Contrary to an inaccurate campaign finance report on the city's Department of Records site, Councilwoman Blondell Reynolds Brown's relection campaign raised a strong $64,300 last year, leaving her with a respectable year-end balance of $42,470. The inaccurate report shows Brown's campaign in the red by $21,000, a figure which appeared in an Inquirer story today on Councilman Bill Green's 2009 fundraising efforts.

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City Councilman Frank DiCicco introduced a bill last week, without fanfare, that would establish new sign and lighting regulations for East Market Street.

DiCicco said it was a way to start a conversation about reinvigorating the East Market Corridor between 7th and 13th streets. "It's kind of drab in its current condition," DiCicco said last week.

Sounded simple enough. The city's foremost anti-billboard and anti-visual clutter organization, SCRUB, is accusing DiCicco of undoing 19 years of work decades of work by activists.

"Huge signs advertising cell phones, alcohol, gambling, and fast food will dominate the street-scape while diminishing the effectiveness of on-premise signs identifying the businesses located in these buildings," SCRUB stated in a press release. "Councilman DiCicco’s bill will only benefit select landlords and the billboard industry. It will harm the City of Philadelphia and the citizens who fought so hard to protect its visual character."
 

»  More SCRUB bashes DiCicco sign bill

Veteran public relations consultant and former Rendell administration official Kevin Feeley is now working for Mayor Nutter's re-election campaign.

Feeley, president of Bellevue Communications, has most recently been in the public eye for his work on behalf of the Board of Revision of Taxes, whom he represented up until last summer.

For Nutter, Feeley said he would be helping craft the campaign's "message," with a particular focus on highlighting what Feeley considers to be an impressive record of accomplishments that have been overshadowed by budget trouble.

Feeley was clear that he would not be shaping the public image of the administration itself, but rather just the campaign.

»  More Nutter has new message manager

City Councilwoman Blondell Reynolds Brown Thursday morning called for mandatory lead testing for rental apartments and a prohibition on renting those apartments until they are certified safe from lead exposure.

Brown estimated the inspection fees at between $100 and $150 but acknowledged that the lead-free requirement would be a significant expense for landlords. Part of the public hearing process to develop the bill will be finding ways to pay for lead removal to reduce the burden on property owners, she said. 

The bill would apply to rental apartments built before 1978, when lead-based paint -- the primary cause of lead poisoning -- was banned for residences. An inspector could certify a unit lead-safe - meaning there was no exposed lead - or lead-free, which would free the owner from subsequent inspections.

Brown said that 2,500 children each year in Philadelphia are diagnosed with lead poisoning, an unacceptable statistic, she said.

»  More Reynolds Brown: Require rentals to be lead-free

Mayor Nutter today asked City Council to confirm his appointments of Sister Mary Scullion, the founder of Project H.O.M.E., and attorney Nolan N. Atkinson to the city's Ethics Board. Nutter also requested that sitting board member Kenya Mann Faulkner be reappointed to the board.

The press release follows.

MAYOR NUTTER NOMINATES NOLAN ATKINSON, SISTER MARY SCULLION TO ETHICS BOARD,
RENOMINATES KENYA MANN FAULKNER

Philadelphia, January 28, 2010 – Today Mayor Michael Nutter submitted resolutions to City Council that would confirm the appointment of Sister Mary Scullion and Nolan N. Atkinson, Jr. and reconfirm the appointment of Kenya Mann Faulkner to the City’s Board of Ethics. S. Mary Scullion will fill the vacancy created by the resignation of Richard Negrin, who left the Board after changing outside employment. Mr. Atkinson will fill the seat held by Phoebe Haddon, whose term ended in November and is now employed in another state. The other members of the five person Board are Damone B. Jones Sr. and Richard Glazer.

»  More Nutter names Sister Mary Scullion & Nolan Atkinson to Ethics Board

City Councilman Frank DiCicco called on Mayor Nutter and the Board of Revision of Taxes to include properties assessed this year in a citywide freeze.

Nutter announced this week that the BRT would not hike an assessments until his administration was confident that those property values were accurate. But not part of that moratorium were properties reassessed this year, some of which saw large increases that equate with a higher property tax bill. Those reassessments were done using the same allegedly unreliable information that was the basis for the decision by the BRT's new executive director, Richard Negrin.

DiCicco said he understood that Nutter had to draw the line somewhere, and he would not extend the freeze back to 2008. "I think that's only in the interest of fairness to the taxpayers," DiCicco told fellow council members in caucus before Thursday morning's council meeting. Council President Anna C. Verna said she agreed with DiCicco.

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Mayor Nutter’s pick to run the embattled Board of Revision of Taxes said today that he could not “in good conscience” continue to value properties in Philadelphia using the “bad data” the department relies on.

He said there would be an immediate moratorium on all reassessments until each and every parcel of land in the city can be assessed anew.

“It became obvious that we could not continue to do assessments in the way we’ve done them in the past,” said BRT Executive Director Richard Negrin, who has been on the job for just over a month. “I was seeing more than enough to give me pause about continuing business as usual at the BRT.”

Negrin’s conclusions were seconded by Mayor Nutter at a City Hall press conference early this afternoon.

»  More Moratorium ordered on Phila. property reassesments

Cozen O’Connor did about $450,000 of legal work to help Democratic U.S. Rep. Bob Brady fight a ballot challenge from rival Tom Knox in the 2007 mayor’s race.
Late last month, the firm won a battle in its ongoing legal skirmish over whether that work should count as a campaign contribution. On Dec. 29, the state Supreme Court agreed to hear the part of the case that turns on whether Cozen, as a creditor, had legal standing to make the argument.
It’s not clear yet whether that decision will give Cozen an opening to argue its broader point in the case.
In 2008, Cozen sued the Philadelphia Board of Ethics over its ruling that the legal work was subject to contribution limits of $5,000 for individuals and $20,000 for political committees. That would have forced Cozen to forgive the debt at a rate of $20,000 a year or forced Brady’s political action committee to repay that amount yearly.
That option seems “silly,” Cozen lawyer Adam Bonin said. “It cannot have been Council’s intent to have a 2007 campaign committee technically active for decades after the campaign’s actual termination.”
Cozen argues that the work should not count as a campaign donation for two reasons: Candidates should not have to worry about amounts spent to keep themselves on the ballot, and money collected after an election “cannot possibly influence the outcome of the 2007 election,” according to a court filing.
Shane Creamer, executive director of the Board of Ethics, said Cozen’s logic would allow candidates to back-load vendor payments and “effectively undermine our limits. … Candidates could go to their donors and say, ‘Give me unlimited amounts of money.’”

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Here’s an interesting exercise. Assume for a moment that each of the city’s labor unions receives a contract identical to the new police arbitration award. That would mean each unionized worker in city government could be furloughed up to 30 days a year.
In its presentation to the police arbitration panel, the city estimated it would save $42.9 million in year one of the deal if it furloughed every police officer the maximum 30 days. Over the five years of the contract, that amounts to $222.3 million, once wage hikes are factored in.
But on practical and political levels, furloughing police officers is tricky. So police would likely be furloughed infrequently, if at all.
Furloughing other city workers, however, is another story. “Heard in the Hall” wondered: How much would the city save if it furloughed all of its unionized workers 30 days a year?
The city is not issuing any such calculations, but according to our estimates the figure tops out at a whopping $549.6 million over the five years of our hypothetical contracts. Exclude police from that total, and it drops to a still-huge $327.2 million. In fact, that covers much of the $350 million over five years in total salary hikes that Councilman Bill Green warns the city is likely to absorb across all unions as a consequence of the police award.
Now for the caveats. There is no guarantee that the city will get 30-day furloughs in its other labor contracts. And even if it does, furloughing every worker for 30 days, or six workweeks, would not be practical.
But it seems clear that furloughs could, at minimum, soften the budget impact of union raises.

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