City's survival depends on all http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/9042733.htm
The rich, the suburbs and the business community should help improve Phila. By Greg Downs It's no surprise that city lawmakers can't make our budget add up. It's simple math. You can't give away millions of dollars to the region's richest people and still pay for services for the needy. The mayor knows it. Responsible City Council members know it. And, most important, the people who rate the city's bonds know it. Last month was depressing: Tycoons lobbying for tax givebacks; Council members padding their 2007 mayoral hopes at the expense of their constituencies; local Democrats suddenly taking tax-cutting cues from congressional Republicans who have nearly bankrupted our federal government based on the fantasy that cutting taxes increases revenue. What can people do to take back the government from the greedy and the gluttonous? First, call out the religious leaders. Catholic, Protestant, Jewish and Muslim clergy should shun regional politicians who voted to give millions to the rich while telling the poor to forget about recreation centers and well-staffed police patrols. These politicians have done the least for "the least of these," and they should not be welcome among people of faith. Second, vote out the business community. Philadelphia is a first-rate city with third-rate business leaders. Compare Philadelphia to Chicago. In many ways, Chicago has it worse than Philadelphia - a more corrupt political machine, worse housing stock, worse weather, a weaker industrial base. And yet Chicago booms. Why? Here's one answer: Unlike Philadelphia, Chicago has a business community with some foresight. The fabled "combine" - a 50-year alliance between (mostly Republican) business leaders along the city's prosperous Loop and the city Democratic machine - produced a tradeoff. City business leaders get the licensing and zoning they want, and in return they whip the rural and suburban legislators into shape. They demand that those legislators use state dollars to help fund the city's growth. Meanwhile, Philadelphia's giants whimper about their weakness in Harrisburg. Here's the bottom line: Chicago gets 16 percent of its revenues from annual, recurring allocations of state taxes. Philadelphia gets 10 percent. That's why Philadelphia is both underfunded and overtaxed. Business leaders won't whip the state government into shape, and instead fiddle with their bankrolls while the regional economy burns. Third, lobby for slot machine parlors - in the suburbs. Make suburbanites pay their share toward regional growth a quarter at a time. Paying for tycoons' tax breaks with nickels and dimes from the city's poor should be unthinkable, and yet it is the plan most likely to pass in Harrisburg. Turning our historic city center into a little Las Vegas is a prostitution of our heritage and a crime for which our children will curse us. There is a simple solution: gigantic, gleaming slot machine parlors in Bryn Mawr, King of Prussia, Buckingham and West Chester. Those suburbanites scavenge on the city's carcass, gathering their profits and refusing to pay for its upkeep. Let's get them to pay...a quarter at a time. And let them foul their ugly shopping districts instead of our historic city center. Fourth, lobby for something that actually would make a difference: the combination of the five Pennsylvania metropolitan counties. Merge Bucks, Chester, Montgomery, Delaware, and Philadelphia into one huge regional force. Call it War-Bucks-Chest-Mon-Adelphia. Develop a governing body that would run a truly regional plan where we can scavenge on other people, like those in New Jersey and Delaware, instead of upon each other. Suburbanites who complain about the city's politics and schools could put their money where their mouths are. A regional school district would have the resources to attack its problems. Any regional governing body would face what is, finally and irrevocably, true: Philadelphia and the suburbs cannot last long fighting each other for scraps. To borrow from Ben Franklin, they can either hang together or hang separately. Greg Downs of West Philadelphia is a doctoral student in history at the University of Pennsylvania. ===== ============================= The West Philadelphia Democratic Club http://www.geocities.com/westphillydems To subscribe to our email list: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To Post a message to our email list: [EMAIL PROTECTED] __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - Send 10MB messages! http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail ---- You are receiving this because you are subscribed to the list named "UnivCity." To unsubscribe or for archive information, see <http://www.purple.com/list.html>.
