Councilmanic prerogative is a tradition that gives City Council members a huge amount of control over development in the districts they represent. When a lawmaker wants to make a zoning change in his district, for example, the other 16 members will vote along with him as a matter of course. Polls Open am - pm. Councilmanic Privilege. Learn more about " Councilmanic Prerogative".
Learn More. What about how your tax dollars are spent — or in the case of sweetheart land deals to favored developers, squandered? Do you care about government transparency? What about rampant blight across the city, which vacant city land contributes to? The use and abuse of councilmanic prerogative has big implications for all of these issues. The legal part is easy: Both state law and the city charter grant City Council some authority over the sale of local real estate.
Legislators must introduce and pass bills to move forward the sale of public properties, or to change zoning designations in their districts.
The result is that individual councilmembers have a whole lot of power in the disposition of lucrative city-owned land — and very little scrutiny of the politics behind these ostensibly public real estate deals. Prerogative holds that no councilmember shall interfere with real estate business outside of their district.
The seven at-large councilmembers — who technically serve the whole city — are expected to co-sign the wishes of the district councilmembers.
In other words, the tradition is essentially a rubber-stamping process for public real estate transactions. There are exceptional situations where this totem is broken. Recently, during the contentious negotiations over the sale of the Market Street building that caused problems for Blackwell, other councilmembers intervened to publicly discuss the sale in which tens of millions of dollars were on the line.
Rarely are questions asked about the sale price or the details of the bidding process. A Pew report from — the most in-depth look at the topic to date — found that only 4 out of land deals had any dissenting votes. Deals are often struck or derailed behind closed doors, leaving behind little record of what happened. Kelly told the Daily News …in Citizens did not have the prerogative to not pay the award or the expenses associated with the legal defense , which just added to the cost of Philadelphia corruption.
Many have called for the head of the councilman responsible for the graft grift, but so many more heads must roll if we are to properly point fingers. Every councilmember who allows councilmanic prerogative to persist as a conduit for corruption, the mayor who permits his administration to acquiesce to the practice, and every city agency official who fails to blow the whistle on these foul plays share the blame.
Privately, so many will confess that they look other way because this is just the way it's always been and pointless to fight; or because it's smart politics to go along to get along; or because there are bigger battles to fight.
But in a city where those bigger battles never seem to reduce poverty, where smart politics never seem to stop criminal violence, and where the way it's always been never seems to create opportunity for neighbors in every community, the consenting of corruption must end.
This fundamental problem of Philadelphia corruption is that ours is a clubby, one-faction-of-one-party town and nobody has the courage or the cojones to stand up and call out what is wrong. Don't tell me you have business skills to advocate for better government if you allow this shady government operation. Don't tell me you are a champion of equity and transparency if you allow this fleecing of the city's overtaxed citizens. Don't tell me you are a valuable city official with vast operations experience that the mayor counts on if you allow your agency to be used for graft and boodle.
Next year, every elected official with a role in ending this corruption is up for re-election and every city official implicated in these activities is appointed by an elected official who can be ousted.
In other words, we can end this corruption by electing officials who will refuse to tolerate corruption and will appoint officials who will not stand for the corruption to continue. So, should be a referendum on councilmanic prerogative and the corruption that is consented to by too many. Nobody who remains quiet deserves to be re-elected in or re-appointed in He is a lifelong Philadelphian.
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