Fred Siegel comments on the arc of the progress cities made in the 90s and points to Philadelphia as one that is slipping back into old bad habits.
…In the early 1990s, Mayor Rendell made a reputation for himself as an urban reformer by rescuing Philadelphia – which was losing jobs and population – from near bankruptcy. This was a city that had raised taxes 19 times in 11 years, and in which municipal workers could take off one workday in five. Rendell knew that Philadelphia’s traditional patronage politics had come to a dead end. He faced down the city’s powerful unions, which he said hadn’t “had a bad day in 30 years,” by trimming paid holidays and eliminating work rules that required, for example, three workers to change a light bulb at the city-owned airport.
But successor John Street, who was elected in 1999 with the support of those same unions and interest groups, has shown little inclination to buck the city’s permanent political class.
…Philadelphia lost 68,000 people – 4 percent of its population – in the 1990s.
…As Rendell’s council president, Street had controlled Philadelphia’s empowerment-zone monies. He produced consulting contracts and several large holes in the ground, but virtually no new development. In fact, the population inside Philadelphia’s empowerment zone dropped 17 percent in the 1990s, or four times the city’s overall rate of decline, despite an infusion of $79 million in federal funds. Suspicions were therefore aroused that the blight money was intended largely for Street’s friends and donors. The mayor himself, never bashful on this point, has explained that “the people who support me in the general election have a greater chance of getting business from my administration.”
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Mayor Street appears to view all policy choices through a special-interest lens. This year the state threatened a takeover of the city’s violence-ridden, financially bankrupt school system, in which fewer than half of the students graduate and the teachers’ workday is among the shortest in the country. Street initially welcomed the takeover as a chance for reform. But when the NAACP, the strike-prone teachers, and the contractors and suppliers objected, Street changed his tune. His staff and allies devised a secret plan to subvert reform. The 67-page plan explained how Street could undermine the state by shifting key educators to the city payroll to “cripple” school operations.
