In case you have not seen it, the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission (PHRC) has filed suit against Wells Fargo Bank. The PHRC, which is responsible for enforcing Pennsylvania's anti-discrimination laws, has alleged that Wells Fargo systematically 'reverse redlined' Philadelphia neighborhoods, by concentrating expensive, abusive loans in Philadelphia neighborhoods that have a high percentage of African-American residents.

PHRC Wells Fargo Complaint

Among other things, the Complaint alleges that:

• Respondents underwrite adjustable rate loans for African Americans and Philadelphia’s African American neighborhoods that those borrowers cannot afford.
• Respondents’ pricing sheets show that it targets homes that are more likely to be located in African American neighborhoods for an interest rate increase, and lowers rates for homes that are disproportionately located in white neighborhoods.
• Respondents originate unfair and predatory mortgage loans to African Americans and African American neighborhoods in Philadelphia.
• Publicly available Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data shows that respondents’ high-cost loans are disproportionately provided to African Americans and are located in African American neighborhoods in Philadelphia
• Respondents’ loan officers were given substantial discretion to increase the costliness of mortgage loans and they regularly used this discretion at the expense of African Americans borrowers and borrowers in African American neighborhoods.

This is, of course, a very big deal, and my guess is that will be hearing a lot more about it in the coming months.

There is word that tomorrow, three bodies- the Police (with heavy input from the Mayor), the Courts and the DA, will each get a vote in whether or not the city lets the federal immigration agency, or ICE, have access to our the Police Department Arrest Reporting System (PARS).

Guess who looks like they will be the swing vote? Our friend Seth Williams.

PARS information sharing is bad, bad news. It effectively lets federal immigration officials mine arrest data from the Philadelphia PD, to see the immigration status of anyone who is arrested. As PICC has noted in a letter to many of our elected officials, this is wrong for a number of reasons:

• Members of immigrant communities will be less and less likely to report crimes, and will be less willing to serve as witnesses. Integrating ICE investigations with local police activities through programs like the PARS Agreement concerns not only immigrant communities, but also local law enforcement, t rely on community trust to do their jobs effectively. As a result of this reluctance to trust the police, our city as a whole will become less safe.
• Through the PARS Access, ICE may be able to access victim and witness information. While the PARS Agreement with ICE attempts to limit further disclosure of that information, it does not go far enough. There is no reason that victims and witnesses should be exposed to possible deportation because of their cooperation in the reporting of a crime.
• The PARS/ICE Agreement provides no real financial benefit to the City. According to the contract between the City of Philadelphia and ICE, the initial licensing fee paid by ICE was $13,065. The ongoing yearly renewal fee is only $5,565. For this renewal fee, the City agrees to provide a 24 hour hotline for support, on-site troubleshooting and updates to ICE. Therefore, the City is unlikely to lose any significant amount of money, and may actually save money by not renewing this contract.
• Through the PARS system, ICE has access to information about every person arrested in the City of Philadelphia, United States citizens as well as immigrants, documented or otherwise. This has resulted in the extended detention of a number of United States citizens, due to ICE mistakes or database errors. ICE agents are charged with the enforcement of federal immigration law. Allowing these federal agents direct access to such extensive information is an overbroad approach to the intended purpose of providing information about a much narrower population.
• The ICE-PARS data link also goes against the spirit of Mayor Nutter’s recent Executive Order No. 8-09, which mandates that immigrants should have access to city services without fear that their immigration status will be questioned or disclosed. The Executive Order includes direction on the narrow, specific situations in which law enforcement may ask about or share this information. This connection between the Philadelphia Police and ICE has created the sense that local police are indeed enforcing immigration laws.
• The continuation of this direct data link will have an ongoing, negative impact on Census participation in Philadelphia, as many immigrant communities have developed an even greater distrust of officials as a result of this closer relationship between Philadelphia law enforcement and ICE.

Participating in PARS information sharing is a huge mistake, on so many levels.

The bottom line is that if you do this, you help create divisions and mistrust between immigrant communities and the PD and DA. Immigrants will see the police as nothing more than an immigration enforcement agency. It means less witnesses coming forward, including victims of domestic violence and others. It tears down the hard work that some offices- such as the Police Department- have done to gain the trust of immigrants communities.

Even on a purely selfish level- if you care about Philly, this is a bad idea, because a big part of the reason that pieces of our city have rebounded in the last few years is that since 2000 alone, tens of thousands of immigrants- documented and not- have come to Philly, revitalized neighborhoods and created jobs.

And they are potentially doing this all for a few pieces of gold...

The swing vote in all of this appears to be the District Attorney (with the Mayor/Police on the right side of things, and the Court on the wrong end.) It is not clear yet what they are planning to do.

Seth has done very good things in office so far- living up to the promise so many of us had. Let's hope that continues tomorrow, with his help in killing this misguided, cruel- and dumb- policy.

Isaiah Thompson of the City Paper has a new story up on Landvest, the Kensington based landlord that has run amok in the city:

Last October, Daily News reporters Barbara Laker and Wendy Ruderman — recent recipients of the Pulitzer Prize — broke the story of Robert Coyle, whom they deigned Kensington's "slumlord millionaire." They revealed that Coyle was under federal and state investigation — sources tell City Paper that a grand jury has been impaneled, though it is unclear whether it is state or federal — and detailed Coyle's many alleged malfeasances: He ignored his rental properties' horrendous conditions; failed to pay taxes and utility bills, telling tenants that water was included in their rent only to let them find out it wasn't when theirs was turned off; submitted bogus city rental licenses during eviction proceedings; and, perhaps most egregiously, told some tenants they were signing "rent to own" agreements that would give them possession of their house after they paid rent for a specified (and usually suspiciously short) period of time.

Coyle, the Daily News reported, had also defaulted on millions of dollars in loans, leaving hundreds of renters — virtually a small neighborhood's worth of tenants — facing eviction even if they'd paid their rent on time. Eight months later, no one's sure what will happen to them.

Meanwhile, Coyle's rise and fall raises vexing questions, both for the future of Kensington and other neighborhoods ravaged by slumlords: How could the institutions that were supposed to protect the public have failed so miserably? And most importantly, could this happen again?

A City Paper investigation reveals that it could. And it will. And it is.

Check out the whole thing, including the mention of a certain YPP-er, coming to the rescue of one of Coyle's victims.

This story screams out for law enforcement to get involved, be it through criminal prosecution or the use of civil injunctions.

A couple of things to note:

1) In the Elections have consequences department, the whirlwind changes to our justice system appear as if they are going to continue:

Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams is pushing forward with an ambitious plan to reorganize both his staff and the courts to refocus prosecutions by city neighborhoods.

Williams wants to reassign almost 100 of his prosecutors - roughly a third of them - into six teams that each would cover a large swath of the city. These teams would handle cases at each step in the criminal-justice process.

The office would keep elite units, including homicide, domestic violence, and sexual assault, and their veteran prosecutors in place. But most cases would be divided up for prosecution among the six neighborhood teams.

Williams is also seeking the state Supreme Court's backing to reorganize the Philadelphia courts in tandem, also along neighborhood lines.

Through the election, one of the major criticisms that I heard of Seth's proposal was that while he might have his pie-in-the-sky plan for a geographical prosecution and zone courts and the like, the Courts and the Defenders and everyone else would have to buy in. Well, it looks as if that is actually happening:

Justice Seamus McCaffery, a leader in a high court push to reform city courts, has already endorsed the plan. Chief Justice Ronald D. Castille said that the idea looked promising, but that he wanted to study it further.

...

Charles A. Cunningham, a top official of the Defender Association, which represents a majority of the defendants in the criminal courts, said the office did not oppose the plan.

Who would have thought? Election promises coming to fruition. After this is done, I will be happy when we see another one of Seth's campaign promises come to pass- a small, agile unit to quickly shut down scam artists and abusive businesses in the city.

2) More budget problems are here:

The city is set to pull its financial belt even tighter, as some tax revenues slouch in at lower rates than expected.

Finance Director Rob Dubow said the city will likely receive $13.5 million less than planned this year, mostly due to weak returns from the property tax and the business privilege tax. He said this puts further pressure on already strained resources.

"We were already going to have significant challenges in terms of keeping cash in the general fund positive. This will just make it that much more difficult," Dubow said.

There are always efficiencies. But, being able to actually put them into place is easier said than done. A 2 percent additional cut to things like Fairmount Park and the libraries will involve pain. Period. Meanwhile, Coca Cola and Pepsi Co. are lighting up cigars, having defeated the tax against the most aggrieved thing in the world- soda.

Last week, Pew’s Philadelphia Research Initiative released a report on Philadelphia’s prison population. The report, “Philadelphia's Crowded, Costly Jails: The Search for Safe Solutions,” comes to some important conclusions, and I would encourage everyone to check it out.

As part of the release of the report, Pew and Penn Law had a really amazing event last week, examining the findings of the report. There was a panel that included Seth Williams, Everett Gillison, Michael Jacobson, Director of NYC’s Vera Institute of Justice and the Rev. Ernest McNear. And in the audience, audience, asking and answering questions were a pretty amazing array of people, from Ellen Greenlee, Pamela Dembe, the President Judge of the Court of Common Pleas and Seamus McCaffery, to Third Circuit Chief Judge, Ted McKee and Prisons Commissioner Louis Giorla.

I believe the event was taped, and when I find a link I will put it up. It really was something to have a gathering of so many stakeholders and judges, that a submitted question from the audience comes from the Chief Judge of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals.

What was amazing was that there really was some very broad agreement the most important conclusion of the study:

One conclusion that emerges—and is shared by many in the city’s criminal justice system—is that the size of the population in the Philadelphia Prison System is largely within the power of policy makers to control and likely can be further reduced without jeopardizing public safety.

How can this be done? The report lists a number of important policies, which will take leadership in instituting, because they seem somewhat counterintuitive.

First, the report suggests that we simply may want to release a number of suspects on their own recognizance (without bail), as many other cities do. As the report notes, and Mr. Jacobson discussed, DC and New York release a higher number of people without bail, and yet, defendants appear for court at a higher rate.

Second, we should resist the temptation to throw people in jail for technical violations of their probation, and instead figure out some alternative punishment. As Mr. Jacobson again noted, when you defund your probation and parole systems, overworked officers simply do the easiest thing: throwing people in jail as soon as they see a violation. They are too busy to do anything else.

Third, divert non-violent people with addiction or mental health issues out of our prison systems.

All of these are easier said than done, especially when you tell a public that is already freaked over crime, that you are going to release more people, let more people out of jail without bail, have to build more day centers, etc. But, that is what leadership is about right? Again, I would encourage everyone to check out the report.

Then, yesterday, the Inquirer had a story about the DA’s efforts to modernize their data systems, and do things like actually track outcomes:

During her 18 years in office, District Attorney Lynne M. Abraham insisted she would not "do justice by the numbers." And the Philadelphia court system's administrator, David C. Lawrence, similarly said, "We're not in the research business."

That meant overall conviction rates for violent-crime cases in the Philadelphia courts were unknown - until The Inquirer drew on raw court data to report that nearly two-thirds of all defendants accused of violent crimes walked free of all charges.

Abraham's successor, District Attorney Seth Williams, has now obtained a $492,000 grant to equip his office with software that, for the first time, will be able to routinely produce conviction data.

Eventually, his office plans to make the results publicly available on what it says will be a greatly retooled office website.

As the article notes, it’s not just the ability to track conviction rates, but the reason for which those convictions potentially fail, and other important data.

Frankly, I agree with my friend Lynne Abraham in a sense: You cannot do justice purely by numbers. But, that sure doesn’t mean you shouldn’t collect the data, or that this is simply academically interesting (as David Lawrence suggests). Examining data will not only let prosecutors or defenders see where their respective success rates lie, but will also let all of us analyze the system for systemic failures, and even hidden abuses. On the police side of things, NYC is a constant example of why we should want data:

Blacks and Latinos were nine times as likely as whites to be stopped by the police in New York City in 2009, but, once stopped, were no more likely to be arrested. The more than 575,000 stops of people in the city, a record number of what are known in police parlance as “stop and frisks,” yielded 762 guns.

Of the reasons listed by the police for conducting the stops, one of those least commonly cited was the claim that the person fit the description of a suspect. The most common reason listed by the police was a category known as “furtive movements.”

Ah, the old furtive movement… Anyway, numbers matter. This doesn’t mean we ignore basic principles of our justice system. But, in 2010, we absolutely should be measuring outcomes, and collecting information that allows us to see the best and worst parts of our justice system.

And finally, in another piece of the article, there is a little snippet that a public interest lawyer anywhere can appreciate:

In the future, Philadelphia prosecutors should be able to update their cases, issuing subpoenas and swapping information with defense lawyers during pretrial discovery, with a few keystrokes.

Whether they are defenders, prosecutors, or civil legal aid attorneys- public interest attorneys are forced to spend times on things that shouldn’t take nearly as long as they do, because there is not the same level of support staff as at a firm, and because it is hard to justify big investments in technology. So, something like this just makes so much sense.

And, as Ellen Greenlee notes, it cannot be only the DA’s who make these advances:

Ellen Greenlee, director of the Defender Association of Philadelphia, which provides representation for those too poor to hire a lawyer, said her staff needed to upgrade its technology as well.

"We're still on paper," she said. "For the system to function at all, it's necessary for all the stakeholders to communicate. They can't let us lag behind."

Sorry for the rambling. Between seeing just about every stakeholder at the Pew event, for the release of a really hopeful report about reducing the number of people in jail, to the District Attorney actually tracking outcomes, the last week has been a hopeful one for our criminal justice system.

Ed Rendell, last year:

Gov. Rendell thinks that Sestak would "get clobbered" in next year's Democratic primary, ticking off the reasons why Sestak has "practically no chance" against Specter, who is well-known across the state and likely will have an inexhaustible supply of campaign cash.

"What in God's name is he doing?" Rendell exclaimed.

TJ Rooney, chair of the Democratic party, in January:

Rooney, who's backing Specter, said it would be a "travesty" to lose Sestak in Congress. He said he also believes Specter has proven his Democratic bona fides since jumping to the party last year.

"Looking specifically at the poll numbers, Sestak has picked up no momentum," Rooney said. "He's actually fallen behind ... if Joe Sestak were to run for re-election to Congress, he'd win."

TJ Rooney, last week:

The chairman of the Pennsylvania Democratic Party issued a stern warning to members of his party this week, declaring that nominating Rep. Joe Sestak over Sen. Arlen Specter could have "cataclysmic" consequences for the party's ability to hold the Senate seat this fall.

As polls show Sestak, a second-term House member from the Philadelphia suburbs, cutting Specter's advantage to single digits, Chairman T.J. Rooney told POLITICO in an interview that "if we want to keep this seat in Democratic hands, the only person capable of delivering that victory is Arlen Specter."
"I can't say, honest and true, if the shoe's on the other foot, that we'll have the same race in November," Rooney said. "The results could be cataclysmic."

On a personal level, I have some affection for Arlen Specter. His personality vaguely reminds me of my late grandfather, who was one my favorite people in the world. So, frankly, I feel for him. But, still, this was a great night, and I take away a few things from it:

First, in races like this, where candidates are on TV a lot, the endorsement of various groups, and especially various politicians just doesn't matter that much.

Second, it is hard for long time Republicans to win Democratic primaries. That sounds obvious, but, I never got why anyone seemed to miss that point. Yes, Democrats had affection for Specter- but, that was when he was a Republican that we could occasionally count on to do something good, and to annoy his party. But, once you switch parties, you will be evaluated under a much different light. That happened, especially when Sestak did what we knew he would do- remind everyone that just six years ago, Bush and Santorum knew that they could "count on" him.

Now, we have Sestak. He is far from perfect, but he would be a pretty good Senator. And he is up against someone who has a view of government and the world that truly needs to be highlighted. It is time for all hands on deck.

Discuss as they come in. Here is my random prediction:

I think that with Philly turnout at basically zilch, Sestak wins.

Election day is basically upon us. For a bunch of different reasons, we have not done much electoral advocacy on YPP this year. But, here is my own ballot:

For Senator: Joe Sestak. I vote for Sestak, and do so with open eyes. He is far from the perfect candidate, and will not be a perfect Senator. But, he is generally pretty good on a lot of different stuff. (And he is very good on certain things that are important to me personally, that a lot of people might not know about- like consumer issues, for example.) And he is a Democrat.

Those characters at the Philadelphia version of the Onion- the Public School Notebook, really got me this morning! So Hilarious!

We have it on good authority that South Philadelphia High School principal LaGreta Brown was among those honored last week by Councilwoman Jannie Blackwell with the Lucien E. Blackwell Guiding Lights in the Community Award.

The Notebook asked Councilwoman Blackwell's office to confirm the list of honorees -- something we thought she would be eager to do -- but we did not hear back.

Amy Brisson, a correspondent for the Delaware County Times who wrote a story highlighting presentation of the awards to the mayors of Chester and Upper Darby, confirmed that Brown received an award. Brisson said she recalls a mention of "controversy" and the desire to show full support for Brown by giving her this award.

Brown has come under criticism for her handling of intergroup tension and harassment of Asian students at South Philly, which burst out into the open in December when 30 Asian students were attacked during and after school. About 50 Asian students subsequently boycotted classes for two weeks, saying they feared for their safety.

Ha ha ha ha. Suuurrrre, suuuurrre, the person in charge of South Philly High got an award.

Oh, you mean...? Oooh.

This is just so awesome:

I have talked about this before, but, it is ridiculous that in a city like ours, where the uproar over the Dadvail leaving often led the news for days, that the river looks nothing like the city. The biggest reason for that is simple: city public schools don't have rowing programs.

Until now, and Philadelphia City Rowing.

It is a really, really cool project that is long overdue. I am happy to be going to Central in a couple of weeks talk to students about it.

(Please click play as you start reading this post.)

How can you not miss our former District Attorney, who made a very public return to the news yesterday? If nothing else, she is very entertaining.

Former District Attorney Lynne M. Abraham, stung by reports that her office had consistently low conviction rates, defended her performance Monday and criticized the rest of the city's criminal justice system as riddled with "deeply troubling" problems.

Abraham, who left office in January after 18 years, cited widespread witness fear, a massive fugitive problem, a dysfunctional bail system, and the dismissal of thousands of cases annually with no ruling on the merits.

"The criminal justice system of this city is not now, as has been almost hysterically proclaimed . . . a broken system," she said.

OK, not broken. Next:

Abraham acknowledged that "meritorious" cases too often failed in Philadelphia's lower Municipal Court, never advancing for a ruling on the merits in Common Pleas Court. However, she said, that was "not because of any failing on my part as district attorney of Philadelphia, but because of the Municipal Court judges."

OK, the fault of judges. Next:

"These problems and issues have been with us since at least 1968," Abraham said. "There's nothing new under the sun."

In her testimony, she questioned the newspaper's motive in studying the courts. "Could this possibly be a vain attempt at trying to capture their former prowess as a news-gathering organization?" she asked.

OK, the fault of the Inquirer. And inertia.

At some point, I think she then blamed City Council, the Clerk's Office, and trans fat.

Oh, and then there is this:

Former District Attorney Lynne M. Abraham ripped into her successor's decision to treat some marijuana-possession cases more leniently, saying Monday that "local gangs and marijuana growers everywhere are positively overjoyed" at Seth Williams' new policy.

In a caustic statement made public at a U.S. Senate subcommittee hearing, Abraham also said, " 'Welcome to Philadelphia, Light Up a Joint' may just be our new slogan."

....

"They are the same criminals who ruin the city's neighborhoods by aggressive, destructive conduct, engage in shoot-outs, commit violent crimes to support their habits, and they intimidate or kill witnesses," Abraham said.

.....

Abraham said that local gangs and marijuana growers would welcome the new policy and that "the drug cartels who import pot from Mexico are thrilled."

How can you not miss that?

There is a great profile piece in the Inquirer today about the Chancellor of Rutgers-Camden, Wendell Pritchett.

Eleven months after leaving as associate dean of the University of Pennsylvania Law School to become chancellor, Pritchett hasn't saved anything yet. But he has left his mark both at the chancellor's office in a stately downtown rowhouse and at City Hall, two blocks away.

Consider his commitment to build two dorms, his mandate to attract more students from city high schools, and his goal to quadruple the number of students living on campus. He is opening a new nursing school and presiding over the launch of two Ph.D. programs - one in computational and integrative biology, the other in public affairs. Both are intended as new niches for the school.

Pritchett also has vowed to double university spending with city and Camden County vendors in five years, in an effort to help local businesses.

"It's really extraordinary how much he's accomplished in less than a year," said his colleague Steven Diner, Rutgers-Newark's chancellor. "He's tactful and friendly, but also forceful."

Wendell was Mayor Nutter's chief of policy and was the head of Obama's Urban Policy Taskforce. And on a personal level, he was also one of the nicest, most engaging professors I had in law school, who mixed mentorship of students with a teaching focus on creating positive change through urban policy and urban law.

When I was interviewed for this story (jeez, Mayor Nutter, thanks for bumping me), I told the reporter that the best way I could describe him is that he is an incredibly ambitious, yet practical, progressive policy maker. It is great to see that Wendell is using his power in Camden to put those ambitions to work.

The day after our local papers were sold to a group of creditors, it is worth noting that this week Philadelphia took two steps towards a more modern, efficient, and better performing government.

First, the Nutter Administration is moving to eliminate the Clerk of Quarter Sessions:

The Nutter administration is moving to draft legislation abolishing the Clerk of Quarter Sessions office, an obscure court agency dating back to 1682 with a $5 million budget, a history of poor performance - and a vacancy at the top.

....

City and state auditors have long faulted the office for its handling of tens of millions of dollars in bail, fines and court fees, including delays in paying the city and state their share of those funds.

....

Criticism of the office escalated last year after The Inquirer disclosed that fugitives owed $1 billion in forfeited bail and that the city had made virtually no effort to collect it.

City officials quickly vowed to pursue that debt, but the collection efforts stalled when court administrators discovered that the clerk's office had no computer records of who owed what.

.....

Money issues aside, the office has also been criticized for mishandling key court documents and causing some defendants to remain behind bars even though judges had ordered their release.

This was a poor performing piece of government. It will soon go away.

Then, we have the good ol' Board of Revision of Taxes (BRT). Their suit to stop you and I from voting to end their office has failed:

The state Supreme Court refused Tuesday to stop a scheduled May 18 primary election vote that could abolish Philadelphia's troubled Board of Revision of Taxes and replace it with two new entities.
The ruling, issued without comment, made no judgments about the merits of the BRT's legal arguments, which contend that the proposed charter change is illegal.

But it appears to clear the way for voters to render a verdict on the independent agency, run by seven judicially appointed directors.

The BRT will now be eliminated by the voters.

What do these things have in common? That the elimination of these poorly performing, patronage heavy offices are happening largely because our local media- here, the Inquirer- ran a bunch stories about them highlighting how screwed up they were. It is worth remembering that, as these far-off creditors decide how much local media coverage Philadelphia gets to have. In this case, the local media is explicitly responsible for making Philadelphia government better for the residents of our city.

I sincerely doubt this is good news:

NEW YORK - Brian P. Tierney, CEO of Philadelphia Newspapers L.L.C., announced Wednesday afternoon that the company that owns the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Daily News and Philly.com has been sold to its senior lenders.

The $139 million deal includes a $39.2 million in debt and $69 million in cash equity, plus the value of the company's real estate, estimated at $30 million for the purposes of the bankruptcy auction.

The Daily News is- in theory- safe for now. But, this is pretty worrisome for the future of the pulitzer prize winning People Paper.

When talking about my life growing up in Philly, I have tried to not shy away from the obvious: that compared to most people in the world, and many, many people in our city, I have lived a life of incredible privilege.

My family was not particularly rich, with three kids living on a public interest lawyer’s and Physician’s Assistant’s salary. Like just every middle class family in America, there were always money worries, and credit card bills, and stress. But on the whole, we lived a dramatically nice life. A big piece of that privileged life was that from Project Learn, to Central High School, to Macalester, Temple, the New School, Beloit College and Penn Law School, the schools that we went to were really, really, really good. And yet, almost none of them would have happened for me and my brothers, except for one fact- the University of Pennsylvania paid huge chunks of the tuition to each one after high school ended.

I go through all of that because as the Temple Nurses end another week on strike, there is one particular thing that Temple has done that really, really, strikes me on a personal level. Specifically, they have decided to end college tuition benefits for kids of the Temple Nurses.

It's a sign of strained times that 1,500 striking nurses and other staff at Temple University Hospital are risking their careers for their children's futures.
…

For 25 years, Temple used tuition reimbursement to recruit and retain highly trained staff at the busy urban hospital. Workers and their dependents could attend Temple for free or apply a $7,000 annual stipend elsewhere.

Now, odd as is sounds, a university hospital wants out of the college-aid business.

Temple is so serious about slashing $5 million from its$1 billion health-system budget that hospital management abruptly canceled tuition reimbursement for dependents in March 2009 in the middle of the Pennsylvania Association for Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals' contract.

This is really, really screwed up, and I really feel for these families.

In my family, in the early 1990s, my mom switched jobs, taking a position with UPenn. She took a pay cut to do so, but, it made sense for one explicit reason- she had three boys, all of whom were going to go to college, and Penn offered an incredible tuition benefit for the kids of Penn staff. It was an investment in the future- none of us were in college at the time, but, the benefit was there, waiting for us. And there was a trust that the University would not simply take it away. The benefit stayed, and, put simply, Penn made it so that an incredible amount of schools- such as the wonderful and expensive one I went to for undergrad- were financially viable for us. My parents, despite their perpetual middle-class-in-America financial worries, were able to provide an incredible education for their kids. Without Penn and its benefit, I really don’t know what we would have done.

So, honestly, I can’t imagine if, right before I started at Macalester, or even while I was already in the school, Penn did something like what they are doing to the families of these nurses:

Tom Geiger is the single father of two teenage daughters and a respiratory therapist who came to Temple 10 years ago because of the tuition reimbursement - a generous perk taxed as income.
"If the job's a hand," he explains, "this was one of the fingers."

Last spring, Geiger choked up telling his eldest, Nikki, that she couldn't go to Shippensburg because Temple had stopped paying the stipend. He dreads having the same conversation with Paulina, an honors student graduating from Franklin Towne Charter with her sights on Penn State.

...

Bruce Yeslow's son was a junior at Temple when the hospital pulled the plug. Yeslow, an interventional radiology RN from Levittown, scrambled to find $11,000, learning quickly that "it's a hardship to get a loan these days."

Temple is striking directly at middle class parents and their ability to provide for their kids in a world of ever more expensive college tuition. These parents have lived for years thinking that they had found a way to make higher education happen for their kids in an affordable way. And now? Now they have told these nurses that in some cases, they are effectively cutting their salaries by 10 or 20k per year. Money that would be directly paying for the education of their kids.

Temple pays little to no taxes. Their hospitals pay little to no taxes. They get pretty much everything they want or need from the city. It makes sense over all, because having big universities in the city benefits us all. One way it does so is by promoting their employee’s ability to pay for higher education. And yet, with a stroke of the pen, they simply ended it.

That is really, really wrong, and is a direct strike against families across the city and region.