The Worst City Government
The Worst City Government No tour of the foibles of city governments would be complete without a visit to Philadelphia, where budget crises have become a way of life. The first sign that the...
...Nobody believed that, but Goode won reelection anyway and discovered almost immediately that the budget was ailing...
...According to him, the earlier forecast had been "optimistic...
...Deficits are nothing new to the council's leading budget expert, John F. Street...
...The first sign that the local budget was heading for trouble was when Mayor Wilson Goode, running for reelection in 1987, announced that city finances were fine and that the budget would be balanced with no tax increases...
...One reason for this lack of faith is the hole in the ground at 13th and Filbert Streets, a block from city hall...
...Bids came in so high that he then cancelled the project, into which the city had already poured $30 million...
...that's more than half the money the city spent on AIDS this year...
...It was supposed to track information on payroll, pensions, and personnel, but by January 1987, a consultant pronounced the project "brain dead...
...City Council sized up the looming budget crisis and reacted by throwing itself a $100,000, invitation-only inaugural bash, complete with flowers, plaques, a mariachi band, and a $25,000 videotape of the ceremonies, which has yet to be shown publicly...
...Then there's Philadelphia's million dollar computer system that never was...
...Instead of the modern Criminal Justice Center that had been planned for the location, the only thing there is a debris-filled chasm...
...Total cost to taxpayers for the system that never worked: between $4 million and $6 million, depending on who's counting...
...Speaking of tax breaks, buyers of condominiums in a 33-story building overlooking upscale Rittenhouse Square received what could total $2.4 million in tax breaks thanks to Mayor Goode...
...The cost of the videotape alone is roughly what a working-class Philly family with an income of $20,000 a year will pay in total taxes over the next decade...
...When the first contractor turned out to have legal and financial troubles, Goode rebid the work at 30 percent...
...You could call it Rubble Without a Cause, except that Goode's critics pin it on the mayor...
...In December 1986, auditors for the city noticed that more than 550 business people who owed $7.8 million in city taxes were nonetheless getting some whopping tax breaks under programs designed to foster development, construction, and repairs...
...In addition to the expense, the quality of the work has been questioned...
...Not until last September did city officials finally, and quietly, pull the plug...
...Dan Meyers...
...Goode too has failed to inspire confidence...
...One horrified critic's reaction: "Call the art police...
...Meanwhile the city Commerce Department studied such writeoffs and concluded that the city is wasting perhaps $50 million a year enticing businesses that would come to Philadelphia anyway...
...When the project was delayed, Goode gave the developer an assist by declaring the luxury apartment building "deteriorated property," thus giving condo buyers tax breaks of between $30,000 and $130,000...
...But for 16 months the tax breaks continued, and, with few exceptions, none of those back taxes rolled in...
...After newspaper reports of the expenses, Council President Joe Coleman felt badly enough that he repaid the $1,985 liquor bill...
...Council agreed and passed a bill, signed by Goode in June 1987, in effect barring tax breaks for tax cheats...
...Among the debts is an unpaid city gas bill of $5,600...
...The audit's recommendation: Don't do that...
...Never mind that one of those pictured, George X. Schwartz, went to federal prison in 1985 for conspiring to extort a $30,000 payoff in the Abscam scandal...
...City law requires that 15 percent of city contracts go to minority-owned firms, but Goode decided to more than double that to 35 percent for work on the center...
...When residents howled their opposition, Goode appointed a task force, which concluded that before raising taxes, "the [city] government must do a better job of demonstrating to Philadelphians that they are getting real value for their tax dollars...
...This budget whiz is currently in federal bankruptcy court staving off creditors demanding tens of thousands of dollars...
...Whoops—Street is a former member of the Gas Commission...
...The mayor insisted on $70 million in higher taxes for the fiscal year that began July 1, 1989, and scheduled a series of town meetings to sell his idea...
...But feeling slighted that only mayors get their portraits hung, Coleman authorized $23,000 for paintings of five council presidents, himself included...
Vol. 21 • September 1989 • No. 8
