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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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Today's City Paper includes an in-depth look at how Comcast flexes its political muscle at all levels of government, from City Council to Pennsylvania’s General Assembly to the U.S. Congress.
The company declined interview requests and asked CP to submit written questions, which we did last week. On Monday, we were still waiting, and so I called Comcast corporate communications executive director John Demming to check in — would they be responding to the questions they asked me to send them?
"I don't think so," Demming told me. Then why did you ask me to submit written questions? "Yeah, but I don't think we're going to be able to. We wanted to see what your story was about. We just, there's no need to reply. We don't have a comment. I just don't think, we're just not going, we don't have a response to them. I don't know if ... I don't know what to say."
Penn
's non-unionized dining workers will be demonstrating alongside students today in protest of what they say are unjust working conditions. Penn Student Labor Action Project (SLAP) will organize a rally at 11:45 a.m. at Penn's College Green, demanding wage and benefits parity with unionized dining hall workers.
The “Justice on the Menu” campaign, which also seeks to provide non-unionized workers with paid sick leave comparable to their unionized counterparts, has been under way for a year, says Penn SLAP spokesperson Penny Jennewein. Most of the Penn dining workers who are seeking wage increases work for a subcontractor, Bon Appetit Management Co., and at a dining hall at Penn Hillel.
The federal law known as HIPAA (The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) is meant to, among other things, protect patients' privacy, but in Justin Wolfe's case, it may have cost him his life. That's how Justin's father, Gregg Wolfe sees it. Justin, a 21-year-old Temple University student, died of a heroin overdose in December 2012. Though Justin had acknowledged his heroin addiction to two different physicians and an addiction counselor as early as April 2012, his parents didn't learn that their son was using heroin until after his death.
Now, Gregg Wolfe, of Voorhees, is advocating to change the HIPAA rules to allow health-care professionals to share information regarding mental-health disorders and addiction with parents of children through age 26. "Because of the fact that we, as parents, take care of our children until they're 26 as far as health insurance, we should be apprised if there's addictive behavior so that we can get them help."
Wolfe found out last year that his son had been using Percocet and Oxycontin, after Justin's mother had learned of the problem and helped him to access treatment that involved the drug Suboxone. "I learned about this a couple months later," Gregg said. "Nobody wanted to tell me because my son and I were very close, and he thought it would kill me."
Gregg tried to do the right thing: restricting his son's cash flow, making sure that he had access to treatment, and urging him to go into an in-patient treatment program. But his son couldn't be compelled to go into treatment, since he was 21 years old. And Gregg didn't know what he was up against, he said. "[Justin] had no needle marks, and he showed no major signs of using anything other than what he was using. … Parents have no clue that you can snort heroin." Gregg said he tried to engage his son's doctors and intake counselors in conversation, "but no matter how much I pushed to find out, I was not apprised because of his age."
In today's City Council budget hearings, Council members took an early diversion from talking about the actual budget to embrace their chance, at last, to interrogate the city's property assessment team, Finance Director Rob Dubow and Chief Assessor Richie McKeithen, about the citywide property tax reassessments known as the Actual Value Initiative or AVI. Among the questions asked: Why have Office of Property Assessment (OPA) officials failed to show up at certain community meetings, specifically those in Councilwoman Jannie Blackwell's Third District in West Philly?
Council President Darrell Clarke asked the question bluntly: "Is there an official policy about the third councilmanic district?"
Word on Reddit and Philadelphia Speaks is that a longtime South Street fixture "Viking Helmet Norm" passed away this past Friday and was honored with a candlelight vigil. Norm is being remembered as both a classic Philly character and an incorrigible bike thief, burglar and possible drug distributor.
From the discussion:
"He was found dumping a bicycle into a back alley in society hill (a forgotten alley that had a solid metal gate) which had over 50 bicycles, ALL stolen. Remember that crazy "epidemic" everyone was so concerned about summer '12 when bicycles around the South Street area were being stolen constantly? That was him, single handed. He would then sell the bicycles to other hobo's in the area for favors, drugs or straight cash so he can get hammered on the street and vandalize people's parked vehicles.
He was arrested in late winter of '10 for PWID and the judge gave him some load of probation, instead of a jail sentence, primarily because he was "too old" and the judge felt sorry for him. Wish the judge looked at his 30+ priors over the last 40 years."
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.
You think Philly's Delaware Riverfront is development-cursed? Check out Camden's. Camden's waterfront has many development-driving advantages over Philadelphia's. There's no gigantic interstate highway running alongside it, the real estate is much more abundant (and much less expensive), and the view of Philadelpia's skyline from Camden is about 10,000 times better than the reverse. Despite all that, Camden's waterfront has been through just as many goofy waterfront proposals as Philly's in the last 30 years. This is the story of one that was pretty certain to happen until it all went to shit.
Back in 1983, when Camden first committed itself to redeveloping its waterfront as a mixed-use attraction, one of the first things ever mentioned was a new highrise that would become home to the city's most popular native company, Campbell's Soup. Campbell's spent the next seven years attempting to develop their own $50-60 million waterfront building, but failed miserably due to the fact that the business was getting its ass kicked during that period. In March 1990 they announced that they would instead lease space in the first building of a complex called the River's Edge Corporate Center.
This new business center was being developed by DKM Properties of Lawrenceville, New Jersey and was first announced around the same time as the original Campbell's plan, but didn't make any progress until 1990. It was to consist of over 700,000 square feet of office space in three buildings on a 13-acre site. The first phase was to be a 14-story, 275,000 square foot, $36 million office building that would stand right near the water just north of the new New Jersey State Aquarium, which was under construction at the time. Campbell's signed a 10-year lease deal for 125,000 square feet of the new tower while the State of New Jersey committed to 10 years in another 50,000 square feet. The New Jersey Department of Treasury was to move into the space.
City Paper has won nine awards in the Professional Keystone Press Awards for writing, photography and design that was published during the 2012 calendar year. The categories and winners are:
Investigative Reporting: 2nd Place, Isaiah Thompson, for his cover story about how the D.A. seizes millions in alleged crime money, regardless of whther a crime has been committed.
Column: 2nd Place, Daniel Denvir, for three of his "Hostile Witness" columns.
Feature Story: 2nd Place, Emily Guendelsberger, for her story about the revived the 215 Festival.
Personality Profile: Honorable Mention, Drew Lazor, for his profile of chef Chris Kearse.
Business/Consumer Story: 2nd Place, Samantha Melamed, for her story about social-enterprise businesses.
Feature Beat Reporting: 1st Place, Shaun Brady, for three music stories
Photo Story: 2nd Place, Neal Santos, for his photographs of underground pool leagues.
Page Design: 1st Place, editorial art director Reseca Peskin and editorial designer Matt Egger.
Graphic/Photo Illustration: 2nd Place, Evan M. Lopez, for his illustrations for our Halloween issue.
Click on the links to check out our award-winning work!
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