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Thursday, July 30, 2009

Calling City Hall deadbeats to account
The Nutter administration is formulating plans to garnish the paychecks of city workers who owe back taxes. (Illustration by PAUL LACHINE)

This just in from City Hall: Mayor Nutter announced that city employees now have to pay their property taxes just like the rest of the suckers . . . er . . . residents of Philadelphia.

Gee, what a novel policy approach. And, essentially, all it took to kick things into gear was a front-page story in The Inquirer.

Mayor Nutter announced the policy shift yesterday in what a press release described as two "tough new measures."

Step One is to notify the roughly 1,300 city employees currently behind on their taxes that they have 30 days to settle up or enter into a payment plan. If the employees fail to comply, Step Two will be to withhold 20 percent of their pay until the debt is settled.

The new enforcement effort follows an Inquirer story last week that showed about 2,000 city employees and their spouses owe $5 million in back property taxes.

Some deadbeats haven't paid their taxes in two decades. The individual arrogance award goes to an aide to City Councilwoman Jannie L. Blackwell who owes the city $96,000 in back property taxes. That's a disgrace.

The list of deadbeats is yet another example of the ingrained culture at City Hall, where too many insiders believe that the rules don't apply to them.

This, in part, is an outgrowth of decades of patronage in a one-party town, where the political code is to reward friends, punish enemies, and, when in doubt, look the other way.

The upshot from years of malfeasance and insider dealings both big and small is a bloated and inefficient bureaucracy that is strapped for cash, and has the highest combined tax burden in the country - and plenty of tax deadbeats.

As the city budget crisis intensified last year, Nutter made it a priority to go after tax deadbeats. There are 100,000 delinquent properties in the city that owe a combined $425 million.

Since The Inquirer story detailed that 2,000 city employees are behind on their taxes, the city has collected about $1 million in back taxes from its workers. More than 100 employees paid in full, while an additional 425 entered into payment plans.

Making city workers pay their fair share signals to taxpayers that the rules apply to everyone. If anything, workers whose salaries and benefits are funded by taxpayers have a greater duty to pay their taxes.

It's also good to see that the mayor hopes to head off the next generation of City Hall deadbeats by requiring new hires who owe back taxes to enter into payment plans before starting their job.

However, it is troubling that since May alone - in the midst of a major city budget crisis - the Nutter administration has hired five employees who are behind on their property taxes.

Perhaps Nutter should add one more "tough" measure to his new policy: Stop hiring tax deadbeats in the first place.
Posted by Russell Cooke @ 5:05 AM  Permalink | Post a comment
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