As we all know, the real nitty gritty of politics takes place is smoky back rooms. It appears the property tax hike controversy will be settled the same way.

At the beginning of caucus before the Oct. 17 Council session, Council President Anna Verna told her colleagues that she was arranging a meeting between her office, the mayor's office, the Board of Revision of Taxes and Council staff. Verna urged her colleagues to hold off on introducing or debating any more property tax legislation until after the meeting.

So Happy Together

After an angry exchange of words at the Oct. 10 Council session, Councilmembers Jim Kenney and Jannie Blackwell have apparently made their peace. The two had sparred over whether Kenney was trying to slip in a call for panhandling hearings under the radar. Blackwell favors a treatment approach while Kenney wants to treat panhandling as a criminal offense.

Faced with the accusation of being underhanded, Kenney decided to wait until the Oct. 17 session to call for a vote on his resolution. "I have a resolution that was introduced a week and a day ago," Kenney said at the Council session. Kenney's resolution unanimously passed.

When Blackwell followed Kenney by introducing her own resolution for panhandling hearings, Kenney, extending the olive branch, co-sponsored her measure. It has yet to be seen whether civility between Kenney and Blackwell will remain once the hearings get under way.

Too Many Laws

Councilman Michael Nutter’s bill to require students living off-campus in his district to register their addresses and license-plate numbers with their university became law last week. The mayor returned the bill to Council unsigned. Unlike in the federal system -- in D.C., when the president refuses to sign a bill it’s called a “pocket veto” -- in Philadelphia, bills the mayor neither signs nor vetoes become law.

At the Oct. 17 Council session, the clerk read a letter from the mayor outlining his opposition to the bill, which passed with all but one vote out of Council. The crux of the mayor's objection was that the bill flies in the face of "efforts made by the city, in partnership with... local universities, to retain those students who call Philadelphia home during their college years." The mayor wrote that he believes that "enforcement of existing measures can help to address many of the problems created by disruptive students."

When you break down the legalese, essentially the mayor is arguing that it is against the law to pee on your neighbor's lawn and blast music at 3 a.m., so why do we need this new legislation?

Bank Job

City Council committee hearings rarely have the fireworks of, say, the Enron hearings on Capitol Hill. But if Councilman Wilson Goode Jr. has his way, he’ll be taking some local corporate executives to task at hearings on the current state of community reinvestment by local banks. The hearings are scheduled for Nov. 12.

According to data compiled by the Councilman's staff, 90 percent of small business lending in the city is done in communities that are less than 20 percent black. According to Goode staffer Solomon Jones, "There might still be some Œred-lining' going on," referring to the now-illegal practice of banks not loaning money in minority neighborhoods. "There's no way that the city can maximize job creation if the city's low- and moderate-income neighborhoods are being redlined in terms of business loans," Jones says.

Jones notes that the committee "also has subpoena power," so that if certain local bankers would prefer not to discuss their lending practices in public, they can be legally compelled to do so.

Burn Those Feet

The Tax Reform Coalition, an association of business and community groups that helped push the wage-tax-cutting Bill 92 over the top last spring, has found a new mission: making sure the Tax Reform Commission doesn’t become a do-nothing blue ribbon panel.

Of course, the Tax Reform Commission doesn't exist yet. But it should soon. The commission will be created if a ballot measure sponsored by Councilman Nutter passes this Election Day. And since asking the voters whether they want to create a commission to lower their taxes is like asking them whether they support mom and apple pie, the vote shouldn't even be close.

It's what happens next that has the Tax Reform Coalition worried. Coalition organizers feel that unless the public holds commission members' feet to the fire, nothing's going to get done.

The coalition is considering getting commission members to publicly agree to a "compact," pledging themselves to "produce a final report with concrete, significant and implementable reforms."