Letters: City commish: Edit missed real needs

IN YOUR April 22 editorial (

"An Eyebrow-Raising Request: Commissioners Want Nearly $1M More"

), the editorial board asserted that the City Commissioners "asked" for nearly $900,000 on top of the $8.7 million budget proposed by the Nutter administration. The editorial also said that none of the commissioners "bothered" to attend the City Council hearing. The editorial and the headline do not accurately portray the entire oral testimony.

Council members were informed that I could not be present due to a medical appointment that could not be postponed. The testimony presented on behalf of the city commissioners was to alert Council that once again an administration had proposed a budget insufficient to pay nondiscretionary costs to fulfill mandated requirements and that the cuts in the funding were not realistic or achievable.

The proposal of almost $8.8 million is well below the actual obligations of $9.3 million in fiscal year 2008, $9.7 million in 2009, and 2010 anticipated obligations of $9.2 million-plus.

The proposed 2011 funding of 88 full-time staffers is insufficient to pay the current salaries of all 103 existing general fund employees or positions.

The proposed $2.7 million in Class 200 for services is not enough to pay $3 million in anticipated expenditures, including poll rentals, poll officials' pay, delivery of voting machines, Election Day machine techs, software-hardware maintenance, postage for mandated mailings and expenses for ballot paper, envelopes, election notices, supplies and materials.

The testimony showed that the proposed budget would again require mid-year or end-of-year transfers of funds to our budget to pay employees and vendors, and possibly once again delay the payment of poll officials for working the May 2011 primary until the 2012 budget in July 2011.

Finally, the Daily News incorrectly states that "every other county in the state has civil-service professionals running elections." On Dec. 22, I responded to the Dec. 12 editorial by saying that elections in 65 of the commonwealth's 67 counties are run by an elected "bipartisan board" of county or city commissioners and in this state, only the elected city commissioners in Philadelphia have a civil-service operational staff.

Margaret M. Tartaglione, Chairwoman

City Commissioners, Philadelphia