Budget
As we reported yesterday, the Pennsylvania Intergovernmental Cooperation Authority has affirmed the credibility of an administration-commissioned study from Boston College, which said the program has cost the city $258 million since 1999.
Today, the state created fiscal watchdog, sent Mayor Nutter a letter expressing support for ending the DROP program. "Clearly this costly and misused human resources tool must be eliminated," wrote PICA Board Chairman Jim Eisenhower.
You can read the letter here.
Buy those electronics fast!
Philadelphia's sales tax hike will go into effect on Oct. 8, according to Janel Miller, spokeswoman for the Pennsylvania Department of Revenue
The sales tax will go from 7 cents to 8 cents on the dollar. Two cents will come to the city and the rest to the state. The increase -- which was approved last week by the state legislature to help the city balance the budget -- is set to last five years and is expected to bring $580 million during the time.
The Penn Project for Civic Engagement has posted the reports from the first community budget workshop on their website.
You can go through and see how 12 different groups tried to plug a budget gap using a list of cuts and tax hikes that were assigned point values. The goal was to get to 100 points. For example: cutting 20 percent from the police budget was worth 26 points, but cutting 30 percent from recreation only got you 5.
What's clear from most of the reports is that the groups largely had great difficulty reaching the goal. Many disputed the premise and made alternate lists of how the city could close the gap. Most groups came in between about 30 and 70 points. Except for one -- group 8 got all the way to 99. How did they do it? Among other things, they raised the wage tax, the real estate tax, the sales tax, cut courts and prisons and added a trash fee.
To try out the worksheet yourself, click here. Or you can head to the next workshop, tonight in Germantown at Mastery Charter School.
We took in the first citizen budget workshop last night at St. Dominic's School in Holmesburg. More than five hundred people attended the meeting, hosted by the Penn Project for Civic Engagement. The night started with a briefing from city officials on the budget crisis -- the city faces a $1 billion shortfall over five years -- and then broke into small group sessions where participants tried to rank their budget priorities.
One of our favorite thing about the evening was the "Wailing Wall," a board set up in the school auditorium where people could pin notes to the city. Most messages said things like, "Cut Nutter's increasing staff," "No tax loopholes for big corporations," or "Stop letting city employees take city cars home."
But here was the best one: "I would like to meet a good looking single woman my age (68)."
Why solve the financial crisis when you can look for love?
We've been reviewing the scenarios prepared by city departments to show the impact of 10, 20 or 30 percent budget cuts on their operations. As we've reported before, these scenarios -- prepared to show the city's options for closing a $1 billion budget hole over five years -- show devastating reductions for departments like police, streets and libraries.
The mayor's office, which had a budget of $6.6 million after the fall budget cuts, also prepared scenarios. They did a 10 percent and a 20 percent report, both of which include staff reductions and reorganization of units. But when it comes to 30 percent, they didn't do a scenario. The document just says "would require complete reorganization of Mayor's Office."
We asked Mayor Nutter why his own office didn't do all the scenarios.
"We'd have to almost close the mayor's office," Nutter said. "We'd have to take an entirely different look at the structure of the mayor's office at a 30 percent cut."
Nutter said his staff is still looking at the issue.
If the stimulus package becomes a reality, Philadelphia seems poised to get a cut of the funding for key priorities like schools, transit and housing. But Mayor Nutter stressed tonight that stimulus money will not help him close the $1 billion shortfall in his five year plan.
“These dollars are not to fill budget holes. Everyone has made that very clear,” Nutter said tonight. “The theory here is when more people are working, they’re paying taxes. Then tax revenues will flow and those dollars will come back to Philadelphia.”
Nutter, who spent the day in Washington DC today to meet with lawmakers about the stimulus package, said he was optimistic about Philadelphia’s fate under the stimulus deal, but didn’t yet know exactly what programs will get funding – or by how much.
"There are lot of programs, there are numerous ways to access the dollars. Are we applying the state, are we applying to the federal government," Nutter said. "I am very optimistic that Philadelphia will be a beneficiary of the stimulus package, we just don’t know when or how much."
So the first of four community budget workshops -- put on by the Penn Project for Civic Engagement -- is scheduled for tomorrow night in Northeast Philly. We just looked over the format outlined on the Penn website and these are going to be serious sessions.
After a briefing from senior administration officials, participants will break up into small working groups that will analyze budget options before the city. Penn Project Director Harris Sokoloff said they will be using the data presented to City Council Monday night about possible budget cuts.
Sokoloff also said they have reached out to churches, civic associations and block captains to let people know about the workshops. "This is a fairly distinct opportunity," he said.
Here's a link to more details about the event.
We didn't link this earlier today, but it's an interesting read. Mayor Nutter has an op-ed in today's paper about the budget crisis, in which he asks the city to work with him on the city's fiscal problems.
An excerpt:
Participatory democracy is not only about expressing what you want, it's also about DOING. We need people willing to clean their street and sidewalk or volunteer at their local rec center or school.
But right now, we need citizens to learn as much as they can about their city's fiscal crisis and then participate in the new process.
To read the entire piece, click here.
Mayor Nutter will brief City Council tonight on department budget cut options. Nutter plans to provide council members with the scenarios created by department heads to show the impact of 10, 20 or 30 percent budget cuts -- and he says it won't be pretty.
"I think the main point is to share the information as we said we would. That's the purpose of tonight's meeting," Nutter said. He added that he wants council to understand the "very tough" options before the city.
After closing a $1 billion gap in the five year plan last November through service reductions, layoffs and delaying tax cuts, the city now faces another $1 billion shortfall over five years. Nutter is in the midst of a public budget process to get input from citizens on how the city should balance their books.
Nutter stressed that he is early in the process and no decisions have been made. On the information that will be provided to council tonight, he said: "these are scenarios, they're options, they are ideas."
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David Gambacorta spent a small eternity writing about cops, drug dealers and serial killers. Now he’s writing about power and politics – which sometimes reminds him of the old crime beat. He joined the Daily News in 2005. And yes, he knows you’re not quite sure how to pronounce his last name. E-mail tips to gambacd@phillynews.com
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Jan Ransom, a native New Yorker, joined the Daily News in 2010 after graduating from Howard University. She has since written about the difficulty of filing police complaints, tax deadbeats and life after violent home invasions. She joined the Daily News City Hall Bureau in 2011 and has plunged headfirst into reporting on administration budget battles and City Council shenanigans. E-mail tips to ransomj@phillynews.com
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Sean Collins Walsh is from Bucks County and went to Northwestern University. He joined the Daily News copy desk in 2012 and now covers the Nutter administration. Before that, he interned at papers including The New York Times, The Dallas Morning News and The Seattle Times. E-mail tips to walshSE@phillynews.com
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