Check out an interesting Dave Davies column over at WHHY's Newsworks site on whether Philadelphia can ever regain momentum on tax cuts. An excerpt:
A little history : In the 1970's and 80's, as the city's economic base collapsed and its middle class fled, city leaders repeatedly cut services and raised taxes to balance the books, and it seemed we were in a death spiral: The government simply couldn't manage on its shrinking tax base, so it raised taxes, which only encouraged the job and population drain.
Then a startling thing occurred in the 1990's. Mayor Ed Rendell came into office with the city humbled and broke, and things turned around. It happened because he brought smart people in who cut employee benefit costs, privatized some services and make productivity gains, and because he was lucky: the national economy was booming, which drove up tax revenues, and Rendell had a friend and fellow Democrat in the White House.
But it shocked me when, in 1994, Rendell proposed that the city actually cut wage and business taxes. The cut was so small it was mocked at the time, but he pledged to repeat the trims every year, and gradually ease our tax burden without cutting services.
For the rest of the column, click here.