The Next Mayor

Via Jeff Shields from Heard in the Hall, some news from today's budget hearings on Fairmount Park:

If your application for a picnic permit ($30 to $125, depending on the site) or a wedding permit (a ceremony alone can cost several hundred dollars, depending on the site) is not approved within 10 business days, you get a 50 percent break! Here's the small print: That's for a future permit application, so you can save some cash the next time you get married.

Focht also talked about the Park's ambitious plan to keep the grass mowed (hitting every bit of grass every two weeks) and the trees pruned. Play ball!

UPDATE: Shields also reported on testimony about the fate of the Canoe Club, the boathouse near Strawberry Mansion Bridge that is, er, was the home of the rowing teams of LaSalle U, Father Judge and North Catholic. If you don't remember, or are not a rower and didn't follow the story the first time, the boathouse was condemned earlier this year.

Back in February, Michael Nutter blasted John Street for transferring millions of dollars to Philadelphia Safe and Sound in the final days of his administration. A new report about the non-profit from the Pennsylvania Department of Welfare seems to confirm Nutter's criticisms. From the Inquirer story:

The interim report said that as Safe and Sound's budget ballooned from $3 million to $60 million in a matter of years - the additional dollars flowed at Street's request - the nonprofit did not keep up with that growth.

The report said Safe and Sound gave out money to dozens of after-school programs even though it had no formal contracts, and in some cases no letters outlining terms of agreement.

Anne Shenberger, the current director of Safe and Sound, responded to the report by saying that her organization had provided adequate financial oversight to programs that received public dollars. She suggests in the article that the timing and content of the report is politically motivated. According to her, there were no specific standards beyond the contract the agency had with the city to provide services.

On Monday, Philadelphia City Council held hearings on the Health Department's proposed budget for 2008. The total amount spent on public health programs by the CIty of Philadelphia is $188,828,092 per year. The biggest chunk of this money-- about 23%-- is spent on operating city health centers in 10 locations across the city.

These facilities are open to any city resident, but are primarily used by low-income individuals and people without insurance. At the hearing, Councilman Curtis Jones wondered if a better way to service needy individuals.

"Is it time for the City of Philadelphia revisit the idea of a publicly owned hospital?" asked Jones. "I wonder if we are at an economic point where we need a to have a publicly owned hospital here in Philadelphia."

The health commissioner, Dr. Donald Schwarz, was skeptical of the idea.

"The cost of investment in a hospital is extraordinary and the ongoing expense for that is equally extraordinary."

Jones responded by suggesting a feasibility study for the idea.

"The cost of a hospital probably is high," he said. "The cost to the citizens of not having a publicly owned hospital is higher. When we start talking issues such as organ failure, kidney failure, it exceeds the death total of gun violence in the city of Philadelphia."

A report from Health Department called "Taking Philadelphia's Temperature" has of tons of mortality statistics and confirms the point made by Jones. Kidney failure is indeed one of the leading causes of death. Cancer, heart failure, and other diseases are indeed more likely to result in death than homicide. This is even true among low income individuals who, based on the stats, are more likely to be murdered.

We absolutely need to figure out a way to provide healthcare to our neediest citizens. Is building a city-owned hospital the best way to spend our money?

Tomorrow, we'll take a closer look at city health centers and try to get a handle on how your tax dollars are currently being spent to provide healthcare for Philadelphians.

Hey!

Check out Ben's piece in today's Daily News about the city's public health centers. You may come away wondering why we don't spend even more on these things if, in the final analysis (I love that phrase), they actually save us money on overall health care spending.

Both Ben and I will be monitoring the blog throughout the day and will try to respond to your comments as quickly as possible. So have at it!

We'll also get the graphics referred to in Ben's piece up on It's Our Money so check that link later today.

UPDATE: Almost forgot... do you regularly use one of the public health centers for your health care needs? What has your experience been like? If you don't want to discuss it publicly, you can contact Ben at waxmanb (at) phillynews.com, but we want to hear from you and pursue this story - your story - in a little more depth.

Just got a media advisory that Mayor Michael Nutter will be testifying in front of City Council Rules Committee at 11am this morning about the proposed Foxwoods Casino, which just got a lot of help from the State Supreme Court.

This isn't a budget hearing but the siting, building and operation of these slots parlors will undoubtedly impact both the revenue and expenditure side of the city budget. The question remains - will that impact be positive or negative?

Nutter's testimony will be given in City Council chambers, Room 400 at City Hall.

We'll have more from the reporters on the scene later today.

By all accounts, this should be a good time for SEPTA. Thanks in part to rising gas prices, ridership is going up. The public transit agency is actually talking about increasing service instead of raising fares. That's why it's distressing to see another story about someone being attacked and robbed while riding the subway. A woman named Tyesha Tazwell was beat up yesterday on her way home. From the Daily News:

Police said she was attacked near an underground concourse between SEPTA's underground lines and the Gallery mall at 8th and Market streets Wednesday night - exactly one week after Starbucks manager Sean Patrick Conroy died after being beaten by six teens on a SEPTA concourse just five blocks away.

Given all the attention being given to public safety and public transit, I thought I'd take a look at exactly how much money SEPTA spends on police officers. You can find the information in SEPTA's annual operating budget. It's available for download from their website by clicking here.

SEPTA spends $14.9 million to employ 260 transit police every year. Does that seem like enough? According to statistics about ridership from the SEPTA website, there are 83,500 trips made by people everyday. That means the ratio of police officer to people using the system at any given time is about 1 for every 321. In comparison, the Philadelphia Police Department has one officer for every 219 people in the city.

My first instinct is that SEPTA needs to hire more police. Of course, that would be pretty expensive-- the average cost of each officer is a little more than $57,000. There may be other, cheaper, ways to deal with this issue. For example, the installation of more security cameras might be a good deterrent against crime. It's important to remember that even cameras have a cost beyond simply purchasing and installation. You have to hire someone who can watch the live feeds and call the police if something doesn't look right.

People will not continue to use SEPTA if they do not feel safe. These attacks provide an opportunity to talk about how Our Money can best be spent to improve security for passengers.

Last week, I wrote a post wondering if SEPTA had enough police officers patrolling the system to protect people riding public transit. There have been several well-publicized robberies and assaults over the past few weeks-- including one incident that ended with the victim dying as result of a massive asthma attack.

So, do we have enough transit cops keeping an eye on things? It appears that the answer is no. Yesterday, SEPTA officials announced that they would be hiring more security personal. From the Daily News:

Starting immediately, 30 additional SEPTA police officers will be paid overtime to work throughout the transit system between 2 p.m. and 5 p.m. That brings to 90 the number of officers on patrol during the hours when more than 55,000 children are traveling home from school, said Jim Jordan, head of SEPTA security.

According to an article in the Inquirer, the overtime is expected to cost about $17,000 per week. In addition to beefing up patrols, SEPTA also said that it would be looking into ways to speed up the installation of security cameras in stations around the city. One SEPTA board member, Christian DiCicco, believes the solution is to hire an additional 50 transit police over the next two years at a cost of about $2.85 million.

Last week, I wrote about the need to increase funding for city district health centers. A new report from City Controller Alan Butkovitz provides more evidence that supports this conclusion. The study, which was conducted by a private company called Practical Healthcare Solutions, examined two areas: the long wait for appointments and how city pharmacies operate. The report found problems with both.

We already knew that it takes a long time to get an appointment at city health centers. The Philadelphia Unemployment Project released a study a year ago that found it can take between 3 and 5 months to see a doctor. Butkovitz's report says that the average wait is actually 165 days. That's about 5 and a half months-- suggesting the problem may be even worse than PUP originally thought. As you can see from the graph posted on the front page, Butkovitz also compared the wait in Philadelphia to other cities and found that we don't measure up very well.

The report also looked at how pharmacies operate and a found a number of areas that need improvement. This is a subject that I touched upon in my op-ed but didn't really examine in-depth. According to the study, city pharmacists have to fill between 300 and 365 prescriptions every day. The sheer volume means that staff have less time and energy to conduct the necessary safety controls that make sure patients receive the right kind of medication. Beyond the safety issue, there are also basic problems with customer service. City pharmacies can take up to two days to fill a prescription and patients can only pick up their medicine during regular work hours.

The solution to these problems in city pharmacies? Spend more money. The report suggests that the city should immediately hire four pharmacists and assign them to the busiest health centers. Butkovitz also says that the city should increase the salary of pharmacists and other pharmacy staff to attract qualified employees. The report also says that the city needs to hire more doctors, apply for more funding through grants, and look at potentially building as many as three new health centers around the city.

I was tryin' to find my way home,
But all I heard was a drone -
Bouncing off a satellite,
Crushin' the last lone American night.
This is Radio Nowhere ... is there anybody alive out there?

Over the last two days, Daily News crime reporter David Gambacorta has produced a flood of stories that, in terms of the city budget, fall into two categories: money not spent well or money not spent at all. Granted, the latter story about the Philadelphia Housing Authority is just as much about cuts in federal funding but there's nothing stopping the city from ponying up for enough of the new radios for the PHA force.

But what good would that extra money do when it seems clear, according to these reports, that it could be spent on a system that simply doesn't work?

At issue is the $62 million Motorola digital radio system that city officials had claimed they had "fixed" in 2005 but has apparently failed at least 14 times since then.

The system, used by cops and fire fighters, depends on sending a digital signal back to a central location which is then transmitted to other radios. Analog radios, on the other hand, communicate directly with each other. So even if two digital radios were within a few yards of each other, if the central location fails, the two radios will not be connected:

The radios came with emergency buttons that were supposed to give cops or firefighters 10 seconds of clear air on all nearby radios, creating priority over all other transmissions.

But the emergency buttons were flawed, too. When firefighter Leon Phipps was trapped in a West Philadelphia house fire in April 2004, his emergency button didn't work when he screamed for help, he claimed afterward. Phipps, 53, suffered career-ending injuries in the blaze, and Motorola eventually settled a lawsuit with him.

Unfortunately, stories about misspent funds, money spent on faulty products or contracts that are expected to cost $X million and come in at $4X million seem all too common. (Remember the $18 million - or was it $30 million - water billing system that didn't work? Or, of course, the $0 - make that $200,000 - Wireless Philly system that may end up costing even more?)

Sometimes, these can be chalked up to plain old bad luck but in the case of the Motorola system it seems that someone was just too eager to spend a lot of money on a fancy system before making sure the system worked:

The controller's report surprisingly found that there was no documentation to suggest that city officials - before shelling out $54 million - had bothered to verify the effectiveness of Motorola's system by visiting other big cities that used it.

When Fire Department officials in Phoenix, Ariz., field-tested Motorola's system for eight weeks in 2004, they found that their old analog system held up better during emergencies.

To top it off, the city will most likely have to spend another $13 million to upgrade the system so that Motorola will continue to provide maintenance and service after their current service contract ends in 2010.

Would you buy a car without test driving first or a house without having it inspected? Hopefully, the city will be a little more careful with Our Money in the future.

I just posted an overview of L&I and some of the problems that the department faces. You can read it by clicking here.

Don't forget to come back and tell us what you think!

I have no other reason for calling attention to this story except that (1) I've spent a lot of time in the particular area referenced in the article, (2) it gives you a good sense of the struggles of other parts of the state when it comes to getting state funding for infrastructure projects and (3) the following quote gives some insight into how some political leaders in other parts of the state view Philly:

"This resizing [of the Marshall's Creek bypass project] hasn't surprised me. That's why they want to toll (Interstate) 80, to fund infrastructure. But I'm not sure Monroe will get its fair share. I'm sure Philadelphia will get its fair share."

That's Monroe County commissioners Chairwoman Suzanne McCool.

I'm also not a fan of any highway project that "bypasses" small rural towns in the interest of improved traffic flow given what happened to poor ole Radiator Springs (there's always a grain of truth in fiction) and I've actually sat in the traffic that it seeks to mitigate. But that's a point for another blog post.

State Senator Vince Fumo was a master at bringing home the bacon from Harrisburg. He delivered millions of dollars in state aid for libraries, hospitals, and other projects in Philadelphia during the course of his career. Fumo was never shy about taking credit and never missed an opportunity to have his picture taken with a giant check delivered to some worthy organization.

However, Fumo's way of doing things has critics. At least one lawmaker in Harrisburg thinks that it's time for these photo-ops with politicians and giant checks to end. Senator John Eichelberger refused to join other state officials for a photo with a mock check for $2.9 million. The money was state aid for local economic development. According to a post on Eichelberger's blog, he feels that these pictures send the wrong message to taxpayers:

My reason for not participating in the photo is that this is government money, not my money. I don’t think that it is appropriate to stand next to a government check and take credit for doing my job as a government official. Also, in this case and many others, I don’t deserve any of the credit since I didn’t do anything to help with this project. The people of Pennsylvania would be surprised to learn that very often the officials standing up and taking credit for the project in today’s paper have nothing to do with that project.

Link: Eichelberger's blog
Also: How Do They "Bring Home the Bacon"?

Legislators in Harrisburg are considering a bill that would require anyone seeking government benefits, like food stamps or subsidized student loans, to prove legal residency. Supporters say that the legislation will keep illegal immigrants from accessing these services. The Daily News has an editorial about the cost of this proposal:

Scarnati's office says that the cost of enforcing the law will be less than $1 million per year. But Rendell's office estimates that the true cost of the bill would be closer to $19 million. Political leaders are free to squabble about the exact number, but taxpayers don't need to look hard for comparisons. For example, local governments in Colorado spent more than $2.8 million to verify the legal status just for people applying for Medicaid benefits.

The study from Colorado, which is linked below, explains how checking for citizenship wound up costing a bunch of money. The simple answer is that the legislation gave more responsibility to people who were already overworked. Social workers were required to process a new batch of paperwork and that added an average of 23 minutes to every application for Medicaid benefits. This significantly decreased the total number of people who could be severed by each caseworker.

Link: One Reform We Don't Need [Daily News]
Also: Citizen Documentation Are Administratively and Fiscally Burdensome [Colorado Center on Law and Policy]

Tomorrow is the final opportunity for the public to testify about the mayor's proposed operating budget. If you'd like to tell City Council how you think our money should be spent, this is your chance!

The hearing is scheduled to begin at 2:30pm. There will be a break at 4:30pm and then testimony will resume at 5:30pm. Right now, the hearing is scheduled to last until 7:00pm but it may run later depending on how many people come to testify.

I've been told that the afternoon slots are all filled, but there is still space in the evening. To get your name on the list, e-mail Sharon Ortiz at sharon.c.ortiz@phila.gov or call 215-686-3407.

If you can't make it to the hearing, be sure to speak your piece in our "Testify!" thread. We'll make sure that City Council gets a copy.

In May, it will have been 23 years since that fateful day when the city burned a block of houses to the ground. The Inquirer today reports on a court decision that "set the stage for future court proceedings, demonstrating that the May 13, 1985, fire is likely to remain for the city an enduring and costly legal burden."

Eleven lives were lost in the tragedy, including 5 children and dozens of families were displaced from their homes on the 6200 block of Osage Avenue in West Philadelphia.

My memory of the event is vague (I was 9 in May of 1985) and most of what I know comes from reading about the aftermath - lawsuits, etc. I seem to remember that the process by which the city chose a contractor to rebuild the houses was fraught with the kind of back-room deals and "who knows whom" that have been common throughout this city's history.

Regardless, it soon became clear that the contractor didn't do such a great job. Residents have been trying since pretty damn near the time they moved back in to get the city to take care of the problems with their houses. At various times courts have sided with them, appeals have been made, and all the while the city shells out money for legal fees on top of what they've already paid:

The 24 homeowners took their case to federal court after refusing to settle with the city after years of problems that resulted from construction defects on the houses built for them.

The city has spent millions as a result of the disaster - including more than $15 million to rebuild the neighborhood, $2.5 million to the parents of the slain MOVE children, and $1.7 million more to the child once known as Birdie Africa, who escaped the fire.

So for one split-second decision on May 13, 1985, the city will continue to pay up.

(Let's do a little crowd sourcing to tell the story. I put a few minutes into trying to track down the name of the builder and all of the circumstances, but I have to move on. Feel free to add on your own knowledge of the MOVE incident and its aftermath in the comments section. If you try to add links, contact me so I know to "allow" the comment. Email me at dpohlig (at) whyy.org)

On Tuesday, District Attorney Lynne Abraham appeared before City Council to justify her $45 million budget. I decided to take a look at a policy that didn't come up at the hearing but has serious financial implications for Philadelphia-- the high cost of death penalty prosecutions.

You can check out my take on the subject by reading "Death Row Dollars."

To give you a hint, I don't think it's worth the cost. Agree? Disagree? Let us know by using this thread to comment!

Yesterday, most of Philadelphia was focused on the big debate between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. However, there was another debate taking place in our city and the issues discussed probably have more impact on the everyday lives of people in Philadelphia than questions about flag pins and Bosnian sniper fire. I'm talking about the public testimony heard by City Council yesterday about the proposed operating budget. Council heard more than four hours of testimony about recreation centers, taxes, libraries, after school programs, affordable housing, and a host of other issues.

I recorded the entire session and we should shortly have video available of all the testimony. I wanted to share a few broad observations about the proceedings while it is all still fresh in my mind. If anything, it reinforced a lot of the things I already thought about the need to make the process more open to the public.

First of all, it really does seem silly to have all of the public testimony happen at once. A better way of doing things would be to scrap the single hearing and allow members of the public to testify at the same time as department heads. It was pretty disjointed to have the Friends of the Free Library speak right after a bunch of people talked about taxes. If Council could hear members of the public at the same time as city officials, it would probably better inform the debate. The current way of doing things requires Council to absorb a huge amount of information from the public without any context. It also prohibits Council from using testimony from the public to inform their questions of department heads.

If it's not possible to allow testimony from the public during every budget hearing, can we at least move the hearing to the front of the process? Right now, ordinary people are only allowed to have their say after department heads and city officials already gone. That means that elected officials, the administration, and members of the media only have access to these important perspectives after most of the debate has already happened.

For example, a group of individuals from Tenant Union Representative Network complained yesterday about an apartment building that has repeatedly violated safety codes that are supposed to be enforced by L&I. It probably would have been useful to hear this information before L&I's budget hearing. That would have allowed Council members to ask the tough questions that need to be asked about why this department is falling down on the job. Instead, they only heard the information at the end of the process and won't be able to make L&I answer any public questions about why they haven't dealt with the situation.

The hearing was absolutely long (and boring at times), but there was something inspiring about seeing so many people come to speak their piece. It was an extremely diverse group and seemed to be pretty representative of the population of the city. We need to figure out how to amplify the voices of ordinary people and make the budget process more open.

I just took a look at the email with Mayor Nutter's public schedule. It shows up in my inbox every evening for the next day but with the debate and everything I was a little busy so I just got around to opening it.

The mayor had a pretty interesting day today:

11:30 AM: Meeting with the Bucks County commissioners in Doylestown...
1:30 PM: Montgomery County commissioners meeting in Norristown...
3:30 PM: Delaware County commissioners (County Council?) in Media...

Hmmm... This could be a good sign. I'll keep you posted if I see any other news about this or... maybe I'll go back to reporting for a few minutes and make a call to see what these meetings were about.

At a budget hearing two weeks ago, the acting commissioner of L&I testified that the department was behind on inspections in a number of areas. Given that the agency is responsible for enforcing health, fire, and safety codes, this seems like a pretty big problem. So why is L&I spending time and resources going after political signs?

Kenyatta Johnson is running for state representative in South Philadelphia and distributed 5,000 signs to supporters throughout the district. Some of these were hung on utility poles and trees, which violates local ordinances. Two weeks ago, the campaign received a letter from L&I ordering Johnson to remove the signs or face a financial penalty. Johnson tried to mount a legal challenge to the ordinance in federal court on First Amendment grounds but was unsuccessful.

These signs absolutely can be an eyesore and political campaigns should not hang things illegally. However, I can't help but wonder why L&I is spending time and resources going after political signs when there are so many other areas that the agency seems unable to tackle. I'd rather have L&I inspect buildings, bridges, and other parts of Philadelphia's aging infrastructure. As for signs, I'd like to see the agency target some of the commercial signs-- for everything from real estate to car alarms-- that are hung in neighborhoods across the city. Going after political signs, particularly during a hot election season, does not seem like a good use of L&I's limited resources.

Link: Signs of the (political) times: Fight to keep posters on poles [Daily News]
Also: L&I: Too Much with Too Little? [It's Our Money]

Well, yesterday when I included a quick update on the Mayor's public schedule I promised that someone would be writing about what he was doing out in the burbs and I was right:

Mayor Nutter fired up his hybrid SUV and dialed up GPS coordinates to preach cooperation in places that have seen few emissaries from City Hall in recent years: Doylestown, Norristown and Media.

Afternoon No. 102 of Nutter's mayoral administration was largely, he acknowledged, a "meet-and-greet opportunity" to exchange staff-member contact lists with his neighbors and figure out where areas of mutual self-interest lie.

Yay!

"Politics is one thing; personal relationships, I think, are something else," Nutter said. "If you have both working, you can get so much more done. So I'm trying to build good professional and personal working relationships."

Though not quite as daunting a task as bringing peace to the Middle East, fostering cooperation among the 5 southeastern Pennsylvania counties would be nothing short of a miracle. You know we'll be keeping track of these developments.

Robberies on the subway lines are up.

The culprits - mostly teens.

The victims - other teens.

No comments from me. I'm just going to keep my head on a swivel.

Last week, Philadelphia City Council heard more than four hours of testimony from the public about Mayor Nutter's operating budget. There are a variety of ways to make it easier for regular folks to participate in the budget process. City Council and Mayor Nutter should consider some of the following proposals.

First, the time for public testimony should be moved to the front of the process. Currently, the hearing happens at the very end. This means that City Council hears from everyone running the departments before the public. Moving the testimony to the front would enable our elected officials to hear how ordinary people feel about the departments and could inform the entire process.

A second idea is to have more hearings. Public comment lasted more than four hours this year. It would be better to have several, shorter, hearings throughout the process. This would allow more people to participate and make it easier for members of city council to digest the information. Currently, someone cannot testify if they can't get off work the day of the single hearing.

What about having a budget hearing for the recreation department in a recreation center? This would also take the budget process out of City Hall and into the neighborhoods of Philadelphia. Holding hearings at night could also increase participation. This idea was suggested by Councilman Curtis Jones.

If City Council and the mayor really wanted to shake things up, they could scrap the single hearing and allow the public to testify throughout the process. If someone wanted to say something about L&I, they could ask their questions directly of a department head. There is the potential that this could get unwieldy, but it would allow a lot of input from the public.

These ideas would shake up the process, but they pale in comparison to some experimentation with budgeting that is happening around the world. There are several cities in Brazil that have something called participatory budgeting that actually allows residents to vote on how money is spent. That might be a little too radical for Philadelphia, but it is an interesting idea.

Allowing the public to have a chance for meaningful input is incredibly important. After all, most of the money being spent comes directly from taxpayers. The concerns of ordinary people, not just government officials, should play a starring role in the city budget process. Adopting some of the proposals mentioned above would be a good start towards increasing opportunities for engagement.

City Council will switch focus on Monday and hold hearings about the operating budget for the School District of Philadelphia. Council is required to authorize the transfer of $889 million in local tax dollars to the District. These hearings-- five in all-- will be the final stage of the budget process.

I've been doing a little digging into the District Budget. It's been an interesting experience. Frankly, there seem to be more people who seem to understand the budget and have strong opinions about it. That's partially thanks to the presence of several strong advocacy organizations.

The School District also does some things right. Take a look at the portion of their website dedicated to the school budget. It's fairly easy to navigate and there is a link on the front page. The site has a calender of budget events, links to documents, and a message board. In comparison, the city only has a links to a few documents.

Here is another little nugget to ponder: Council has held more than sixty hearings on Mayor Nutter's $3.9 billion budget. There will be only five hearings about the School District, which has a budget of $2.3 billion. Does that make anyone else go "Hmmm.."?

If you haven't heard already, Philadelphia Safe and Sound has decided to shut it's doors after nearly ten years of operation. The non-profit, which grew from a budget of $3.3 million to $75 million in just a few years, severed as a financial intermediary between the city and dozens of social service agencies across the city. The departure of Safe and Sound means that the city must find a new way to provide funding to many community-based organizations that provide services to children. An editorial in today's Philadelphia Daily News explains just how messed up the current system is:

WHAT DOES THE DEATH OF Philadelphia Safe and Sound mean for the children of the city?

Mayor Nutter has a great opportunity to reform this. We hope he takes it on. *

City Council will begin hearings today on the budget for the Philadelphia School District. An editorial in the Philadelphia Daily News, reprinted below, outlines some of the budgetary issues facing public schools.

Here is the editorial:

THE RED FLAGS are flying again over the School District of Philadelphia. They were hoisted last week in light of two disturbing stories that suggest that the district's track record for fiscal oversight and management is still troubled.

Can't attend the hearing? The Daily News and WHYY's "It's Our Money" project on the city budget, funded by William Penn Foundation, will post public testimony on budget matters. Visit www.ourmoneyphilly.com and testify. *

Philadelphia isn't the only city to have trouble accounting for public dollars given to private non-profits. City Council members in New York City were apparently using non-profits in an elaborate shell game to hide budget dollars from the Mayor. Here is a blurb that explains the basics from the New York Times story:

The millions of dollars that council members dole out to community groups each year rarely received attention until last month, when it was revealed that the Council had been using the names of fictitious groups to park money that it could later spend without going through the normal budget review process.

Now a spectrum of analysts, from auditors for the city comptroller to federal investigators to lawyers for the city’s Department of Investigation, are scrutinizing just what kinds of programs City Council members are financing with the discretionary funds they control.

The obvious It's Our Money question is: could this possibly happen in Philadelphia? It's unlikely. New York City Council has a lot more control over how money is spent. They actually have a budget of their own and can make expenditures independent of the mayor. In contrast, individual council members in Philadelphia do not have access to much in the way of discretionary funds. The only potential exception is the funding provided for capital improvements in the Recreation Department. Members of Council in Philadelphia can decide where to spend that money, but it must be at a recreation center or some other public facility.

It's been a while since I checked out one of my favorite blogs - Governing.com's 13th Floor - and man, have I been missing out.

These guys are great at passing along information about innovative, creative and sometimes downright wacky things going on in other cities or being attempted by state and local governments.

Let's take a quick look at some good ones from just yesterday.

How about the Bum Bot? Apparently a bar owner in Atlanta has developed a robot that rolls around outside of his bar and sprays loiterers with a jet of water to move them on their way. Apparently the thing is pretty popular since its inventor thinks he has a shot at being mayor. His platform: a robot on every corner and a spray of water for every vagrant. Video included.

DId you ever wonder what people in 1955 thought the world would look like in 1975? Apparently there's a whole website devoted to that and it is AWESOME. The site, Paleo-Future.com, includes some maps like the Super Metropolis Map of 1975. Like the 13th Floor says, it's a pretty "spot-on prediction" of what shape regional development would take if not by 1975 then at least by the 1990s. Unfortunately, one of the predictions that hasn't yet come true was the optimistic view of how we would get around in these Super Metropoli:

They will be saved from traffic self-suffication by high speed transportation -- perhaps monorails that provide luxurious non-stop service between the inner centers of the supercities as well as links between the super-metropolises themselves.

I want my Monorail!

And finally, do find yourself dreamily wishing you could go to that paradise known as California - at least the one portrayed in those ubiquitous commercials with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Rob Lowe? Well, for now you may have to settle for the state's own Youtube channel. While not Laughing Baby good, there are apparently some pretty entertaining videos on their from a variety of state agencies. Bonus: none of the videos feature a certain second-most famous animatronic groundhog.

Ok. Back to work everyone.