March 28-April 3, 2002

city beat

Being John Street

: Eddie Palumbo

A long strange trip inside Hizzoner's head.

On Thu., March 21, City Paper’s news staff sat down with Mayor John Street at City Hall to talk about his performance in the first half of his first term and his plans for the future. Our wide-ranging, 100-minute interview (which kept the mayor’s cabinet waiting 40 minutes) offers a unique look at what makes Street tick.

The interview was conducted by City Paper interim editor Howard Altman (HA), managing editor Frank Lewis (FL), senior writer Daryl Gale (DG), staff writers Jenn Carbin (JC) and Daniel Brook (DB) and political columnist Mary F. Patel (MFP).

HA: Midway through your term, how do you rate your job as mayor?

John Street: On a scale of 1 to 10, 11.5. Just kidding. In retrospect, if somebody had said to me, "Well, you said you were going to actively engage in improving the quality of education in the schools, reform the school board, you negotiated a landmark contract, every student now gets 90 hours of additional classroom instruction per year over what was happening before you became mayor. You have an agreement with the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania where the commonwealth is in here in a partnership status with a commitment from the governor and majority leaders of the House and Senate to give 75 million additional new dollars to public education' -- not perfect, but more money than any governor has ever committed in recent memory, and there's a plan to keep the schools going and to improve the quality of education in the schools that's a partnership with the commonwealth. We've always known that at some point in time we were going to be running the schools with the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, so I think that's great progress for us, notwithstanding weaknesses in the details. That is huge progress for the City of Philadelphia.

We have a neighborhood-transformation program that was written up in The Washington Post yesterday. This is a program at the core of which we have gotten huge, huge, huge public support. We got the secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development saying it's the best and most creative and most comprehensive thing he has ever seen. I said we would borrow a quarter of a billion dollars and put it in neighborhoods. It looks like it's going to be about $295 million, so we'll probably do a little bit more than we said that we would do. In our next budget year, we will spend on children and youth programs -- after-school programs and youth-development programs -- $50 million more than was being spent when I became mayor. I said we were going to focus on neighborhoods, I said we would focus on schools. I said we would focus on children. I said we would do stadiums, we did stadiums. As a matter of fact, my first year, it was September and people were saying, "You're never going to do stadiums. You can't get stadiums done.' Those stadiums ... That Eagles thing is coming up out of the ground. I think we've delivered. In the last six months we've cleaned over 18 ...

(Street stops abruptly and addresses photographer Eddy Palumbo.)

JS: I need you to take some pictures and stop. I don't mean any disrespect, but that flash is going off. I'm trying to concentrate. And I know 200 or 300 pictures probably isn't enough ...

EP: I can shoot without a flash ...

JS: It's just distracting. I just don't understand why a couple dozen shots isn't enough.

In the last six months we have taken over 11 tons of trash off of over 18,000 vacant lots in the City of Philadelphia. We have cleaned and sealed just hundreds and hundreds of properties. We have removed over 100,000 abandoned cars from the streets of the City of Philadelphia. I stood up and I said, "We plow side streets.' We now have over 400 pieces of equipment that we can deploy into the side streets of this city --

HA: If we had snow ...

JS: If we had snow, right. As a matter of fact, the Fire Department was praying, "No snow, please,' and the Streets Department was saying, "Let's have one big storm, how could that hurt?' On balance, we feel very good about where we're going. We had huge, huge, huge challenges. I mean, these are issues that have been around for a long time, that I made an absolute commitment to get involved in, and that doesn't get into a lot of the smaller details of all the economic development we've done. We have huge things going on down at the waterfront. And there's just a lot of stuff going on. There's a huge, huge spread in The New York Times last week, did you see that? A huge spread in The New York Times. We have recovered from 9/11 in the hospitality part of this thing, getting travelers, and all visitors and tourists, faster than any other region of the country. Philadelphia's bounced back faster, and it's been widely recognized. And while New York has a $3 billion or $4 billion budget deficit and New Jersey is sporting a billion-dollar budget deficit and Pennsylvania's whining about somewhere between $600 million and a billion-dollar budget deficit, we still have a substantial budget surplus.

HA: How much is that surplus?

JS: Oh, about $220 million, and we still have, even with all the controversy, we still have a $170 million tax-reduction plan. We're talking about no reductions in services, nary a reduction in service. So from our point of view, we're on the way.

HA: Let's talk about taxes for a minute. Your own transition team recommended that taxes were going to be really detrimental to the city. Why not just get rid of the wage tax?

JS: Well, that would be a wonderful idea if you tell me where we're going to get a billion dollars from. Our wage tax brings a billion dollars in. I'd love to get rid of it, you know what I'm talking about? Let's say get rid of the wage tax. It's a billion dollars. It's $5 billion over five years. People are distorting the [transition team] report. What the report says is if you could find a way to reduce the wage tax sufficient so that it would have an impact on the economy, you should do that. That's what the report said. I read the report. We have a $170 million tax-reduction program. When everybody else is raising taxes and cutting services, our costs are up, our security costs are up, we're in the same recession that the rest of the country is in, but yet still we're going to continue to cut taxes. This is the issue, right? And this has been distorted, and I'd like to clean it up right now. Once and for all, I'd like to clean it up. This city can't afford anything more than $170 million in [annual] tax reductions at this time. It would be a terrible idea to now go and say we're going to do more. We're unable to do more. We have $45 million more to give to the School District of Philadelphia annually. We've a $45 million one-time payment to the school district. We loan PGW [Philadelphia Gas Works] $45 million. Our pension fund has underperformed as a result of the Wall Street collapse to the tune of about $190 million, which is going to have an impact on our pension payments. We have police and fire contracts that we're negotiating now ... We have huge additional expenses. We're going to have to save, over a five-year period, a couple hundred million dollars by reducing the size of government. We are in a position where we can't have anything more than a $170 million tax-reduction program.

Now, those people who say we can afford more than that, this is what I say to them: We have certain fixed expenses. Debt service is a fixed expense. Our payments to Community College is a fixed expense. We aren't getting ready to cut police. We aren't getting ready to cut fire, libraries. ... Probably two-thirds of our budget is money that comes from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania or other governments, and if we don't provide the service, we don't get the money, so cutting the service doesn't matter, right? Because if you don't provide the service, you don't get the money. So cutting the service doesn't matter. We have 120-some-odd additional DHS [Department of Human Services] workers over and above what we had when I became the mayor. We think children are important and, if we can, get more money out the commonwealth to hire workers so we can do a better job. And even under the best of circumstances, tragedies occur. We're not cutting those people. We have about 100 more police officers, maybe 90, something like that, a few more firefighters, we have some more recreation workers. Those additional workers are critical. Everybody else is, for the most part, down -- has fewer workers today than when I became mayor. So if we have $175 million [wage-] tax-reduction program, that's what's what I call the "buck-a-month' tax-reduction program, because that's what it's worth. The median income of a family in this city is a little less than $30,000. The average income of a worker in this city is about $16,000. The cuts that everybody is talking about are worth 50 cents a month to your average worker and a buck a month to your average family. Every economist we've talked to, including Anthony Santamaro and [Robert] Inman over at Penn, they're all saying if we give every one of the 750,000 people that pay the wage tax a buck a month in tax relief, you know what they'd do? Nothing. They don't go out and buy cars and refrigerators, they don't go buy clothes, they can't even go to a fast-food place.

My position is simple, if we can afford to reduce taxes over this five-year period by this $70 million [in annual gross-receipts-tax savings], which would have been what we'd reduce the wage tax by, let's focus it on the gross-receipts tax because we can reduce the gross-receipts tax by as much as 20 percent. I think that's the number. I think $70 million has the impact of reducing the gross-receipts tax by 20 percent, as opposed to giving 750,000 people a buck a month in tax relief. Now, the economists have told us if you reduce the gross-receipts tax by 20 percent, or by $70 million, that will have an impact on what businesses do.

HA: Conversely, does the wage tax, in your mind, keep businesses from coming here, keep businesses from growing here?

JS: Oh, it's a bad tax. If I had the capacity to reduce it by 20 or 25 percent, then I think, "Sure.' But we don't. I have a relative who used to say, "You can't take the pants off a bare behind.' We don't have that kind of money, and the only way we're ever likely to have that kind of money is if there were some kind of statewide tax reform that gave local municipalities the opportunity to reduce some local taxes in return for a stronger support from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, or just, for example, if the Supreme Court decided to enforce its 15- or 16-year-old order that the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania should fund the courts.

HA: Is that ever going to happen?

JS: I don't know. I've been working with several mayors and it didn't happen during any of their terms; I don't have any reason to believe it's going to happen on my time. I wouldn't start spending the money. So, the problem with what's going on now, just take Councilman [Michael] Nutter's bill for example. We don't have that kind of money. We don't have it. And what you have to ask people is, if you think you can cut that much money out of the budget, where are we going to cut it? Our revenue growth is anemic. Everybody understands that, and we're still saying we're going to reduce taxes by $170 million.

DG: Why is it that Nutter's bill got so much play and continues to and there's such a groundswell, and yet--

JS: There is no groundswell. I gotta tell you, there's no groundswell. You got one or two people in the chamber, one or two people, maybe on a editorial board in the paper here or there who are splashing it all over the paper, but ... even the Chamber of Commerce survey itself was flawed, that thing that you read about, they did a survey? They sent out 7,000 questionnaires. You know what they got responded to? One hundred and seventy-two. And my understanding is that, like, 52 percent said, "Well, probably wage-tax reductions are better.' And the other 48 percent said, "Well, gross receipts.' A hundred and seventy-two out of 7,000? I'm telling you -- this is an issue that is driven by people, who for their own private business -- there's never been an objective survey taken.

HA: Why is there so much support in Council for it?

JS: I don't know that there is so much support in Council for it.

HA: Do you anticipate having to veto the bill?

JS: I don't ever anticipate the veto. I'm always optimistic. I don't think the vetoes ever should be necessary.

FL: I just want to make sure that I'm understanding one of the points you're making. It seems to me that you're suggesting that part of the problem with the wage tax is one of perception.

JS: No. It is as bad as they say it is. It's bad. I'm not trying to say it isn't bad. We'd rather do without it. If we could find a way to rationally and reasonably reduce it, I would do it.

FL: Would you disagree, then, with, as some have argued, as the Rendell administration said when these very small cuts were first implemented, that they have symbolic value?

JS: Yes. They do have symbolic value. And we've been doing them now since 1995. I'm saying at some point in time the symbolism should give way, to something more than just symbolism.

DB: What is your plan for keeping upper- and middle-class people in the city?

JS: What we'll do is what we are doing. We're improving the quality of life for people in neighborhoods in a way that is unprecedented in the history of this city. Streets are cleaner; streets are safer. We're cleaning out blight. We have virtually eliminated, for all practical purposes, the abandoned car [through the] program in the city, cleaned 18,000 lots. We have people spending $425,000 for properties at 19th and Fairmount. We have the hottest real estate market in this city in 80 years. Ask the developers. We have a 10-year real estate tax-abatement program, we do TIFs [tax incremental financing, another form of tax abatement]. We have a convergence of amenities in this city that's probably as good as anywhere in the country. We have new stadiums going up, we have a regional performing arts center. We have a raft of new restaurants and new arts and cultural amenities. We have a waterfront that's gonna be the standard for waterfronts... This Mel Simon [Penn's Landing development] is four times the size of [Baltimore's] Harbor Place. People love what's going on in this city.

HA: You think a lot of people love that? Some think it's a glorified mall.

JS: No, people love what's going on in this city.

HA: I'm talking about the waterfront, specifically.

JS: Oh yeah, I think that the Please Touch Museum, I think that the tram from Camden over to Philadelphia and all that stuff down there, I think it's good stuff for the city.

DB: Can't the people who live in Cherry Hill or Bryn Mawr take advantage of all those things without living in the city?

JS: Yeah, but I got a -- In 30 days I hope to have a story to tell you that belies that, because we have a company that we think we're gonna get to move, we're within a gnat's whisker of [them] moving right here in the city, bringing 1,000 jobs, because they say they don't want to be in South Jersey and they don't want to be way out in the northern suburb, because they want a thousand of them! They want to spill out into the city. They like a city! They like the arts and the culture and they like what's going on here.

HA: What location?

JS: I can't tell you that. I said in about 30 days we hope to be able to announce it, I can't get ahead of the Commerce Department.

HA: When we talked to you before you became mayor, you said, among other things, "Council President [Anna] Verna is a good friend and a supporter of mine. I don't know how that will change, but I think we'll have a good working relationship.' Didn't quite work out that way... I know that we've talked about the influence of [sate Senator] Vince Fumo in all that. I'm wondering how the senator's role with the Council president affected your relationship with Council.

JS: I'm not talking about Senator Fumo or Council President Verna. Council President Verna has a very difficult job; she will do her job in the way she thinks is in her best interests, and I will do what I think I have to do to advance the interests of this city. It's not in my best interests or her best interests to start analyzing and pulling apart Council and its leadership and its organization. This Council does things differently than I did when I was the Council president. I think -- I like the way I ran Council.

HA: Are they doing a good job in your mind?

JS: Well, I'm not going to -- I really don't think it's in my best interest to start speculating around about all of that. I mean, I have great respect. Council President Verna has been my friend for a long time, and one day I won't be the mayor and one day she won't be the Council president and we'll be friends. She's got to do her job and I've got to do my job, and, you know, we're going to make this work for the city.

HA: How about your relationship with Senator Fumo? Has that been a problem for the city? You guys obviously don't work and play well together.

JS: Well, Senator Fumo is -- has been around a long time, and I respect Senator Fumo, Senator [Shirley] Kitchen, Senator [Vincent] Hughes and all the members of the Philadelphia delegation because I have to. But I have to respect and do my business in a way, the business -- both the political and the policy business of the city in a way that I think is most likely to be successful, and sometimes that means I can work with Senator Fumo in a close way and sometimes I can't. I have to respect all of them and Senator Fumo. I don't have the same kind of working relationship with Senator Fumo that Mayor Rendell had, but I'm trying to do it in a way that I think represents the best interests of the city. Senator Fumo is in the minority in the Senate. He's not in the majority, and I have to work with everybody. I can't just work with one or two people.

FL: Does your administration operate differently in regards to Council than when you were Council president?

JS: That's an interesting question because only Ed Rendell and I know how we operate, and there are people all over the place who speculate about all of this. And they don't know what they're talking about. We have supplied this Council with more information, more opportunities to be involved in virtually everything that we are doing here than any mayor I have ever seen. We sat down for hours and hours and hours with every Council member, talking about this whole neighborhood-transformation program. I have no interest whatsoever in being a one-person crew going into neighborhoods. We need the full support of, particularly, district Council members and Council in general in all of this. But there are standards, and there are some things we can do and some things we can't do. There are some lines. You know, I'm not into --I do my best to avoid confrontation. Councilman Nutter just sponsored a bill that gives neighborhoods and families around schools all these rights if the SRC [School Reform Commission] decides to privatize the management of the school. It's blatantly illegal. It's illegal. Let me tell you, it isn't going to have any impact on anything. Councilman Nutter sponsors the bill. He's sponsored probably three illegal education bills. That bill would have been illegal if there hadn't been any state intervention in the management of the schools.

HA: Why?

JS: I guess to make a statement.

HA: No, why are they illegal?

JS: It's illegal because City Council has never been able to pass a bill telling the school board how to act. The only thing we've ever been able to do is authorize the school district to collect and spend certain local taxes. We've never been able to say, "You must do this' or "You must do that.' Never! Not since the day I came here. Well, I could have vetoed the bill. I didn't veto the bill. Let the bill go, let it sit, you know? But there's a point beyond which you can't go. And there are some things that some members -- and it's not all members -- there are some things that some members want to do that are just not legal, and some of them just aren't right. And if I have to fight, I will fight. I don't want to fight. I have no interest in fighting with people up there.

HA: Is the senator's influence on the board interfering or causing problems?

JS: Well, you know, I can only speculate about that, and I don't know that it serves anybody's best interests. I think Council members have responsibility to exercise individual and their collective discretion about what should happen in this city. To the extent that people allow all kinds of other politics to get involved, I think they've made a mistake. I didn't do that. When I was Council president, I tried to make sure that we had a little order up there, and that we know what we're doing, and that we get stuff done, you know, efficiently and in order. One of the things that I'll always be proudest of is when I resigned City Council to run for mayor. The legislative body had almost a 70 percent approval rating. People believed in City Council. They really did. They believed that Council was really working hard trying to get things done. And then I polled Mayor Rendell and I polled myself, and people were really very, very pleased with what was going on.

HA: And now?

JS: I don't know, I haven't done it since.

DG: Do you think Council would get the same kind of numbers today?

JS: I don't know. It's just hard to say. I think certain Council members up there would get very strong numbers. But I don't know.

MFP: What do you think about Rendell's gubernatorial chances?

JS: Well, actually, I think his chances have improved significantly, and I think some people have been shocked and other people have been pleasantly surprised -- it depends on what side of this political thing you're on -- at Ed Rendell's numbers. He's got great numbers, and Ed Rendell will do very, very well in this city, and he'll do extremely well in the region.

HA: How well is he going to do in the city?

JS: It's a little early to say, but I think Ed Rendell will probably get better than 70 percent of the vote.

HA: Is that good enough, do you think?

JS: That depends on what the turnout is, and then some of it has to do with what happens in the other counties, but he's going to do very well. Ed Rendell is enormously loved and appreciated. There will be some people who will try to distort his record. And it's interesting. There will be people who will say, "Well, Ed Rendell didn't remove 100,000 abandoned cars from the neighborhoods,' and they'll say, "Well, Ed Rendell didn't do some of the stuff you're doing.' And then I always have to give them a history lesson. When Ed Rendell became mayor and I became Council president, we had a $200 million operating deficit. We had a $1.5 billion projected five-year deficit. We couldn't borrow a dime. We had junk-bond status. It was five years before we were able to have our own capital program. We couldn't even borrow any money. It was a long time. We had the first balanced budgets in years and years and years and years and years. And, you know, Ed Rendell's commitment was to bring this city back from no place. His commitment was to make the city start working, to live within our budgets, to rein in some of the labor contracts. That's what he said he was going to do. He did what he said he was going to do. He created jobs. He created a whole new image about what's possible in this city. He did what he said he was going to do. That's what he did. And it's unfair to now retroactively raise the bar on Ed Rendell.

HA: Why wait until very recently to endorse Ed?

JS: Because nobody was paying attention until now. If I had endorsed Ed Rendell in-- before Thanksgiving, it would have been a wasted endorsement. It would have been lost. I endorsed him at the right time.

HA: How did you decide when to do this?

JS: I endorsed Ed Rendell just about the time I announced the run for mayor. Do you remember when I announced the run for mayor? February.

HA: So you picked that time as --

JS: I picked that time because I felt that that was the time when I get nine cameras, TV cameras out there and people will be paying attention to the governor's race.

HA: Will the Street street machine be there on Election Day?

JS: Oh, yeah. Oh, absolutely. We're going to do everything we can to support Ed. It's hard for me to imagine how people can't understand that Ed Rendell as governor would be good for the city. He'd have to be good for the city. He understands everything we're doing here. I mean, the man was the mayor of the city for all those years. You wouldn't have to tell him about the waterfront, you wouldn't have to tell him about the Navy Yard, you wouldn't have to tell him about the parks, you wouldn't have to explain any of that. Here's a person who sat here and knows it all. So when you got him on the phone, it wouldn't be a thing, "Huh? Now tell me, Pennypack what?'

DG: If that unthinkable happens in the May primary and Bob Casey Jr. is the Democratic nominee, how do you then approach Casey's people to lobby for the city?

JS: Probably what's likely to happen, and nobody knows the beginning to the end of these things, but if somehow Casey wins the primary, he probably wouldn't be too hard for me to get on the phone, probably. Given the fact that he has no chance of becoming the governor unless he gets huge numbers out of here. So I think the likelihood is that in this primary it will be a relatively contentious primary, it will be a costly primary. I think, at the end of the day, the Democrats will win.

MFP: Back to the administration. Do you know or have any idea of when you will be appointing a police commissioner?

JS: I haven't rushed judgment on police commissioner. I like [acting commissioner] Sylvester Johnson. As a matter of fact we had a meeting with him the other day with federal and state agencies from around the region on law enforcement and what's going on.

HA: I understand that the Baltimore City Paper is going to be coming out with a story that says Ed Norris [the police chief of Baltimore] has been offered that job.

JS: Our job?

HA: Yes.

JS: I don't even know Ed Norris. I've never had any contact with Ed Norris, and I'm not, I don't know anybody in this administration--

HA: Have you met Ed Norris?

JS: I don't know that I would know Ed Norris or anybody named Ed Norris, and I have not interviewed anybody for the police commissioner's job, and I would be shocked if I heard anybody named Ed Norris could credibly say he's had any discussion with anybody in this administration about the police commissioner's job.

HA: Have you had any discussions about the police commissioner's job with anybody but Sylvester?

JS: Now that's a bad question, I'll give you a chance to reframe that question. I'll give you two chances to say that question over.

HA: Is there anyone you're considering, and/or have interviewed for the position other than Sylvester?

JS: We have no other candidate.

HA: He's the only candidate?

JS: There are no other candidates. ...

HA: There are no other, you haven't talked to anyone else?

JS: I haven't talked -- you're asking a bad question and I should probably help you.

HA: Why is it a bad question?

JS: Because you asked me, "Have I talked to anyone else about police commissioner." You didn't say about being a candidate.

HA: About being a candidate.

JS: There you go, Howard! Because I talked to Joyce [Wilkerson, chief of staff] about the police commissioner, but I haven't talked to her about being a candidate.

HA: Why not name Sylvester now? Right here, break the story.

JS: Right here, right now, break the story. You know why? Because being a police commissioner is a very, very, very big responsibility. And if I thought for one minute that this department or the city or the citizens of Philadelphia were being any way negatively affected by the fact that I haven't made a decision about any of this, I would make a decision happily.

HA: Isn't Sylvester negatively affected?

JS: I told Sylvester, "Be the police commissioner. Be the commissioner every day you're the police commissioner.'

HA: What's the harm then in naming him? I mean, is there a chance that anyone else may get this job?

JS: Howard, I've said enough. Sylvester Johnson is the acting police commissioner, he's doing a good job. I haven't had any complaints about him. If I did, I would tell him, and I'll get to it when I think it's the appropriate time. There's nothing wrong with Sylvester Johnson having the opportunity to go show his wares.

[Mayoral spokesman Frank Keel pipes up from the background]: We have time for one wrap-up question.

JS: I'm just getting started. We got more time than this; I'm not gonna short-change Howard.

HA: Thank you.

JS: Me and Howard went fishing together.

HA: That's right.

JS: I show up for this fishing trip with a cooler full of fish. I showed up with carp, I said, "Howard -- just in case we don't catch any.' They were nice too. We took a picture.

HA: Do you anticipate any re-election primary fight?

JS: I always expect a primary fight.

HA: Who are the prime primary opponents? Do you think Jim Kenney is going to run?

JS: I have no clue, I have no clue. I mean, I have to prepare for a primary fight, it's just part of what you do. In this business you take nothing for granted. Always get prepared. I'll hope for the best, plan for the worst. And if I have a primary fight, I have a primary fight.

DG: Does anybody worry you?

JS: No one worries me; I don't worry about that stuff. Let me tell you something: I will go into the primary election, and I will go out into the street, and I will make my case. I will say, "Are you better off today than you were when John Street became mayor?' I will say that I keep my commitments. Are more children in day care? Are more children in after-school programs? Are your neighborhoods cleaner? Are they safer? Did we get snow off your street? We told you we were going to do stuff in your neighborhood, are we doing it? I mean I'll make my case. Because we're doing, I'm doing what I said I was gonna do. And I got a record of what I said I was gonna do. I'm gonna turn my attention to neighborhoods without turning my back on Center City. If I had known this job was this much fun, I might have made a run at it earlier.

HA: One thing I always wanted to ask you about was your attitude toward pay-to-play. I've never heard politicians be so matter-of-fact. Is it a good thing for the city that contributors get a better shot at contracts?

JS: I can do three things: I can lie. I can tell the truth. Or else I can try to fool you. I'm never trying to fool you. I was just amazed that a candidate for public office can stand up and say, "The people who oppose me are just as likely...'

DG: So what do you think about campaign-finance reform?

JS: There should be state campaign-finance reform. Everybody ought to be under the same rules. You shouldn't have local campaign-finance reform, and then local candidates can't do certain things, and then the state candidate can. I was actually at Mount Airy Day. I was at Mount Airy Day in 2001. These people came up to me and said, "Mayor Street, we want campaign-finance reform. We want you to be for' -- Councilman [Angel] Ortiz or someone had this bill up and they said, "We want you to be for this bill.' And I said, "Take that bill and make it a state law, and I'll be the first one to be for it.' But why should you put local elected officials? Why should you put the mayor in a box?

DB: Speaking of campaign support, in your last campaign you got tremendous support from organized labor, particularly the building trades union. Are you going to be able to use your excellent relationship with them to reduce costs at the Convention Center, or try to reduce the cost of doing construction in the city?

JS: Yes, we're working on all of that now. We've actually had great success over at the Convention Center with the project-labor agreement. They had one incident over there in over a year, and we're still trying to figure out this whole cost issue. It is a big issue. People want to say that it is the labor costs. They say it is because there are multiple unions. A study is being conducted right now, and we'll figure it out, and we're going to get to the bottom of it.

DB: What about the cost to do private-sector development in the city? Some developers have told us -- some on the record, some off the record -- that it deters them from doing work in the city.

JS: We think we've found a way we can reduce the cost of building a market-rate housing unit in the City of Philadelphia, and we're having those discussions now.

FL: You were once quoted as saying that you don't cross the street without talking to organized labor.

JS: I still don't.

FL: The choice of wording seems to imply more than just support for organized labor, which is common for Democrats, but that you're beholden to organized labor.

JS: I wouldn't be the mayor without organized labor. There are two groups of people, who probably more than any other groups of people made it possible for me to be mayor. That's the clergy community in the primary, and the labor community in the general election. I will always be grateful to those two communities forever. And I don't do anything without talking to these labor guys. They're important people in my own political network. I don't always do what they say -- I mean, a lot of times I don't do what they want.

HA: Can you give an example of a time when you said no?

JS: I said no to them a hundred times during this Convention Center stuff. I said no to them a hundred times. I said no to them when the Republican National Convention was here. I sat right in this room and said, "You have to do this.'

HA: Which is what?

JS: Which was make all kind of concessions down at the First Union Center. I said, "You have to do this, you can't do that.' Every one of the [television] networks was ready to walk out of here because we didn't have that labor thing nailed down.

FL: Your administration has been criticized for not turning over information as fast as certain members of Council would like and for missing deadlines. Often, self-imposed deadlines. Is there a timeliness problem in your administration?

JS: No. August of 2001, a Council member had been complaining about giving him information. And we found out that the information had been sent up in June. It was August, and the information hadn't percolated down to the Council members. It had gone in June. And the stadium negotiations. There is a rational responsibility that takes place in the local government where you have a strong mayor and a weak Council. This is a strong mayor form of government. The only person I know that's really figured that out is the former Council president who is now mayor. I worked with Ed Rendell. I said, "Ed, you're the mayor. I don't want to be the co-mayor. You're the mayor. Tell me what you think we need to do.' And I had hundreds of hours of discussions. And if Ed Rendell's plans made sense, I supported them. If they made sense. If I thought they didn't make sense in some respect, I'd say, "Ed, I don't think that works.' There were times when he said, "I want to do it anyway,' and I said, "Well, do it.' I spent my time trying to get programs passed. I'd tell him what I thought and then he was the mayor. Council is not the mayor. They're not going to be the mayor. They had a provision in the neighborhood-transformation ordinance that there would be a review team and that the councilman's representative could stop everything going on in the city that had one dime of NTI proceeds. Unilaterally stop everything.

FL: Wouldn't you have wanted that sort of influence?

JS: I never wanted that sort of influence. The Council should never have that sort of influence. Council should approve the budget. They don't do things. They don't build things. They don't run things. Once you cross that line, you can't go running up there. Somebody's gotta be responsible for getting things done. That is illegal, and it is also ill-advised. You can't have somebody being appointed who can stop everything in the city. Somebody who's appointed with no standard to bear -- that's ridiculous. That was so ridiculous that Council members said we're never going to do that. There are Council members who are never going to be for anything I'm for.

HA: Why is that?

JS: It's politics, that's all. They're not in my camp.

HA: Whose camp are they in?

JS: I don't know. It's just politics; they're never going to agree. You've got people sitting up there saying the reason I support the regulation to borrow money from the schools that the governor supports is because I have a primary coming up. Everybody's got a primary coming up. There are some people who see politics in everything. It was the right thing to invest in neighborhoods. That has nothing to do with politics.

JC: What about the reverse side of that coin? People who support you no matter what? Isn't that politics?

JS: No, it's not because of politics. There are people who support me because I've given them rational arguments and reasons to do so. There are people who were a natural part of our political base. They're people I've worked with for years. Just look at the quality of the opposition. Here's a Council member who in September of '01 said we can't afford to borrow money for this neighborhood-transformation program. And when I announced that we're going to borrow $45 million, he said how in the world are we gonna afford that? The same person is a prime sponsor of a bill that will cut the wage tax by $290 million. How can you reconcile those positions? Because this is a person who wants to be against everything that I am for.

HA: And who is that?

JS: Councilman Nutter. Yeah, Councilman Nutter says, "How can we afford the $45 million," but now we can afford cuts. If you go back and you look, but nobody does that. People don't do their homework anymore, you know? And it's so easy, because all you all have to do is lift up those laptops, go online, you could pull up the names of these people and pull up everything they said, because it's there. And if you did, what you would see is that these people are flip-flopping all over the place. I could show you some stuff. I could show you where the PICA [Pennsylvania Intergovernmental Cooperation Authority] board a few years ago said, "I don't know how we're going to afford the current tax-reduction program. We got problems here, problems there. How can we afford this program?' I got quotes I can show you. And now, a year later, they're saying we can afford to cut way, way, way deep. It's totally inconsistent. And I don't mean you all personally, but people don't do their homework anymore. You know what they do in the media? This person writes something, and this person copies off of them, and this person copies off of them. We know. We read the stuff. You all just copy off of everything everyone says. I see it. I read it all. I got people who can show you, because people have gotten lazy about doing their homework. Now, does that cause me any frustration? Please, I got too much stuff to do. I'm having a great day every day. But people don't do their homework anymore. People don't have that thirst to figure this stuff out. Isn't it important that Charlie Pizzi [President and CEO Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce] has now admitted publicly that, when I and the finance department, when I ran by him our whole tax-reduction strategy, he said, "Sounds like a great idea'? And then when we got a couple articles from a couple papers, he flipped around. He was doing somersaults. Isn't that important? And he's supposed to be a representative of the business community. He's doing somersaults on us.

HA: Do you feel you've been treated unfairly by the local media?

JS: Everybody treats me fairly.

HA: No problems, no complaints? Do you feel you've been accessible to the local media?

JS: I think I've been enormously accessible. I think this administration has been accessible. I'm never going to be Ed Rendell. One time people characterized Ed Rendell as a rolling press conference. I'm not a rolling press conference. I'm not going to be a rolling press conference, all right? I would talk to you more, but I can't get through that phone system you got down there. I'm never calling you. I never can get through. I'm not calling [Altman], he's got the worst system in the world. The worst system. Part of the frustration that a couple of people have had -- there are a couple of things. One, I don't think it's my God-given duty and responsibility to make everybody see things my way. I think I have a responsibility to tell them my point of view, and I'll go about my business. I also think that the media has an obligation that's imposed on it by its own standards to try to get to the bottom of some of this stuff. I'm never going to hire 50 spin doctors; I'm just never going to do that. I care about the media, I care about what you think. But I'm not going to go out and spend a whole lot of money and be obsessed with trying to spin you, because I'm going to be obsessed with trying to do a good job. And I think that there is a certain resistance and a certain attitude that they don't really care what you think; well, they do care what you think. I'm gonna tell you this and I'm gonna tell you this faithfully. I only spend this much time with you because I think you care what I think. And I think you will take it all into account and you will write what you think. There are some people that I don't think I have any chance of winning over. Do you think I waste my time with people that I don't think are going to see some of my point of view? We reserve a right to put a face on issues. And if you want to have an in-depth conversation about PGW, I can talk to you a lot about PGW, and I said I think I need you to talk to Joyce Wilkerson, she knows a lot more about it. I have people who were very upset with me because I wouldn't talk about the firefighter negotiations, because that's the managing director's job. I said "Talk to the managing director.' "Well, we want to talk to you.' "Well, talk to the managing director, because I'm not talking to you about it. I don't want to get into it, because I don't want to get into negotiations.' The managing director is there because he is part of the team, but they don't want to talk to the managing director. There are people who want to talk to me about things, and it's not that I don't want this administration to talk about them. There are people in the administration who know a lot more about them. For example, I insisted that [former managing director] Joe Martz -- I pushed him out front. I said Joe, you're going to be a real working managing director. You're going to talk to the press. Nobody even remembers who Rendell's managing directors were.

FL: Joe Certaine.

JS: You think so? You think that's the managing director? For how long? I just -- Joe [Martz] talked a whole lot more, Joe was involved a whole lot more. I hire people to talk a whole lot more about these things because they know a whole lot more. You can't imagine the amount of people who say if I can't talk to you I don't want to talk to anyone. That's not fair.

DG: Do you think we in the media have been a hindrance in you getting your message out?

JS: You guys have been great. I think you guys have been great.

DG: The media in general?

JS: No, not the media in general, you guys. You guys have tried to be fair. That's Frank [Keel]'s job. I've got other people who are responsible for worrying about that. I don't worry about that, I really don't. I'd rather be out taking care of the business of the city. I care a lot about the First Amendment and about this process, because I think you deserve a certain amount of information....They're telling me I gotta let you go.

HA: One more question. Are you still thinking about running for the U.S. Senate?

JS: Who, me? Am I gonna run for the U.S. Senate? I had a dinner with Governor Schweiker. Naomi and I went up for dinner, and I gotta tell you, that governor's mansion is a nice place. There's a beautiful view of the river-- what is that, the Susquehanna?

HA: Yes, the Susquehanna.

JS: That mansion is very nice.

HA: So you wouldn't rule out a run for the governor's mansion?

JS: I wouldn't rule that out, no.