Yet even as the troubled BRT faced political extinction over the summer, it continued the same practices that won it a reputation for incompetence and mismanagement, an Inquirer review shows.
The board started mailing yet another round of tax increases to 18,000 city homeowners in August, even though BRT members had said they didn't plan any more piecemeal tax hikes. Some bills more than doubled. The last batch of increases went out in November.
The notices were heavily concentrated in some wards, like Sladek's, with little discernible pattern. In some cases, an Inquirer analysis shows, BRT assessors singled out just a few houses on a block without apparent rhyme or reason.
Critics say the random nature of the tax hikes is a clear sign of the agency's continuing disarray, and an illustration of just how difficult it will be to repair the cockeyed system of property values the BRT has built.
The BRT panel will be around until at least Sept. 30, handling appeals, but Mayor Nutter's administration already has taken over tax assessments under a deal formalized this month.
A new BRT director chosen by Nutter, lawyer Richard Negrin, moved last week into the office once occupied by Enrico "Ricky" Foglia, a former patronage worker who got his job with the assistance of U.S. Rep. Bob Brady, the city Democratic Party chief. Foglia resigned in September.
Soon, Negrin acknowledges, he will have to confront the central question for Philadelphia property owners: How does the agency begin to repair the city's broken and inequitable assessments? The problems are well-known: The BRT's assessments are so out of kilter that only 3 percent of city homeowners pay the right amount, according to an Inquirer analysis last year.
