DN Editorial: Is city flush again?

IS THE CITY nearing the end of our long fiscal nightmare? As Mayor Nutter puts the finishing touches on the final budget of his first term, city revenues finally appear to be stabilizing. That's a big change from the past few years, when the national recession caused tax collections to fall off a cliff.

According to a monthly update from the Pennsylvania Intergovernmental Cooperation Authorit (PICA), the city has collected more than $1 billion in tax revenue in the past seven months. That's an increase of 11.3 percent since the previous fiscal year. About half of that is because of last year's sales-tax hike, but collections for the wage tax and real-estate transfer tax showed growth as well.

For the past three years, the budget crisis has meant that city government has basically been stuck in survival mode. We're looking forward to seeing Nutter's plan for governing when the budget has stabilized.

The increase in tax revenue also means that the prolonged recession might finally be ending, meaning businesses will start hiring again and the thousands of Philadelphians who are unemployed can get back to work. More than anything Nutter's budget can do, that's the key to Philadelphia's economic recovery. *