Mayor Nutter is about to get some serious help, and from a somewhat non-traditional source, in achieving his campaign goal of increasing public school funding.
Taking the helm as the new chairman of the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce, David L. Cohen told about 1,500 business leaders at this morning's annual breakfast that his number-one chairman priority was pushing for "adequate" funding in public schools. "In the end it's us, the region's business leaders, who pay the price," Cohen said.
No wordy rhetoric about the city's costly business taxes. No defensive posturing about the need to safeguard recently-enacted business tax cuts from being rolled back because of the city's $850 million budget shortfall.
Instead, Cohen rolled out what he called his "No Excuses" agenda, noted in today's Inquirer which also includes getting companies to hire more high school student interns, and business leaders to mentor minority business owners.
Those in attendance also received autographed copies of Tom Brokaw's new book, "Boom," which Brokaw discussed in a speech before the chamber this morning.
The NBC News anchor didn't talk much about what's really on everyone's minds - the presidential election - except to reflect on the 1960s and say: "This election is about embracing what's worth keeping and what's worth leaving behind."
In a smaller meeting after the breakfast, Brokaw also warned against reading too much into early signs showing Barack Obama ahead of John McCain. After 45 years in the business, he said, there's no predicting the "unforeseen factor." His advice: National polls aren't as important as those individual polls for crucial swing states, such as Ohio and Pennsylvania.
Speaking of the 1960s, by the way, Brokaw said, "Yes, I did inhale." He was in California at the time. "It didn't really take with me. I reverted to good red wines and single malt scotch."
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Cohen was instrumental in creating the budget surplus under Rendell. Key to that was collecting overdue property taxes, where a private municipal collection agency was brought in and authorized to put properties to sheriff sale for collection of lien debt to the city. The success of the program was not mentioned in "A Prayer for the City" which chronicled Rendell's first year in office as Mayor of Philly, oddly, but the surplus was big news at the time. Nutter would be well-advised to take Cohen's input on creating a surplus during tough budget times. The overdue property taxes of some $568 million owed to the city (some for several years) are critical to school funding since about more than half goes to fund city schools. It can't fund schools, however, if it remains uncollected. Building a local property tax base in lieu of a job-killing wage tax and novel, unknown elsewhere business taxes is critical to funding schools in lean years as well as booming ones. Why not certify this overdue debt for prompt sheriff sale foreclosure and payment if we are in a budget shortfall? There's no time to lose.— CleanupPhilly- I thought after Cohen left city government that the issue of fixing property tax collection and nonpayment would stay on the front burner. It's such an obvious means of municipal revenue anywhere you look. Instead, the overdue taxes ballooned again, and the city agencies tasked with collection and certification bogged down and reverted to ineffectiveness. We have to ask ourselves why the local Democratic party is allergic to collecting property taxes. We can't have an optional only property tax system. For some reason, Tom Brokaw's new book appears of more interest to the press because he inhaled. But Philly needs more people like Cohen who are willing to follow the money and go and get it for the city, no excuses.— CleanupPhilly
- Any further state funding of city schools should be contingent on specific overdue property tax collection goals. For example, all property tax debt over a certain amount or over a certain time period should be sent (certified) for collection to via the private collection agency in exchange for any state money, and that collection should be completed at a verifiable rate of sale or auction. That means the pets of the local party are no longer going to be able to call city council and get delays and exemptions on property tax collection for overdue properties. This party will fight it tooth and nail, and the papers will dutifully report that it saves old ladies from getting evicted, even though it is the most vulnerable who are the ones who are on the block instead of the owners who owe the most and pay the least, since the issue requires actual research, and not just some pol telling you what to say.— CleanupPhilly
- Don't take my word for it, see for yourself: http://www.hallwatch.org/proptax/about/redelinq/stats -- why are some neighborhoods sporting more than half of all owners owing school-funding property taxes to the city? Why are some of the largest debtors to the city politically connected agencies and groups that land bank properties as they wait endlessly for more money to fund long-promised projects that never seem to get built, and never seem to get audited by anyone responsible for oversight? Why are such owners obviously off limits in the sheriff sale process, while other owners will lose a property for a few thousand in unpaid taxes? The obvious skew and politicization of the property tax collection process seems to interest the papers surprisingly little. That seems astounding.— CleanupPhilly
- That David Cohen is still the only person in Philly that is ever going to connect good schools to property taxes because he is the only person who ever got property taxes collected using a working objective mechanism after all these years later is really a sad comment on the legal, intellectual problem solving of the local party in charge. Cohen is your only guy, apparently, who knows that surpluses, balanced budgets, and adequately funded schools are not the result of magical thinking.— CleanupPhilly
- I believe the economy on a national scale was on the upswing at the time you reference, it would be interesting to see the results of a similar property tax collection push in the current economy.— nickj
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