The mayor’s budget paints rosy picture of the future | Editorial

Last week, in delivering his fourth budget address, Mayor Jim Kenney asked the crowd to time-travel with him to the year 2024, painting a picture of a thriving and inclusive city. with universal pre-K, a high-performing public school system, fully funded libraries, affordable housing, a record-low crime rate, no opioid crisis, and almost no homelessness.

As a budget address it was imaginative. As a campaign appeal for four more years, it was even better. Budgets in election years are all about telling a positive story unburdened with tax hikes, program cuts, or unnecessary drama. This year’s state budget, which generated little heat when it passed in June, was another example.

Kenney’s budget makes the case for continued investments in the programs he ran on in 2015: more funding for education, pre-K, and Rebuild. The spending plan for fiscal year 2020 is close to $5 billion. Here are takeaways from the plan:

1. We never have money. Now we have money and it’s going to education. Over the next five years, the city is committing to more than $1.2 billion for the School District – meaning that next year, the city will give the district more than $200 million — double the amount it got in 2017 and quadruple the amount it got in 2013. One of the factors in this change is the city taking back control of the schools from the state. Kenney is consistent in his declaring education to be a priority. It’s hard not to wonder, though, where the money has been every year when the district came begging for far less than it’s getting now?

2. The economy is helping. Philadelphia is getting more revenue thanks to higher wage tax and business tax revenues due to a strong economy. This allows the city to invest more in programs and put money aside for the city’s rainy-day fund. Another sign of fiscal health: The pension fund saw more contributions than payouts last year. It is still far from being fully funded, but at least it is not bleeding money.

3. Are we doing enough about overdoses and gun violence? The mayor’s five-year plan includes an additional $31.5 million in funding for the gun violence prevention program, Roadmap for Safer Communities, and $35.9 for the focused opioid crisis effort in Kensington, the Philadelphia Resilience Project. But because these problems are addressed with multiple funding streams, it’s hard to know if we’re spending enough until the city does a consolidated estimate of all the resources spent toward these crises that are killing our city.

Budgets are by definition aspirational. It’s great to hear a positive spin on so many aspects of the city. But the full truth is more complicated: We still have a huge problem with poverty, and our job growth is positive only when we’re comparing it with our own past performance, instead of other cities. The property tax system has serious problems and the wage tax, while a happy source of income for the city, is not such a happy tax for employers.

The goal is a budget balanced, not just financially, but by reality.