Clarke has more tweaks for his plan to remake planning and development

Council President Darrell L. Clarke's controversial plan to create a new city Department of Planning and Development is likely to get even more controversial.

Over the weekend, Clarke sent his colleagues a letter outlining his latest twist to the proposal for the new department: giving City Council a say in the cabinet-level appointment for head of the new department; and dropping from the new department's purview the duties of Department of Licenses and Inspections.

Clarke's original proposal called for a cabinet-level department to take over functions now handled by seven entities, including L&I, the Planning Commission, the Historical Commission, and the Philadelphia Housing Authority. The new department would have to be approved by voters in a City Charter change.

The latest version of the bill, which is up for a hearing before the Committee on Law and Government on Wednesday, does not include L&I under the development and planning umbrella as originally proposed. That might be a good thing for advocates who were asking that L&I remain under the direction of the deputy mayor for public safety.

But Clarke's proposal to give Council the power to veto the mayor's appointment to head the new department is already raising eyebrows because it would weaken the city's strong-mayor form of government.

"I can't understand the logic of it," said David Thornburgh, president and CEO of the watchdog group Committee of Seventy. "Other than an attempt to change the balance of power."

Since the City Charter was signed in 1951, the only cabinet-level appointment subject to Council approval is city solicitor because the job calls for serving as adviser to both the administration and Council.

"Consistent with the theory of the strong-mayor form of government, the mayor is given the power to appoint his principal assistants without the advice and consent of Council," the City Charter states.

Clarke, who could not be reached for comment Monday, said in his note to Council that the plan "promises a 21st-century organization structure that would greatly enhance our city's ability to plan and support development."

Clarke unveiled his original bill in September - the same day that Mayor Nutter announced a special commission's recommended changes to L&I.

Since then, Clarke has received some backlash from developers, members of Nutter's special commission, and community advocates over various aspects of the bill, including the involvement of L&I in the new department, lack of coordination between the Streets and Water Departments, and his plan to limit the independence of the Planning Commission.

"By removing L&I, he probably thought he was meeting one of the objections," Ned Dunham, the chief of staff of the mayor's special commission on L&I, said Monday. "But it gets us back to ground zero."

On Monday, Craig Schelter, executive director of the regional developers' advocacy group Development Workshop, said his group would ask Council to hold up the bill.

Schelter, who is a former executive director of the Planning Commission, said that streamlining development doesn't require a charter change. In addition, he said, the whole process seems rushed for no reason.

"It's not something that should happen until you get a new administration," he said.

That would be in 2016.