The Next Mayor

Who better to steal a quote from than Alan Shepard who is said to have yelled impatiently that very phrase from atop a Redstone rocket booster? Like Shepard, who couldn't wait to be hurled at twice the speed of sound into the darkness, the peace and the quiet of space, I can't wait to get this mayor's race (and this blog) launched and be hurled into something far less quiet. Unfortunately, like the Redstone rocket booster of the early space program, mayor's races in Philly seem to blow up three out of every four times - sometimes literally - just google "molotov cocktail" and "Philadelphia" and you'll see what I mean.

But maybe, just maybe, we can avoid that this time around. As a city we can finally come together and demand the type of high-minded, issues-based, responsive and idealistic campaign that befits the place where the phrases "We hold these truths to be self-evident" and "We the people" were born.

Am I being too naive? Possibly. Is it worth trying? Definitely.

So that's what this blog and this entire project is all about. The Next Mayor isn't about the person who will be the next mayor but the package of ideas and issues that voters of Philadelphia and the residents of the entire Greater Philadelphia region would like the next mayor to address in the course of the campaign. In the coming months we'll present you with a number of different video, audio and print pieces written for, about and in many cases by you, the citizen.

Sure, there's a chance that the whole election goes as usual and the people of Philadelphia are left that much poorer for it. But there was also a chance that Alan Shepard would be vaporized by his Redstone booster instead of reaching the stars as he ultimately did. So let's light this candle and maybe 2007 can be one giant leap for Philadelphia.

You can't seem to swing a virtual dead cat on the internet without hitting some kind of list that ranks cities by everything from "Best Places to do Business" to "Coolest Cities"which seems to be a measure of how easy it is for you to buy vintage clothing by the pound.

This week, two such lists came out with mixed results for the City of Brotherly Love. First the good news.

According to a report by SustainLane, a Web site that studies urban sustainability efforts, if the price of gasoline ever shoots up over $5 per gallon, we would seem to be sitting pretty here in the 215. We actually rank 5th among the nation's largest cities in "Preparedness for an Oil Crisis." (Ha! Take that Phoenix, #22!) This ranking looked at a number of factors including availability of mass transit, incidence of sprawl and highway congestion.

However, when we walk into a bar don't ask us to give you some insight into the evolution of the market economy in the southern colonies because unlike 17 cities ahead of us in an AP study of the top 21 cities, we're a little lacking in the number of residents with a bachelor's degree. The Daily News suggests that changing the city's motto to "what goes on in Philly, stays in Philly" might not be the best tactic for growing the supply of college grads.

So what does this all mean for the next mayor?

Check out the latest Zack's Corner. Apparently that low rumble you're hearing on the distant horizon is the political avalanche that would be Democratic City Committee Chairman and 1st District Congressman Bob Brady's entrance into the mayor's race.

According to Zack and others, it looks like John Dougherty's attempts to get some of his electricians union friends to run for occupied committee seats may have been just the thing to get Congressman Brady interested in a shot at City Hall.

Just goes to show, if you're going to take shots at the king, you better not leave him standing.

Several years ago, I read a critique of NFL football that pointed out how there seems to be a penalty flag thrown without exception on every kick off and punt return. Well, substitute election for kick-off and lawsuit for penalty flag, and you get pretty much the same thing. Think back to the last election season when there were no lawsuits filed by, against, for, on behalf of, or behind the back of some candidate.

Why should this election be any different?

However, sometimes lawsuits can be a good thing. In this case, several groups have filed various lawsuits that seek to clarify a new city law that limits the amount of money that candidates for office in Philadelphia can accept from individuals or political action committees - PACs.

One of the first links I check on Sunday is the column "Influences" in the Inquirer. I'm not sure why. Maybe I just like to see how many more books my social betters keep "on [their] nightstand[s] right now" than I do. They always seem to have at least 2 but more often 3 or 4 books going at one time. I've had Naked Lunch on my nightstand for 4 months now but I wake up with a wicked hangover every time I read it.

Anyway, this week's column featured Could-Be Mayor John Dougherty. I put this up without comment except to say that it seems I have a lot in common with Mr. Dougherty, which would mean that he also most enjoys Dylan Thomas's "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" when recited by Thornton Mellon.

In the Daily News, gossip columnist Dan Gross revealed that the first major player to offer an endorsement (scroll down past the part about the porn star auditions) in the race for mayor is... Kyle Korver? Ok, check that, first defensively-challenged, 3-point specialist, back-up shooting guard to offer an endorsement.

To both Korver's and Dougherty's credit, this announcement came during an event highlighting their consider work with charities. Dougherty is the president of the local chapter of Variety, The Children's Charity and Korver has done a number of charitable works including "Kyle's Coat Drive."

Not mentioned in the article was the attempt by Korver, who is generally regarded as resembling a certain host of the MTV show Punk'd, to trick Dougherty into thinking that Congressman Brady was stealing his car... (oh snap, Johnny Doc, you got Punk'd!)

No similar endorsements yet for "Mikey Nuts," "Tommy Knoxville," "Jonny Sides," "D-EV" or... well... "Chaka Fattah." (What can I say? It's a great name... and Stephen Colbert agrees)

OK, here's a new topic: Anybody else still concerned about how much it costs just to have fun in Philadelphia?

We got this note from a reader about the cost of the Flower Show:

"We had a brief period of time to go to the Flower Show tonight, driving into the city from Delaware County. Parking in outside lot west of convention center from 7 pm to 8:30 pm (1-1/2 hrs) = $24.00

"This is insane. Philadelphia's Phinest Price gouging! And they want
visitors to come down and make it a night? That, combined with the show tickets, hot dogs, sodas and ice cream for a family of 4, and we dropped $96.00 for two hours in this fine city.

"We won't be popping in for anything in the future,

- Disappointed Suburban Family"

Thoughts? Comments? I know this comes up from time to time, And I realize that City Council took action to prevent parking-lot operators from raising their prices just for a big event -- and that was good -- but that doesn't mean that the costs aren't RIDICULOUS.

On the other hand, nobody wants to turn Rittenhouse Square into Branson East...

This guy just don't want to win you know. He wants to bury you, he wants to humiliate you, he wants to prove to the whole world that you was nothing but some kind of a... a freak the first time out. - Mickey from Rocky II

Did anyone else hear that bell ringing? It appears the gloves are laced up, the sparring is over and the real fight has begun. In this corner, weighing in at 220 lbs, the Pugilist of Pennsport, the Electric Exocutioner... John "Johnny Doc" Dougherty. And in this corner, weighing in with his opinion on the intricacies of the Home Rule Charter, from the Fighting Fourth Councilmanic District, the Punishing Poindexter... Michael Nutter.

On Tuesday, WHYY's Brad Linder sat ringside for what should prove to be the first of many rounds between these two seasoned combatants. After wiping off the splattered blood, he had this to report.

You can hear more from Nutter and Dougherty here:

1. Nutter: seeking to clear up 田ampaign contribution culture in Philadelphia"

2. Nutter: will continue to serve on City Council

3. Dougherty: Nutter should either deny candidacy for mayor or resign

4. Dougherty: 鍍here痴 two sets of standards here.�

Ok, enough with the horserace... let's get back to the issues.

Geez. I work on another project for three days and I missed out on a whole mess of interesting things going on in and around city government. Like this piece that flew in under the radar: the Street administration closed a loophole in the city's new campaign finance law by requiring lawyers and law firms seeking no-bid work as bond counsel on city bond deals to comply with campaign contribution limits.

Unfortunately, George Peppard passed away too early in 1994, otherwise I'd be screaming from the mountaintop for the mayoral candidacy of Colonel John "Hannibal" Smith - a man who truly knew the value of planning. Granted, the type of planning favored by Hannibal had more to do with blow torches, scrap metal, used machine parts to make indestructible, all-terrain battle vehicles that crashed through phalanxes of hopelessly overmatched bad guys with bad 80s mullets and a tendency to fire their weapons into ground at the feet of A-Team members.

Tomorrow at 11am on Radio Times with Marty Moss-Coane Marty will be talking to Larry Eichel of the Philadelphia Inquirer and Ed Schwartz who chaired the Philadelphia Tax Reform Commission. They'll be discussing Eichel's two-part series about the tax situation in Philadelphia. If you haven't seen it yet, you should check it out.

Hopefully our Could-be candidates for mayor will be listening tomorrow. Eichel points out that while Philadelphia has cut taxes in a very incremental fashion over each of the last 11 fiscal years, the overall tax burden on people who live and work in Philadelphia remains higher than just about any other large city. However, with just under two years left in the current administration, it will be up to the next mayor to figure out whether this tax cutting has delivered on its promise to create a more business-friendly environment or if those cuts have crippled the city's ability to deliver necessary services.

If you are a wonkish policy nerd who want further information or a policy staffer for a potential mayoral candidate who doesn't feel like doing this research on your own, here are some links to the reports that Eichel cites in his article:

Tax Rates and Tax Burdens in the District of Columbia - A Nationwide Comparison (for those families of 4 making $25,000, repeat after me "thank god we're not in Bridgeport!)

Kosmont-Rose Institute Cost of Doing Business Survey (Guess what? You don't have to buy it because Eichel already gave you the good stuff.)

For those of you interested in just how we got here, I found this great summary of the history of the wage tax in Philadelphia from the good (and way smarter than me) folks at the Pennsylvania Economy League. Skip down to page 6 for the article.

I've been fascinated by this for a long time. Essentially the wage tax was a prescription pain drug that the city became addicted to. Leaders kept upping the dosage just to stay afloat and before anyone realized it, the city was out on the Admiral Wilson Boulevard in a short skirt, fishnets and knee length boots, selling its body to get the money for a score just to get through the next fiscal year. In fact, it's somewhat ironic that the Philadelphia Inquirer is the one staging this current intervention to draw attention to the tax issue. Here's a quote from the Inky in 1961 when the wage tax stood at 1 1/2 percent:

"There is always the danger of pegging the wage tax at so high a rate that it would drive small businessmen and professional people out of the city. But no one expects it to go that high."

High indeed. Good call guys!

Feel free to call in to Radio Times tomorrow. I'll try to follow up with some good soundbites from tomorrow's show.

Do you want everything you need to know about all these lawsuits over the city's new limits on campaign contributions distilled into 8 easy to understand questions and answers? Check out Catherine Lucey's Answers to the hubbub over campaign finance.

Councilman W. Wilson Goode Jr. is pretty much responsible for all of this lawsuit tomfoolery and he's definitely not sorry about it.

After giving some subtle hints creating headlines last week that he would do so, Dougherty asks courts to remove Nutter from his seat on City Council. C'mon, Doc. Who else would we be able to watch eat his oatmeal and orange during 10am hearings?

To all of the faithful readers of this blog, which is literally reaching ones of people, feel free to come up with your own song parody reflecting the early goings of this mayor's race. I'm thinking of that great Phil Collins hit with the line "Just say the word, I'll sue- sue- sue ya oh oh oh!"

So lawsuits involving the Could-be mayoral candidates continue to make headlines while a quick search of this Daily News cover story about PGW reveals no comments from the Magnificent Six. Given soaring energy costs, the next mayor may have to face the fact that PGW's traditional three-fold mission (traditional utility company, social service program delivering heat to the poor, and generator of revenue for the city budget) needs to be rethought.

The social programs include subsidies for the poor and the elderly and for weatherization efforts.

"This is a social problem and not a utility problem," said PGW President Thomas Knudsen. "At the very least, there should be a public discussion of this."

Yes, at the very least...

Wondering where John Street is today? According to the New York Times, he's in New York attending a daylong meeting on the proliferation of unlicensed firearms in crimes convened by Mayors Michael Bloomberg of New York and Thomas Menino of Boston. Both Bloomberg and Menino recognize the toll that gun violence has taken on the nation's large cities and have responded by picking up the ball dropped by the federal government.

Throughout the country, mayors of major cities have been taking the lead on what at one time would have been considered national issues to be addressed by the President and the federal government.

In the wake of the U.S. government's refusal to sign onto the Kyoto Protocols for reducing global warming, Mayor Greg Nickels of Seattle has taken the lead to get over 200 mayors representing 44 million Americans to sign onto the U.S. Mayor's Climate Protection Agreement.

Chicago Mayor Richard Daley has also become quite the environmental advocate by encouraging the construction of green buildings.

In San Francisco, Mayor Gavin Newsom is searching for ways to provide health insurance for his city's working poor.

Philadelphia mayors past and present have taken the lead and provided examples for other mayors on issues like homelessness and wireless connectivity.

But when was the last time the mayor of Philadelphia has used his position as the chief executive of the 5th (or 6th?) largest city in the nation to advance an issue that would benefit all Americans? Do we want the type of leader who does such things or should the next mayor focus exclusively on things going on within this city's borders? Simply put, do we want to share our mayor with the rest of the country - assuming he or she is worthy of it? If so, what issue can our next mayor take the lead on?

UPDATE: Photo from LIBRADO ROMERO/New York Times. In case you're wondering who's who, they are from left: Thomas M. Menino of Boston; Jerramiah T. Healy of Jersey City, N.J.; Anthony Williams of Washington; Michael Bloomberg of New York; John Street of Philadelphia; Laura Miller of Dallas and Douglas Palmer of Trenton, N.J.

As promised, here's a follow up to yesterday's Radio Times with Marty Moss-Coane. I would try to sum up in the tax problem as explained by Larry Eichel of the Inquirer and Ed Schwartz, former chair of the Tax Reform Commission, in 53 words or less but Tom Ferrick already did on his blog.

What I can offer my tens of readers, who should include at least these guys, are some soundbites from the show:

1. Did you know that Philadelphia is the only city in the country that is a city, county AND school district? Ed Schwartz details how that fact and several others contributed to put the city into this tax mess in the first place.
2. Larry Eichel explains how the classic "legislator's dilemma" stands in the way of tax reform. (Could this be one of the negative impacts of cutting services?)
3. How do we continue lowering taxes without cutting services? Sorry, Could-be's, you didn't think just clicking on that link would give you the answer, did you? That's up to each of you.
4. So it's that simple? Cut taxes and next thing you know, Microsoft, Boeing and Dell will be banging down the doors at the Comcast Tower to move their headquarters here? Not so says Larry Eichel. But at least if they ever did find the so-called "Delaware Valley" they wouldn't be forced to settle in Cherry Hill.
5. Tax reform has officially entered the realm of science fiction. When I hear 2013, I think flying cars and soylent green. According to Ed Schwartz the next mayor will be dealing with this well into his or her second term. This could be tough for a group of politicians whose definition of forward thinking is careful consideration at 10am of what they'll be ordering at The Palm for lunch.

If you want to listen to the whole hour, just click your heels together three times and say "there's no show like Radio Times." And when that doesn't do anything, click here.

Check out Above Average Jane for these tests for evaluating a candidate for public office.

These tests should come with a warning: Tests are only to be used during direct interaction with a candidate, please do not base evaluation solely on campaign commercials.

Oh and by the way, "The Rope Test" ...it's not what you think it is.

Legendary civic activist and writer Jane Jacobs passed away at the age of 89. Jacobs radically shifted the way that urban planners thought about cities with her seminal 1961 book "The Death and Life of Great American Cities." At a time when urban renewal meant bulldozing high occupancy buildings in order to create more suburban-like living arrangements and using expressways to bring suburbanites directly into the heart of a city, Jacobs argued that a city's density and diversity created the energy that makes it great.

Coincidentally and perhaps taking up my call to make effective city planning a major issue for the next mayor's race, the Design Advocacy Group, a non-profit dedicated to furthering the cause of good planning and design, released a report that's intended to serve as a manifesto for the City and candidates for mayor.

WHYY's Susan Phillips talked to one of the groups founders.

Citizens of Philadelphia, a question:

How would you feel about your hard-earned tax dollars being used to finance the campaigns of candidates for municipal office (Mayor, City Council, etc.)?

Now, how would you feel about removing the influence of big donors from political campaigns in the city so that candidates and elected officials need to depend on broad citizen support to get into and stay in office?

WHYY's Brad Linder reported today about City Council hearings that are investigating the possibility of bringing publicly financed campaigns to Philadelphia.

If this ever becomes a serious issue, you'll be able to tell a lot about a person's position on it by which of the above two questions they ask. So how about it? Should we have publicly financed campaigns in Philadelphia? If so, what rules should candidates have to follow?

As far as I'm concerned, anything that could lead to fewer campaign commercials, leaving more time for those wacky Vonage commercials is a good thing.

Btw, the proprietors of Young Philly Politics had a good debate on this issue a while back. Perhaps it's time to bring it up again.

So I may have gotten a little ahead of myself yesterday when I wrote that City Council would be holding hearings about public financing of municipal political campaigns.

I thought maybe, just maybe, they would take the matter seriously. We'd have an end to the countless newspaper stories that (a) seem to be nothing more than balance sheets telling us how much money candidate x has raised and how much "cash on hand" he has and (b) tell us who got a sweet deal from the city followed by how much he or she contributed to the mayor.

Visions danced in my head of an election utopia in which all candidates are on a level financial playing field and are actually judged by their records and/or their visions and plans for the future. I admit it. I was high on idealism but thankfully City Council staged an intervention to get me off that.

In this radio story by WHYY's Brad Linder, we discover the major stumbling block to publicly financing campaigns isn't the First Amendment or pre-emption of the state constitution but the threat to Joe Committeeman's $100 on Election Day.

In Councilman Goode's defense, he's not defending this practice as much as he's giving us a dose of reality. With over 3000 Democratic committee men and women having a stake in the multimillion dollar campaigns of everyone from President down to City Councilperson, there's little chance that the current power structure would allow such a thing to happen. Afterall, that's a lot of mouths to feed. His primary concern, however, seems to be that if public financing becomes a reality, the "public" might not be too thrilled to learn that their money is essentially being turned over to ward leaders in the form of small, non-sequential bills in unmarked envelopes.

How hard could it be to prevent that? Included in the laws governing public campaign financing, you include a provisions detailing exactly what the money can be used for (billboards, posters, television ads, office staff, events, etc.) and you specifically include prohibitions against those types of payoffs. Other cities have figured out how to do this and frankly, the whole, "we're Philadelphia, we're not like other cities" excuse is starting to wear thin.

I officially became a member of the blogosphere today when a member of the MSM (see, I'm even using blog terminology!) wrote a piece that's at least loosely related to a post that I did several days ago. Proper credit ultimately belongs to Kyle "Real Hair" Korver for going out an limb to endorse John Dougherty's nickname.

Of course, Jill Porter actually tried to come up with nicknames that have meaning to them where I just typed the first things that came to my head... not usually a good idea. Anyway, since it's probably not even worth distinguishing these guys from each other until they start to distinguish themselves, I suggest we come up with nicknames for the whole group. I've already used "The Dirty Half-Dozen" and "The Magnificent Six" and "Bob Brady's Doormats" so you can see that the competition to be clever is pretty easy.

You can send your suggestions to the comment section below. If they're good enough, or if they suck, or if you simply take the time to click and type and click, they'll appear, with whatever credit you want to give them, on this blog.

Is anyone else having the same reaction that I am to this quote from today's Clout column in the Daily News:

Ward leader Matt Myers said he hadn't witnessed the incident, but had seen the result.

"There was a large indentation over the urinal," Myers said. "Funny thing is, we have no fights in our ward this year at all. No one is even running against a committeeman. We're going to be bored on Election Day."

No fights?!? Well, I guess I can cross Ward 39-B off my list of "must go" places on Election Day. The good thing is:

McBride said that Brady apologized for the incident and that carpenters repaired the wall the next morning for free.

They must have fixed it before they decided to stop negotiating.

And maybe if Floyd Wedderburn had inflicted the same kind of damage on some defensive tackles, he'd still be in the NFL.

This gives me a chance for a shameless plug of a Next Mayor partner event: If you are interested in finding out what Wards and Divisions are all about, check out "If These Wards Could Talk", hosted by The Committee of Seventy. The event is free and open to the public. Click on that link for more details.