Government: A Citizen Voices Issue Framework

The main reason citizens are unhappy with their city government, in this view, is that Philadelphia has been set up to fail by regional, state and national politics.

More efficient management and better citizen activism are fine as far as they go, proponents of this choice say, but they alone can’t overcome Philadelphia’s challenges. The city simply can’t make it, in this view, without more help from outside, help it deserves and might be able to get if it speaks with a more unified, persistent voice.

Like most big cities in the Northeast and Midwest, this view argues, Philadelphia has been hammered by trends in the global economy and by national transportation and housing policies that practically begged people to move to the suburbs. Some peculiarities of Philadelphia’s situation complicate its situation even further: As a city that’s also a county, it must pay for its own court and human services costs. It can’t do as other counties do: divide the cost of those services among affluent suburbs to lessen the tax impact on the urban core where problems of poverty are concentrated.

In this view, while relations between major cities and their suburbs, and between cities and state capitals, are often prickly, Philadelphia’s relationships with its region and with Harrisburg are particularly antagonistic and damaging to the city.

This choice would like to see the city’s leaders, including their statehouse and congressional delegations, focus on creating more productive relationships with the suburban, state and federal governments – so that the city could begin to get what this view sees as Philadelphia’s fair and necessary share of assistance from those parties.

place upon the city.

• Get the state to comply with the state Supreme Court ruling that is should pay the costs of county court systems.

• Get the state to pay a higher share of Philadelphia school costs.

• Explore cooperative, cost-sharing arrangements with suburban counties on services such as prisons, trash disposal, road maintenance and drug enforcement.

• Ask suburban residents to pay more, through fees or taxes, for the city amenities – such as arts groups, museums, the zoo and sports stadiums – that they use and enjoy.

• Advertise aggressively the steps Philadelphia has made in cutting costs and improving services, to portray the city as a worthy partner to the region and state.

• Lobby the state to enact land-use and environmental laws that would limit suburban sprawl and encourage urban redevelopment.

• Elect state and federal representatives who will speak in unity to support Philadelphia’s interests, regardless of party politics.

• Set up joint law enforcement and economic development strategies with inner-ring suburbs that border the city. Make common cause with those suburbs on shared problems.

• Enact regional tax sharing of revenues from new development.

• Move toward wage tax parity between city and suburb.

• Acting as though all the city’s problems are its own fault damages its legitimate case for more help from other levels of government.

• The city is still the heart of this region; if it collapses under the weight of its problems, quality of life throughout the suburbs will be damaged.

• Similarly, Philadelphia is still a prime engine of Pennsylvania’s economy, so the state’s economic fate is tied to the city’s.

• It’s wasteful for suburbs, the state and federal government to subsidize construction of new suburban roads and sewers to further sprawl, while letting the existing, paid-for infrastructure of the city deteriorate.

• Money can be saved and services improved through regional cooperation.

• Why should suburbanites benefit from the city’s amenities while not paying their fair share of the costs?

• For a half-century, a federal policy of disinvestment in cities (which smacked of racism) helped put Philadelphia in its current fix; the federal government has a moral duty to create of program of reinvestment to undo the damage it’s done.

• It’s a political fantasy. Harrisburg and the suburbs will never do such things.

• After years of watching Philadelphia waste their tax dollars through bad decisions and corruption, why should the suburbs and state throw good money after bad?

• Through the punitive commuter wage tax and other levies, suburbanites already pay more than their fair share into city coffers.

• Many suburbanites left the city to escape its problems; why should they assume responsibility for fixing them now?

• Regional government just creates a sprawling, inefficient and unaccountable bureaucracy.

• If federal policy is a major culprit behind Philadelphia’s woes, then it’s foolish to assume federal policy can somehow be the city’s rescuer.

• Robin Hood schemes of robbing rich communities to give to the poor never work.