A Nutter Day

Philadelphians have to bear the (budget) cross too.

by Liz Spikol

It’s Dec. 18 and at Martin Luther King High School on Stenton Avenue, at the last town hall meeting held by Mayor Michael Nutter and his cabinet, Diane, a registered nurse, is asking a question.

“There’s legislation at the state and national level for single-payer health insurance,” she says. “It would provide healthcare for everybody in the country and therefore everybody in the state for much less than we’re paying now. … I wonder if you would prevail upon [the state] to do a feasibility study because healthcare is one of our most urgent needs.”

The mayor asks Philadelphia’s Health Commissioner Don Schwarz to speak to the issue. After explaining some financial subtleties in state and federal healthcare dollar allocations, Schwarz talks about the city’s support for reform of the health insurance system. He says the city wants every Philadelphian to have health insurance and access to care, and the mayor assures Diane he’ll talk to every member of the Pennsylvania General Assembly about the city’s position on the legislation.

The conversation is a substantive one. The issue of affordable healthcare—access to lifesaving medication, doctors and critical care—affects most of the roughly million and a half people in the city. But as soon as Diane sits down, another woman stands and raises the issue that’s been overshadowing all the other challenges the city faces: the libraries.

It’s the same at every other town hall—and every countertop diner, bar and beauty salon or barbershop: The outrage over the proposed closure of 11 branch libraries—David Cohen Ogontz, Charles C. Durham, Eastwick, Fishtown, Fumo Family, Haddington, Holmesburg, Kingsessing, Logan, Queen Memorial and Wadsworth—is pervasive.

Some of the mayor’s opponents have been cordial, but at most town hall meetings, Nutter has been treated like the enemy: heckled, booed and ridiculed. The anger has been palpable, whether at rallies or at hearings where legal proceedings were drowned out by the yelling of protesters. The mayor was even served a subpoena from a young man who said, “We’re putting you on trial for the crime of genocide being committed against African people.”

The Coalition to Save the Libraries issued an indictment against the mayor for a number of ills pertaining to the library closures. Charges included abandoning the minds of children, promoting illiteracy, encouraging street violence, increasing joblessness, creating neighborhood blight, targeting low-income communities, violating the public trust and last, but definitely not least, ignoring the people’s will.

The fury is even greater on local blogs. On PhillyBlog, for example, pcounselor—who has plenty of company—writes, “It seems Nutter plans to decimate every neighborhood in the city” and says the mayor should be impeached.

Photo by David Scott

You name it, Nutter is taking the blame for it. Longtime Philadelphia journalist Tom Ferrick sums it up on WHYY.org: “The man who was praised a few years ago as a savior of libraries, now is cast as a villain.”

A villain who’s being nailed to the cross over libraries that saw a total of 671,885 visitors between July 1, 2007 and June 30, 2008.

Back in January 2008, the scowling faces, boos and vitriol would’ve been unimaginable. Beloved as a well-known councilperson willing to fight City Hall, Michael Nutter came in on a wave of good will and high expectations. Philadelphians put him on a pedestal, believing he could transform a city mired in corruption charges and dashed promises.

In a recent series on cities in crisis, NPR’s Michel Martin talked with Nutter about Obama, and about coming into office with high expectations. He said, “Yeah, I know a little bit about that. After you walk on water and kind of get that over with, you get down to the real work.”

And that work was appreciated at first. WHYY’s Dan Pohlig wrote: “He brought in ‘rock stars’ of the public policy world. He created positions to make the city government a player in the arts and culture community, to guide its efforts towards sustainability, to increase public safety and health, and to bring authority to planning and economic development. Nutter’s first budget promised funding increases for education, the arts, the parks and ethics.”

But once the budget cuts were announced, the tide turned, and the library closures were seen as one cut too many. But why?

“It’s the one city agency everybody loves,” says Amy Dougherty, executive director of the Friends of the Free Library Philadelphia. “Everybody needs and uses the library differently, which is why it’s so perfect. It’s a world-class system.”

Marc Stier—issues chair of Neighborhood Networks and blogger for YoungPhillyPolitics—says, “I ran a citywide campaign [for City Council] two years ago and I spent a lot of time in the libraries, and a lot of time in neighborhoods. And when I asked people, ‘What makes this neighborhood work?’ they often said the libraries. These institutions are really deeply embedded in our neighborhoods.”

No one knows that better than people like Benito Ortiz and his friend Richie, who live in the barrio in North Philadelphia. On a rainy winter day, they stand outside New Journeys in Recovery on North Fifth Street, talking about neighborhood crime, drugs and other problems. But like so many people in Philadelphia these days, they’re most angry about the libraries.

“[If they close], the kids won’t have nowhere to go,” Richie says with frustration. “They’ll end up on the street corner selling drugs.”

Both men are mad at the mayor, but for different reasons. Now in recovery, Richie has been using the library’s computers to email friends and relatives he lost touch with when he was using drugs. Benito, in contrast, uses the library as a place to relax and job search.

Richie is so passionate on the issue, he says he’d rather give up some of his income than have the libraries close. “Take anything except the libraries,” he says.

It’s a sentiment many Philadelphians have expressed—this willingness to make sacrifices to save the libraries. But given the financial situation faced by the city and the country, sacrifices may soon become a luxury.

Photo by Ray Skwire

This week the Congressional Budget Office offered testimony on the economic outlook between 2009 and 2019. The news was bleak: “CBO anticipates that the current recession, which started in December 2007, will last until the second half of 2009, making it the longest recession since World War II. … It could also be the deepest recession during the postwar period: By CBO’s estimates, economic output over the next two years will average 6.8 percent below its potential—that is, the level of output that would be produced if the economy’s resources were fully employed.”

It’s a frightening projection. There are already 4.5 million people on unemployment nationally and the city fares no better. Philadelphia Unemployment Project Director John Dodds says the city faces a particular problem: a labor surplus. Dodds points to November’s Pennsylvania Department of Labor statistics, which show that Philadelphia County’s unemployment rate is more than 7 percent, whereas Delaware, Montgomery, Chester and Bucks counties fall between 4 and 5.4 percent.

The way things are going, Richie may indeed give up his salary—but it won’t be to save the libraries.

While Philadelphians are busy crucifying the mayor, those with a larger view are giving him credit for handling things well. Last week the Associated Press wrote that Nutter’s slim cuts were “in stark contrast to measures being proposed in other cash-strapped cities,” citing Chicago’s plans to lay off upward of 900 employees, New York’s layoffs of about 500 workers and Atlanta’s layoffs of hundreds of employees.

And before he asked the library administration how they could help, he instituted other changes. The Chief Integrity Officer reassessed contracts and saved the city more than $9 million. The administration cracked down on delinquents, with a potential influx of $27 million. Nutter saved the city $200,000 in vehicle reduction and expects to save $3 million in the next fiscal year. He cancelled bonuses, made pay cuts, instituted efficiencies, raised fees and fines, gave city workers furlough days, made cuts to every department in city government. He’s acknowledged the tax structure in Philadelphia doesn’t work and that it has to be restructured. He’s thinking big and small.

Nutter has said that he based the budget on three fundamental criteria: core services the city government must provide; protecting vulnerable populations; and long-term implications for the city. These criteria weren’t arrived at without careful consideration (though the lack of transparency around the process has compromised his credibility).

Steve Agostini, Philadelphia’s budget director, says the city’s particular crisis has been affected by two factors: “One, what was happening in equity markets created losses in our pension system, which in turn required greater contributions to keep the system funded. And then second, the loss in revenues that are associated with the downturn of the housing market, the downturn in sales taxes and the downturn in business activity in the city, also created a rather sizable problem.”

That amounted to a little more than $200 million a year for each of the five years Mayor Nutter had to plan for. Because part of that was almost at the midpoint of the fiscal year, the administration was required to make dramatic changes to the budget so as not to end the year in deficit. Unlike the federal government, the city government is not permitted to deficit spend.

“So that just laid out a whole range of very difficult choices that we had to face,” says Agostini. If it hadn’t been the library—which, if the closures are enacted, will save the city $36 million over five years—it would have to be something else. And that’s where the math gets ugly.

Photo by Ray Skwire

“The total city budget is a little less than $4 billion,” says Agostini. “Of that, there’s approximately $2.2 billion that we treat as nondiscretionary, which means there are expenditures there for which we have limited control—if any control—because they are associated with other independently elected officials who are either part of the constitutional offices or part of the charter offices.”

Agostini is talking about City Council, the Controller, the Board of Revision of Taxes, the courts, the sheriff and other statutory offices.

“You can’t really go in and mandate they maintain a certain level of funding and decrease their funding based on what you may be facing as a mayor,” he says.

Additionally, the mayor can’t touch pension payments or the $600 million associated with healthcare for the city’s employees. Between fixed costs, mandated expenditures and expenditures adjudicated by other offices, $2.2 billion of the budget has been non- negotiable, leaving $1.7 billion that the mayor viewed as discretionary.

“There’s basically a half-dozen departments where all of the employees and all of the expenditures are,” says Agostini. “Those are police, human services, the fire department, prisons, the streets department—and then you start looking at things like recreation and library. Police is just over $525 million, prisons is about $235 million, fire is $193 million, human services is $191 million, recreation is $34 million and library is $32 million. You start to add all that up and suddenly you’re very close to that entire $1.7 billion. You’re left with very limited options because you’re spending money in very concentrated areas. A few million here and a few million there doesn’t get you to the number to ensure you don’t have a gap and you’re not running a deficit.”

Agostini won’t say what other cuts may be announced next month or in March. So far the Department of Recreation has largely managed to shield their services from harm, but what if it’s a rec center next time, or a halfway house or homeless shelter or trauma center? What will we do to Nutter then?

The mayor knows the cuts aren’t welcome; he told Martin, “We had to make choices between many bad options.”

If you live in a community whose library is closing, the choice Nutter embraced may sting. But what if, instead of your library closing, your trash didn’t get picked up? What if your fire company shut down? What if police stopped patrolling your block and crime surged? It’s wonderful if a child can walk to a neighborhood library, but what about children in foster care? Don’t they deserve to be protected?

And Nutter’s not the first mayor to contend with the issue of shrinking the library system.

“Library funding in this city has always been something of a political football,” says Amy Dougherty. “This is not unlike other municipalities or cities across the country. I was on the Friends of Libraries USA Board, and this is what happens. It happened all over California, it happens everywhere. Rendell cut hours at libraries when he was in. Street tried to do the same thing.”

Even Dougherty, who is absolutely opposed to the cuts, acknowledges Nutter faces a unique set of circumstances: “There definitely is a budget emergency here like there is across the nation and across the world. He hasn’t manufactured that.”

Marc Stier thinks the mayor is under a tremendous amount of pressure. “He’s someone who believes in expertise and people with technical skills, at least according to his administration,” Stier says. “He’s inclined to support the recommendations [the library] give[s] him. That’s why he’s defending the library’s plan. I don’t think the plans came from him.”

Photo by David Scott

Sandy Horrocks, the library’s spokesperson, confirms Stier’s understanding of Nutter’s involvement in the decision-making process. “He did not [choose]. The library did. … He’s in a very tough position. You’ve got the Department of DHS, and childcare—it’s hard to pick what you’re going to cut, which child.”

Nutter tried to convey that during his final town meeting. He urged attendees to think creatively rather than harangue him. After being at seven other meetings, he said, he finally realized nothing he does can appease people: “You’d like us to not do any of the things we’ve announced. We get that. … [But] we’re your partners. We’re not the enemy.” He asked people to help their communities and to think about volunteering. His words fell on deaf ears. The next attendee who spoke was irate: “You say you care about the children … ”

The level of neighborhood organizing and activism this city is capable of is tremendous. In fact, seven residents and the library union sued the mayor to keep the libraries open temporarily—and won. Meanwhile, union firefighters filed a request for a similar injunction to keep the fire companies from closing, but to no avail.

All the activism has shown how far people are willing to go—and how quickly they can mobilize. Early on, four days after the cuts were announced, a Fishtown rally came together “on about 24 hours notice, through word of mouth, emails, flyers, etc,” wrote YoungPhillyPolitics blogger Dan U-A. He said there were “hundreds of people, demanding that Mayor Nutter spare their library.”

Can this same passion engender a culture of creative solutions in a city that will continue to have its troubles? While our homicide rate decreases, for instance, rape is on the rise. Additionally, a recent report shows that nearly a quarter of our residents lack basic literacy skills. Bloggers have made a connection between this and the library closures. But we won’t solve illiteracy by keeping 11 libraries open; we’ll solve it by ensuring that children stay in school and have good teachers and appropriate materials.

When community members complain to Nutter that schools in affected neighborhoods don’t have libraries, they need also to ask School District head Arlene Ackerman why funds aren’t being allocated more effectively. (The District declined to comment for this story.) Other issues—poverty, hunger, homelessness—require innovative problem-solving (and money).

Nutter has said that when it comes to the libraries he hopes “parents and community leaders will continue to make sure children have access.” He’s pointed to the resiliency of the citizens and is calling for us to come together to help solve a financial problem that’s gone global.

Difficult times call for hard choices. But Philadelphians are tough, as Barack Obama pointed out in a visit here. Are we tough enough to bring Nutter down from the cross?