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The William Penn Foundation has suspended grant-making to city-related agencies after public education advocates filed a complaint charging that the $2 billion philanthropy violated Philadelphia's new lobbying code when it funded and directed millions of outside dollars to pay the Boston Consulting Group to develop a controversial restructuring plan for the School District of Philadelphia.
"A citizen complaint was recently filed with the Philadelphia Board of Ethics alleging that certain grantmaking activities of the Foundation are regulated by the City’s lobbying registration and reporting ordinance," according to an email from Interim President Helen Davis Picher. "The Foundation wants to ensure our full compliance with the ordinance and is awaiting further clarification with regard to its scope concerning permissible grant activity."
The city says that it received a letter announcing the decision in reference to a grant application seeking funding for Bartram's Mile, a proposed 1.1-mile trail extension linking the east and west sides of the Schuylkill River.
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Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams accepted at least $9,466.99 in campaign contributions from indicted political operative John D. McDaniel, according to Board of Ethics records. A former campaign manager for Councilwoman Blondell Reynolds Brown with ties to Laborers Local 322, a Philadelphia-based construction union, McDaniel was charged with wire fraud by federal attorneys last week after it was revealed that he had conducted and paid himself for political activity while employed by the City of Philadelphia. Political work by municipal employees is prohibited under the city charter.
I'm a little behind in my podcast listening, so I only just now realized that the Jan. 23 episode of the always-great design-oriented 99% Invisible concerned LOVE Park's long, strange history as a skateboarding Mecca/no-man's-land. City Paper was there back in 2002, when 92-year-old city planner/Kevin Bacon's dad Ed Bacon put on a helmet and defied Mayor Street's skating ban. In fact, that's then news-editor Howard Altman and then-designer Brian Hogan holding the elder Bacon steady during his brief cube-gleaming. Here's what Altman wrote at the time.
"Don’t drop him,” I think to myself as I hold up the old man who is in the process of becoming the world’s most ancient skate rat. "Just don’t drop him. The last thing I want is The Bacon Brothers after me.”
It is a brisk Monday morning in late October. A smattering of skateboarders, a world-famous architect, a couple of television crews, the merely curious, a cop and the homeless have gathered around the LOVE sculpture in LOVE Park. They are here to see Edmund Bacon, the former city planner who envisioned this space, stage a four-wheeled rage against the machine.
"Cutting this park off from skateboarders is a serious mistake on the part of Mayor John Street," says Bacon as he steps gingerly onto a borrowed board. "And by this act of civil disobedience, I am showing my displeasure with the mayor's actions."
Read the rest of the story here.
Check out the full 99% Invisible story here. Then subscribe, because it really is one of the best podcasts out there.
Howard Altman's covering the news down in Tampa these days, and he's on Twitter.
About 4,000 Pennsylvanians have concealed-carry gun permits from Florida, a loophole that's been a major and intractable issue for gun-law-reform advocates, who have attempted to address it by way of legislation and advocacy. So, Kathleen Kane, our recently installed state Attorney General, just went ahead and took care of it by herself.
She changed up the agreement between Florida and Pennsylvania so that Pennsylvania will only recognize those concealed-carry permits issued by Florida to bona fide Florida residents. People who actually live here will have 120 days to get their Pennsylvania permits in order, or to stop carrying guns around with them.
Here's her press release:
February 8. 2013
Bart Blatstein has sold off 60 percent of his Northern Liberties holdings at Piazza at Schmidt's and Liberties Walk, the Inquirer reports. Which just makes official what Blatstein has been openly indicating as he talks up his plans for a North Broad Street casino/entertainment hub: He's just not that into you anymore, NoLibs. As for the fate of the neighborhood he took over and revamped (and that has since suffered enjoyed property value inflation nearly along the lines of Old City's), well, the majority of that is a New York investor group's problem now.
Blatstein told residents at a Logan Square community meeting months back that he planned to move his offices to North Broad from their location at the Piazza as he re-focused on his new dream project. He also said that his dream of building "a place I wanted to be at" in the Piazza hadn't quite worked out. Sure, the bright young things had come flocking, but "All these pretty girls were calling me 'sir.' ... Where was this party scene 30 or 40 years ago?"
Whereas at North Broad Street, "the demographics we're going after, selfishly, are me."
Six City Council members called for separate hearings today to dig into Philly's half-billion-dollar delinquent tax-collection problem, which Mayor Nutter recently announced a new plan to address through more aggressive collections and outreach and through a $25 million new software program to improve the data the Revenue Department can track.
Each of last year's "serious six" freshman City Council members introduced his or her own resolution on the matter, collectively called the "Taxpayer Fairness Initiative."
"As a body of freshman Council members, we began talking about this last year in terms of addressing this serious issue in a meaningful way," Councilman David Oh said. "It is not fair that not everyone is paying their taxes. A lax process for collecting taxes has only perpetuated the problem, and its effect reaches every neighborhood in our city. The fact that a half-billion dollars is owed to the city is very disheartening."
Gov. Tom Corbett's budget proposal may not have included much very good news for people in Pennsylvania, who learned, for example, of his plan for minimal increases to education funding that was cut deep in the past few years. But it did offer plenty to large companies doing business in the commonwealth, including proposed reductions of some corporate taxes and repeals of others.
One thing Corbett's budget didn't address: Closing up tax loopholes. A new report by PennPIRG finds that loopholes allowing for offshore tax dodging cost Pennsylvania $2.1 billion in 2012. Pennsylvania lost the fifth-largest amount in the nation through such tax havens, after California, New York, New Jersey and Illinois. The federal government also loses out on around $150 billion in taxes each year thanks to such tax havens, the report found. Pennsylvania also loses out on taxes from companies registered in Delaware, where lax rules have allowed companies to avoid paying various state taxes totaling $9.5 billion in the last decade, according to a New York Times report.
The state's biggest tax-dodgers, per the report: Comcast, GMAC and Sunoco, which together have 10 subsidiaries registered elsewhere. Incidentally (or not), these are some of the same companies that have benefited from the Pennsylvania's largess, including $25 million for Sunoco's refinery overhaul and expansion, and $60 million-plus for Comcast, including credits, grants and subsidies for building its Center City tower.
City Council will get a briefing on more detailed property-tax-assessment numbers today, the first close-up look most have gotten beyond the broad-stroke figures released by Mayor Nutter in December as part of an effort to get assessments closer to their real values (aka the Actual Value Initiative or AVI). Council President Darrell Clarke's office has already received a full breakdown of the assessments of city properties, details of which will be going out to property owners Feb. 15.
One Council staffer said a preliminary peek at the numbers had revealed some assessment oddities in certain neighborhoods, where homes appeared to the staffer to be undervalued by more than 50 percent. However, since assessments were done based on the exteriors of homes, and since finding comparable properties can be difficult in some neighborhoods where property values change drastically from block to block, that's perhaps to be expected.
A more pertinent question is what Council will do when it gets a look at those values. Most importantly for homeowners: Will Council members rally around the idea of a homestead exemption once the numbers are in front of them?
Counciman Bill Green, for one, is against it. He says the lowest possible millage rate will be the way to go. As the law now stands, he says, "AVI will take effect and the rate will be 1.39 percent, based on the current number of people who are taking homestead exemptions. … The only way to lower the rate and collect the same amount of money is to change the relief measures."
Despite Gov. Corbett's indications that he would not continue cuts to education and social services in this year's budget address, Democrats were none too pleased with the priorities he outlined before a joint sesion of the General Assembly today. Lancaster County Democrat Rep. Mike Sturla called it the worst-received budget address he'd ever seen. In particular, the governor's announcement that he did not see a way to proceed with the Medicaid expansion outlined in the Affordable Care Act drew backlash from Philly lawmakers.
Corbett said he would:
• put "a record amount of state funding into basic education, $5.5 billion dollars, starting with early childhood programs and going all the way through grade 12."
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Mayor Michael Nutter unveiled an aggressive new strategy yesterday to crack down on property tax deadbeats. The latest announcement in a string of pledges to collect on the city's estimated half-billion-dollar backlog of uncollected taxes was peppered with slang and Nutter's patented mild swearing, to indicate that he's really, actually serious this time. For real.
Said the Mayor, "Now there are some other trifling, raggedy people around here who can actually pay, who don't pay. We're going to chase their little asses down as hard as possible."
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