What Would Philly Do With Cash From a PGW Sale?

The time is right for the city to unload the gas utility. Let’s daydream about spending the profits.

Philadelphia mayors have dreamed of selling off—even giving away—the publicly owned Philadelphia Gas Works for nearly 20 years. The obstacles: Some pols blanch at the mere mention of privatization, and few buyers were interested in taking on the utility's huge debt.

Do Those Unhappy With Corbett’s Budget Cuts Want to Pay More Taxes?

The governor’s plan aims to create more blue-collar jobs for Philly.

In 2009, on day three of the Obama administration, the President met with Eric Cantor and a handful of other congressional leaders in the White House. The way Cantor tells it, he presented Obama with a list of GOP ideas for righting the economy. According to Cantor, Obama observed that he disagreed with Republican tax policy, and then said: "Elections have consequences."

How Not to Get Murdered In Philadelphia

It’s easier than you think ... for some residents.

We know that Philadelphia is the most deadly of the 10 biggest cities in America (it's not even close). And we know that there are times in this city—like now—when high-profile killings join the steady drumbeat of less publicized murders to create a kind of terrifying noise that, for a while, manages to drown out everything else. Last week, fellow Philly Post contributor Christine Speer Lejuene asked two questions. 1. Does Philly's high murder rate actually affect you? And 2) What's the value in dwelling obsessively on crime statistics?

Philadelphia City Council Freshmen Flunk First Day on the Job

New Council President Darrell Clarke’s off to a good start, but the newly elected officials phone in their beginning.

On the surface, City Council's first working session of 2012 seemed altogether different. Gone was the wizened frame of the recently retired Anna Verna; in her place at the head of council chambers was Darrell Clarke. Gone too were five other council members, a (mostly) sorry lot that will not be missed by those Philadelphians who expect their legislators to actually, you know, legislate. In their place were six new council members: some nervous, some buoyant, all of them— one would expect, at least—anxious to make a name for themselves. But no. Not yesterday, at least. The first council session of 2012 was—with the exception of the Clarke for Verna swap—much like any other of the past four years. A handful of council members, Clarke, Bill Green, Maria Quinones-Sanchez, Curtis Jones, Blondell Reynolds Brown, Wilson Goode, Jr., kicked off the new term with fistfuls of bills and weighty resolutions, while their fellows—including all six of the freshmen—offered up nothing but empty commendations and small-ball zoning housekeeping within their districts.

Corbett: Save Money or Eat Dinner? Your Choice!

The governor finally gets reckless ... with food stamps.

Most of the time, Governor Tom Corbett is as careful and deliberative as they come. Friends attribute it to his prosecutorial background (so does he, actually). Here's a man, they say, who built a career carefully weighing the evidence, putting together a watertight case, and moving only after all the facts are in.

Here’s More Evidence That Politics Is for the Vindictive

Senator Robert Menendez does New Jersey proud.

Only 10 days into the new year, and already we have a political sin worthy of the 2012 championship. New Jersey U.S. Senator Robert Menendez has exposed himself as a breathtakingly vindictive pol who has no qualms about messing around with the country's judicial system in what looks to a lot of people like an attempt to settle a personal feud.

Could Darrell Clarke Be Philly’s Next Mayor?

If Obama takes Nutter to Washington, that would happen.

I'm pretty sure Mayor Nutter was trying to strike a note of grim determination in yesterday's inaugural address, but mostly what I took away was the grim. The contrast between the buoyant new mayor of four years ago and the battered and cautious (but determined!) figure we saw yesterday was pretty profound.

Will Philadelphia City Council Really Change?

The political stories that mattered to the city this year

Here, Philadelphia's five most notable political stories of 2011. 1. The Mayoral Race That Wasn't The biggest Philadelphia political story of the year was the non-story of Mayor Nutter's re-election. Two years ago, remember, Nutter looked so vulnerable that a few actually thought he might be the first incumbent Philadelphia mayor to lose a re-election bid in the city's modern era. The city's seemingly endless budget crisis—and the service cuts and tax hikes those budget deficits led to—had sucked the air out of Nutter's first term in a hurry. His support was weak in the black community, and plenty of his allies were talking privately about how big a disappointment he'd turned out to be. But then the budget stabilized, Nutter patched up his relationships with some key players, and his critics lost their courage and decided to play it safe and not openly challenge an incumbent. You could say that Nutter skated because his would-be opponents and their backers were gutless (and you'd be partly right). But Nutter's pass was also due to some good behind-the-scenes maneuvering on the Mayor's part. He showed a deft political touch before the primary that had been lacking for too much of his first term. And so instead of a real campaign, we got the farce of Milton Street and Karen Brown.

Tom Corbett’s Jerry Sandusky Problem

Did the governor slow-walk the prosecution?

Most people cite Bonusgate—the bipartisan political corruption prosecution—when asked to name Tom Corbett's chief accomplishment as state attorney general. But not his wife. In an interview with Philadelphia magazine this summer, first lady Susan Corbett named an altogether different initiative as Corbett's proudest and most meaningful achievement as AG: the creation of the Child Predator Unit, a specially trained unit of investigators and prosecutors, who are tasked with putting child sexual abusers in prison, and educating children and parents about child predators and their tactics. "That would probably be the thing he thinks of as his legacy: his starting that department and the success of that department and the number of children that have probably been saved because it’s been hugely successful," Susan Corbett told me.