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Monday RoundUp: Budget chaos, gambling free for all, immigration and health care, the BRT usual – and city leaders are where?
Submitted by HelenGym on Mon, 09/14/2009 - 1:44pm.
It’s all budgets all the time with the news that a veto-proof agreement may have been crafted. The compromise however leaves a lot of areas hanging:
Education: The compromise blows a major hole in the education budget as reported by Dan Hardy, confirming rumors that have been swirling for months (edit: a bit of hyperbole there - rumors have been swirling for a few weeks, not months). The School District is expected to be at least $140 million short – a move that one District insider said months ago would be "the end of the world." Hardest hit are likely to be pre-school and help for students looking to return to school and get their diplomas. The SRC meanwhile has chosen to postpone its September meeting dates without explanation. Explaining to the public how you didn’t really have a Plan B is such a chore. Read more at the Public School Notebook.
PICA punts on Plan C: Speaking of a lack of plans, the city buys time when PICA declines to weigh in on Plan C, saving the Mayor an embarrassing rejection as one Councilman notes. But it does highlight a widespread lack of faith in the alternative the Mayor has submitted.
Look on the Bright Side: Now we can play poker to really class up those slots barns! Although it looks like neighborhood bars may not get their video poker, the state believes its second highest revenue generator – expanded gambling through table games – is still the magic bullet to plug holes. Sort of. Actually only briefly. $200 million this year and a 40% drop in revenues next year (casino industry estimates by the way, and we know how reliable those are). Meanwhile, with the political gambling contributions ban eliminated, it’s a virtual free for all for the casino industry to ensure table games are as individually profitable as they are likely.
In other news, the Inky puts another foot on the BRT’s keister with a series of stories on the new tax assessments. Patrick Kerkstra notes that it’s "business as usual" for one city block where some assessments tripled. Meanwhile the BRT follows incompetence with – what else? More incompetence!
Among the findings:
Hundreds of the new commercial numbers were thrown off by mistakes littering the BRT's property records, including incorrectly sized lots and buildings that don't exist. At Seventh and Arch Streets, for example, the BRT calculated a new value of $5.2 million on what the agency thought was a huge, 200-space parking lot. But there is no such lot, just a narrow walkway next to the Federal Detention Center.
Instead of trying to figure out a property's real worth, the BRT's assessors slapped the same percentage increases on thousands of parcels across the city. More than 500 would get the same 40 percent increase - properties as different as a $6 million shopping center on Castor Avenue and a long-empty hoagie shop in North Philadelphia.
More than 6,000 commercial properties - a quarter of the total - are missing entirely, left undone as the BRT rushed to send the AVI numbers to impatient city officials last spring.
Apparent glitches in the BRT's computer models produced some bizarre results. Parking lots in a drug-ravaged section of Frankford, for example, were valued at a steep $140 per square foot - more pricey than many lots in Center City.
The most telling line:
Mayor Nutter, through a spokeswoman, declined to comment.
And finally, Michael Smerconish, who when googling past columns of his, I came across the unfortunate nature of his Philly Mag profile. I do not advise.
Anyway, he takes on the Joe Wilson-immigrant reform-Obama health care controversy, even though not a one links logically to the another.
Now for the record, Smerconish actually published a column about his diversifying of America paranoia:
I know I'm not alone in my belief that today's immigrants - those here both legally and illegally - are not assimilating the way my forefathers did when they arrived.
And before I'm shouted down as a xenophobe, hear me out. My intent isn't to amplify the shrill debate surrounding illegal immigration. What I'm interested in is defending the tradition to which my grandparents adhered: the one that led them to a new name and a better life in this country.
I fear we are leaving it behind.
Leaving aside the philly.com comment stream, and they are particularly colorful whenever immigration is raised – Smerconish nevertheless raises sensible points about why the far right’s call to completely deny undocumented people from receiving health care is bad policy:
- It would require the undoing of the 1986 Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act requiring care for anyone who visits an emergency room.
- It would require doctors and caregivers to function as immigration agents first, and health care professionals second.
- It wouldn’t keep with our national rep to deny health care to people who were gunshot victims, or giving birth, or in a car accident, or suffering from a communicable disease, say.
- And it doesn’t help the fact that what health care professionals are more concerned about are insurance protections than verifying legal status.
Smerconish omits one other important reality, and that’s the fact that so many families in the U.S. are of mixed immigration status. Back in 1999, the Urban Institute reported that as many as one in ten American families had at least one family member who was undocumented. A more recent Pew study shows that 75% of the children of undocumented immigrants are U.S. citizens. So it kinda makes it complicated when you start trying to deny citizen kids health care check-ups for school when their parents don't have the right paperwork.
In the end, though, Obama’s health care reform bill is meant to address health insurance plans and medical coverage in general. It’s not meant to rewrite every single law that deals with health care. And although Smerconish raises some good points, it’s just plain misdirection to raise the 1986 law and try to hang it on the president’s neck.
Nutter's "no comment" is a problem?
I'm someone who went from a Nutter supporter, to severely disappointed, to an emotionally detached "but what are the alternatives" but that's terribly misleading.
The BRT is badly, badly mismanaged and Nutter put direct pressure on Council to introduce the legislation to reorganize it last spring. Actually he first asked for the authority to do it himself (including handing over long-term legislative solutions for Council to pass) and was basically turned down, in part by Council and in part by the local party machine. Council instead passed the sales-tax budget we are still waiting on, promptly punted on the BRT and then went on summer vacation, while the sales-tax budget floundered in Harrisburg - making it increasingly more and more clear that property taxes are not a portion of tax revenue that Council can afford to "not deal with". As if we could afford to mismanage any significant chunk of city revenue like this in current conditions.
What the linked article basically showed is that for commercial properties the BRT's "new and improved assesments" simply took either 10 or 20 year old data which itself was flawed and full of innacuracies and then in huge swaths of the city just multiplied that bad data by flat 30-40% increases. Years of incompetence unchecked got plugged into ridiculously sub-standard rate increase tables and produced crazy results. Garbage in, multiplied by garbage flat formulas, produced garbage multiplied exponentially on the other end.
I agree this is massive "danger, danger" sign for the competence of the BRT generally (as if it needed another) but its sort of a bizarre construction to frame this as a problem the mayor doesn't care about. His chief fiscal expert was quoted criticizing the half-baked bad assessments just above the "no comment" you chose to emphasize, Helen.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say Dubow's comments for better or worse reflect Nutter's own take, even if the mayor himself declined to comment lest is limit his ability to pressure Council to act.
Since we seem to be risking putting yelling at the handiest politicians over the appropriate ones - lets recall what Nutter said about the BRT before Council went on summer break.
He asked on May 6, 2009, as Kerkastra reported, for the BRT board to resign and hand over authority to him to reorganize and fix the mess. To be clear the Charter would still have a committee of judges approve the interim board, but it clearly would have been "Nutter's board" at that point. Why? Because the "culture" of the BRT didn't drift off course over a matter of months but of decades and swift action was called for.
The court-appointed BRT board's response?
"Go eff yourself."
So much for that much cited "strong-mayor" system apparently.
And Council Pres Anna Verna said Nutter's call for an immediate emergency reorganizaton were made too "hastily", that Council would take the lead of crafting a revision to the Home Rule Charter that could be put up to the voters.
Then City Council finished the sales-tax budget and promptly went on summer recess with no sign yet of when they plan to actually deal with it. Meanwhile, people are actually being forced to pay (as you pointed out earlier, Helen) up to 300% increases based on a tainted, discredited assesment process.
I'm just saying, I get being bothered by this but its absurd to be bothered at the mayor as opposed to City Council which are clearly the folks most obviously dropping the ball on this currently.
From my perspective, if Council does not get a BRT proposal together for the November ballot, it will be an even bigger legislative branch failure than Congress not passing health insurance reform by roughly the same time. And currently it looks like Congress is in the lead on that race.
-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.
Frankly,
I'm not that bothered by it as you apparently are. As you noted it's a different take than last spring when the BRT series broke. Back then the Mayor took a strong stand - the problem was he did it on something he didn't have a right to control - and he knew that. Since then, we haven't really heard much on the BRT from the Mayor's perspective. Of course Rob DuBow speaks for the administration, but I think on an issue where residents actually suffer consequences (and the city potentially loses revnues), that it's just curious that the Mayor chose to withhhold comment. And I pointed it out in one line, not an exclusive post. It's interesting, that's all.
But hey, everyone should weigh in as they like. As for Council, there's plenty of blame to go around on the BRT (don't forget those judges too), but unless I'm wrong, I don't know anyone who had the kind of hope for Council or the BRT Board of Trustees or the Court of Common Pleas (or whoever appoints the BRT) like they had for Michael Nutter.
Any comment on the other 100 lines I wrote about? tanking ed budget maybe? the fact that Michael Smerconish has a bare posterior on the internet? Cuz that's what really bothers me.
Smerconish is full of B.S.
Perhaps its because I went to a kind of rough urban high school in San Francisco where many of the same types of Asian and Mexican and Central American immigrants who are now arriving in the Philadelphia region were in dramtically larger numbers, but who also had long deep histories as part of the city, I have a hard time taking these kinds of things seriously.
To me it sounds like patent bias and "I feel uncomfortable". To be honest, I was pleasantly surprised and enjoyed moving to the East Coast where it struck me as strange the degree to which 3rd and 4rth generation Italian, German, Polish, Jewish and Irish traditions alive in what to me seemed like odd and unusual ways. Many of my good friends, acquaintances and housemates in SF were 2nd generation immigrants and had all basically lost more of their parents and grandparents traditions than what moving here struck me as "odd" traditions were kept up by people here noticeably more generations removed.
Honestly from a merely subjective experience not only do I think that Smerconish's read is backwards about new immigrants not adapting but frankly it makes me worry that TV and media has accelerated that breakdown in a way that actually weakens one of the interesting things about living in an immigrant nation - possibly to our communal detriment.
Totally subjective but since Smerconish's point was also subjective that's my honest read. Also since moving here in 2000 I can not say enough the degree to which for me personally the arrival of a variety of everyday "real" Mexican cooking is welcome. Like I spent my whole 20's literally eating from taco trucks so the arrival of the Taco Loco RV at 4th and Washington makes me feel "at home" in a weird way I seriously lacked for years in this town. The connection to cheap greasy Chinese bakery/steamed bun shops and Vietnamese Banh Mi sandwich shops is not quite as deep but were also big part of my life at a time. Philly for me has always struck me as a very weird place for being both so black and so white when the SFUSD at the time I was a student didn't allow any high school to have more 30% of any single ethnic group - across the city. And of course later in young adulthood in SF, I was also a rare bird among white people my age for actually having grown up in the city. So I'm sort of atypical on that stuff.
The school budgeting stuff I'm still digesting, but it does not surprise me that in the economic downturn we are cutting back in practice on the stuff we as a nation should be focusing on investing in.
-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.
Full of BS, and wrong
I've seen a number of studies that show that immigrants are assimilating at a faster rate than in the past - in particular when it comes to learning English.
Dupe post
Dupe post
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I agree. He made the big
I agree. He made the big pissed off press conference, telling them all to resign, but, then he did nothing. The vulgar language gets old...
And, while it wouldn't have been easy (and maybe expended too much capital), yes, he could have done something about it. He is the most powerful Democrat in the city. He could have made things happen inside the machine.
Look at Mayors on Council and you will see their strengths
and weaknesses as Mayor
Nutter was effective in Council when he found a popular issue and worked the press, and activist groups, to pressure Council. That was true with ethics reform and with cutting tades.
He was not especially effective in moving Council under other circumstances. And even on the ethics issues, where Neighborhood Networks was working with him, I was kind of suprised that he did not do a lot of rudmintary things I would have expected such as counting noses, lobbying his colleagues, or arranging for activists to do the lobbying.
Street was never all that good at PR. But he knew what Council members wanted and what it would take to secure their votes. He used his ability to cut the budget unilaterally to keep Council members in line. And despite his limits in playing to the media, he could could figure out how to move outside groups to put pressure on Council when needed, sometimes by appealing to their broad interests, sometimes to their narrow interests. Sometimes Street, like Jannie Blackwell on the housing trust fund issue, would do things just to create a bargaining chip with Council. (Jannie Blackwell's skill in political gamesmanship is worth studying if you want to understand how this city works. Even when I disagree with her, I very much admire her skill.)
Perhaps Nutter thought that the Inky series on the BRT was enough to move Council. It clearly wasn't. He needed to figure out a way to reform the BRT that helped Council members as well or helped key interests that are influential with Council. Perhaps he needed to figure out a path to reform that changed the way the BRT works without threatening the lower level patronage jobs that are important to ward leaders and council people.
And if he was going to use the public pressure approach he would have had to continue it for much longer than he did. Calling for Council to hold a special summer session on the BRT so that a charter change would be ready for the November eletion, might have focused enough attention on the issue to forced some change. Giving some members of Council leadership roles in the effort, so that they could take credit for reform instead of seeming to be horswhipped into reform would have helped as well.
I don't know if any of these tactics would have worked. I'm not close enough to Council to really know. But it's pretty clear that Nutter's approach did not work. He lashed out, got a day or too PR credit while pissing off Council, and then lost the good PR when, predictably, the BRT refused his request to resign.
A tidal wave of indignation only works
if someone else actually joins in. Most Philly politicians are amazingly comfortable with things the way they are. In truth part of Nutter's bold call to action was that he wanted to a budget that relied in part of property taxes and the Inquirer series was timed (intentionally as the reporters admitted on Radio Times) to dismantle that. Not because they prefered Stan Shapiro's GRT proposal or some other mix of taxes but just because it was a tax increase at all, economic downturn or no.
So in your opinion did Nutter screw up by being so bold as to suggest that Philadelphia could find a way to do things better or because Council and the judges told him to go jump off a cliff? I feel like Nutter took advantage of political expectations of him being a good-government crusader to get elected but he's a target from people expecting him to live up to those expectations and people who say he's too "go it alone" and doesn't know how to cut a deal with Council. Both are interesting storylines. I'm particularly surprised by people who seem to vacilate between the two. I feel like only one can be right.
-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.
????
Err . . yeah, boy I must be some loser since I actually vote for people based partly on their campaign promises rather than surmising unknown agendas. How naive of me to fail to recognize politics as just PR and that mayoral visions end on election night.
Particularly love the indignation line too. Yeah that captures it. People concerned about city leadership are just indignant. Like my 12 year old, when I tell her she can't download Lady GaGa videos.
Not sure whats rubbing you the wrong way
but
1.) I liked Marc's analysis and wish it had displayed before my post hit because he actually addressed the serious part of my question in some detail before I even asked it. I'm not that interested in complaining about how Nutter is not moving things along unless it gives some insight how he (or the next mayor, for that matter) might do better.
2.) Complaining about politicians who at least identify the problem is sort of complicated. Yes its disappointing when someone lays out an ambitious agenda including many items you feel are overdue and then gets pulled off track along the way. But I'm not sure its useful to focus more ire on them then the politicians who steadfastly refuse to acknowledge there is even in a problem - but somehow we do - why? "You identified the problem correctly and then failed to get anyone to along with you therefore I hate you so much more than the politician who shows no sign of even acknowledging there is problem at all". Don't the ones completely ignoring the issue deserve a little ire too?
Does our disappointment with Obama on follow through on closing Gitmo in a more than symbolic fashion really make him "worse" than Cheney who unappologetically still thinks the whole thing - the detentions, the torture, the forced extractions - was the right path from the get-go?
Maybe there is a little too much of a myth of the "righteous crusader" going on in this transaction. Marc mentions that Jannie is a master of gamesmanship and that may well be, but I don't often perceive there is any consistency in the goal of the gamesmanship, that there is an overarching principle any where to be found. If you don't write things down and you don't articulate a vision, what purpose does collecting all the bargaining chips serve.
-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.
When you hold a press
When you hold a press conference and bluster, and absolutely nothing comes from your bluster, and then there is little follow up, you look bad, and people stop listening. I have no doubt that he would like the BRT to go away, but, if at a moment when the entire city is on their case, all he can do is a hold a press conference, why does he even bother?
So the Philly really "corrupt and contented" then
The mayor should not take a swing at issues that he doesn't know Council will actually move on then. Council would never have moved on DROP on its own, so therefore that puts Pileggi and the State Senate R's actions in a more positive light. And we should not complain about PICA interference since obviously much of Council has been there for decades of unballanced budgets and underfunded city worker pensions. The state was justified in stepping on the cities toes. And the other things Nutter stepped forward and said we have to do - tackling some of the row offices like Clerk of Quarter Sessions or expecting more from the City Commissioners office - Council clearly has no appetite for either of those as well.
I don't buy it. I think it falls into the "one good man could fix it" storyline for me.
If the Mayor should never go out on a limb and attempt to shame Council then he might as well just focus all of his energy on raising money to elect a slate of new faces loyal to him and him alone in 2011 and give up doing anything till that point.
I think its fair to expect more from Council then we get and I still hold them accountable for much of our current problems. There is nothing for the State Senate to hold over the city if we had actually paid for pensions as we went and there was no easy examples of abuse of DROP for them to point to. Council has to do better.
-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.
If the Mayor should never go
You are making a lot of jumps here.
The BRT was in the news. The Mayor hopped on it and said they should resign. Do you have any indication that he did any follow up to make that happen? Say, as the most powerful person in the party, in a party patrongage office?
Speaking out can be very good. But this is a person with quite a lot of power. Until I see him use that power to actually do what he speaks about (and campaigned on), then people will tune him out.
What power?
Without the state budget approvals he has the power to 20 different ways to make himself the most hated man in Philadlephia.
Marc's analysis of Street talked about Street's ability to stash "extras" in the budget that he could pull out and offer to individual councilmembers to get them to go along with this, that or the other. If we are closing all the libraries and all the rec centers would it really be responsible to be offering such extras?
If jobs and funding for pet projects are the currency of political exchange, the mayor this year either has a fraction of what most mayor's have had on that front (best case scenario) or none at all (Plan C).
Look Nutter to me has also been disappointing also. He's a horrible "movement organizer" but its the budget that Council picked that has locked him into a circling pattern for what 4 months now. And Council's move throughout this predicament has been to lay low and work mostly of minor legislation that has absolutely nothing to do with the issue at hand - revenue.
-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.
Well the Committee of 70 is pushing for movement
but without voices on Council willing to step forward how are any of the littany of things on the agenda play any different from the BRT.
Nutter says "As the press has reported in painful detail, mismanagement of all of these different areas are in shocking disarray and have been for years. I call on City Council to join with me in adopting this legislation to address this situation".
Council says "No we'll take care of it our way" and then promptly decides to talk about plastic bags and city decals for small trash dumpsters for another 6 months. Chairman Brady says "Well thats a nice idea for the BRT, Michael, maybe sometime next decade we can look at it."
I think its time to not just expect more of the mayor, but of city government as a whole and a lot of that responsibility falls on "us" to hold their feet to the fire. Nutter can't force the rest of city government to develop a sense of shame. Thats up to voters.
-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.
First, it is hard to follow
First, it is hard to follow conversations with yourself.
Second, Nutter chose this path. Council wanted to raise the wage tax. The casino law is unclear about how you calculate the drop in revenue to account for being able to raise the wage tax. Dubow/Nutter certified that it 'just missed' the neccesary drop. Rather than pick a new fight, Council gave up, and went with a sales tax. There was a lot of leeway in that interpretation, but the Mayor's office didnt want to raise the wage tax.
Third, on power, are you serious? One of the first public acts as Mayor that he did was go to bat for Brady. To act like he doesn't have power- as a Mayor and as a Ward Leader, is a little strange. That doesn't mean he could wave a wand, but, of course he has a lot of power.
Maybe he calculated that it would be too much of a distraction, expend too much capital, etc. But, he made that choice. And so, in that context, the bluster gets old.
The wage tax polls worse than sales tax
Council didn't "defer" to Nutter. They picked what they thought was the easiest option.
On the subject of power, your beef seems to be that Nutter charged out said "We have to do something about BRT right now" and Brady and Verna both basically said "whatever" and didn't budge. A week later he was embracing Council's budget and people were talking about the budget as a "win" for council and a "loss" for the mayor.
Council might have paid lip service on wage taxes, but more likely they blamed Nutter's numbers (which they could have easily disupted - or asked PICA to review) when they were talking to folks they know want wage taxes, and something else when they are talking to a different group, say employers and business groups. In any case actions matter and when they actually passed a bill unanimously Council was on message to a person supporting the sales tax. Is Council not responsible for the legislation they actually pass?
Or if they are so easily intimdated by the big bad mayor why didn't they budge the two BRT bills he gave them? Why didn't they move on DROP? Why didn't they move on the row offices? Why did they raise their own budget on a year when the mayor cut his (and every other part of city government) and he put pressure on them tomake cuts as well? Why didn't they even come downstairs to show their faces at his rally in City Hall's courtyard to push for getting the budget approvals passed in Harrisburg?
I gotta say if you were looking for evidence this year to bolster the argument that when the mayor says jump, Council says "how high", there is not a lot evidence of that this year. Quite the opposite.
If you think the problem with the BRT reform was that Nutter charged out pushing hard for a total overhaul and then nothing happened, thats not an argument that indicates in actual practice that the mayor's office is exercising much power at all. And if he isn't using his power to kick Council into action effectively, how do you think he should go about pushing on them more effectively?
-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.
"Nutter chose this path. Council wanted to raise the wage tax"
Lest we travel further down the road of historical revisionsim, let's review Isiah Thompson's excellent article of May 9, 2009 titled "It's Alive: Oh God, Council Made It's Own Budget".
It was a great article, very informative. It even included this cute cartoon rendering of Nutter, Dubow and Councilman Green.
Well worth a quick re-read.
And of course Thompson's "Frankenbudget" is exactly what passed shortly after publication - albeit with Green's plan to borrow from the pension fund (pushing us from what would be Category 3 to Category 4 in the State Senate's levels of economic distress, as I recall) rather than from banks. Good news in that interest on the loan helps pay down the pension fund rather than go into a banker's pocket, bad news for city workers if for some reason we can't pay it down as projected.
-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.
Council was
OK, how about Council was considering the wage tax? is that better? Council was considering the sales tax, as well as the wage tax. He then took it off the table, unless they wanted to sue:
There are a lot of ways to construct that
if you sincerey believe that Dubow was somehow manipulating the numbers. I don't. Some members, possibly not majority, definitely not a super majority, said they were interested in it. Some clearly weren't. If Dubow's numbers were screwey they could have pushed PICA to overrule but they didn't I believe because the numbers were sound.
Nutter thinks raising wage taxes is the wrong message for attracting jobs to Philly. Rendell had a similar position when he was mayor and its very, very likely the mayor who wins the seat after Nutter whether its Kenney or Green or someone else will have a similar position.
Wage taxes are not ideal. As Stan would remind us without the credits for the working poor, they take a much more painful bite out of the working poor than the middle class - though to be sure its one of the middle class's favorite complaints about the city also. Councilwoman Blackwell was steadfastly opposed to a wage tax increase for that reason, according to Thompson's article, and she's hardly Nutter's biggest fan.
In short if Dubow was lying, they could have gone to PICA or made a public case of it. The reason they didn't was probably not a political capitulation to Nutter's politically overbearing will, but more a capitulation to the facts because on closer examination Dubow's numbers actually held up.
Ultimately, the only bill they actually voted for was sales taxes and as a rule its the actual votes on the record that matter when evaluating a legislator's performance, not the comments they make to various interest groups on the side that don't translate to real bills. Its an old, old story that legislators will say "well I would support you on this but my colleagues would never go for it" when their actual vote might go differently if it were put to the test.
As an aside on a similar note, did you see Specter just told the AFL-CIO he supports a "compromise" EFCA? Its the voting record, not the off-the-record comments, that count.
-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.
I didn't say he was lying.
I didn't say he was lying. It is common sense that if you have a 2 percent requirement, and in a budget that big you got to 1.93 percent, and that you couldn't even agree how you were supposed to make the calculation in the first place, that getting that extra .07% would have been pretty easy to do.
And, no, I don't think it is realistic to sue Dubow, right after it took miracles to get three of them to sue Nutter. (And yes, you would have to personally sue Dubow, since you would need to force him to certify, per the law.)
Anyway, I think this conversation has reached its logical conclusion.
Well if you are running for mayor or city council in 2011
I would still advise you to not put "I Will Raise the Wage Tax!" in big bold letters on any of your campaign lit. But yeah its water under the bridge at this point.
-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.
Council seems to have preferred the sales tax
From the Daily News, April 29:
A narrative in which Council preferred raising the wage tax but was stopped by the mayor doesn't seem to correspond to the facts.
Instead, it seems likely that Council -- which had written the sales tax increase legislation a month before -- preferred the sales tax all along, but readied wage tax and business privilege tax fallbacks in case the mayor rejected the sales tax.
And, as Tasco notes, it was never clear there were enough votes on Council to raise the wage tax or the business privilege tax, but there were 14 votes ready to back the sales tax increase.
Mayor has budgetary power in both good and bad years
Street stashed money in the budget to put back stuff he had said he would cut.
You can do that in bad years, too. In fact, its almost easier because you have a good rationale for cutting and can propose cuts far deeper than necessary--as Nutter did, for example, with the libraries.
I just don't accept that this is Council's budget. I know for a fact that there were peopl in Council trying to come up with a balanced proposal that raised all taxes--property, wage, business, sales--a bit. It would not have been easy to get Coucnil approval for the package. But it might have been possible. But the Mayor basically took wage and business taxes off the table. Why should any Council member take the political risk of supporting them when they know the Mayor is going to criticize them and veto the tax. The Dubow killed the wage tax increase. The Mayor's property taxes proposals were screwed up both by how large they were and by by an Inquirer investigative report. So, what was left?
And, BTW, the investigative report was predictble. It's not as if people did not know how political the BRT was. Take Wissahickon Avenue for example. Those of us on the west side, who were in Nutter's Council district, have long believed that we were getting punished for Nutter's break with Street as compared to the people on the east side, who were in Donna Reed Miller's district. And I know some of my neighbors complained to Michael Nutter about it. And the low valuation for Fumo's manison stuff was in the papers for a few years.
And, anyway, Nutter was on Council when they kept ducking the full valuation issue and everyone knew that eventually the Mayor and Council were going to have to address it. I got a briefing from two different city officials about it when I was preparing to run for Council.
So moving to full valuation and reforming the BRT was something that a new reforming Mayor should have tackled early in his administration. I'd be shocked if there were not a transition team paper that said exactly that. But you will all remember that the Nutter administration did not exactly hit the ground running with reform proposals.
I support full valuation
but we should be careful. There are still some problems with residential numbers, though many of those got sorted out by sending the numbers to outside review. And the fact that they have better, more reality based assesments has not stopped the BRT from issuing riidiculously arbitrary spot assesments baes on the bad old models.
More recently Inky coverage has focused on how for rolling out what it calls "full valuation" on commercial properties the results have been disastrously off base. The causes are varied - in part because the BRT's data is just wildly inacurate and they never corrected it, in part because the BRT used a process where they just did flat percentage increases to huge swaths of the city - which most real estate experts criticize as "non-standard", in part because when they did the residential numbers they worked with E-consult and other outside consultants who fine-tuned the formulas and on this one the BRT flew solo and commercial property is if anything trickier.
I also agree that while Nutter was on Council in terms of property tax issues, he frequently said "I support these kinds of reforms" but neither he nor the rest actually put together and passed any bills. So when we say "Council has kicked the can down the road for too long", its absolutely 100% fair to include Councilman Nutter's tenure as part of that "for too long" comment. That said, the time to start to work on real bills with real legislative deadlines is right now and writing legislation unequivocally falls under the responsibility of the legislative branch.
In terms of this sales tax discussion, I think folks here who were invested in a different mix of revenue sources were succesful in bending the ear of a few members of council on why a mix of other taxes is less regressive than sales tax alone. That success in getting some members to hear out their concerns, however, is very different from putting together a legislative majority behind a specific bill. I'm thinking that some folks in this discussion have an emotional investment in defending Council as a body because they feel they have a sympathetic ear from a couple of members and thats driving the confusion here. I don't think its fair to say that the wage tax even before Dubow calculated the numbers got to a point where people were counting heads for a real vote on a fleshed out budget proposal and it frankly quite likely may have never gotten to that point. By contrast, the budget Council actually passed by a unanimous vote after it changed the mayor's proposal is by any fair assessment properly called "Council's budget" - period. Again you judge it by what people put up for a vote and pass. Nobody apparently felt strong enough about chances of passage of wage taxes, with or without Dubow's numbers, to put anything other than sales taxes up to a vote.
-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.
Deal with it
Council authored the five years sales tax plan as an alternative to Nutter's.
He agreed to it.
Now, it's not unusual in political discourse to take advantage of a politician when he's down -- unpopular or appears ineffective. That's fair. Nutter's earned that kind of treatment.
It's also not unusual to cast such a politician as a villain, so that advocates for some issue or person can pitch narratives wherein the villain character (Nutter in this case) is the only thing standing between what advocates desire -- their good issue or the ascendancy of some good person -- and the promised land.
That's everyday politics. I've been around it since I was 19. I'm not complaining about it.
I think those who wanted to raise the wage tax and/or the business tax are participating in something like that on this thread.
Fine.
Just expect to be called out by people like me who honestly believe, in this case agreeing with Wharton's Robert Inman (and yes the Pew report, and yes every city planner I've ever spoken to on the matter) that raising the wage tax and the business tax is more likely to turn again the 60 year cycle of misery than other choices Council and the mayor had.
So I point out:
1) It's silly to refuse to call Council's first and most-popular-within-the-chamber budget -- face it, at crunch time, 14 members were on board with the sales taxes, more than anything you would have preferred -- Council's budget. It's what the majority of Council wanted. It's just not what you wanted.
2) It's equally silly to suggest the mayor is guilty of some gaffe because he didn't have a large cache of superfluities to cut during Round Two of Philly Budget Meltdown 2008-10. Street's superfluities amounted to no more than $10 million or so, and Nutter cut more than that in the fall, as you yourself pointed out last week.
I'd call your allegation rather blatant, gratuitous piling on, trying to make the villain look even more villainous. I say, give it a break. Nutter's also guilty of failing to lure billions of dollars worth of businesses and new residents to fill the budget hole during the recession.
What other nonsense can we accuse him of?
3) RE: BRT, agreed that Nutter has been ineffective on follow-up, but he needs Council to act.
Nutter's also been exactly as ineffective on follow up as has been Johnny Doc's pal Councilman Green who introduced BRT legislation in spring (modeled on legislation Nutter wrote when he was on Council -- and usually in the minority) and weeks afterward told the Inquirer that Council would not act on anything related to BRT until after the summer.
So yes, BRT overhaul, yes full valuation, but the mayor's not only been consistent on these issues, but he's already put the ball in Council's court; unless you're trying to make political hay out of Nutter's political misfortunes, the most logical political entity to blame for inaction on both these issues is Council.
On primary election day in May, fellow Doc pal Councilman Greenlee told me that Council definitely was not going to do anything about the BRT until fall, and that most were pissed about being asked to.
Plenty of blame to spread around.
I'm pretty sure you'd rather not spread it on anyone you think may to listen to wage and business tax hikes.
But I'm not rooting for that (I'm not even rooting for 1828 to fail!). So I'm ok with sticking closer to the facts that show both the mayor and Council in a not-so-flattering light.
Again, Committee of 70 on Nutter and BRT
Re: your point 3 that the most "logical entity to blame on both these issues is Council":
No one excuses Council or the Court of Common Pleas or other forces, but none of them made a stink about it either. And again, after all the bluster of last spring, do you know that the Mayor has been making calls to Council to move on the BRT?
And it sure doesn't explain why the School District might move to keep half the BRT employees on their payroll either. That kind of chicanery points to the Mayor's commitment or lack thereof to substantively address the BRT reforms.
Right, but the need for a push from the mayor
assumes resistance from Council.
And all I said was that there's plenty of blame to spread around, and that I'm comfortable with blaming both Council and the mayor. So I guess we're in agreement.
Can the mayor unilaterally prevent the School District from keeping the BRT employees?
Communication from the Mayor's office
Communication from the Mayor's office indicating lack of support for the District should they choose to exercise their right would put a lot of pressure on the District to retain the employees.
Which is why I'm curious whether you know if the Mayor's contacted City Council members to move on the BRT. I just think it would be interesting if the Mayor was silent with Council yet was communicating to the School District about what was expected of them.
Good question
I think these two reports suggest some kind of answer.
Clout, May 8:
KYW, June 4:
My guess is that some of this got lost in the ongoing Harrisburg saga.
But folks can conclude more nefarious things if they wish to.
He gave them bills to introduce
they refused to introduce them. Or to introduce any of their own (with the exception of Councilman Green - who was also shut out by his cohorts). And now that they are back in session they aren't re-introducing any of them either.
I agree 30 hot seconds after 1828 re-passes the State Senate, Nutter should re-focus and re-push again but its hard to imagine any mayor pushing any harder than saying "these are my bills". Or a Council response recalcitrant as just saying "no".
Doesn't Verna bear any responsibility in this?
Really?
-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.
Sigh, yes.
She does. So does the rest of Council and their aides and the Court of Common Pleas and the Democrat and Republican ward machines and party leaders and the BRT Board of Trustees and the BRT Executive Director and the School Reform Commission and City Controller and whomever else has let this pass. Yes they all do. We're in agreement on that point.
But specifically Verna was the last person
to claim direct responsibility by shutting down Nutter's bills and arguing that Council would come up with its own solutions after the summer recess.
And now the summer recess is over and . . .
-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.
Look, we can disagree what leadership does
Look, we can disagree what leadership does when faced with an incalcitrant legislative body. I can look at Obama and health care for example. Does anyone think that had Obama simply put out the public option but not followed it up that the entire bill would have collapsed? Or look at Rendell on the education budget. He submitted it, it's tanking, and he's fighting tooth and nail for a legacy he can claim. Are either of them throwing up their hands or standing on the sidelines?
Both of them are fighting for the reforms and priorities they believe in. That's what's missing here. Not the recalcitrant body, or the entrenched political interests, or the status quo, or the deferring and the task forces and the studies - those things are always there and they'll be there till they're voted out.
The game changer is the leader who decides that now's the time to draw the line in the sand. There aren't nefarious intents to pointing that out, nor is this a "story line" to throw out there. No one disagrees about the role of Verna or any other interests. But using that to dismiss leadership questions is more deflection than anything else.
Ummm, if you didn't notice
we are currently still on track to send out 3,000 layoff notices in 48 hours, actually start to close all libraries and rec centers in 15 days. That is still a very real possiblity.
Under those dire circumstances Council will be doing everything possible to pass the buck and lay the blame on the Mayor. That would be true with this mayor or another one. As long as HB1828 remains unresolved the majority of Council will be doing everything possible to avoid being seen in the same room as the mayor lest some ot those Plan C cooties rub off on them. Its pathetic but true.
There is a time and place for casting blame on all parties. Currently one member of the leadership you describe is doing everything possible to stop our city from being effectively shut down and 17 other members of the leadership have done shamefully far from enough. Thats the single take away story from all of this and the BRT is just yet one more example where the exact same theme is playing out in disturbing detail.
The second the impasse over HB1828 is over, I'll be happy to join Nutter to list of people to throw stones at but right now there are 17 other much more pressing and clearly, clearly deserving targets in City Hall and quite few more up in Harrisburg.
If its leadership you want, I have to ask what leverage is available to Nutter that hasn't been used already as long Plan C is up in the air? As far as I am concerned leadership in a democracy still requires the activists and citizens holding those most directly responsible accountable and clearly those most directly responsible at this current moment are the members of City Council and I feel that folks that ignore or attempt to lessen that fact are engaged in some form of deflection of their own.
-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.
This might be worth a read.
http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/cityhall/Mayor_Asks_City_Workers_To_S...
How many members of Council can make a similar claim about trips to Harrisburg? Or attempts to pass DROP reform? Or hearings on the BRT since returning?
-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.
Mayor and Council
That Council doesn't take anything but the path of least resistance is a given for Philadelphia politics. That's our history, our culture, our common practice.
I can’t think of many truisms in politics about which I’m more confident: the Philadelphia City Council is not going to lead except under very extraordinary circumstances.
So Philadelphia City Government works well—perhaps I should just say OK, as I don’t think the city very works well—when we have a strong, politically effective Mayor who takes advantage of his extraordinary charter powers, his control over some patronage, the relationships he has built with the party and interest groups including labor, his ability to capture the attention and mobilize the political class and activists of the city, to make things happen. It takes some combination of foresight, skill, timing, and not a little luck, to do that.
Lots of us, including people who voted for candidates other than Michael Nutter, had really high hopes that he would be such a Mayor. He might yet become such a Mayor.
But let's just say he's not there yet. And we are suffering as a result. And it does him and us no good to make the excuse of blaming Council for being Council.
Most of us—maybe you are an exception—don't have any way but what we say here to get someone (anyone!) in the administration to pay to our views about how they are screwing up and how they might fix those screw-ups.
If people like us don't point to better ways for the Mayor to proceed, there is no hope for improvement. You will note that I've not just been complaining about how the administration has failed, but I've been making as concrete recommendations as I can about how it might have done better and how it can succeed in the future.
Frankly, Sam, what you or I say here will have very little effect on the Mayor's popular standing or his chances of being reelected. Right now, I don’t even see a likely candidate who can beat him let alone one I might support. I don’t know if what we say might have some effect on how the Mayor or his staff proceed in the future, but that is perhaps more likely.
So I really don't know why you spend so much time cheerleading for Michael Nutter as you have ever since things started going wrong with the library debacle. That's not what he needs from you and or any of us. He needs some hardheaded advice about how to mend the administration.
One of the worst aspects of Philadelphia politics is that is always about friends and enemies. I’ve pointed out that politics is usually about that. But it doesn’t have to be always about that.
And so there is such a thing as friendly criticism. My criticisms of the Mayor about his strategy and tactics are precisely that. Yes, I do have some pretty fundamental disagreement with him and you about taxes because I do not think that increasing business taxes, in the right way, or personal taxes on unearned income, or property taxes are likely to harm our economy in the long term. And increasing those taxes or the wage tax in the short term to deal with a severe recession is not likely to harm it at all.
But even leaving aside the tax dispute, the Mayor has had some problems. Everyone knows this. His strongest supporters—many of whom live in my neighborhood—are shaking their heads about an administration that they know badly needs a re-boot.
Responding to these criticisms by blaming a Council that is by tradition, history, structure—and right now personnel—incapable of acting in the way we might want it to, is just not a very plausible of responding to those criticisms. Instead, you owe the Mayor you worked so hard to elect some hard headed advice about how to do better.
I think these are extraordinary times
and times of extraordinary avoidance by most of Council.
I was glad to hear Councilman Green on the radio today saying that in retrospect Council should have worked harder to find budget alternatives that did not rely so much action by Harrisburg. Of course he went out of his way to describe it as "the Mayor's budget" which he only voted for, which is a tad amusing but as they say in recovery accceptance is the first step to recovery.
Logically, "alternatives" have to include property taxes fairer and more rational, just as many here I am sure would like to see a mix of revenue streams investigated. So thats hope.
But overall, just as one lesson of this experience has to be that Democrats in Philadelphia ignore the balance of power in the State Senate at their peril, another lesson has to be that for real changes or in times of extraordinary financial challenges accepting "Council being Council" is simply not good enough. Its wrong to just rely on the mayor to open up the doors of overdue reform, we have to force Council to do better, And by force, I mean force.
-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.
Well said Marc!
It's nice to see someone put things in perspective.
Likewise
An eloquent response Marc that encapsulates the goals that many of us are striving for when raising concerns. Thanks.
Well I think "by tradition" stinks
Council has to do more, to work on substantive solutions, and I would feel that way if it were Nutter or someone else was in the mayor's slot. A few of them have shown an interest, but far too few. I think in the bigger picture settling for a legislative body that avoids the big problems is an unsustainable situation. It has to become a body known for bringing forward innovative solutions that go directly to our city's most challenging problems and it can.
There is no reason for settling, although the work of making it happen won't be easy. Its just today with the problems Philadelphia made for itself over decades multiplied by a global economic crisis, settling is no longer good enough.
-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.
I'm not going to continue this silly dispute
I'm trying to get us away from the blame game, Sean. And I'm not going to let you suck me back in.
Of course, Council should be better. No one is excusing Council. Of course I think we need a few more Council members who present innovative ideas for the City to consider.
But even if we had elected to Council in 2007 the candidate who was most likely to present those ideas to Council and the city it wouldn't change a fundamental fact of politics. Legislatures rarely lead in America or anywhere else for that matter. (They only do when there is party division and strong party leadership, neither of which we have in Philadelphia.) If the Mayor wants to lead the way, he will find lots of us ready to work with him to pressure Council to reform the BPT, fix our tax system, and reform the rest of city government.
Here is my sense of how to do it: The Mayor needs to find a champion or two in Council, ideally including President Verna and Majority Leader Tasco. He needs, with them, to get behind a proposal for reform, ideally one that give us fair taxes while not entirely disrupting the party. He needs to get Bob Brady behind the proposal. He needs to reach out to the groups that helped him get ethics reform bills through Council, including Committee of Seventy, Neighborhood Networks, Philly for Change, and Philadelphia Forward. A press conference. Some op-eds. And a real focus on this for a few weeks until it is done.
And either at the same time, or after, he needs to come up with a proposal for reforming the property tax system, that is a schedule for moving towards full valuation and, I hope, a plan to gradually move to an LVT.
I agree on how to do it
Its exactly, exactly the plan I would and have over the years supported. The problem is largely, the mayor already had those press conferences - back in May. I've read those op-eds for years and with a new intensity late this summer. I videotaped the PFC meet-up with Zach Stallberg talking about the reforms to the row offices and the BRT we need action on back in July. And those champions, "ideally including President Verna and Majority Leader Tasco", refused to act and then did everything possible to lay low on the topics all summer. But if Council won't schedule the hearings, the mayor's bully pulpit is a podium in an empty hall. Groups like Committe of Seventy, Neighborhood Networks, Philly for Change, Philadelphia Forward and Coalition for Essential Services are limited in how much pressure we can exert. We need those "champions" because every mayor, every executive needs partners in the legislative branch. In ideal circumstances, the legislative branch is not just responding responsibly to what the executive hands them, but generating innovative ideas on how to improve and expand on that agenda.
For most of this spring and summer, the Philadelphia City Council with but a few exceptions has missed that mark dramatically. Here's to a more inspiring performance this fall.
-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.
Everyone will know when the Mayor really wants something
if the Mayor makes it clear.
No one every doubted what John Street's priorities were and when he wanted something bad. He used all sorts of inside and outside tactics to make that clear.
In fact, one frequent criticism of Mayor Street was that he acted like a legislator in that he only focused on one central priority at a time.
Mayor Nutter has the opposite tendency--partly forced him by circumstances, no doubt but also a product of a lack of strategic thought in the administration--to make pronouncements about what he wants too often and without making his priorities clear. And then there isn't enough follow-up.
President Verna said that BRT reform is her top priority. She is a far more thoughtful and knowledgable legislator than most of you give her credit for being. There is the opening for the Mayor, if that is, he decides that this is going to be one of his priorities for this year.
And it should be. The whole tax structure of the city is crazy. I agree with The tax reform commission's notion that we should be relying more on property and less on wage and business taxes especially if we move to LVT and make it as progressive as possible with a homestead exemption. One main reason our city has been hurt so badly by the recession is that we rely too little on the property tax. But we can't fix these problems if no one has any faith in the fairness of property taxes.
We all know
(well maybe not Councilwoman Blackwell) that property taxes have to be addressed because the city can not afford to proceed with the broken BRT in charge of such a major revenue stream. We all also know that those changes have to be coupled with exemptions and deferrals to protect the elderly and house-rich-but-cash-poor. It's the one thing that any member of Council could in theory focus on without political cost - alleviating against sudden increases make sense regardless because even with current system the BRT is still handing out ridiculously large spot reassessments. Amazingly though there has been scant progress on actual legislation on this front for years.
-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.
A really useful, succint timeline around the BRT
http://www.philly.com/inquirer/world_us/59454147.html
Also as noted earlier
the Councilman pointing out how "embarassing" it is that the version of Plan C Nutter put forward (and Green himself legally "approved" by silence when he was given a legal opportunity to speak out about flaws) is incomplete in detailing how awful Plan C would be, was the guiding hand for the sales-tax budget that may yet - against all odds - force Plan C. So as much as I like Councilman Green, he's one of those glass-house-dwelling-rock-throwers on that one. "I'm 'embarassed' by how insufficiently you plotted our landing point if it turns out I caused us to drive us off a cliff". Embarassing, indeed.
Yes Nutter's Plan C does not give any money for the DA's office, the Public Defender's office or the courts and still lack of funds would cause the layoff of around 1,000 cops. Yes, that absurd - with no DA's office or courts why even have the cops? Yes, obviously Plan C is supposed to demand revision from PICA to stall for more time. But equally obviously since you can't simply cut all funding for the courts and DA's and Defender's, the reality of Plan C would actually be worse than it is currently described as.
So everyone is calling Nutter "Chicken Little" but in reality if somehow it all falls apart it could actually be much, much worse than he is saying it will be. Hold me back while I dance in celebration of that. Woo hoo!
-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.
Back to Smerconish
Any thoughts about the fact that the guy who has made more money than any other single individual off of the controversy surrounding the death of Officer Daniel Faulkner is now apparently an important fundraiser for Democrat Arlen Specter.
-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.
no relation between the two
I honestly don't think smerconish's position on faulkner has much to do with his support of specter. It's driven by Smirky's suspicion of the wingnut rump that is the PA Republican party.
As you'll recall, Smirky supported Obama (in fact just recently he interview BO in the white house). In fcat, Obama has cultivated a few allies from the "reasonable right" (if such a thing exixts): David "bobo" Brooks, another conservative who is appalled at the state of the GOP, is also on the bandwagon for Obama.
case in point: http://www.mastalk.com/daily_news2/090309.htm, where he goes off about how his customer service rep at verizon was a teabagger. here's a money quote or two:
he goes on to say some typically stupid shit about the people who [correctly] claim that bush lied us into war, but you get the gist.
So i think it makes sense that the democrats have the Smirkster raising funds for the Democratic party's establishment candidate: he's got the radio show, a dedicated audience, and he (probably) reaches that shrinking population of reasonable conservatives.
none of this should be read as an endorsement or appreciation of arlen specter, mike smerconish, or the PA democratic party.
No I just think that one the lasting ironies
of the overcooked Mumia brouhaha is that in all fairness Michael Smerconish should probably write a thank you note to Abu-jamal for indirectly paying for whats probably half of Smerconish's home and all his kid's college funds. Mumia Abu Jamal (who I think is guilty) has been the dead horse that has made "Smirky" personally a very wealthy man. White indignation (presented in a more reasonable tone) can be a very profitable business if you can figure out how to cash in on it correctly. If you or I could figure out a way to sell, "I'm mad about Latrice Bryant" in a bottle to people in NE Philly, for example, we too could probably both quit our day jobs and buy big houses on the Main Line. Its sad but funny.
-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.