Monica Yant Kinney: 'People's Budget'? Nice try . . .

After listening to Mayor Nutter's budget address last week, I was reminded that every budget is like a play that undergoes rewrites immediately after the first performance.

The first draft is always the most dramatic, and this year the star, faced with a looming crisis, found strength after stumbling.

Had Nutter not made such a rookie move in the fall - trying to close 11 library branches - he would never have been beaten up for it.

Had the mayor not been savaged by folks who cherish libraries as sacred spaces amid blight and crime, he would never have gone on an apology tour.

When he did, residents gathered in rec centers and dining rooms to tell him what they need from city government - and what they loathe about it - and he won back some political capital he'd blown.

The result? The cleverly named $3.84 billion "People's Budget," which would give citizens the services they said they wanted but at a cost - steep hikes in property and sales taxes.

And since "shared sacrifice" has a ring to it, the People's Budget also seeks to slim down a bloated bureaucracy and make other elected officials feel the burn.

The heckling began Thursday as Nutter took the stage in City Council chambers, with a dozen Service Employees International Union members holding up signs reading, "Mayor Nutter says cut back. We say fight back."

It was no secret that Nutter planned to use the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression to shake up the system.

He'd be a fool not to. If you're forced to take the blame for raising taxes on homeowners already struggling to pay their mortgages, why not try to make amends by becoming the reformer they elected?

"It's time for leaders to lead," Nutter vowed, "not follow the screaming masses."

By lead, the mayor means going after the pay, pensions, and benefits of the screaming masses, er, the 23,197 city workers. He even asked civil-service employees to take a one-day unpaid furlough - a largely symbolic gesture that would save the city a mere $4.1 million.

It's hard to say which part of the monologue aggravated union members most, but the furlough line did elicit pained shrieks of "No! No! NO!" from the balcony.

Definitely improvised.

Meanwhile, behind their desks, Council members were clutching the keys to their city-issued sedans the way Charlton Heston used to grip his guns.

Sacrifice is nice shared thrice.

If Nutter is risking his hide hiking taxes and trying to wiggle out of paying new hires a pension, I guess he figured he might as well take on his old pals on Council, too.

He'd like them to give up the free rides and the spoils from the DROP pension program. Ending the perks wouldn't close the budget gap, but would appease ticked-off taxpayers.

"I think," Joan Krajewski complained, "it's unfair to keep picking on Council."

What she sees as fair is collecting $275,000 from DROP, a program designed to retain key city workers. She retired for a day and then returned to a six-figure salary behind the wheel of her city-issued 2003 Taurus.

Council members Frank DiCicco, Frank Rizzo, Marian Tasco, Anna Verna, Donna Miller, and Jack Kelly will also leave office with a wad of DROP cash. All of them but DiCicco drive city cars.

The only comic relief in Nutter's 45-minute monologue came after a woman shouted "What about the trash?" so many times that an irritated Nutter hollered back, "We're going to pick it up."

Talk is cheap, said Tracey Gordon, a Southwest Philadelphia block captain, who wasn't amused.

"I don't mind higher taxes if it will get my neighborhood looking better," she told me afterward, "but right now it's a dirty mess."

She did agree with Nutter on the budget drama's central conflict.

"We are," Gordon said, "in a state of emergency."