OK, I know it is Friday, and Dan has been stretching our brains quite a bit lately.
But I have one more heavy thing to throw at you:
The budget watchdogs at the Pennsylvania Intergovernmental Cooperation Authority have a new report out on prison costs, which are increasingly eating up the city budget (at least, what's left after pensions).
What's very interesting about this report is that the problem is not merely that we have more prisoners - the costs of all the things that prisoners need are increasing even faster than the number behind bars.
* Since the 1997 fiscal year, healthcare costs have grown almost 200% while the average inmate census has grown 55%
* The per-inmate cost of healthcare for inmates has grown 85 percent since fiscal 1997, only slightly faster than the 79 percent growth in healthcare costs for prison employees.
* Food costs have increased by about 30 percent since fiscal 1997 (though that is roughly at the rate of inflation, and per-inmate costs are down).
* By fiscal 2007 - when one of five guys we know will have a new job - overtime costs are projected to be 160% higher than they were in fiscal 1997; those costs have grown much more rapidly than the number of inmates.
Hey, great! We've got a prison system that's busting at the seams and costs are actually growing faster than our overcrowding problem.
This is when I really am amazed that five competitive candidates are beating themselves up for this job.
Not only that, but many of them have addressed improving systems for inmates when they re-enter society.
Michael Nutter has a prisoner re-entry plan that encourages businesses to hire former inmates; re-entry was also part of his "Safety Now" plan.
Dwight Evans called for a collaborative approach to prisoner re-entry - as well as setting aside one-quarter of any money sent to inmates in a savings account to cushion the return to outside life. (As a state Rep., by the way, he worked with Rep. John Meyers and the PA Board of Probation and Parole Board on a pilot program to improve re-entry by lowering parole caseloads, requiring therapy and community service work from ex-offenders, and providing incentives to companies that hire parolees).
Chaka Fattah called for a kind of ex-offender Job Corps "that allows ex-offenders to work toward achieving educational goals while working to rebuild local communities and gaining job skills."
And Tom Knox has set a goal of reducing recidivism by 25%, including by offering training programs for prisoners.
Comments (10)
Why, unlike a number of other major cities, doesn't our state pay for that. Most of the problems in this city stem from an ineffective state gov't. When you aren't working at a state level you can't expect the largest city in the Commonwealth to be effective either.
Posted by Patricio | March 23, 2007 9:55 AM
People are making a big deal about the state not paying for courts, and I think they should. However, I think I heard the courts cost a couple of hundred million dollars per year. While that's a significant amount, it's only a small portion of the city's almost $4 billion general fund. The state doesn't by a long stretch deserve the blame for all of the city's problems. The problem is that our elected officials can't seem to properly manage a budget, and that much of our budget gets poured down the drain on patronage, inefficiency and things that pretty much amount to buying votes.
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March 23, 2007 11:50 AM
I could not agree more with Dave because alot of this city's problem stem from elected officials buying votes and given away good jobs to people who do not deserve them in the first place and/or are not properly trained to do the job effectively. Most of the city's budget get eating up mostly because too many side deals and parasites getting their cut on the backs of hard working men and women in this city. I'm running for city council and will do my best to put all of the sady deals out in the open.
Posted by Lamont w Thomas | March 23, 2007 1:26 PM
Dave -- I will reflect something that PICA points out often -- most of the city budget is fixed costs, so the things we can control are more significant than they seem.
The last time Phil Goldsmith wrote about this for the Daily News, he estimated the state's responsibility at $114 million. No, it's not half the budget, but it would go a long way toward ending the school deficit, for example.
Posted by Wendy | March 23, 2007 10:25 PM
That's assuming the mayor and city council used that extra $114 million to plug the school district deficit rather than spending it on some ego-boosting "legacy" project or on adding more useless, redundant social services agencies run by people who help "get out the vote" for certain people on city council.
Sorry, I'm feeling a little bitter right now.
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March 24, 2007 12:59 PM
The city is owed a lot of overdue property taxes, but is reducing sheriff sales to collect that money. www.hallwatch.org shows that the city is owed over $400 million in unpaid taxes that it can collect if it just sells these properties competitively.
That means that they city can't hold all that property for no reason to give to generous donors at below market rate.
This happens with politically connected nonprofits that pose as community development groups that don't fit the stereotypical insider.
Half of this, give or take, goes straight into the scihool system, so why has it become taboo under Street to have Sheriff sales to collect from deadbeats who cost the city the most and contribute nothing, but own taxable assets?
The whole state should take over city tax collection, with the stipulation that it will provide more revenue and have the right to make cuts.
Philly is too much like an island city-state that operates outside the legal norms.
Posted by Collect overdue taxes also | March 25, 2007 2:16 AM
Half of all property taxes pay for schools, I mean.
So what is this local Dem party really working toward? Better funded schools, or plenty of docile voters who depend on a broken government not to collect taxes?
Posted by Over $400 million -- half goes to fund the school system | March 25, 2007 2:18 AM
The city is doing a good job with the prison system now (unlike the jail or "roundhouse" which is being sued for unsanitary conditions).
The prison I work in is modern, clean, and the inmates get top notch care with almost no wait time, unlike the people who care for them, who have to make appointments weeks, even months, in advance!
This care for addiction, unmanaged chronic illness, and social skills like anger management, etc. is going to reduce Philly's recidivism in the very near future, now at 56%.
So what to do about costs?
1. Trying to pretend that we can hold prisoners waiting for their court date for years is crazy.
The Philly prison system is only meant to hold prisoners for "county life" or 2 years.
But we hold people for that and much longer. Why? The state has no room and is not building prisons in an effort to seem all nice and PC, and to not have to make financial decisions.
Believe me, what is nice to a prisoner is getting them INTO the system where we can help them, and where they can cause no law abiding, tax paying person any harm.
The cost comes from NOT putting people in prison soon enough with intensive services.
Then you've got a revolving door a la Street in and out of the mean streets. I'm aghast at the seventies types who think that opening up the prisons, reducing sentences, early parole, and all that is the solution. States with the least crime have the toughest time.
Repeated leniency just cultures the violence. It rewards it.
Hence our murder rate. The current generation has been treated leniently by schools, then the YSC, then they are experienced cons by the time they are adults, folks.
Keeping them "out" with the idea to be kind just prevents them from working with the high quality social workers, nurses, docs, PAs, psychiatrists, psych nurses and techs, and yes, COs who teach them what it's like to live in a world where there are rules.
Pay for it any way you can, casinos, lottos, and yes, property taxes that more closely reflect the surrounding suburbs.
I know people in Philly who own and pay $250-300 per year in property taxes. Hello!
They can't imagine having to pay property taxes in real time, for real time city costs of service.
When the pols grow a pair, then it will change, and they better get someone in charge who has some financial background, like Knox.
Philly can't afford to be the refuge of the undereducated, low wage home owner of the fire trap house anymore.
The philosophy of warehousing the poor in abandoned cities is no longer holding. The jobs are in the rest of the state, and people who can't afford to pay property taxes have to move to where those jobs are.
When the Dems have the courage to operate the city in a businesslike fashion again, then it will be able to pay all its bills.
State road has plenty of room for taller buildings, and more buildings. What it hasn't had since Rendell's admin is someone who has enough experience in real world financial management.
Posted by State Road has plenty of room for more buildings | March 25, 2007 2:44 AM
Stop trying to save money by being cheap.
Stop trying to bail out cons who won't show. It creates a city where in some neighborhoods have one in five adult males with outstanding bench warrants for no shows to court.
Think about that.
They incur more charges, and more contact with police and the prison system in Philly because the judge let a poor candidate for bail get it.
This doesn't happen anywhere else in Delaware Valley counties. Period.
They get that the costs are greater in bailing out people than in holding them, because they are the kind of people who can keep track of their finances and get the big picture.
The Fattah concept is penny wise and pound foolish. Letting people out on the ten point Uhuru movement plan, where all prisons are bad and the streets are the place where somehow reform and consequences happen, is plain proof that the many toked once too often.
We save them from themselves while we have them. So let us have them.
We'll prevent them from murdering grandma for crack change while we have them. We'll prevent them from killing witnesses while we have them. We'll prevent the small percentage of folks who commit 95% of the big crime from continuing to do so, which is in fact an expensive problem.
No wonder Philly needs more cops: it is, in effect, an open air prison system.
We need a Democratic party not afraid to have people missing elections because they're locked up.
That would save the taxpayer a lot of prison expenses.
Posted by Anonymous | March 25, 2007 3:24 AM
We need a paper who doesn't treat crime and taxes like a racially loaded third rail.
"If we seem to write favorably about increased prison capacity, it might be bias because it will disproportionately affect black readers!"
Or "If we raise property taxes, it will disproportionately affect minority homeowners!"
Hello, minority homeowners are more concerned with crime and lousy schools. Your minority readers are more conservative than you think.
Being honest about paying for prisons means the paper will have to deal with municipal finance, something that this paper only has one idea about -- property taxes are bad, wage taxes are necessary.
Take the R7 to Trenton and tell me why this policy has made North Philly a job and safe streets mecca.
Posted by Paper needs conservative thinkers in it, not just with a column from the beyond | March 25, 2007 3:39 AM