Philadelphia Research Initiative Poll (.pdf) as reported today on Philly.com:
Of the 800 respondents, 48 percent said they preferred to receive fewer services but pay no more in taxes, and 35 percent indicated they would rather pay higher taxes and not reduce services.
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Among its other findings, 53 percent of those asked opposed Nutter’s plan to raise [...]

Bollywood film crew shooting scenes in front of the PNC Bank Building made to look like a FBI office. Image credit: Ross Irwin

I’ve been meaning to post something about this story all day just because I know how much my colleague Alan loves the Bollywood stories. But now I realize I’ve never seen a [...]

Just a thought but it seems like at a time when some really big decisions will need to be made concerning mass transit in the region and when a nearly unprecedented amount of stimulus money for transit is flowing into the region, it’s not a good idea to hold up two otherwise qualified city representatives [...]

My reaction earlier to the Philadelphia Research Initiative’s latest poll from an email that I sent to folks on our news team:
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And this is why I hate issue based polls:
At the same time, Philadelphians give city officials little guidance about how the budget should be balanced.  Fewer services would mean fewer city workers, but 62 [...]

I don’t want the sarcasm of the title of my post to obscure the tragedy of a man losing his life, but rather to point out the ridiculousness way the story was reported. Greater Greater Washington is the gold standard for watching out for this shoddy reporting, advocating in its own subtle way, a change [...]

One of the problems with the way news is reported these days is that we often fail to put individual stories into their larger context.  Doing so requires a lot of work by reporters who are already pressed for time and it asks them to make certain leaps or conjectures that may not turn out [...]

As we reported on WHYY News a couple days ago, the Philadelphia International Cycling Classic is in danger of being can canceled for 2009 due to a shortfall in funding and a new city policy that requires events to pay for the use of city services like policing and clean up.
I have to admit, if [...]

A House Legislative Committee in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania voted down a proposed cell phone ban (link removed) for motorists. The bill would have made it illegal to use a hand-held phone while driving.
But the Committee did vote to give police the authority to fine anyone for driving carelessly because of a cell phone or other distraction. [...]

A few weeks back when Sugarhouse revealed their plans to put a mega concrete parking box on a prime piece of the Delaware waterfront, I wondered how Pulitzer-prize finalist and scourge of unimaginative developers Inga Saffron would react.
It turns out, she must have been on her tour of California at the time because she didn’t [...]

(Editor’s note: City Controller Alan Butkovitz called me and complained that this story is misleading and that Brett Mandel either doesn’t understand the job of the Controller or is purposefully misleading the public into believing annual audits are not being done by the Controller’s Office. Butkovitz says, financial audits are done on every department once [...]