Tasco looks back as she prepares to leave City Council

Marian B. Tasco started working as a Philadelphia Police Department clerk in 1959, cross-checking pawnshop inventory with records of stolen goods.

As the new kid on the block, the 22-year-old single mother from North Carolina got stuck with the harder-to-identify merchandise.

"People were stealing a lot of suits back then, men's suits," she said, laughing at the recollection. "Let me tell you, it's hard to identify a stolen suit, but I caught some."

At the time, Tasco never imagined she would go on to work in City Hall for more than 30 years, save a controversial one-day retirement.

At 77, the seventh-term councilwoman from Northwest Philadelphia said last week she was retiring and endorsed a former aide to succeed her next year. In an interview, she reflected on a career that spanned four mayors and the rise of local black political power.

"I don't think I could have done anything better in my life that I would have enjoyed more," Tasco said in her office. "Maybe tap dance, but my grandmother didn't allow that," she added in her subtle Southern drawl.

Tasco, who lives in East Mount Airy, was the second woman and first African American elected to the City Commissioners, who run elections. She will leave City Council as one of its longest-tenured members.

"It feels like the end of an era. It's definitely going to be different around here," said Derek Green, her special counsel since 2003. "She brings a certain spirit and energy from working with the Bill Grays and the Charlie Bowsers, but it shows she's not afraid to pass the baton and say, 'My time's up, I've run my race.' "

Tasco was raised in segregated North Carolina by a nurturing grandmother who was strict when it came to school.

She graduated 12th in a class of 165 and received her church's first-ever college scholarship - $50, to attend Bennett College, a small historically black school for women in Greensboro.

A few years in, unable to pay tuition, she dropped out and moved to Philadelphia to live with her mother. She married, had a son, and got the clerk's job.

Night classes at Temple University followed. She worked for the Philadelphia Urban Affairs Coalition from 1970 to 1976; it was there she fell in with the city's black political movement, working with some of its giants - activist and former mayoral candidate Charles Bowser and U.S. Rep. William H. Gray 3d.

Around that time, a neighbor knocked on her door and asked Tasco's then-husband to run for Democratic committee person in the 50th Ward. Tasco pushed him aside and she'd do it instead.

Now she's the ward leader.

"Back then, we really thought, 'We're going to make change.' There was the thought that we could win," she remembered. "It was new, it was exciting, because we were breaking down barriers."

Bill Green, a former at-large councilman, recalled Tasco as a feisty and sharp political operator in the 1970s and '80s.

"She was integrally involved in electing other people in the early part of her life, and she often told me stories, when we were on Council, how if she was mad at anybody back then, she'd rally people to go march on them."

Green, now chairman of the School Reform Commission, said Tasco was a consensus-builder on Council. "When she believes in something, she is not shy or afraid to make you know it. She is extremely dedicated and very capable of pushing her agenda but is also very well respected by her colleagues," Green said. "She was essentially one vote away from being Council president in this term."

She won her district Council seat in 1987, four years after her election to the City Commissioners. In that earlier role, she led voter seminars in city schools but ultimately came away from the office believing it was outmoded and should be dissolved. "You've got these systems that have been here for years," she said, "but you don't really need them. Have a director and a commission that sets policy."

Her second husband, Thomas Earl Williams, was not involved in politics but had a knack for calming Tasco down when the halls got the best of her - "He would see something in my eyes and say something just right."

Williams died suddenly in 1995 at 55. He was a heavy smoker who had been ill but hid it from Tasco. The morning she found him, her first call was to a longtime friend and political mentor, State Rep. Dwight Evans (D., Phila.)

"He came over, and I just fell apart," she said.

Evans calls Tasco one of his strongest allies in the Northwest. Together, he said, they helped bring the area a half-dozen new or renovated recreation centers.

"All politics is local," Evans said. "Those things set the quality of life in North Philadelphia. It probably slowed down the migration of people moving out."

He also listed Democratic women Tasco had helped elect - former U.S. Rep. Allyson Y. Schwartz, state Attorney General Kathleen Kane, Councilwoman Blondell Reynolds Brown, and Councilwoman Maria Quiñones-Sánchez, a former Tasco aide.

Another Democrat, State Rep. Cherelle Parker, who also represents Northwest Philadelphia, was 16 when she started interning for Tasco. She worked for her for 13 years. Now Parker is vying for the Council seat her old boss is vacating.

"I don't know if there is another woman in the city of Philadelphia who has been responsible for helping to elect more women," Parker said of Tasco.

On Council, Tasco's crowning achievement was a 2001 bill that curbed predatory lending. Described as the first of its kind in the nation, it was a model for laws elsewhere.

She has faced criticism, too, especially for her participation in the city's Deferred Retirement Option Plan. DROP allowed her to retire for one day, Dec. 30, 2011, collect a $478,057 pension check, and then return the following Monday to be sworn in for her seventh term.

She said that she stood by her action and that voters stood by her; some City Hall colleagues who cashed in on DROP were swiftly ousted at the polls.

As chair of the Philadelphia Gas Commission, she took heat for Council's decision last year not to hold a hearing on the now-undone deal to sell the Philadelphia Gas Works. She said Mayor Nutter hadn't included Council enough in early discussions.

Her advice to Parker or any other successor? "Take it easy." Or, in her Southern fashion: "Don't get your powder wet."

In retirement, Tasco figures to spend time with her great-grandson and relax in Florida - but keep to campaigning for political allies.

"I've been coming to this building over 30 years, I've met a lot of wonderful people and I'll miss the camaraderie, the working together on issues," Tasco said, "Also, the whispers - the 'whatcha hearing? whatcha hearing?' "

215-854-5506

@juliaterruso