Harris Sokoloff, director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Project for Civic Engagement, planned and led the recent citizen budget workshops in Philadelphia  (which WHYY co-sponsored).   He writes for It’s Our City about how Mayor Nutter’s budget proposal connects (or doesn’t) to the input at the workshops, and about what should happen going forward to maintain the civic [...]

Michael Nutter was to John Street as (BLANK) is to Michael Nutter.
a) Kermit the Frog
b) Councilman Bill Green
c) Cory Booker
d) Donovan McNabb.
The correct answer is of course, Bill Green, Council gadfly, microphone magnet and know-it-all.
Which is probably why former Mayor Street could be seen wearing a beatific smile in Council chambers Thursday as Mayor Nutter [...]

By Chris Satullo
This morning, Harris Sokoloff and I delivered our final report on the yield from the four Tight Times, Tough Choices budget workshops to Mayor Michael Nutter and his cabinet.
We spent about an hour going over the input and the findings from this exercise in asking more than 1,700 residents of the city to [...]

By Chris Satullo
They came in waves: firefighters in windbreakers, lawyers in Boyd’s best, activists with fliers in hand, homeless citizens wrapped in anxiety. They chanted, chatted, scowled, smiled, munched and waved to neighbors they hadn’t seen in a while.
They came to have their say, to defend what was precious to them. They got that chance, [...]

More than 400 Philadelphians, filling every available seat and standing two deep along the walls, took part in the first Tight Times, Tough Choices workshop Thursday night at St. Dominic’s School on Frankford Avenue in the lower Northeast.
The heart of the evening was a workshop where citizens, working in breakouts groups of 25 or so, [...]

Last night, Mayor Nutter and his team briefed members of City Council on the options for closing a new, $200 million budget gap in next year’s city budget.
Use this link ….. to view the powerpoint Nutter showed to Council members at the 5 p.m. meeting, no doubt spoiling any appetite they might have been working [...]

If the residents of any city in America should be familiar with the term gerrymander, it’s Philadelphians.   Gerrymandering is the dark art of drawing the boundaries of political districts without any regard to logic or geography, but with a keen eye to furthering the election chances of a) incumbents or b) the political party that’s [...]

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 [...]

Jon, Jon, Jon - why did it have to come to this?
In a world that is such a target-rich environment for his brand of political humor, why did Jon Stewart have to start his pre-inaugural version of The Daily Show Monday night with a weak, throwaway gibe at our fair city?
He opened the show with [...]

In every town across a huge, humbled nation, the scene was repeated today - in classrooms, in cloisters, in town squares and corporate cafeterias, in coffee shops and senior centers.
Americans gathered, clapped, cheered, laughed, wept or listened in rapt silence as Barack Obama took the oath of office as president of our nation, enacting for [...]