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05/10/2004 Council holds stupifying hearings on tax reform (Ed Goppelt)

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Citizens listen politely to their elected officials
2004/05/10 Joshua Vincent, Executive Director of the Henry George Foundation had this to say about the tax reform hearings:

"I left in disgust."

Vincent's organization sent this letter to 150,000 Philadelphians inviting them to attend the tax reform hearing. According to one Councilmember's estimate 1,200 ordinary citizens showed up for the hearing, only to be turned away by security guards strictly enforcing fire code limits on attendance. Vincent notes that when Council considered the stadium bills "there were union guys standing in the halls, standing in chambers" and wonders why the same courtesy was not extended to ordinary citizens many of whom lost a day's pay to attend the hearing.

Vincent felt that having been burned once ordinary citizens are unlikely to return: "They expected to be heard and seen and neither happened. I trusted the presence of thousands of people not sent by a union or paid by their employer would matter; that their voice would be heard by Council."

"The Land Tax would have been good for poor and working families. The Tax Reform package has become a business tax reform package."

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Citizen sign at Monday's Tax Reform hearing
2004/05/10 Compared to 2002's "Briefcase Brigade" where businessmen marched on City Hall demanding lower taxes, Monday's tax reform hearing was a politely boring affair. Council is considering 13 bills incorporating the recommendations of the Tax Reform Commission. The Commission spent a year grappling with how to provide both businesses and citizens with relief from the City's oppressive taxes. In broad strokes the proposed reforms would:

• Reduce the taxes that people and businesses pay on their income.
• Shift some of the tax burden on to the Real Estate tax.
• Reform the way the City assesses Real Estate taxes.

The Land Tax which would have reduced real estate taxes for all but the richest Philadelphians is now opposed by a majority of Councilmembers, reportedly done to death by the parking lot industry. Under the land tax parking lot operators would pay higher taxes.

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Stupifying Signs from Mayor's Press Office
2004/05/10 Visitors to City Council were greeted by about a half dozen of these drab signs. Could the Mayor's Press Secretary--a public relations pro who used to work as a television producer--have been unaware of how boring these signs were? This press release about tax reform shows the press office can make a snappy presentation when it wants to, in this case when addressing the local media.

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Mayoral bigwigs: Philadelphia can't afford tax reform
2004/05/10 From left to right are the Mayor's Chief-of-staff Joyce Wilkerson, his finance director Janice Davis and Managing Director Phil Goldsmith.

Publicly the Mayor say sthat he supports "responsible tax reform." Someone who didn't know better might conclude that the Mayor considers the legislation from the Tax Reform Commission to be irresponsible. This would be an odd conclusion indeed. The fifteen member commission spent the better part of a year carefully weighing alternatives and was composed of accomplished citizens, many of them friendly to the Mayor.

In January the Mayor proposed pumping $500 million into a government led effort to redevelop the waterfront, but Administration officials argued Monday that the City could not afford most of the tax reforms under consideration by Council. To date the Administration has yet to propose an credible alternative to the City's crushing taxes other than "we can't afford it."

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Councilman Wilson Goode Jr. does a slow burn
2004/05/10 It's fun to watch Councilman Goode do a slow burn when someone from the Administration tries to slip a whopper past Council. On Monday Goode questioned the Administration's oft repeated claim that the City couldn't afford tax reform.

Goode: "The 1st year of tax reform would cost $17 million. Isn't the cost of tax reform about the same as the City's forgoing its PGW payment ($18 million)? The Administration has said if we do tax reform there might be layoffs, but there was no talk of layoffs about forgoing the PGW payment."

Chief of Staff Joyce Wilkerson: "Tax reform might well cause layoffs."

Goode: "Can you get your answer straight and give me a yes or no? Is foregoing the PGW payment comparable to tax reform?"

Wilkerson: "Yes."

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City Controller Jonathan Saidel: "They're talking tax reform to death"
2004/05/10 As Administration big-wigs listed the reasons why most of the tax reform bills would never work, Saidel paced at the back of Chambers.

"They should let the public speak first. We (city officials) can come back anytime. It's like the old Soviet Union. They're talking it [tax reform] to death."

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Brett Mandel watches Council go through the motions
2004/05/10 Mandel is leading the public campaign to get the tax reform bills enacted. He heads a new non-profit founded for that purpose, Philadelphia Forward and was the architect of the City Controller's 2001 "Tax Structure Analysis" Report calling for tax reform.

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Citizens safely behind glass
2004/05/10 As part of the recent renovations to Council Chambers, the upper balconies are now encased in glass, presumably to stop disgruntled citizens from raining objects onto the heads of their elected representatives.

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What's more important: parking or tax reform?
2004/05/10 Signs calling for more and/or cheaper parking were more numerous than those calling for tax reform. According to a source, many of those lobbying for a reduction in the parking tax wore the logo of a local parking lot company.

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2004/05/10

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2004/05/10