The Worst Legislative Body in the World?
Noise complaints? Streetlights? Paperwork problems? A marooned tux? Call Council. The instinct is a last vestige of Philadelphia’s tradition of personal politics. As the ward and committee system has declined, Council offices have beefed up their service staffs to offer constituents an ally as they navigate the impersonal forces of institutions and bureaucracies. “It’s what I pride myself on,” Tasco says. “If there’s a pothole, I want it fixed. … A call from us can really light a fire under a commissioner.” As a way of organizing a government, it’s absurd: Why should anyone owe a Councilman a vote for getting City Hall to do something that we’re already paying taxes for it to do anyway? How ’bout fixing dysfunction rather than cleaning up its wake?
No one would ever design a system where the best way to remedy an erroneous water bill involves calling an elected official. But for a lot of people, it works — it’s a reliable fix for the occasional crises of urban life. “My people are better than anyone at it,” says Joan Krajewski, who’s represented parts of the Northeast for 30 years. Much more than any legislation or oversight activity, this also explains why the likes of Krajewski can get elected again and again and again. Sure, an ideal city wouldn’t require political intervention to straighten out service problems. But this is Philadelphia. “At the end of the day, they don’t care what your politics are,” says Miller. “It’s ‘Are you a go-to person?’ That’s why, with DROP and all that, they’re still going to get reelected.”
And that’s the problem.
Even in today’s fistfight-free, nobody-under-indictment incarnation of Council, the tradition of having legislators moonlight as caseworkers undercuts any incentive for pols to get serious about governing. Perform no legislative function beyond showing up to dole out ceremonial resolutions? Reelection’s a breeze. Tell someone with a -quality-of-life complaint to go through proper channels? You’re out of a job. It’s no surprise that the most productive and grown-up members of Council over the years have been those with ambitions for higher office — that is, members who think they’ll one day be up for a job where voters judge candidates on their policy chops. For instance, at an April budget hearing for the maligned BRT, only Bill Green and W. -Wilson Goode Jr. managed to ask semi-serious -questions — and only seven Council members were there at once. Perhaps the rest were handling another tuxedo crisis.
For a mayor like Nutter, Council’s self-conception as deus ex machina complicates life immensely — given that the newly empowered legislative branch will have an extra incentive to resist change. Members delight in railing against Nutter’s 311 telephone system, which encourages citizens to call in service complaints to a single switchboard. To many on Council, it’s a sneaky ploy by the Mayor to keep them from solving constituents’ practical problems. More to the point, they say, it doesn’t work as well as a call to a politician. For better or worse, though, 311 is the sort of initiative that defines Nutter. With little money to spend on major plans, his reforms often involve revising the org chart at City Hall. It seems unobjectionable enough. Unless, that is, you’re someone who gets reelected based on your ability to work the existing chart.
