(Image: 9th and Girard) UCLA planning professor Michael Manville recently coined the term “pretextual planning” to refer to a phenomenon that Philly housing politics watchers will immediately recognize. The idea is that city governments will sometimes intentionally put in place bad rules governing housing and land use and other issues, in order to use the removal of the bad rules as negotiating currency for some other agenda.  Continue reading

(Every supermarket with a beer section has to mean one less restaurant or bar under PA's broken licensing regime | Image: Jon Geeting) Pennsylvania liquor license prices have been spiraling out of reach for smaller restaurants and bars for several years now, without much interest from the political system, but one person in Harrisburg is finally starting to ask some questions, and it’s worth saying a good word about the recent work of Rep. Frank Burns, a Democratic state Rep. from Cambria County.   Continue reading

(Image: Governor Tom Wolf) As expected, Governor Tom Wolf has vetoed HB 1300, the Republican election bill that would have made sweeping changes to Pennsylvania’s election code and rolled back some of the voting access expansion policies in Act 77—the 2019 law that established no-excuse vote-by-mail and other changes.  Continue reading

(Image: Boardroom Spirits of Lansdale, PA) Governor Wolf’s COVID-19 emergency order was overturned recently after voters approved the ballot question curtailing the Governor’s emergency powers, but one unanticipated side effect of the change was to also cancel the emergency provisions related to outdoor dining, including to-go cocktails and outdoor alcohol-serving rules.  That set off a scramble by the hospitality industry and supportive lawmakers to hurry up and pass a few bills that had already been under consideration to make some of these changes permanent, so that the existing bar and restaurant operations won’t face disruptions. (Sign the petition from the Pennsylvania Restaurant and Lodging Association!) Continue reading

Philadelphia’s Mixed-Income Housing program is like a money-printer for the city’s Housing Trust Fund, raising far more than City Council originally anticipated when they passed it in 2018. As we wrote last month, the Housing Trust Fund just received its second-largest-ever payment under the Mixed-Income program, to the tune of almost $1 million for a single project. For context, the entire Housing Trust Fund has only been receiving about $20 million from the city in recent years, so receiving 1/20 of that from a single project is a big deal. Continue reading

(Image: Philadelphia Magazine) Philadelphia is receiving a big cash infusion from the federal government to restore our funding levels and services after the pandemic-induced budget crunch last year, and there are a lot of questions out there about how strategically city elected officials are using that money.  Last week, the Inquirer published an op-ed by Controller Rebecca Rhynhart, in which she sounded the alarm about the Kenney administration's current approach, and laid out an alternative plan for spending the substantial funds allocated to the City via the American Rescue Plan (ARP).  Continue reading

(Image: Kathryn Garcia) New York City’s Mayoral primary election is happening next month, and the results will be very interesting to watch from a Philadelphia perspective because of how Philadelphia’s Mayoral elections have often tended to mirror the political mood in New York. Mayor Michael Nutter’s technocratic political style was in many ways reminiscent of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s approach, while Mayor Jim Kenney’s more closely resembles the more classic left-liberal approach and general vibe of Mayor Bill De Blasio, who was elected just a couple years before Kenney. Continue reading