Progressive forces won an important victory by building support for the preservation of essential services even if this requires a tax increase. This was a incredibly beautiful and wide ranging struggle with many people playing a role. And Mayor Nutter deserves credit for recognizing that the citizens of this city are willing to bear higher taxes temporarily in order to save services that are so important to us.<\/p>\n
Now, however, we have to recognize that fight continues on three sides.<\/p>\n
On one side, we want to make the tax increases as progressive as possible. Many of us have concerns about the regressivity of the sales taxes and the danger that the property tax increase will fall too heavily on the poor and working people if it goes into effect without the implementation of a homestead exemption and a broad based and fair revision of property assessments.<\/p>\n
On a second side, there are members of council who don’t seem to be willing to raise taxes as much as the Mayor has recommended. The Mayor’s insistence that Council members give up some of their perks–such as cars and the DROP program\u2014has made this more difficult.<\/p>\n
And, on a third side, there is the potential for a huge conflict between the administration and the city’s workforce as the Mayor’s proposal not only leaves no room for wage increases and seeks health care givebacks. Given that the rising cost of health care is a largely a national issue on which, we hope, major progress will be made this year, it hardly seems fair to place the blame on our workers. And while major wage increases are impossible under these economic conditions, it is important to recognize that city workers are also our neighbors. They all live in Philadelphia and their wages support the businesses in our neighborhoods. If we undermine those wages, we undermine the economy of the city and tax revenues.<\/p>\n
So we are in a difficult and complex situation. We have to fight with Mayor Nutter to insure that enough revenues are raised while also fighting against the Mayor in the hopes of making the tax increases more progressive and in providing enough revenues to relieve some of the pressure on the unions.<\/p>\n
I’m not yet sure exactly how we should balance these conflicting demands. I hope that progressives with expertise in city budget matters will be meeting this week to discuss them.<\/p>\n
Right now, I just want to suggest that we can find a way to bring these two concerns together.<\/p>\n
For example, if we replaced some of the sales and property tax increases with a temporary roll back of some of the wage tax cuts created by casino revenues, we will make a tax increase more palatable to citizens and council members. Similarly, a homestead exemption and assessment revaluation may make the property tax increases more acceptable to both council and citizens.<\/p>\n
I also think we should think carefully about the sales tax. Like the wage tax, and unlike property taxes, it tends not to raise a lot of hackles because it is paid in very small increments over time. From our point of view, that’s a good thing. And while sales taxes tend to be regressive in taking a larger proportion of income from people with low than high incomes, our sales tax is better than most in that it does not tax food, clothing, and medicine. I’d like to see the numbers on the impact of these exclusions before I conclude that a sales tax increase is unpalatable.<\/p>\n
What is most critical, however, is that the coalition for essential services develop a strategy moving forward that keeps us united. Like the library coalition, the CES is a major new force in the politics of our city, one that can play a long term role in making Philadelphia a better place to live for all of us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Progressive forces won an important victory by building support for the preservation of essential services even if this requires a tax increase. This was a incredibly beautiful and wide ranging struggle with many people playing a role. And Mayor Nutter deserves credit for recognizing that the citizens of this city are willing to bear higher taxes temporarily in order to save services that are so important to us. Now, however, we have to recognize that fight continues on three sides. On one side, we want to make the tax increases as progressive as possible. Many of us have concerns about the regressivity of the sales taxes and the danger that the property tax increase will fall too heavily on the poor and working people if it goes into effect without the implementation of a homestead exemption and a broad based and fair revision of property assessments. On a second side,\u2026 Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[57,154],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p35YuU-tM","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1846"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1846"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1846\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6585,"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1846\/revisions\/6585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}