Two Respected Commissioners Departing Nutter Administration
By Pat Loeb
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- Two leading Philadelphia city officials are leaving the Nutter administration.
Deputy mayor for health Donald Schwarz and human services commissioner Anne Marie Ambrose are leaving city government after six years and generally high marks for their performance.
Dr. Schwarz, a pediatrician at Penn when he took the job, led efforts to improve access to care and behavioral health treatment to discourage smoking, and launched an anti-obesity program that brought the first drop in the city's adult obesity rate in more than a decade.
Ambrose took on a department in shambles in the aftermath of the horrific starving death of Danieal Kelly (see related story) and installed a new case management system credited with improving child safety and permanent placements, and recognized by the United Nations.
Schwarz's chief of staff, Susan Kretsge, will take over his deputy mayor role, while Drexel University professor James Buhler takes over as health commissioner.
Ambrose will be replaced by her deputy for Children and Youth, Vanessa Garrett Harley.