A day after former City Representative Desiree Peterkin Bell was accused of stealing and misusing public funds through a city-run nonprofit, her name has already been scrubbed from organizations with which she had been involved.
Peterkin Bell’s name was removed from the website for the state’s Advisory Commission for African American Affairs. She resigned from that post in an email Monday afternoon, a spokesman said.
Her biography also no longer appeared on the website of the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication, where she had been a lecturer in urban communications, teaching a course she designed.
“She will not be teaching at Penn in the future,” a university spokeswoman said. “Her relationship with the Annenberg School has concluded.”
Both were part of the backlash after Bell was arraigned Tuesday on charges that she stole and misused $245,000 in taxpayer money.
Peterkin Bell has denied the accusations, which came after a 14-month grand jury investigation.
The grand jury found that when Peterkin Bell oversaw the Mayor’s Fund — a nonprofit intended to advance the mayor’s policy goals — she charged $20,000 to the fund’s credit cards for her personal use, including for shopping, vacations, and dinners at fancy restaurants. Investigators also said she took $225,000 in city money allocated to fund a cycling race and used it to pay debts for other events that she, as city representative, had been responsible for getting financed through donations or grants.
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