Verna likely will not seek a 10th term
Democratic City Council President Anna C. Verna, who has held the city's second-most-powerful position for more than a decade, is expected to announce Monday that she will not run for a 10th term representing South Philadelphia's Second District.
Democratic City Council President Anna C. Verna, who has held the city's second-most-powerful position for more than a decade, is expected to announce Monday that she will not run for a 10th term representing South Philadelphia's Second District.
She has called a lunchtime meeting in her office with ward leaders to discuss her decision. According to three sources familiar with Verna's plans, she will announce that she is going to retire next January at the end of her term.
Reached at home Sunday night, Verna would not comment.
Verna, 79, had been debating for months whether to run again. She sought input from many friends and colleagues along the way.
Her decision to give up the seat would spur a heated race in a district she was first elected to in 1975, after the death of her father, William Cibotti, who had represented it since 1967. It also would set off a struggle for the Council presidency; Verna has been the only woman to hold that office. The two leading contenders are Council Majority Leader Marian B. Tasco and Majority Whip Darrell L. Clarke.
Verna would be the fourth of 17 Council members to give up their seats. All four have participated, at one time or another, in the city's Deferred Retirement Option Plan (DROP). Democrats Joan Krajewski and Donna Reed Miller and Republican Jack Kelly will not run again.
Verna stands to collect about $585,000 in a lump-sum DROP payment in January, and she has openly worried that would dominate her legacy of 60 years of public service.
DROP allows city workers to collect up to four years of pension payments over their last four years of employment while also collecting a paycheck. In exchange, employees, including elected officials, make a supposedly irrevocable commitment to retire by a certain date. But elected officials, starting with Krajewski and City Commissioners Chairwoman Margaret Tartaglione, determined they could collect their DROP payments and return to work if they were reelected - infuriating many Philadelphians. DROP has consequently emerged as the most controversial issue so far in the coming May primary.
The other remaining Council members in DROP seeking reelection are Tasco (who would collect $478,000); Frank DiCicco ($425,000); and Frank Rizzo ($195,000).
Verna, who was an assistant to District Attorney Richardson Dilworth in 1951, is the most senior city employee out of about 27,000.
