City Council Districts in Philadelphia

Last week, the Committee of Seventy’s Zack Stalberg had enough. For Stalberg, the last straw was hearing that City Councilman Jack Kelly was asking the public to pay for a PR guy to deal with the issue of his indicted former chief-of-staff.  The Daily News quoted him saying “It is appalling that Councilman Kelly would even think about asking the taxpayers to foot the bill.”

The former editor of the Philadelphia Daily News turned good government reformer is calling for a full review of city council’s operations and its structure. Stalberg had been thinking about this before his beef with Kelly. Councilman W. Wilson Goode, Jr. has been stirring public debate after announcing that he would like to change the council election system; so in effect, there would be one less Republican at the table. Goode feels that in a city dominated by Democrats, Republicans are over-represented on council because current rules ensure they get at least two council seats.

Today, WHYY’s It’s Our Money blogger Ben Waxman wrote an editorial that goes much further than anything Goode is imagining. The difference being that these ideas aren’t designed to favor the Democratic Party, but instead an often under-represented party called “the public.”

One of the ideas takes the partisanship, at least in name, out of the election system. Candidates running for City Council wouldn’t declare a party, and run just on their own good name and merits. Denver, Colorado uses this system and it seems to work pretty well there. Although mile-high council watchers still know who the D’s and R’s are.

One really radical idea, to me at least, is instead of having 10 individual council districts in Philadelphia, we would have five districts with two council members each. Proponents of the idea say district residents would have a broader diversity of representation. So if councilman X is hostile to your backyard incinerator plan to eliminate trash, you could try councilman Y.

Anyway…. check out Ben’s piece, and tell him what you think. It’s always good to shake-up how we view the world. It’s like traveling and realizing that people can drive safely on the other side of the road. It’s seems crazy at first, but then after while it just seems normal.