Philly City Council is considering fewer bills than it has in years. Does that matter?

Amid deep political polarization, lawmakers in Harrisburg and Washington have in recent years been historically unproductive — but it appears that trend is not just limited to divided governments.

Philadelphia City Council, where Democrats have long held a supermajority, has been considering fewer bills than any other time in a decade — and last year devoted its time instead to churning out more public commendations and honorifics than in any recent year.

According to an Inquirer analysis of records from the city’s legislative database, the city’s lawmakers introduced 271 bills last year. That’s lower than the decadelong average of 317 and far fewer than the 407 bills it considered in 2019.

The legislative output took a nosedive in 2020, dropping nearly 40% from the previous year. While that dip is almost certainly attributable to the pandemic — and the fact that lawmakers were governing remotely — the number of bills that Council is considering has failed to rebound to pre-pandemic levels.

Taken together, the figures show the city’s lawmaking body is passing fewer pieces of significant legislation, and some critics say Council spends too much time drafting resolutions that have little practical impact. But Council leaders and other experts say a decline in the sheer volume of legislation doesn’t necessarily mean lawmakers are less productive.

City Council President Kenyatta Johnson, who took over as the chamber’s top leader in January 2024, said in an interview that Council is focused on considering quality legislation — not quantity.

“It would be futile to just be introducing bills just for the sake of introducing bills, and say, ‘Hey, look, I’m doing something,’” Johnson said, “but at the end of the day, it doesn’t have any real social or economic impact.”

John Kromer, a City Hall veteran and a consultant for the University of Pennsylvania’s Fels School of Government, said the amount of legislation is just one measure of lawmakers’ efficiency. Critics of City Council — once tarred by former Mayor Bill Green as the “worst legislative body in the free world” — could even see a low number of bills as a good thing.

“For some people, there’s a philosophy of ‘the less, the better,’” Kromer said. “I think the way to look at it is to look at what Council could do, and didn’t do.”

Lawmakers did pass some notable legislation last year, including Mayor Cherelle L. Parker’s first budget proposal. And they spent much of the fall debating and approving a deeply controversial package related to the 76ers’ proposal to built an arena in Center City (which is no longer happening after the basketball team struck a deal to remain in South Philadelphia).

But even many of the 271 bills were procedural in nature. Of the 185 signed into law, close to 100 were tweaks to zoning or street parking rules, approvals for sidewalk cafes, or bills approving city land transfers or leases.

Jon Stein, a public-interest lawyer and longtime antipoverty advocate, said Council and the mayor failed to address some pressing policy issues last year, including a local housing and homelessness crisis, tax reform, or planning for the impacts of the new administration under President Donald Trump.

Council is likely to debate all those issues in the coming months — Parker has said housing will be a key initiative in her second year in office.

“It could have been the priority this past year,” Stein said. “It would have been great to see the city making headway on those issues instead of putting energy into this arena fiasco.”

City Council members work full-time, but legislating is only part of the job. Most of the 17 members — especially the 10 who represent geographic districts — spend a significant chunk of time on constituent services, like responding to residents’ requests for filling potholes or helping with their property-tax bills.

As the number of bills they introduced fell in recent years, Council members found another way to pass the time: passing many, many resolutions.

These generally nonbinding documents are often meant to express the will or opinion of Council as a whole, and include everything from political statements to street renaming to congratulatory citations. Last year, the body passed official “happy birthday” messages from members to gospel singer Jocelyn Wims, poet Sonia Sanchez, and former President Jimmy Carter, who died last month.

The introduction of these missives increased 88% between 2020 and 2024.

Kromer said resolutions are generally short documents and much easier to draft and pass than the average bill, allowing elected officials to create the appearance of action.

“They just require a vote, the appropriate photo op, and the issuance of a copy of the resolution,” Kromer said. “That’s a big improvement over working on a bill that takes forever and may never get approved.”

Resolutions have outnumbered bills for years, but in 2019, the body reached near parity, introducing 407 bills and 434 resolutions. For comparison, last year, City Council introduced more than twice as many resolutions as actual bills — 621 in all. That was the most resolutions, by far, of any year during the last decade.

Brett Mandel, a former deputy controller and author of two books on urban governance in Philadelphia, attributed the explosion of feel-good communiques to recent turnover. Last year saw a new mayor, a new Council president, and four first-year legislators.

“They’re still feeling their way out,” Mandel said. “The instinct of first-term Council members is to do something innocuous. You say, ‘At least I can put a smile on people’s faces.‘”

Council unanimously approves almost all symbolic resolutions through voice votes. But those can still be time-consuming, and that time adds up.

It is not uncommon for Council members to spend an hour or more delivering speeches to pay tribute to an elected official or community member who has died and is being honored by a resolution. Often there is a series of speakers who advocate for street renamings before Council passes the needed legislation.

And some resolutions, especially those about world affairs outside Philadelphia City Council’s control, have been controversial.

For example, in the aftermath of Hamas’ attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Johnson authored a resolution condemning Hamas, which drew scores of protesters to a heated meeting that ended with several demonstrators being removed from the chamber. Council then debated — largely behind closed doors — for months over whether lawmakers should introduce a resolution calling for a cease-fire in Gaza. They ultimately did not.

In 2022, Council members defeated a resolution calling for a partial no-fly zone over Ukraine after Russia invaded. Then-Council President Darrell L. Clarke openly expressed frustration that debate over the resolution took up so much of Council’s time.

Council also found time to consider dozens of resolutions last fall amid the Sixers arena debate, which itself involved 48 hours of committee hearings, far more than any other legislative matter last year.

Johnson said that he is comfortable with the amount of legislation — both bills and resolutions — that Council introduced last year under his leadership and that the body has a full slate to consider this spring.

“Members of City Council go hard when it comes to advocating for issues that’s near and dear to them,” he said. “It’s just based upon the issues and concerns that members feel as though they want to address.”

To Stein, the lawyer, it didn’t feel as if that’s what happened last fall, when arena legislation took precedence over seemingly everything else.

“We elect these people to set the agenda. Their job is to bring critical thinking to city policy,” he said. “Instead, a small group of businesspeople set the entire agenda for the entire city.”