Levy calls for cutting health, pension costs

Add Paul Levy, president and chief executive officer of the Center City District, to the list of politically influential Philadelphians who are publicly calling on the mayor to use the budget crisis to lower the city's mounting health-care and pension costs.

Levy's quarterly newsletter gently takes Mayor Nutter to task for publicly focusing so far on taxes and layoffs, instead of reducing the cost of employee contracts or exploring privatization of services.

"These are third rail issues in Philadelphia politics and the reluctance to touch them could easily push the Mayor and City Council towards tax increases," Levy observes in the newsletter.

"The Nutter Administration faces unpleasant options whichever way it turns. But if there ever was a crisis not to waste, this is it."

Levy joins a growing number of prominent observers, such as Uri Monson at the Pennsylvania Intergovernmental Cooperation Authority, who are becoming concerned with Nutter's lack of public focus on the issue of public-employee costs.

Last week, Nutter told The Inquirer that his administration was committed to the long-term goal of reducing pension and health-care costs.

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