By Tom Ferrick
(part 4 of 5)
There is a simple way for the city to save a lot of money on its health insurance costs, which total about $400 million a year.
Each of the city’s major unions, plus its non-unionized work force, have separate health and welfare funds. If you combined them into one fund and [...]

By Tom Ferrick
(part 3 of 5)
To understate the case, the city has not been successful over the years at getting its labor unions to make concessions on wages, work rules and fringe benefits.
Union leaders are not elected to give up their members’ hard-earned rights and benefits.
Confronted with this resistance, the city has often resorted instead [...]

By Tom Ferrick
(Part 2 of 5)
Mayor Nutter likes to talk about making political alliances outside the city. Well, here is an opportunity for him to join other local officials across the state to press for a change in the way county courts are funded.
For 22 years, the state of Pennsylvania has been living under a state [...]

By Tom Ferrick
(part 1 of 5)
The city’s budget woes are beginning to sound like an ad for an oriental rug store: Save 10! 20! 30 percent or more!
Only in this case it is cut 10, 20, 30 percent! At least that was the directive of Mayor Nutter to his department heads the other in [...]

By Tom Ferrick
Now that Chris Matthews has decided that the best way he can serve his country is by making millions as a political talk show host, this question arises: What Democratic politicians are now thinking of running for the U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania in 2010.
The short answer is: nearly all of them.
With Matthews, the [...]

By Tom Ferrick
Lord of the Rings anyone?
If you think the dust up over the Mayor Nutter’s plan to close libraries, fire stations, city pools, etc. was a big deal, stick around. They were just skirmishes.
Now, the battle begins in earnest.
The Nutter administration this week went before the arbitrators who will decide the police-and fire-employee contracts [...]

By Tom Ferrick
What would you call a big parade that hardly anyone shows up to watch? I would call it a failure. In Philadelphia, we have a different name for it. We call it the Mummer’s Parade.
News reports in the Daily News and the Inquirer made it clear that the crowd that lined up on [...]

By Tom Ferrick
When it comes to Mayor Michael Nutter and the libraries, the phrase “more trouble that it’s worth” comes to mind.
The Urban Dictionary, a snide and funny web site of American slang, defines the phrase as follows: “high maintenance; requiring excessive investments of effort that may not be exceeded by the return.”
That sounds about [...]

“We cannot grow, or even preserve, our revenue base unless we cut taxes. The status quo will lead to less revenue”
In the end, the tax reform movement in Philadelphia died without a whimper.
Last week, when City Council voted to freeze the wage and business tax reductions scheduled for coming years, it was done by unanimous [...]

It looks like the brief and undistinguished judicial career of Willie Singletary may soon be over.
The state group that oversees judicial conduct recently chastised Judge Singletary for his pitch to bikers in 2007, urging them to pony up $20 for his campaign for Philadelphia Traffic Court.  In so many words, Singletary said: You help me [...]