Council President
Darrell L. Clarke's controversial plan to create a new city Department of
Planning and Development is likely to get even more controversial.
Over the weekend,
Clarke sent his colleagues a letter outlining his latest twist to the proposal
for the new department: giving City Council a say in the cabinet-level
appointment for head of the new department; and dropping from the new
department's purview the duties of Department of Licenses and Inspections.
Clarke's original
proposal called for a cabinet-level department to take over functions now
handled by seven entities, including L&I, the Planning Commission, the Historical
Commission, and the Philadelphia Housing Authority. The new department would
have to be approved by voters in a City Charter change.
The latest version
of the bill, which is up for a hearing before the Committee on Law and
Government on Wednesday, does not include L&I under the development and
planning umbrella as originally proposed. That might be a good thing for
advocates who were asking that L&I remain under the direction of the deputy
mayor for public safety.
But Clarke's
proposal to give Council the power to veto the mayor's appointment to head the
new department is already raising eyebrows because it would weaken the city's
strong-mayor form of government.
"I can't
understand the logic of it," said David Thornburgh, president and CEO of
the watchdog group Committee of Seventy. "Other than an attempt to change
the balance of power."
Since the City
Charter was signed in 1951, the only cabinet-level appointment subject to
Council approval is city solicitor because the job calls for serving as adviser
to both the administration and Council.
"Consistent
with the theory of the strong-mayor form of government, the mayor is given the
power to appoint his principal assistants without the advice and consent of
Council," the City Charter states.
Clarke, who could
not be reached for comment Monday, said in his note to Council that the plan
"promises a 21st-century organization structure that would greatly enhance
our city's ability to plan and support development."
Clarke unveiled his
original bill in September - the same day that Mayor Nutter announced a special
commission's recommended changes to L&I.
Since then, Clarke
has received some backlash from developers, members of Nutter's special
commission, and community advocates over various aspects of the bill, including
the involvement of L&I in the new department, lack of coordination between
the Streets and Water Departments, and his plan to limit the independence of
the Planning Commission.
"By removing
L&I, he probably thought he was meeting one of the objections," Ned
Dunham, the chief of staff of the mayor's special commission on L&I, said
Monday. "But it gets us back to ground zero."
On Monday, Craig
Schelter, executive director of the regional developers' advocacy group
Development Workshop, said his group would ask Council to hold up the bill.
Schelter, who is a
former executive director of the Planning Commission, said that streamlining
development doesn't require a charter change. In addition, he said, the whole
process seems rushed for no reason.
"It's not
something that should happen until you get a new administration," he said.
That would be in
2016.
Source: Philly.com
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