As Darrell L. Clarke steps aside, an era ends with an opportunity for a reboot | Editorial

While the mayoral election is garnering much more attention, next year will see a new face in another powerful political post: Philadelphia City Council president.

After three terms in the position, and almost 25 years on City Council, Darrell L. Clarke will not run for reelection. His retirement comes at a time when Council itself is in considerable flux. Even if all of the current incumbents, besides Clarke, were to seek and win reelection, the body would still have a dozen members who weren’t in office during Mayor Jim Kenney’s first term.

That’s a serious departure for a Council better known for members who have served for decades — and an opportunity for voters to prioritize the kind of transformational leadership that Philadelphia needs.

Clarke has undoubtedly changed city government during his tenure. In particular, he has massively expanded the power of City Council — and of the Council presidency. He’s also clamped down on public disagreement between colleagues. While in the past Council was home to lively debates and even the occasional round of fisticuffs, today’s Council proceedings are a much less raucous affair. Under Clarke, Council has tended to pass legislation with unanimous or nearly unanimous votes. Rather than debating their differences in public, Clarke sought to forge consensus in private.

» READ MORE: Darrell L. Clarke’s retirement ends four decades of Philadelphia City Council leadership. Here’s why it matters and what happens next.

Clarke is far from the first Council president to seek to strengthen the office, but he may end up being regarded as one of the most successful at it. While Philadelphia’s Home Rule Charter intended a “strong mayor” form of government, Clarke has guided a shift to a stronger Council president system. Clarke’s leadership has constrained the mayor’s ability to act on land use and transportation — allowing individual councilmembers enormous leeway to set rules in their districts — and he has successfully pushed for initiatives that cost as much as any mayor’s.

When former Mayor Michael Nutter sought to sell Philadelphia Gas Works, Clarke refused to allow hearings or a vote to take place, even though some of his colleagues disagreed. When Kenney sought to steer investments in playgrounds and rec centers on a need-based basis, Clarke intervened to ensure that district councilmembers would direct the funds.

Meanwhile, when Clarke does support a program, like his office’s Turn the Key initiative, councilmembers and the mayoral administration are expected to enthusiastically back the proposal with little or no public debate, and nearly always do. That’s despite the fact that Clarke-designed housing programs, for example, have in the past failed to achieve their stated goal of providing homes for Black longtime residents.

» READ MORE: The fight to succeed Darrell Clarke as Philly City Council president has already started: ‘It’s pandemonium’

Clarke has defended these changes to city government as empowering Council members, whom constituents are most likely to hold accountable when things go wrong. But that analysis comes with a strong caveat: There’s no way for voters to hold the Council president directly accountable.

Unlike cities such as Baltimore, where the Council president is elected at-large, Philadelphia’s Council president only needs eight votes from fellow Council members to secure leadership. And once elected, a Council president is nearly impossible to remove. Since the creation of the City Charter, Council presidents have retired, ascended to the mayor’s office, and in one case, been taken to federal prison. They’ve never been pushed from office by their own colleagues.

It is no surprise why. When Joan Krajewski made an ill-fated challenge against then-Council President Joseph Coleman in 1987, future Council president and mayor John Street called it a big mistake. “She’s putting herself in a difficult position where it may be difficult for people to cooperate with her in the future,” he said.

Given the Council president decides committee assignments, determines which bills get a hearing and which do not, and can appoint colleagues and associates to critical boards and commissions throughout the city, Street’s point was an understatement.

While going back to the days of fistfights on the floor may be ill-advised, it is essential that the next Council president is someone willing to allow at least some debate in public. While tightly controlling the narrative might have worked for Clarke, it has been a disaster for his former colleagues who are currently running for mayor — and for the voters trying to make up their minds.

It may be that Cherelle L. Parker, Helen Gym, Allan Domb, Maria Quiñones-Sánchez, and Derek Green each have a distinct vision for city government, but the fact that they were on the same side of so many 17-0 votes makes it hard to find daylight between them. No wonder polling suggests that Jeff Brown, a grocery-chain heir with no experience in elected office, is currently thought to be the front-runner.

Clarke’s supporters, including real estate developer Bart Blatstein, have presented him as a warm and compassionate gentleman with good relationships with (most) community leaders. Yet by prioritizing the concerns of these groups over every other factor, Clarke’s legacy has left Philadelphia functioning more like a suburban homeowner’s association than the dynamic and vibrant city that residents require.

If Philadelphia is to solve the systemic issues that have challenged city government for decades, the next Council president needs to commit to more transparency, more debate, and less decentralization of major decisions that affect all Philadelphians.