The fix was needed because Council earlier this week amended a separate but related piece of legislation — called the H.O.M.E. budget resolution — that sets the first-year spending levels for the housing programs funded or created by the initiative.
Council’s changes, which Parker largely opposed, were significant enough that the budget resolution no longer aligns with the bond authorization bill Council approved in June, meaning the administration cannot rely on the original legislation as its legal basis for taking out city debt.
The new bond bill introduced Thursday reflects Council’s changes, which include increasing the first-year H.O.M.E. budget from $194.6 million to $277.2 million and changing eligibility requirements for some programs to make sure the lowest-income Philadelphia households were prioritized.
“We want to make sure that this is a H.O.M.E. plan that supports everyone, but obviously members of Council had an issue and concern about making sure those most in need are supported throughout this process,” Johnson said.
The bill now heads to committee, and Johnson said negotiations could lead to further changes. Next week is Council’s final meeting of the year, and Johnson on Thursday ruled out adding an extra session, meaning the bill likely will not pass until January at the earliest.
“Working with Council President Johnson and the Members of City Council, we are laser-focused on building, repairing and restoring 30,000 units of housing and making H.O.M.E. a reality for the people of Philadelphia,” Parker said in a statement Thursday.
‘That’s my sister’: Johnson says relationship with Parker still strong
Parker-Johnson pact intact: The Council president on Thursday downplayed his spat with Parker that saw both issue pointed statements Tuesday night blaming the other for delays in issuing the bonds.
But Johnson said Thursday their relationship remains the same and has always involved disagreements — just not ones that have spilled out into public view.
City Council President Kenyatta Johnson and Mayor Cherelle L. Parker have maintained a close working relationship.
“That’s my sister,” Johnson said. “Most of the time, when we do have disagreements, y’all just don’t see it. We meet every week, so you don’t get a chance to see the back-and-forth. But at the end of the day, the mission is to move the city of Philadelphia forward together.”
Council makes it harder to open convenience stores and pharmacies in Kensington
The bill, authored by Councilmember Quetcy Lozada, forces any new “sundries, pharmaceuticals, and convenience sales” businesses in her 7th District — which covers much of Kensington and parts of North and Northeast Philadelphia — to get approval from the Philadelphia Zoning Board of Adjustment. That process is notoriously long and can be expensive for applicants.
Lozada has said that the bill is targeted at corner stores and smoke shops, not chain businesses like CVS and 7-Eleven.
The legislation is part of the body’s broader war on so-called nuisance businesses, which lawmakers say attract crime and disrupt neighborhoods. And it comes in addition to a controversial 11 p.m. business curfew in Lozada’s district that took effect earlier this year.
City Councilmember Quetcy Lozada represents Kensington.
It’s one of several legislative remedies lawmakers have undertaken to curb small businesses like smoke shops and convenience stores that have unregulated slot machine-like “skill games,” sell marijuana-like products, and peddle drug paraphernalia without a license to do so.
Seriously … no nuisances, please: Lozada was not the only lawmaker taking aim at “nuisance” businesses Thursday, when Council approved two bills by Majority Leader Katherine Gilmore Richardson on the same topic.
One measure makes it easier for the Philadelphia Department of Licenses and Inspections to issue stop-work and cease-operations orders to businesses violating city regulations. The other is aimed at closing loopholes that “let nuisance business owners avoid enforcement by changing their name or ownership, ensuring those with similar ownership or operations remain accountable for past violations,” Gilmore Richardson’s office said.
The measures, which were both approved 16-0, were aimed at stopping “the spread of dangerous and destructive businesses and the need for further action to address their impact on our communities,” Gilmore Richardson said.
“While I am encouraged by the steps we are taking today, I am also working on additional legislation to more aggressively crack down on these businesses and the bad actors behind them,” she said.
“Anybody that knew Paul will tell you he really was that guy, that guy who would give you the shirt off his back,” Harrity said. “He’s the only person I truly knew never lost faith in me, even when I was at my lowest 10 years deep in my addiction.”
Councilmember Curtis Jones Jr. thanked Harrity, who often gives impassioned speeches, for his heartfelt tribute to Staico.
“I want to shout out Jimmy Harrity for making crying in Council cool,” Jones said. “Nobody does it better, brother.”
Staff writer Jake Blumgart contributed to this article.
Philadelphia City Council on Tuesday amended the initial budget for Mayor Cherelle L. Parker’s signature housing initiative to direct more money to programs that will help the lowest-income Philadelphians, a move that sparked one of the most notable confrontations between Parker and city lawmakers since she took office almost two years ago.
The amendment, which followed a weekslong standoff between the executive and legislative branches, represents a rare act of defiance for a Council that has otherwise been largely compliant with Parker’s agenda, and it appeared at first to be a major win for Philly progressives.
But Parker is not giving up the fight, and she said Tuesday night that the amendment may have had unintended consequences that could hold up much of the housing initiative for months.
The changes to the legislation, she said, may trigger additional procedural steps that will prevent the city from issuing $400 million in bonds to fund the initiative until March or later. The mayor did not hold back from laying the blame for the delays at Council’s feet.
“The resolution that City Council passed out of the Committee of the Whole today contained language that our bond lawyers have repeatedly advised would prevent the administration from being able to issue the bonds,” Parker said in a statement. “That means homes are not being restored. It means homes are not being built or repaired.”
In an unusually blunt statement late Tuesday night, Council President Kenyatta Johnson pushed back against the administration’s analysis of the situation.
“Council’s responsibility is not to rubber-stamp legislation, but to ensure that any multi-billion-dollar public investment is legally sound and targeted to the Philadelphians who need it most,” Johnson said.
But he also vowed to have Council quickly introduce new legislation that could ameliorate the procedural problem Parker identified, tacitly conceding that additional legislation was needed hours after lawmakers approved the resolution with no mention of that possibility.
Johnson said Council would “resolve remaining legal and policy issues swiftly,” and that a new measure to legalize lawmakers’ most recent changes could be introduced this week.
Council wants “shovels in the ground” and “homes repaired,” he said, but ”refuses to rush into issuing $800 million in debt without iron-clad legal protections and clear guarantees.”
“Council members repeatedly raised concerns — directly and in good faith — about accountability, neighborhood equity, homeowner protections, and the long-term impact of the H.O.M.E legislation,” he said. “Council’s action today strengthened the H.O.M.E resolution, not sabotaged it.”
The late-night war of words between Parker and Johnson came hours after a celebratory Council committee meeting in which lawmakers took a victory lap for standing up to the administration.
After the vote, Councilmember JamieGauthier and Councilmember Rue Landau, respectively the chair and vice chair of the Committee on Housing, Neighborhood Development and the Homeless, said the amended resolution means “working and low-income families will finally be able to get the support they need sooner.”
“With roughly $30 million in federal homelessness funding at risk, it is more important than ever that this multiyear, $800 million investment begins by prioritizing the more than 200,000 Philadelphia households on the brink of losing their homes,” Gauthier and Landau said in a joint statement, referring to a federal policy change proposed by President Donald Trump’s administration that could cost the city millions in funding for anti-homelessness programs.
Council pushes for policy changes
Parker, who has long championed the city’s “middle neighborhoods,” structured her sweeping Housing Opportunities Made Easy, or H.O.M.E, initiative to ensure that the myriad programs funded or created by the program would be available to homeowners and renters at a variety of income levels.
But Johnson — in an unexpected break from his usual alignment with Parker — stood with Gauthier and other progressives who fought to ensure the neediest city residents were prioritized in the budget resolution, which sets the first-year spending allocations for H.O.M.E. The distribution of funding must be approved by Council before the administration can issue the first of two planned $400 million tranches of city bonds that will finance much of the initiative.
Council’s Committee of the Whole, which includes all members, approved the amendment and advanced the resolution in a pair of unanimous voice votes Tuesday afternoon following hours of testimony.
The measure would now head to the Council floor for a final passage vote in the next two weeks. Parker’s statement, however, could mean Council has additional work to do before getting the measure over the finish line. Johnson’s office said the vote is still scheduled for Dec. 11.
“The majority of the members of City Council want to focus on the issues of those who are poor here in the city of Philadelphia when it comes to housing and equality,” Johnson told reporters after the vote.
It’s unclear whether the vote represents a serious rupture in the tight relationship between Parker and Johnson, who have worked closely together since both took office in January 2024. Council approved the most important pieces of legislation Parker proposed as part of the H.O.M.E initiative earlier this year, and the changes adopted Tuesday do not alter the fundamentals of the program, which Parker hopes will achieve her goal of creating or preserving 30,000 units of housing in her first four-year term.
“We support the H.O.M.E. plan,” Johnson said. “And I think the mayor did a good job in investing close to $1 billion … in supporting the issue of housing inequality here in the city of Philadelphia. This amendment represents the will of the members. … We want to specifically focus on those who are the most least well-off, those who are poor.”
But after reading about Parker’s statement in the evening, Johnson’s attitude toward the administration sharpened. His lengthy statement included the most critical language the Council president has directed at the mayor since they were inaugurated.
Mayor Cherelle L. Parker unveils her long-awaited plan to build or preserve 30,000 units of housing during a special session of City Council Monday, Mar. 24, 2025. Council President Kenyatta Johnson is behind her.
Johnson rejected Parker’sclaim that the legislative delays could cause the popular Basic Systems Repair Program to temporarily run out of funding, saying that there is plenty of money in the current city budget to cover shortfalls.
“Threatening residents with a shutdown of the Basic Systems Repair Program and assigning blame does not move this process forward,” he said. “Collaboration and working together does.”
The amendment increases the first-year budget for spending the bond proceeds from $194.6 million to $277.2 million. The increased price tag, however, does not represent new money in the housing budget; it merely allows the administration to spend more of the $400 million in bond proceeds in the initiative’s first year.
The changes include increases in funding for housing preservation from $29.6 million to $46.2 million, and housing production from $24.3 million to $29.5 million. Additionally, the amendment boosted funding for homelessness prevention programs from $3.8 million to $8.8 million.
But perhaps more importantly, Council altered the income eligibility levels for several programs.
Parker, for instance, had proposed that the H.O.M.E. funding for the Basic Systems Repair Program, which subsidizes critical home improvements to prevent residents from being displaced by the costs of needed repairs, be open to any homeowner who makes Philadelphia’s area median income, or AMI, which is about $119,400 for a family of four.
Council’s amendment, however, requires 90% of the new funding to go to families making 60% of AMI or less, about $71,640 for a family of four.
The administration initially planned to issue the first $400 million in bonds this fall, and Parker sent Johnson’s office a first draft of the budget resolution in July. Council then delayed the committee vote on the resolution several times as Johnson negotiated with Parker on potential changes.
The amendment adopted Tuesday appears to largely mirror Gauthier’s priorities for the spending plan, rather than a negotiated compromise, the first sign that Johnson had moved forward despite not reaching a deal with Parker.
Parker’s plan to sell the initial round of bonds this fall appeared to be on schedule when Council in June approved the most important pieces of legislation associated with the H.O.M.E. initiative, including an $800 million bond authorization.
But lawmakers at that time inserted a provision into the bond legislation that required the administration to get Council approval of its H.O.M.E. budget each year before it can spend the bond proceeds. For the initiative’s first year, that provision means the city cannot take the bonds to market at all without Council signing off on the budget resolution, city Finance Director Rob Dubow has said.
The latest potential delay, which could set Parker’s schedule back months more, stems from the amendment approved in committee Tuesday.
Parker did not elaborate on the procedural issue that could cause the latest delay, but her comments indicated what it may be: Because the resolution, which dictates how the bond proceeds can be spent, now includes significant differences from the bond authorization bill Council approved months ago, the city may not be able to rely on the original bill as its legal basis for taking out debt and selling the bonds.
To make them align, Council may have to approve a new bond authorization bill, or abandon some of its changes to the spending resolution.
In his statement Tuesday night, Johnson indicated Council has chosen the former route.
“City Council is preparing to introduce an amendment to the H.O.M.E bond ordinance as early as this week’s Council session,” he said.
It’s unclear if the resolution could pass by the end of the year. But Johnson’s reference to the potential of the current city budget’s surplus covering shortfalls in housing programs indicates that might not be possible.
Council’s last meeting is scheduled for Dec. 11. Lawmakers can vote to suspend Council rules and fast-track legislation as needed.
This story was updated to include Council President Kenyatta Johnson’s response to Mayor Cherelle L. Parker’s statement.
Mayor Cherelle L. Parker has said her administration relied on expert advice from a top law firm when it decided to end a Philadelphia policy prioritizing businesses owned by women or people of color in city contracting following recent court rulings that limited affirmative action-style government programs in hiring and contracting.
“I call them my genius attorneys because they all clerked for Supreme Court justices, and they handle the hardest cases throughout the country,” City Solicitor Renee Garcia, the city’s top lawyer, recently said of the New York-based firm Hecker Fink.
“And we went back and forth,” Garcia said. “Can we do this? Can we do this? What about this? What about that?”
But when it came time to replace the city’s old program with a new policy, the Parker administration didn’t adopt all of the suggestions it received from Hecker Fink, internal administration documents obtained by The Inquirer show.
Hecker Fink attorneys suggested that Philadelphia replace its old contracting system with one that favors “socially and economically disadvantaged” businesses, the documents show. Parker instead created a new policy favoring “small and local” companies.
The differences between Parker’s program and alternatives the city could have adopted are highly technical but hugely important, attorneys and researchers who study government contracting told The Inquirer.
Critics say the new policy indicates Philadelphia took the easy way out in the face of conservative legal attacks, instead of fighting to preserve the spirit of the old program: promoting equity and diversity in city contracting.
Parker, however, is adamant that her “small and local” policy will achieve that goal, given that many small companies in the city are owned by Black and brown Philadelphians who have faced discrimination.
“Our small and local business program is our disadvantage program,” Garcia said in a written statement. “Considering counsel’s advice, the City determined that a small and local business program is the best way to incorporate social and economic disadvantage in a way that is objective, content-neutral, consistent, demonstrable, and could be stood up very quickly.”
The documents, which include confidential legal memos from Hecker and internal administration emails, show how top city officials attempted to navigate a new legal landscape after the U.S. Supreme Court in 2023 upended decades of jurisprudence on affirmative action and other race-conscious policies.
Mayor Cherelle L. Parker said her “small and local” contracting policy will boost Philadelphia companies.
In early 2025, the Law Department provided a spreadsheet of line-by-line edits to the city’s Five Year Plan, a long-term budgeting document, to remove language about racial and gender-equity goals submitted by city departments.
When the Office of Community Empowerment and Opportunity, for instance, wrote that its mission involved “advancing racial equity,” the Law Department simply wrote, “remove racial,” as it did for several other agencies.
The edits signify a stark contrast to the city’s approach under former Mayor Jim Kenney, who in 2020, operating under very different circumstances, instructed all departments to craft comprehensive racial-equity plans.
There is no indication in the internal documents, which are primarily from 2024 and 2025, that Parker, the city’s first Black female mayor, or administration officials were eager to make those changes. And no city officials appeared in the documents to view the “small and local” policy as less aggressive or safer than the other options at Parker’s disposal when she replaced the city’s race-conscious contracting system.
But for Wendell R. Stemley, president of the National Association of Minority Contractors, the mayor’s choice was revealing.
“The cities that want to cave in on this issue without doing the hard work are just doing small [and] local, race- and gender-neutral,” Stemley said.
‘Disadvantaged’ vs. ‘small and local’
The documents obtained by The Inquirer show that Hecker recommended the city abandon its decades-old contracting system — responsible for allotting more than $370 million each year in city contracts to historically disadvantaged firms — due to the threat of potential legal challenges, as Parker and Garcia have said.
But they also show that the firm proposed replacing that policy with a system “setting mandatory goals for hiring socially and economically disadvantaged businesses or persons,” a race- and gender-neutral standard based on the federal Small Business Administration’s 8(a) business development program.
Like the city’s contracting policies, the federal program previously had a stated policy of aiding business owners who were members of specific historically disadvantaged groups, such as women and Black people. But a 2023 federal court ruling in Washington, D.C., prohibited the SBA from presuming that members of those groups had faced barriers and required 8(a) applicants to demonstrate social and economic disadvantages.
The change allowed the program to pass legal muster by not favoring race or gender groups, while still allowing the agency to consider whether each applicant had faced discrimination on an individual basis.
Hecker, a litigation and public interest firm, suggested that Philadelphia adopt a similar approach.
“Adopting mandatory goals for hiring socially or economically disadvantaged individuals or businesses, defined along the same race-neutral lines as in the SBA’s 8(a) program, would likely be defensible if challenged,” Hecker lawyers wrote in a May 5 memo to the city.
An internal administration memo analyzing the city’s options on May 16 said that Hecker “recommended taking a look at the federal SBA 8(a) Business Development Program as a model.”
“This is a program to recognize small and disadvantaged businesses,” the city’s memo said, adding that the SBA defines socially disadvantaged individuals as “those who have been subjected to racial or ethnic prejudice or cultural bias within American society because of their identities as members of groups and without regard to their individual qualities.”
The executive order governing the city’s old minority contracting program, which aimed to award 35% of contracts to historically disadvantaged firms, expired at the end of 2024, and the city quietly ended it at some point earlier this year.
The key difference between Parker’s program and the 8(a) model is that the city’s new policy gives no explicit consideration for social disadvantage, prejudice, or cultural bias.
Garcia, the city solicitor, firmly pushed back against the notion that the city had ignored Hecker’s advice on reshaping its contracting landscape and contended that the “small and local” policy will result in equitable outcomes because many of Philadelphia’s small businesses are owned by people of color and have faced discrimination and other barriers to growth.
“The City’s small and local business program … is more aggressive [than an SBA 8(a)-style policy] in that it is broadly applicable to small and local businesses, without creating unnecessary hurdles and confusion over the word ‘disadvantage’ or requiring onerous paperwork” for business owners to demonstrate their disadvantages, she said.
City Solicitor Renee Garcia is the Parker administration’s top lawyer.
Although Parker’s new program is not exclusively available to disadvantaged firms, Garcia said it “has built-in elements of social and economic disadvantaged programs like the SBA 8(a) and [U.S. Department of Transportation] programs, such as utilizing SBA business size standard caps, examining years in business, examining employee count, and personal net worth considerations.”
But Andre M. Perry, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said that while the city may be intending to help disadvantaged businesses with its “small and local” approach, specifying that goal in writing is important. The mayor’s executive order does not use the word disadvantage.
“They are different,” said Perry, the author of Black Power Scorecard, an examination of access to property, education, and business success. “The downside of any approach that does not use some criteria for being disadvantaged is that you can ignore them.
“There is a history that suggests that you absolutely need some process to identify groups of people who have been ignored by the city. It’s certainly not a given that you will touch those communities that have been denied opportunities in the past under ‘small and local,’” Perry said.
‘Too early to tell’
Parker’s move to abandon the city’s goal of prioritizing businesses owned by women and Black and brown people has become the latest flashpoint in the debate over the centrist Democrat mayor’s approach to the new political reality under President Donald Trump’s second administration, as critics like progressive City Councilmember Kendra Brooks have accused her of “caving” to Trump.
Parker, however, said the city had little choice but to end the old system following Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, a 2023 Supreme Court ruling that prohibited affirmative action in college admissions and has had widespread consequences for race-conscious government programs.
“There were people who told us that leadership meant justifying the [old] law,” Parker said at a recent news conference announcing the contracting policy changes. “They said, ‘Forget about the Supreme Court ruling. Philadelphia should just continue functioning and operating its program even if your Law Department and these genius lawyers at [Hecker] who have clerked for Supreme Court justices [recommended abandoning it.]’
“I want to take some advice from somebody to interpret the Supreme Court ruling right for some folks who have worked there.”
The U.S. Supreme Court upended the legal landscape for race-conscious government programs with a 2023 case ending affirmative action in college admissions.
But Parker also said she felt that the city’s old system was “broken” long before the Harvard decision because it failed to achieve its goal of boosting the number of “Black and brown and women and disabled business owners” in Philadelphia.
Parker, who as a lawmaker worked on policies aimed at boosting economic opportunities for minority- and women-owned firms, said she was optimistic that pivoting to a focus on “small and local” firms would produce better results.
Parker has not publicly discussed suggested alternatives to her new policy, including the 8(a)-style approach.
Several government contracting attorneys and researchers interviewed by The Inquirer said that both “small and local” and “socially disadvantaged” programs have downsides and that the success of either would primarily depend on how well it is executed. Details are scant on what the new policy will actually look like, making it difficult to evaluate the potential impact.
But experts said choosing a policy that seeks to favor disadvantaged businesses rather than any small Philadelphia firm would indicate the mayor was fighting to maintain the spirit of the old program, which sought to boost companies owned by women and people of color who have long been underrepresented among business owners and government contractors.
“Adopting an 8(a)-style program with language prioritizing contracts for socially disadvantaged businesses would signal a desire to maintain the pre-2024 understanding that cities can procure goods deliberately, intentionally, in different ways, with preferences from disadvantaged businesses,” said Brett Theodos, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute who has written a paper about how governments can use contracting to promote equity, despite recent court decisions. “Having an (8)a-style [program] would signal that the mayor wanted to try something more.”
Parker has defended her policy shift by invoking the bona fides of the Hecker attorneys who worked with the city. She and other city officials have noted that one clerked for liberal U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor and now works for the American Civil Liberty Union — “not somebody who would have had a conservative mindset,” as Garrett Harley put it. (Those comments later prompted the ACLU-PA to distance itself from what it described as the city’s “DEI rollback.”)
To be sure, adopting a program in which contractors need to demonstrate social disadvantages, such as past instances of discrimination, has its own drawbacks.
Following the 2023 federal court decision, the SBA now requires 8(a) applicants to submit “social disadvantage narratives,” or essays, increasing administrative burdens and potentially favoring savvier contractors. The U.S. Department of Transportation has a similar essay-based approach.
The U.S. Small Business Administration’s 8(a) business development program is aimed at helping “socially and economically disadvantaged” firms.
“We have heard from our businesses it is already too hard to do business in Philadelphia; these kinds of additional requirements will exacerbate an already difficult and burdensome process,” Garcia said.
And despite being a race- and gender-neutral federal policy, the current 8(a) standard, which was adopted in President Joe Biden’s administration, may still be challenged in court.
The lawyers at Hecker Fink, however, believed that a Philadelphia version of the policy could withstand scrutiny.
“The next wave of conservative litigation in this space may target such programs, arguing that social or economic disadvantage is a proxy for race,” Hecker attorneys wrote in the May 2025 memo. “However, based on our assessment of the current legal landscape, the City would have a strong chance of defeating such challenges.”
Like many diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives cast as discriminatory by the president, the 8(a) program has come under siege since Trump took office in January. On the agency’s website, hyperlinks to guidelines on how companies can demonstrate social disadvantage have gone dead, and the Trump administration has launched an audit of the program in the wake of an alleged bribery scheme.
None of those issues, however, address the question of whether a similar policy crafted for the city would be legally defensible. Despite Trump’s attacks, the current version of the 8(a) program’s focus on “socially disadvantaged” firms has not been overturned in court.
Regina Hairston, president and CEO of the African-American Chamber of Commerce of PA, NJ, and DE, said the organization will wait and see how Parker’s new policy shakes out.
“It’s too early to tell if the mayor’s policy is the right policy, but from what I’ve seen across the country, other cities are moving to [prioritize] small, medium enterprises,” Hairston said. “We don’t know if that’s the answer, but we will be monitoring it.”
Staff writer Anna Orso contributed to this article.
Mayor Cherelle L. Parker has appointed nonprofit founder and Democratic ward leader Anton K. Moore as the city’s director of public engagement and neighborhood affairs.
Moore, who founded the South Philadelphia-based group Unity in the Community, effectively replaces Hassan Freeman, who was fired from the Parker administration about two months ago following a verbal altercation outside City Hall with City Councilmember Isaiah Thomas that the lawmaker described as “negative and disturbing.”
Freeman, who worked under Chief Deputy Mayor Sinceré Harris, was director of neighborhood and community engagement. Parker said she renamed the role to reflect added responsibilities while appointing Moore, whose work will now fall under Chief of Staff Tiffany W. Thurman’s portfolio.
The Office of Public Engagement and Neighborhood Affairs will manage the city’s 10 Neighborhood Community Action Centers, which are meant to be “neighborhood City Halls” where residents can access services closer to home. The centers are a major part of Parker’s efforts to follow through on her campaign promise to create a city government “residents can see, touch, and feel,” and there is one in each Council district.
Moore, the Democratic leader of the 48th Ward in South Philadelphia, has strong political connections, and his nonprofit work has been praised by numerous elected officials.
“This is the piece of the puzzle that we needed,” Parker said Monday at a City Hall news conference, before addressing Moore: “You now have an opportunity to do what you did in South Philly but you’ve got to do it all over the city.”
Moore’s salary is $195,000, according to the mayor’s office.
“We’re going to work, we’re going to have fun, and we’re going to deliver the services that the city of Philadelphia deserves,” Moore said.
Police Commissioner Kevin J. Bethel said he has worked with Moore, 39, on youth employment and engagement efforts and leaned on him as an “adviser of my process to help me understand what is going on in the streets.”
“There is nobody better connected to our community. There is nobody better trained to take on this task,” said Bethel, who later added he would “go through a wall for this kid.”
Founded in 2008, Unity in the Community provides a variety of services, including connecting residents with housing aid and students with scholarships, and its parent organization is Soul Food CDC. The group has partnered with 76ers player Joel Embiid to give residents Giant gift certificates and former teammateBen Simmons, now with the Los Angeles Clippers, to provide Christmas gifts to children.
The group also received $417,900 from a city anti-violence grant program founded during the surge in shootings and homicides that followed the onset of the coronavirus pandemic.
In a report about poor oversight of that program, The Inquirer in 2023 reported that Unity in the Community received about 60% more in funds than the $258,000 the group had applied for. The paper also found that a staffer for the Urban Affairs Coalition, which administered the grant program, raised questions about management of Unity in the Community’s project, expanding a youth carpentry training program in South Philadelphia.
The staffer wrote in a 2022 email he was “very concerned” about accounting issues, including $75,000 in funding for which the organization had not submitted invoices. Moore said in 2023 he would work to fix the paperwork errors and defended the group’s work.
His application for the anti-violence grant was supported by Thomas and State Sen. Anthony Williams (D., Philadelphia), an indication of Moore’s support among Philadelphia’s political class.
Council recently named a block in South Philly in his honor. He was appointed by former Gov. Tom Wolf to the Pennsylvania Commission on African American Affairs. At Monday’s news conference, Ryan Boyer, a Parker ally who leads the politically powerful Philadelphia Building & Construction Trades Council, heaped praise on Moore and joked that he “will be a great director of whatever the mayor called it.”
Parker’s chief of staff, Tiffany W. Thurman, praised Moore as “someone whose heart beats with the rhythm of our streets in every neighborhood.”
“Your mandate from the mayor is very clear: You are now the direct link between our administration and our neighborhoods,” Thurman said at the news conference.
Freeman’s dismissal followed a September incident in which he allegedly confronted Thomas at the lawmaker’s parking spot. In an email Thomas sent administration officials that was obtained by The Inquirer, Thomas wrote Freeman “spoke to me in a disrespectful manner, a hostile tone, and addressing me outside my name and title.”
Freeman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Parker declined to comment on the ordeal, except to say “some personnel adjustments were made.”
“I’m not looking back on anything associated with yesterday,” Parker said in an interview. “I’m thinking about how we are going to keep moving Philadelphia forward.”
Staff writer Ryan W. Briggs contributed to this article.
City Council this week again delayed a key piece of legislation that needs to pass before the Parker administration can sell hundreds of millions of dollars in city bonds, the primary source of funds for the myriad housing programs being created or expanded through the mayor’s Housing Opportunities Made Easy initiative, or H.O.M.E.
The delay comes as lawmakers negotiate to amend the legislation — a resolution setting the first-year budget for H.O.M.E. — to increase spending levels beyond the currently proposed $195 million and to lower income eligibility thresholds for some programs, prioritizing poorer residents.
The most recent setback came this week, when Council President Kenyatta Johnson canceled a Monday hearing to advance the resolution and declined to reschedule it before Thursday’s regular Council meeting, when the administration said the proposal would need to receive final approval for the first $400 million round of bonds to be sold in 2025. (The city plans to sell a second and final $400 million tranche of bonds in 2027.)
The administration sent Johnson’s office an initial draft of the resolution in July, but the Council president has repeatedly delayed advancing the measure throughout the fall.
“It is critically important to get the first-year spending plan right because what is agreed upon in the first year will influence all future spending for the H.O.M.E. program,” Johnson said in a statement explaining the cancellation of Monday’s hearing. “It is also essential that the final legislation include spending priorities important to City Councilmembers.”
Parker is known as a hard-line negotiator who rarely cedes ground, and Johnson’s delays might be meant to send the signal that if she doesn’t bend on Council’s demands, he won’t meet her timelines.
The saga marks a rare moment of discord between Parker and Johnson, who have worked hand in glove on most issues since both took office in January 2024 — including the passage of the initial package of legislation related to H.O.M.E. last spring.
At left is Council president Kenyatta Johnson speaking with Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle L. Parker before start of her press conference regarding her first budget in Philadelphia City Hall on Thursday, June 6, 2024.
In a hearing last week, Johnson appeared to side with lawmakers, led by Housing Committee Chair Jamie Gauthier, who were pushing for the administration to lower income thresholds for some H.O.M.E. programs, saying the city should prioritize the neediest Philadelphians.
Parker has proposed expanding income eligibility requirements in some cases so that the programs can also be accessible to middle-class residents, saying she does not want to pit “the have-nots vs. the have-a-littles.”
‘Pit one against the other’
Even with the bonds delayed until next year, the mayor does not appear to have given up the fight to maintain her vision for the housing initiative. At an unrelated Council hearing on the school district on Tuesday, Parker brought up the H.O.M.E. initiative unprompted.
She then called out four Council members who have middle-class constituencies that are likely to benefit from increased income thresholds for housing programs: Curtis Jones Jr., whose district includes Roxborough and Overbook; Anthony Phillips, who represents East Mount Airy and West Oak Lane; Mike Driscoll, of the Lower Northeast; and Katherine Gilmore Richardson, who represents the city at large but is a Democratic ward leader for Wynnefield.
“I am unapologetic about making sure that constituents represented by you … should not be left out of any investment that we make in the city of Philadelphia,” Parker said. “Every community can be lifted up with the work that we are doing, so I won’t let us pit one against the other.”
The remarks, however, effectively pitted members with poorer constituencies against those with middle-class bases. Johnson represents Southwest Philadelphia and the western half of South Philly; Gauthier’s district covers much of West Philadelphia.
Despite the dustup, it remains unlikely that a lasting fissure has emerged in Parker and Johnson’s relationship, given that they still share many policy priorities and can benefit each other politically.
“Council President Kenyatta Johnson and I have an amazing working relationship,” Parker, a former Council member, said in an interview Monday. “Council has a right to do its due diligence. If I hadn’t been there, if I wasn’t a former staffer in there, maybe it would be foreign [to me]. No. We’re going through the process, and I have to trust the process.”
Additionally, Johnson standing up for Council members’ concerns over the H.O.M.E. budget may help shield him from questions about whether he is overly compliant with the mayor’s agenda.
“Both branches of government remain committed to ensuring the H.O.M.E. program is implemented transparently, equitably, and in a way that maximizes benefits to Philadelphia residents,” Johnson said in his statement. “Taking extra time to finalize these critical elements will result in a stronger, more effective program.”
Tracking progress
The administration is not waiting for the H.O.M.E. bonds to be sold to start notching wins for Parker’s 30,000 housing units goal. The city’s Philly Stat 360 website has already begun tallying units built and preserved during her tenure.
To be sure, some of the mayor’s strategies for the H.O.M.E. initiative do not require bond money. For instance, Parker has led a shake-up of the Land Bank, which she hopes will accelerate the redevelopment of unoccupied city-owned parcels into housing, and she won Council approval last spring for zoning changes meant to streamline building.
But the potential infusion of $800 million is undoubtedly the centerpiece of the initiative. The money will help launch programs like Parker’s One Philly Mortgage, which aims to provide 30-year fixed-rate loans to qualified homebuyers, and will buttress existing ones like the Basic Systems Repair Program, which has been credited with preventing the displacement of low-income residents who end up moving if they cannot afford needed home repairs.
“It’s never been done in the history of our city, and we do that together in partnership with each other, and that’s what we’re working to do right now,” Parker said.
Staff writers Jake Blumgart, Kristen A. Graham, and Anna Orso contributed to this article.
But this week, Parker is going on the offensive. The mayor said she was eager to eliminate the city’s racial participation targets long before the current legal threats to the policy emerged, saying the city’s 40-year-old effort to use its contracting process to boost diverse businesses had failed.
“Did the Supreme Court ruling have anything to do with our decision-making? Absolutely,” Parker said Monday, referring to a 2023 ruling that threatened race-based affirmative action programs. “But it wasn’t the impetus for it. I ran on providing access to economic opportunity for all here in the city of Philadelphia.”
That case, Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, could mark the beginning of the end for a wide variety of government programs that seek to boost diversity or aid people of color.
In her first extensive comments since The Inquirer reported Parker’s administration had ended race- and gender-conscious contracting policies, the mayor defended her decision Monday at a last-minute “roundtable” meeting she organized in Northwest Philadelphia with business leaders.
And she doubled down during a news conference Tuesday at the African American Chamber of Commerce headquarters, where she signed an executive order codifying the city’s shift to favoring firms that are registered as “small and local.”
“We knew the system was broken years before,” Parker, the city’s first Black female mayor, said. “Because every time we would look at the numbers and we would want to see how many Black and brown and women and disabled business owners were growing in the city of Philadelphia, the numbers became stagnant.”
Historically disadvantaged firms win city contracts worth more than $370 million annually, and supporters of the program criticized Parker for not fighting to preserve it.
City Councilmember Kendra Brooks of the progressive Working Families Party said Parker was “caving” to President Donald Trump, whose administration has sought to roll back policies on diversity, equity, and inclusion.
“People want to see leaders fighting for something,” Brooks said last week, “and right now we don’t see our city fighting for anything.”
But Chief Deputy Mayor Vanessa Garrett Harley said Monday that the administration examined the Philadelphia Office of Economic Opportunity’s registry of disadvantaged businesses that should get a leg up in city procurement opportunities, and found that only 20% were actually winning contracts.
“Obviously, it was not working,” Garrett Harley said.
Deputy Mayor Vanessa Garrett Harley speaks during a press conference in Philadelphia, Pa., on Thursday, June 27, 2024.
Parker said that setting diversity goals was not enough to grow women- and minority-owned businesses. Instead, she said, they need technical assistance, access to capital, and other tools so that they can develop to the point where they are able to regularly compete for city contracts without relying on set-asides.
Her administration is focused on providing those resources, she said, and not just “checking boxes.”
“I’m fighting,” Parker said. “But I’m fighting the fight the way I know best: to achieve the results and act and extract the tangible results that I need for the people who live in this city, who own businesses in the city.”
‘Small and local:’ A new world for city contracting
Parker on Tuesday signed an executive order detailing city’s new contracting system. As previously detailed in The Inquirer, the city will now give preference to “small and local” firms rather than requiring participation for businesses owned by women, minorities, and people with disabilities.
The executive order does not set a target goal for what share of city contracting dollars should go to “small and local” businesses.
The city’s previous goal of directing 35% of contracting dollars to disadvantaged firms was similarly not enumerated in law. Instead, Parker’s order outlines a structure for setting benchmarks and providing assistance to firms seeking to do business with the city.
For example, it charges the economic opportunity office with setting overall contracting goals, as well as establishing “participation ranges” for individual contracts. Those ranges will be used to give contractors benchmarks for money that should be set aside for subcontractors and suppliers that are considered disadvantaged businesses.
The office is also responsible for maintaining the registry of small and local businesses. Garrett Harley said the “overwhelming majority” of businesses that are registered with the city as minority-, women-, or disabled-owned will qualify as “small and local.”
Nadir Jones, the city’s director of business impact and economic advancement, said firms already registered with the city will be “grandfathered in” and will not need to register again as small or local.
To qualify as “local,” a business must either be headquartered in Philadelphia city limits or meet two of three other criteria:
More than 60% of employees live in Philadelphia.
More than half of the business’ employees work in the city at least 60% of the time.
More than 75% of the business’ gross receipts came from Philadelphia.
To qualify as “small,” Jones said, a business must have fewer than 750 employees.
Parker said her administration is working with outside advisers to hone the program. That includes the African American Chamber of Commerce, which announced Tuesday it had established a Special Task Force on Economic Access and Procurement in response to the contracting changes.
“We will continue to advocate for policies that are not only measurable and defendable, but also those that produce real impact,” said Regina Hairston, the organization’s president and CEO. “However, as we have recently learned, these policy changes are happening whether we fully support them or not.”
A risk-averse legal strategy
Parker’s elimination of racial diversity targets in city contracting — due in part to the hypothetical threat of litigationraised by City Solicitor Renee Garcia — in some ways parallels the mayor’s decision earlier this year to settle a lawsuit challenging a city tax break that primarily benefited small businesses.
In both instances, critics said that the Parker administration overstated the legal jeopardy the programs faced and gave up without a fight. But there are key differences between Parker’s handling of the contracting goals and the tax break, which exempted firms’ first $100,000 in revenue from the business income and receipts tax, or BIRT.
If anything, there was less of an immediate threat to the city’s contracting diversity goals, which are not facing any legal challenge. The administration instead preemptively abolished its racial diversity targets due to rulings on separate issues, such as affirmative action in college admissions or the city’s project labor agreements.
The catalyst for Parker eliminating the BIRT exemption was a 2024 lawsuit filed by a Massachusetts medical device manufacturer challenging the constitutionality of the tax break. Critics of Parker’s decision argued that if the city had fought it in court, the case could have been thrown out because the company may have struggled to demonstrate harm, given that the tax break actually benefited the firm.
Instead, the city settled with the company, and Parker pressed Council to remove the tax break from city law.
Renee Garcia, Philadelphia City Solicitor speak on Jan 22, 2025 during a hearing exploring Philadelphia’s readiness and commitment to protecting immigrant, LGBTQ+, and other marginalized communities in preparation for the impending Trump administration.
During the debate over the BIRT exemption, Garcia said Philadelphia could potentially lose hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenue if it didn’t cave to the legal challenge. Critics of the city’s approach cast doubt on whether that was a realistic outcome.
But in the case of the contracting DEI goals, the potential risks articulated by the administration are far less dire.
Garcia said Monday the primary financial risk involved in maintaining the contracting diversity program is that if the city ever did get sued, and then lost a protracted court battle, it may have to pay the plaintiff’s attorney’s fees.
She also cited the possibility of creating unwanted legal precedent if the hypothetical lawsuit against the city reached the U.S. Supreme Court and lost — something that could still happen if a suit is filed against any of the hundreds of jurisdictions across the country that still have racial participation goals in contracting.
“This way, we do it on our terms,“ Garcia said. ”We have time to build it. We have a plan.”
The most important difference between the business tax and contracting issues is that Parker was in favor of the BIRT exemption but does not support the old contracting system.
In her budget address in March, Parker said she was begrudgingly seeking to end the tax break because state judicial rulings, in the administration’s view, had forced the city’s hand. But when it comes to the city’s contracting practices, Parker’s aims in some ways align with those seeking to undo longstanding city policy on diversity in contracting.
The administration’s messaging on the issue has become somewhat mixed. On one hand, Garcia said Parker was “anguished” when she realized she had to make changes to the contracting system due to the legal environment.
“She did not want to do this,” Garcia said.
On the other hand, Parker said she has long planned to reform the contracting system. Asked if her policy goals or new legal rulings were driving the decision, Parker said: “It’s both. It’s not either/or.”
“We are building something that does not exist here in the city of Philadelphia,” she said. “We are asking you to join the fight with us.”
A Navy pilot in New Jersey. A democratic socialist in New York City. Three Pennsylvania jurists who never wanted to hit the campaign trail in the first place.
The results were momentous for a party hungry for wins in President Donald Trump’s second term. But they are also likely to revive longstanding debates on how the party should present itself to the American people going into the 2026 midterms and 2028 presidential race.
Should Democrats embrace a bold vision and tack left? Are left-of-center candidates with bipartisan appeal still the way to win statewide races? Or could the party simply embrace the reality of being a big-tent party?
Here are five takeaways from Tuesday’s elections, including the state of play for both parties’ soul-searching exercises.
Democrats gained momentum, but received no clear signs about the future of the party
The energy is clearly there.
Turnout soared on Tuesday, despite being an off-year election, and Democrats won by surprisingly large marginsup and down the ballot.
Even Montgomery County, where there were no competitive elections for county offices, saw its highest-ever off-year turnout at 50.7% of registered voters, and Democrats flipped every contested school board race.
At the top of the ticket, New Jersey’s Mikie Sherrill and Virginia’s Abigail Spanberger, both U.S. representatives with national security backgrounds, ran up the scores in their gubernatorial races while portraying themselves as pragmatists.
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“There’s a new politics,” Krasner said Wednesday. “It’s pretty clear that the American people, Philadelphians, are tired of insiders who promise them things they don’t do. They’re tired of political dynasties.”
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Democratic strategist Brendan McPhillips, who has worked for progressive candidates as well as Joe Biden’s and Kamala Harris’ campaigns in Pennsylvania, said the party should embrace the ideological diversity of its constituencies.
“People have tried to ask this question of who represents the soul of the party, and I just think it’s a bad question,” he said. “The party is a huge tent, and last night proves you can run for Democratic office in New York City and New Jersey and Bucks County and Erie, Pa., and each of those races can look entirely different.”
Democrats made gains with Latino voters
One of the more worrying signs for Democrats in the Trump era has been the president’s increasing popularity among Latino voters.
They flipped that narrative Tuesday.
After 10 months of aggressive U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids under Trump that are seen by many in the Latino community as indiscriminate and cruel, Democrats appear to have undone some of Trump’s gains in what has long been a blue constituency.
In New Jersey, the two counties where Sherrill made the biggest gains compared with Harris in the 2024 presidential election were Passaic and Hudson, both of which are more than 40% Hispanic, according to the U.S. Census.
Sherrill won Hudson by 50 percentage points, which represents a 22-point swing from Harris. And she won Passaic by 15 percentage points after Trump surprisingly carried the county with a 3-point margin in 2024.
In Philadelphia, Krasner won eight wards that the more conservative Patrick Dugan — Krasner’s opponent in both the general election and the Democratic primary — had won in their first round in May.
All were in or near the Lower Northeast, and the biggest swing came in the heavily Latino 7th Ward, which includes parts of Fairhill and Kensington. Krasner’s share of the vote there grew from 46% in the primary to 86% in the general.
It’s really hard to unseat Pennsylvania judges
Only one Pennsylvania Supreme Court justice since 1968 has failed to win a retention election, in which voters face a yes-or-no decision on whether to give incumbents new 10-year terms, rather than a choice between candidates.
Tuesday’s results will be discouraging for anyone hoping to increase that number soon.
Hoping to break liberals’ 5-2 majority on the state’s highest court, Republicans spent big in an attempt to oust three justices who were originally elected as Democrats. Democratic groups then poured in their own money to defend the incumbents.
In his third attempt to become governor, Republican Jack Ciattarelli bet big on South Jersey, the more conservative but less populous part of the Garden State.
It didn’t work.
In his 2021 campaign against Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy, Ciattarelli carried Atlantic, Cape May, Cumberland, Gloucester, and Salem Counties with a combined 56.8% of the vote. Trump then went on to sweep all five counties last year.
But on Tuesday, Ciattarelli performed 8 percentage points worse in the region, giving Sherrill a narrow lead in South Jersey, where she won three of the five counties south of Camden.
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Republicans now face their own soul-searching question: How to win without Trump?
In 2024, Trump’s coattails helped Republicans win control of Congress and other elected offices across the country — including in two Pennsylvania swing districts.
With the president in his second and final term, how will the GOP win without him on the ballot?
For Jim Worthington, the Trump megadonor and owner of the Newtown Athletic Club in Bucks County, Tuesday’s results show that the GOP needs to do more work on the ground if it wants to succeed without the man who has dominated Republican politics since 2015.
Elections, he said, are “not about the policies as much they’re just turnout. Red team, blue team.”
The blue team won Tuesday, he said, because the red team didn’t do enough of the legwork needed to get its voters to cast mail ballots and to drive in-person turnout on Election Day. Worthington said the results left him concerned about Republican Treasurer Stacy Garrity’s chances of unseating Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro next year.
“If we don’t get a robust vote-by-mail, paid-for program, it’s going to be very difficult, very difficult, if not impossible for Stacy Garrity to win,” Worthington said. “During this whole 2025 year when we could have been building this toward 2026, we lost a year because we didn’t do it.”
Staff writer Anna Orso contributed to this article.
This suburban content is produced with support from the Leslie Miller and Richard Worley Foundation and The Lenfest Institute for Journalism. Editorial content is created independently of the project donors. Gifts to support The Inquirer’s high-impact journalism can be made at inquirer.com/donate. A list of Lenfest Institute donors can be found at lenfestinstitute.org/supporters.
City Councilmember Jimmy Harrity wants to revisit the contentious debate that led to the 2017 creation of Philadelphia’s sweetened beverage tax, arguing that the levy has cost the city jobs and will eventually prove insufficient to pay for the programs it was enacted to support, such as subsidized prekindergarten.
“We‘re going to keep on pulling more money out of the general fund each year, taking away from other programs,” Harrity, a Democrat, said Monday at a hearing of Council’s Labor and Civil Service Committee, which he chairs. “If we were in business and these numbers were the numbers of the business, we wouldn’t be in business long.”
The tax, which is paid by distributors of sweetened beverages sold in Philadelphia, is 1.5 cents per ounce. Council approved it in 2016 despite vociferous opposition from the beverage industry and Teamsters Local 830, which testified Monday the tax has led to 1,000 of its members who drove trucks for distributors losing work.
Harrity,an ally of the Teamsters, noted that revenue from the tax has declined as Philadelphians either drink fewer sweetened beverages or find ways to purchase them outside the city. The tax produced about $73.4 million in the 2023 fiscal year, but only $64.4 million last year, he said.
A Council staffer arranges a table of sugary drinks before Councilmember Jimmy Harrity (not shown) holds a hearing in City Council Monday, Oct. 27, 2025 on former Mayor Jim Kenney’s tax on sweetened beverages.
For Harrity, that means that the city should consider eliminating the “soda tax,” as it is widely known, in favor of a more “sustainable” funding stream. He did not offer any alternatives.
But based on his colleagues’ reactions, it is unlikely the tax will be reconsidered in a serious way any time soon.
Marcy Boroff with Children First dresses as a coke can for a City Council hearing Monday, Oct. 27, 2025 on former Mayor Jim Kenney’s tax on sweetened beverages. She was there to support the tax. Children First advocates for policy changes to improve child health, education, and welfare, especially for low-income children. .
And they stressed its critical role in paying for the three initiatives that Kenney launched alongside the tax: PHL Pre-K, which provides free childcare to 5,250 kids; community schools, which offer a multitude of services to families in 20 Philly schools; and the Rebuild program, which renovates and improves recreation centers and playgrounds.
“We have to make tough decisions that will actually benefit the greater good, and that’s what we did here,” Democratic Councilmember Rue Landau said during the hearing, adding that “the majority of us up here on this panel think this is a great investment.”
“We would not have been able to fund these programs without that beverage tax money,” said city Finance Director Rob Dubow, who has held his role under Parker, Kenney, and former Mayor Michael A. Nutter. Nutter twice tried unsuccessfully to implement a “soda tax” before Kenney succeeded.
Dubow told lawmakers that the decline in the tax’s revenue over time was always part of the plan and that city leaders intended for the regular city budget to make up the difference for funding Rebuild, pre-K, and community schools when they created the tax. The moment when the soda tax began taking in less money than the city pays out for the three programs it helped launch was the 2024 fiscal year, he said.
“We pay for it out of the general fund, which is what we always intended we would do,” Dubow said.
This year, Rebuild, pre-K, and community schools are projected to cost $110 million, Dubow said. Of that, $73 million pays for the 5,250 slots in the city’s pre-K program.
Preschoolers and their caregivers attend a City Council hearing held by Councilmember Jimmy Harrity Monday, Oct. 27, 2025 on former Mayor Jim Kenney’s tax on sweetened beverages. The tax funds the city’s universal pre-kindergarten program
‘Why not Taj Mahals?’
Councilmember Brian O’Neill was the only other Council member besides Harrity to vocally criticize the tax at Monday’s hearing.
O’Neill, Council’s lone Republican, noted that Council members have traditionally had control over capital funding for Philadelphia Parks and Recreation projects in their districts. That money, he noted, is split evenly among the 10 district Council members.
“This program — Rebuild, they call it — they didn’t decide to bring playgrounds up to some minimum level where people over the years may not have spent their money well,” O’Neill said. “They decided to build Taj Mahals in many cases. … You know what happens when you build a playground and spend tons of money on it? … All the playgrounds around it look terrible.“
Councilmember Brian J. O’Neill (center) speaks during a hearing in City Council Monday, Oct. 27, 2025 on former Mayor Jim Kenney’s tax on sweetened beverages. Behind him, front to rear, are: Councilmembers Kendra Brooks, Jimmy Harrity, Nina Ahmad, and Rue Landau.
That comment did not go over well with some of his colleagues.
“My community benefited from a rec center that was through the Rebuild program,” said Councilmember Kendra Brooks, a member of the progressive Working Families Party who lives in Nicetown. “It’s not a Taj Mahal. It’s a quality rec center in the middle of North Philadelphia. It does not have everything, because I personally went and bought a refrigerator.”
And Councilmember Nina Ahmad, a Democrat, questioned why building grandiose rec centers would be a problem in the first place.
“Why not Taj Mahals for all our folks? Why not have the best-quality rec centers so our children want to go there, our children want to spend time there?” Ahmad said. “We live in a first-world country and yet we are begging for scraps for our youngest citizens.”
Prosecutors have charged Keon King with murder and other crimes for allegedly kidnapping Scott, shooting her, and burying her body behind a closed East Germantown school in early October.
King was arrested in two separate incidents in December and January in which authorities allege he violently assaulted an ex-girlfriend. In the second incident, he is accused of kidnapping her and choking her in his car.
Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner held a press conference at his office regarding the death of Kada Scott on Monday, October 20, 2025.
District Attorney Larry Krasner’s office requested bail to be set at just under $1 million in that case. A judge instead set bail at $200,000, allowing King to be released after posting the necessary $20,000. Krasner’s office did not appeal the bond decision.
Prosecutors then withdrew both cases after the victim and witnesses failed to appear in court. Krasner has admitted that dropping charges against King for the second incident was a mistake because there was enough video evidence to proceed with the prosecution. But he also directed blame at the courts for letting King out on bail following eacharrest.
“As the City of Philadelphia, I think we failed the young lady, right?” Council President Kenyatta Johnson told reporters Thursday. “You got two agencies, two city departments, pointing fingers at one another, and at the end of the day, that’s not going to bring resolution to the family. And so at the end of the day, that needs to be addressed. And so we’ll look at the system as a whole.”
Council approved a resolution authored by Johnson that will allow the Committee on Public Safety to hold hearings on how the courts, sheriff’s office, district attorney’s office, and police department work to protect domestic violence victims.
Kada Scott ‘a beacon of light and love’
Remembering Scott: Council also approved a resolution by Councilmember Anthony Phillips honoring Scott’s life and legacy, describing her as a “a beacon of light and love, remembered for her faith, kindness and countless lives she touched.“
Scott, who opened a beauty spa in Mount Airy when she was 19 years old, “was the kind of person who made others feel seen,” said Phillips, whose 9th District includes Mount Airy.
Prosecutors have charged Keon King with the murder of Kada Scott, pictured.
“Kada was a young woman whose light and kindness reflect the very best of us,” Phillips said in a speech on the Council floor. “She had vision and determination. She believed in the power of self-care, community, and purpose.”
Councilmember Cindy Bass, whose 8th District includes the school where Scott’s remains were found, added that “it’s never been more important that we get our young men together.”
“There is a vulnerability that exists, and protection is needed. Protection is important,” Bass said. “What we do and how we handle our situations in our community — there’s just so much to be done.”
Childcare providers could get tax break
Targeted relief: Councilmember Isaiah Thomas last spring pushed for the city to aggressively cut the business income and receipts tax, or BIRT.
Johnson and Mayor Cherelle L. Parker ultimately went with a less aggressive schedule of tax cuts than Thomas had wanted. But the sophomore lawmaker is now trying another route to lighten the BIRT burden: cutting rates for a specific industry.
Thomas on Thursday introduced a bill that would halve BIRT’s two tax rates for childcare providers, which are facing a nationwide crisis over costs, staffing, and financial viability. The gross receipts portion of BIRT would be reduced from 0.1415% to 0.07075% for daycare owners, and the net income rate would go from 5.81% to 2.805%.
City Councilmember Isaiah Thomas wants to give daycares a tax break.
“There’s one business and one industry in the city of Philadelphia that touches every district and a lot of families, especially working families, that are struggling,” Thomas said. “This legislation is another example of us trying to think through what we can do to support businesses who support families as well as families who are in need.”
Regulatory bill sparked by Center City bike lane debate passes after arduous legislative process
Unloading over loading zones: Heated fights over legislation with narrow impact are nothing new in City Council, where limited proposals often become battlegrounds in larger disputes over issues such as gentrification or the opioid crisis.
But a bill on loading zones in parts of Center City, approved Thursday, may have set a new standard.
The bill, which was proposed by the Parker administration and carried by Johnson, will allow the mayor’s administration to add or remove loading zones in parts of Center City without new ordinances from Council.
It ultimately passed in a 16-0 vote, with Councilmember Brian O’Neill absent.
But the journey to Thursday’s vote began with the high-profile death of a cyclist, involved a lawsuit, went through two rounds of amendments limiting and expanding its scope, and ended with plans for further proposals to tweak the law.
The saga began when Johnson passed a bill making it illegal for vehicles to idle in bike lanes following the 2024 death of Barbara Friedes, who was killed while riding in a bike lane on the 1800 block of Spruce Street. Parker’s administration then adjusted loading zones in Center City streets with bike lanes, with the goal of providing spaces for residents who used the bike lanes for unloading their vehicles.
After neighbors complained the loading zones would take away a handful of parking spots, attorney George Bochetto successfully sued the city, with Common Pleas Court Judge Sierra Thomas Street this summer ruling the administration did not have the authority to promulgate loading zone regulations without Council approval.
The case led to the revelation that a 1980scity law granting that regulatory authority was somehow never officially codified, throwing into legal jeopardy hundreds of parkingregulations promulgated over the last four decades. The bill passed Thursday was intended to fix that legal conundrum by reiterating Council’s intention to grant the administration that authority.
A cyclist rides along Spruce Street.
But Johnson and Councilmember Mark Squilla, whose districts include parts of Center City, at one point amended the bill so that it applied only to loading zone regulations and to the Spruce and Pine Streets corridors, which have bike lanes. They eventually reversed course on the geography of the bill, adopting a new amendment allowing it to affect all areas of their districts included in the old law. But they maintained the part of the original amendment narrowing its scope to loading zones and not other parking rules.
Meanwhile, Councilmember Jeffery “Jay” Young Jr., whose 5th District also has a slice of Center City, removed his territory from the bill entirely.
Next, Councilmember Jamie Gauthier is expected to work with the administration to fix the regulatory black hole in University City, which is part of her 3rd District. And Johnson said Thursday he may be open to revisiting whether the administration should be given explicit statutory authority to regulate other parkingrules beyond loading zones in the affected area of his district.
“We always have an open mind,” he said.
Quotable: Honoring the late Philadelphia newspaper editor Michael Days
Glory Days: Michael Days was a longtime editor of the Philadelphia Daily News, an executive at The Inquirer, and the inaugural president of the National Association of Black Journalists-Philadelphia.
He died on Saturday in Trenton at 72 years old. Council on Thursday approved a resolution by Johnson and Majority Leader Katherine Gilmore Richardson honoring Days “for his extensive career serving Philadelphians.”
Philadelphia Daily News Editor Michael Days celebrates with the newsroom after word of the Pulitzer win.
A North Philadelphia native and devout Catholic, Days was revered as a principled reporter and editor, a mentor for young journalists of color, and a leader who helmed the Daily News when it won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting.
Staff writer Ellie Rushing contributed to this article.
City Controller Christy Brady, seeking her first full term as Philadelphia’s independently elected fiscal watchdog, is being challenged by Republican Ari Patrinos in the Nov. 4 general election.
The controller’s office is charged with auditing the city’s finances and investigating fraud, waste, and abuse.
But despite that critical role, there hasn’t been much drama in this year’s race.
Patrinos, a former stockbroker and Philadelphia public school teacher, acknowledged the odds are against him in heavily Democratic Philadelphia and said he has no particular complaints about Brady’s performance.
Instead, he said, he ran because “it was important that somebody run on the ticket.”
“The truth is nobody wanted to run, and my ward leader asked me if I would run,” said Patrinos, who has not reported raising any money for his campaign. “I didn’t have any specific attacks on Brady. My concern is that the city is too single-party, and I think the city functions better when you have a two-party system.”
Brady, a Democrat who has a $250,000 campaign war chest she likely won’t need to use this year, has the support of much of the local political establishment, including the Democratic City Committee and the building trades unions.
A 30-year veteran of the controller’s office, Brady has struck a notably conciliatory tone during her tenure, striving to work collaboratively with Mayor Cherelle L. Parker’s administration rather than butt heads with the executive branch, as many of her predecessors have done.
“Because of my experience when I took office two years ago, I hit the ground running,” she said.
Seeking a full four-year term for the first time, Brady this year ran uncontested in the Democratic primary.
“The biggest question I get [on the campaign trail] is: What does a controller do?” she said. “And so I’m getting out there and spreading the word of what we’re currently working on and what we do in the office.”
The controller earns an annual salary of $171,000 and oversees an office with more than 120 employees and a budget of about $11.8 million.
Patrinos also had no opponent in the May primary. He said he has been spending much of his time on the campaign trail promoting Pat Dugan’s campaign for district attorney.
“I spend like half my time when I campaign advocating for Dugan because I’m very concerned about the crime,” Patrinos said.
From Philly to Harvard and back
Patrinos, who lives in Chestnut Hill, said he was a Democrat until about four years ago, adding that he voted for Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election.
His conversion was prompted primarily by his alma mater, Harvard College, which he felt had too enthusiastically embraced a “woke” stance.
“The immediate driving factor was on the cultural front. It was what was going at Harvard,” he said. “I’m a little bit of an anti-woke warrior. … 2020 was peak woke.“
Academia’s leftward trajectory and the Biden administration’s “terrible” handling of the pandemic combined to leave Patrinos with the feeling that he had no place in the Democratic Party, he said.
“These Ivy League liberal types who really don’t have a sense of what’s going on in the lives of average Americans — they seemed to be so indifferent to the negative effects of their policies,” he said.
He became involved in local Republican politics and helped boost President Donald Trump’s Philadelphia campaign in 2024.
“I’m not a MAGA guy, so I didn’t join [the GOP] because of Trump,” he said, “but honestly I’m very happy with the higher education stuff, the hardcore stand he’s taken with Harvard.”
Patrinos, a Central High School graduate who also has a master’s degree in political science from the University of Chicago, was a stockbroker in New York City before moving back to Philly about 15 years ago.
He then became a math and history teacher and worked at West Philadelphia High School and Strawberry Mansion High School. Patrinos said he suffered a seizure several years ago that temporarily limited his employment opportunities, but is now seeking other jobs should he come up short against Brady.
If elected, Patrinos said, he would audit the Philadelphia Department of Licenses and Inspections (L&I), examine whether SEPTA could do a better job preventing fare evasion, and push the school district to prepare more students for careers in information technology.
Controller and mayor on the same page
Brady’s approach to the mayor’s administration is the exception when it comes to the recent history of her office.
A decade ago, then-City Controller Alan Butkovitz’s relationship with Mayor Michael A. Nutter became so toxic that Nutter at one point issued a statement calling Butkovitz “a sad and sick person.”
Their successors, Kenney and Rhynhart, started off with widespread expectations that they might have a better working partnership, given that Rhynhart served as a top executive branch official under Nutter and, briefly, Kenney. But the relationship soured in a matter of months after Rhynhart publicly criticized the administration’s bookkeeping, prompting a call from Kenney that reportedly “got personal” and the cancellation of their planned monthly meetings.
Cherelle L. Parker, then a candidate for mayor of Philadelphia, stops to greet a group, including Christy Brady,(center seated), during election day lunch at Famous 4th Street Deli in Philadelphia on Tuesday, May 16, 2023.
That outcome does not appear likely with Brady and Parker.
Brady shares many political allies with Parker, especially the Philadelphia Building and Construction Trades Council, a coalition of unions that spends big on elections and has reason to be pleased with both Brady and Parker’s tenures so far.
Brady, for instance, touts her office’s audit of L&I that revealed inspectors often failed to confirm that construction sites were being run by licensed contractors — providing ammunition to the trades unions, which often rail against “fly-by-night” contractors that do not employ their members. And the mayor last year split the department into two agencies, with one focused largely on enforcing construction regulations.
Brady said her healthy relationship with the Parker administration should not be confused with a reticence to call out fraud and waste.
“I am an independently elected official. I am not afraid to stand up for what’s right,” she said. “I believe in the rules and regulations in city government.”
Her approach to the executive branch, she said, is designed to advance the aim of any auditor: ”getting management to implement your recommendations.”
“In my experience in the controller’s office, when you fight, they’re not going to listen to your recommendation,” said Brady, a certified public accountant who graduated from the Philadelphia College of Textiles and Science, now Jefferson University. “When we issue our reports, the mayor has been thanking me for the recommendations. And I really appreciate that relationship because I believe that we can make change.”
Staff writer Ryan W. Briggs contributed to this article.
