Let me draw you a picture of the subject of a news story:

• You grew up in old school, machine driven Philadelphia politics. Your dad worked in the machine, and you were largely handed a major election victory by those ties.
• You are powerful. At this point, you have the ability to yield more political clout than all but a few others in the city. Some are aiming for your hold on the throne.
• You have held onto your seat as a woman, in a city of male dominated politics, which is no small feat. Especially considering that you did it at a time when the power dynamic of the sexes was even more out of whack than today.
• You have served for a long, long time. At 78 years old, you have been a politician here as Philadelphia has gone through a significant decline in population, growth in the numbers of those in poverty, and the mixed re-birth of the last 15 years.
• The district you have represented that whole time, however, has had significant trouble. Some of the neighborhoods in your district- including the one where you are also the ward leader- have had more murders per capita than almost anywhere else, in this already too violent city. Those same neighborhoods are rife with the depravation that is the hallmark of America’s worst hit neighborhoods.

You are Anna Verna, City Council President.

I go through that all because the Inquirer ran a piece on the storied career of Councilwoman Verna yesterday, and, while a good read, it left something to be desired by focusing mostly on how Councilwoman Verna runs City Council, while ignoring the other huge story: what has gone on in the last 40 years in the neighborhoods that she represents.

Meet city employee No. 1.

She first made the news in 1954, when a Philadelphia Evening Bulletin column noticed "a pretty working girl" with a passion for TV crime dramas and an aversion to pasta. Back then she was secretary to District Attorney Richardson Dilworth, an icon of reform in Philadelphia.

With 59 years on the payroll, City Council President Anna Cibotti Verna today is not merely the longest-serving worker out of 27,000. She has occupied the second-most-powerful position in city government for more than a decade, a regal fixture in the president's ornate chair.

The nine-term incumbent is almost universally praised as fair-minded, hardworking, and "classy." She has never known a close election, from her first Council race in 1975.

The article gives you the perspective of whether or not Councilwoman Verna is a 'good' or 'bad' Councilperson, and/or President of City Council. There are judgments about how she actually runs Council (which the article has a lot of), and what veryimportantpeople think about her. There is one on the record, negative quote, and it is from (of course) John Dougherty. (Which can continue the Hatfield-McCoy, Doc v. Fumo South Philly battle royale that continues to produce good copy, despite Fumo taking a state sanctioned break from politics, and Dougherty trying to regroup and rebuild his political cache after a big political loss.)

While it is totally legitimate and important to identify how good or bad or effective of a Council President Anna Verna is, I think that the story is too much grounded in the palace intrigue of City Hall. In fact, the only real quote we hear from someone in the neighborhoods that she represents is this:

She's regarded as a savior in this community - she's the catalyst and the glue keeping us together.

I don’t know how that quote, from one of her ward leaders, even gets into a newspaper story without some sort of counterbalance. But, I assure you that on the streets of Point Breeze, or in pockets of SW Philly destroyed by poverty, drugs and guns, neither she nor any other local politician is regarded as the savior of the community. I would wager that despite her position as Councilperson and Ward Leader, many people don’t even know who she is. That isn't a knock against her so much as a simple reality of where we are as a city and a nation. Given the depth of issues that face people in their everyday lives, a city politician is simply not viewed by people as a "savior."

All of this isn’t to say that Councilwoman Verna isn’t a good President of City Council or Councilperson. The few "insider-ish" progressives I have heard rumblings from seem to think that, at minimum, she gives them a fair shake. Frankly, I don’t know enough about what goes on in that building to know. But, she is the Councilperson of neighborhoods (and Ward Leader of the neighborhood) that probably have had more young men killed by guns than just about anywhere else in the city. And, of course, as these neighborhoods have fallen into despair, she has been their representative. It would be really interesting to hear how an older, well-off, white politician struggles through the profound issue of how she best represents neighborhoods where the number one cause of death among young African-American men is a bullet.

To say that a single Councilperson in a single American City- even a powerful one- is not responsible for the overwhelming waves of suburbanization, redlining, drugs, and urban disinvestment that so devastated neighborhoods, would be the understatement of the century. But these still are her neighborhoods, and have been for so, so long. So how she- and we- grapple with these issues is the real story to me.

Well, everyone, Happy New Year. Now buckle up; we’re in for another rocky ride. Here’s the news that you’ve been waiting for according to yesterday’s Daily News:

With the holidays over, city budget season rears its ugly head.
And while the economic freefall of the past 18 months seems to have stabilized, Philly's dark financial days are not over as tax revenues continue to lag and costly union contracts are looming.

It seems that we have this little problem. Those greedy city workers want a salary increase, and don’t necessarily want to let their pensions and health care benefits drown. Wage tax receipts are likely to be down $50 million this year. Every Department head has been asked to come up with budgets that are down 7.5% from this year’s already shrunken totals.

So Councilman DiCicco is proposing legislation to require every bicycle in the city to be registered at a cost of $20.

One really has to wonder if $20 will even cover the adminstrative costs and the outreach costs to get every single bicycle in the city that gets used only twice or 4 times a year registered. Or how much of a difference it will have in effecting whether bicylcists follow the rules of the road.

It’s a question that Parents United for Public Education, Public Interest Law Center of Philadelphia, and the Education Law Center are considering right now.

At issue is this section of state law, 72 PS 5341.21, which states that responsibility for the expenses of the BRT lies with the county:

§ 5341.21. All salaries provided for in this act and the proper expenses of the board shall be paid out of the treasury of the county.

The Pennsylvania School Boards Association said they aren’t aware of any other county in the state which charged a school district for property tax assessments. Why us?

So hot on the tail of some active discussion roundabout these parts over who we should be looking most intensely over lack of progress on botched property assessments, patronage and waste in the Bureau of Revision of Taxes - City Council or the Mayor, City Council weighs in. Actually almost as if to explicitly to say "It's us".

In May, the school board only budgeted enough money to pay the BRT workers until Sept. 30 and said it would prefer that the workers go under the city payroll - a nudge for Mayor Nutter and City Council to act.

But that seems unlikely anytime soon. Even the Council members who are most fed up with the BRT's inaccurate assessments say that patronage isn't the real problem.

"Whether they are committee people or not, I am sensitive to people being unemployed," said Councilman Frank DiCicco, who is pushing for reforms at BRT.

Whatever you think about the importance of the Bureau of Revision of Taxes, there’s no question that what the city, and perhaps most importantly the Mayor, does with this mess of an agency is a test of leadership and vision that’s under the public – re: media – scrutiny.

The draft statements coming from the Mayor’s appointed task force aren’t entirely encouraging:

The 85-page report, by a task force of City Council staffers and officials in the Nutter administration, is not a ringing call to remake the BRT.

In fact, Council made sure that it wasn't. The leadership instructed the task force to offer no direct recommendation on how to fix the agency - only alternatives.

One of those possibilities - "Option A" - would make only modest changes, such as improved training for assessors.

Other options would leave the agency intact but allow the mayor and Council to pick the members; or split the BRT into two agencies, one to set values and the other to handle appeals.

"Option D" would wipe out the BRT and put assessments in the hands of city leaders or a new agency. The last three ideas would require approval by city voters, the task force noted.

Which means that significant action on the BRT won’t happen until the 2010 election cycle, way too far down the road.

Meanwhile, half the BRT workers sit on the School District of Philadelphia payroll. The District’s money for these positions runs out at the end of this month, and the question is what to do next.

So, let's recap here:

• For months, Pennsylvania Real Estate Investment Trust (PREIT), chaired by Rendell BFF Ron Rubin, has been claiming that they own the Strawbridge's building which they intend to lease to themselves via Foxwoods casino, whose lead investor is Ron Rubin's "charitable trust."

• errr . . . they lied. OK they fudged facts since they are actually owners of Strawbridge's Unit A.

• The other owners of Strawbridges didn't like that which surprised and shocked Councilman Frank "My Fighting Days are Over" DiCicco.

• BUT the bill passed through committee and will be read in Council this morning anyway!

Now for the record, the Councilman promised he wouldn't bring anything to a vote because why would you want to deal with this?

The Strawbridge Building is a commercial condominium. DiCicco is concerned that there is something in the ownership agreement that would prohibit the bottom floors from being used as a casino. He is also worried that Gramercy might take either PREIT or City Council to court if the CED legislation is passed. He also said Gramercy could potentially file a lawsuit alleging that the zoning change lessened the value of its property.

But it begs the question again, what was the Planning Commission doing when it whole-heartedly gave the project its endorsement a few weeks back? or when everyone from the Mayor to the Councilman applauded the move to Strawbridge's?

And while all of city leadership bucks process, it's interesting how one tenant can say the same thing that our city leaders ignored from 1,000 people, 25,000 petitions, and the dozens of groups who are part of the No Casino in the Heart of Our City Coalition - which is that no one, not even the co-owners of a building, really thinks that casinos are a viable form of economic development.

(Note: This blog entry was updated to separate the District's operating budget from its capital budget, which is $2B or so dollars over five years)

It's kind of hard to imagine that if someone handed you a thank you card for your $810 million gift of city cash, there wouldn't be a significant amount of public scrutiny over where it's going. But it appears that's what may happen to the School District's FY2010 budget.

The 330-plus page operating budget was just put online last week. The capital budget hasn't even been released for distribution. Then last week City Council announced that it has canceled today's day-long accountability hearing for the School District and will instead condense it into a one-day session tomorrow which includes public testimony. All of which means that this budget - $3.2 billion operating - is not only the largest in recent memory. It could also be the least scrutinized.

I, like many, am encouraged that there are many capable people over at the District. I'm glad that the District isn't engaged in scandals that earned it the kind of headlines it did in 2006 and 2007. I actually even think the District has put out more information about its budget than it has in the past. But having smart people who haven't embarrassed themselves in the paper recently doesn't mean a budget of this size gets a free pass.

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.

After all, last fall’s show about making the Gallery the sworn choice for a Center City slots joint was a tough act to follow. No plan, no design, no studies, no financing, but Council was able to ram through rezoning a 16-square block area before they could blink.

A city planning commission vote was such a rubber stamp at least two Planning Commission members voted not to oppose the project by shrugging their shoulders. After 1,000 people marched in the streets and 60 citizens gave five hours worth of testimony at a packed Saturday Council hearing, Council committee members unanimously voted to move a motion forward and left the room before we had picked up all the signs and banners from the seats. Council acted similarly in waiving requirements to speed up the final casino zoning vote. Except for a brief comment by Councilman Curt Jones Jr. and a classic reprimand by Council President Verna – “nothing you say can change this vote” – nothing referenced the concerns that a distraught community had raised for weeks. The same held true for the Mayor when he came in on a Sunday morning to sign the legislation for the Gallery zoning into law, less than 24 hours after meeting with community members.

So how can City leaders possibly top that?

Let’s review the huddle conversation.

There was a very interesting piece today on WHYY radio about Councilman Bill Green, with his first year behind him, the issues he's championed and his perspective on the way in which council, and city government, goes about doing the people's business.

The link to the transcipt of the story is here: http://whyy.org/blogs/itsourcity/2009/01/21/bill-green/

Does anyone have any cites or sources for the establishment of this "councilmatic perogative" concept or for any qualifications imposed upon it?

Below is a copy of an email I sent to the Mayor's Action Line, outlining a specific issue involving a councilperson's "gifting" of tax delinquent properties to a tax-delinquent developer. Does this concept really authorize deviation of application of tax laws, variance ordinances, and building codes? Does any one know of it ever being challenged?

Email:
Dear Mayor Nutter,
First, thank you so much for agreeing to represent the citizens of Philadelphia as our top elected official.

This morning, City Council is expected to pass two bills that will re-zone the Gallery to a gambling district (CED), and re-designate an area from 6th to Broad Streets and Arch to Chestnut Streets as an area where a gambling zone "would be permissible."

For one of the City’s biggest projects, this could likely be the most fast-tracked in history. No plans, no proposals, no studies, and worse no questions. A Saturday Council hearing on November 1st saw up to 1,000 people in the streets, five hours of testimony from 60 speakers, and not a single question or dialogue among Council members before they unanimously voted it out of committee – adding a caveat that the rules would be suspended to set a special Nov. 6th hearing for first reading and that the Nov. 13th hearing would allow both a second reading and a vote on the same day.

City officials are silencing questions and asking Philadelphians to take a wait and see approach. But last month Mayoral advisor Terry Gillen gave a videotaped talk at the Northern Liberties Neighborhood Association that gives troubling insight into the zoning legislation and what really is at stake – and perhaps, most troubling of all, the active role the administration might have as Foxwoods’ potential business partner in the Market East location.

It’s a long meeting (you can see the full video below), so I’ll help break it up for you:

First, the CED legislation is NOT exploratory in nature:

Contrary to city officials claiming that the CED legislation would only allow them to "explore" the Market East site, Gillen speaks candidly that the City and Foxwoods and the PA Gaming Control Board (PGCB) have an understanding that the CED could form the basis for a site license change – a process she said no one had done before and that city officials were "making up." She also implies how premeditated this is because they want things to happen before there's any possibility of the election impacting on the PGCB's make-up.

Tomorrow City Council is holding a public hearing at 10 a.m. at City Hall on whether to re-zone the Gallery to permit gambling in the heart of Philadelphia.

Here’s a PSA about what’s at stake.

What’s interesting about this re-zoning, is that the broader area being discussed in the bill is actually 6th to Broad and Chestnut to Arch. This is the area that is defined as amenable to taking a CED (Commercial Entertainment District), which is the zoning specifically designed to permit gambling.

Let's repeat that again: A 16-square block area covering 6th to Broad Streets, Chestnut to Arch Streets. Take a look at that area here.

What’s it mean? Who knows?

After all, it’s our Mayor himself who said:

"I don't have anything on the back of a napkin to show what this would look like."

At a Society Hill forum earlier this week, Planning Commissioner Andy Altman denied that there was any intent to put a gambling strip on Market East, saying that the zoning process would protect that from happening. But in the same breath, he disregarded that same zoning process and said it was essential to forfeit zoning privileges in order to "get a process started" for Foxwoods. As residents pointed out to him after the forum, how do you say zoning doesn’t matter in one case, but it’s an essential protection in another?

So tomorrow, we’ll be headed to City Council to say slow up this process. A rush job after all feels like a hack job. Everyone knows you plan first and zone later. Doing otherwise raises eyebrows.

And in between the Phillies celebration and before canvassing for the most important election of our time, I'm inviting you to join hundreds of citizens for an hour or two Saturday morning to march from Chinatown to City Hall. We’re marching for neighborhoods and a better vision for Philadelphia, and we’re marching to make Philadelphia’s political process as worthy as its World Series title and as the deliverer of the PA electoral vote.

Saturday, November 1st
9 a.m. gathering
Chinatown gate: 10th & Arch Sts.

I’ll leave the last words on the significance of this hearing for Chinatown’s Debbie Wei.