City of Philadelphia charging bloggers hundreds, robbing citizens of opportunity

 http://www.broadstreethockey.com/2010/8/23/1637544/city-of-philadelphia-charging

by Travis Hughes on Aug 23, 2010 12:49 PM EDT 

Editor's Note: We don't get into politics on this blog often. In fact, I don't believe we ever have. This, however, is an issue that could directly impact this blog and, honestly, any one of you. We want your opinion, but don't let it get out of hand and please, don't use any labels -- liberal, conservative, Democrat, Republican, etc. Just debate the issue on its merits.
This site might not exist if a new law being enforced by the City of Philadelphia were in effect a few years ago.
An article in this morning's Philadelphia City Paper (h/t @dchesnokov and @emcerlain) details a new decision by the city to charge bloggers a $300 fee for a "business privilege license," even if said blogger makes no money off of their blog.
That's right. Do you run a small, nobody-reads-this-anyway-so-I'm doing-this-just-for-fun blog about how many different ways you can tie your shoelaces into clever little knot-puppets? Do you happen to have little Google ads on the side, perhaps there only for the sole reason of paying server costs?
Oh, well, City Hall wants your money. A lot of it.
From the City Paper:

After dutifully reporting even the smallest profits on their tax filings this year, a number — though no one knows exactly what that number is — of Philadelphia bloggers were dispatched letters informing them that they owe $300 for a privilege license, plus taxes on any profits they made.
[...]
Even though small-time bloggers aren't exactly raking in the dough, the city requires privilege licenses for any business engaged in any "activity for profit," says tax attorney Michael Mandale of Center City law firm Mandale Kaufmann. This applies "whether or not they earned a profit during the preceding year," he adds.

I'm not going to sit here and argue that the City doesn't have the right to tax legitimate business within their limits, but that's not what this is about. Do kids have to get these licenses and pay these taxes on their allowances, now? After all, they're providing a service in exchange for money -- isn't that a business?
They've made the decision to tax people out of money they don't even have.

And the idea of a "business privilege" license -- I should feel privileged to operate a business in thee great land of brotherhood and love! -- is absolutely ludicrous. I know, every city has business licenses in one form or another, but that name just irks me.
I don't live in the Philadelphia proper, nor do any of the other bloggers who write at this site, but if we did, it appears we would be subjected to this law. (Actually, I suppose SBN would, and since they're not a Philly-based company, it likely wouldn't matter. That doesn't mean this isn't a big deal, however.)
A lot of people might say something like, "well, it seems unfair, but every business is subjected to this, no matter the size, and if you're not making money anyway, just take down the small, meaningless ads."
When I started blogging two years ago, I wouldn't have been able to afford a $300 fee. Yet at the same time, I needed to keep ads on my pre-SBN site to earn enough to cover the server costs and the domain registration. None of the money went into my pocket. It wasn't a lot of money and the small ads were enough to cover costs, but without them, I wouldn't have been able to run the site.
I wouldn't have been able to run my site, build that up to the point where I could apply to be run a new Flyers site at SB Nation, build that Flyers site into what it is today and ultimately become hockey manager here. It wouldn't have been possible.
By enforcing this law on bloggers who make little-to-no-money off of their sites, the City of Philadelphia is robbing its citizens of the opportunity to create. It's robbing them -- and the city itself, really -- at a change to innovate.

We have the Philadelphia Trash Police because ALL OF THE CITY'S OTHER PROBLEMS HAVE BEEN SOLVED !!

http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local-beat/Investigation__Beware_of_the_Trash_Police_Philadelphia.html

WHY WE HATE THE PPA.

http://www.philadelphiaspeaks.com/forum/local-state/11075-why-we-hate-ppa.html

Citation for trash violation: $25. Takes 13 years for city to mail it: priceless

http://www.philly.com/dailynews/columnists/stu_bykofsky/100243414.html 

By Stu Bykofsky
Philadelphia Daily News

Daily News Columnist

FROM THE file marked "Your Efficient City Government At Work" comes the tale of Peter Levinson, president of United Nations Travel, at 130 Chestnut St.
While city bloodhounds have allowed $1 billion in forfeited bail to evaporate, and hundreds of millions in taxes went uncollected, they pounced on Levinson, 71, for a $25 violation for an "improper container" for trash. He was written up on Dec. 15, 1997.
That's not a misprint: He was written up thirteen years ago, but the citation arrived last month.
Levinson says that he never received notice of that violation. Back then, trash was collected at night, and if the ticket was written and left for him, he never got it. In subsequent years, he thinks he might have gotten one ticket, which he promptly paid.
Last month, the owner of 130 Chestnut got a notice from the city Department of Finance of a $25 fine. The landlord turned it over to Levinson, the tenant, who called the number at the Department of Finance on July 13 and talked to a clerk. Levinson wanted some details about why he was ticketed, what the offense was, and, gee, maybe why it took thirteen years for the ticket to reach him.
The clerk said that a supervisor would call to talk to him about the matter. (Names withheld to protect the guilty.)
Instead of a call, Levinson got a delinquency notice, mailed out July 30: "Be advised that a previous notice remains unanswered and a penalty of $25 has been imposed."
That's an "abomination," Levinson said, because he had "answered" the notice with a phone call to Finance, and he had a confirmation number.
"It took 13 years for the first notice to come, 13 days for the second," Levinson grumped.
What is going on: a ticket from 13 years ago and a "penalty" for not responding, when in fact he had?


I called Paula Weiss, executive director of the Tax Review Board, into whose lap this problem falls like an overripe peach. When I told her the ticket-issue date she asked me to repeat it, to make sure she heard it right.
"That is a really long time," she said.
She seemed perturbed by that, but even more that Levinson hadn't received a callback in more than two weeks. People may not like what the department has to say about any violation, she said, "but certainly they are entitled to a quick response."
Amen, sister.
As to how a 13-year-old ticket suddenly materialized, Weiss said that it came in for processing without the proper identification information in 1997, and somehow fell between the cracks.
Recently, in "cleaning up some backlog," Weiss explained, a computer pulled it up, merged it with something and spit out a letter.
As Weiss described it as a "ridiculous consequence of computer logic," I remembered the HAL 9000 computer going rogue in "2001: A Space Odyssey."
"I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do," says HAL. The Tax Review Board computer did the same thing, sending the notice to the right party after human error had delayed it for 13 years.
In any event, Levinson's call "should have triggered a review and someone should have called him back," Weiss said. Not all mistakes can be avoided, she said, but courtesy is mandatory.
After learning of the botch, both the supervisor - who was never given the message by the clerk - and Weiss called Levinson to apologize.
Weiss dismissed Levinson's 13-year-old ticket as being "too old" for him to properly defend himself.
It's possible that a few more oldies but baddies are kicking around the system. Weiss told me that she's having techies review the computer logic to weed them out.
If you get a ticket written before the millennium, phone it in. Tell them HAL sent you.

Stolen car in the city: A civics lesson for the teach

http://www.philly.com/dailynews/columnists/stu_bykofsky/20100826_Stu_Bykofsky_.html?cmpid=41372432

By Stu Bykofsky
Philadelphia Daily News

Daily News Columnist

YOU MIGHT call it irony that Rick Naughton, a high-school teacher specializing in civics and government, got thoroughly screwed over by elements of Philadelphia's civic government.
"The system worked against me," says the 32-year-old Center City resident.
It started July 19, when he parked his car - a less-than-cherry '99 Toyota Corolla - at 11th and Spruce, near his home. The car has a residential parking sticker and often remains parked for days because Naughton likes to walk.
He never leaves anything in it and always locks the car. A native of Scranton, he's lived in Center City long enough to learn common-sense precautions.
After dinner out on July 23, a Friday, he noticed his car wasn't there but thought it might have been moved, as sometimes happens, when street repairs are made.
"I didn't panic," he told me.
He should have. Maybe not panic, but call 9-1-1 to report the car stolen. His failure to do that trapped him in the system's hamster wheel that brought him verbal abuse and cost him $1,400.



Actually, he did call the 6th Police District, in Chinatown, that night, to ask if his car had been moved, but police couldn't help him because - he's embarrassed to admit - he didn't know his license-plate number. He had to wait until Monday to call PennDOT to get it.
When he got the information, he called and learned that his car was in the Philadelphia Parking Authority lot on Columbus Avenue. He went there, but couldn't retrieve his car because it had been towed at 5:45 a.m. Saturday in West Philly. That's when Naughton realized that his Toyota had been stolen. That's also when he entered the bureaucratic maze.
According to a police report, the driver's name was Michael Watson, 41. When he couldn't produce a license, the cop called for a tow truck.
To get his car back, Naughton was told that he'd have to produce a stolen-car police report and his registration, which he kept in the car. The registration was gone.
Naughton called 9-1-1 to report the stolen car and to have police check it before he took it, fearing there might be contraband in it.
Officer Reigert Pone arrived, but the lot supervisor refused to allow the cop to inspect the car. Pone was helpful, took a report and gave Naughton advice. "He's one of the good guys," says Naughton. "He helped me."
The next morning, he called the 16th District, in West Philadelphia, where a cop had the car towed in Operation Live Stop. That's a towing that occurs when a driver is unable to produce a license, a registration or proof of insurance. The officer answering the phone at the 16th offered him no information, just some lip when Naughton told her that he had filed a stolen-car report.
This became a sticking point several times because the rules say that you can't file a stolen-car report after it has been recovered, something no one explained to Naughton. No one offered him an alternative. Everybody's too busy, I guess.
He went to Traffic Court later that morning and was told that he could hire a lawyer for $150 to help get his registration papers. He got the papers.
A Traffic Court judge told Naughton that although he couldn't prove he wasn't driving, he'd dismiss the fine for driving without a license, but kept a $75 paperwork fee.
He was told that he could appeal at the PPA's Bureau of Administrative Adjudication, at 9th and Filbert, but would need a stolen-car police report. He also was told that he could go to the impound lot to get his car. Naughton took a cab there, only to be told that the towing and storage fee - $224.80 - had to be paid at 9th and Filbert, so back he went. That's $20 for cabs, each way.
He returned to the lot with his receipt, but still wanted police to inspect the car. When he called the 6th District, where the car had been parked when stolen, Naughton says, the cop on the phone "became enraged" because Naughton had talked with Pone, who took a report after the 9-1-1 call. The 6th District cop hotly threatened to charge Naughton with filing a false police report.
Shaken, Naughton called 9-1-1, which sent two cops, one of them being the helpful Pone, who told Naughton that he had filed his report, which mysteriously never made it into the system.
Pone inspected the car, and that's when Naughton saw that it had been damaged that day, between his first and last visits. The lot supervisor said that another driver picking up her car had done the damage and that PPA did have her info. The damage is estimated at $900.
That evening, Naughton and a friend went to the 6th to file a stolen-car report. Two disagreeable officers there accused him of lying, but allowed Naughton to file a vandalism report. This is a truncated version of what happened to Naughton.
"The police in the 6th District are so rude, so condescending, so outright mean, no one should have to put up with this," Naughton told me, and I agreed.
So I asked 6th District Capt. Brian Korn to meet with Naughton. He did, along with Lt. Pasquale Agozzino, for 90 minutes.
Naughton emerged from the meeting satisfied.
Both were "very friendly," Naughton says, and they apologized for the nasty behavior of their officers.
"And they did what I wanted more than anything," Naughton says. "They gave me an official report saying that, in fact, my car had been stolen."
Why did Naughton have to be tortured and abused to get it?

Of all the trash bags on all the streets in all the city, they rummaged through his.

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/local/20100828_A_galling_fine_for_an_avid_recycler_in_Philly.html

By Melissa Dribben

Inquirer Staff Writer

Of all the trash bags on all the streets in all the city, they rummaged through his.
And then, they gave him a ticket for not recycling.
Kevin Stutler - a man who not only sorts his own plastic, paper, cardboard, glass, and empty cans, but also cleans up the trash from his less conscientious neighbors - could not believe the irony.
Acting on orders from the mayor and City Council to pressure residents to recycle, the Streets Department is dispatching 46 enforcers to rummage through the garbage people put out on the street. When they locate unauthorized materials in the trash, these inspectors have the authority, nay, the obligation, to act.
In principle, Stutler understands, even supports, the effort to reduce the waste sent to landfills.
But Sutler believes his fine - for failing to recycle a single plastic bottle - is ludicrous and unjust in a city filthy with litterers. Not to mention an appeals process that strikes him as, well, garbage.
It happened July 23. Stutler, 35, of East Mount Airy, a vegetarian, an organic gardener, and a quality-control officer for a pharmaceutical company, was headed to the airport. He was going to Ohio to help his wife take care of her grandmother, who had just had several strokes.
Before he left, Stutler dragged his recycling in the usual blue bin to the curb, but, not wanting anyone to steal his garbage can while he was away, he put the rest of his trash in a bag.
It contained some food that had gone bad in plastic containers and a few pieces of junk mail, he said, explaining, "I had my identity stolen once, and the police told me to put papers like that in different places, stain them with food, make them unappealing."
Walking to the car, he came across a crushed soda bottle that had been tossed into the street and a gift that someone's dog had left on the sidewalk. Using a scrap of cardboard, he scooped up the poop, tossed it along with the bottle into the trash, tied up the bag, and drove away.
A week later, when he returned, he found a ticket wedged into the wrought iron of his front door. A code violation carrying a $50 fine. "Recyclables not separated from rubbish."
"It was a kick in the face," Stutler says, pulling at the hair on his lower lip. "My volume of trash is low. I repurpose clothes, cookware, books."
He regularly volunteers on the city's tree-planting days, and, he says, "I do funny things like this. . . ." He excuses himself and rises gingerly from the dining-room table, returning a minute later with a quart-size plastic bag bulging with grungy batteries.
"I pick these up off the street," he says, plunking the bag on the table next to a copy of the ticket and the letters he has sent to the Streets Department in an attempt to resolve the matter. He lowers himself back into a wooden chair. "They're filled with toxic chemicals that can leach into the ground and the water."
Periodically, he takes the stash to a toxic waste recycling center, he says. "My general philosophy is conservation."
After earning his degree in botany at Ohio University, Stutler says, he worked as a soil scientist for an environmental cleanup company.
But in his late 20s, after he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, he and his wife bought a 20-acre organic farm in Oregon. "We lived in a school bus with solar showers in the woods," he says. His ponytail dangles to the waist of his shorts, which hang loosely on his hips.
"We had a couple hundred trees. We grew Asian pears, blueberries, apples, cherries, and green gauge plums, and we got a state grant to rehabilitate three acres of wetland as habitat."
Over time, they watched the animals return. Western pond turtles, salmon, coyotes, a blue heron rookerie, osprey, golden eagle. They raised ducks and chickens for eggs and brought classes from the nearby elementary school to the farm to managing land.
Four years ago, when Stutler's illness made the physical labor too difficult, he says, his wife applied to dental school and the couple moved to Philadelphia. They grow vegetables in the backyard and keep a worm farm in the garage.
Stutler gives a tour. He picks up the plastic lid, pierced with airholes, and reveals a bin filled with black clumps, lettuce, carrot peels, and newspaper strips. Dipping his hand into the moist gunk, he comes up with a handful of skinny worms.
"Eisena foetida," he says. "Red wrigglers. They make all these nice worm castings. They're happy little farmers."
As if the scene didn't speak for itself, Stutler has character witnesses.
"I've seen him pick up trash in the neighborhood," says Simone Cartwright, who lives across from Stutler. "He got a ticket? That doesn't make sense at all. He's one of the neighbors who makes everyone conscious about being environmentally responsible."
Cartwright, who runs a home-inspection company, says Stutler has given her gardening advice and bought her organic products to keep the bugs off her flowers. "And at block meetings," she says, "Kevin has explained the importance of separating trash."
Mistakes happen, said Carlton Williams, assistant commissioner of the Streets Department. Since the 1990s, the city has been ticketing people for not recycling, but under Mayor Nutter, enforcement has intensified, he said.
In 2005, Williams said, 13,000 citations were issued. In 2009, it shot up to 33,000. And that was only January through July, he said, because last summer, the $25 fine was doubled and Council voted to give citizens a six-month warning before they were hit with the tougher consequences.
Between January 2010, when the $50 fine went into effect, and July, Williams said, the enforcers have written 6,000 tickets for recycling violations.
Officially known as streets and walkways education and enforcement officers, the enforcers are trained to look for recycling containers. "If they don't see one, they're prompted to go through the trash," said Williams. "And if they see materials in there that should have been recycled, they issue a citation." It's a dirty job, but - never mind.
Williams said he would look into Stutler's case. Since May, the enforcers have been recording their evidence with digital photographs, but for some reason, the pictures are missing in Stutler's file.
Meanwhile, Stutler has requested an appeal, and after multiple phone calls and letters, he was given a court date.
For June.
"I don't know how I'll get to it," he says. "We're putting our house on the market."
His wife has a new job, so they are moving to (of all the places in all the world) Columbus, Ohio, where there is no here's-looking-at-you-kid fine. But curbside recycling is still going to cost him.
In that city, residents are charged for the service.
Pay it again, Kev.

2 more inmates released accidentally from Delco jail

Is that a man??????????

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/20100827_2_more_inmates_released_accidentally_from_Delco_jail.html

By WILLIAM BENDER
Philadelphia Daily News

benderw@phillynews.com 215-854-5255

The privately run George W. Hill Correctional Facility has been struggling this summer with what you might call a prisoner-retention problem.
Delaware County authorities discovered this month that two inmates had been mistakenly released from the prison due to clerical errors. Neither has been heard from since.
It's the fifth time that this has happened in recent months, according to a county official.
The prison, operated by New Jersey-based Community Education Centers for $43 million a year, made headlines in June when accused killer Taaqi Brown walked out because of a records snafu. Brown, 22, of Germantown, turned himself in the next day, and the CEC clerk who let him out was fired.
Now, the U.S. Marshals Service Fugitive Task Force is searching for David Wilson, 19, of Chester, who was convicted in July of a firearms offense, but was released from the prison Aug. 4, two weeks before he was to be sentenced.
Federal authorities also are looking for Ateia Polk, 32, of Philadelphia, who is on the lam after the prison released her last month prior to her trial on robbery, assault and related offenses. Polk is accused of stealing jewelry from an Upper Darby beauty parlor and threatening to stab the owner with a hairpin.
"We're not pointing the finger at anybody," said prison Superintendent John Reilly Jr., who oversees CEC's performance on the county's behalf. "This is an in-house problem that needs to be resolved here."
Reilly said that Polk was released because a prison employee misinterpreted a judge's order. The clerk apparently thought that "no bail" meant that Polk could leave without posting bail.
"She just made a colossal mistake," Reilly said.
In Wilson's case, the prison never received a fax from the county's Office of Judicial Support stating that his bail had been revoked. But Reilly said that a prison employee should have double-checked that he was cleared for discharge.
"You need to do a more thorough search," he said. "The bottom line is, you are responsible when you open the back door."
Reilly said that the prison's records department has been having trouble handling the thousands of documents it receives every week. He described it as a systemic problem that CEC is working to correct.
"They don't have a process in place to accurately accept all these documents," Reilly said. "They just come flying in. There's a real breakdown in their process at that point."
In some cases, such as Polk's, overwhelmed employees are simply misreading the paperwork.
"It's a longstanding problem with the records department being able to process the volume," Reilly said.
CEC took over the operation of the county prison last year after the GEO Group abandoned its contract due to "financial underperformance and frequent litigation." Located in Thornton, it is the only privately run county prison in the state.
CEC spokesman Christopher Greeder declined to elaborate on the discharged inmates, other than to say that "the matter is under review and the company is working closely with the county."
"This is the first crisis of the CEC era, and we're going to see how good they are," Reilly said. "They'll have to get through it."