This week, if you're looking for your state senator/ mayor/council person, don't bother searching the local halls of power.
Instead, try the Time Warner Cable Arena - or one of the nearby bars - in the Queen City of Charlotte, site of this week's Democratic National Convention.
The list of Philadelphia pols making the trip is long, topped by Mayor Nutter, who is to give a speech at the convention.
Here's a partial roll call of the others planning to serve as delegates, superdelegates, and something with the acronym PLEO that we worked hard to determine stands for Party Leader/Elected Official:
U.S. Reps. Bob Brady, Chaka Fattah, and Allyson Y. Schwartz and former Congresswoman and current Chelsea Clinton mother-in-law Majorie Margolies-Mezvinsky.
Council President Darrell L. Clarke and members Cindy Bass, Blondell Reynolds Brown, Kenyatta Johnson, Curtis Jones Jr., Maria Quiñones Sánchez, and Marian B. Tasco.
District Attorney Seth Williams, State Sens. Vincent Hughes and Daylin Leach, State Reps. Angel Cruz and Brendan Boyle; and former D.A. Lynne Abraham.
NAACP leader J. Whyatt Mondesire; labor leaders Jerry Jordan and Catherine Scott; and superlawyer Stephen Cozen.
Phew! If the city's perpetually out-of-power Republicans ever wanted to stage a coup, this might be their chance.
- Troy Graham
Will Mayor Nutter make Jay-Z and crew pay the same freight as the Mummers for police overtime and other costs incurred by the music impresario's Made in America festival this weekend?
In 2009, Nutter began demanding that organizers of parades and ethnic and neighborhood events start paying for police and other city services they used. That created an uproar as small nonprofits got bills of $100,000 and more.
Eventually, Councilwoman Maria Quiñones Sánchez passed a law limiting what the city could charge, and Rep. Bob Brady found private money to pay the remainder for most events.
Typically, the city presents event organizers with a written cost estimate ahead of time. But for Made in America, city officials have said they will not provide financial details until later, though city officials say festival promoters will pay the "lion's share" of costs.
Nutter's spokesman, Mark McDonald, said Friday that "it is the very same process that other groups have worked through." The agreement was not yet public because it had yet to be "legally conformed," he said.
Representatives of the Mummers and other groups that organize parades and festivals say they will be watching to make sure Jay-Z does not get special treatment.
"I was surprised the Nutter administration had no cost estimates on such a significant festival, especially because they almost canceled the Mummers Parade in 2009 and in 2010," said George Badey, a Mummer who is running as a Democrat in Rep. Patrick Meehan's Seventh District. "Maybe they realize major events can produce a net financial gain and they help Philadelphia retain its stature as a world-class city." - Miriam Hill
