Kenyatta Johnson indictment highlights Philly's political problem: transactionalism
The Fix: Permit The Sun Polish
The indictment of Councilman Kenyatta Johnson is just the latest case of Philly'due south most pressing political problem: Transactionalism
Jan. 31, 2020
After my "Reformer vs. Progressive" slice terminal week, I ran into a buddy of mine. He'd read my ramblings, in which I argue that the true political divide in Philadelphia is not Right versus Left then much as Ideologue versus Applied Reformer. "Aren't you really just expressing a local version of 'liberal' versus 'moderate'?" he wanted to know.
Actually, non at all. The point is more fundamental: Locally, at least, that old paradigm no longer applies.
In a corrupt, one-political party town, run for and by the same permanent establishment—a bandage of characters numbering in the hundreds—the prevailing dispute is not nigh something every bit high-minded as political values or philosophy.
Our biggest threat comes not from the usual prepare of isms that ascertain our politics: liberalism, conservatism, socialism. No, our biggest challenge is a different ism: transactionalism. Philly has long had two sets of rules—1 for insiders and their self-dealing transactions, and ane for those not in the room where it all happens.
A prime instance arose just this week.
Reading the long-awaited federal indictment of Councilman Kenyatta Johnson and his wife Dawn Chavous feels like deja vu all over once more. Like the indictments of labor leader John Dougherty and Councilman Bobby Henon (that's right, 12 per centum of Council is at present under federal indictment. Get Philly!), information technology indicts non only its alleged bad actors, but a whole organisation of governance.
If yous're a hard-working, tax-paying, law-constant constituent, how do you get your elected official to work as hard for you every bit he apparently does for varied ultra-connected private interests?
Johnson and Chavous, of course, are innocent until proven guilty, as are Dougherty and Henon. But I'yard talking about something across guilt or innocence.
Reading both indictments, you can't help merely wonder: Are at that place really 2 Philadelphias? One for the connected, with their side deals and alleged veiled threats and quid pro quo'd no-show jobs, and one for the rest of united states of america?
Reading about Dougherty, Henon and Johnson working their magic—weaponizing a city agency like L & I in Henon's case on Dougherty'southward behalf, or manipulating country use dispositions in his commune on behalf of a supporter in Johnson's—makes you wonder: Even if it'south legal to apply the power of councilmanic prerogative to do good a political benefactor that hired his married woman as a consultant in what the feds characterize every bit a no-show chore, surely it's wrong, no?
If you're a hard-working, tax-paying, law-constant elective, how do yous become your elected official to work as hard for you lot as he apparently does for varied ultra-connected private interests?
Remember, Johnson has already lost a ceremonious court instance over his utilize of councilmanic prerogative, the virtually-absolute power district councilmembers wield when it comes to land-apply disposition in their districts.
The facts are in: The practice, not codified in law or charter, stalls mutual good development, diminishes professional zoning and planning, and can pb to a culture of de facto extortion.
Over the years, after all, it's served every bit an invitation for lawmakers (George Schwartz, Rick Mariano, Leland Beloff and, at present, potentially, Johnson) to be sent off to the Large Firm for either shaking down developers or working as their proxies in violation of the public trust.
We take no shortage of supposed crusaders who suddenly go all song fry when the subject of their colleagues' insider means comes upwardly. Instead, information technology's much safer to try and have national progressive programs and jam them through a local cookie-cutter.
Our status as the nation's premier political-perp-walk city would seem secure, no? Think of it: We alive in a town where the last district attorney is currently wearing an orangish jumpsuit, (and not for the style statement), following in the footsteps of the country's sometime attorney general.
A state rep (who used to work in our current DA'south function) just pled guilty to theft and perjury charges, and our onetime congressman—once the fresh face of reform—is still on a 10-yr involuntary vacation.
Given such a dispiriting litany, you lot'd call back progressives would be all over fixing
our corrupt system. You lot'd be wrong.
As I covered last week, nosotros accept no shortage of supposed crusaders who suddenly go all song fry when the subject of their colleagues' insider ways comes upwards.
Instead, it's much safer to attempt and take national progressive programs and jam them through a local cookie-cutter. Let's zippo in on ii such case studies.
Councilman Mark Squilla has led the local state of war on plastic bags, in keeping with a nationwide progressive trend; more 240 cities and counties take passed laws banning them in the last 13 years. In that location's one trouble, though: In the rush to hop on the bandwagon and enact the ban, inconvenient facts have often fallen by the wayside.
Fact is, the efficacy of such bans is no open-and-shut instance. A contempo study of the plastic bag bans in California found a disturbing unintended consequence: Turns out, people who would reuse their plastic shopping bags for lining trash bins or picking up dog poop made a run on plastic garbage bags to the tune of a 120-percent increase.
These are heavier, mind you lot, so they use considerably more plastic. Moreover, the ban on plastic numberless led to a surge in paper trash bag sales—which a number of studies discover to be more harmful to the environs, given the cutting down and processing of trees involved with that activity.
Maybe, instead of copying and pasting the linguistic communication of progressive bills in other cities onto their letterhead, our elected progressives ought to take some gamble and spend some political capital letter past throwing dorsum the shades, opening the windows, and finally letting the sun smoothen in.
Why bring this upwards? Because, as with the banning of plastic straws, the politics of practiced intentions does non equate to the change we demand. And it's more than deleterious even than that: The notion that intractable problems similar the decimation of our environment have quick, easy fixes really fuels more than inaction. It's the illusion of progress, at a time when we need groundbreaking global action.
Or allow'due south take the upshot of hire command, which newly-minted progressive Councilwoman Kendra Brooks has made her signature issue. Every bit Steven Malanga outlines in City Journal, "decades of bipartisan research tell us that controls on rent suppress real manor values, diminish property taxes, and reduce investments in housing."
He walks us through how hire command actually fueled deportation in the middle of the 20th century in New York, squeezing "landlords unable to increment rents for maintenance, repairs and fuel prices until owners began abandoning buildings by the thousands during the tardily 1960s, driving out middle-class residents, stranding the poor in deteriorating apartments and creating immense tracts of poverty in formerly stable blue-collar neighborhoods."
Of course, there is no political risk to vilifying landlords or declaring a fatwa against plastic numberless. But it's not particularly courageous. You know what would exist? Maxim no to your friends and taking on the interests that put y'all where y'all are. How could our electeds do that? By adopting a truly reform agenda.
Strengthen the planning commission. Pass term limits. Release a fully itemized accounting of Council'south mysterious upkeep. (Information technology exempts itself from the transparency information technology demands of other city departments.) Or how near this i: Non only brand the inspector full general's office permanent, just widen its jurisdiction and then it can investigate Council and the row offices. Council President Darrell Clarke doesn't want to do that; presumably, he sees oversight as a threat.
He should encounter it as an opportunity for sunlight. It'due south now 106 years since Justice Brandeis wrote the brilliant phrase "sunlight is the best disinfectant" in his book, Other People's Money.
That, of course, is a succulent title for us, given that that was the phrase—"OPM" for short—former State Senator Vince Fumo would employ to avowal of how he paid for his lavish lifestyle and all those vacuum cleaners, Tiki torches, and bobblehead dolls documented in the case that, this being Philly, sent him away for a while, besides.
A century after Brandeis wrote those words, the indictments and the well-nigh daily drumbeat of our headlines propose we're still in the dark. Maybe, instead of copying and pasting the language of progressive bills in other cities onto their letterhead, our elected progressives ought to take some risk and spend some political majuscule by throwing back the shades, opening the windows, and finally letting the sun smoothen in.
The Fix is made possible through a grant from the Thomas Skelton Harrison Foundation. The Harrison Foundation does non exercise editorial control or approval over the content of whatsoever material published by The Philadelphia Denizen.
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