It's Our City podcast with Budget Director Steve Agostini

Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter presented his spending plan last week, outlining his ideas for eliminating a five-year $1 billion budget gap.

He went out of his way to say there will be no layoffs in the city’s police or fire departments. Both departments’ workers are represented by unions. However, Nutter did not have that same message for the city’s two other large unions, AFSCME DC 47 (white collar workers) and AFSCME DC 33 (blue collar workers). In fact, without concessions from these unions, the mayor has said he will be forced to lay off city workers. Some union officials now believe the city is intentionally trying to pit the unions against each other.

Yesterday, City Budget Director Steve Agostini told It’s Our City that this is not the case. In an interview with Chris Satullo, WHYY executive director of news and civic dialogue, Agostini said the following:

“I don’t know if he’s (Mayor Nutter) trying to drive a wedge. I think the point about not having layoffs for police and fire was really in reaction to what we heard citizens saying. I’m not telling anybody anything that they don’t know. We’ve got some very serious people out on the streets who don’t belong out on the street. We have a very talented police commissioner who is working very hard to get the crime rate down. The last thing we want to do is lowering his ability to be successful in making this a safer city.

“Similarly, we heard concerns about firefighters and engine and ladder company closings and we’re trying to respect those concerns. I think that’s what you were hearing (when the mayor delivered his budget speech). We have arbitration with those unions, at the end of the day it will be decided by a neutral arbitrator.

“That’s not the case with our blue- and white-collar unions. We’re trying to work with them. I think we’re trying to convey that this is a serious time. We really need them to sit down with us and think seriously about the things we can do. We expect they will be good partners.”

The 45-minute interview with Agostini was recorded yesterday at WHYY’s studios and is available below as an It’s Our City podcast. Topics ranged from why the city is facing its second $1 billion budget gap, to why the mayor favors raising property taxes instead of the wage tax as way to increase revenues, to what role the mayor’s staff now plays as city council begins reinventing the mayor’s budget.

Some of the interesting things that came out of that interview include the budget cut the mayor’s office itself will take. Satullo reminded Agostini that during the citizen budget forums, many residents were incensed by what they perceived as a super-sized administrative staff for the mayor. The budget director says the mayor’s office will see a $620,000 cut under the mayor’s plan. He wouldn’t say how many staffers be let go.

You can listen to the full interview, which we’ve broken into two parts, here:

PART 1 with Steve Agostini

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PART 2 with Steve Agostini

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Or, if you want to download both parts of the interview and listen to them on your fancy i-doohickeys and .mp3 gadgets, just right click on this link for part one and this link for part two.  Choose “Save Link As” and download away.