Page 2 The Public Record • May 6, 2010
Stalberg’s Committee of 70 Has Serious Problems by Tim Dowling Election Finance And Document Specialist Office of City Commissioners On Apr. 22, 2010, I received a call from a concerned citizen who resides in the 49th Ward, 22nd Division, about an error in the 2010 Citizens Guide, distributed by Stalberg and his self-proclaimed “good-government”watchdog group”, the Committee of 70. Based on the caller’s inquiry, we did a cursory review of the Guide and found what seemed to be another systematic error. I use the word “systematic” because the apparent disregard in proofreading their work seems to be an ongoing problem for Stalberg and his Committee of 70 acolytes. This is not the first time the Guide has had errors in it. The omission of the 49th Ward, 22nd Division in the Guide should be corrected to reflect the assignment of that precinct to Congressman Robert Brady’s 1st Congressional Dist., and to State Sen. Shirley M. Kitchen’s 3rd Senatorial Dist. Personally, I was dumbfounded and at a loss for words. It is eyebrow-raising, and a little embarrassing, that a watchdog group, such as Zack Stalberg’s Committee of 70, which researches and scrutinizes every aspect of government, fails to keep his own house up to the same standards that he expects from everyone else. Maybe that is be-
cause he answers to himself. The excuse offered by Jonathan David, a follower of Stalberg’s, also a Seventy employee, as to their failure to put out a correct Citizens Guide was that they have limited staff and funding. Wow! Sounds familiar. Maybe the exorbitant salary of the Committee’s executive could be the reason for the lack of competent staffing. Stalberg’s salary should be cut to one-third, to provide for the position of a proofreader, and more staff, so material distributed by the Committee of 70, hopefully, will be correct in the future. Furthermore, the errors found in the 70’s Citizens Guide highlights the problems that can occur when you consolidate and centralize many functions or jobs on the shoulders of one person. Moreover, in a broader scope, the many Federal, State and County laws and functions administered by the City’s row offices, elected officials, and their civil servants, versus the collectivist crusade by Stalberg and the editorial boards of the Daily News and Inquirer to consolidate and centralize, will create a new massive bureaucratic entity, under the guise of saving taxpayers’ dollars. Let’s not be fooled: This is about power and control, not saving taxpayers’ money. The blatant distortions, omissions, misrepresentations, and fallacious facts to the taxpay-
ers, as relayed through the Editorial Boards of the Daily News and Inquirer, will cost taxpayers more in the end. Their outright lies and distortions such as that, alone out of 67 counties in Pennsylvania, Philadelphia does not have civil servants in these offices, is an outright lie. It is to the contrary. Philadelphia County Board of Elections, voter-registration and warehouse staffs are all civil servants. The history of government consolidation favored by Stalberg and his exclusive group of followers, under the false veneer of saving taxpayers’ dollars, is delusional at best, and is all about consolidating power. Do we taxpayers really want elections controlled by one superentity or person, or by a bipartisan elected Board instead? Stalberg’s elimination and consolidation deception, as history has shown us, is a code word for expansion as in the creation of the Dept. of Energy, under Jimmy Carter, on Aug. 4, 1977. The elimination of smaller energy offices consolidated under the Dept. of Energy illustrates the problems, errors, massive expansion and exponentially increased costs associated with a communal structure of a massive government bureaucracy. Elimination, centralization and consolidation under one super-entity foster waste, confusion, arrogance, and foster indifference to the needs of its citizens. As of 2009, the Dept.
of Energy had 16,000 Federal employees, 100,000 contract employees and a budget of $23.4 billion, to wean us off foreign oil. How has that worked for us taxpayers? Stalberg’s 70 operation proposals promoted by his friends on the editorial boards of the Daily News and Inquirer to eliminate row offices as a “useful necessity”, under the false flag of saving taxpayers’ money, seems to tie in with what C. S. Lewis, a British novelist (1898-1963), warned: “‘Useful’ and ‘necessity’ was always ‘the tyrant’s plea’.” And Edmund Burke, an Irish-born British statesman, orator, and political thinker (17291797), warned the citizens – contradicting Stalberg’s elimination, consolidation and centralization deception – “The greater the power (under one executive) the more dangerous the abuse.” Zack Stalberg and his Committee of Seventy acolytes sit at the elite altar of deception, looking down on us taxpayers. He orchestrates his power and control, using the old standard template of confuse, divide and conquer. Do not be confused; this attack on City government is all about power and control, and not saving taxpayers‘ money. If Stalberg really and truly wants to initiate change, I challenge him to run for office, instead of hiding up above in the clouds of confusion and deception. But he must first move into the City of Philadelphia to do so.
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Seizure Or Salvation? Path Is Cleared For Germantown Property Takeovers by Tony West A vast effort will soon get underway to use a new law to seize and rehabilitate vacant, blighted properties in Northwest Philadelphia, now Commonwealth Court has given a green light to the process. The Abandoned & Blighted Property Conservatorship Act, which was passed in February 2009, permits a nonprofit “conservator” to petition the court to take over a vacant building with serious code violations and carry out a plan to restore it and sell it. The measure’s sponsors envisioned smallscale, case-by-case actions for the most part. But a group of Germantown activists read it more boldly. Areas with a high concentration of vacant buildings face a comprehensive problem, as blighted properties drag down neighboring real-estate values and foster criminals and fires. They formed the Germantown Conservancy and prepared a list
of more than 300 buildings between Wissahickon and Stenton Avenues that met the conditions of the “ABC Act”, as it’s called. On Sep. 16, 2009, the Conservancy submitted a petition to Philadelphia Common Pleas Court on behalf of 50 properties, mostly in the lower end of Germantown. President Judge Pamela Dembe dismissed this petition and issued a stringent General Court Regulation laying down procedures for such cases. Her rule called for a separate petition for each property. She insisted on elaborate documentary proof of violations and hazards in advance of hearings. And she wanted the Conservatorship to pay the Business Privilege Tax. Judge Dembe undoubtedly wished to avoid sticking the court into a meat-grinder of complex new litigation, at a time when the Court System is under great pressure to lessen its caseload and speed up its decisions.
The Conservatorship, too, was thinking big. Its cochairs, Betty J. Turner and Peter Wirs, are disciples of Mary Nenno, whose 1996 book Ending The Stalemate: Moving Housing and Urban Development into the Mainstream of America’s Future has become something of a Bible for urban renewal today. “If you simply rehab one building in a blighted area, without regard to the others around it, you can never get ahead,” Wirs argues. “Piecemeal approaches don’t work.” The Conservatorship wanted to tackle a rack of vacant factories, mixed-use commercial strips and rowhouses at the same time. It has prepared a 180-page plan and is working up a hitlist of funding sources for a project they estimate will cost $645 million. A project this size also needs efficiency. The Conservatorship appealed Judge Dembe’s ruling and took it to Commonwealth
Court. On Apr. 30, Judge Bernard McGinley issued an opinion on Apr. 30 that settled how to proceed on ABC Act petitions. Conservators will indeed have to file a separate petition for each property, as stated in the ABC Act. Wirs still maintained petitions could be consolidated later, although Commonwealth Court did not address that point. But elaborate written evidence of violations and hazards is not necessary for a filing, Judge McGinley wrote; conservators can wait to present them at the hearing. And since the Conservatorship is a nonprofit, it is exempt from the Business Privilege Tax. Removing that burden was important for community activists, because turning around blighted areas is seldom a profit-making activity at the outset. The first rehabbed properties still suffer from “location, location, location” and often cannot re-
coup the costs of restoring badly damaged buildings at point of sale. The deck is cleared now for a spate of petitions, which Wirs assures will soon be coming. The Germantown Conservancy is an unusual experiment in grassroots organizing. Its boundaries include the 9th, 12th, 22nd & 59th Wards, along with a part of the 13th Ward – the original extent of Germantown Township. Seats on its Board of Directors are reserved for all Republican and Democrat ward committees, civic associations, and historic and conservation groups in that area. The ABC Act is not universally popular. When the US Supreme Court issued its Kelo vs. City of New London decision in 2005, public opinion turned sharply suspicious of public authorities seizing private property based on pleasant promises to put the land to better use. Wirs counters the targets
of the ABC Act aren’t innocent owners of decent, if unfashionable, houses. They all stand in violation of the code and the City, by definition, has failed to enforce its own code on them. Furthermore, they are vacant and unused. These are the sorts of properties that leave activists in hard-pressed neighborhoods tearing their hair out. Once established, a conservatorship makes an end run around lax City enforcers. It becomes an arm of the judiciary, not the executive. When Judge Dembe took over as President Judge two years ago, she probably didn’t expect to have 300 new arms to manage today. They may be on the way regardless. Commonwealth Court did not address whether real-estate conservancies should be handled in Common Pleas Court or Orphans Court. The 1st Judicial Dist. is mulling this issue now.