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HALL MONITOR: Bye bye Clerk of Quarter Sessions, Marcellus Shale studies and BPT reform
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HALL MONITOR: Bye bye Clerk of Quarter Sessions, Marcellus Shale studies and BPT reform
We go to City Council meetings so you don't have to.
As far as Council meetings go, this was a fairly enthralling one, so let's just cut to the chase, shall we? But first, our weekly attendance record: Councilwoman Joan Krajewski wasn't at the meeting. Everyone else was. Moving right along …
- The bill abolishing the Office of the Clerk of Quarter Sessions — and transferring all of its duties to the First Judicial District — passed unanimously. Congrats, Committee of Seventy. Now just three more row offices to go, y'all.
- Councilwoman Maria Quiñones-Sánchez introduced a bill that would reform the city's long-criticized business privilege tax: It would raise the gross receipts tax and eventually kill the net income tax. (It would also add a tax credit to fresh food retailers to "address the problem of 'fresh food' deserts," says Sánchez in a press release.) According to co-sponsor Councilman Bill Green, this will remove the "disincentive for businesses" — especially small businesses — "to locate to Philadelphia." This, of course, differs from Mayor Nutter's plan kill the gross receipts tax and lower the net income tax by 6 percent. Should make for an interesting showdown. You can check out a copy of the bill here. (For an easier — though longer — read, here's a PowerPoint on the bill from Sánchez and Green's offices.)
- Also, in Nutter/Council showdown news, the deeds bill that aims to prevent property theft passed, with everyone voting in favor except for Councilman Brian O'Neill, who abstained from the vote.
- And finally, Council passed a resolution to call on the Delaware River Basin Commission to enact a three-year moratorium on Marcellus Shale drilling and create a Marcellus Shale Study Commission to assess its environmental impact. If elected, gubernatorial candidate Tom Corbett vows to place a moratorium on all such moratoriums.
I'm glad council is finally taking on tax reform, which is something we were promised nearly three years ago now. But it also seems that the plan is to just shuffle around the numbers to impress an illusion, the way a middle-schooler rearranges 10 words from a wikipedia entry to pretend that he's not plagiarizing. Part of the onerousness of Philly's tax code is the gross receipt portion of the tax, which—if I understand correctly—is actually part of the BPT. So they may be going away with the business receipts portion, but not the gross receipts tax. In fact, I'm not sure why you would raise gross receipts—which taxes businesses even when they lose money—and kill net income. I'd be curious to see a financial analysis about it, but that's wishful thinking. Jesus, I'm becoming ChangePhilly.
[...] Now that the Clerk of Quarter Sessions has been abolished, Krajewski's bill that would transfer all of CQS' funds for 2011 to the First Judicial District is [...]
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