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As debate over raising the federal mininum wage begins in Washington, a bill, applying the city's "21st Century Minimum Wage and Benefits Standard" to airport workers and others employed by companies that have concessions or leases from the city, passed out of City Council committee this morning. The living wage standard is $10.88 per hour; many airport workers make the minimum wage of $7.25 per hour or less.
The Mayor's office is supporting the bill, and no one from the airport showed up to speak against it or suggest that it would lead to a loss of jobs, a common argument against minimum-wage hikes. Supporting the bill were airport workers rounded up by Fight for Philly to put a face on what they're calling "poverty wages."
"I work fulltime, but I'm hungry," Tara Russell told the committee. Russell has been working as a wheelchair attendant at the airport for four years and still makes $6 per hour. Theoretically, she also works for tips, but "the last two weeks, I got nothing. ... So how do I survive? I don't. I borrow $20 here and $20 there. I get $300 in food stamps but I'm broke." She told Council: Please make sure that no one at the airport goes hungry working fulltime."
Philly City Council members — and residents at large — are only beginning to absorb what the full impact of new property tax assessment figures released by the city on Friday will mean in Philadelphia's neighborhoods. But Councilman Jim Kenney is upset enough by the numbers that he's promising to take on the administration to ensure residents don't get driven out of their homes, which he now sees as very real possibility. "We're looking at everything from legislation to suing. I'm not just going to turn my back on these people after all these years. ... We're exploring every possibility and it will be a militant effort."
Kenney and Councilman Mark Squilla are planning to educate and organize residents about the new assessments, which were generated as part of the Actual Value Initiative (AVI).He says that will probably include "busing in whole entire streets at the same time" to submit appeals. Kenney says he's also heard that Councilman Kenyatta Johnson, Councilman Bobby Henon, Councilwoman Cindy Bass and Council President Darrell Clarke share some concerns about the assessments' impacts on poor and working-class neighborhoods from Port Richmond to Whitman. Squilla told the Daily News the assessments were unfair, and he'll be challenging their accuracy. How he'll be able to do that through legislation is unclear.
Kenney also wasn't sure yet about the legal grounds for suing the city over the assessments. (Individual homeowners do have a couple ways to appeal their assessments.) But he said Council is not out of options: Possiblities include looking to roll back the "temporary" tax increases that Council made permanent last year, or forcing the administration's hand by refusing to match its revenue goals. "If I can't get any cooperative relief, I'm not voting for anything over 1.0-percent millage rate," he said.
Most people who dislike bandit signs — those ugly and illegal posters urging passersby by to sell their house, hire a roofer, or enjoy cheap diabetes meds based on ads stuck to utility poles and fences around Philly — simply tear them down. Huggie has a different idea: he coopts the messages for his own twisted, artistic purposes. The latest — a take on the ubiquitous "I will buy your house in 10 seconds. Those other guys won't" signs — is an homage to Philly's Actual Value Initiative. (OK, so it's been several years in the making, not 10 seconds, but we'll let it slide this time, Huggie.)
More such hijinks are at GorillaUpskirts.com, where "ads" for other offerings do include fliers for "gorilla upskirts."
If you own a home in Philadelphia, you've probably already looked up your property tax assessment (and maybe those of your neighbors) on the city's new tax-assessment look-up service and AVI calculator, released on Friday. But what does the landscape look like for the city as a whole? Where are the winners and losers under the Actual Value Initiative? AxisPhilly's mapping gurus have released a map that shows just where the changes will have the most impact. Seeing the massive numbers of homes in, for example, poor neighborhoods of North Philly that are facing 400-percent-plus tax increases is one way to understand what's at stake here.
Fair warning: Don't click through unless you have time to get sucked in by the strangeness that is Philly property values.
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A pornstar named "Xotic Esmeralda" tweeted to a horny follower named "Avi" using "#avi," unintentionally bombarding a twitter discussion of the Actual Value Initiative with giant boobs and bringing much needed levity to the subject. This image has been made safe for work with the help of Mayor Nutter and Finance Director Rob Dubow.
Apologies to City Paper alum Holly Otterbein for being the last person we follow to bring insight to the AVI process before it became hilarious in a high school kind of way.
Adults are urging people who are still interested in tax policy and not just furiously masturbating because they saw a breast on the internet to use #phlavi from now on.
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John McDaniel, the former city employee/political operative/fraudster, plead guilty yesterday for stealing $103,000 from a PAC he controlled, and then fudging disclosure forms to cover his tracks. Speculation is rampant that the former campaign manager for City Councilwoman Blondell Reynolds Brown will cooperate with federal authorities in exchange for a reduced sentence, as part of a larger FBI probe into the wheeling and dealing of Congressman Chaka Fattah's son, Chip Fattah. What incriminating information McDaniel has remains a mystery for now.
But the greater mystery is McDaniel himself. The man who held cushy patronage jobs under mayors Nutter and Street has proven an elusive figure. Throughout a political scandal centered around his actions, his personality and the reasons for his extraordinarily favorable treatment by city politicians remaining unclear. Aside from apparently cozy relationships with politicians like Nutter and Brown, both of whom reside in the same Overbrook/Wynnfield area as McDaniel, the self-described political consultant's only other major tie to local power structures has been to a local chapter of the Laborers International Union of North America (LIUNA).
A minimum wage of $7.25 an hour in Philadelphia is just not enough to live on, workers told acting Secretary of Labor Seth Harris at Philly AFL-CIO offices today. Organized with help from the Philly Unemployment Project, a group of women — and 60 percent of minimum-wage earners are women, Harris noted — described choicing between various utility payments, food and shelter, bunking with family members and going winters without heat.
Harris was in town to gather support for President Obama's push to increase the minimum wage to $9 per hour and to index it to the cost of living, an initiative the president announced in his State of the Union address on Tuesday. "That would be a 24-percent pay increase for some of the hardest-working and lowest-paid people in American society," Harris said.
Cheryl Henderson, a baggage handler at the airport who has been making $7.25 for three years, said she and her son could get a place of their own, instead of crashing with family, if she could take home anextra $1.75 per hour. Tracy Mulvehill called her old minimum-wage job at Parx Racetrack "degrading." And Jessica Nuñez said her life as a minimum-wage worker with two jobs is filled with constant choices: "Do I want to feed my kid? Do i want my kid to have school supplies? … Do I want him to have a roof over his head?"
This week, Gov. Corbett announced the year's first round of Redevelopment Assistance Capital Program grants (RACP). A number of Philly entities — all but one of them nonprofit or public institutions — cashed in for anywhere from $500,000 to $5 million. Also receiving the state's largesse: An offshoot of Sunoco, a company that was recently named in a study as one of the Pennsylvania biggest tax-dodgers.
The RACP round included $5 million for a new art-handling facility for the Philadelphia Museum of Art, $500,000 for the Enterprise Center CDC's open but half-vacant Culinary Enterprise Center, $1.3 million for the zoo, $3 million for a parking garage and ambulatory care center at CHoP, $2.5 million for a University of the Sciences technology center, $1 million for a clinical learning center at PCOM — and $5 million for Philadelphia Energy Solutions (PES).
PES is, of course, the joint venture between Sunoco and the Carlyle Group, which is using the money to help refurbish the Philly refinery's catalytic cracker unit. They plan to invest $200 million in the plant, but are also supposed to be getting a promised $25 million in state grants plus "the possibility of a tax-free zone."
Sunoco is, of course, one of the top three companies in Pennsylvania when it comes to exploiting state tax loopholes by offshoring, according to a recent report by PennPIRG. Such loopholes cost Pennsylvania an estimated $2.1 billion a year.
Meanwhile, Philadelphia Authority for Industrial Development is getting $4 million to develop its Central Green, pictured below, in the Navy Yard.
Ah, love. It can be co-opted for so many causes. This morning, Philly paid-sick-day proponents are urging City Council to show some love to the paid-sick-day legislation introduced by Councilman Bill Greenlee.
Philadelphia Coalition for Healthy Family and Workplaces and PathWays PA organized the delivery of postcards, letters and petitions to City Council offices at 11 a.m. today. Per the press release: "On Valentine’s Day, Philadelphians will show their love for the Healthy Families and Workplaces Bill, which currently awaits a hearing in City Council. Many Philadelphians, including constituents of Councilman Mark Squilla and Councilman Bobby Henon, will visit City Hall to hand deliver over one thousand signed letters, postcards, and petition signatures urging support and passage of earned sick days. In Philadelphia, about 200,000 workers do not currently have access to paid sick time and are forced to work sick or risk their wages or jobs to take time off when they or their families are ill."
Two men behind the local animal rescue Justice Rescue (known to Daily News readers as "burly bikers on a mission") are known for being aggressive in responding to reports of animal cruelty. But recently they crossed a line, according to the Pennsylvania SPCA. The PSCPA claims Justice Rescue has been impersonating its Humane Law Enforcement officers, who are sworn, armed police officers with arresting powers. They say Philly Police were able to arrest Russell Wayne Harper (aka “Wolf”) and Robert John Lewis (aka “House”), after the PSPCA received numerous complaints.
An email to Justice Rescue on Monday was not returned. Their motto is, "It's not about the toes we step on, it's about the paws we protect."
PSPCA spokesperson Wendy Marano says Justice Rescue took a dog from a home in Northeast Philly against the owner's wishes; it was the first time that the PSPCA was able to confirm that the rescue had been imersonating its officers. "We had complaints about [the conditions provided for] this animal at this location, but the animal actually met the letter of the law. The dog was fine, and had food, water, shelter. But we got some addtional complaints and our officers went to the location to check it out — and the owner said, 'I don't know what you're talking about. You guys were here yesterday and you took the dog.'"
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