Lotsa Luck, Mike

The biggest problem facing Philadelphia wasn’t much talked about during the recent mayoral primaries. And when it did come up, the enormity of the problem was perhaps best reflected in the way observers strained to find a metaphor appropriate to its gravity: “The blob that threatens to eat everything.” A “boa constrictor” strangling the city budget in its coils.

The man whose job is to oversee Philadelphia’s budget on behalf of the state favors a global warming metaphor. “I think that captures the slow, subtle way it takes effect,” says Rob Dubow, executive director of the Pennsylvania Intergovernmental Cooperation Authority. “The way you could not notice it until it’s too late.”

In fact, Dubow — a quiet, reassuringly reserved man who speaks in the slow, careful cadences of a children’s counselor — did notice, and for the past several years, PICA has been playing the role of Al Gore and asserting its own inconvenient truth: that Philadelphia is facing a budget crisis of historic proportions, one that could not only eclipse the Rendell-era 1992 deficit that brought the city to the verge of bankruptcy, but that will handcuff the next mayor’s ability to deal with the city’s other problems, from public safety to education to high taxes.

That’s probably why none of the mayoral candidates were anxious to talk about it. Who wants to be the voice of gloom and doom? Even Michael Nutter, the reform candidate, wasn’t bold enough to run a Chicken Little campaign and point to a sky that is, indeed, falling as the number one issue.

The crux of the crisis is basic math. This year, the city will spend $710 million more — on pensions, health insurance, debt service, the department of human services, and prisons — than it did when Street first took office, a figure our revenue growth can’t offset.

And there’s no sign costs are going anywhere but up. Pension and health-care costs alone are projected to reach approximately $865 million by 2009, according to the city’s own figures — a roughly $480 million increase from when Street’s first term began. No less an authority than former Ed Rendell chief of staff David L. Cohen — hero of Buzz Bissinger’s A Prayer for the City, which chronicled Rendell’s first term — is sounding an alarm. “As long as the growth of these uncontrollable costs exceeds revenue growth, we’re in danger of another 1992,” says Cohen. “I’d say in three years, that’s what we could have.”

It’s why Michael Nutter today stands on the cliff of his campaign promises — wondering when he will be able to fulfill them.

“We’re not going to know what we’re facing until we get over there and have a chance to check under all the couch cushions and see what we have,” he says. “We made a lot of announcements about plans we wanted to do, but that’s not to say that if the environment changes we can’t adjust. It’s not like we’re going to do all the campaign announcements on the first day or the first month, or that we promised we would. So we may have to look at the timing of what we do and how we do it.”