Headlines & Happenings
08/27/2010: City Council finally responded to calls (from the Committee of Seventy and the mayor, among others) to kill the controversial drop program by ... announcing another study. The Council President says Council will pay up to $30,000 to an actuarial firm based in Baltimore and Washington to examine the $80,000 Boston College study commissioned by the mayor (and requested by The Committee of Seventy), which showed that the DROP program has cost the city pension fund an extra quarter of a billion dollars. No word on how long it will take to study the study.
08/26/2010: The Philadelphia Daily News editorial board agrees with the Committee of Seventy in calling for embattled PHA head Carl Greene to resign. Other news outlets nationwide, meanwhile, begin to take notice of the increasing pressure on Greene and the PHA Board. Seventy executives appeared on a number of local TV stations discussing the issue.
08/25/2010: The Committee of Seventy today called on embattled Philadelphia Housing Authority head Carl Greene to resign amid reports that the agency had quietly settled four claims of sexual harassment against him. Although the settlements were paid by PHA's insurance provider, the agency reportely had to pay a $150,000 deductible, funded by taxpayer dollars.