Council meeting on public meetings held in secret
Philadelphia City Council President Anna Verna and at least nine of her colleagues locked reporters out of a secret meeting yesterday.
The meeting's topic: How to hold public budget hearings.
Verna seemed surprised after the meeting, held in her office, to learn that reporters considered the closure a violation of the state's Sunshine Act.
"If this is against the law, that's news to me," Verna said.
The Sunshine Act defines a public meeting as: "Any prearranged gathering of an agency which is attended or participated in by a quorum of the members of an agency held for the purpose of deliberating agency business or taking official action."
With 17 members, Council reaches quorum when nine are present.
Verna said that the Council members, all Democrats as far as reporters could tell from out in the hallway, were discussing whether to move some public hearings on the budget out into community forums instead of holding them only in City Hall.
Council's Democratic leaders also met with Mayor Nutter yesterday to discuss that and other scheduling issues, Verna said, emphasizing that there was no deliberation on budget finances.
"You have as much information as we have at this point," Verna told reporters. "We have no information on figures in the budget."
Council Majority Leader Marian Tasco and Whip Darrell Clarke said there was no need to let the public attend the meeting.
"We're not deliberating on an issue that impacts the people," Tasco said later. "It's administrative work as far as I'm concerned."
Reported By CHRIS BRENNAN & CATHERINE LUCEY
Philadelphia Daily News
..............................................................................
Fumo trial near end, claims Case 'Overblown'
After a four-month trial filled with startling revelations from estranged family members, former staffers, loyal friends and the former lawmaker himself, both sides will finally wrap up the Vincent J. Fumo saga this week with closing arguments.
Fumo, 65, is accused of embellishing his lavish lifestyle with purchases, favors, and boat rides funded by taxpayers and a local nonprofit he controlled, all while serving as one of the state’s most powerful senators.
A jury will soon decide what happens to Fumo and whether his pattern of behavior is enough to convict him on any of the 139 counts he faces.
“I think he’s got an uphill battle,” said Marc Neff, a defense attorney and former prosecutor for white-collar crimes. “I think it is a very difficult thing for him to win all the counts in this case.”
Neff expects prosecutors to be very analytical in their closing, while defense attorney Marc Cogan could try to paint a broad brush about his client, he said.
During six days on the stand, Fumo’s testimony ranged from bragging about “a victory” for customers when he received a multi-million dollar PECO settlement, to admitting that he had Senate staffers work on his girlfriend’s computer, to expressing regret that he’d ever been elected.
If Fumo is convicted, he would follow in the footsteps of his predecessor, Buddy Cianfrani, who was sent to jail for abusing his office as a senator, which opened the door for Fumo.
Reported by Solomon D. Leach
Metro Newspaper
..............................................................................
PAC accused of breaking finance rules faces fines
A political action committee supported primarily by Gov. Rendell stands accused of circumventing city campaign-finance rules and failing to disclose contributions to, among others, three of five Democratic candidates in the 2007 Philadelphia mayor's race.
The Philadelphia Board of Ethics went to court Tuesday to compel the PAC - Pennsylvanians for Better Leadership - to pay $30,000 in fines and amend its campaign-finance reports to show the missing information.
"You have a politically connected and well-funded PAC that has been operating outside of the law by failing to make the required disclosures," said Shane Creamer, executive director of the ethics board. As a result, he said, "The public hasn't had an opportunity to understand what this PAC has been doing."
Kevin C. Watson, the PAC's treasurer, was also named in the lawsuit. He did not return a call yesterday. Watson works as a legislative aide in the Philadelphia office of Republican U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter.
The lawsuit, which the ethics board filed in Common Pleas Court, alleges 20 violations committed in 2007. The board did not allege any wrongdoing by Rendell, a Democrat, who donated $160,000 to the PAC in 2007.
Specifically, the suit cited 13 instances in which the PAC did not reveal $49,000 worth of donations it made to city, state, and federal candidates. Among them were U.S. Rep. Bob Brady (who received $5,000 on March 1, 2007); U.S. Rep. Chaka Fattah ($2,000 on March 9, 2007); and state Rep. Dwight Evans ($10,000 on March 1, 2007). All were candidates in the Democratic mayoral primary.
Creamer said the ethics board learned of the unreported donations through bank records it subpoenaed from the PAC.
Four other alleged violations stem from contributions that the PAC included in a campaign-finance report but that were never actually made. For instance, the PAC reported a May 4, 2007, donation of $10,000 to One Step Closer, a group that funded TV ads attacking Mayor Nutter during the primary campaign. But according to the petition, no record of that contribution existed in the PAC's bank records.
The ethics board also said the PAC failed to list three contributions it received. Two, totaling $30,000, were made by insurance executive Andre Duggin, a Republican and one of Rendell's longtime financial backers. A third contribution, for $15,000, came from the campaign committee of Allegheny County Executive Don Onorato, a Democrat.
Rendell, the PAC's biggest funder by far, donated $70,000 on April 3, 2007. That contribution is not in question because the PAC disclosed it.
However, the governor also gave the PAC an additional $85,000 in December that year. The PAC did not report that donation, but also has not filed a campaign-finance report since November 2007.
"The governor has always given financial support to candidates both directly and indirectly," Rendell spokesman Chuck Ardo said. "The governor believes the PAC officers knew the rules and he assumed they followed them in the same way he always has. He had no way of knowing about the alleged wrongdoing."
Pennsylvanians for Better Leadership was first registered with the state in 2003.
To date, though, it has not registered with the city, which may constitute another violation, according to Tim Dowling, a document specialist with the City Commissioner's Office.
Dowling also said the PAC would be fined an additional $500 for missing the filing deadlines for two 2007 reports.
According to campaign-finance records, the PAC made 12 donations in 2008 but filed no reports with the city or state. Among those receiving money: Evans, who took in a total of $11,000, and South Philadelphia union leader John Dougherty, a former state Senate candidate. He received $1,000.
Reported by Marcia Gelbart
Inquirer Staff Writer
..............................................................................
President Obama’s Budget: Some Honesty About Taxes — Finally
President Obama’s first budget recognizes what most of Washington has been too scared or ideologically blind to admit: to recover from George W. Bush’s reckless economic policies, taxes must go up.
Mr. Obama’s blueprint, released on Thursday, commits to cutting by more than two-thirds, by 2013, the $1.75 trillion budget deficit that Mr. Bush dumped on the nation.
A credible pledge to reduce the deficit is imperative. Without it, foreign lenders — who financed the Bush-era deficits and are now paying for the stimulus and bailouts — could lose faith in the nation’s ability or willingness to repay in anything other than rapidly depreciating dollars. That would send interest rates up and the economy down, the worst-case scenario. Controlling the deficit is also necessary to sustain a recovery — when it comes.
The collapse of the Bush-era economy is ample and awful evidence of the folly of unconstrained debt-fueled growth. The Obama administration has acknowledged the need for deficit spending to stimulate the economy but has vowed that unpaid-for government will not become the norm. Judging from the blueprint, Mr. Obama is not just talking the talk.
A lot of the projected budget improvement is premised on economic recovery beginning in 2010, which may or may not happen. But much of it is premised on raising taxes. The proposed increases signal a serious attempt to tame deficits in a way that restores fairness to a tax code that has for too long been tilted in favor of the wealthiest Americans, resulting in budget shortfalls that disproportionately burden everyone else. At the same time, Mr. Obama has proposed a separate, targeted increase to help pay for health care reform in a way that doesn’t dig a deeper budget hole.
All of the proposed increases apply to couples making more than $250,000 ($200,000 for single taxpayers) — about the top 3 percent of taxpayers. None are big enough to derail an economic recovery. And contrary to Republicans’ knee-jerk protests, they impose no outsize burden on small businesses: Most sole proprietors and other small-business owners do not make anywhere near a quarter-of-a-million dollars a year.
To combat deficits, Mr. Obama proposes to let Mr. Bush’s high-end tax cuts expire in 2011, raising the top rate from 35 percent to as high as 39.6 percent. He would also impose a 20 percent rate on investment income, up from the current super-low 15 percent. And he would reinstate a tax provision enacted by the first President Bush, but undone by his son, that limited tax write-offs by high-income taxpayers for dependents and other expenses, like mortgage interest on vacation homes.
The proposal also calls for taxing private equity partners just like the rest of us. Under current law, multimillionaire buyout mavens pay tax on much of their income at about the lowest rates in the tax code. Under the Obama budget, their earnings would lose favored status and be taxed as the ordinary income of ordinary mortals.
No one who really believes in fiscal responsibility could object to the proposed tax increases. And yet, each one presages a political fight. At issue is not only the tax burden on the wealthiest Americans or election-year debates, but the real-life difficulty of weaning people hooked on unsustainable debt — whether it is unpaid-for tax breaks or over-leveraged buyouts or junk mortgages. It’s a challenge avoided for too long.
New York Times Editorial
published February 27, 2009
..............................................................................
Bonus Round:
Shocking
A fair number of people, including some editors I know, are amazed that Barack Obama is actually trying to do what he said he would do during the campaign. And, I must admit, I wasn't convinced he would go all the way with programs like cap-and-trade limitations on carbon emissions. But he is. And, I suspect, the public is ready for it.
Republicans, stunned that what passed for conventional wisdom for thirty years is no longer operative, are still attempting arguments like this one:
“The risks are too much too soon, and piling on, and triggering class warfare,” said Kenneth Khachigian, a former aide to Richard M. Nixon and Ronald Reagan.
In truth, class warfare is what the Reagan Era gave us: thirty years of tax breaks for the wealthy at the expense of the common weal, thirty years of lax regulations which enabled the bankers to strip-mine the savings of average Americans while reaping huge rewards in Ponzi schemes, like the micro-dividing of mortgage assets that were really debits.
Once again, I'm not sure Obama's proposals will work--some will surely be more successful than others, there's a good chance that rather than being too bold, he isn't being bold enough--but I am absolutely certain where the continuation, or augmentation, of Reagan-Bush policies would leave us: even worse off than we are now.
Posted by Joe Klein
Update: E.J. Dionne has more on this theme, laying out the real stakes of the game.
..............................................................................
Note: Editorial Cartoon by Pat Oliphant