Street Beat?

When John Street’s administration brought out its budget, finance and commerce directors to testify on behalf of the mayor’s tax proposal Monday, the hope was to keep the debate focused on the numbers. Street has maintained that the city can only afford $170 million in tax relief by 2007, not the additional cut called for in Councilmen Michael Nutter and Frank DiCicco’s Bill No. 92, which would cost the city $120 million more in wage-tax revenue by 2007.

As Councilman Rick Mariano reminded the first witness of the day, "We're not all CPAs."

Not that anyone needed a reminder when Councilman Jim Kenney took his turn grilling the administration's number crunchers. Kenney moved beyond the "can we or can't we afford it" debate and used the hearing as an opportunity to attack the administration on issues across the board. Kenney, whose name is often floated as a potential challenger to Street, had grown a goatee lending him a touch of radical chic.

"The deck chairs have been rearranged," he said, comparing the city under Mayor Street to the Titanic.

Kenney suggested that the current administration has no real plan to reverse the city's decline in jobs and population, while administration officials dismissed the picture of Mayor Street fiddling while Philadelphia is burning.

"We are holding our own when it comes to attracting and retaining business," Commerce Director Jim Cuorato told the councilman.

Kenney went on to criticize the mayor's beloved anti-blight program as treating the symptoms of urban decline but ignoring the disease. "What came first, the flight or the blight?" Kenney asked.

Cuorato countered, "I don't think the tax structure per se is driving people out of Philadelphia," suggesting that making neighborhoods more attractive may entice people to move in.

Without reversing the downward trends, Kenney said the city would end up with more and more needy residents and fewer and fewer taxpayers capable of supporting them.

Kenney believes that if Bill 92 passes, the administration will trim city government because it will have to. Otherwise, the city payroll will continue to increase, as, Kenney pointed out, it has under Mayor Street.

It seemed the stars were all aligned in Philadelphia as wage-tax opponents steamrolled Mayor Streets opposition to Bill 92 -- and it seemed the wonks were all aligned too. Study after study called for reducing the wage tax, but one policy analyst wasn’t on the tax-cutting bandwagon.

Ed Schwartz, president of the Institute for the Study of Civic Values and a former member of City Council, thought the wage-tax slashers were putting the cart before the horse -- cutting taxes without specifying which services would have to be cut to pay for it.

Bill 92's backers were split over the issue. Some denied that the tax cut would reduce revenues. Others, like Kenney, said the tax cut would force the administration to find the waste and eliminate it.

Schwartz calls the supply-side analysis "Reaganomics." Instead of denying that the city will have to make do with less, Schwartz says a responsible debate would focus on what would be cut.

"As long as people think you can cut costs without sacrificing quality [of city services] it would be insane not to cut," Schwartz says. But that's not the reality. If the issue were fairly presented to Philadelphians, Schwartz muses, "maybe the public would be happier to have lower taxes and put up with some sacrifices."

Schwartz says he understands that the wage tax deters businesses from opening up shop in the city. Acknowledging that wage-tax reductions will happen, Schwartz says, "let's take a careful look at how to restructure the wage tax and do it right," suggesting that it might be worth issuing bonds to make up for the initial shortfall. In the meantime, the city needs to "upgrade the workforce" through education and computer training and link city residents to suburban jobs with improved public transportation.

With Councilwoman Blondell Reynolds Brown moving from the mayor’s camp to leaning in favor of Bill 92, the Thacher factor appears to be neutralized. Councilman Thacher Longstreth, a co-sponsor of the wage-tax-cutting Bill 92, began to waver in his support after the mayor came out swinging. Last Wednesday, while Longstreth was in holiday, his legislative assistant Christopher Wright explained that the octogenarian councilman put his name on the bill to indicate that he wanted to see the measure debated, but not necessarily passed.

"He's concerned that the administration is saying that we cannot afford this," Wright said. "He just wants to have this debate aired out."

The councilman got his wish Monday as contentious wage-tax hearings got under way when three top Street administration finance wizards took the witness stand. The only problem was that Longstreth wasn't present. He was on vacation in Europe. Earlier that morning, an angry Frank DiCicco told a rally in front of City Hall that "Thacher's gotta get on a plane and get off the cruise ship!"

Longstreth staffer Henry Rawls insisted that the staff is in constant contact with the councilman and that Longstreth will be back in town to vote on the bill if the mayor vetoes it.

As for the contention that the councilman was waiting to hear the administration position, Rawls said staffers "wrote up a synopsis" of the testimony and faxed it to him. In the meantime, Longstreth continues to give new meaning to his title, Councilman at Large.

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