Nutter critics question his effectiveness

With a budget deal finally at hand, Mayor Nutter heads into crucial contract negotiations with the city's labor unions in need of a clear victory to dispel a growing sense that his administration's political clout is waning.

Though the mayor strongly disputes that characterization, more than a dozen political observers, elected officials, and members of his staff said this week that Nutter had been weakened by recent setbacks, and they contended that the mayor should be less rigid, improve relations with City Council, and perhaps be more thoughtful when publicly confronting other political players.

As examples of recent missteps, those interviewed cited the budget accord, in which a united Council forced the mayor to compromise on tax policy; Nutter's demand that the seven members of the Board of Revision of Taxes resign, a call they immediately and publicly defied; and his scrapped plan to close 11 library branches.

"Right now he is coming off to an awful lot of people as wounded," said Zack Stalberg, president of the government watchdog group the Committee of Seventy.

The fresh doubts about the administration come at an inopportune time for Nutter.

On June 30, contracts for all four of the city's labor unions expire. Nutter seeks extraordinary concessions, which could provoke a strike.

"Today, with all these people asking questions, it's a little bit of an unknown as far as whether people will line up behind him if it comes to a confrontation with the unions," Stalberg said.

In the months to come, the mayor and Council must also sell their compromise budget to state lawmakers, whose approval is required for key elements of the plan, including a five-year penny-per-dollar increase in the sales tax and major changes to the terms of the city's pension fund payments.

In an interview, Nutter dismissed doubts about his political strength as irrelevant to the lives of city residents, and he argued forcefully that Monday's budget deal represented a victory for his administration.

"The stuff that you're talking about is so inside baseball it's in the locker room," Nutter said, dismissing questions about who won or lost this year's debate over tax policy.

Philadelphians, he said, were more concerned about the preservation of city services than the specific mix of tax hikes and pension adjustments used to fund the budget. He rightfully noted that his spending proposals had emerged almost completely unscathed from the budget talks. It was Council's distaste for his tax plan that forced him to compromise.

"In this business, it's a sign of leadership when you can bring people together and rally them around a view and a vision of the future. And if you have to make changes, be strong enough to work with other folks to reach a good resolution," said Nutter, who characterized his relationship with Council as "good, warm, hardworking, respectful."

But the mayor's view is not widely shared by other elected officials, including some of his staunchest supporters.

Councilman Jim Kenney, one of a just a handful of Council members who sided with the mayor in the budget debate, said Nutter had been damaged politically by recent events. And though Kenney faults fellow Council members more than the mayor, he said the relationship between the two branches of government was badly strained.

"I don't think he's weakened beyond repair. But I think he's had to take a couple steps back, and he'll need to figure out a new way to deal with stuff in the future," Kenney said.

Another city official described Nutter's negotiating style during the budget talks as "rigidity followed by total collapse."

"This is not how it's done," said the official, who is not a frequent critic of the mayor and who requested anonymity because of the need to work with Nutter.

The mayor continues to get high marks from political observers for the work he has done mending Philadelphia's image in Harrisburg and in the suburbs. They also praise his civic cheerleading and the relentless pace of his public appearances, which they say has given Philadelphians a clear sense that someone is in charge.

It is the workings of City Hall - the horse-trading and relationship-building so central to Philadelphia politics - that Nutter is struggling to get right, those interviewed said.

For instance, political consultant Larry Ceisler contends that Nutter has developed "an unfortunate habit of going nuclear," provoking major political confrontations without thinking through the potential consequences.

"He went nuclear with the libraries, he did it again when he asked the BRT members to resign, and he did it with Council in talking about DROP and cars," Ceisler said, referring to Nutter's request on the eve of his March budget address that Council members turn in their city-issued vehicles and adopt a bill that would ban elected officials from participating in the city's controversial Deferred Retirement Option Plan.

Former Managing Director Phil Goldsmith said it was a case of confusing "campaigning versus governing."

"It was just the wrong time to do it," Goldsmith said. "It's like going to your father for allowance and telling him he has bad breath."

Nutter said he was not motivated by political concerns when he went after the BRT or asked Council to surrender its perks.

"Everything we do is not about politics. Sometimes it's about just what's right," he said.

That approach served Nutter admirably as a councilman, when he repeatedly rallied public opinion to his side and used it to force through such popular causes as a citywide smoking ban and strict campaign-finance rules.

But as mayor, internal politics are at least equally important, said Joseph McLaughlin Jr., a Temple University professor and former city lobbyist.

"It's one thing to rely on outside pressure to win votes for causes some legislators don't like but the public does; it's much harder to do when all the options are unpopular. That's when you need the legislators to stand with you on decisions that are necessary but that the public is bound not to like," McLaughlin said.

Like Nutter, though, McLaughlin thinks typical Philadelphians will not ultimately care who won what round of a single given budget battle.

"What will matter to the voters and taxpayers is how all this ends, not how he got there," he said.

But popularity with voters has not been Nutter's problem. In the most recent public poll, by the Pew Charitable Trusts in March, his approval rating was still a strong 59 percent.

Nutter's problem is translating his personal popularity into support for his more controversial proposals, most notably his now-abandoned attempt to temporarily increase property taxes to help close the city's $1.38 billion five-year budget gap. In the Pew poll, 86 percent of respondents said they opposed that option.

Winning Council approval of any measure that is so broadly disliked would be difficult, but even Nutter allies say he could help his cause by rethinking his approach to Council.

"He needs to communicate better. He needs to have someone on his staff who is a go-to person who can give answers independently without the mayor telling him or her it's OK," Kenney said.

Kenney was among many interviewed who questioned the internal workings of Nutter's administration, from what some say is a tendency to micromanage, to confusion over lines of authority, to a sense that the mayor is focused less on his broad agenda than on the fight of the day.

"To me, it seems like a helter-skelter type of operation. It's ad hoc. It's 'I'll try this, and if it doesn't work I'll try something else,' " said Terrence D. Griffith, pastor of the First African Baptist Church and chair of the political action committee of the Black Clergy of Philadelphia.

Ken Snyder, former Mayor John F. Street's communications director, said Nutter and his public relations team seemed to have lost sight of the mayor's long-term goals, fighting instead to win daily news cycles at the expense of bigger victories.

"He ran for election on making Philadelphia healthy again in a long-term sustainable way," Snyder said. "He needs to deliver on that and worry about that agenda, and not have a boutique press strategy where he focuses on every little thing that comes up every day."

In other words, Snyder said: "Sometimes you are better off just biting your tongue."

Municipal labor leaders were also critical, saying that Nutter's fiscal plans were too far removed from political realities to have a chance of winning Council approval.

"I believe he is getting bad information and bad advice from his budget people," said Brian McBride, who heads Local 22 of the International Association of Firefighters. "They are budget people, they are not politicians. They can't think out the process of, 'Is this going to fly or not.' "

Nutter has company. With the recession draining public coffers across the country, most big-city mayors and governors are enduring difficult days, which the administration's growing number of critics say they are taking into account.

"Mayor Nutter is a bright man and we hope he succeeds, but this situation may be overwhelming him," Griffith said.

Asked what he made of the fact that some City Hall veterans and community leaders harbored growing doubts about his ability to reach deals and govern effectively, Nutter responded slowly and softly.

"I know how to make deals," he said, referring to the budget. "And we made a good one for the citizens of Philadelphia."