I've been more than generous with your time, sir.
I've been more than generous with your time. It beeped like three times. I just was letting you go.
All righty. Small businesses are the cornerstones -- bar -- corner stores, barbershops, day cares, food carts that form the heart of our neighborhoods don't need higher taxes. They need breathing. They need protection and our people need a government that chooses them over corporate profits. We are asking, no 17 demanding, that you reject this upside-down budget. Call it what it is --
-- a giveaway to those who already have more than enough. Thank you very much.
And just for the record, I'm very, very proud of this young man. He's from South Philadelphia, interned with me as a young man. We both went to the same elementary school, which is Childs Elementary School I graduated from, and I came there when Childs was open during a school assembly and he was giving a speech. And so, that's a rising star right there. Mijuel, keep up the good work. (Applause.)
We have Ben She and Deborah Wei, followed by Sergio Cea and Myra Clemens. (Witnesses approached Witness table.)
Hello again. My name is Debbie Wei. And if you don't remember me, you should remember my shirt. The Chinatown community fought billionaire developers, including the CEO of Campus Apartments who I believe is named as a beneficiary of proposed tax cuts against an oligarch-driven vanity project that no one asked for and the vast majority of Philadelphians did not want. And only a few months ago we watched this body be bamboozled by those billionaires who don't live here, don't send their kids to our schools and who treat us as steppingstones to more accumulation. So I hope you learned billionaires don't care about us and they really don't care about you. So if I got paid $10 an hour hours a day seven days a week to sit here, not only would that piss you all off, it would take me 11,400 years to accumulate $1 billion. No one earns that kind of money from their own labor. It is extracted from our communities. People with this much money do not need nor deserve tax breaks. They need to pay their fair share. Our local government is the only protection we have right now. And let me put this in terms that I think we can all understand. We, all of us, the citizens of the poorest large city in America, we're the Eagles. Your constituents are the quarterback. We live and work here, pay our taxes, send our kids to the public schools. We elect you and we can make or break this team. The Chiefs are the federal government now led by two billionaire oligarchs. We're watching them sack the Department of Education, intercept food for poor people, block our arts, decimate our civil liberties. This body, you are the offensive line. That's right. You are Saquon, A.J., Jordan. You are all of them. Your job is to protect us, to hold the line, to receive the pleas that we pass to you, to find the openings past the federal government and to carry them forward so that our city can survive. I know political campaigns need money, but I also know billionaires don't need tax breaks. Small businesses, many who have not yet fully recovered from COVID and are staggering under the weight of inflation, they don't need to have an added burden just so billionaires can get richer. I'm going to sing the last part of my testimony just because Councilman O'Rourke is here. "There is hurting in my family and there is sorrow in this town/there is panic across the nation and there is wailing the whole world around/you must be open. You must be willing, for to be hopeless which seems so strange/it dishonors those who go before us so find your hearts and be the light of change." Thank you. (Applause.)
Tough act to follow. Good afternoon, Councilmembers. My name is Sergio Cea. I use el/he/him pronouns, and I'm the Political Director of Reclaim Philadelphia as well as a facilitator for the Alliance for a Just Philadelphia, a coalition of over 30 community organizations in the city, including Reclaim. The Alliance is demanding City Council put forward an equitable tax plan. The budget and tax plan as presented by Mayor Parker is a reverse Robin Hood, prioritizing the needs of the haves against those of the have-nots in a time of spiraling wealth inequality. Mayor Parker's pushing massive tax cuts for big businesses through BIRT. What we do know is that these cuts combined with the wage tax cuts accounted for more than half of the City tax revenues last year, and the money to interest behind the Tax Reform Commission want the City to shift dependency on taxing businesses to taxing real estate and property. So homeowners in Philadelphia will see their taxes rise while big corporations will see their taxes go down. Sorry, lost my sight, make it make sense. I think I hear the Mayor and City Council say they support small businesses, but I will watch what you do, not what you say. Parker is rolling over and not defending the exemption in courts and even former Councilmember Maria Quinones- Sanchez says the City could win, but we need a Mayor and Council who will actually fight. And with what is happening nationally in the background, billionaires in the White House cutting funding left and right, we are already seeing the results of this chaos. We cannot say we are against what Trump and Republicans are doing when we have oligarchy being supported by Democrats right here in Philadelphia. We need an equitable tax plan now that taxes the ultra wealthy instead of giving them huge tax cuts on the backs of homeowners and small businesses. This is not a time to be caving on taxes for the wealthy. The rainy day is here. We are in a perilous situation and we need City Council to invest in a budget suited for the political moment we are in. We need a budget that invests in the essential services and programs that make our communities more safe, healthy and whole. We saw what happens when Council caves to the whims of the ultra wealthy in Philadelphia. Do you want to be their pawns again? To read more about the Alliance's demands, you can go to adjustphilly.org. Thank you. (Applause.)
Next we have Myra Clemens and Madeline Morgan. And they are followed by Joan Pompei and Kimberly Cooke. (Witnesses approached Witness table.)
Hello. Good afternoon, City Councilmembers. My name is Joan Pompei. I have been a domestic worker in Philadelphia for over three decades. I am a member leader of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, PA Chapter. I am concerned about the current tax plan in the City budget because it will cut taxes to big corporations and millionaires, and we need this money to fund our city. We need to tax the richest in our city to pay for critical needs, like allocating $3 million to $1 million for the Office of Workers Protection. I am also concerned about tax cuts for corporations and millionaires, because as workers we need a fully-funded Office of Worker Protections. If there isn't enough money coming into the City, that office would continue to be underfunded and workers will keep suffering from insufficient responses from the City when our rights are violated. We are currently fighting for the Power Act to expand and retaliation protections and improve labor enforcement. 14 out of of you are co-sponsors of 17 that legislation. Without enough revenue coming into the City, the Office of Worker Protections will continue to struggle to protect our rights. The wealthier should pay so that workers can survive. Thank you. (Applause.)
Hi, everyone. My name is Kimmy Cooke, and I am speaking in opposition to the tax bills in the proposed budget. Right now our communities are asking if they can rely on Philadelphia city leadership to have their backs as the Trump Administration strips more protections from us every day. Mayor Parker's tax plan looks grimly similar to what we're seeing in the White House. It takes away protections for small businesses while slashing taxes for the mega corporations. It is extremely negligent and risky to codify 15-plus years of tax giveaways to big business at a time of unparalleled instability in recent history. Just as we saw at the Sixers arena, we cannot put our faith into these billionaires who will always prioritize their bottom line. It is shocking that this Administration isn't even bothering to fight for our small businesses. Before the BIRT exemption has even gone through the court system, the City is ready to give up. We wouldn't need to spend $30 million to transition small businesses to paying the BIRT if we fought for the exemption that has a strong chance holding up in court. The mega corporations who will benefit the most from the BIRT cuts have no obligation to actually create jobs or create jobs that are here for the people living in Philly, not New York. We are tired of trickle-down economics for decades when we know that it doesn't work. This budget proposal takes money that would go to serving working-class Philadelphians and redistributes it to the biggest corporations. The plan will ultimately gut our critical public services like libraries, schools, parks and sanitation. I worked as a City worker with Parks & Recreation for five years and saw firsthand the result of decades of divestment, understaffed, underresourced and unsafe building conditions. The Rec center that I worked at had its doors closed since 2020, an absolute disgrace. We just saw what happens when we are fighting for scraps. The Community College of Philadelphia staff and faculty were on the brink of going on strike, fighting for good jobs and quality higher education to be accessible for all. It shouldn't take 15 months to be told their basic needs can be met. Their budget along with all of our essential public services should be fully funded, and it should be paid for by the ultra rich that aren't paying their fair share. We need a tax plan that taps into the extreme wealth created in our city and we need it now. Every day Philadelphians deserve to know is this City going to once again be for the billionaires or will it stand with the working people who elected them? We are waiting and we'll be watching. (Applause.)
Is there any one else here for public comment whose name has not been called? (Witness approached Witness table.)
Hello, everyone. My name is Lucas Martz, and I am here to talk in opposition to the tax reform proposed. And I'm here really to call it what it is. It is trickle-down economics, as we have all been hearing today. And if I understand the proposition correctly, what it looks like to me is that the people proposing this plan believe that this money, these hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenue, is better off in the pockets of these corporations than it is in the City budget. I personally don't really understand how you all here think that in order to make the best results for the City of Philadelphia that you ought to be giving up tax revenue and handing it off to businesses in what feels to me like the hopes that those businesses will then better the city themselves. Obviously, when it's in the tax revenue you all get to decide what happens to it. But when it's in the budgets of these mega corporations, we don't really have any say over what happens to it and you're just kind of crossing your fingers hoping that they are willing to invest it back in their employees. On top of all of that, this proposed tax plan is on the net income. Meaning, that salaries and wages are already paid. This would just incentivize these businesses to hold on to those profits, keep it in their pockets and not increase wage or salary as trickle-down economics supposedly suggests might happen. On top of all of that, I feel as though these tax reforms in their nature is essentially supposing that the budget itself can afford to lose that much money. And as we've been hearing from everyone today, it certainly cannot. If you have noticed, the people speaking in opposition they have been talking about people, working-class people and the businesses they like, the small mom-and-pop businesses that they go to often. If you've listened to the people who talk in favor of it, they talk about numbers, revenue, GDP, capital investment. These people do not necessarily care about Philadelphians. They care about making these numbers increase. What I would often argue is that continuing down the path of endorsing trickle-down economics policies could replace the entirety of the City of Philadelphia with one big shopping mall. You could get every major corporation to set up shop here and they would be doing big business. The numbers would all look better. You'd have better revenue, better GDP, more capital investment. But if it displaces the entirety of the City of Philadelphia, all of the businesses and people that we love, and replaces it with one big shopping mall that technically is better economically, is that really what we want? Is that really what is better for the City of Philadelphia? So I stand here today in opposition of this bill, asking us to stop going down this trickle- down economics pathway. Hold on to the money in our own tax revenue so that we can decide what happens with it rather than just crossing our fingers and hoping that some corporate megalopolis decides to pass it on to us. Thank you all very much. (Applause.)
Thank you very much. This concludes our public comment session. The Chair recognizes Majority Leader Katherine Gilmore Richardson for a motion --
We had a short day. For a motion of the public hearing and meeting on the bills and resolutions before the Committee today stand in recess until Tuesday, April 1, 2025 at 10:00 a.m.
Thank you, Mr. President. I move that the public hearing and meeting on the bills and resolutions before the Committee today stand in recess until Tuesday, April 1, 2025 at 10:00 a.m. in Room 400 City Hall. (Duly seconded.)
It has been moved and properly seconded that the public hearing and meeting on the bills and resolution before the Committee today stand in recess until Tuesday, April 1, 2025 at 10:00 a.m. in Room 400 City Hall. All those in favor will signify by saying aye. (Aye.)
The ayes have it and the motion carries. This Committee stands in recess. (Committee of the Whole concluded at 4:42 p.m.) C E R T I F I C A T I O N I, hereby certify that the proceedings and evidence noted are contained fully and accurately in the stenographic notes taken by me in the foregoing matter, and that this is a correct transcript of the same. __________________________________ TANEHA CARROLL