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.
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