"It's one really busted agency, and it can be fixed," said Zack Stalberg, president and chief executive officer of the Committee of Seventy, a Philadelphia government watchdog organization.
"Schools are tough to fix. The prison system is tough to fix. The BRT is not hard to fix."
Last week, Mayor Nutter and City Council vowed to do just that. Citing Inquirer reports that detailed chronic mismanagement and ethical shortcomings at the agency, Council began considering a bill that would dissolve the BRT, while Nutter called on its leadership to resign.
The BRT's leadership, however, defied the mayor, refusing to step down. And the agency, which doubles as a jobs bank for people connected to the city's Democratic and Republican Parties, has powerful political allies.
"The findings of the series and the revelations of patronage are appalling, but in Philadelphia that doesn't mean that change will come," Stalberg said. "It means the fight is on."
Nutter has taken to the brawl with gusto, quickly deploying what one political operative called "the nuclear option" by publicly demanding the seven-member board's resignation.
If anything, though, that step appears to have steeled the spines of the agency's leaders.
After promising for five years to develop property values that matched sales prices, the BRT released those numbers April 29. BRT leaders insist the new computer-based system will make property taxes more accurate and uniform - and less susceptible to manipulation.
They now say they want to stay on to repair the failed system they supervise.
