Posted on 11/06/2001 12:03:14 PM PST by Mannaggia l'America
WHEN IT comes to driving a car, he's no Angel.
City Councilman Angel Ortiz has been a lawbreaker since soon after he settled in Philadelphia as a young community legal services attorney in 1976.
He has been driving all this time without a driver's license.
Last week, the joy ride ended when a news crew from WTXF-TV ambushed the five-term councilman as he got out of his Ford Crown Vic at City Hall and asked him, for a report Channel 29 aired last night, if he had a driver's license.
"They got me in a very embarrassing situation," Ortiz said yesterday in an interview in his City Hall office.
"I told them I didn't have a license. I'm not going to deny something like that. I'm not that type of guy."
But he is the type of guy who has driven city vehicles since 1984, when then-mayor Wilson Goode named Ortiz his records commissioner. Later that year, Ortiz won a seat on City Council to fill the unexpired term of Al Pearlman, who'd died.
In years past, a child seat could be seen in his Ortiz's car. Unlike some Council members who make taxpayers pay for a staff driver, Ortiz drove himself. Indeed, he took his city car all the way to Atlanta for the 1988 Democratic Convention.
In a real sense, Ortiz is the poster boy for thousands of Philadelphians who can't cope with car insurance and traffic violations, but who take advantage of a city that has great difficulty apprehending scofflaws.
Here was a records commissioner who ironically could not take care of one of the most basic records Americans possess.
Traffic Court Administrative Judge Fred Perri reacted sternly to news of Ortiz's quarter century of scofflaw driving.
"Isn't that a disgrace? You can see why some folks don't want us to take and impound cars," he said.
Under the so-called "Live Stop" program, police can confiscate the vehicles of drivers who can't produce a valid driver's license or registration. That program is enforced only in several areas of the city, pending a decision by the Street administration for a citywide effort.
But Perri said police could not do anything about Ortiz's past admissions of illegal driving. Only if they catch him driving without a license can they ticket him, Perri said.
And that's not likely to happen. Ortiz said he's being driven by a staffer until he can get his license.
"When I moved here I had a driver's license from New York, but it lapsed," he said.
"I kept trying to make time to get a new license, and it seemed that something pressing always took precedence. Over the years, you sort of neglect certain things and I neglected this.
"From one month, it got to be two and then a year, and I kept putting it off," he said.
"This is a case of my own personal indiscretion."
Ortiz said he had not lost his license in New York state nor has he ever been in an accident or gotten a traffic ticket.
In short, he simply fell through a massive crack that many illegal drivers fall into and survive until they get caught.
"I am sorry for the embarrassment I have brought to my family and to City Council," Ortiz said. "But I have made arrangements to get a license."
Ortiz showed a Daily News reporter an application for a learner's permit that he had filled out. Ortiz said he planned to study the driver's manual to prepare for the written test.
"I'm studying the book and I want to get this done," he said.
He knew that the test asks 18 questions, that a passing score is 15 and that each version of the test has a few very difficult questions.
"Do you know any of the trick questions?" he joked.
But how could Ortiz get past seemingly rigorous standards set by city government that require drivers' licenses and insurance before city employees can operate municipal vehicles?
In the event of a serious car crash involving Ortiz, city taxpayers could be out big bucks because Philadelphia self-insures its vehicle fleet.
Joyce Wilkerson, Mayor Street's chief of staff, and a key staffer for then-Council President John Street, said she had no recollection of the issue arising in the seven years that Street was president.
Robert Johnson, who oversees administrative duties for Council President Anna Verna, said, "Holy mackerel!" upon hearing of Ortiz's failure to have a driver's license.
But he said he had no information about Ortiz's driving status.
City Councilman Richard Mariano said last night he is seriously considering asking Council for an ethics investigation into Ortiz's lack of a driver's license.
Last week, Ortiz was considering a similar ethics request after Mariano threatened to beat him during a private Council meeting.
Both men are on opposite sides of a bitter dispute over redrawing Council district boundaries.
In 1997, the city's Risk Management unit set up a new process for checking employees' drivers' licenses with PennDOT.
The city sends to Harrisburg a list of the names of about 20,000 employees.
The state agency tells the city which employees have expired, revoked or suspended licenses.
The city then takes away driving privileges until the employee corrects his driving problems, according to Barry Scott, the director of safety and loss prevention in the Risk Management unit.
Last year, this routine checking turned up the name of Earl Hatcher, a deputy prison commissioner who had been driving city vehicles for more than seven years before he was caught.
Hatcher was one of 275 employees whose license status raised a red flag.
Last March, Prison Commissioner Thomas Costello gave Hatcher a wrist slap of 20 days' suspension, which is "held in abeyance" for one year, at which time it's presumed Hatcher will retire.
Why didn't Ortiz's name pop up in the massive cross-check with PennDOT records? Scott said that although Council staff submitted a list of employees to be checked, it did not contain Ortiz's name.
"There may have been an oversight. It's not clear to me why his name should not have shown up, so I don't have an answer for you on that," Scott said.
A Council staffer, familiar with the handling of license checks, said yesterday the president's staff was mainly interested in checking up on other staffers.
"We told one staffer who had a suspended license that he couldn't drive until he got it straightened out," the official said.
Meanwhile, Ortiz is deeply involved in struggles over not only redistricting but also Street's handling of public education and the city's stalled blight plans.
"I need to get this license so that I can get back to my priorities," Ortiz said.
"I will secure my Pennsylvania driver's license and won't drive until then. I am very sorry."
But he said, had any official asked him whether he had a license, "I would have told them. It's all done and I'm going to take care of it."
It's funny that Rick Mariano is threatening an ethics investigation. Mariano was caught a few years ago using cops and staffers to deliver cookies for his wife's cookie business. Of course, there were no consquences - he was sorry.
Sorry about all of the one sentence paragraphs. The Phila Daily News writes for its readers, which are generally at a 3rd grade reading level.
After saying that, I fully understand that making a choice of not having a DL may entail some necessarily messy encounters with the Jackboots and property seizures have been unconsitutionally upheld by the courts. That still doesn't alter the fact that no citizen is required to have a state DL to operate a personal conveyance - bicycle, tractor, roller skates, truck or car - on the public roadways, except for commercial purposes. Democrap or Republican alike.
I know, there will be many squealing sheepies here that will claim this ain't so. But just like the fact that no one is required to have a Social Insecurity #, or "traveling papers" or such, no one is required to have a drivers lic. The problem I see is that the little guy will get his a$$ thrown in jail for not having a Lic. The Big Guys [IOW, politician and those with money and pull], Democraps and Republicraps alike, get off with "I'm sorry, I just didn't have time".
I'd have to go spend some time looking up the Supreme's ruling on this, but it had something to do with that pesky Constitution again. Those misguided Founding Fathers seemed to have this crazy idea that no citizen should be kept from traveling where, when or however he wanted to by the goobermint. You know, that typical Anarchist, ancient claptrap that so interfers with, and has little relevance to, today's modern world and the socialists/nazis' desires to control everything we do- all for our own good, mind you. Or "for the children".
Well, I guess no one had taken this to the Supreme Court yet, because they can and will confiscate cars in Phila. if you don't have a license.
BTW, I don't disagree with the concept that drivers licenses should not be required, but experience has shown me that they are. Try citing Supreme Court decisions the next time you are stopped by a cop and don't have a license.
Lemme guess - we also are not required to pay income taxes.
The other day I watched apartment coupon types near their free apartments parking in handicaped zones because they be ezempt too.
What are "apartment coupon types"?
We were in Mobile several years ago and an upscale motel had some peeples there to the tune of at least $55 a night.
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