JOHN TAYLOR: Philly’s Best Voice In Harrisburg?

BY TONY WEST

The most important Philadelphian in Harrisburg, by some measures, is an unpretentious, plain-spoken native of the River Wards who, on paper, looks no different from any other State Representative. He’s John Taylor, a 27-year veteran of the State House who is now the only Republican in Philly’s delegation to the General Assembly.

This matters when Republicans control both the House and the Senate as well as the Governor’s Mansion. In practice, most legislation will be put into play and passed by Republicans in 2012. Taylor’s 27 Philadelphia Democrat colleagues can propose anything they want … but only Taylor’s side gets to dispose. So if the city needs anything from Capitol Hill, many local Dems are turning to Taylor to get the message across to his fellow Republicans.

It’s not necessarily a happy position. “I wish this had happened to me in the ’90s, when we had all that money to give out,” shrugs Taylor. “Now the issues are about who’s going to get cut.”

But Taylor has always been a man others could work with. Democrats outnumber Republicans in his district and he’s always had to deal with Democrat peers and officials. So he’s racked up a lot of experience in bipartisan negotiations. And his taste runs to problem-solving rather than theory-building. “Some people are very involved with ‘liberty’ philosophically,” he notes. “My concerns are more practical.”

Taylor is an expert in the gritty business of his old blue-collar River Ward communities – urban America to the bone. In the last term, Taylor was Minority Chair of the Urban Affairs Committee. Real-estate blight and shabby schools are familiar threats to his constituents; he has authored trail-blazing legislation to address these problems.

No one can overlook Taylor’s expertise in urban issues – “I’m the only urban Republican in the state,” he notes. But when the GOP took over the House in 2010, Taylor relinquished the chair of Urban Affairs to get hold of Liquor Control. This Committee controls one of the hot-button issues Gov. Tom Corbett had campaigned on: privatizing wine and spirits sales. Folks have been talking about it since 1934 but no administration, Republican or Democrat, has been able to do it. This subject triggers deep disputes that bridge party lines and rile rival industries. Taylor had ideas he wanted to try out.

House Majority Leader Mike Turzai (R-Allegheny) last spring introduced a measure, HB 11, which would have scrapped retail State wine-and-spirits stores entirely, selling them off to the highest bidder – but kept the Commonwealth in the wholesale spirits business. This didn’t make sense to Taylor. He amended HB 11 in committee last month to make it a different critter.

Taylor’s plan will now keep the State stores and their unionized workforce. But it will allow 1,200 beer distributors (whose private market is artificially created by State law) to start wine sales as well. Currently, 100 private “L” Licensees, many of them big-box food sellers, already have this power. Taylor figures the value of the “D” Licensees will climb with this new writ; their owners will either move into a new business or cash out with those who will. Either way, consumers will get more retail outlets, says Taylor. And the State will get its taxes.

“Some people say the government shouldn’t be in the business of liquor-selling,” says Taylor. “But then, why is the State in the gambling business? Yet we depend on both for revenue.”

Taverners would also gain new beer-takeout sales rights though, so every industry found something to grumble about. This may be the glue that holds a good compromise together. Taylor’s plan cleared Committee and is due to pass the House next week. We’ll see what the Senate does with it.

This is Taylor’s style: a negotiated, large-scale but modest, reform of real business systems, rather than a sudden radical overhaul that never actually shows up.

Taylor’s doggedness comes out in another signature issue: founding a Land Bank for Philadelphia (and anywhere else that wants one). This idea, pioneered in the Rustbelt city of Flint, Mich., would create a single agency to acquire abandoned and neglected properties, swiftly repackaging and disencumbering them, and moving them on to new uses as sales to private owners or as productive public uses.

Philadelphia sits atop a monster pile of unused and unusable properties. It’s the Sa’udi Arabia of vacant lots. Taylor wants to see something, almost anything, done with them, faster. Land Banks are a tested tool, he says.

Pennsylvania’s Land Bank Act sailed through the House in 2010 but died literally in the last hours of the Senate. Some worrIed this was a form of “eminent domain”, a prerogative now scowled on by many both left and right. This concern sounds extreme, to anyone who’s seen a rowhouse block blighted by an eyesore rotting away under a hapless estate executor in Florida. But it isn’t immediately obvious to a legislator from Malvern or Bird in Hand.

Taylor didn’t quit Urban Affairs in 2011. He still wants to see these properties either repaired or moved to new owners. His Land Bank bill will soon hit the legislative bricks again. This time, he aims for a swifter run through the House and a better chance of nailing the Senate.

Taylor is also pressing to take advantage of other anti-blight laws recently passed: Act 90, which permits the City to tighten the screws on owners of dilapidated properties, and the Conservatorship Act, which allows nonprofit corporations to seize abandoned properties and redevelop them without going through condemnation first.

A State legislator can’t deal with urban issues without dealing with his City peers. Taylor has been working with Council Members Bill Green, María Quiñones Sánchez and Bobby Henon on the Land Bank proposal and on the business tax.

But school issues are filling Taylor’s plate these days. Simultaneous closings and reorganizations in the School District of Philadelphia and the Archdiocese of Philadelphia have thrown Taylor’s constituents, like many other working-class Philadelphians, into turmoil.

Taylor is working on responses to the threatened closures of St. Hubert, St. George and St. Laurentius. Some of these projects may turn out to be innovative models. Watch for big new developments in coming weeks.

Taylor was a constant advocate of the Philadelphia Safe Schools Advocate – an independent job shoved by Philly State Reps down the throat of the School District, which critics charge wants to cover up violent crimes committed on its premises. Safe-school foes got the last Governor, Ed Rendell, to ax this position contrary to law. It has just been reinstated and Taylor is bubbling over the new Advocate, Kelly Hodge, who he says has “a real grasp of the job.”

Taylor is still haunted by memories of the last independent Philadelphia School Board, whose meetings he often attended. “They would go on for hours, but they never talked about the kids. It was always about the contracts,” he recalls.

In the big, bad city, bad schools and bad buildings are related, says Taylor. If each starts falling apart, and the local community has no effective control over either process, then it’s doomed. You’ll see flight and blight and plight.

Many of Taylor’s neighborhoods have survived pretty well, though. Some have gentrified a bit, like Fishtown and Port Richmond; some have merely hung on, like Kensington and Bridesburg. All have problems. As a whole, though, his 177th Dist. is as good a model for a functioning inner-city, working-class Republican lawmaker’s seat as you’ll find anywhere in the nation.

It keeps him busy. After redistricting, Taylor picked up a lot of new Mayfair constituents. He wanted them and is happy with them; but he still has to meet them. So he’ll be working hard this winter, before the April primary, one church hall and one doorbell at a time.

Like every other Republican in Philadelphia, Taylor has been caught up in the factional war between old-school Meehan loyalists and the younger set, who march to the State Party drum more often than not. It pains him. “All I do is get in the middle of friends vs. friends,” he complains.

Taylor just hired as his aide Marc Collazzo, a State Party stalwart who ran to retain the 170th Dist. seat once held by George Kenney (R-Northeast). Collazzo was trounced by Kevin Boyle in the general, but he worked hard and did well.

Look for Taylor to play a key role in formatting a Republican voice for the city in 2012.