Mayor James Kenney's administration has pursued a policy of secrecy to keep the public from learning about the finances of the Democratic National Convention. Anna Adams-Sarthou, the spokesperson for the Convention's local host committee, and Paul Deegan, an official at the city's industrial development authority PIDC-PAID, appear to have been handed the task of turning away requests for Convention-related financial information until the law unmistakably requires the city to disclose it by court order. The Democratic National Committee (DNC) isn't saying anything either.
When it was announced that the Convention was coming to Philadelphia, big promises were made that millions of dollars would be raised from private sources to pay for the event's costs. Private donors, former Mayor Michael Nutter and convention organizers promised, would bear the burden. The supposedly brilliant fundraising talents of Ed Rendell and others associated with the Convention's local host committee were to be put to good use. Rendell said then, in February 2015, that he felt "confident" they could raise the $84 million they estimated was needed, along with "a little cushion."
But news reporters from mainstream local sources including the Inquirer, the Daily News, and local television and radio stations did not bother to ask what should have been the most important question: what happens if the fundraisers claim not to have gathered enough cash?
The answer, as it turns out, was pretty simple: the city pays, and its taxpayers lose. That would have been easy to report, but it might have led city residents to question the merits of holding the Convention in Philadelphia. So local media companies, which took a friendly approach to former Mayor Nutter's administration and have been fanatically devoted to Kenney's, just didn't bother to mention that taxpayers would be liable if fundraisers dumped convention costs on the city and focus on fundraising for Hillary Clinton. City taxpayers' liability for unpaid convention expenses went unmentioned at a time when city residents might have demanded action to change it.
The city is clearly undertaking extraordinary expenses for Convention purposes, including costs associated with event security, and the $1.2 million cost of a special insurance policy to cover the cost if the police beat up some of the many expected protesters. Like information about what was raised, information about what's been spent is secret, too, so the Kenney administration may even be hiding cost overruns.
The DNC, meanwhile, has been collecting large sums of money from people who will attend the Convention and paid to have special access to politicians. Political action committees, lobbyists, and individuals were asked to contribute hundreds of thousands of dollars, or raise as much as one and a quarter million dollars, for big-donor "packages" that let them enter exclusive events at the Convention and hobnob with politicians whom they hope will do their bidding. While the DNC's goal is to raise money for the fall campaign, it would have to divert only a small fraction of what it would otherwise hand to Clinton's campaign to the city to save local taxpayers from bearing any burden.
But why should it? Former Mayor Michael Nutter allowed the Host Committee to make a deal that put city taxpayers on the hook for unraised money, and Kenney refuses to call that arrangement into question. The result, it appears, is that city taxpayers will soon be handed a bill for whatever Rendell and his friends didn't bother to raise.
Philly, mind you, is the same city that is by some measures the poorest in the country. It's the same city that has lately resorted to gimmick taxes on cigarettes and soda to supplement a host of others not commonly charged beyond city borders, and the same city that goes to Harrisburg every year to plead for more state money. It's the same city that recently forced its main public-sector union, District Council 33, to accept a deal that will leave many future workers without an adequate retirement pension. And it's the same city as to which City Council will hold hearings (after the Convention, of course) on the city's "true financial health." The members of DC 33 don't know it yet, but they may never receive pay increases they're being promised in exchange for selling out new hires who won't get meaningful retirement pensions. The city may simply go bankrupt like Detroit, and DC 33 workers will be denied the benefit of their union leaders' unwise bargain.
One item on the bill city taxpayers will receive will be a contract awarded to a firm co-founded by Jesse Rendell, Ed's son. The Host Committee paid Jesse's firm to make a cell phone app to help visitors find donkey statues that have been placed around the city. The cost of Jesse Rendell's firm's very important contract to the city is still a secret. Although it seems to me scandalous that Jesse even got the contract, both local and national media seem uninterested in pursuing the matter.
When the city pays Convention contract awardees, however, and forces its taxpayers to bear the burden, Jesse's app won't be needed at all, because it will be no challenge for city residents find the jackasses. Under the terms of the sweetheart agreement between the city and the DNC, city taxpayers will just have to look in the mirror.
