By STEVE SHERMAN, For The Philadelphia Tribune; PUBLISHED April 22, 2023 https://tinyurl.com/yszt37ts
PHILADELPHIA – Rebecca Rhynhart, who is seeking the Democratic nomination for mayor of Philadelphia, is steeped in money and politics. That background launched her into municipal treasury, budgeting and eventually leading the City Controller’s office in two mayoral administrations where she spotted major problems in the city’s policing and finances from that vantage point.
She’s the daughter of retired college professors – mom Alice Sayles was an adjunct math professor at Penn State Abington. From Burlington, Kentucky, her dad Frederick Rhynhart was a political science prof at Northern Kentucky University.
Born in Wisconsin, Rhynhart grew up in Abington. She earned a Bachelor of Arts from Middlebury College and received a graduate degree in Public Administration from Columbia University.
Following a stint in the financial services industry — she worked at Bear Stearns, coordinating with city governments across the country —Rhynhart got her start in government as City Treasurer in 2008 under former Mayor Michael Nutter, and later served as his Budget Director and Chief Administrative Officer, a job she continued under the current administration.
In 2017, she ran for City Controller, defeating three-time Democratic incumbent Alan Butkovitz and was easily reelected in 2021.
After five-years in the City Controller’s office, now she’s running for mayor.
Safe to say this candidate – one of 10 running for the Democratic Primary nomination come May 16 – has plenty of experience managing municipal budgets.
In the Democratic Primary Debate held April 11 at Temple University and broadcast live by Fox 29–WTXF, Rhynhart was asked about budget cuts and where she’d start on day one as mayor.
The former City Controller says she’d begin with operations, specifically overtime. Rhynhart says she can save the city $40 million a year just by managing overtime more efficiently.
“The city is not managing well,” said Rhynhart.
“It isn’t about putting more dollars into the budget. In fact, the dollars have gone up by billions over the last four or five years with a decline in services.”
The city budget is not the number one issue in this election, however. The voters’ top priority is reducing gun violence. While the homicide rate is down – 516 homicides were recorded in 2022 after a record-setting 562 in 2021 – shootings that didn’t result in a fatality have remained steady with 1,791 in 2022 and 1,831 the year before.
Rhynhart was asked much earlier in the debate, of course, what she’d do to stop the shootings.
She says she’d roll out gun reduction programs that have been successful in cities such as Oakland and New Orleans. These programs target both victims and perpetrators of gun violence, offering social services as a way out.
“As mayor, I’d make our city safer on day one,” said Rhynhart. “That involves implementing the proven programs that have been shown to work in New Orleans and Oakland – 50 percent homicide reduction rate in Oakland, 27 percent in New Orleans.”
This candidate says she’d activate an emergency operations center on day one, which would coordinate policing efforts with that of the Streets Department, Behavioral Health and the District Attorney’s office.
Rhynhart says she’d add some social remedies to that mix starting with group violence intervention and cognitive behavioral therapies. She even says she wants to keep libraries and rec centers open later to help keep kids off the dangerous streets of Philadelphia.
Rhynhart resigned her post Oct. 25, announcing her intention to run for mayor the next day at Nichols Park in West Philadelphia. Flanked by her husband David McDuff and her daughter Julia, she chose that location because it was the scene of 15 shootings and eight homicides last year.
Rhynhart has been endorsed by Nutter and former Mayor John Street, and most recently The Philadelphia Inquirer. She also has the support of the fifth, eighth, ninth and 15th Wards, some of the highest-turnout voting blocs in the city.
She lacks the big union support that opponents Cherelle Parker and Helen Gym have received, however. Heck, even businessman Jeff Brown has several unions backing his run for the Democratic nomination.
Campaign manager Kellan White is confident Rhynhart is capable of winning the Primary, which is tantamount to gaining the office as Philadelphia hasn’t had a Republican mayor since 1952. One reason for White’s optimism is that both labor and political leaders are split in their support.
“No one has a clear coalition like Jim Kenney had in 2015,” said White.
“Really, it’s going to come down to who is best positioned to lead this city and who the voters resonate with and we feel like we are right there with everyone else, regardless of the endorsements.”
“And we feel like our message resonates with voters.”
That message includes increasing tree canopies across the city, lowering the city’s wage tax, and rethinking the current policy of taxing both net profits and gross income on small business.
Rhynhart wants to double the number of Black-owned businesses during her tenure as mayor. She says if she’s elected, 40 percent of the city’s contract dollars will go to Minority-owned businesses. At 2.8 percent, Philadelphia currently ranks 24th in the country for Black-owned businesses.
“Like owning a house, owning a business is one of the best ways to create intergenerational wealth,” said Rhynhart. “And for too long, Black people have been denied credit, insurance and opportunities to start and grow their own companies.
“We can and must do better.”
Rhynhart wants to prioritize education in Philadelphia by not only increasing funding for the School District but also by appointing a School Board that is held accountable for students’ performance in the classroom.
Philadelphia’s public schools are not performing well. The candidate points to the fact that just 30 percent of the city’s third graders are reading at grade level in 2022. That’s a five percent decrease since 2019.
”Our kids have struggled more than ever since the pandemic hit and we need a clear, effective plan to improve reading levels,” she said. “Our schools need more funding.”
But more funding is not always the answer she adds, however. Rhynhart reports the last two mayors increased annual spending on education by over $500 million with mixed results in performance outcomes.
A progressive, Rhynhart campaigned in 2017 on bringing modernization and efficiency to the Controller’s Office and more transparency to city government. Her office released a significant audit of the Philadelphia Police Department (PPD) shortly before she announced her candidacy.
With a cost hovering around $300,000 to complete and ordered by City Council in the wake of the George Floyd protests – and clashes between protestors and police – that took place across the city in 2020, the audit found that, except for the 22nd District in North Philadelphia, communities with higher density of black and brown residents wait significantly longer for police to respond. The PPD audit said that just 40 percent of sworn officers actually patrol the streets and that was without accounting for vacationing and disabled cops.
PPD auditors found both abuse and a lack of satisfactory record-keeping with regard to officers out on heart and lung disabilities sustained while on duty. The office also discovered an archaic method of sharing information among police that involved too much paper, not nearly enough technology, and in some cases, actually driving the info between districts in squad cars.
It also said the Department needed to revamp Operation Pinpoint, a 2019 boots-on-the-ground program deployed by Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw designed to combat crime in communities hardest hit by crime, with the audit keying on inefficient data collection, unsatisfactory training methods and expanding the program too quickly across the city in 2020.
With its $750 million budget, the PPD has the largest expenditure across city government. The controller’s report found however that those moneys were not necessarily allocated to communities where it was most needed but instead was divided up according to historical spending levels.
Fraternal Order of Police President John McNesby responded negatively to the audit in a Fox 29 news report.
“If you want to run for mayor, we wish you luck, but don’t do it on the backs of hard-working police officers in the City of Philadelphia,” said McNesby.
To which Rhynhart responded “Mr. McNesby would rather politicize a problem than get to its root cause.”
During Rhynhart’s tenure, the Controller’s Office also conducted audits of the Sheriff’s Office, the city’s sexual harassment policies, as well as the way it has managed its finances. Her office has also published public policy analysis and data on city budgets, gun violence, trash pickup and revenue from the beverage tax.
She’s batted heads with the current Kenney administration on several occasions, starting with her discovery of a missing $33 million in the city’s cash account in 2018. More recently, in 2022, the Controller’s Office found that only 21 percent of the $155 million the city spent on gun violence prevention programs went toward decreasing shootings in the long term. The figures grow worse for 2023 with the city spending $208 million on gun violence prevention with just 17 percent of those monies going toward intervention programs.