We’re running Integrity Icon Philadelphia in partnership with a number of Philly-based organizations including The Philadelphia Citizen, an innovative non-profit media outlet that combines solutions-oriented journalism with specific calls for civic action. The Citizen’s Executive Editor Roxanne Patel Shepelavy lays out our shared vision for how Integrity Icon can celebrate and encourage the best of Philadelphia’s public service below.

Talk to anyone who has dealings with the City, and you’ll hear a lot about city workers. Bureaucrats, inefficient, tied by unnecessary rules, political appointees who clock in, do the minimum needed, and then clock out. You know, city workers.

But you’ll also, on more than a rare occasion, hear about the public workers who take the “public” part of their jobs to heart, those who do their absolute best to make lives better and easier for their customers—Philadelphians.

They are people like Ralph DiPietro, in the Department of Licenses and Inspections, who helped clean up his rampantly corrupt department, and received the city’s Joan Markham Award for Integrity for his efforts.

Or “jury duty lady” Tanya Covington who leads sing-alongs in the Common Pleas jury room.

Or police officers Shamssadeen Nur Ali Baukman and Justin Harris who throw Friday afternoon karaoke parties at the corner of 52nd and Market streets to bond with their community.

They are city workers, too—and they are not alone.

Read the full article here.

KatieFuhs