Activists Cry Foul on 'Draconian' City Budget

By Daniel Denvir
Add Comment Add Comment | Comments: 0 | Posted May. 21, 2009

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Is Mayor Nutter rolling over instead of fighting for Philly?

Twenty-something people representing about a dozen community and labor groups gathered outside of City Council chambers this morning to lambast Mayor Nutter and the Council’s budget compromise. Yet as we speak, Council is probably voting to approve that very same fiscal year 2010 budget.

The Coalition for Essential Services' biggest complaint seems to me to be a fair one: the buck has been passed to the Republican controlled and notoriously anti-Philly state senate, who must greenlight the city’s sales tax hike. If they fail to do so, Nutter’s emergency Plan B (unfortunately evoking the morning after pill) budget goes into effect, which advocates call “draconian.”

Plus, advocates say things won’t be much better if the Senate does allow the city to raise the sales tax. Since the sales tax is regressive—meaning poor people pay a greater proportional share of it than rich—the city would still be “balancing the budget on the back of workers.” And they say that Plan A still includes cuts to “pools, libraries, summer camps, health centers, youth education and violence prevention programs [that] will hurt our most vulnerable neighborhoods.”

Coalition leader Sherrie Cohen says that the mayor should roll back cuts in the gross receipts tax (which taxes a company based on its total revenues) on big businesses instead of taxing consumers for everyday purchases. “The mayor promised a people’s budget, but he and council have failed to deliver,” she said.

Another speaker said that releasing and supervising many non-violent offenders from city jails would save a lot of money. And of course there’s the ever-present issue of the property tax abatement, which gives many Center City residents a free ride during one of those greatest generation-let’s-all-pitch-in sort of eras that we’ve supposedly entered.

This is certainly not all Nutter or the Council’s fault. Gargantuan debts are currently crushing municipalities and states throughout the country. Even if, like the casino situation, the biggest villains aren’t in City Hall, don’t we deserve something a bit more visionary than a mayor who plaintively rolls over? Why isn’t he leading Philadelphians in a march on Harrisburg to stop the casinos, or a march on Washington with municipal leaders from throughout the country, to demand stimulus funds to shore up the budgets of our nation’s cities? Then at least we could say that the mayor did his best. Better yet, we might just win.

Unfortunately, City Hall seemed like business as usual. On my way out, a young man was giving some elementary schoolers a tour. “There’s a big cluster of people of there, they all have signs. This happens sometimes every week.”

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