Baptist Church, and experiences a miracle at West Philly’s Mercy-Douglass Hospital.
Tanner family members gather on the front steps of the Tanner House, at 2908 W. Diamond St. in Philadelphia, in this photo taken circa 1920. They are: Bottom row (l-r) Aaron A. Mossell Jr., and his wife, Jeanette Gaines Mossell; Middle row (l-r): Sadie T. M. Alexander, her mother, Mary L. Tanner Mossell, and Sadie’s sister, Elizabeth Mossell Anderson. Top row: Page Anderson, Elizabeth Anderson’s husband.
Halfway through Keepers, Ozzie attends a party thrown by elite Civil Rights husband-and-wife-team Raymond Pace Alexander and Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander at their swanky home at 17th and Jefferson.
Attorneys John Francis Williams and Lewis Tanner Moore Sr., cofounder of the Pyramid Club and whose son, art collector Lewis Tanner Moore Jr. died in 2024 — shoot the breeze about an NAACP fundraiser and Buddy Powell, a 1940s jazz musician who was so severely beaten by the Philadelphia railroad police that he ended up in an asylum.
“In The House of Eve, I got to dig around in my mom’s memory for Ruby,” Johnson said. “This time around I got to dig around in my dad and Uncle Edgar’s head to get South Philly down. Let’s see what happens in the next book.”
Sadeqa Johnson will give an author’s talk at the Philadelphia Ethical Society, 1906 Rittenhouse Square, Friday, Feb. 13, 6:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $35 and include a copy of “Keeper of Lost Children”
As Pennsylvania attorney general in 2018, now-Gov. Josh Shapiro oversaw the release of a bombshell grand jury report that revealed thousands of cases of abuse by priests across the state.
The nearly 900-page report was lauded as the most comprehensive review of clergy abuse across a single state and prompted new laws clarifying penalties for failure to report and allowing survivors more time to pursue criminal or civil cases against their abusers.
But a key step in delivering justice to those survivors — establishing a two-year window for the filing of lawsuits over decades-old abuse that falls outside the statute of limitations under existing law — remains unfinished.
Nearly a dozen interviews with survivors, their family members, and advocates reveal a deep frustration with the inaction in Harrisburg. Some question whether Shapiro has done enough to use his power as governor to advocate for them.
Big-money and out-of-state donors helped the Democratic governor raise $30 million for his reelection campaign, while likely Republican challenger Stacy Garrity raised $1.5 million from grassroots donors in Pennsylvania.
Shapiro unveiled a broad plan Thursday meant to grow and preserve Pennsylvania’s housing supply as the state faces a shortage of homes residents can afford.
Shapiro said Thursday that he will not attend any White House event that excludes another governor ahead of next week’s gathering of the nation’s governors in Washington.
Haverford College is grappling with its connection to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick after his appearance in the Epstein files.
Lutnick is a 1983 graduate of the Main Line school and a mega-donor who also served as the former chairman of the university’s board. According to the files, he had contact with Jeffrey Epstein as recently as 2018, long after the financier pleaded guilty to obtaining a minor for prostitution.
The commerce secretary maintains he had limited interactions with Epstein and has not been accused of wrongdoing. Since the Epstein documents were released, Lutnick has faced bipartisan calls to resign.
In light of the documents, some students are asking the school to cut ties with Lutnick and to remove his name from the Haverford library building, to which he donated millions for upgrades. If school leadership pursues the renaming, the process could take years and would involve a review process with university stakeholders.
A Bucks County woman reported her ex-boyfriend to police after a sexual assault. Hours later, he fatally shot her, authorities said. Her family now hopes for justice.
The suspect in the rape and killing of a 5-year-old Philadelphia girl is now in custody, authorities said. He had been on the FBI’s most-wanted list for nearly 20 years.
A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shot a gun near New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill’s former district. One of the candidates vying to replace her wants to abolish the agency.
U.S. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick said reforms to ICE, including mask bans for agents, should be part of any funding extensions for the Department of Homeland Security.
Philadelphians continue to pay for the alleged misconduct of former Register of Wills Tracey Gordon — at a cost of more than $900,000 — two years after she left office.
Low-income Pennsylvania families and older adults have been dropping out of Affordable Care Act health plans at the greatest rates after a key financial incentive expired.
PennDot is giving Philadelphia $13 million for six traffic-safety projects across the city. The money comes from speeders caught and fined by automated enforcement cameras.
Under new leadership, the Women’s Community Revitalization Project is developing apartments on public land in Kensington.
A “Cease Operations” notice was posted on World Cafe Live’s door this week. What does that mean for the embattled venue’s future?
This week, we have an explainer from reporter Nick Vadala on a possible solution for getting rid of all this icy slush still piled in mounds. Couldn’t the city just toss it in the Delaware River or the Schuylkill?
While it’s been done in the past — including after the blizzard of ’96, when around 500 tons were dumped — the practice is now seen as an environmental hazard. Here’s the full story.
Just two blocks from Independence Hall, Carpenters Hall is where Pennsylvania declared its independence from Britain in June 1776. To celebrate America’s 250th birthday, what will be installed outside of Carpenters Hall in June?
Cheers to Luke Coulter, who solved Thursday’s anagram: P.J. Whelihan’s. The Haddon Township restaurant chain is officially moving into Newtown’s shuttered Iron Hill Brewery.
Students walk out of Motivation High School in protest on Monday, as their school in Southwest Philadelphia is one of 20 that have been tagged for closure.
🎒 One last motivated thing: Students staged a walkout this week over plans to close Southwest Philadelphia magnet school Motivation High. They have the backing of Pennsylvania House Speaker Joanna McClinton.
Thanks for ending your week with The Inquirer. Paola has you covered this weekend. ’Til we meet again in your inbox, be well.
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Bert Bell pulled the defunct Frankford Yellow Jackets out of bankruptcy, and started a new NFL franchise in Philadelphia in 1933.
His wife, actress Frances Upton Bell, paid her husband’s share of $2,500 (more than $60,000 in today’s money) to seal the deal.
Bell spotted a billboard for Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, which included the insignia of a bald eagle, and decided this new team should be called the Philadelphia Eagles.
The NFL back then was a nine-team league. And for players it was a free market. The best and brightest could join whichever team they saw fit.
The Eagles were the worst. And in 1935, Bell tried to sign Stan Kostka, a 6-foot-2 fullback from the University of Minnesota. After failing to close the deal, he decided there had to be another way.
Bell came up with an idea whereby each team had a fair shot at the top players. His solution was a draft, in which teams would select from a pool of new players entering the league.
And the key idea: The order of player selection would be in reverse order of the previous year’s standings. So the worst-performing franchise would pick first, and the league champions would pick last.
They called it “the selection of players.” And the first iteration would be held during the owners’ meetings, Feb. 8 and 9, 1936.
It made sense to hold the event in Philadelphia. It was a midway point among the nine cities, and Bell’s father owned the hotel.
On the clock
The Eagles held the first-ever pick in the NFL draft.
They selected Jay Berwanger, Heisman Trophy-winning halfback from the University of Chicago. But his salary demands were high, reported at $1,000 per game. (That would be $25,000 per game today.)
So immediately the team tradedhim to the Bears for veteran tackle Art Buss.
Berwanger, unimpressed with the Bears’ contract offer, took a job with a rubber company instead.
He never played a minute in an NFL game.
In that hotel room, the nine owners drafted 81 players over nine rounds, kicking off what would become an industry unto itself and the league’s third marquee event, behind the NFL’s opening weekend and the Super Bowl.
The Women’s Community Revitalization Project is planning a 34-unit apartment building, flanked by two triplexes, on city-owned land in Kensington.
All of the units will be available to those below 60% of area median income, or almost $72,000 for a family of four.
The apartment building at Cumberland and Reese Streets is designed at an angle slashing across the lot, using only a portion of the city-owned land.
“Having a solid wall of building directly across [from rowhouses], we just felt wasn’t really contextual to the neighborhood,” said Lorissa Luciani, who has been the executive director of Women’s Community Revitalization Project (WCRP) for the last nine months. “Then there’s height limitations so we couldn’t go any higher.”
The project is funded through federal Low Income Housing Tax Credits (LIHTC), which the nonprofit group obtained in 2025. The land will be obtained for a nominal cost from the city.
WCRP has been meeting with local community groups since 2024. Luciani said organizations such as Xiente, APM, and the 19th Ward RCO have been supportive of this project.
The development, designed by Philadelphia-based CICADA Architecture & Planning, will cost over $26 million and is slated for completion 18 months after the group settles on the land. It will include 10 parking spaces.
On Tuesday, the Philadelphia Land Bank’s board voted to approve the sale of the property to WCRP. The plan also has the backing of Councilmember Quetcy Lozada, which is essential because she will need to introduce legislation to move the property out of the Land Bank.
“It’s an amazing project,” Lozada said. “We are in need of partners like the Women’s Community Revitalization Project who understand the need for not just affordable housing, but deeply affordable housing.”
Without Lozada’s support, the project would be impossible.Final passage of the legislation could come as soon as later this month.
The three buildings being developed by WCRP can be seen from above, highlighted in white, with the apartment project’s slanted angle readily seen from above.
Luciani said WCRP would close on the project in the fall.
This will be Luciani’s first ground-up development with the organization. She joined the nonprofit in 2025 after WCRP’s longstanding executive director and founder Nora Lichtash retired from her leadership role with the group after 35 years. She still works for the group as a consultant.
WCRP was founded in 1986 to serve Fishtown, Kensington, and other neighborhoods in North Philadelphia east of Broad Street. Since then, it has developed projects in other corners of the city, such as Germantown and Point Breeze.
“My predecessor has a substantial amount of experience and relationships with many of these organizations” in Kensington, Luciani said.
“I’m trying to work to have my own relationships with them,” Luciani said. “They’re a really organized, sophisticated community that really understands their needs, and they’ll fight for it as hard as they need to.”
Luciani previously worked in New Jersey local and state government and planning for decades and has a deep familiarity with subsidized housing policy.
“I grew up in public housing in North Jersey,” Luciani said. “So it’s been a personal and professional lens that I utilize to try and continue the good work that helped my family in the hopes of helping others.”
Family Practice & Counseling Services Network won a $3.4 million federal health center grant that will allow the nonprofit to continue providing medical and mental healthcare in Southwest Philadelphia and other low-income Philadelphia neighborhoods, officials confirmed this week.
The clinic had been part of Resources for Human Development, a Philadelphia human services agency that a fast-growing Reading nonprofit called Inperium Inc. acquired in late 2024. As a federally qualified health clinic since 1992, the clinic had received an annual federal grant, higher Medicaid rates, and other benefits.
Federal rules prohibited the clinic from continuing to retain that status and those benefits under a parent company. That meant Family Practice & Counseling Network had two options: close or spin out into a new entity that would reapply to be a federally qualified clinic.
With financial and operational help from the University of Pennsylvania Health System, Family Practice & Counseling formed a new legal entity last July and reapplied for the grant. Last week, the organization’s CEO Emily Nichols learned that the federal agency that oversees federal health centers awarded it the grant.
On Tuesday, the city agreed to pay $250,000 to a former clerk who, like several other register of wills employees, said he was fired after he refused to contribute to Gordon’s campaign.
Nicholas Barone alleged in a 2023 federal lawsuit that Gordon, through an intermediary, had first requested a $150 contribution in late 2021.
When Barone told his supervisor he could not afford to contribute, Gordon asked for $75, according to the lawsuit. Barone balked again.
Then, in January 2022, Barone received a termination letter, effective immediately. The letter came four days after a performance review found he was exceeding expectations, according to his suit.
“She pressured everyone to make a donation and sort of made it known, if you’re not donating, you’re not going to be employed,” said Barone’s lawyer, James Goslee.
In addition to the Barone settlement, the city has paid $400,000 to settle four other federal lawsuits brought by former Gordon staffers. They alleged that Gordon, who was elected in 2019, had essentially turned the register of wills office into an arm of her unsuccessful reelection campaign.
Patrick Parkinson, a former administrative deputy in the office, claimed in his lawsuit that Gordon “continually and relentlessly badgered” him for campaign money, then fired him in 2022 when he refused. His suit was settled in 2024 for $120,000.
Barone’s case was unusual in that it was the only one that got as far as a trial, which began Monday. Several former employees testified about how Gordon had politicized the office. Gordon testified last.
The city then agreed to settle before the jury began deliberating. Goslee said her testimony was a “disaster” for the defense.
“She just wasn’t a good witness, I’ll put it to you that way,” Goslee said. “She should not be in politics or be allowed anywhere near public office.”
Reached by phone Thursday, Gordon initially declined to comment. She called back five minutes later.
“In connection with the allegations brought against me, I maintain I did nothing wrong,” Gordon said. “Any decision to settle the case was a decision made by the City of Philadelphia.”
A spokesperson for the city’s law department declined to comment.
The register of wills office is a somewhat obscure row office in City Hall that employees approximately 100 people with an annual budget of about $5.2 million. It issues marriage licenses, processes inheritance-related records, and does other nonpolitical work.
But it also has a reputation as a Democratic patronage operation going back at least to the 1980s, with jobs being doled out to people with political connections.
Goslee said he was hoping that Barone’s case might lead to some “structural change.”
“This is a very important public interest case,” he said. “That system of entrenched, compelled patronage really needs to come to an end.”
That does not appear to be happening yet.
Gordon was defeated in the 2023 Democratic primary by John Sabatina Sr., an estate attorney and Northeast Philadelphia ward leader. He took office in January 2024.
The city has since paid out $256,000 in settlements to nine former register of wills employees who filed lawsuits alleging that Sabatina fired them to make way for his own patronage hires. Five cases are still pending.
“It was a hit list,” lawyer Timothy Creech, who is representing most of those ex-employees, said in September, comparing Sabatina to a “Tammany Hall”-style party boss, a reference to the former New York City political machine.
“It wasn’t to save money,” Creech said. “It was specifically to hire their own people.”
Register of Wills John Sabatina
Several of the 30 office employees on the list are described by their connections to Gordon, including “Tracey niece,” “Tracey’s friend, 7th Ward committee person,” “Last Tracey hire.” The suggested action for most of those employees was immediate termination.
“We have enough immediate terminations to allow us several hires in the next two weeks,” reads a note at the bottom of the spreadsheet.
Another note appears to indicate that some firings were planned before Sabatina had replacements:“We don’t have people lined up for all of these jobs and we need to make sure we use up all of the funds set aside in the budget for salary.”
Sabatina has declined to comment on those cases.
Lauren Cristella, president and CEO of the Committee of Seventy good-government group, said it is not acceptable for the city to spend more than $900,000 to settle lawsuits stemming from politics in the register of wills office.
“We can all think of a thousand better things we could do with these funds,” Cristella said. “The patronage mill better start printing money to keep up with these payouts because taxpayers in this city can no longer foot this bill. When is enough for Council and the mayor to meaningfully reform the row offices?”
Last year, the Pennsylvania Intergovernmental Cooperation Authority, Philadelphia’s fiscal watchdog, passed a resolution to recommend that City Council and Mayor Cherelle L. Parker abolish the register of wills office, along with the sheriff’s office, another row office with a long history of problems.
Neither Parker nor Council has shown any interest in taking action.
Gordon, who ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 2024, now works in the sheriff’s office as a services representative, according to city payroll records.
“Row offices are set up to create jobs for the politically connected, not serve the people of our city,” Cristella said. “It doesn’t matter who is in the office, the taxpayers are always on the hook for their abuse of power.”
Staff writer Ryan W. Briggs contributed to this article.
Philadelphia is getting $13 million to support six traffic-safety projects in Philadelphia, courtesy of speeders caught and fined by automated enforcement cameras.
The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation announced the grants Wednesday for an array of city projects, including $2 million for traffic-calming measures on Lincoln Drive between Kelly Drive and Wayne Avenue.
Some of that money will help pay for speed humps at 100 additional public, parochial, and private schools in the city, PennDot said.
Since taking office in 2023, the Shapiro administration has invested $49.7million in city traffic-safety projects, all from revenues raised by speed cameras.
Calming speeders
Under the automated speed-enforcement program, grants are plowed back into the communities that generated the revenue. Philadelphia is so far the only municipality in the state where speed cameras are authorized.
Pennsylvania also has automated speed enforcement in highway work zones, but that revenue goes to the Pennsylvania State Police for extra patrols and more troopers, the turnpike for safety projects and speeding counter-measures, and the general treasury.
The new grant is meant to continue traffic-safety work on Lincoln Drive that began a couple of years ago.
That includes speed humps, speed slots, new phosphorescent paint, flexible lane delineators, a smoother merge point where the road narrows, and marked left-turn lanes.
“It’s made a huge difference,” said Josephine Winter, executive director of the West Mount Airy Neighbors civic group, which organized residents.
“People that live along Lincoln Drive are feeling positive,” she said — though there is a split between people who are angry at what speed bumps have done to their cars’ undercarriages and those who support what they say are life-saving improvements.
“The city was wonderful, very responsive,” Winter said. “We’re been fortunate to get something done here.” Next up: working with other Northwest residents to get improvements on side streets, Wissahickon Avenue, and others.
Other grants
$1.5 million for planning work to upgrade traffic signals, better lane and crosswalk markings, and intersection modifications.
$5 million for design and construction of safety improvements along commercial and transit corridors. Those include curb extensions, concrete medians, bus boarding bump-outs, and new crosswalks. Locations include: Frankford Avenue (Tyson Avenue to Sheffield Avenue); 52nd Street (Arch Street to Pine Street); Hunting Park Avenue (Old York Road to 15th Street); and Germantown Avenue (Indiana Avenue to Venango Street).
Sitting onstage in an echoeyhistoric synagogue, next to a U.S. senatorand a cardboard cutout of his newly released memoir, Gov. Josh Shapiro reflected on the Pennsylvanians who give him hope.
As he had in other stops on his book tour up and down the East Coast, Shapirooften referred to his book’s title, Where We Keep The Light, and the ways he finds hope in the “extraordinary impact” of Pennsylvanians. Among them, he said, were those who were sexually abused by Catholic priests in crimes covered up by the church until they were illuminated by the victims’ unrelenting quest for justice.
“I find hope in the people I met who were abused over years and years and years,” Shapiro told U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock (D., Ga.) last month at an event at Sixth and I, a synagogue in Washington, “who still had the courage to show up in a grand jury room to testify and to challenge me to do something to make sure we righted a wrong and brought justice to them.”
The nearly 900-page report was lauded as the most comprehensive review of clergy abuse across a single state and prompted new laws clarifying penalties for failure to report abuse and allowing survivors more time to pursue criminal or civil cases against their abusers.
But a key step in delivering justice to those survivors — establishing a two-year window for the filing of lawsuits over decades-old abuse that falls outside the statute of limitations under existing law — remains unfinished.
The proposal has become one of the most fraught issues in Harrisburg. After a devastating clerical error by Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration killed a proposed constitutional amendment in 2021, lawmakers have been unable to come together on a new path forward. Republicans who control the state Senate have tied the proposal to policies Democrats will not support. All the while, the Catholic Church and the insurance industry have lobbied hard against it.
Nearly a dozen interviews with survivors, their family members, and advocates reveal a deep frustration with the inaction in Harrisburg. Even as Shapiro renews calls for the Senate to act, survivors are divided over whether he has done enough to use his power as governor to advocate for them.
A key pledge in Shapiro’s bid for reelection — and his pitch to a national audience — is that he can “get stuff done” by working across the aisle. But some abuse survivors in Pennsylvania say the unfinished business in getting justice for them brings that record into question.
“He got to where he’s at on the back of victims and survivors, and now he’s forgotten,” said Mike McIlmail, the father of a clergy abuse victim, Sean McIlmail, who died of an overdose shortly before he was supposed to testify in a criminal case against his alleged abuser.
Shapiro, his spokesperson Will Simons said, has fought for survivors “publicly and in legislative negotiations” since 2018. He has promised to sign any bill that reaches his desk establishing the window.
With a reelection campaignunderway and his eyes on flipping the state Senate, the governor renewed that fight earlier this month. He used his budget address to blame Senate Republicans for the inaction thus far.
“Stop cowering to the special interests, like insurance companies and lobbyists for the Catholic Church,” he said, his voice thundering in the House chamber. “Stop tying justice for abused kids to your pet political projects. And start listening to victims.”
Mike and Debbie McIlmail, parents of Sean McIlmail, in the office of (left) Marci Hamilton, in Philadelphia on March 29, 2022.
For most of the casesin the report, the statute of limitations had passed, leaving no legal recourse for survivors.
The report proposed that lawmakers create a two-year window to allow the filing of civil suits over cases that happened years, if not decades, ago. Despite Shapiro’s advocacy since releasing the grand jury report, the proposal has been trapped in a stalemate for years.
Pennsylvania trails more than 30 other states that have approved similar legislation.
Then-Attorney General Josh Shapiro speaks at a news conference in the state Capitol in 2018 about legislation to respond to a landmark grand jury report accusing hundreds of priests of sexually abusing children over decades stalled in the legislature.
“It’s maddening to have people say, ‘We’re committed to this, this is going to happen, we’re committed to it,’ from both sides of the political spectrum and nothing ever gets done,” said Jay Sefton, who says he was abused by a priest in Havertown as a middle schooler in the 1980s. “It does start to feel like these are lives being used as its own sort of theater.”
Gov. Josh Shapiro makes his annual budget proposal in the state House chamber Tuesday, Feb. 3, 2026.
Speaking to journalists in Washington days before he targeted Republicans in his budget address, Shapiro tied the window’s prospects to Democrats’ ability to win the state Senate for the first time in more than three decades.
“I’m confident with a Democratic Senate that will be one of the first bills they put on my desk,” Shapiro said.
Senate President Pro Tempore Kim Ward, a Republican, leaves the House chamber following Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro’s annual budget proposal speech in Harrisburg on Feb. 3.
In an interview, Senate President Pro Tempore Kim Ward (R., Westmoreland) noted that the GOP-controlled Senate had approved a constitutional amendment to establish the window several times before, although it ultimately failed to ever reach the voters.
She declined to say whether the state Senate would take up the amendment up this year but said creating the window through legislation, as Shapiro requested, would be unconstitutional.
“He has decided that he’s going to be moral instead of follow the law. Look at his record in his own office,” Ward said, arguing Shapiro has a track record of fighting for some survivors but not others. She pointed to his office’s handling of sexual harassment allegations brought against a former top staffer and close ally. Documents showed that complaints about the staffer were made months before his abrupt resignation.
For some clergy abuse survivors, the blame lands squarely on Ward and her Republican allies as they insist on a constitutional amendment, which requires two votes by both the House and Senate along with a ballot measure.
“It’s the Republicans that are blocking it, and I think they’re blocking it because of the church,” said Julianne Bortz, a survivor who testified before the grand jury and whose experience was featured in the report.
A portrait of former Pa. House Speaker Mark Rozzi hangs alongside painting of other former speakers in hallway at the state Capitol.
Debate among survivors
Despite Shapiro’s recent statements, there is a sense among some survivors that lawmakers, and Shapiro, have forgotten about them.
Former state House Speaker Mark Rozzi, a Berks County Democrat and clergy abuse survivor, said Shapiro “betrayed” survivors and should be playing “hardball” with the Senate to ensure that the bill makes it to his desk.
“Talk is cheap. Unless you come to the table and cut a deal, nothing else gets done,” Rozzi said.
Then-Pennsylvania House Speaker Mark Rozzi, center right, embraces Arthur Baselice, the father of Arthur Baselice III, after he testified at a hearing in Philadelphia on Jan. 27, 2023.
Advocates have spent years pushing lawmakers in Harrisburg and have grown increasingly frustrated with the lack of movement.
“We, being the victims, have always held our end of the bargain. Always. We’ve always shown up when we’ve asked to, we’ve testified when we were asked to, we interviewed, we discussed the worst moments of our lives when asked,” said Shaun Dougherty, who said he was abused by an Altoona-Johnstown priest.
Now, he said, it’s the governor’s turn to get the work done.
Former State Rep. Bill Wachob, a Democrat who worked in politics after leaving elected office in the 1980s, is convinced the governor could make it happen through negotiations if he wanted.
“He and his team have made a calculated political decision that they have gotten as much mileage out of this issue as they’re going to get and they’re not doing anything more,” Wachob said.
In Shapiro’s memoir, however, he wrote he expected that going up against the Catholic Church in pursuing the 2018 report “was likely the end of the road for me politically.”
“I’d made my peace with being a one term Attorney General, if it meant that I could put my head on the pillow at night knowing I did my job and made good for these victims,” he wrote.
“I have no doubt that the governor has been doing what he can,” said Marci Hamilton, the founder of Child USA, which advocates for child sex abuse victims. She blamed the challenges in reaching a deal on Harrisburg’s partisan dynamics.
Recent criticism of Shapiro has driven division within the survivor community in recent weeks, said Mary McHale, a survivor who was featured in a 2022 Shapiro campaign ad.
“He cares. But he also has a state to run. This can’t be the No. 1 issue,” she said.
Diana Vojtasek, who said she was abused by the same Allentown priest as McHale, said she worries frustration is being misdirected at Shapiro instead of Republicans.
“I just don’t see the value in attacking the one who has vowed publicly that he will sign this legislation for us as soon as it’s across his desk,” she said.
Abuse survivor Shaun Dougherty (left) greets then-Gov. Tom Wolf in the State Capitol on Sept. 24, 2018.
“What the Epstein transparency act showed us is we are finally at a point where the protection of sexual abuse victims is nonpartisan,” Hamilton said. “I fully expect to see that that understanding for victims will happen in Harrisburg.”
Rep. Nathan Davidson, a Dauphin County Democrat who introduced the House legislation to create the window, has scheduled hearings in April to bring renewed attention to the issue.
Sefton, who said he was abused as a middle schooler in Havertown in the 1980s, will perform a one-man show about his experience in a theater just steps from the state Capitol the week of the hearings.
He is done hoping lawmakers will establish the window but said it would make the state safer if they did.
“Nobody is going to give anyone their childhood back. It can’t happen,” Sefton said.
“There’s always going to be a part of me that’s filled with some rage about people blocking the energy here. If that were to go through, it’s a piece of energy that gets finally freed up.”
