Nutter's Plan C dire for court system

Mayor Nutter talked yesterday about his contingency budget's impact on the city's vast court system, warning that the funding would run out before the end of the fiscal year.

That assessment is contained in a new five-year financial plan he will give to City Council today outlining the layoffs of nearly 3,000 municipal workers and deep service cuts required to balance the budget if the legislature fails to pass two measures the city needs to raise revenue.

"We're talking about a virtual shutdown of the entire criminal-justice system in Philadelphia because we don't have the money to pay for it," Nutter said at a City Hall news conference, where he was joined by District Attorney Lynne M. Abraham, Common Pleas Court President Judge Pamela Pryor Dembe, and Chief Defender Ellen Greenlee.

The mayor and the others, however, would not go into detail about how those cuts - which Nutter called "painful, drastic, and devastating" - would specifically affect the court system, which has 93 Common Pleas Court judges and 25 Municipal Court judges and which deals with a half-million cases annually.

Comments from all four city officials reflected the administration's continuing efforts to provoke the General Assembly into fast passage of the measures.

The city has asked state lawmakers to agree to a penny-per-dollar increase in the city sales tax and to allow a two-year delay in contributions to Philadelphia's pension fund, as well as other pension changes. Without those changes, the city would have to make $700 million in cuts over the next five years.

The state House approved legislation allowing those changes, but the Senate has yet to act, and a vote is not expected before Wednesday.

Meanwhile, the city's fiscal overseer, the Pennsylvania Intergovernmental Cooperation Authority, has required the city to prepare a new long-term budget in case the legislation fails.

Today, the Mayor's Office is expected to submit that budget document, known as Plan C. Council is not required to vote or hold public hearings on it, although it may do so if it likes. It has tentatively set aside three dates for legislative action: Tuesday, next Thursday, and Aug. 31.

At a rally three weeks ago, Nutter offered a broad outline of the contents of Plan C, which would eliminate 1,000 police and 200 firefighter jobs; reduce citywide trash pickup to twice a month; and close libraries and recreation centers.

The mayor went further yesterday, saying that if the sales-tax and pension measures fail, the First Judicial District, the District Attorney's Office, and the Defender Association - all supported with city tax money - would lose funding for the remainder of the fiscal year, which ends June 30.

He stopped short of saying whether there was a detailed plan to close courts on certain days, and he gave no other specifics.

But Greenlee offered a summation repeated by Nutter, Abraham, and Dembe: "This crisis is as real as a crisis can be."