photo | Kaytee Riek, ACT UP Philadelphia

Members of ACT UP Philadelphia attended the mayor's budget address.

As Mayor Michael Nutter gave his address for his budget proposal yesterday, March 3, members of ACT UP Philadelphia lived up to their organization's name by interrupting him to bring attention to their cause. ACT UP, the AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power, is an international organization, bringing together radical AIDS activists in a number of locations, including Philadelphia. Currently, ACT UP Philly is asking the mayor to set aside $2 million to $4 million to provide housing for people living with AIDS. Click here for an MP3 of the interruption.

photo courtesy of cbspittsburgh.com

Sen. Jane Orie

Trial against state Sen. Jane Orie-R and her sister, Janine Orie, began on Feb. 10 and was halted this afternoon when prosecutor Lawrence Claus uncovered allegedly forged documents being held as evidence in Orie’s defense.

Orie was accused last month of misusing her legislative office and staff to perform political chores. These “political chores” were in an effort to help Orie’s sister, Supreme Court Justice Joan Orie Melvin with her 2009 election campaign. Sister Janine Orie is being charged for aiding in the senator’s corruption scams.

Judge Jeffery Manning, after examining the documents in question, said “Ray Charles could see that signature was doctored.”

The signature was supposedly that of Orie’s former top aide and major witness for the prosecution, Jamie Pavlot, who testified that she did not recognize the documents.

The documents show that the signature from page two, which seems to be legitimate, has been cut and pasted onto the first and third pages. The signature on the first page contains lingering marks from the signature above it. The one on the third page looks as if the lingering marks were whited out before the signature was shoddily pasted in place.

The Judge has not formally called for mistrial, but it is an option at this point.

...in the way of wonderful pictures of our city, of course. Keep 'em coming. Post your photos to CP's Photostream this weekend during the forecasted showers to alleviate your boredom, and ours.

Post them to our Flickr page by logging in and uploading your photos, like this one by Photostream member corvussolus, of what appears to be a band playing in someone's living room. We dig it.

By uploading photos to our Flick page you are allowing CP to post these pictures to our Photostream and, possibly, our print edition.

Where the nation gets the State of the Union , Philadelphia gets the Mayor's Budget Address. He's delivering it right now — follow my updates on Twitter for the duration of the speech.

First update here: The mayor's speech was interrupted almost at the outset by activists with ACT UP, who are determined to get the city to end the waiting list for housing for people with AIDS.

The author apologizes for previous typing errors in this post. Thanks to a certain cat, he was without the benefit of his usual laptop computer and forced to rely on inferior technology.

On Thursday, the House Gaming Oversight Committee heard testimony regarding the possible re-bidding of the casino license originally granted to Foxwoods Casino.

As reported by PlanPhilly (but not, as far as I can tell, any of the mainstream media), the testimony included comments by Philadelphia attorney James DiVergilis, who had this to say about Philly's attractiveness to the gambling industry:

"Two ethniticities [sic] that [go to] these parlor are the Slavic community and the Asians ... Outside Brooklyn, Northeast Philadelphia is the highest Slavic community in the country."

The casual statement that the industry is targeting particular ethnic groups horrified at least some of the Committe.

Representative John Lawrence (R-Delaware) responded that "With all due respect,  your comments with regard to particular ethnic groups being more or less likely to participate in gambling was somewhat surprising and shocking to me. And disturbing, frankly. I wonder where you come across this information."

"It's all in the literature," DiVergilis replied, adding "I agree with you ... I'm just ... repeating."

"Well are you saying you're a proponent for bringing hte gaming facility to this city?" asked Lawrence.

"As a proponent for jobs, absolutely," said DiVergilis.

Another interesting tidbit: Besides pronouncing the word "ethnicities" incorrectly several times, DiVergilis appeared to announce that he'll be running for judge — he ran unsuccessfully for judge in the Court of Common Pleas in 2003.

Rep. Lawrence remarked to PlanPhilly later: "This gentleman is running for judge, he's not just somebody off the street. That's a position of public trust."

There I was, waiting for a bus at 30th Street Station when whom should I see but — was it really? — former mayor John Street in disguise?

"Haha, somebody just told me that the other day," chuckled Curtis, a SEPTA security officer bearing what seemed to me a more-than-passing resemblance to our former mayor.

"Other people say I look like Samuel L. Jackson!" he added.

Curtis	Mayor John Street
Photo | Isaiah Thompson	whyy.org

You decide.

Philly Clout posted this morning about the possibility of a story in this week's Public Record "borrowing" from Clout's February 18 post. Interestingly enough, when comparing parts of the two articles there is definitely a similarity (similarity meaning word-for-word in this case).

Here's just a small sample of the "borrowing" by The Public Record:

Philly Clout "You would think that John Featherman, the only Republican who has declared a run for mayor this year, would be psyched that nobody else from his party wants to get into the race."

The Public Record "You would think John Featherman, the only Republican who has declared a run for Mayor this year, would be psyched that nobody else from his party wants to get into the race."

Check the full stories out, let us know what you think happened.

The Pennsylvania House Gaming Oversight Committee held a hearing at City Hall this morning to discuss a bill which would allow the auctioning of Category 2 slot-machine casino licenses.

If passed, House Bill 65, which was referred to the Gaming Oversight Committee on Jan. 24, would allow the bidders to choose locations across the state.

The bill would allow for two licenses, currently revoked, to be put up for auction, one of which is the the revoked license of the former Foxwoods Casino, though it is currently under appeal.

But, Dan Hajdo, board member and a spokesperson for Casino-free Philadelphia, said Philadelphia is still a potential spot for the licenses.

Hajdo said his organization chose not to testify at the hearing because the bill “doesn’t do anything to prevent a new casino in Philadelphia.”

“It doesn’t do anything to help the people of Philadelphia,” Hajdo said. “We think any real change is going to come from the community.”

“Casinos are destructive...for gambling addicts, their families and communities,” Hajdo added. “The state should not be supporting their spread, they should be protecting [the] citizens.”

photo | Tanya Hull

The union rally this morning outside City Hall was set for 11:30, but barely lasted the proposed three hours it was supposed to. It was not due to lack of support, however. Several stragglers from the rally told CP reported at least several hundred people arriving to fill the area outside the Municipal Services Building. "It's not just the unions out here doing it, it's people who care," said Leon Oboler.

Oboler, National Writer's Union member and rally participant, said he had hoped the rally would last longer but mentioned that he saw it as a great networking opportunity for all involved. "Unions can stand up to big corporations," said Oboler. "As a group we can make a difference."

Sam Warden (above, left) is a former union member also showing his support for the cause. He explained that this rally was to support union workers throughout the country. The sign he is holding in the above photo displays the beliefs of many union members present at today's rally: that the union works for the people, ensuring their labor (and human) rights on the job.

So, for those of you who were curious about how Governor Tom Corbett plans to proceed with regard to the Rendell Administration's moratorium on Marcellus Shale drilling in certain state parks and forests, you now have something close to concrete information. This is from an AP story published Tuesday:

Calling it redundant, the Corbett administration on Saturday killed the policy, which had been written in October under former Gov. Ed Rendell.

But that's misleading: Corbet hasn't repealed October's much-discussed moratorium on Marcellus Shale drilling in certain state parks and forests; he moved "to quietly rescind a recent state policy to minimize the impact of natural gas drilling on public state park and state forest land where the state doesn't own subsurface mineral rights drew considerable and perhaps unwanted attention." Which is a slightly different policy.

Does that clarify things for you? Even if it doesn't, the distinction between the two similar policies -- and between "repeal" and "quietly rescind" -- might not even matter.

In yesterday's Inquirer, a Corbet spokesman said the administration wants to get rid of the moratorium, too:

Spokesman Kevin Harley said the governor believes there should be drilling on publicly held lands, and called former Gov. Ed Rendell's moratorium a political move made on the heels of the legislature's failure to enact a tax on natural gas extracted from the Marcellus Shale formation.

So if you're planning on doing any camping in Pa. state parks, now may be the time to do it.

---------

For more background, check out Isaiah Thompson's cover story about Ed Rendell's "plot to pillage Pennsylvania's forests, consequences be damned," and, more recently, his post about why the moratorium is mostly meaningless anyway.

Evan M. Lopez

This is the second of two reports by CP contributor Ralph Cipriano, who's 2010 story "The Billion Dollar Boondoggle" exposed the program's costs to be substantially higher than previously thought. (Click here to read the first, "Council Study says DROP can be fixed — not so fast.")

By Ralph Cipriano

What’s the cost of DROP? It depends on who’s doing the math.

City Paper documented last year that the Deferred Retirement Option Plan (DROP) was costing taxpayers more than $1 billion in past and future cash bonuses paid to retiring municipal employees, according to the city’s own pension records detailed on Excel spreadsheets.

A Boston College study released last August by Mayor Nutter figured that since 1999, the DROP program had cost the city pension fund an extra $258 million. DROP is a double dip that has allowed some 10,000 city employees to simultaneously collect their salaries and pensions for up to four years, with the pension money coming in the form of lump-sum cash bonuses that average more than $100,000 per retiree. But the Boston College study looked at the pension side of the double-dip and ignored the salaries that employees collect while they’re in DROP.

On Tuesday, the City Council unveiled a new study by Bolton Partners Inc., a Baltimore actuarial firm, that said Boston College had gotten it wrong, and that DROP’s added cost to the pension fund was really $100 million.

City Council, which has six members signed up for more than $2 million in future DROP bonuses, hired Bolton Partners to punch holes in the Boston College study as part of a campaign to keep DROP.

But in the latest report’s executive summary, Thomas Lowman, Bolton’s chief actuary, made a declaration that called all of the city’s prior DROP studies into question — but which confirmed CP's findings, that the program is far more expensive than previously thought.

“It should also be understood that the BC (Boston College) DROP study and prior actuarial DROP studies focused solely on pension cost . . . and not any other payroll or personnel cost,” Lowman wrote. “In this sense, the BC cost is not intended to represent the full economic impact.”

Amen.

Meanwhile, City Council President Anna Verna used the occasion of the unveiling of the new DROP report to publicize some possible reforms that would allegedly make DROP cost-neutral for taxpayers, such as:

— Requiring employees who enter DROP to wait until they reach the minimum retirement age.

— Lowering the 4.5 percent interest rate paid to all DROP participants.

— Requiring employees enrolled in DROP to continue making contributions to the pension fund. Employees enrolled in DROP currently don’t have to make any contributions to the pension fund. Employees not enrolled in DROP contribute between 1.8 and 7.5 percent of their salaries to the pension fund.

— Giving city employees the option to receive only a portion of their DROP money as cash bonuses, and then “reduce their monthly pension checks by an amount that would pay for the lump sum.”

City Paper asked Joe Boyle, the Philadelphia area actuary whose pro-bono services led to our original expose, to review the Bolton study. Boyle says that although Bolton wasn’t asked to do a full-blown actuarial study to assess the cost to the taxpayers for DROP, nevertheless, he was impressed by both the Bolton study and by the proposals for reforming DROP.

“This is a pretty thorough analysis and their suggestions are to be lauded,” Boyle says. But, Boyle said, if all of the reforms are passed, the city will have scaled down what was originally a great deal into something that people can either take or leave.

“If they truly make this a cost-neutral program, then in effect, they’ve eliminated DROP as a benefit,” Boyle says. “There’s no advantage to taking DROP.”

Evan M. Lopez

This is the first of two reports by CP contributor Ralph Cipriano, who's 2010 story "The Billion Dollar Boondoggle" exposed the program's costs to be substantially higher than previously thought.

On Tuesday, City Council President Anna Verna unveiled a new study of the city’s now-infamous Deferred Retirement Option Plan (DROP) that claims it costs less that previously reported.

DROP is a pension perk that allows city employees to pick a future retirement date and then treat themselves to a double-dip during their last years on the job. For a maximum of 48 months, employees enrolled in DROP get to simultaneously collect their salaries and their pensions, with the pension money stored in a tax-deferred account and paid out the day the employee retires in a lump-sum cash bonus that averages more than $100,000.

The DROP program also allows elected officials (like City Council members) to “retire” for a day, collect fat bonuses, and then go back to work the very next day and resume collecting their salaries.

Last year, a City Paper exposé (Cover Story, “The Billion Dollar Boondoggle,” Ralph Cipriano, April 22) found that the program begun in 1999 is costing taxpayers more than $1 billion in past and future cash bonuses, according to city records reviewed by City Paper.

Mayor Nutter joined the fray last August when he unveiled a Boston College study that said that since 1999, DROP had cost the city $258 million in extra pension costs. The Boston College study, however, looked at only the pension side of the double dip, and ignored salary costs.

The City Council, which includes six members scheduled to receive more than $2 million in future DROP bonuses, then commissioned its own study, by Bolton Partners Inc., a Baltimore actuarial firm, to challenge the findings presented by the mayor.

On Tuesday, Council president Anna Verna unveiled the results. Bolton Partners found that Boston College professors had made “several substantial errors” that overstated the cost of DROP by “nearly $160 million.” Bolton put DROP’s added cost to the pension fund at “approximately $100 million.”

Verna, who will collect a DROP bonus herself next year of $584,777, took occasion at the unveiling of the Bolton study Tuesday to proclaim that DROP can be fixed — but first we need another study.

The city has already spent $80,000 on the Boston College study, and $30,000 on the Bolton Partners study. But Verna announced that she’s asked an actuary to prepare a “cost analysis” that would weigh several proposed reforms of DROP (see below), and figure out how to make the program “cost-neutral” for taxpayers.

And who, says Verna, should perform this cost analysis? Why, the very man who helped create DROP in the first place.

Since 1995, with the exception of two years, Kenneth A. Kent has served as actuarial consultant to the city pension board. From 2000 until 2010, the city has paid two firms that employed Kent more than $3 million for his expertise.

Based on Kent’s advice, the pension board designed a DROP program that was supposed to be cost-neutral. The city was supposed to earn an annual 9 percent return on investments, so it could afford to pay employees enrolled in DROP an interest rate of 4.5 percent.

Instead of earning that 9 percent interest rate on investments, though, the city in the past dozen years has earned only 4 percent. Based on that 9 percent projection, Kent estimated back in 2000 that the city pension fund would swell to $8.5 billion last year. He was off by $4.5 billion. Instead of being cost-neutral, the program has proved very, very expensive.

When Kent and the pension board designed the DROP program, they also did not foresee a stampede of some 10,000 applicants, which is why DROP has been so expensive.

An undaunted Verna proclaimed on Tuesday that Kent would finish his analysis by early April, and then the Council would hold public hearings on DROP.

With Kent’s track record, don’t be surprised if you find the Nutter administration commissioning … another study.

Kaytee Riek

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the badass AIDS activist group ACT UP, who will do literally anything — get arrested, storm the New York Stock Exchange, sing morbid carols outside of Mayor Michael Nutter's house — to get their way.

Curious about what their legendary protests look like in person?

They're outside of City Hall right now, in hopes of pushing for the Mayor to provide $2 to $4 million in funding for housing for people with HIV/AIDS ... and they're doing something dubious with alarm clocks, fog horns and noisemakers.

photo | Several seconds

We all know what it's like to look out our windows at the wonderful city of Philadelphia. But this is only one window, sent in by Flickr user Several seconds. What about the rest of you?

Whether it's your windows, your pets, your breakfast. We don't care, CP just wants to see some of your photos on our Photostream.

Upload them now to CP's Photostream Flickr page via Yahoo!

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No, this author is not running for an at-large City Council seat in this May's primary elections — perhaps you've confused me with Isaiah Thomas, a legislative assistant for State Rep. Tony Payton Jr., who is running for that elected position.

You can find out more about that Isaiah, or any of the other known candidates for Philadelphia City Council, at the Committee of Seventy's excellent primer, "Council Districts and Candidates at a Glance,"

If you have even a remote interest in the upcoming election — and it's going to be a free-for-all — visit that page and bookmark it.

So as to be fair to Mr. Thomas' opponents, here are the other presumed candidates listed by Seventy for the at-large Council seats:

POTENTIAL CANDIDATES  (Democrats)

Lawrence Clark (D)
Mike Driscoll (D)
Christopher Hayes (D)
Janis E. Manson (D)
Isaiah Thomas (D)

Potential Candidates (republicans)

Tim Gerard (R)
John Giordano (R)
Marie Delany (R)
Adam Lang (R)