Any changes would have to be put to city voters for approval. Nutter said his goal was to sign a law this year and get the charter change on the May ballot.
Nutter and Green think the BRT should be replaced with new agencies, but Nutter thinks he should appoint all the board members. Green thinks Council and the judges should share that power.
Council Majority Whip Marian Tasco said she didn't think Green's legislation was "too far off" from Nutter's goals.
One exception is the BRT patronage clerks and assistants who are kept on the school district payroll, allowing them to remain active in politics. Nutter said all BRT workers should be on the city payroll, but Green's bill would leave them where they are.
"I don't think it's an issue for any of the Council members, just for the mayor," said Tasco, herself a Democratic ward leader.
"I feel very bad for those people," she added. "They've been made to look like the problem with the BRT."
Zachary Stalberg, president of the Committee of Seventy, a civic watchdog group, said the agreement was "a very important first step."
He said, though, that city leaders needed to make the changes permanent. The real goal, he said, should be to remove politics from the BRT's operations by changing the appointments process and scrapping the patronage system.
"I would hate to see it end there," he said. "You don't want to fall back into the old practices once the spotlight is off."
Likewise, Helen Gym of Parents United for Better Education said her group would not be satisfied until the school district - currently struggling with a huge budget deficit - stopped spending $4 million a year to pay the BRT patronage workers.
"They can call it what they want, but it's not reform until the school district employees are on the city payroll," she said. "Obviously, we're still waiting to see when that will happen."
Contact staff writer Joseph Tanfani at 215-854-2684 or jtanfani@phillynews.com.
Inquirer staff writer Jeff Shields contributed to this article.
