City Councilman Bill Green, fresh off a successful court challenge to Mayor Nutter's attempt to close 11 library branches, now wants to take away the mayor's ability to slash the library budget at all.
Green introduced in Council yesterday a bill to guarantee a funding stream for the Free Library system. The councilman - a constant thorn in Nutter's side - introduced a resolution that would carve 3.1 mills out of the city property tax to be dedicated to libraries.
That would generate $33.5 million a year, about the same amount allotted in Nutter's working budget proposal, Green said.
Such a measure would require approval of voters in a referendum, most likely in the fall. The bill will go to a committee for a hearing.
"What this ordinance does is let voters decide how they want their libraries funded," Green said in a news release. "This is truly the greatest form of participatory democracy."
Although the bill was cosponsored by five Council members - Curtis Jones Jr., Frank DiCicco, W. Wilson Goode Jr., Jack Kelly, and Joan Krajewski - it will face opposition from within Council and from the mayor.
"It's a bad idea, and it's fiscally irresponsible," Nutter said after an unrelated news conference. "Taking more money out of the general fund further constrains our ability to provide services to this city. This proposal represents a complete lack of understanding of how our city budget is put together."
Republican Councilman Brian J. O'Neill, the minority leader, said the idea seemed benign but could lead to calls to alter the budget to fund every good cause.
"I don't know where you stop," O'Neill said.
In December, Green, Kelly, and Councilwoman Jannie L. Blackwell sued to block the mayor's emergency plan to close 11 of 54 libraries to help close a $1 billion budget gap. They won, based on a provision that requires the mayor to get Council approval to permanently close any city-owned facilities. All the libraries remained open, but with reduced hours.
In other Council action yesterday, Goode's bill to require contractors to document their minority hiring practices passed unanimously.
The bill requires statements from contractors "summarizing past practices to develop diversity at any/all levels of its organization including, but not limited to, board and management positions," Goode said in a statement.
"I believe it is the most efficient tool in creating better economic-opportunity plans," he said. "The original economic-opportunity plan was crucial to creating economic inclusion, and this is a crucial next step."
Minority-inclusion laws are notoriously weak because governments cannot require contractors to meet quotas, only to set goals. Enforcement is inherently undercut by the rules on quotas.
The bill, which Nutter is expected to sign, would allow the city to establish a mechanism by which contractors who failed to show any efforts in minority hiring could be barred from city contracts, Goode said.
Also, he said, the required reports would give the city a way to see what contractors were doing in the private sector, as it asked them to detail past performance on public and private projects.
"It allows us to better analyze this in terms of what has been done in the past," Goode said, "instead of what's being promised in the future."