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Archive: April, 2011
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Thousands of environmentalists and anti-drilling activists are gathering in Trenton today to deliver some of the many public comments to be considered by the Delaware River Basin Commission before it decides how and whether to allow hydraulic fracturing in the Delware River basin.
While the DRBC initially took a hard line on fracturing, declaring that it would not allow the practice until a study was conducted, that stance softened decidedly when funding for such a study dried up. THe DRBC proposed rules that would allow fracking, and opened those rules to public comment — tomorrow is the last day it will accept public input.
To deliver the last of a "record-breaking" number of comments — and to urge the DRBC not to allow fracking at least until the EPA finishes its study, due to be released next year — a coalition of environmental groups is meeting in West Trenton.
Among them: Penn Environment, the Delaware Riverkeeper Network, the Catskill Citizens for Safe Energy, Food and Water Watch, Sierra Club, Damascus Citizens for Sustainability, NYH2O, Environment New Jersey, Protecting Our Waters, and United for Action.
According to Penn Environment's Erika Staaf, it'll probably take the DRBC about six months to read through the comments before a decision is announced.
This month, SEPTA made a big announcement regarding its years-behind plan to implement smart cards instead of tokens and cash fare.
The announcement: they're still working on it.
The agency expects to award a contract this summer, but says that smart cards are still years away.
Meanwhile, in all the years it's been working on smart cards, SEPTA hasn't managed to place token machines at all of its stops, forcing riders to pay full fare instead of the discounted token rate. Many stations still refuse to take cash, even when a booth operator is present.
Are smart cards better than tokens? We suppose so.
But we're going to make a radical suggestion: Maybe "smart cards" are effectively a kind of red herring — as long as we're waiting for the improvements associated with smart cards (my city planning buddy assures me these improvements will be real, and they will be good), we are less inclinced to focus on all the improvements that aren't being made to service right now — things as small as SEPTA's posting train schedules at stations or making its announcements of delayed service easier to hear.
And so we've commissioned the following thoroughly un-scientific poll. What do you most want to see SEPTA prioritze?
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In this week's print edition (and as part of our "The Abandoned City,' , Anthony Campisi and I take a look at a brand-new initiative by the city's Department of Licensing and Inspections to go after the owners of vacant properties.
There are basically three parts to the plan:
1. Actively seek out and issue appropriate violations to vacant properties (as opposed to only responding to public requests for action).
2. Use under-utilized city rules (like having working windows and doors on blocks with 80% residency or more) to issue violations.
3. Use new powers granted by Senate Bill 900 (aka Act 90) to go after the personal finances of owners of vacant properties.
L&I Commissioner Fran Burns emphasizes that L&I wants the owners to bring their properties into compliance, not to bring them to court.
But the big question is whether L&I's effort will, in fact, force property owners — especially those who own many vacant properties — to clean their acts up. As we point out in our piece, SB900 exempts "Asociations and Trusts," a phrase I was told essentially exempts LLCs and other corporate entities from the law.
Robert Coyle Sr., the infamous Kensington slumlord, used dozens of small companies to hold his properties — presumably, this exemption would have helped him escape having to risk his personal assets if the city came after him.
In last week's ElectionEar column, our esteemed news editor Isaiah Thompson implored this year's primary candidates to quit talking about the Deferred Retirement Option Program (DROP) "as if not being enrolled in it is some kind of qualification for elected office!"
So far, candidates haven't heeded his advice. In fact, even in the race for the Eighth District Council seat — where no DROP-enrolled candidate is running — DROP is becoming a hot issue.
The campaign for Verna Tyner, who's running for the Eighth District Council seat, just sent out a press release promising that she wouldn't vote for a DROP-enrolled Council president next year — in other words, Councilwoman Marian Tasco, who's vying for the seat and is enrolled.
Tyner's release notes that her one of her opponents, Cindy Bass, hasn't made up her mind about DROP, according to Fox29.
In an earlier press release, Tyner said she called Mayor Michael Nutter "to discuss his involvement in this race and to clear up any rumors about a deal involving Ms. Bass’ promise to support Councilwoman Tasco, a DROP participant, for City Council President next year." As of last week, she says Nutter hadn't returned her call.
UPDATE: Joseph Corrigan, Bass' spokesman, says that the Fox29 report that Tyner's release refers to misquoted her. He says she is undecided about supporting Tasco for Council president, not about DROP. Corrigan says that Bass is against DROP for elected officials, and that the city "must replace DROP" with another retirement program for rank-and-file workers. You can read more about Bass' position on DROP here.
This article is part of our new, expanded coverage of this year's exciting election season. Grab this link for more "ElectionEar" pieces and look for the new column in our print edition.
CBS Philly reported today that Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey says that the opening of SugarHouse Casino has not led to an increase of crime in that area.
At a City Council hearing, CBS reports that Ramsey said, "We’ve not seen a significant spike. ... There’ve been some car break-ins, there’ve been some robberies that have taken place that obviously made the paper. ... But it actually has not been as bad as we thought it would be initially."
In March, however, City Paper found that there had been 170 reports of crime at SugarHouse since opening day, according to state and city data.
This isn't the first time city officials have said that crime isn't a problem at SugarHouse. Planning Commission chairman Alan Greenberger told a House committee earlier this year, "There have been no serious [crime] issues at all [at] the SugarHouse Casino." Greenberger later told City Paper that he based that information on what police have told him.
Indeed, police have maintained that crime hasn't went up in the area since SugarHouse opened.
"Most of that is ... not violent crime," said 26th District Captain Michael Cram in March, responding to CP's findings. "Remember, that business is open 24 hours a day."
The Naked City just got off the phone with Rep. Matt Baker's office, which says that the state House Health Committee has voted for H.B. 574, a bill that would hold abortion clinics to the same safety standards as "ambulatory surgical facilities."
Supporters of the bill say that it will bring much-needed state oversight to Pennsylvania's abortion clinics. Critics of the bill, including women's health advocates like Pennsylvania NOW and the Women's Law Project, say it will raise the costs of abortion and shut down safe clinics.
The bill will now go to the House for a full vote.
Get the full story on the bill on this previous Naked City post.
Today, the state House's Health Committee will consider a bill that would hold abortion clinics to the same safety standards as "ambulatory surgical facilities."
The proposed bill, introduced by Rep. Matt Baker (R-Wellsboro), was written in the wake of the case of Kermit Gosnell, a West Philadelphia abortion doctor who was recently charged with the murder of seven babies and one woman — and whose clinic hadn't been inspected by the state since 1993.
In order to improve the state's regulation of abortion clinics, both state legislators and the Health Department have proposed a number of changes, including Baker's bill.
The grand jury report on Gosnell suggested that abortion clinics "be explicitly regulated as ambulatory surgical facilities, so that they are inspected annually and held to the same standards as all other outpatient procedure centers."
But some women's health advocates and abortion providers say that Baker's proposed bill, H.B. 574, may actually make women less safe, by forcing safe clinics to close and by raising the cost of abortion by as much as $1,000, they say.
The Pennsylvania National Organization for Women and the Women's Law Project are among the critics of this bill.
Why do they believe it will raise the costs of abortion? Construction costs, for one. According to the Women's Law Project, this bill would require that operating rooms in clinics be 400 square feet. Now, most are 100 to 150 square feet.
The Women's Law Project also says that the bill would require that an RN or LPN be present during all hours that "patients are present," even on days when the clinic is not performing abortions.
The bill's critics say that these regulations offer no medical benefits, but would simply increase costs. In fact, says a report by the Women's Law Project, "The current regulations are more than adequate to protect patient safety" — women's health advocates say they just haven't been enforced by the state.
This bill "will make abortion even less accessible to women in Pennsylvania," says Jen Boulanger, executive director of Allentown Women's Center, and "would result in most freestanding clinics closing, including the Allentown Women’s Center."
Baker, conversely, told the Sun Gazette that, "This is a common sense approach to regulation and inspection based on the similar nature of the procedures performed at both facilities, the type of anesthesia used at both facilities and the degree of care needed in the performance of these surgical procedures."
A call to Baker's spokeswoman was not immediately returned.
The bill is on the schedule today for the state House's Health Committee meeting, along with two others.
UPDATE: The Health Committee voted in favor of the bill. It will now move to the state House for a full vote. Read more about the vote here.
View galleryOn Thursday, shortly after 5 p.m., Maria “Fernanda” Marroquin stood in front of Sen. Pat Toomey’s district office at 1628 John F. Kennedy Boulevard and declared herself an undocumented U.S. citizen.
It wasn’t the first time for the 21-year-old, and it certainly won’t be the last, she said.
Marroquin was one of the organizers behind the vigil honoring the “Georgia 7,” as some call it, the group of seven undocumented citizens in their 20s arrested Tuesday in Atlanta, near Georgia State University. One of them was Marroquin’s sister, also named Maria.
She decided to take a stand for us...for all undocumented youth...so that they could come out of the shadows and finally declare that they’re undocumented," Marroquin said of her sister, a 23-year-old co-founder of DreamActivist.org’s Pennsylvania chapter. The group is pushing for passage of the "DREAM Act," which would allow conditional permanent residency to illegal immigants who came to the country as children and have graduated high school.
La Salle University officials acknowledged today that the university has launched "a full-scale investigation" into "reports regarding an incident which occurred on March 21" — an incident which, according to two students who witnessed the event and spoke with CP, involved a professor inviting a team of strippers to engage himself and students at an on-campus, for-credit symposium.
Yesterday, City Paper reported that Councilwoman Donna Reed Miller says that Greg Paulmier, a candidate for the Eighth District Council seat, was recently kicked out of City Hall by police because of "his behavior." He had allegedly been asking for her endorsement.
When CP asked Paulmier about this, he denied that he had been kicked out, but offered little detail. "I don't know anything about that," he said at the time.
Today, NewsWorks reported that Paulmier denied it again, this time providing more detail:
Paulmier said it was Miller who was the unruly one, getting so loud in her displeasure with a comment Paulmier made about her that police took notice.
According to Paulmier, Civil Service Police came over and said, “‘is everything alright Greg?’” after Miller began yelling accusations at Paulmier for allegedly lying about her.“
She claimed that I had ‘lied on her,’” Paulmier said.
According to Paulmier, Miller was referring to an allegation he made last month that the reason the Chelten Plaza development in Germantown is going forward dispite widespread public opposition is because politicians like Miller are making money on it.
When reached by the phone today, Paulmier told CP he didn't have enough time to provide those details before. "I was on my way somewhere," he says.
He added that he has asked for Miller's endorsement each of the four times he's run for the Eighth District, in order to "unify the electorate."
"I'm a Quaker," says Paulmier. "We don't move forward unless there's a consensus."
This article is part of our new, expanded coverage of this year's exciting election season. Grab this link for more "ElectionEar" pieces and look for the new column in our print edition.
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