Mike vs. Mike
This policy-wonk image is something Nutter still seems to be straining to get beyond. I watched him settle into a substantive interview on WHYY’s Radio Times, where he talked in the same sober, soothing tones as the on-air talent. And I saw him subvert his usually precise grammar to talk preacher-talk at Herb Lusk’s church in North Philadelphia. “Wow, are we having us some church this morning,” he said, starting a speech in which his words seemed to arc and fall like malfunctioning flares somewhere between the podium and the pews.
Of course, every politician tries to connect to the audience. Nutter is no different. But his reformer persona makes any acting seem particularly disingenuous. Given his current lack of standing in the African-American community, he also looks a little more desperate. A recent Pew poll found that 57 percent of white Philadelphians give him a “B or better,” while just 37 percent of African-Americans say the same thing.
Such mixed results reflect his erratic first year. Victories included the formation of a new, toothier ethics committee, and his hiring of police commissioner Charles Ramsey, who has presided over a reduction in crime. Nutter also deftly handled two crises powerful enough to derail a city administration: the needless deaths of children monitored by the Department of Human Services, and a filmed police brutality scandal featuring three prostrate African-American shooting suspects and the mob of police that kicked and beat them.
Despite these accomplishments, the Mayor lost his identity — and his own political calculations are to blame. Before taking office, Nutter talked of a budget stretched so thin by rising employee health-care and pension costs that it could snap under the weight of “a couple of snowstorms and a few other bad incidents.” Instead of taking on these issues, however, and getting down to real reform, Nutter got Council’s approval for a 2.6 percent spending increase. Worse, when it came time to deal with those pension and health-care costs in union contract talks, Nutter appeared more timid conformist than bold reformer, signing off on a one-year status-quo deal that deferred negotiations until this summer.
The real death blow to Nutter’s image, however, fell in August, when the country’s economy tanked. Projected revenue from the city’s business-privilege and real-estate-transfer taxes dropped well below projections, and the underperforming stock market drained Philadelphia’s pension fund, forcing the city to divert money from its operating budget to cover the shortfall. Forgetting all about his promises of transparency, Nutter consulted with advisers behind closed doors for 30 days. He held no public forums. And he convened a quorum of Council members to brief them while barring the press. By the time he emerged from his hidey-hole, the five-year budget gap had swelled to $1 billion, and his solution was a political stink bomb: In addition to cutting staff salaries and suspending planned tax reductions, he announced the closure of 68 swimming pools and 11 libraries.
