Political Jeopardy anyone?

Mayor Michael Nutter said this afternoon if the city raises the wage tax rate, it could result in the loss of the city’s share of Pennsylvania’s casino revenues. Calling this “political jeopardy,” Mayor Nutter said “this is not a path I’m willing to go down.” City Finance Director Rob Dubow added that it’s widely known that the state legislature is out to get Philadelphia. If Philly raised its wage tax, it would anger state lawmakers who specifically carved out special language for the city to use casino revenues to lower the tax. And to top it off, Philadelphia’s two licensed casinos are nowhere near being completed, so the city is not even contributing to the the gaming fund it draws from.

The idea of raising the city’s wage tax came up during a discussion of the findings from the four budget workshops that were held last month. One of the outcomes was that participants signalled that they would support higher taxes in an effort to spare deep cuts for city services deemed essential such as housing and public health.

A number of city council members were on hand for today’s briefing. City Council President Anna Verna asked the two panelists who organized the forums whether participants realized that raising the wage tax could have political repercussions from state lawmakers. Chris Satullo, the executive director of news and civic dialog at WHYY and one of the forum’s conveners, said most residents probably did not fully understand the potential backlash a raise in wage taxes could have.

If Mayor Nutter draws the line on the wage tax rate, this would represent the first significan split between citizen views expressed at the budget workshops and what the mayor wants to achieve.

The mayor thanked the workshop organizers, Satullo and Harris Sokoloff, the director of the Penn Project for Civic Engagementm for their work saying, “The process was a good process…. It (the findings) will be used. We read through it a couple of times. I take the ideas very seriously. The concept and concerns expressed will be reflected in the upcoming budget…. This input will be used.”