Stop, DROP, And Roll

Most Philadelphians have spent this week in various stages of disbelief and utter frustration. Horrified, dumbfounded, and hoppin’ mad, we have been staggered by revelation after revelation of what the general public would call thievery, chicanery, underhanded corruption and unbridled arrogance.

Those in government would probably call it The Way Things Work.

Where to begin? The city's independent study of DROP, the Deferred Retirement Option Program, despised by taxpayers yet adored by city workers, was finally made public.

Remember when then-Mayor Ed Rendell sold us this bill of goods, and his administrators promised that DROP wouldn’t cost taxpayers a dime, but in fact would save money on pension payouts in the long run? Well, the study, conducted by Boston College researchers, revealed that DROP has actually cost us $258 million in extra pension expenses since its approval in 1999. And that number doesn’t even count the elected officials who have taken the money, “retired” for a day, then come back to work for their regular salaries.

Giving credit where it’s due, Rendell’s successor Mayor John Street tried to kill DROP in 2003, rightly predicting it would come back and bite us in the end. Say what you will about John Street, but no one in Philadelphia had a better understanding of the complex intricacies of the city’s budget than he did. Street’s valiant try at a DROP-killing initiative failed – nipped in the bud by the city’s unions and rank-and-file employees - and in the finest tradition of “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em”, Street then signed up for DROP himself.

Giving still more due credit, current Mayor Michael Nutter has picked up the fallen standard, and made his opposition to the program well known. When the results of the study were made public earlier this week, Nutter said, "We cannot afford this program any longer and it must go."

But Nutter alone can’t kill DROP. He faces the same opposition Street did, and you’d better believe the city’s union forces are again lining up in defense of the program, prepared to guard that money tree with their very lives.

City Council can kill DROP, and that’s what the mayor, and the public, wants. Except for one tiny problem – half a dozen Council members are signed up for DROP themselves, and theoretically could be voting themselves out of thousands of dollars. Even those not signed up will be subjected to the full court union press – unions which in many cases make up a substantial portion of their fundraising base.

As if the DROP fiasco wasn’t enough, we were also treated this week to the news that even in these hard economic times of double-digit unemployment and growing public despair, we’re paying some top officials like we have money to burn.

Out of a sense of sheer decency and respect for the public, the mayor, the governor, and most of their cabinets have cut their own salaries and given back raises and bonuses. People are hurting, and it doesn’t help taxpayer confidence to see their money being spent on exorbitant public salaries.

Meanwhile, Philadelphia Housing Authority Executive Director Carl Greene is pulling down $306,370, with a bonus of $44,188, up almost 10 percent from last year. By comparison, the salary of the U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, who’s in charge of the entire nation’s housing programs, is less than $200,000.

But what really stuck in the public’s craw was the outing of Philadelphia School Superintendent Arlene Ackerman, whose paltry $338,000 salary was supplemented by a recent bonus of $65,000. The chancellor of the New York City school system, which has seven times as many students and a budget 10 times larger than ours, makes $125,000 less than Ackerman.

Recently, the residents of Bell, CA, a small suburb of Los Angeles, found out their city officials were pulling in outrageous salaries for part-time work. Rather than just grumble, they descended on city hall with pitchforks and torches, forcing administrators to quit, flee in panic, and reduce their own salaries by more than 90 percent.

If it worked in L.A., it should work here. After all, isn’t Philadelphia the place where Thomas Jefferson penned the words, “Whenever any form of government becomes destructive, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.”

If Jefferson was right, maybe it’s time to grab the pitchforks, light the torches and make some alterations.