BRT deal struck in Philly fashion Backroom bargaining led to the plan to remake the tax-assessment system.

The historic deal that promises to remake the property-assessment system in Philadelphia started with a meeting between the city's powerful Democratic leader and a sick old man.

U.S. Rep. Robert A. Brady, the party chief, got a call from Enrico "Ricky" Foglia, the 80-year-old executive director of the Board of Revision of Taxes. They went way back, coming up in politics together in the 34th Ward in Overbrook.

As they sat together at the ward clubhouse on Haverford Avenue, Brady was gentle. With the BRT under siege, Foglia's health was being battered. He had heart trouble and shingles. Who needed the stress? Why not retire?

Foglia was ready.

"Bobby, I've had enough," he told Brady. "I'm being blamed for everything. I can't take no more."

With that opening, Brady made a call to Mayor Nutter: Here's your chance, he said.

The BRT has long been a target for Philadelphia's civic reformers because of its slipshod assessments, its backroom picks of board members, its patronage. The chorus for change rose loudly again after The Inquirer published a series on the BRT in May.

But the opportunity to create a new BRT came not through public hearings and angry taxpayers. Instead, there were months of back-channel talks and, finally, the quiet blessing of Brady - who, as party chair, helps decide who runs the BRT and which loyalists get its low-level patronage jobs.

"He's the congressman and chair of the party," said Nutter, asked why he was talking with Brady about what to do with the tax agency. "He knows a lot of the people."

The account of how the BRT deal came together was supplied through interviews with key players and others familiar with the talks, some of whom spoke on condition of anonymity.

On Wednesday, Nutter announced that the BRT had agreed to turn over management duties to the city finance director. The six remaining BRT members - who make between $70,000 and $75,000 a year for part-time work - would keep their jobs and continue to hear appeals for up to a year.

Nutter said the agreement, reached after weeks of negotiations with BRT members, was essential to restoring public confidence in the city's property assessments.

"They were very cooperative," Nutter said. "It was not something that was contentious at all."

It was far different from Nutter's first attempt to remake the BRT. In May, after The Inquirer series, he announced to reporters that the BRT members should simply quit.

No way, BRT members said. Led by a clearly irate Russell M. Nigro, a former state Supreme Court justice, board members called a rare news conference and said Nutter could get lost.

"I take it as a personal affront, quite frankly," Nigro said.

But at the same time, Nutter was getting signals that the BRT members weren't opposed to surrendering control over the assessment of property taxes.

First, the BRT had to solve the Foglia problem.

In truth, Foglia was executive director in name only; he had little to do with assessments, and a newly hired director of administrative services handled most of Foglia's old payroll duties.

But Foglia clung to the $98,300-a-year job, telling anyone who asked that he had no other social life, that the BRT workers were his family.

Given his friendship with Brady, there was little appetite to fire Foglia. The BRT members themselves have strong ties to the political system; they are selected by the city's judges in a closed-door process heavily influenced by Brady and, until his corruption arrest, former State Sen. Vincent J. Fumo.

Fumo's closest associate on the board, Joseph A. Russo, was fired by the judges in May after an inspector general's report found he abused his position by trying to interfere with an assessment at Fumo's request.

The position is still open.

As the summer wore on, Nigro called Brady.

"Hear me out," he told Brady. The BRT's troubles were "not going to get better." It would be best for everyone, Foglia included, if he just stepped down.

"You're right," Brady said to Nigro.

But nothing happened for weeks, as Foglia went in and out of the hospital. At least twice, Foglia was taken out of the BRT in an ambulance. In August, he put in his retirement papers, effective Sept. 11.

When Brady called Nutter to tell him the news, the mayor told him that he wanted control over BRT's operations.

"I told him . . . we would obviously need cooperation with the BRT in order to reach some kind of agreement," Nutter said.

Inside the agency, things were falling apart.

The BRT's acting chief assessor, Barry Mescolotto, was out most of August and September, either reporting sick or on family medical leave.

As assessors worked on the Actual Value project, an effort to fix the city's broken assessments, Mescolotto tried to supervise it from home on his BlackBerry.

Weeks turned to months and criticism mounted, but the BRT chairwoman, Charlesretta Meade, stayed silent.

By late August, Brady told Nutter he thought the BRT members were open to a deal. Nutter and his chief of staff met with several of them: Meade, Robert N.C. Nix III, Harvey Levin, and Alan K. Silberstein.

"They said they would talk about it among themselves," Nutter said, "But they clearly understood what the request was."

Drafts of the agreement went back and forth. The BRT first suggested the city Finance Department could take over for 90 days, to stabilize things. Nutter wanted six months, with another six possible.

That term was all right with the BRT. But Nigro said he bristled at some of the Nutter team's language.

"It makes it look like we reached out to him because we were desperate," he told Nix. "No way I'm going to go for that."

Nutter sent over another version of the agreement; the six board members discussed it at a private meeting. On Monday, three board members - the senior officers - signed it.

"Since he wanted to do it on an interim basis, it made it more palatable," Nigro said. "I said we don't want to run the tax assessments."

On Thursday, City Council introduced a bill to abolish the BRT and set up two agencies - one for assessments and the other for appeals. The measure, sponsored by Councilman Bill Green, would set professional standards.

But neither the Council bill nor the mayor's agreement touched the BRT's 80 patronage workers - who make up nearly half the agency's staff.

Reserved for party workers and their families, these jobs are bankrolled by the School District in an arrangement designed to avoid the city's ban on politicking by city workers.

The School Reform Commission, which pays $4 million a year for the workers, said it was time to take them off the payroll. But it left the decision in the hands of Council.

Many Council members have no problem with the patronage system. Green said those jobs could disappear in time.

"The problem is not the worker bees," he said. "The problem is the leadership."

Green said he's asking city attorneys if the deal is legal, since the BRT - a board subject to the state Sunshine Law - did not vote on it at a public meeting.

"I like the result, but I would like it to be done in the light of day," Green said.

With the deal, Nutter's finance director, Rob Dubow, will soon hire a full-time manager to supervise the BRT.

Nigro said he could live with the deal, but has his doubts about whether it's wise to let City Hall take over board appointments. He thinks the city judges should keep that role to provide a buffer between the people who generate tax money and the politicians who want to spend it.

"I think the city is looking for trouble," he said. "You're telling me they're not more in politics than the judges are? I mean, come on. This is crazy."

After all the criticism, Nigro said he was eager to see how well Nutter's people finish the new assessments - a project that will inevitably raise many homeowners' taxes and create a political firestorm.

"It really takes the pressure off the six of us," Nigro said, "so let him go do it."

To read The Inquirer's three-part series "Tax Travesty" and other recent articles on the Board of Revision of Taxes, and to look up the new and current values for nearly any city property, visit http://go.philly.com/brtEndText