City: New Hires Must Pay City Bills Before Starting Work
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City: New Hires Must Pay City Bills Before Starting Work
Catherine Lucey
The city is getting tough on bill collection.
Top officials today approved new regulations that would require all potential civil service and exempt employees be fully paid on all city taxes and fees -- or have entered a payment agreement -- before they could start a city job.
Revenue Commissioner Keith Richardson said the city will check to see if a new hire is up to date on bills and taxes. If they owe money, they'll get 20 days to either pay in full or enter a payment agreement through payroll deductions.
The city Administrative Board – which includes the mayor, the managing director and the finance director -- today approved a new civil service regulation that would cover civil service hires. That policy should be in place in a month. And a similar rule was approved for non-civil service hires also.
Richardson said the city has also been cracking down on current employees who owe. Letters were sent to 1,491 city workers with delinquent bills in May. The number with outstanding bills is down to 872 now. Richardson said the city controller is expected to soon send them a letter warning of payroll deductions if the employees don't settle the debts.
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Anyone working for the city who has not paid property taxes in Full must be jailed if they owe over $10k. Others owing lesser amount must begin immediate 5 year maximum payment plan with interest. ACORN is run by George Soros, invesigate it yourself.— BFlint- Comment removed.
- People retire and so the city does have to hire some new people even in economic downturns to fill key positions. And while it might be an interesting idea to report late property taxes to the credit bureaus, we don't do that in the state of Pennsylvania. We don't even do that when people buy properties at sherrif's tax lien sales and then don't pay the taxes on the building going forward -crazy as that sounds. This is a very resonable proposal despite the off-topic rants on ACORN above.— seand
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- Isn't the city on a hiring freeze? At least certain departments are.. except for city council and the mayor's office whose budget has increased in the budget crisis— streetjustice
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- good question streetj...they said that and are supposed to be, Budget Crisis? But are currently hiring and promoting anyway....just need to do a little investigating DN and inky— uandwhosearmy
- do the same for those already on the payrolll....and watch the leeches run....fire political hacks.....start firing, fining and issue eviction notices to all city personel, companies doing buisness with the city and all propertie owners in the city.....— nuggett
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- This measure has no teeth because of the payment plan provision. Pure and simple, if your city taxes are not paid in full, you should be prohibited from working for the city.— jfar86
- The city makes it very hard to pay them in some cases, and has a habit of losing a check and then charging penalties even after crediting a payment to principal.— dartvader
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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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