sorry. i think i maybe just restated your point.

which still leaves us fucked and answerless.

mostly because the machine in Chicago is unified and corruption is kept under some control. Chicago is much better governed for the same reason. Here in Philly we have such a factionalized party that each faction spends all its time fighting the others and each one of the factions can stop any new public policy initiative that might hurt it. In Chicago, the Mayor / Chair of the Cook County Democratic Party has much more control over the city and can force through compromise deals that benefit all factions in the long term even if it hurts many of them in the short term.

This, by the way, is the best reason for thinking that Bob Brady might actually accomplish things as Mayor that no one else could. But he would have to hang on to his position as party Chair.

We are still waiting, howver, to find out what Brady would want to accomplish, as we mostly are for Fattah as well. (Brady did endorse the Committee of Seventy Ethics proposal, however.)

Isn't the ideal Mayoral candidate a composite of the real, existing candidates? Dwight Evan's vision of economic development and crime reduction, Michael Nutter's vision of clean government, John Dougherty's vision of public works as a path to prosperity, Chaka Fattah's ability to sell a public policy in public and Bob Brady's ability to sell it to the party leaders and Council. (I don't know Tom Knox well enough to include him.)

One reason we can't find a consensus among progressives about the Mayor's race is that our candidates have such different virtues. I think we would all agree about the virtues of each candidate, but we can't agree upon which ones are most important to us.

"For the folks who do, and need a permit from L and I or a wage tax"

Believe me, I've done my share of waiting in impossibly long lines at L&I, and for long hours trying to get through to city services on the phone.

"The "culture of pay-to-play," has been in no way scientifically quantified "

I think that's a good point, and speaking of Goode, I think some of his challenges to the perceived prevalence of pay-to-play have been instructive. I have no reason to believe that there has been any more pay-to-play under Street than there was under Rendell, let alone Rizzo (under whom I would guess there was considerably more PTP). I am quite leary of the rabble-rousing around "ethics," and skeptical about attempts to portray Nutter as the "reform" candidate.

But I guess I just see the near total lack of accountability as being an extension of "corruption," and addressing corruption as being the same thing as addressing accountability. I consider a government system wherein people aren't held into account to do their jobs efficiently AND politicians stay in office regardless - through blatant patronage and a de facto Tammany Hall type of political machine that disenfranchises voters (a la insiders appointed to City Council slots) - to be a "corrupt" government system. In using that term I mean more than just graft or politicians enriching themselves personally.

OK, enough beating this dead horse.

While I enjoy finding stats or case studies as much as probably anyone here, I doubt that any case studies or stats exist for the cost of pay to play. That is because there is no scientific or statistical study that can be done on this or a before or after study as the issue is very murky and when and where pay to play actually occurs or does not occur cannot be empirically shown in nearly any case. Ergo, you are likely never going to see stats or a study. That does not mean that pay to play or corruption does not exist. In terms of corruption and inefficiency and lack of accountability, while there may not be a direct nexus among them in some or many of most cases, I believe they are all in the same basket and overlap to some degree. I will close with the point that the fact that pay to play does occur to some degree in Philadelphia and it contributes to the dynamics, culture and mentality of local government. While corruption does not make it impossible to deliver policy change on crime, jobs, education, it certainly does not encourage or establishes an evironment for progressive, creative and dynamic leadership and envisioning that results in change.

There are all kinds of corruption in the city. And Ray is right that some of them just cost a little, or perhaps a lot of, money. And other kinds systematically undermine the way the city operates.

We do have some indication of the costs of pay to play, for example. Joe Hoeffel pointed out last year that when he was a commissioner in Montgomery County, they started to bid out most legal work such as bond work. And their legal bills dropped—unfortunately I can’t remember the exact amount—either in half or by two-thirds.

If someone had the time and energy, they could pore over the transcripts of the recent trials and start quantifying other costs. Ron White’s girlfriend had a printing “business” that owned no presses. It basically served as a contractor to the airport and hired other companies that actually did the printing. And then she padded the printing bills by 50% over she was charged by the real printer. That might have cost the airport a few hundred thousand dollars over the course of the year.
But Ray is also right, I think, in pointing out that the deeper problem in the city is not money wasted—although we certainly could use that money—but that city agencies are unresponsive to the public and act in arbitrary and an unfair manner.

Some examples:

L&I doesn’t always come when called; it doesn’t follow up on cases it opens; and it doesn’t seem to enforce the law fairly.
To get action, it helps to have a ward leader or council member make a call for you. And those same calls often protect business owners from enforcement. There is an egregious example I know of a car dealership that has a totally illegal, brightly lit sign that L&I can’t seem to get removed.

The zoning process is also thoroughly politicized. District Council members and, sometimes, ward leaders, have a tremendous influence on which variances are granted and which are not. And since our crazy-quilt zoning code almost makes a variance mandatory before anything gets built, zoning decisions are made in ways that are highly arbitrary.

The process for getting licenses to open a new business is another example. Smart businessmen hire “expediters” and “consultants” to grease the wheels of the machinery of the city.

The process by which vacant land is made available to potential developers is another example. There is no one place to find out what land the city owns. Getting that information usually requires political connections. And political considerations largely determine why one potential developer rather than another gets site control over city owned properties. There is rarely any bidding process.

Whenever a political system is in place that is unfair, dysfunctional and annoying to many citizens we need to ask ourselves why it has not been changed. Why has every mayoral candidate in the last twenty years said that he would fix the regulatory process and nothing has happened?

My view is that the way this city works is functional, for Council members and, to some extent, ward leaders. Whether we are individuals, homeowners, businessmen, or community groups, getting what we need from the city requires us to make a special deal with a member of Council or a ward leader. We thus become dependent on them. And some of us vote for them, or give them campaign contributions, because of the special deals we get.

And I use the word “us” deliberately. As a leader of a community organization, I have played my role in this system. So has every other effective community activist in the city. Those of us who want to improve our neighborhoods are enablers of this system and not just because we provide tacit or active support for the Council members who help us.

We also take on much of the role that an effective government would be providing: we police the streets in town watches; we report on potholes; we represent neighborhood interests in zoning and development disputes and so forth. It is a good thing that we play this role. A good municipal government should involve its citizens in the administration of public policy. The problem, however, is that we play this role not primarily by interacting with apolitical administrative agencies that should be encouraging citizen involvement. Instead we work through Council members and the party. And that means we get further enmeshed with them.

I have been calling this system a politics of fear, because it leaves us dependent on, and fearful of our political leaders.

It is a very bad system.

Why is it bad?

First, it is unfair to individuals and neighborhoods. Individuals and neighborhoods that have political connections or know how to create them do well. Those who don’t, suffer. And, as you would expect, class and race play a large role in determining which neighborhoods do well and which suffer. As I have been traveling around the city, I have seen that some neighborhoods have to put up with things—the lack of enforcement of city laws; unwanted development shoved down their throat—that I would never tolerate when I was president of West Mt. Airy Neighbors.

Second, it balkanizes the city. Our attachment to our neighborhoods is one of the best things about Philadelphia. But in politics, it keep us focused too much how to serve our narrow interests—and in making sure we get a larger share of some limited resource, like police protection, than some other neighborhood. We should be thinking more about how we can improve the city—and create more resources—for everyone.

And, third, it enables our political leaders to get reelected even though most of them they are not trying to find innovative public policies that would benefit all of us. The politics of fear is the main reason that Philadelphia is twenty to fifty years behind other cities in the country and the world in so many public policy areas, from crime to transportation to economic development to affordable housing to zoning and development to taxation

We have to end this politics of fear. As some you have heard me say, we have to create a politics of hope. We have to encourage our citizens to believe that real change is possible, to think that there are solutions to the problems that afflict every neighborhood, and to demand that their political officials offer such solutions,
Ray is right that people care about the problems that affect their lives, more than they care about issues of good government. But I have discovered that they understand the connection between the politics of fear and the lack of good government. They are angry about it. And they want to believe that politics in Philadelphia can be better. They really want a politics of hope.

We will find out whether this message can generate a movement for political change and can elect candidates for office that want to change our politics.

I’m betting the next four months of my life that is can.

If someone says issue X is "THE" issue in the election, I will presume they mean Philadelphia voters. Ie, those who go into the voting booth and decide who to put into office.