The Air-Quote Budget

Once upon a time, my favorite euphemism was "police-press relations," but after hearing Mayor Nutter's plan to extricate the city from its budget crisis, I'm tempted to change that to "temporary tax increase."

Also known as the "penny with a purpose," the 1 cent hike in the city's sales tax is one of the "temporary" increases Nutter is proposing to help the city make ends meet, without the steep cuts to services he's spent months threatening. The mayor says a three-year increase in sales tax, from 7 to 8 cents on the dollar, would bring in about $340 million. He's also calling for a one-time hike of 19 percent to the property tax, which would then drop back to a 14.5 percent increase next year, assuming an "economic recovery." Anybody see an economic recovery coming in two years? Only President Obama has that much hope. Yet in the final years of Nutter's five-year budget, the increases are phased out.

The city's history bears the fallacy of so-called "temporary" tax hikes: The Inquirer recently printed a list of city and state taxes, from levies on liquor to the wage tax, that were created decades ago as temporary measures, yet live on. At least one City Council member has suggested swapping a longer-term sales tax increase for the property tax hikes, though I can't really see how it's a choice between the two. It's more likely the new Task Force on Tax Policy and Economic Competitiveness (not to be confused with the already-extant Tax Reform Commission) will see a need for both.

"Temporary" taxes. Seriously, see if you can even say it without making air quotes around the word. Philly loves to call us folks from New Jersey names — some of you had choice ones for me after my last column (but more on that later). Still, one thing you can't call us is naïve: Here in Jersey, we're taxed by everyone from the state government to our local fire district commissioners, and if we know anything, it's that elected officials may come and go, but their tax increases are here to stay.

What I can't figure is why this tough-talking mayor, who's unafraid to go toe-to-toe with tax deadbeats on the sidewalk, suddenly needed to hide behind weasel words. He's spent the last year being pilloried at public community meetings, excoriated for threatening the libraries and finally, showered with a chorus of boos at last week's Council meeting. Yet the mayor who prides himself on keeping it real suddenly wants to pretend the economy's going to pull through in two years, right in time for his re-election run. On second thought, maybe it's not weaseling. Maybe it's delusion.

The need for tax revenues will only get worse if Nutter fails to convince the city's workers, and the four unions representing them, that they're not sharing enough of the sacrifice. With union leaders saying earlier this week that there's a 70 percent chance of a strike, it looks to be an ugly summer.

It's already been a long, hot season for Nutter, who's spent nearly a year making what seem like rookie mistakes, bouncing from one unpopular budget-cutting idea to the next. Or hey, maybe the mayor just played the entire city like a poker chip from one of those casinos he's resigned himself to, by making things sound so bad that "temporary" tax hikes now seem palatable. Nutter's budget throws in some feel-good cost-cutting gestures like a one-day furlough that would raise $4.1 million, and a call to revoke city officials' cars, but beneath all that, it's still about the taxes. And that may be right. But the mayor should be realistic about it.

Last time around in this space, I talked about how Philadelphia's budget crisis affects those of us for whom the city is a resource for work, play, culture and sports, but not a home, even going so far as to suggest a way the city could make more money from us tourists by creating user fees for the city's parks. In return, I got the usual variations on the tiresome "stay in the suburbs where everything sucks" theme, but was surprised to read I had "stunned" blogger Duncan Black over at Eschaton. Philadelphia is "not an urban theme park," he scolded, a catchy little turn of phrase I'll remember next summer when I'm strolling a New Jersey boardwalk surrounded by folks from Northeast Philly slurping up their precious two weeks' vacation like a lime rickey.

The point is, we charge you guys money to come and play with our toys, right? And that goes both ways: You tax our spending. Which is why, as an outsider, paying a higher sales tax when I spend in Philly seems logical in this age of "shared responsibility" which is another euphemism — for "we're all screwed."

Amy Z. Quinn blogs at citizenmom.net.