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The Secret Life of Budget Director Stephen Agostini: Data-slayer
The Web site for the award-winning alternative weekly, the Philadelphia City Paper.
The Secret Life of Budget Director Stephen Agostini: Data-slayer
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| Does he dream of BRT data sheep? |
A new and likely-doomed blog series, in which I fuss — about the city budget. Oh yeah.
What, exactly does Budget Director Stephen Agostini do? The budget, of course — as evidenced by the hours and hours he spends sitting in on Council's budget hearings, ever-ready with reams of numbers and answers to obscure fiscal questions.
But what else does he do, eh?
The answer, apparently, is: a lot.
A recent visit to Mr. Agostini's office confirms that the man is not only in charge of the budget, but also of overseeing stimulus spending and, the great glorious crown of municipal drudgery: fixing the lousy Board of Revision of Taxes data.
Quietly, and even amid the budget hearings, Agostini is leading a small group of people who meet every week, for "about 4 or 5 hours" to discuss the latest in efforts to repair what appears to be a city-wide data crisis.
According to Agostini, the problem has grown far beyond the BRT, since various city departments — among them Water Revenue, Streets, Revenue, Records, L&I, and the Water Department — have been relying on (bad) BRT figures, thereby creating even more sets of useless data. (As one source deep in the bureaucracy put it, "It's so bad.")
He estimates it'll take a year to 18 months to get it all fixed.
Why has such a task fallen on a man ostensibly busy with the budget?
"Why this fell to me is because I started working on it a year ago," he told me, shrugging.
You have an answer for everything. Go Citypaper go.
Dear Kenneth, Mr. Agostini was given the opportunity to provide his own photo for this blog post, and advised that I'd have to scour the internet otherwise. When Mr. Agostini replied – very politely, I might add - that I should go ahead and dig one up, I Google-Imaged the man and found this photo, which is, after all, his public Facebook profile. All that being said, I think it's a rather charming shot, don't you? Isaiah
you used his facebook photo?
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