There are two great coalitions around that are working on City and State budget issues, both with much the same name. There's CES which stands simply for the Coalition for Essential Services. That group is focused on City budget issues. Then there's SEPCES which is the Southeast PA Coalition for Essential Services. Both of these were somewhat successful last year in preventing the worst of proposed City and State budget cuts from being implemented. But, as most of you know, substantial cuts were still made. More State budget cuts were made just a week or so ago by Governor Rendell.

The battle is about to stop even deeper cuts in an environment of shrinking revenue. Here are two ideas for improving how those of us involved with the coalitions might improve our lobbying this year and into the future.

LVT and AXI in Philadelphia: Saturday Discussion
Tax policy by the numbers and with a philosophy.

The 2009 budget crisis in Philadelphia came down to the wire. How could it have been avoided? By implementing a progressive form of land value taxation, a self-generated fiscal solution can be in the cards, without overly-burdening working and poor residents. Urbantools staff will demonstrate how with blazing graphics and a gripping narrative! Find out why Councilwoman Quinones-Sanchez, amongst others, has asked for full study of land based taxation.

All are welcome. When someone tells you that the money's not there for essential city services, you can have an answer at hand. Come on down, tell us what you think and give us a chance to make our case.

When: Sep 26, 2009 from 10:00 am to 11:30 am
Where Henry George School, 413 South 10th Street, Philadelphia, PA 19147
Contact Name: Barbara Maloney (RSVP if you can)
Contact Phone: 215-923-7800
Attendees: The Public

It's Our Money's Ben Waxman had a nice set of factors that might make the sales tax hike get accepted in Harrisburg called "Selling the Sales Tax," including my favorite weird rationale that started with Mrs. Verna: the higher rate will help business elsewhere.

Who thinks this will pass? Why do people think the silence has been deafening on this phase of the process? And hey, Ben, who the heck is CleanUpPhilly?

Where do we go from here? Down to the lake I fear.

For the record this is my screed on the sales tax issue right now.

The question unasked in all of this is: How in the face of declining receipts at a 7% rate, will more revenue get collected at a higher 8%? State-wide, receipts from the sales tax dropped $100 million below estimate, to about $600 million. In Philly itself the decline is 6.7%.

The Henry George Foundation signed up yesterday and submitted testimony. Our plan is to help bridge the gap between the Mayor and the council's competing proposals. With less than two weeks to go, many ideas are floating, but no common ground has been achieved. We proposed combing the sales tax increase with LVT using the current BRT assessments, thereby changing - albeit modestly - the sales tax increase into a "tax on foreigners living abroad". We got a lot of questions, and had the data broken out by District and then city-wide.

Council was disappointed at the lack of attendance, but at least we had the luxury of being asked in-depth questions and a request to the chair by Councilman Green for a fuller study was accepted by CP Verna.

Helen Gym gave a sharp and persuasive presentation on BRT employees skulking in School District corridors. Helen's command of the subject impressed many.

A new day, and a new way and an old crisis. I am sure we've all noticed that Philadelphia's budget problems reoccur every 10 years or so, no matter who is at the helm. A rethink of what should be taxed and how taxed must be at the heart of any and future current debates and policy.

Every crisis puts the most vulnerable programs and people at risk. Why them? Well, they don't have a constituency and advocates with ideas that move beyond traditional nostrums.

How about this idea. Just for thought then action?

Philadelphia's Budget: Everyone's Right

Mayor Nutter’s announcement of today is understandable, yet also avoidable. Understandable because the traditional reaction to an economic downturn in government is to cut services, lay off workers and rethink taxes. Avoidable because all options should be on the table, but are clearly not.

I've been wrestling with the Mayor's new budget for a few days now. One thing I've figured out; it's not right to think about it in terms of what should reasonably be expected from Michael Nutter. In that framework I might be relatively pleased; when he was a Council member he worked hard to abolish the Business Privilege Tax in toto; now he proposes abolishing "only" the Gross Receipts part. Furthermore, he proposes to cut the rate of the Net Income portion of the BPT just 7%. Neither the Gross Receipts abolition, nor the Net Income cut is immediate; they would both be phased in over a period of years. And Nutter is also proposing an immediate 25% increase in the Parking Tax -- a relatively progressive tax -- which will make up a substantial part of the lost BPT revenue.

So as someone who thinks cutting business taxes should be a very low priority, if one at all, I could feel OK about all this compared to what might have been.

But personalizing the budget proposal is the wrong approach. The important question is not how to grade Nutter. The important question is this: are the choices the Mayor made in the budget the right ones for our City? My answer to that has got to be no.

The Pennsylvania AFL-CIO is pressing legislators to pass HB 2098, a bill submitted on December 6th and sitting before the House Insurance Committee (authored by its chair, Rep. DeLuca). We were all a little disappointed earlier this year when the legislative process failed to make good on Governor Rendell's plan to allow our insurers to quit paying for infections and mistakes made by Hospitals. Then, the next thing we knew, Medicare (by far the biggest spender in Healthcare) came along and said it wasn't going to pay for those mistakes or infections starting late in 2008, anyway. Which could have nearly the same effect, so HB 2098 seeks to give our Pennsylvania insurers that same right: to refuse to pay bills for procedures correcting conditions that hospitals should have prevented.

"But wait! I thought we already solved this problem?" you ask. Sure you do. We did something about it, but we sure didn't solve it. In fact, in one very important way, we took a step backward. A big step. Click Read More to see what I mean!

I love the way THE INQUIRER is pounding the quote-unquote "Philadelphia" Parking Authority. City GOP benefits from Parking Authority. It needs it. The story starts off promisingly:

Though the Philadelphia Parking Authority has fallen short in its promised funding for city schools, it certainly has been a boon for the Philadelphia Republican Party.

Authority employees and consultants have contributed at least $214,000 to the Republican City Committee since 2001, according to an Inquirer analysis of campaign finance data.

The contributions this year have reached at least $33,210, or more than 14 percent of the party's total.

I wonder if that's the single biggest cadre of funders? Of course, "cadre of funders" gets hard to define for a newspaper article, but still I wonder.

My humble suggestion to Philadelphia reporters pursuing these questions: the story I'd like to see is some attempt to sort out how much money could, potentially, be going to schools and how, exactly, the law designates that they are supposed to determine that figure.

This schools issue is a big part of why I want to lambast the PPA so badly. If it were just an issue of over-spending and patronage, I would care but I wouldn't care as much. The simple fact is that the PPA is making our city harder to live in by tightening up parking rules, but they aren't delivering on the promised benefit of that: getting some more money into education.

Pound them, Inqy! Pound them!!!