Phila. Council begins to reinvent the defunct BRT

Legislation that would dismantle the troubled Board of Revision of Taxes was introduced yesterday in City Council, where it received nearly unanimous support and was endorsed by Mayor Nutter.

Fifteen of 17 Council members cosponsored Councilman Bill Green's bill to transfer the BRT's job of assessing properties to a new Office of Property Assessment under the mayor.

Still unclear is the future of 80 School District employees who work for the BRT in an arrangement that allows them to participate in political activity outside of work.

The mayor and Council must also reach agreement on the appointment process for the new appeals board and the structure of the city's new assessment division. But neither issue appears to pose a real threat to wider reform.

"I think it's important that the citizens of this city - the property owners, taxpayers - know that reform can happen in this city," Nutter told reporters outside his office.

BRT members - whose agency's history of mismanagement and bad assessments was chronicled in an Inquirer series in May - agreed with Nutter on Wednesday to put the city Finance Department in charge of assessments pending permanent legislation. They have otherwise remained silent, and yesterday the BRT's three top officers did not return calls for comment.

Green's bill would make that change permanent, though in a slightly different form.

It would abolish the BRT after work is completed on assessments for 2010. Replacing it would be a seven-member Board of Property Assessment Appeals, responsible only for challenges to property values set by the new city department. The bill would take appointing authority away from the Board of Judges, which has routinely approved BRT appointments in a closed process based on requests by the Democratic City Committee.

"There are instances where reform can be accomplished through minor repairs, and then there are times where it is better to just raze the structure and start fresh," Green said at Council's regular meeting yesterday. "With this bill, Council has fired up its bulldozer."

Nutter wants the mayor to appoint the new board. Green would set up a nominating panel - comprising representatives of city government and the private sector - that would forward nominations to the mayor.

Nutter praised the bill, though he went out of his way to note that he first proposed BRT reform in 2002, and suggested that Green - Council's most vocal thorn in his side - incorporated his own ideas into his revised bill.

Nutter said he looked forward to signing the bill into law before year's end, putting the question to voters on the May primary ballot, and getting down to transforming the BRT into "an entity we can all be proud of."

Green said Nutter need not worry about who gets credit.

"If it's important for the mayor to take credit, he's going to get plenty of it on this issue, because we're going to do it together," Green said in an interview.

Several areas remain subject to negotiation, including the sensitive topic of the 80 patronage employees. Regular civil service employees are not allowed to practice politics, and those positions have long been a refuge for ward leaders and committee people.

Council members have defended those employees, saying they are not behind the board's problems. A first draft of Green's bill last week specifically kept those employees under the School District.

Nutter said those employees must come under the city, but noted that civil service rules - which include testing and ranking - would complicate that process. Yesterday's bill does not mention those employees, saying only that all employees would be transferred to the new Board of Property Assessment Appeals or the Office of Property Assessment. It appears the issue will be negotiated during the hearing process.

Green said the employees' status would be up to the School District and the administration. But he also predicted that Council - which has complained loud and long about the city's restriction on political activity by employees - will offer another ballot question in May to allow all employees to hold party office in their free time.

That would be good news to Donna Aument, a Democratic ward leader and School District employee working as a real-property assistant at the BRT.

"I want to remain political," said Aument, who once ran for city commissioner. "If you're not going to let me have the ability to run for an office, you're hurting me."

Aument, 62, noted that she is paid $36,334 after 29 years on the job and is not eligible for the DROP early retirement incentive, as city employees are, or the five years' hospitalization coverage when she retires.

"I do my job here," said Aument, who said all her political work is done at night. "Other people choose to sit at home and watch TV all night, and I choose to knock on doors and talk about issues that hurt my neighborhood."

Council members Jannie L. Blackwell and Frank Rizzo were the only two not to cosponsor the bill. Blackwell said she had initial concerns and would see what the hearings bring. "The final analysis for me is, I want to make sure it's better than what we started with," Blackwell said of the proposed changes.

Rizzo said he was "OK with it," and through either a miscommunication between offices or an unrelated tiff between Rizzo and Green, was not a cosponsor. Rizzo said Council must take on the issue of the school-funded patronage workers as part of the bill. "If you're going to just cherry-pick and not take on the tough part, the political part, you're going to have another bureaucracy with a different name," Rizzo said.

Until the new board is constituted, the BRT would continue to hear appeals of its deeply flawed assessment system. The BRT has seven members, although one seat is vacant.

"I have to take it that they will continue to do their jobs to the best of their ability," Nutter said. "They're the current board members. They're going to be in place for a while. So you work with the people who are in place. That's how it goes."

Dumpsters. City Council yesterday approved Councilman Bill Green's legislation to regulate Dumpsters by enforcing city ordinances for which fines regularly go unpaid. The bill hikes annual fees to pay for that enforcement, increases fines to inspire compliance, and mandates a system of electronic medallions that would allow quick electronic processing of ownership information and citations.

Green went back and forth with the Nutter administration and business interests about fees and fines, and the bill was amended three times, but yesterday Nutter's spokesman said he supported the initiative and would sign the bill.

City contracts. Council unanimously approved legislation that gives it an official role in disqualifying from gaining city contracts firms that fail to hire minorities or to make a good-faith effort to do so.

The bill, authored by Councilman W. Wilson Goode Jr., establishes a process in which Council can recommend disqualifying a contractor. The bill is part of a broader push by the councilman to force the city to disqualify firms that don't follow rules on minority participation and wage-and-benefits standards.

- Jeff Shields

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