Darco is dead on, that L&I is always amenable to pressure from the
powerful.
Important to note, though, that there's a long 90 feet between "not out
of the question" and "on first base." Coulda-mighta does not demonstrate
any pressure was actually applied around here.
An Apr. 28 /Daily News /article noted, under the Nutter Administration,
total City citations have soared from 60,000 to 100,000 annually. All
departments are under pressure to enforce more regs. That's particularly
true when regs are also revenue sources, and the City budget is
imploding. Every penny a bureaucrat raises by enforcement, takes a penny
of heat off his funding.
So L&I hardly needs arm-twisting by UCD to go sniffing down Baltimore
Avenue -- or up 5th Street -- looking for new citations to issue in
2010. It has a Motive, as Agatha Christie would say.
In fact, evidence at hand hints at a palliative role, not a punitive
role, for UCD. UCD has a great deal at stake on a restaurant boom in UC.
It's promoting a brace of restaurant specials right now, many of whose
participants are on Baltimore. Your average woo-hah
neighborhood-nightlife flak does *not plan to kick off her spring
promos* with a string of L&I busts on her strip! L&I would undoubtedly
score more points and make more money if it just swooped in and busted
people unwarned. A well-organized educational advance tour suggests
someone has been talking to L&I about the needs of burgeoning, but
inexperienced, neighborhood businesses. Who might that be?
Now, if someone can cite a dining enterprise on Baltimore that is
supposedly in bad stink with local Powers That Be ... then you would
have the beginnings of a case for an "evil empire" plotline. At the
moment, though, this is lacking.
-- Tony West
On 5/17/2010 10:14 AM, Lalevic, Darco wrote:
"L&I is still acting as an independent entity"
Makes me laugh so hard... L&I (like most public entities in this city)
is extremely responsive to political pressure -- and in this city has
a history of being used as a weapon.
Whether or not UCD applies that pressure or any other entity is not
out of the question. UCD is just an easy villain because it represents
the politically powerful groups in West Philly/University City
