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It is easy to make Mayor Michael Nutter the bad guy. Things are tough, real tough. And he is the mayor.
The city unions shout him down. The City Council president doesn’t react by clearing the chambers. Instead, he cuts off the mayor’s budget address and an embarrassed Nutter is forced to retreat from the chambers. He seems like a man without an ally these days. The local media relentlessly portray a city in disarray. Is it fair?
Nutter knew when he ran for re-election, this would be no cakewalk. He knew economic times were tough and big cities are hurt the most by them. He also surely knew when God handed out scapegoats, big city mayors were the first in line. And yet, his detractors try to have it every which way. Nutter is befuddled and confused, yet he is unyielding and dictatorial.
He doesn’t forge alliances in City Council, but when voters elected him twice, they knew that as a councilman, Nutter was a notorious loner. No Dale Carnegie course was going to change his personality when he was elected mayor. This columnist pointed out Nutter’s lack of political social graces when he ran for mayor (“Nutter’s challenge,” Nov. 29, 2007). I compared him to former mayors Bill Green and John Street in that regard, both of whose failures could be attributed directly to that same flaw. So, please, it should be no surprise to any of us that Nutter’s governing style is not warm and fuzzy.
Could Nutter be a more successful mayor if he had worked harder at making friends in City Council? There is little doubt. But whether you agree with the union protesters or not, the mayor’s forced exit in the middle of his budget address was shameful, a surrender to the rule of the mob.
I understand the rage of city workers, but the problem of unfunded pensions did not begin with Nutter. It is a mess that landed in his lap because the political can was kicked down the road by his predecessors. The system has screwed them and the mayor is almost as much a victim as the union membership. The long-term problem is systemic and, unless some courage is shown on both sides, will be with us long after Nutter is gone and present union members have retired.
Is Nutter really an anti-union monster or a convenient scapegoat? Isn’t it true, for instance, that unlike many other big mayors, Nutter was the one to eschew layoffs in favor of attrition that saved union jobs? Would the union be happier if Nutter had opted for massive layoffs to avoid blowing up the budget? I don’t think so.
We, the media, are also at fault. Have we ever given the mayor credit for getting Philadelphia through the bad economic times without the cuts in city services so many other municipalities have endured? If we have, I must have missed it.
Credit is something we rarely dole out in covering city politics. Take the constant drumbeat of cynicism directed at City Hall. When the crime statistics were going out of sight, you could depend on our local newspapers and television outlets to lead with the gruesome homicide statistics. Philadelphia’s crime stats were shown in unfavorable comparison to New York where Mayor Bloomberg’s “stop and frisk” procedures were given the credit for that city’s drop in the homicide rate. Thus far in 2013, Philadelphia’s homicide rate has dropped nicely, but for the most part, the local media has been sparing in giving credit to Nutter and Police Commissioner Charles Ramsay. When Ramsay tries to get rid of some of the bad apples in his police force, as we saw recently in the case of Lt. Jonathan Josey, he is often overruled. Often Ramsay is forced to rehire these officers.
When the mayor needs help on any issue, he might as well forget about Harrisburg. The hostility of the State toward Philadelphia is palpable.The city is viewed as a pariah. The governor and majority of the legislators are tone-deaf to the city’s problems. If they could make Philadelphia just go away, they undoubtedly would.
There is no easy answer to the our financial problems. The Actual Value Initiative is a hot potato. Politically, it seems, it must be revenue neutral. Arbitration of city contracts doesn’t seem to work. Asking outsiders to resolve budget issues demands these “neutral experts” weigh competing interests instead of elected officials.
In the current dispute, the union claims the money is there to fund their contracts. Just forget about the small, measured decrease planned in the city wage tax. Forget about any decreases in the City’s onerous business taxes that scare new business from coming into the city.
New businesses create jobs. Go after the tax delinquents. The first two suggestions are shortsighted. Everyone agrees on cracking down on tax delinquents, but make no mistake about it, chasing down delinquent tax cheats costs up front money to enforce and is complex enough that any revenues gained from the move will not come swiftly. The union contract demands will not be magically funded.
Yeah, the mayor hasn’t governed perfectly. Far from it. But isn’t making Nutter the scapegoat for our problems just a little too easy?
Contact the South Philly Review at editor@southphillyreview.com.
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