A Million Stories

All the news we care to print.

by Jeffrey C. Billman, Holly Otterbein and Yowei Shaw

Evan M. Lopez

So when The Public Record came out with two scathing articles earlier this month about Stalberg and his government watchdog group, our ears perked up. Granted, the Record's publisher and editor, Jimmy Tayoun, is an ex-City Council member who served more than three years for mail fraud and racketeering in the 1990s. (You'll be pleased to know he used the jail time wisely, writing a how-to book called Going to Prison?.) Not the best messenger, perhaps. But still, at least someone is refusing to bow before Stalberg; the city intelligentsia's tendency to treat Seventy's every pronouncement like it was handed down from the mountain can be a bit grating.

Tayoun and co-author Joe Shaheeli took issue with Stalberg's $248,733 salary; his purported inability to understand the legal mandate for the row offices; his group's allegedly too-close-for-comfort relationship with the real estate industry; and his expansion of Seventy's original clean-elections mission to becoming "the propaganda force for those who stand to gain from reorganizing city government."

"I think it's all completely off base," says Stalberg. "I don't particularly respect The Public Record as journalism or anything close to it."

While it's true that several of Seventy's board members hail from the business and real estate worlds, Stalberg denies any impropriety. "The important thing is, has any funder or anyone else asked me to do or say anything wrong or for selfish reasons? And in the five years or more I've been here, that never happened."

As for his anti-row office campaign, Stalberg points out that the idea originated with Mayor Michael Nutter, and last year, the Pennsylvania Intergovernmental Cooperation Authority (PICA) quantified the savings shuttering the row offices would bring: $15 million a year.

"In speaking out for this, our interest is in saving money that we think is not being well spent," says Stalberg. "If PICA says it's possible to save $15 million, I'd rather see it spent making schools better or make the streets safer."

Tayoun was out of the country and could not be reached for comment. But in a July 8 editorial, Tayoun made at least one semi-lucid critique of Seventy's aims: If you eliminate the row offices and consolidate their duties inside the mayor's office, you're going to have one hell of a powerful mayor. Though the notion of a mayor who could, you know, actually get shit done is not without its charms.

YOUR GOVERNMENT AT WORK

Speaking of good-government types — and of the one tangible thing Nutter has accomplished — City Controller Alan Butkovitz has spent the last few months investigating a very serious subject: the city's solar-powered compacting trash cans. He will now render a verdict. You might want to sit down.

On Monday, the controller's office released a 25-page report titled "Purchase and Deployment of BigBelly Solar Compactors," and we read it, because that's what we do. After all, this being Philadelphia, even a relatively small-potatoes, $3 million, environmentally friendly thing is almost sure to be rife with ... is corruption too strong a word? Let's call it incompetence.

According to the report, BigBelly suckered the city into a single-source contract by claiming that it was the only company that could sell the contraptions; the city could have saved 200 grand by going through distributors. Moreover, the report claims that the city had paid nearly $19,000 in interest on items it had not yet received, an "unusual business arrangement."

There's more, naturally: BigBelly doesn't have a required Business Privilege License; the city didn't train its workers to work the machines; about 90 of the $3,700-a-pop trash cans had "clouded or opaque" plastic solar bubbles, meaning they couldn't generate the energy they needed to do the compacting; and 31 of the original 501 machines the city bought have yet to hit the streets.

Also — and sadly, not surprisingly — the report claims that the compactors didn't produce the savings we were promised: We were told the city would save $13 million over the next decade because city workers wouldn't have to pick up trash as often. In fact, whereas the city figured it would have to collect the compacted trash only five times a week, the report claims that, in March and April, the city averaged 10 collections a week per trash can.

BigBelly vice president of marketing Richard Kennelly told the DN that the report was "riddled with inaccuracies," though he didn't elaborate. Streets Commissioner Clarena Tolson sent a letter to Butkovitz claiming that the program enabled the city to eliminate 24 positions: "There is no question in my mind that the BigBelly compactor program has saved taxpayer money."

C'mon, people, this isn't nuclear physics: Either the program is a money-sucking clusterfuck or Butkovitz is as much of a hack as he's accusing the Streets Department bureaucrats of being.

Which option do you believe? Yeah, us, too.

GET A JOB YOU LAZY BUMS

Last Friday, on Pennsylvania Public Radio in Lancaster County — where nearly 22,000 people are unemployed, BTW — GOP gubernatorial nominee Tom Corbett let this slip: "People don't want to come back to work while they still have unemployment. ... The jobs are there, but if we keep extending unemployment, people are going to sit there and ... I've literally had construction companies tell me, 'I can't get people to come back to work, until' ... they say, 'I'll come back to work when unemployment runs out.'"

(CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

For the record: Unemployment benefits are temporary, and usually provide only half of a worker's ordinary pay. To make matters worse, Corbett can't even get his story straight. First, he said a construction company spoke to him about those lazy welfare queens; then he claimed it was a candy company; later still, his spokesman said it was a plumbing business. Whichever it is, it totally sounds like a fair sampling of Pennsylvania's 500,000 unemployment benefit recipients.

For the record: Pennsylvania's unemployment rate is at a 26-year high; nationwide, there are five applicants for every open position. The jobs aren't there, Tom. You prick.

Corbett rival Dan Onorato sent out a press release Monday morning reveling in the gaffe: "Corbett thinks Pennsylvanians would rather be unemployed than earning money for their families, and he simply doesn't understand the economy."

True. But then, at the end of the release, Onorato reminds his audience that: "A life-long Pennsylvanian, Dan Onorato was raised in a working class neighborhood on Pittsburgh's North Side."

Well, isn't that convenient, you transparently political cheeseball?

Corbett, on a scale of one to 23, you get a 20 on this week's How Evil is Tom Corbett? Barometer. And Onorato, you get a slap on the wrist.

This week's report by Jeffrey C. Billman, Holly Otterbein and Yowei Shaw. E-mail us at amillionstories@citypaper.net.