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Ms. Verna Squashes Hearing on Libraries
Submitted by Ben Waxman on Sat, 12/13/2008 - 12:49pm.
From "It's Our Money":
Last week, Philadelphia City Council overwhelming approved a non-binding resolution that called for “more discussion, more deliberation” of Mayor Nutter's proposal to close 11 city libraries. Some Council members want to hold additional public hearings on the closures, but City Council President Anna Verna has made clear that no such hearing will take place.
“We in Council are completely powerless at this time,” said Verna. “It's strictly up the Mayor. If we were to have public hearings from now until the first of January, it wouldn't do anything. Let me reiterate: We on Council are powerless at this point in time. The Mayor will do what he has to do.”
Verna went on to say that City Council and the public will have their say during the budget hearings that will begin in February. She believes that additional hearings will only give the public “false hope” that library closures can be reversed and the town hall meetings provide ample opportunity for public input.
Most of City Council is attending the Pennsylvania Society in New York City, but several that could be reached declined to comment.
“It's an embarrassment,” said one Council staffer who asked to remain anonymous. “The whole purpose of Council is to hold hearings and provide oversight. If you're not doing that, what is the point?”
Completely embarassing
Translation:
I made a deal with the mayor that I will abdicate doing my job and he will get the political flack for closing libraries in my district. So don't ask me to do my job or exercise any oversight because the whole plan is for me to pass the buck. I don't want to be responsible.
-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.
Stop paying your Philly taxes
and start giving the money to a more local "neighborhood" collective that will do a better job of providing payment to those who provide infrastructure services. You know, a kind of outsourcing that WE control, or a Neighborhood Advisory Council that WE run AND have represent us to negogiate trash pickup contracts, security contracts, etc..
Or, pay taxes to the city, and write on the back of the check some sort of "contract" that reads something like this:
"Upon endorsement, the City of Philadelphia agrees to cut all City Council salaries by 2/3's" or
"agrees to submit to taxpayer documentary and detailed evidence of unbiased and nondiscriminatory decision-making and tax collection before requiring taxpayer to pay next tax bill." or
"agrees to immediately work with the FBI, the IG, and the AG to invesigate and prosecute all City Council members for unethical AND criminal behavior."
or "agrees to publish ALL documents immediately"
What grand ideas!
There is nothing illegal with shutting the libraries
On that the mayor is right. He can do that if he chooses to by mayoral fiat. He could also choose to stop paying for public safety or shut down every city health clinic if he wanted.
But being legally able to do something and choosing not to because its not actually good social policy are thankfully two different things. Its a matter of bring a lot public pressure to the issue, not criminal investigations.
-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.
We will see about the legal status of library closings
More importantly for the purposes of this thread, while Council cannot force the Mayor to spend money, Council can require that certain services be provided to people.
Council passed an ordinance over Mayor Streets' veto that required that the city provide trash pickup to condos. Street challenged the ordinance in court and lost.
Stan Shapiro, with a little help and encouragement from me, has developed two parallel legal strategies that council could use to keep the libraries open. No one can say for sure that we would win in court. But the mere act of passing the ordinance and having it challenged by the administration would certainly delay the closings.
We have shopped this legal approach to members of council. No one has been willing to introduce the ordinance.
My point is that if Nutter,
My point is that if Nutter, Reardon, AND City Council aren't responding to citizens and incorporating our concerns, needs, and wishes into the way that they run this city--which is a privilege that WE gave them by our vote, then we are NOT being adequately and fairly represented.
Nor are we being given an adequate and fair process or chance to "negotiate" our taxes, or to demand our government's provision of health, safety, and welfare services to its citizens.
And these are basic protections afforded to us by our Constitution.
The failure of these people, of elected and appointed public officials, to represent us in the determination of our taxes and in the protection of our health, safety, and welfare is apalling and is what completely embarasses me!
Let's bring the full weight of political pressure first
Basically they do have a real financial shortage and they are betting noone will question their decision making process with enough force to actually cause them the real political pain sufficient to force them to be more accountable. Its becoming time to prove that jaded and cynical political calculation wrong.
Its starting to get to be time to show Nutter and Reardon that closing libraries = soon too be approval ratings close to Street and Bush = a very, very unfun next couple of years. Hammering that message home over and over again is I am beginning to suspect the only thing that will turn this thing around.
-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.
Nutter is insensitive to approval ratings,
I suspect, by the way he is "deciding". Maybe, that is because he prays for an appointment in the Obama administration. maybe, he even expects it.
Individual citizens are handicapped when it comes to bringing the weight of political pressure on an elected official. Severely handicapped.
Legal action is a way to even the playing field, a way to gain enough leverage to even be allowed into the conversation.
Not likely
He endorsed Clinton and he's not from Chicago. Plus being an executive of a major city is better than serving as a sub-head of a federal agency.
He's making cuts to the libraries because he thinks he can because of the economy and because he thinks he still has enough of that honeymoon effect. Hearing from enough folks like me - people who supported him in primary - the lefter side of the Nutter coalition - "good government" but neither knee jerk against efficiency in government nor knee jerk in accepting any unjustified suggestion that every politically easy cut really is "smart" or "efficient" may make a difference. Or it may not.
He knows Stan Shapiro will not like the way he's doing these library closings, he may still not realize how many folks like me he is risking losing with this crap process.
-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.
100% agreement
"Its starting to get to be time to show Nutter and Reardon that closing libraries = soon too be approval ratings close to Street and Bush = a very, very unfun next couple of years. Hammering that message home over and over again is I am beginning to suspect the only thing that will turn this thing around."
Absolutely. And it's going to take a lot of work and creativity to pressure these actors at every step.
i would like to see a video released of someone walking through a dangerous part of the city to get from a closed library to an open one, maybe around 4:00 pm when it gets dark, no police escorts (lord knows ordinary people don't get that perk). That shouldn't be too hard. Maybe include an open invitation to the Mayor and Ms. Reardon, and include some residents who are elderly and/or on a fixed income.
A nice walk would be from Kingsessing to Paschalville.
There would be PLENTY of time for the mayor and Ms. Reardon to explain what a reasonable plan they have.
Yes and No
Yes, libraries can be legally closed. But no, libraries cannot legally be closed unilaterally by the mayor.
In 1988, while I was working on getting Pennsylvania into the minimum wage business by passing Pennsylvania's first minimum wage increase in excess of the federal minimum wage, my father David Cohen was working in City Council to restrict the mayor of Philadelphia, whomever he or she might be, from arbitrarily shutting down Philadelphia capital facilities.
On December 1, 1988, the Philadelphia City Council overrode the veto of Mayor W. Wilson Goode, Sr., and the opinion of City Solicitor Seymour Kurland and required City Council approval of any capital facility closing. A Philadephia Common Pleas Court Judge agreed with Goode that the ordinance was unconstitutional, but the appellate Commonwealth Court found that the Common Pleas Court decision was procedurally invalid. and hence null and void.
By that time, Ed Rendell had become Mayor of Philadelphia, and he abandoned plans to close the dispurted capital facility, a fire station, stopping any more litigation and leaving David Cohen's City Council ordinance presumed to be constitutional.
I expect that before the end of the year, one or more lawsuits will be filed seeking to enforce the requirment that City Council must approve by ordinance any closing of a city capital facility.
As I told the crowd at the December 6 rally, if Mayor Nutter wishes LEGALLY to close the eleven branch libraries, he should prepare an ordinance for City Council doing so. If he doesn't want to prepare an ordinance for City Council and clsoe the libraries LEGALLY, he should not do it at all.
I'm glad to hear legal options are in play - on both counts
Clearly though, if City Council were as a whole stepping up a little more those legal challenges would be that much stronger.
And that's what saddest about Verna's comments at the top of the thread. They are so emphatic about "we can't do anything" it does not take much to infer that she does not just mean to undersell what she thinks she and her colleagues can do. It reads a lot like she is actively instructing her colleagues to be more passive in their acceptance of a "done deal".
Well it isn't a "done deal" and we should all remember that Verna in this instance did not just choose to sit on sidelines, she tried her best to induce the rest of council to shirk their responsibilities to serve their constituents as well.
-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.