DN Editorial: Put a hold on holds

ARE MEMBERS of City Council elected to serve the interests of neighborhoods and citizens, or as mini-emperors whose job it is to amass enough power and favors to hold sway over how their districts take shape? The answer is, probably a little of both. Sometimes, though, those emperor costumes get left on a little too long.

Witness the practice that allows Council members to have power over development in their districts to a degree that they can hold up legislation indefinitely - and answer to no one as to why.

Council people can put holds on the legislation required for projects to move forward for any reason: because they favor one developer over another, to extract tribute money from developers for civic groups. They can put dozens of projects on hold simultaneously, choking off all development in their districts.

Because this councilmanic prerogative doesn't exist in law or code, the hold cannot be governed by any outside authority - not the courts, not the mayor, not the city's Ethics Board.

Nor are Council members anxious to regulate the practice themselves. It's the root of their power.

That's why we have problems with Council President Darrell Clarke's proposal for getting money to the school district: In exchange for $50 million, he wants the district to hand over the school buildings it has closed for the city to sell.

Once the buildings are in the hands of the city, legislation will be required to finalize the sales. The fate of each building, then, will be subject to councilmanic prerogative, not to the best interests of the city as a whole.

Will Council members use the hold to steer favored developers to certain buildings? Will they extract patronage and other concessions? Will they seek to use the hold to extract tribute money from the buyers?

We don't know, because Council members are not required to divulge the reasons behind the hold, nor even the fact that a project has been held.

According to a report in the Daily News, Councilwoman Jannie Blackwell has a hold on 43 projects in her district, and has threatened to wage war with Drexel University over one project unless it restores a $300,000 annual grant to a civic group run by one of her allies.

The Mantua Community Improvement Committee (MCIC) got grants from the school to hire residents to clean up the neighborhood. The problem was, the group never kept adequate records of how the money was spent. Drexel cut them off.

But, Drexel also wants to bid on the closed University City High School, and Blackwell has threatened to use that as a wedge to get the money back to MCIC.

Council should abandon this antique practice. At the very least, it should shed light on it: make public the list of projects held, disclose how long they have been on hold and state the reasons why the hold was placed. And state those reasons on the floor of Council, for the official record.

Gov. Corbett announced yesterday that the state will release $45 million for the schools. Now, the city should resolve its own funding strategy, but leave the school buildings in the school district's hands.