(Sugarhouse response added)
In the latest go-round between Philadelphia and the casinos, the city says it is Sugarhouse’s fault that they don’t have a foundation permit yet. This comes from the city’s response filed yesterday to Sugarhouse’s request for “A Special Master” (ouch!) to make Philly move faster on the permitting process.
In the document the city [...]

One New Year’s story that has been lost amid news about the economy, politics, and war is that Pennsylvania has one fewer municipality in 2009.  Just south of Pittsburgh,  tiny Alexander Borough in Washington County has merged with Donegal Township.  WHYY’s Dave Heller spoke with Mark Muro, Fellow and Policy director at the Brookings Institution [...]

Reader Amy Dwyer wrote in to tell us about her school’s plans for Inauguration Day, plans that included a series of Inaugural Balls for the students.  She works at the The Elementary Workshop Montessori School in downtown Wilmington, Delaware.  Yesterday she sent a bunch of photos from the events which I have included in WHYY’s [...]

Long time city watchdog Ed Goppelt reports on his website this morning that “Hallwatch to cease operations” on Feb 26 @ 11:59pm.  The site started in March 2001 after Goppelt learned that the Philadelphia City Council was considering fining owners of noisy dogs. Goppelt who owned a part-pit bull named Emmy Lou said he became [...]

Here are the dates and locations of the upcoming citizen budget workshops in Philadelphia. They are being organized by the University of Pennsylvania Project for Civic Engagement. At the meetings citizens will work in groups of 20 to discuss various approaches to balancing the city’s future budget. The results will be provided to the mayor’s [...]

Things are not well in budget land for cities and states. Next week the public we’ll get a chance to hear Pennsylvania’s Governor Ed Rendell talk about the perils of managing a state budget during this major recession. To give you some sense of how frustrating this could be think of it this way.
Have [...]

by Elizabeth Fiedler, WHYY News
City Council is preparing to gather for its first session of the year.   In just his first few months, freshman City Councilman Bill Green has drawn plenty of attention for challenging veteran politicians and long-standing city political traditions.  His aggressive style has some wondering about the political ambitions of the new [...]

A new year, a new budget gap.
The welts from its last round of budget encounters with the people of Philadelphia still sting, but the Nutter Administration still must deliver some more bad fiscal news. As Mayor Michael Nutter announced a week ago, continued weakness in the local economy and city tax receipts will force a new round of [...]

Several days ago I wrote about how folks in D.C. are unhappy with the otherwise highly praised Metro for its hesitancy to share its schedule info with Google and therefore become part of Google Transit.  I wrote about it because, unfortunately, our own regional transit authority was also outside of the Google-verse.
According to SEPTA Watch, [...]

Like it or not, you’re stuck with the wage tax if you live in Philadelphia, or live outside the city but work here. Yeah, it’s a raw deal. But it’s part of the price we pay to live and/or work here. Back in October, we asked you why you choose to stay in Philadelphia, why [...]