Daniel Rubin: Lots of money down the drain

Morton Liebman was braced for the worst last week when he opened his water bill.

"We were doing a lot of double washes, since I felt I might be allergic to laundry soap," said the retired teacher who lives with his wife in a modest, two-story West Park rowhouse.

But $17,000.51?

"The whole thing is ridiculous," said the 81-year-old. "It's bizarre."

The Liebmans were notified that their water will be shut off if they don't pay by April 17.

The couple isn't rolling over just yet. Florence Liebman has kept seven years of canceled checks and water-bill stubs. Said her husband, "It is very possible that these God-knows-whats at the Water Bureau got all screwed up."

You think?

When the city controller reviewed the accounts of the bureau recently, auditors discovered some beautiful Philadelphia stories.

For nine years a department supervisor had been phoning in fake meter readings on his own house to save money.

State and federal offices were months late on bills, owing nearly $2 million. For 30 years the city has had no policy for how to collect or shut off their services.

And some of the worst deadbeats had skipped paying for as long as 15 years - yet water still flowed from their faucets.

In all, 62,000 customers were three months or more late with their payments, owing $117 million.

The good news is that Revenue Commissioner Keith Richardson promised that an improved computer system would fix many problems, automatically flagging delinquents for collection or shut-off.

The bad news is that it is already in use, and that it generated bills like the Liebman's $17,000.51 whopper.

I faxed Liebman's bill to Richardson, who is new, on Friday. He studied the bill before replying, "They're not going to have to pay."

Richardson blamed data-input error, not the new system. So it's a new computer with some bad old data. But it's not the Liebmans' responsibility. The Water Bureau records show the property they were billed for was in Germantown and owned by M & F

Leibman

. Different spelling.

Bad record-keeping seems to be the least of the problems.

The audit by Controller Alan Butkovitz showed that the State Office Building at Broad and Spring Garden owed about $190,000, the state police barracks on Belmont Avenue owed nearly $40,000, the Veterans Affairs building on Wissahickon Avenue owed about $96,000.

St. Joseph's Hospital at 16th and Girard owed $367,000 - an account delinquent since 2003. Globe Dye Works owed $170,000. And One Day at a Time, a nonprofit group that supports those struggling with addictions, ran up a $276,000 bill, a debt the City Solicitor had ordered erased without explanation.

One problem auditors found was that the Water Revenue Bureau's 30-year-old computer system automatically overwrote data after a year, meaning all records of collection attempts, payment plans and shut-offs were erased.

This is the agency that's raised rates four times in 21/2 years, hiking bills by nearly 28 percent.

Richardson, who took office in January, said he found the audit fair. "Things in the report unfortunately happened." He promised that when the state and federal government run up bills, he'll pick up the phone and get payment.

Same for nonprofits. "To me, there is no free ride for anyone. I'm pretty sure the federal government has money - they get to print it."

The audit report is written in bureaucratic deadpan: "We believe that allowing customers with large unpaid balances to continue receiving water for many years before water service is terminated is not an effective collection effort."

In person, Butkovitz is more plain-spoken. The city's message, he says, is, "If you really don't want to pay, you don't have to pay."