by KYW’s Tony Romeo and Mike Dunn
Monday was likely to bring word from Pennsylvania state Senate leaders as to whether they're on board with revisions by the House to the bill which would salvage Philadelphia's budget (see more "Philadelphia Budget" stories).
House Bill 1828 is what the mayor desperately needs passed to avoid a shutdown of many city services. The bill that would allow Philadelphia to raise its sales tax and delay payments to its pension system was earlier amended by the Senate to include major statewide pension reforms opposed by organized labor. The House has now weakened those amendments to satisfy union concerns.
Now the bill is back in the Senate. Erik Arneson is spokesman for Dominic Pileggi (R-Chester County), the Senate majority leader:
“There are many senators who are concerned with some of the changes that were made in the House, removing provisions that many of our members believe were designed to insure the long-term stability of pensions for those who are already in pension systems that are distressed.”
Arneson says whether the Senate will support the bill without those provisions is something that wouldn’t be known until members met to discuss it on Monday afternoon.
Mayor Nutter says if this isn't settled by week's end, 3,000 city workers will receive layoff notices:
"Friday, unfortunately, if the bill is not fully passed by the Senate and signed by the governor, we will have send out layoff notices to upwards of 3,000 public employees and shut down many of our departments and agencies. So this is a serious situation, and it has to be dealt with in a serious fashion."
Nutter's budget chief, Stephen Agostini, says few of the positions are vacant -- meaning real people would lose their jobs:
"We have a plan that will eliminate 3,000 positions. We anticipate that most of those positions will be filled, so it’s a good guess that there will be layoffs on that order."
Those layoffs would actually be effective two weeks later, on October 2nd, and on that day the doors to the recreation centers and libraries would be locked.
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