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Expect new life from the graveyard of Council bills

A fee on shopping bags. Security cameras outside every bar. A ban on cigarette sales at city pharmacies. All were proposed by Philadelphia City Council members last year, but none saw a Council vote. Two were shelved without a hearing.

A fee on shopping bags. Security cameras outside every bar. A ban on cigarette sales at city pharmacies.

All were proposed by Philadelphia City Council members last year, but none saw a Council vote. Two were shelved without a hearing.

Dozens of bills face the same fate each year. And every four years, at the end of a term, all that leftover legislation is gathered, stamped lapsed, and buried.

But this graveyard of bills, which this week will get an influx of new markers, may not be a final resting place for every proposal.

Some will be resurrected and reintroduced, sponsors say. One - a proposal by then-Councilman Jim Kenney to ban parking on the pavement outside City Hall - will be brought back to life Monday.

Kenney will do so by executive order on the day he becomes mayor.

"The building is too important, too beautiful," Kenney said, "to be marred up by people's cars because they are too lazy to walk to their space."

Same goes for his car: "Whatever vehicle I have won't park there either."

Here's a look at other issues:

$15 minimum wage. The effort to set a citywide, $15-per-hour minimum wage gained some traction in early 2015 after advocates circulated a legal memo arguing that a state law that appears to prevent cities from setting wages could be circumvented.

To gauge public interest and keep momentum, advocates pushed Council to pass legislation that would have put a nonbinding question about raising the minimum wage to voters at the next election.

In May, Councilman Kenyatta Johnson introduced the bill. It never had a hearing.

Johnson said last week that he held back after the Law Department said that challenging the state preemption wasn't feasible. He said that he was still interested in wage issues, but that he wanted any legislation to be "something that has teeth" - not just symbolic.

So it's unlikely the ballot question will get a second wind.

Shopping bags. Mark Squilla wasn't the first to call for a fee on shopping bags. A 25-cents-per-bag fee died in committee back in 2009.

In June, Squilla introduced a bill that would have imposed a five-cent fee on both paper and plastic bags, but he never held a hearing.

"During the process, obviously, there's some lobbying that goes on for the chemical companies who make the bags," he said last week. "And we didn't really have everything worked out to get enough support from Council and the administration to move forward."

Squilla plans to reintroduce the bill in February.

He said that beyond the lobbying, Council members had concerns about how the bill would impact the poor. Squilla suggested that those concerns could be addressed, perhaps through a program that would provide free reusable bags.

If the third time is a charm, what antilitter measure would Squilla take up next?

"I still think we need a street-cleaning program," he said. "Now, my South Philly brethren will probably freak out about it. But I would be a proponent."

Cameras outside bars. Councilman Curtis Jones Jr.'s bill to mandate cameras outside of places that serve alcohol was unpopular from the start. The bill came in response to the death of Shane Montgomery, who drowned in the Schuylkill but whose fate was a mystery for weeks afterward.

The restaurant industry was squarely opposed. And when Jones expanded the discussion to include cameras inside of parking garages, that industry wasn't thrilled either.

Though the bill didn't get out of committee, Jones said, he will reintroduce it this month.

"The clock ran out," he said. "But we're going to pick it right back up."

Jones said he wanted to continue talking with stakeholders and expected the bill to be amended.

He also plans to reintroduce a bill he first put forth in September 2014 that would ask voters to make the Police Advisory Commission a permanent city office. The commission reviews allegations of police misconduct.

Prison land purchase. Among the most controversial bills heard last year was one that would have allowed the city to buy land that officials said could be used for a new prison.

The bill met stiff opposition from neighbors in the Northeast Philadelphia neighborhood and some on Council, who said the city was prioritizing investing in a prison over the city's youth. The 54-acre property on State Road is still on the market.

Councilman Bobby Henon, who introduced the bill, said he wasn't eager to reignite that fight.

"I am not excited about championing controversial land use," he said, "until we go through our due diligence."

He warned that the decrepit House of Correction was still a pressing problem.

Is that enough to make him reintroduce the bill?

"Not in the near future," he said.

Cigarette sales in pharmacies. Among the last major initiatives proposed by the Nutter administration was banning the sale of cigarettes at any place where pharmaceuticals are sold or health-care services provided.

The bill, introduced in October by Councilwoman Marian B. Tasco, was scheduled for a hearing. But that hearing was abruptly canceled with no explanation. Months later, mystery still surrounds this bill's fate.

Perhaps concerns voiced by Councilman Darrell L. Clarke - who questioned whether the city could prohibit the sale of a legal product - were enough to spook the sponsor. Clarke also questioned whether the bill was intended to help CVS stay competitive, since the drugstore company disclosed that its decision to stop selling cigarettes had hurt business.

Or perhaps Tasco, who was preparing to retire, saw the opposition forming and decided she wasn't up for a final fight.

Mayor Nutter, through his spokesman Mark McDonald, declined to speculate on why the bill was killed or to say whether it should be resurrected.

"We'll leave comment on future legislation," McDonald said, "to the future mayor."

tnadolny@phillynews.com

215-854-2730@TriciaNadolny