Rebecca Rhynhart once defended Nutter-era budget cuts. But she says she wasn’t responsible for them.

A major part of Rebecca Rhynhart’s pitch to be the next Philadelphia mayor is that she has the necessary government experience to lead and “knows the city’s budget inside and out.”

Now that experience is drawing scrutiny.

With fewer than three weeks until the May 16 primary election, Rhynhart’s opponents have attempted to tie her to painful budget cuts that took place when she was a top official in Mayor Michael Nutter’s administration, and they have questioned her role in cuts in city services in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis.

Rhynhart has said the cuts were decided by the mayor, not her, and that she wouldn’t handle fiscal challenges the same way.

The fresh attacks could be indicative of her standing in the race as it enters its final stretch. While there are no clear front-runners, several Democrats have a viable path to the nomination, and private polls indicate Rhynhart has gained support over the last several weeks.

Rhynhart and Helen Gym, a former City Council member who brought up the service cuts during a debate Tuesday, are competing for some of the same voters. Gym was one of Council’s most progressive members, and while Rhynhart appeals to some on the left, she has taken a more business-oriented approach throughout the campaign, including saying she is in favor of incremental business-tax reductions.

Gym said Tuesday that her administration would invest in city services “that were slashed in an administration that [Rhynhart] served under.” She specifically said Rhynhart advocated for firehouse “brownouts,” or temporary closures of fire stations that served as an overtime-reduction measure.

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In 2011, firefighters union officials blamed the brownouts for multiple deadly fires, saying station closures meant response times plummeted.

Rhynhart — then the city’s budget director — had defended the strategy, once saying “the brownouts are saving the city a significant amount of money.”

In an interview Wednesday, she said the decision to close fire stations temporarily was made before she took over as budget director in 2010. Before then, she was the city treasurer and was largely responsible for managing debt.

Bill Gault, the former head of the International Association of Fire Fighters Local 22, said he recalls Rhynhart’s taking part in meetings about the brownouts along with other members of Nutter’s executive team, but he said it didn’t appear she was steering the policy.

“Nutter was driving everything,” Gault said. “She was just taking orders, like everybody on that team.”

Nutter agreed.

The former mayor, one of three ex-mayors who have endorsed Rhynhart, said he takes “full responsibility” for the brownout strategy, which he said was supported by Fire Department leadership at the time. (Former Fire Commissioner Lloyd Ayers could not be reached for comment.)

“The budget director does not determine or set policy in any sane administration,” Nutter said. “And any mayor who would let the budget director set policy is stupid and should quit, because they’re not doing their job.”

On Wednesday, former Mayor Ed Rendell, who is also backing Rhynhart, said, “People who don’t work for the executive don’t know how it goes.”

“The executive decides what the issues are going to be,” he said, “and the executive will tell his or her staff, ‘Look, I’m thinking of increasing the pension fund, but give me the options,’ and people who work for them give them the options. They don’t make the decision.”

Gym and a handful of organizations supporting her on Wednesday afternoon reiterated her criticism, holding a rally in LOVE Park to call for a “moral budget.”

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While she did not mention Rhynhart by name, Gym strongly alluded to her, mentioning firehouse closures and saying “she called it doing her job, and we’re talking about what it means to actually serve the people.”

She said her opponents have presented only “tired ideas and technocratic solutions.”

“Those candidates have played it safe all their lives,” Gym said, “holding bureaucratic or elected offices while our schools crumbled, watching as our libraries closed down, or our fire stations closed down.”

Gym has said repeatedly that she is running for mayor in part because of cuts to the school system that occurred under Nutter’s administration.

And her mention of library closures refers to Nutter’s recession-era proposal to close 11 branches as a cost-cutting measure. Rhynhart was the treasurer at the time. The libraries remained open following a lawsuit that contended Nutter couldn’t close the libraries without Council approval, and he has since apologized for the proposal.

Rhynhart has said voters should not expect that she would handle a fiscal crisis the same way Nutter did, and said the plan to cut libraries was a mistake.

Still, Gym has been critical of her rivals, including Rhynhart, who are in favor of continued incremental reductions to the city’s wage and business taxes. Those candidates, Gym said, have simultaneously proposed improving services without saying how they’d make up the revenue.

Rhynhart said “limited” tax cuts would not lead to service reductions. An incremental cut to the business, income, and receipts tax, she estimated, would cost the city roughly $35 million to $40 million per year, a fraction of the current city budget, which is more than $6 billion this fiscal year.

She said that amount could be made up for in efficiencies, and cited a report her office prepared when she was controller that said the city could save more than $40 million a year by managing overtime more effectively.

“What I’m talking about are reasonable, practical plans to be able to make cuts in our taxes and encourage business growth,” Rhynhart said. “Tax reductions won’t lead to service cuts. We have to increase the quality of services.”

Inquirer reporter Sean Collins Walsh contributed reporting.