Foglia was ready.
"Bobby, I've had enough," he told Brady. "I'm being blamed for everything. I can't take no more."
With that opening, Brady made a call to Mayor Nutter: Here's your chance, he said.
The BRT has long been a target for Philadelphia's civic reformers because of its slipshod assessments, its backroom picks of board members, its patronage. The chorus for change rose loudly again after The Inquirer published a series on the BRT in May.
But the opportunity to create a new BRT came not through public hearings and angry taxpayers. Instead, there were months of back-channel talks and, finally, the quiet blessing of Brady - who, as party chair, helps decide who runs the BRT and which loyalists get its low-level patronage jobs.
"He's the congressman and chair of the party," said Nutter, asked why he was talking with Brady about what to do with the tax agency. "He knows a lot of the people."
The account of how the BRT deal came together was supplied through interviews with key players and others familiar with the talks, some of whom spoke on condition of anonymity.
On Wednesday, Nutter announced that the BRT had agreed to turn over management duties to the city finance director. The six remaining BRT members - who make between $70,000 and $75,000 a year for part-time work - would keep their jobs and continue to hear appeals for up to a year.
Nutter said the agreement, reached after weeks of negotiations with BRT members, was essential to restoring public confidence in the city's property assessments.
"They were very cooperative," Nutter said. "It was not something that was contentious at all."
It was far different from Nutter's first attempt to remake the BRT. In May, after The Inquirer series, he announced to reporters that the BRT members should simply quit.
