“There’s no advantage to taking DROP.”

If 1,247 new  enrollees collect what more than 6,000 recipients have previously collected from the city, the additional price tag for the new DROP recipients would be more than $136 million.

It's the definition of throwing good money after bad.

The Boston College report argued that since its inception in 1999, DROP had cost taxpayers only $22.3 million per year, or about $258 million total. If only that were true.

Mayor Michael Nutter has waited four months for a Boston College study of the city's Deferred Retirement Option Plan (DROP) program.

The $300,000 amounts to a final payday for Tierney, who had been engaging in brass-knuckle bargaining with the new owners, a group of senior lenders that won control of the papers at an April 28 auction for $139 million.

Getting rid of DROP won't be easy. "The mayor's office is pretty powerful, but I don't get a magic wand to just do away with things," Nutter said. "DROP is a bill, it's a law. It would have to be removed through the legislative process if we decide to go in that direction. So I can't eliminate it by myself even if I wanted to."

On Jan. 14, 2012, City Council President Anna Verna is scheduled to retire from office and collect a going-away present from the city — a lump-sum cash bonus of $584,777. But she doesn't have to stay retired for long. If Verna runs for office again in 2011 and wins, she can retire for one day, make a deposit at the bank, and then go back to work the next day, Jan. 15, 2012, and resume collecting her salary of $148,090.

In recent years, both the city of San Diego and the county of Milwaukee adopted DROP programs, just as Philadelphia did. But in San Diego and Milwaukee, publicity over DROP bonuses sparked taxpayer revolts, criminal indictments, court battles, recall drives and a negligence lawsuit. Philadelphia, it seems, could learn a lot from those experiences. But, so far, it hasn't.