The Pope's Visit and Nutter's Downtown Dictatorship

Pope Francis's visit is still more than a month away, but it's been dominating the news in Philadelphia for several weeks.  Summer is effectively the season for violent crime, and there have been a rash of recent scandals involving politicians and police, so papal primacy in the headlines has hardly been preordained.

More private conversations also seem to be turning to the upcoming papal visit, which will follow the World Meeting of Families to be held in Philadelphia.  Anecdotal evidence suggests that many people take a decidedly negative view of what lies ahead.  If you knew only that "the Pope" was coming to Philadelphia, and heard some of this talk, you'd think that "the Pope" was either the leader of an invading army or a nickname for the Ebola virus.

But the source of most of the negativity seems to have little to do with the Holy Father himself.  Instead, Mayor Michael Nutter and his administration are to blame.  They've decided to turn Center City and its surroundings into a mini-dictatorship while the Pope is in town.

Nutter's administration has prepared a "daily progression of street closures" barring access by vehicle to Center City and its surroundings.  At a news conference on August 13, the mayor marveled at "just how complicated vehicle traffic will be," as though his decision to block access to Center City was a major achievement.  

Having judged it unsafe for people to drive into town, the mayor and his advisers have also decided that arriving by public transit is too risky to allow more than a few people to use.  Thus, they contrived to make it impossible for more than a small percentage of the people expected in Philadelphia for the Pope's visit to ride in on SEPTA and other public transit systems.  SEPTA and other agencies are running on unprecedented limited schedules, bypassing all but a few stops, and charging especially high fares for tickets that must be purchased in advance through a lottery.  When parking lots at the few stops that will be serviced fill up, some lottery winners may find themselves to be losers after all.

Without cars or trains, what are people supposed to do?  A Mayor's Office press release of August 10 tells them simply to "be prepared to walk to your destination... up to a couple of miles."  If they can't do that, presumably they can't come downtown.  Too bad for the injured, the aged, and the disabled-- not to mention the people who are physically able to go through this unnecessary hassle.

To add to the welcoming spirit, Nutter has also ordered the closure of the public streets throughout an area encompassing Center City and areas bordering it to cars and pedestrians who do not submit to searches.  This will be accomplished with massive police overtime, the rental or purchase of screening equipment, and the construction of temporary walls.  Visitors to our city will get a taste of pre-1989 East Berlin.  How retro!

Another Communist Bloc throwback will be empty shelves and shops with nothing to sell.  The cordoned-off area where masses of visitors are expected will be largely unable to receive deliveries while Center City is under Nutter's lockdown.  Assuming employees of shops and restaurants manage to make it to work through the mayor's walls, they will have nothing more to sell once the crowds exhaust their supplies.  Nutter hasn't yet explained what crowds of hungry and thirsty people should do if this happens.  Based on his earlier comments, he'd probably tell them to keep walking until they found sustenance.

I wish I were the well-compensated consultant who came up with the name "Traffic Box" for the area barred to vehicles, and "Secure Perimeter" for the area where police will arrest anyone walking down the street who's unwilling to submit to searches.  But if I were the well-compensated consultant, I would likely have been fired for questioning Mayor Nutter's decision to declare war on all residents and visitors.  I would have pointed to other cities around the world, in both rich and poor countries, that have hosted the Pope.  Do those places go to the extremes Nutter is contemplating?   Certainly not.  Even many cities in developing countries are better managed than Philadelphia is.  Their leaders have taken a more reasonable approach to ensuring security than Nutter, and haven't wasted resources and caused disruption to nearly the extent that his plans entail.

The effect that Nutter's mini-dictatorship will have on turnout is becoming clear in the results of the ticket lotteries being held by the public transit authorities.  The lotteries were supposed to offer a limited number of tickets so that SEPTA and the other authorities wouldn't have to turn people away.  But so many people feel deterred by Nutter's unreasonable preparations that there are many more places available in the lottery than people who want them.  The hassle and dangers being created by City officials are simply too great.

The Mayor's Office has repeatedly made piecemeal additions to its elaborate security preparations, some maps of which are still labeled "draft."  This suggests that Nutter and his advisers are basing their preparations not on any objective measure of need, but on changing political assessments of what they can get away with.  Why would they want to do this?

I think the administration wants to set a precedent that will be used repeatedly in the future.  All the talk about how extraordinary the Pope's visit is will be forgotten then, and city residents will be asked to endure similar restrictions on their freedom and their commerce every time a major convention is in town.  

The "Traffic Box" and "Secure Perimeter" will become part of a package that the City tries to sell to organizations to try to attract them to hold events here.  Philadelphia has not attracted as many conventions or major events as it should.  Rather than fix problems with the City that have kept conventions away, such as inadequate and overly expensive parking, the high cost of holding conventions here, or the widely held perception that Philadelphia is a dirty and dangerous place, City officials intend to add this new feature to the deal they offer to convention organizers.  The Pope's visit is the first demonstration of the mini-dictatorship as a feature of events in Philadelphia; the Democratic convention next year will be another.

The idea is to show that Philadelphia can function like Davos or Bilderberg.  Those places simply order the closure of large public spaces so that rich people who've paid for the privilege can use them exclusively, without having to deal with any undesirable people they don't wish to see in their midst.

City officials haven't consulted the public about this, but in all likelihood, they don't feel they have to.  They view voters here as docile and ignorant, and city residents as mere objects to be moved out of the way to accomplish their goals, however foolish and unattainable they are.  Smell Center City in the summer, look at the trash in the streets, or get your car broken into if you manage to park it, and you'll understand why no one will mistake Philly for Davos.

It's a shame that the visit of the Pope is being exploited by Nutter and City officials in furtherance of their scheme.  If I were the Pope's advisers, I'd consider telling him to cancel the visit.  The City's misguided preparations will keep so many people away that it will appear as though people don't want to see the Pope, or don't care enough to turn out.  Why risk that embarrassment?

The 174th District Special Election: Vote for Your Favorite Loser

Today is an exciting day for Northeast Philadelphia's political cliques.  Sometime after 9 PM tonight, they'll find out whether Ed Neilson or Tim Dailey won the 174th District seat in the Pennsylvania House, and the right to distribute the jobs and walking-around money that go with it.

But for 174th District voters, today isn't exciting at all.  They must choose, literally, between two losers.

Neilson, a former member of City Council, lost in the Democratic primary in May.  After this defeat, the lame-duck councilman resigned to run for the 174th District seat vacated in May by John Sabatina, who had just won a special election to fill the State Senate seat vacated in January by now-Lieutenant Governor Mike Stack.  Dailey lost to Sabatina in that election.

Voters in the 174th District ought to take note of the contempt the parties have shown for them in nominating Neilson and Dailey.  Rather than choose fresh candidates, the parties both ran warmed-over losers.  In the Neilson-Dailey race, voters are being asked to choose between two men both of whom they may already have rejected within the last six months.  One reject or the other will inevitably be selected.

For anyone who's as serious about democracy as Americans ought to be, that is cause for concern.  Did the parties assume that people in the 174th District are too stupid to notice that their choice is between two candidates only recently rejected by voters?  Did they figure that turnout for a special election date in the middle of the summer would be so low that it didn't matter what most voters might think of the candidates?

I think that the parties regard special elections in Philadelphia as chances to impose bad candidates on unwilling voters.  A few ward leaders essentially handpick candidates from among very narrow groups of party hacks; the narrow time frame involved in holding special elections denies voters in each party the chance to influence their party's choice of candidate through a primary.  Then, in the general election, voters choose between two undesirable toadies of the ward leaders.  In the case of the 174th District, both toadies also happen to be losers of elections this year.

Right now, two small groups of hangers-on of the two candidates are gearing up for a big day of making phone calls and driving aged, disabled, and unmotivated supporters of their party to the polls.  One group will get easy jobs on taxpayers' dime; the other will be disappointed.  I don't disparage anyone who wants to better their lot in life by taking up a new occupation.  But the process by which these political lackeys are getting their opportunity-- a process in which one of two losers will be forced on voters on short notice-- is a total failure.

No wonder voters don't bother to show up.  The recent comments of Mayor Michael Nutter and leaders of the Urban League and Committee of Seventy about the low turnout in recent elections in Philadelphia did not seem to take account of the uninspiring choices facing those who do vote.  In the 174th District, voters who didn't like Neilson or Dailey in elections just a few months ago were simply ignored by party leaders, so it's hard to blame the voters for ignoring this race.

Fattah's Indictment: Obama's Quid for Nutter's Quo?

Chaka Fattah's indictment made national news.  If people in other parts of the country needed a reminder that Philadelphia's politics are the kind in which only the crooked rise, they got it.  If people here needed a reminder that repeatedly reelecting incumbents who face no opposition results in corruption, they got that, too.

The local and national news both focused on the substance of the allegations against Fattah, which center on the use of public money laundered through a nonprofit organization to pay private debts, and taking bribes. Local political custom holds that death and Federal courts are the only ways an incumbent can be made to leave office involuntarily. As Fattah must realize, he could be forced out.  

Other politicians in Philly may also be crapping their pants right now, knowing that they and their staffs behave just as Fattah and his staff are alleged to have done.  But do they really have anything to worry about?

I doubt it.  The funny thing about Fattah's indictment is the timing.  I think it's as important a story as what Fattah is alleged to have done

Much of Fattah's alleged wrongdoing appears to have taken place between 2007 and 2011.  It's been awhile since then.  Even assuming that it took some time for Fattah's alleged transgressions to be discovered and investigated, four years or more seems like a very long time to wait for an indictment.  A potentially career-ending public corruption case against an official as highly placed as a Congressman seems like it might have been a higher priority for the Justice Department.

I suspect that the reason for the wait has to do with an arrangement made a long time ago between President Barack Obama and Mayor Michael Nutter.  Twice, Nutter delivered big votes in Philly to Obama, in effect winning Pennsylvania twice for the President.  What did he get in return?  At one time, it was thought Nutter might join Obama's Cabinet, but that never happened.  Philadelphia did prevail in its bid to host the 2016 Democratic Convention, but that was a bone thrown to the City's Democratic Party collectively, not to Nutter personally.

Instead, I suspect Nutter got Obama's commitment some time ago to help him personally this year, in 2015.  With Nutter's second term ending, he would be looking for a job worthy of the dignity of an ex-mayor.  He or his handlers have been floating trial balloons in the media about his potential suitability for a seat in Congress since last year.

What was needed, though, was an open seat.  That's where Obama could help Nutter.  With a telephone and a Justice Department at his disposal, a President can create open seats in Philadelphia with relative ease.  Few politicians here would likely be found clean on close inspection.  But since Fattah's seat is the one Nutter is after, it was Fattah who found himself charged with crimes.  The Justice Department won't get its hands any dirtier than it has to in order to see Nutter's path cleared.

If Fattah is guilty, he should go to jail, although I wouldn't bank on that.  But if my theory about an Obama-Nutter deal is correct, it's doubtful that anything better can be expected of a future Congressman Nutter.  What Philly's politics needs to become cleaner is more competition, not less.  But if Nutter arranged to have Fattah displaced at a moment when he was overwhelmingly better prepared than anyone else to grab Fattah's seat by exerting influence on Democratic ward leaders, the result won't be a contest.  Instead, we'll see the coronation of a new job-for-life incumbent who needn't answer to anyone other than a Federal court or the Grim Reaper.

How Very Fortunato

When ordinary people go before a judge in Philadelphia to be sentenced for their crimes, they typically get stern looks, hear condescending, pious remarks about how wrong their actions were, and often receive a sentence that sends them to jail to think about their terrible misdeeds.  God forbid that you or I should get caught stealing two pairs of pantyhose, buying a tiny amount of a controlled substance, or punching someone who had hit them first.  I've personally seen and heard jail sentences handed down for each of those awful crimes.

When former Traffic Court Judge Fotunato Perri, Sr. went before a Federal judge to receive his sentence on Friday, somehow things turned out differently.  Perri got two years of probation for mail and wire fraud and conspiracy, to which he pled guilty in 2013.  He fixed cases in the now-defunct Traffic Court in exchange for bribes.

For Perri, the outcome was quite fortunate.  He was considered a real hammer during his many years on the court.  He handing out harsh sentences for the terrible, fabric-of-society-rending evils people perpetrated with their cars.  The black-robed hypocrite's own activities helped to undermine public confidence in the justice system and discredit the Traffic Court, which was disbanded by the state legislature in 2013.

The learned Federal court cited Perri's advanced age and declining health to justify his relatively light sentence.  Courts have vast discretion in sentencing, so there's nothing technically wrong with a sentence of probation for him.  People who have been slammed with a harsh sentence or seen a loved one locked up for a minor transgression, however, might well wonder why someone who helped ruin a whole governmental institution was treated more leniently.  Perri apparently managed to hide his wrongdoing behind the trappings of his office for long enough to claim to be too old to face the consequences.

Judge Perri's case continues a special Philadelphia tradition.  When the political class breaks the law, it is treated as a higher caste that does not have to face the law's harshest consequences, even though the public trust reposed in officials makes their wrongdoing far more damaging to society than that of ordinary criminals.  The treatment of a host of other minor judges and state legislators from our region earlier this year kept up the same tradition:  though guilty of corruption, they got plea bargains that let them stay out of jail and even keep their hefty pensions.  Former state Senator Vince Fumo's house arrest after a short stint in jail in his corruption case was another well-known manifestation of this special caste's status. 

As long as this continues, no one should be surprised that outsiders see Philadelphia as a corrupt city run by bad people.

Judge Perri's story also shows what Republicans would have to do to gain credibility in a city where they have none.  Briefly, they would have to purge everyone like him from their ranks.  That would take some doing.  In a city where you need a college degree to become an administrative assistant or a firefighter, Perri got on fine for many years as a high-school dropout judge with a nasty courtroom demeanor on the strength of his political connections.  He seemed unabashed by the contrast between his high office and his lack of talent or character.  Plenty of Democratic office-holders in Philly are of course just the same, but the political status quo favors them.  Nobody of Perri's ilk would ever inspire people to change their party allegiances.

Is Jim Kenney Gay?

Is he?  This article does not answer that question conclusively.  The answer wouldn't affect my vote, or the result of November's election.  As the Democratic nominee for Mayor of Philadelphia, Kenney would win if he were jailed or committed to an institution; if Kenney disclosed that he was gay before Election Day, it would likely matter even less to the result.

On the other hand, we've lived for a long time in a society where the personal is political.  Politicians' lives should not be hidden from public view, because with good reason, people don't trust politicians.  If a politician maintains secret allegiances and personal contacts, voters cannot assess accurately to whom he might be beholden, or whether he might be favoring his friends in a way that abuses the public trust.  This is especially true when the contacts at issue involve self-serving interest groups.  A politician's silence about a fundamental aspect of his identity until after an election offends the notion that important aspects of a politician's life should not be shrouded from public view.

I heard a rumor about Kenney's sexual orientation, and tried to learn more about him on the Internet.  I soon hit a roadblock.  As I discuss below, Kenney has kept secret basic details of his family and personal life-- details of a kind that other politicians readily disclose.  His friends at two local newspapers appear to be helping him to achieve this degree of secrecy.  I couldn't find information that would let me conclude that what I heard was or wasn't true.  

In my view, that is a problem.  Why isn't such a basic fact about a candidate for an important office a matter of public knowledge?

My suspicion is that Kenney thinks he can do more for his friends by keeping the details of his personal life, whatever they are, private.  Kenney has been a strident proponent of special city ordinances and executive policies favoring sexual orientation minority groups and seeking to attract people in those groups to Philadelphia, including rules touching on taxation, discrimination, education, housing, senior citizens, the allocation of cash and City resources to community organizations, and tourism.  Money and power flow from these policy choices, making the identity of the decision maker a potentially significant matter.

Kenney began his career as an aide to State Senator Vince Fumo.  After becoming top aide to Fumo, who later went to prison for his official misdeeds, Kenney won election to City Council in 1991 with the support of a recently formed political action committee, the Pride of Philadelphia Election Committee.  That group, founded by Philadelphia Gay News publisher Mark Segal, sought to replace Councilman Fran Rafferty, who did not support gay causes.  They backed Kenney, whose Irish name and Catholic background would play well with the same ethnic voters who backed Rafferty.  (As State Representative Brian Sims told a Kenney fundraiser held at a Center City gay bar in March, Kenney's value to LGBT political causes stems from his background seeming "so traditionally Philadelphian" to most voters.) Presumably, something about the relatively unknown Kenney convinced Segal's group in 1991 that it could safely put its money behind him.

Last week, Kenney decided to involve himself in a controversy over the firing of a teacher at a private Catholic school in Montgomery County.  The issue had nothing to do with Philadelphia mayoral politics or City policies.  But Kenney nevertheless inserted himself into it, as might be expected of a politician who had received a lot of money from LGBT groups over the years and identifies closely with them.  Kenney's opponents in the Democratic primary could hardly be considered antagonists of sexual-orientation minority groups.  It would have been unsurprising if Kenney shared the support of these groups with other Democratic candidates.  For some reason, though, Kenney appears to have won their backing with little dissent.  It's unclear why.  Those groups would no doubt be happy if Kenney were to follow in the footsteps of one of his prominent supporters, Representative Sims, and declare that he is gay after he is elected.  The head of one LGBT organization that initially withheld backing from Kenney justified his position on the ground that, as the Inquirer reported, there were "many firsts" for progressive voters to consider during the Democratic primary, including the possibility of electing the first Hispanic mayor, or the first woman mayor. He implied that Kenney was one of several possible "firsts"-- suggesting that he and other LGBT fundraisers know something about Kenney's personal life that most people don't.

In explaining his advocacy of LGBT causes, Kenney has stated that he regards those less strident supportive of those causes as "overly religious" or "intolerant."  Using words that insinuate his low opinion of a group of people who probably voted for him in large numbers, Kenney has said that his views on gay rights had to evolve because he began as "a white Irish Catholic guy from South Philly."   Evidently, Kenney thought people in that demographic were retrograde in their views, and too inattentive to recognize what he was saying about them.  He felt he can score political points by disparaging them, and that he'd get many of their votes regardless of what he says simply because of his Irish last name on the ballot.

Kenney seems to have the same opinion of Catholics generally.  His comments last week about the recent firing of the Montgomery County teacher included a condemnation of leaders of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia as "cowardly men," and an assertion that the firing was motivated by "discrimination and hate."  I wouldn't have fired that teacher, either.  But I doubt seriously that her firing was the result of "discrimination and hate."  Instead, as Kenney no doubt knows, Catholic schools' codes of conduct for faculty members don't let faculty be involved in same-sex civil marriages.  Kenney evidently thinks that his years as top aide to a corrupt politician and then as a member of that illustrious and profoundly moral deliberative body, the Philadelphia City Council, has prepared him to tell the Church that its interpretation of scripture is wrong, and to personally guide the faithful down the true path.  If Kenney thinks the Church's teachings on the subject misinterpret the Bible and reflect mere discrimination and hate, he should say so directly and explain himself. 

A recent article cataloged some of Kenney's frequent attacks on the Catholic Church, which sound a little strange coming from a politician who also advertises his Catholic roots and his attendance of an all-boys Catholic high school.  Based on my experience on college campuses, I find that some sexual orientation minority groups wrongly to regard the Church as a hate group.  In voicing their anti-Catholic sentiments individually and through their organizations, they sound an awful lot like bigots themselves.  Kenney's airing of views on the recent firing and on the Church generally are no doubt welcome to such people.  But if his religious convictions were ever sincere, his years of vilification of the Church may point to a broader change in his identity.

Kenney's campaign website makes no mention of his family after his graduation from college.  During the Democratic primary-- the real mayoral race in Philadelphia-- Kenney's campaign made an unusual statement that should have led reporters to inquire a bit further into his personal life.  In January 2015, when he resigned from Council to run for Mayor, Kenney took the unusual step of having his spokeswoman tell the Philadelphia Daily News that he had been separated for years from his wife.  The spokeswoman explained that "[t]here's nothing scandalous here, it's just what works for them," without elaborating on the circumstances behind their estrangement.  "He's a very straightforward guy," his spokeswoman added, with or without intended irony.

Kenney had run for Council several times without going public about his relationship with his family.  Evidently, he hoped to defuse speculation about his personal life before the typically closer scrutiny of the mayoral campaign fell upon him.   The Philadelphia Daily News, to which Kenney's campaign revealed this information, was keen to cooperate,   "By getting his personal life out of the way early," Daily News gossip-column writer Molly Eichel explained, "Kenney essentially makes it a nonissue."  As far as Philadelphia's main news-gathering institutions were concerned, Eichel's statement has seemed more like a policy than a casual observation.  Neither the Daily News nor its sister paper, the Inquirer, have had any more to say about Kenney's family or personal life since then.  As to Kenney's family, Eichel was told that they "are private people."  Like media used to a half-century ago, local media appear to have uncritically accepted that this was the last word on the subject.  No one has since endeavored to inquire about Kenney's family, what precipitated his separation from his wife, or what the nature of his personal life has been since their separation.

The Inquirer's and Daily News's editors and staff clearly favored Kenney in the primary.  Articles that were not on the Opinion page of the paper often contained editorial comments about Kenney's suitability for mayoral office.  When the Inquirer's publisher insisted that the editors endorse Kenney's primary opponent Anthony Williams, the editors drew the endorsement as "narrowly" as possible, then leaked to other media the fact that they personally preferred Kenney.  If Kenney decided he wanted to hide something about his personal life, it's likely that he would find willing collaborators at both papers.

That is wrong.  Public figures shouldn't be allowed to keep secret important parts of their lives.  It's a price they owe to society for raising them to prominence.  Politicians who are to be invested with political power and charged with the public trust have the least claim to privacy, because their personal associations are the likely source of corrupt influence.  A mayor's personal relationships, no matter what their nature, should not be obscured from the public so that no one can tell whether his conduct abuses the public trust. 

I wouldn't vote for or against a candidate based on the position he took on LGBT issues.  Whether I ultimately vote for Kenney depends whether I can get over his Fumo connections (he was still benefiting from Fumo's dubious money as a Councilman while Fumo was engaging in activities that sent him to jail) and other issues I have with him.  He certainly doesn't need my support to win.  While the City's calcified politics hurt it badly, and many of its Democratic Party leaders seem smug, uninspiring, untalented, and even unworthy of office, I also have serious doubts that the city's Republican Party as it exists now can be trusted with power.  I shudder to think what would happen if people like the Republican bottom-feeders at the Parking Authority were instead charged with running the whole City.

However, I dislike politicians who keep secrets about themselves and their personal associations and relationships, hiding things from voters that need to be public knowledge if the democratic process is to function effectively.  We are talking about Jim Kenney in 2015, not John Kennedy in 1960.  Kenney should disclose considerably more about his personal life and his relationship with his family, including his sexual orientation.  It wouldn't be difficult for Kenney to definitively answer basic questions about these matters, questions which politicians typically answer readily, and which the media has behaved irresponsibly in failing to ask.  Given the overwhelming odds in his favor in November, I think he would join the ranks of "cowardly men" if he kept mum on these subjects through Election Day.  More importantly, if he keeps quiet, he will fail to fulfill his responsibility to voters making a democratic choice-- even if their choice is, sadly, an extremely limited one.  For the process to work, the public must know.

Councilman Henon's Prison Land Deal

Last week, it was reported that Councilman Bobby Henon has temporarily withdrawn his proposal to buy land at 7777R State Road for future use as a prison site. He said he plans to raise the issue again in the fall, and has formed a “Prison Reform Working Group” on Council to agitate further for the purchase.  But before City Council considers Councilman Henon's plan, it should make sure that some questions are answered.

Should the city build a new prison? Henon worries that a court will order the City to build one, but none has done so yet. There are many other uses for the City's money, and no public outcry for a prison. Moreover, Council and the Mayor just raised property taxes because the City can't pay for its current operations.

 Where will Henon find the money to buy the property, and then the vastly larger amount that would be needed to build a prison?  Henon has claimed that the land will cost more if the city buys it in the future.  But even assuming for the sake of argument that buying this land is the best option, it's not clear that its price will rise.  Nor is it clear that diverting money from the City's budget away from some other use to buy land that will likely sit unused and off the tax list for years is the best use of the City's resources.

Moreover, would the City even need to buy land to build a prison? Perhaps the city already owns suitable land. Henon hasn't addressed this in a comprehensive way. He has referred to a few sites which he says won't work, such as the site of the former Holmesburg Prison and of the Riverview facility for infirm prisoners. But his arguments don't really rule out those sites, or, more importantly, any other site. The city owns a great deal of property within its limits. Before it buys any more land, taking it off the tax list, it should make sure its inventory doesn't include land well-suited for use for a prison.

If a prison is to be built on purchased land, is 7777R State Road the best choice? It's unclear what's special about this parcel, or whether the price is right. At present, no one else seems to want the land at the price Henon proposes to pay. People living near the proposed site don't seem pleased by Henon's plan. But although they are the Councilman's constituents, their concerns haven't moved him to reconsider.  He appears to 

Who owns the company from which the City would buy the property? "7777 Philadelphia, PA Loan, LLC" bought the parcel on January 23, 2014 for $100, which the City would buy for more than $7.2 million. Henon hasn't disclosed the company's beneficial owners' identities (in other words, the people who would be entitled to take from the company the money the City would pay to 7777 Philadelphia, PA Loan, LLC to buy the land). But the public should know who'd make such a large return at taxpayer expense.

The property had been the site of a failed housing development scheme, whose principals defaulted on their loan. The lending bank, BNP Paribas, bought the property at a sheriff's sale. Henon's website says that the property then fell into the hands of 7777 Philadelphia, PA Loan, LLC after the bank “assign[ed] the bid” to them, but he does not state whether this company is owned entirely by the bank, or whether its shares are held by others. Whether the bank or someone else owns the property, further questions must be answered. If the bank does indeed own 7777 Philadelphia, PA Loan, LLC, is the transaction intended mainly to bail out the bank at taxpayer expense for making a bad loan? If someone else owns 7777 Philadelphia, PA Loan, LLC, would they be unjustly enriched by this deal? Presumably, Henon knows who the beneficial owner or owners of the property are.  He should disclose their identities in a verifiable way.  In the unsavory context of Philadelphia politics, the secret identity of the property's real owner or owners only adds the reasons for suspecting that Henon's proposed deal would do a disservice to the public interest.

Answering these questions may take time, but the City can afford to wait. If the answers are no good, it should keep waiting indefinitely.

Philly Uses Chainsaws to Solve its Homeless Problem

With no notice or fanfare, the city cut down the trees that stood along the north side of Logan Circle nearest to the Vine Street Expressway.  In recent months, the city had already cut down trees on a few other patches of land on a nearby stretch of above-ground Vine Street.  Why all the cutting?  If asked, Mayor Michael Nutter's office would likely say it was the start of a plan announced last year to redevelop the section of Vine Street that tourists and urban gentrifiers might see if they go walking.  

The Vine Street project is a dubious use of public money in a city full of decaying neighborhoods that have gone decades without visible public investment.  To the majority of city residents who live in those decaying neighborhoods, the completed project will be another in-your-face reminder that only Center City matters to policymakers.

But the Vine Street project wasn't the real reason why the trees were removed yesterday.  They stood near areas targeted by the project, but not on them.  And apart from the tree-cutting, the project itself has yet to begin.  The real reason the trees had to go immediately is that the city government wants to make homelessness invisible to tourists and people with money to spend.  

Homelessness may be the cruelest indignity a person can suffer. Throughout the year, between 500 and 800 homeless people live on the streets of Philadelphia.  More homeless people live on the streets during the warmer months of the year.  The city government, which is the source of these numbers, believes that more than 300 homeless people live in the Center City area.  Those people are the ones city officials want to make disappear, ideally before big upcoming events like the visit of the Pope in September and the Democratic National Convention next year.  When the Pope says mass on the Parkway, which crosses Logan Circle, the city government evidently hopes that he will have no opportunity to call attention to the embarrassment of homelessness in the midst of abundance.

As far back as I can remember, homeless people used the trees near Logan for shade during the warmer months of the year.  People set up boxes and tarps an lived under those trees.  Others congregated under them, waiting to receive a donated meal from a very thoughtful charity group.  By cutting all the trees down on the last day of winter, the city government ensured that when homeless people emerge in springtime from shelters and from sleeping spots underground, they will find that there is no place for them to go at Logan.

So, where will they go?  Mayor Nutter, City Council, and rich property investors who have their ear want to make Center City homeless-free.  Dilworth Plaza, formerly the summer abode of many homeless people, was made into a windswept, paved-over "park" for that purpose last year.  Rather than plenty of seating under trees, Dilworth now features little seating, no trees, and two city workers who stand around at night to call the police if anyone is brave enough to lie down on one of the few uninviting patches of grass.  Vine Street, and soon Love Park, will also be remade with the same insidious purpose in mind:  erase the homeless.

Ultimately, the city's elected officials want to see the homeless move out of Center City and into the neighborhoods. Too bad for the homeless people, who will find few services there. And too bad for neighborhood residents, who desperately need to elect new leaders whose focus is on the places where they live.  The current political class has only contempt for the neighborhoods and their residents, a contempt it demonstrated in 2013 by raising residents' taxes to provide tax cuts for owners of business properties, in the so-called Actual Value Initiative, and demonstrated again recently with talk of a further property tax increase.  

The Mayor and Council don't care about the plight of either the neighborhoods or the homeless.  Neither writes them checks.  But politicians care a lot about helping the developers who want to sell overpriced residential and office space downtown.  Helping the developers means finding a rug big enough to sweep all the homeless people under.  The neglected neighborhoods are the biggest rug of all.

The 170th District Special Election: The Parties Fail the People

When I left church yesterday morning, a fat guy in a large SUV was idling down the street outside.  He had a trailer painted in a bright red color, with the words "Martina White State Representative" painted on it in white letters.  

The driver must not have been personally familiar with the church. The less-used doors that I exited look like the main ones from the street.  He had idled past several sets of doors where more people exit on the side of the building.  It was too late to turn back, so he parked briefly in the street, blocking traffic.  The driver must have been disappointed when only a few people came out to see his trailer.  He would have been more disappointed to have heard the women leaving church behind me say they thought it was offensive that Martina White turned the mass into a campaign stop.

For an example of the total contempt shown by both parties for voters in Philadelphia, consider the special election being held in the 170th State House District in the Far Northeast.  White, the Republican, is opposed by Democrat Sarah Del Ricci.  The circumstances of the election and the choice of both candidates suggest that, in the estimation of both parties' leaders, voters in the district are suckers.  

The election is costing the public extra money.  It isn't being held on May 20, the day of the primary election, when it would cost nothing to add another race to the ballot.  Instead, it's scheduled for next week on March 24.  Nothing else is on the ballot that day; it will cost taxpayers extra money to hold the special election separately. 

This waste is taking place for two reasons.  First, Brendan Boyle, who held the 170th District seat until January, decided it was in his interest to run for that seat in November 2014, at a time when he was also running for a seat in Congress.  The 13th Congressional District has a large registration advantage in favor of Democrats, and Boyle's Republican opponent in that race had less money, less of an organization, and a message designed to appeal to voters in Wyoming.  

By running in two races, Boyle bought himself an unneeded job insurance policy, costing the 170th District its representation in the legislature for a few months.  Boyle won the Congressional seat in November by a huge margin, as everyone expected.  He resigned the state house seat in January. 

Under Section 628 of the Election Code, State House Speaker Mike Turzai had to choose between scheduling the election for free on the day of the primary in May, or forcing taxpayers to foot the bill for a separate election in March.  Turzai knew he would give White a better chance of winning by keeping turnout down in the 170th District, where voter registration is about 2 to 1 in favor of Democrats.  That could be achieved by scheduling a standalone special election separate from the primary, at a time when few voters would expect it.  Judging the responsible stewardship of public money to be less important than suppressing the vote, Turzai chose the March date.  His choice was the second reason why money will be wasted.

Boyle's and Turzai's choices also ensured that there would be no primary elections in which voters might choose someone for one of the parties' tickets who was not hand-picked by party bosses.  He also ensured that the special election to fill the state house seat would be held by itself, on a day when fewer people would be likely to remember to vote or deem it important enough to do so.

Who, then, did party bosses select for the two-item menu of choices on offer for voters?  The Republicans chose White.  At a public appearance, she sounded like a sophomore on a high school debate team, saying nothing of substance and saying it nervously like she had ants in her pants.  She may or may not be talented, but at 26 years of age, she is unrepresentative of the largely older group of people who live and vote in the 170th.  She cannot have much experience of the world; indeed, she does not have enough experience in her line of work in the financial services industry to have more than an entry-level job.  That the Republicans could find no better candidate says a lot about how small they've gotten.

The Democrats chose Del Ricci.  She is slightly older than White, but also seems to have no useful experience that might bear on serving as a legislator.  She runs a horse-riding program for the disabled, a noble pursuit, but one with little bearing on either policy-making or understanding issues important to the district.  She is the wife of a Democratic Party hack who was reportedly offered the nomination himself, but chose not to take it in order to finish earning a pension at another job for the politically connected.  Wise move on his part.  But aside from being a party hack's wife, it's hard to see why Mrs. Del Ricci is on the ballot for State Representative. There are an awful lot of Democrats in Philadelphia.  Can it possibly be true that she was the best one available? 

Special elections are supposed to be for emergencies, like the death or involuntary resignation of a legislator.  They're not desirable because they cut the campaign very short, robbing voters of the chance to learn anything meaningful about the candidates.  In this special election, there has been almost no news reporting of the candidates' views, no debate between the candidates, and no effort on the part of either to commit to a clear stance on any issue.  Both candidates have sent plenty of mailers, but they repeat endlessly that both are from the area and would like there to be more jobs.  That doesn't distinguish either of them.  What either would actually do in office is still totally unclear with about a week left in the race.

In my part of the district, at least, White's campaign seems more active and better-funded.  She is clearly getting a lot of money from the Republican State Committee.  She would make a fine instrument in their hands:  a novice in Harrisburg with no relevant training, there to follow rather than to lead.  White would provide an extra vote for whatever the Republican leadership desired.  They could trust White to vote with them even on matters unpopular in the 170th District, because she would have little chance of reelection in 2016 no matter what she did in office.  The large Democratic turnout to be expected in that year's presidential election in Philadelphia means that she would very likely be a one-term legislator.  When a legislator knows that they have no incentive to please voters at the next election, those voters had better beware.

As to Del Ricci, her campaign appears slow to get off the ground.  I haven't seen her yet, even though I attended an event where she was supposed to appear.  She was a no-show.  That doesn't bode well for a wannabe legislator.  Unlike White, I haven't seen her knocking on doors or showing up at train stations, either.  In fairness, it could be that I've missed her.  But it's funny that I haven't missed White, on several occasions.  Like White, I would expect Del Ricci to take no independent initiatives at all if elected. If she has plans of her own, she hasn't informed voters about them. If Del Ricci bothered to show up for a House vote, she would do whatever Democratic leaders told her to, whether that was good or bad for the 170th District.  Despite the registration advantage, she may well manage to lose the race.

Sadly, one of these bad candidates will win the election. In fact, everything about this election is wrong.  The public should have much better choices than these.  It shouldn't be forced to go without representation or pay for extra elections.  It shouldn't be the object of public officials to suppress the vote.

Northeast Philadelphia is one of the last parts of the city where Republicans are even close to being competitive.  Clearly, the sort of things that have happened in this special election couldn't play out in the same way in many other parts of town.  But in the eyes of both major parties' leaders, there's probably nothing unusual about my section of the city in terms of the low degree of respect they think the public deserves.  Everyone in Philadelphia can take the lessons to be learned from this election:  that both major parties' leaders think we are stupid; that we don't deserve to be represented by a people of our choosing; and that without other major parties to offer the current two effective competition, they will continue to fail us.

Charter Schools: Separating Chaff from Wheat

Last week, a representative from a local charter school came to speak to the members of my civic association.  He told the members what a great school it was, and that the nonprofit organization that runs the school deserved to have its application to open new schools in Philadelphia approved by the School Reform Commission this week.  He hoped the civic's members would voice their support for the application.  Everyone clapped.

It didn't surprise me to hear that the man's organization obtained the approval it wanted from the SRC this week.  No one disputes that his school is a good one.  In various rankings of schools, it finishes in the top echelon.  Hordes of parents enter their children in a lottery each year for a seat in the school.  Only a tiny percentage get in.  The school's facilities and programs seem superior to those of other schools I'm familiar with.  I think, based on anecdotal evidence, that this charter school makes people who run other schools in the area uncomfortable.  Too many of their students are on its waiting list.

The visitor at the civic deserved our support.  But one thing he said would have best been omitted.  He told us that he resented it when his school was "lumped in" with certain other charter schools with much worse reputations.  He didn't explain why they have bad reputations.  His complaint was that the SRC had been unfairly holding up his school's application based on other charter schools' problems.  Rather than hold up the applications, he implied, the SRC should err on the side of approving them, and sort out problems later.

I hope that the SRC's action has removed the visitor's cause for complaint.  But guys like him who run high-quality charter schools could have taken an easy step to assuage both the SRC's concerns with respect to these applications, and the public's lingering apprehension about funding charter schools when some of them are run by crooks.  Even today, they could still take action; indeed, all they need to do is something that other individuals and organizations faced with similar problems also commonly do.

Philadelphia's better charter schools need to associate, and to self-regulate.  In other words, they need to form an exclusive club of charter schools, one that keeps out schools that are crookedly or incompetently run.  Existing charter school organizations don't fit the bill because they are designed for lobbying rather than standard-setting.  They offer no way for outsiders to distinguish between good and bad charter schools.  Forming an organization for purposes of self-regulation might take a little effort, but it wouldn't be impossible, and would yield major benefits to schools that were part of the club if it were done properly.

The founding member schools in the club would have to agree on rules for membership.  They should be designed to exclude schools that people like the civic's visitor don't want to be "lumped in" with. I'm sure that he and his counterparts have some ideas in mind about what constitutes a bad charter school that would be excluded from the club.  Knowing how to run good schools, they should also know how to make rules that set objective criteria for membership in a club of good schools.  The rules should limit membership to schools that supply a quality education and pose a low risk of betraying the public trust.

I can think of a few rules of exclusion on the public trust side to get them started.  First, member schools should be organized as nonprofit organizations.  Second, the annual pay of member schools' top administrators should be publicly disclosed, and should not exceed a certain percentage of a member school's operating budget.  Third, member schools' contracts for services that are larger in value than a modest amount must be subject to a public bidding process.  Fourth, member schools, their directors, and their highest-paid employees must publish annually a disclosure of their holdings of ownership interests in businesses, and the directors and employees making the disclosures must divest themselves of interests in businesses with which the school does business, or resign.  Fifth, schools that are sanctioned by a public authority may not be members of the club for five years afterward. Sixth, members must admit students exclusively through a lottery process, so that members may not engage in picking and choosing of students to seek out ones that will yield the most state or Federal funding while  necessitating the least expense.  Other rules could be added to these. 

It's unreasonable to think that the SRC-- or the public-- should be able to readily distinguish between good and bad charter schools for purposes of allocating resources.  The people who run bad charter schools are aware that the work they're doing would arouse the consternation of taxpayers and public officials if it became widely known.  They don't have to disclose as much information as one might expect, and they no doubt conceal their misbehavior whenever possible.  

Nor should the SRC be asked to fund "charter schools" categorically, and be reprimanded by people like the civic's visitor for dragging their feet.  Everyone knows that "charter schools" as a group include both good ones and bad ones, and that telling the difference between them (except in the case of exceptionally good schools like the visitor's, or exceptionally bad ones) is not easy.  If the SRC takes a cautious approach, and people like the civic's visitor have failed to take a few easy steps to make it easy to distinguish between good and bad charters, no one should fault the SRC for exercising due diligence.

So far, charter schools, good and bad, have tended to stick together for lobbying purposes.  Doing so has served them well to this point in Harrisburg.  But they've reached a point in their development where the stick-together strategy no longer makes sense.  Those who run better charter schools should recognize that bad charters will continue to set back their ambitions as long as officials and the public lack a reliable way to separate the chaff from the wheat.

The civic's visitor wrote on his school's website that he "has focused on branding the school."  Clearly, he's concerned to set his school apart from lousy ones.  Making his school a member of an exclusive club of charter schools that gains recognition would do just that.

Youth and the Mayor's Race

Five of the current seven Democratic candidates for Mayor of Philadelphia in 2015 are in their late 50s or older.  City residents' average age is under 34.  Is that a problem?  

I don't know, but it's not worth the ink that's been spilled on it, given what's at stake in this election.  Moreover, some younger people who've complained about the candidates' ages have their own interests rather than the city's at heart.

An Inquirer article called attention to the Democratic candidates' ages two Sundays ago.  Another one last Sunday that highlighted the age of the youngest candidate, Doug Oliver, wasted precious space in the increasingly thin newspaper.  It would have been better used to inform the public about where the candidates stood on substantive issues.  Maybe the Inquirer will stop lamenting the candidates' ages now that another candidate in his 40s, Keith Goodman, has entered the race.

That would be nice, because no shortage of real issues must be settled.  In the next five years, the Mayor and Council may determine whether to raise the wage tax, whether the so-called actual value initiative should be administered in a way to keep property taxes rising, whether to sell city assets, whether to radically change the conditions of employment of the city's workforce with respect to pensions and benefits, whether the public school system will be effectively replaced by charter schools, and even whether to take the city into bankruptcy.  No one will care how old the Mayor is when those decisions are made.

Having younger candidates in the primary wouldn't change the issues Philadelphia faces.  Moreover, while the average city resident's age is much lower than that of the Democratic candidates, it would be no surprise if the candidates' ages are much closer to the average city voter's age.  

Young people in Philadelphia live the stereotype:  most of us don't vote.  It's hard to say what percentage aren't even registered, but it must be high.  The influx of young people into the gentrifying areas around Center City includes few civic-minded ones.  Most stay for a few years, make some money, decide that Philadelphia is not where they want to raise children, and get out.  Transient, short-term residents who don't usually take the time to vote are an unlikely group from which to expect candidates for office to emerge.

Still, even if there's nothing to be gained from matching candidates' ages to the average population, maybe it would be useful for young people to play a more active role.  Nobody would say that the city government is full of youthful energy, or that the city's Democratic Party is.  Philadelphia has serious problems with its budget, its schools, its infrastructure, its economy, and its ability to attract people and businesses to stay after their first child comes, or their tax breaks go.  It will take energy to solve those problems.  Maybe youth can supply it.

A tiny percentage of young people in Philly have organized to gain clout.  Can they help the city-- or will they?  The website of one group, the nonprofit Young Involved Philadelphia (YIP), appears to show that it has a little more than 110 members.  YIP featured in the Inquirer article about the Democratic candidates' ages.  A YIP spokesman said that his group has had "a lot of conversations about how the older political establishment, who are primarily 50, 60, and up, have not been developing the younger generation of political leaders."  

Since the current "political establishment" in the city is almost exclusively Democratic, YIP would presumably like the Democratic Party to "develop" some subset of young people (drawn ideally, one imagines, from the ranks of YIP) into future officeholders.  Would that serve YIP's goal of "break[ing] down the barriers to the political system for young people"?

By and large, no.  All it would do is "break down barriers" facing a few brown-nosers.  YIP seems to consist of a not-at-all representative little group of young people who want power, but have so far seen their ambitions thwarted by older people who possess power.  Every generation of people has tasted a bit of the same frustration in its relations with the generation before.

But if YIP's goals consist of no more than getting old Democrats to train new ones, its members' ambitions appear purely personal rather than civic-minded.  If YIP wants current Democratic politicians to groom its members into successors, it must be comfortable with those current politicians' performance.  Certainly, for those whose ambitions go no farther than holding office in Philly, the city's Democratic Party is a perfect fit.  YIP's complaint is not that Philly doesn't do better, but that it doesn't bring in enough new personnel to do the same.  In effect, YIP argues that it's time to throw the bums out and replace them with younger bums.

At some point, some among today's cohort of young people who decide to stay in Philadelphia will enter the political fray-- although by the time they do, they might not be so young.  But the best hope for the city is that any emerging leaders have more than their personal aggrandizement in mind.  The people the city really needs to get involved will have new ideas and a new vision of how the city should be run, rather than just a desire to grab power.  As to the Democratic Party, the new leaders Philadelphia needs will seek to improve it or replace it with something better.  They will not beg to become the current leaders' toadies.