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While a state law requiring licensing of massage therapists in Pennsylvania may have move human-trafficking victims out of the massage industry, City Councilwoman Blondell Reynolds Brown says that many of those victims are now working at so-far-unregulated touch-therapy facilities, advertising services such as reiki or acupressure. She introduced a bill today to close that loophole, which she says she came across during an investigation of human trafficking in Philadelphia.
Brown says the state regulations, which were enacted in 2008 and took full effect in January 2012, included exceptions for a broad range of services outside standard massage therapy. "I do not know how or why these exemptions were granted, but I can almost guarantee that they were not conceived of or implemented at the suggestion of a woman," she said in a statement.
Despite the expense of interest-rate swaps to Philly's city government and school district — estimated at more than $331 million — the city is still entangled with swaps from which critics say it would cost the city and school district $240 million to extricate itself. This morning, Philadelphia City Council passed a resolution urging the state legislature to prohibit municipalities in Pennsylvania from participating in swap deals.
Councilman Jim Kenney, who introduced the resolution, said this was an example of Council weighing in formally after its attempts at more subtle pressure on the issue failed. "We've been trying to get the administration to sue some these banks to get some of the money back or to waive the penalty fees for us to get out of these deals," Kenney said. Moreover, he added, "There has been some lobbying to exempt Philadelphia from the [statewide] ban" on using the financial vehicles.
Damon K. Roberts is probably best known as a candidate for Pennsylvania state Representative and Philadelphia City Council's Second District, having made three failed bids for various elected posts in the past several years. But Roberts' clients have apparently seen a different side of him: An attorney who fails to provide competent representation, misses filing deadlines, fails to return fees for incomplete work, doesn't return clients' calls, misinforms clients in order to collect further legal fees, and even, on one occasion, advises clients to engage in fraudulent conduct.
That's based on a petition submitted by Roberts and Pennsylvania's Office of Disciplinary Counsel to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court Disciplinary Board, which on March 28 agreed to suspend Roberts from legal practice for 30 months. "A thirty-month suspension is the appropriate quantum of discipline to be imposed to protect the public from this patently unfit practitioner," the petition concludes. Roberts did not return a call to his cell phone, where the outgoing voice-mail message still identifies him as "attorney Damon K. Roberts."
The admissions outlined in the 82-page petition describe Roberts making matters worse for clients who were already dealing with tough situations, including losing their homes. Take for example Thanimus Scott, who hired Roberts to help her stave off foreclosure. Roberts took a $1,500 deposit from Scott but missed numerous filing deadlines, then provided a false reason to the court about why a deadline was missed. "As a result of Respondent's failure to act with reasonable diligence, on July 23, 2010, Ms. Scott filed a bankruptcy petition to save her home … [and] incurred additional expenses, including interest, penalties, foreclosure fees and bankruptcy costs," the petition notes.
In another case, Roberts took a deposit from mother and son Sheila and Lawrence Murray to negotiate the prevention of their home's disposition by sheriff's sale — even after his paralegal informed him their house had already been sold at sheriff's sale that very morning. Roberts "instructed [the paralegal], "Don't tell her [Ms. Murray]. Wait until after she pays us." For the next two months, Roberts took no action on the case and did not "promptly discuss with Ms. Murray any options that might have been available to accomplish her objectives to stay in her house."
Either Philly's workers are one infirm bunch or there's waste somewhere in the city's workers' comp process, according to City Controller Alan Butkovitz, who released a report today claiming that the city's Risk Management Workers' Compensation Program cost Philly $54 million in 2011, up 26 percent from 2007, largely due to "excessive" use of physical therapy.
"The number of visits, and inherently the costs were staggering. Not only has this led to higher medical expenses, but also it has allowed employees to collect benefits under the Workers’ Compensation Program much longer than needed," Butkovitz said in a statement.
As we reported last week, Philadelphia residents who were set to be shifted into new City Council districts in a couple years are, thanks to a quiet maneuver by city lawmakers last month, under different representation as of yesterday. So how many people are impacted? Sarah Cordivano of @Mapadelphia figures that about 9.86 percent of the city, or 150,552 people will be making a move.
A weekly series of foul-mouthed investigations into empty lots, dead-ass proposals and other design phenomena in Philadelphia. Find more stories like this at Philaphilia.blogspot.com.
Lancaster Avenue gets no damn respect. This road was once a major thoroughfare — one of the most important single streets in early America. This surface lot that sits on its 3400 block sucks ass. Though the lot's days SHOULD be numbered, a small group of angry NIMBYs is determined to keep it a surface lot for the rest of time.
The land this lot sits on was purchased in 1765 by a collaboration between two of Robert Morris' most trusted underlings, Tench Francis, Jr. and Thomas Willing. They were both the trustafarian sons of wealthy British families that had come to Proto-America. Willing was mayor of Philadelphia at the time and would go on to be a member of the Continental Congress and the first president of the Bank of the United States. Francis was his buddy that he not only worked with, but was related to by marriage. The Willing-Francis family would hold on to the land well into the mid-1800s.
In the early 19th Century, the land this surface lot sits on was part of a village called Greenville. Unlike the other West Philly villages of the period, Greenville's name did not survive as the name of a current neighborhood. Though Greenville didn't really have a definitive boundary, the lot is in an area that was on the easternmost edge of it.
One of the reasons Greenville's name never survived is because it was notoriously shitty backwater boozefest of a village. Cattle drivers who were on their way to Philadelphia from points west used the area as a final rest stop before coming into town along the Lancaster Turnpike Road (aka Lancaster Avenue), America's first highway. They would park their cattle along the undeveloped parts alongside Lancaster Ave. and get wasted at taverns near what is now 38th, 39th and 40th Streets. The area the lot sits on was the shittiest part of this shitty area. Cattle drivers would only park their herds here if all the other spaces in the main part of Greenville were taken. Greenville was also home to the first African-American neighborhood in West Philadelphia. Some think that some current residents of the Bottom are descended from residents of ancient Greenville. A few of the old taverns that were a part of Greenville survived into the 1970s.
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I was walking through the City Hall SEPTA concourse a few days ago and saw this guy.
His sign reads: Capitol Hill, Ezekial 20:29, which, according to the online King James Bible is: "Then I said unto them, What is the high place where unto ye go? And the name thereof is called Bamah unto this day."
Guy's got a staff and some characters in a language I am not familiar with on his jacket.
I know I'm supposed to be the reporter here, but I was in a rush to catch my trolley and didn't have time to chat.
I think this means something about politicians turning away from God. Any Bible scholars out there have some insight?
Philly city government had a few surprises up its sleeve for April Fool's Day today — some more fun than others.
First, if you missed it this morning, Mayor’s Office of Transportation and Utilities called on Pig Iron Theater's School for Advanced Performance Training for some guerrilla-style traffic-safety advocacy, in the form of clowns directing rush-hour pedestrian, bike and vehicle traffic around City Hall. It was a one-morning-only affair modeled after Caracas, Venezuela's traffic mimes. From a statement: "The Mayor’s Office of Transportation and Utilities is reminding drivers, pedestrians and cyclists to not act like fools any day of the year. Each year about three dozen pedestrians lose their lives after being struck by cars, trucks and busses."
Less fun, but perhaps more important: City Council's surprise switch of representation — by speeding up the changes in councilmanic districts wrought by redistricting, originally set for 2016, to take effect today. As City Paper reported last week, Council quietly enacted a resolution to speed up relocation of district lines for the purposes of zoning, constituent services and pretty much everything else a person might contact his or her councilman for. Find your new Council district here.
Right-wing news outlets don't have much faith in the electoral process in Philadelphia. Thanks to Fox News, The Blaze and others, Philly has become known, in election season, as the home of the Black Panther who terrorizes voters stands respectfully outside a polling place and holds the door. And last November, bloggers likewise ate up a story about the presence of a mural depicting President Obama inside a polling place in a school in the city. The mural, which was not installed for the occasion of the election and in fact had been in place for at least three years, was covered up after a judge issued an injunction.
Election materials are already outlawed inside polling places. But, lest another group of students paint a mural of their president inside school property somewhere else in this city, Rep. Stan Saylor, a York County Republican, wants to make perfectly clear what's allowed. He's working to introduce a bill to stop such shenanigans. Here's his memo to fellow state House members:
The last few presidential elections were monumental and historical for numerous reasons. One reason we should not be so proud about is the blatant tide of voter intimidation that has taken shape here in Pennsylvania. Again this last election, polling centers in Pennsylvania made national headlines involving controversial voter intimidation methods. One of several controversies surfacing in Pennsylvania included the displaying of a 15-foot mural of a presidential candidate that included the candidate’s face, campaign slogan, and logos inside a polling place. Despite the initial reasons for the mural, its visible location in a polling place sends a definite bias to voters, and the appearance of not holding fair elections that are free of voter intimidation.
For this reason, I will be introducing legislation to protect citizens from the pressures of parties or campaigns when standing in line and casting their vote inside the polling centers. My legislation will amend Article V of the Pennsylvania Election Code to clearly indicate that polling places selected by the County Board must be free of all political material during any election. Under the bill, political material includes pamphlets, posters, signs, advertisements, photographs, painted or written material, or statements that identify or indicate a candidate. The term does not include materials presented by the Secretary of the Commonwealth.
Election material and electioneering inside the polling place are prohibited by state law. As was the incident of the mural, eventually an injunction was issued requiring poll workers to cover up the mural. Instead of covering the entire mural, poll workers covered only the candidate’s face with pieces of paper, leaving the candidate’s likeness, quotation, and campaign slogans clearly visible. My bill will make it clear that when polling places are used they are to be free from any type of persuasion or intimidation.
I hope you will consider joining me in support of this important legislation.
Philadelphia city government, which last year took over for the First Judicial District in paying court-appointed lawyers, has been considering how to reform that system, possibly by creating a single Office of Conflict Counsel that would handle the bulk of such cases. Now, there's a new wrinkle: A group of those lawyers has filed a petition with the state Supreme Court demanding that the court assume jurisdiction over their payment, which has long been criticized as both insufficient (to the point of being far below minimum wage) and chronically late. The lawyers are also asking the court to compel the First District to set up a long-promised panel to review lawyers' compensation on an annual basis.
The issue of inadequate pay for court-appointed counsel — who represent people who can't afford lawyers in criminal matters and certain civil matters, like if their parental rights are at risk of termination — made headlines in recent years, after defense attorney errors led to numerous capital cases being overturned by appellate courts. The Inquirer reported that only 30 lawyers in Philly now are willing and qualified to take on death-penalty cases for indigent clients because of the insufficient pay.
"The court-appointment system in Philadelphia is probably one of the worst in the country in terms of the amount of money that is paid to the lawyers that are on the [appointed-counsel] list, which of course raises an implication of ineffective counsel," says Mingo Stroeber, an attorney specializing in delinquency cases and one of the petitioners in the case. Stroeber had worked for the Defender Association before going into private practice and was "shocked" at the rock-bottom pay.
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