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Nutter discovering that it's hard to pass an emergency tax when the emergency keeps changing
Mayor Nutter, as you've hopefully heard by now, has re-proposed a tax on sweetened beverages - the so-called "soda tax," - to raise money (somewhere between $60 and $80m annually) for the Philadelphia School District, which faces a GIGANTIC $629 million budget shortfall - a hole that undoubtedly represents an emergency for the District and Philadelphia children. The emergency is real: but the evidence that the mayor's proposed tax will do much to solve it is less clear.
Nutter discovering that it's hard to pass an emergency tax when the emergency keeps changing
Mayor Nutter, as you've hopefully heard by now, has re-proposed a tax on sweetened beverages — the so-called "soda tax," — to raise money (somewhere between $60 and $80m annually) for the Philadelphia School District, which faces a GIGANTIC $629 million budget shortfall — a hole that undoubtedly represents an emergency for the District and Philadelphia children.
The emergency is real: but the evidence that the mayor's proposed tax will do much to solve it is less clear.
The beverage bill was introduced by the mayor as the solution to an announcement by School District superintendent Arlene Ackerman [Yes, I accidentally wrote 'Axeman' in a previous draft; that was a spell-check error, and not an intentional jibe at Dr. Ackerman] that she'd have to cut full-day kindergarten if the District couldn't get more money — like from, say, the city.
The problem is that the narrative — that this tax will pull the district from the brink of doom — isn't adding up very tidily. First, Ackerman restored kindergarten herself, overnight, without any additional funding.
But then, in budget hearins over the last two weeks, Ackerman also revealed that other serious cuts — notably a move to bring some 2,000 at-risk students in "accelerated" non-district schools into "in-house" programs — come while the District is expanding other programs, like so-called "Promise Academies," a key part of her Imagine 2014 plan for the District.
What's more, Ackerman's case for the extra funding from the city hasn't been particularly detailed: a number of about $50 million was being bandied about before the $100 million request materialized. During budget hearings, a little prodding by Council members (notably, Councilman Bill Green and Councilwoman Maria Quionones-Sanchez) revealed that a few accounting tricks solved much of the District's supposed $50 million transportation problem — a victory for the kids, but one which made some members of Council question how carefully Ackerman and her team had gone through their own budget before coming to the city for funding.
Take those doubts, add widespread criticism of Ackerman's leadership, and then add mix in a popular reception to the beverage tax that's been lukewarm at best (and, in many corners, reviled) and you don't exactly get the Beverage bonanza Nutter needs to pass this thing.
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