Hey City Council: You’re Supposed to Be Better than Harrisburg
City Council’s failure to move a liquor-by-the-drink tax yesterday disappointed parents and school supporters all
across the city.
Today over 100 parents, students, and community members packed City Council chambers—in the middle of a workday afternoon—and testified for over three hours to demand movement on the liquor-by-the-drink tax. For weeks, parents and other community members have made thousands of phone calls, sent hundreds of letters, spent hours on lobbying visits, and gathered countless petition signatures in support of raising desperately needed funds for our public.Opposite us were a handful of lobbyists, whose sole job is to be paid to gain access to City Council members and state legislators.
To our disgust, Council could not muster enough support on the liquor-by-the-drink bill in order to vote it out of committee. Despite testimony on the desperate need of our students, and despite presentation of data demonstrating how this tax will not undermine food and beverage establishments, Council could not summon the collective will to do right by our city’s children.
As proposed, the liquor-by-the-drink bill would raise $22 million for Philadelphia’s public schools by increasing the tax rate on liquor by the drink from 10% to 15%. In effect this would add 15 to 50 cents to the price of a drink and be borne by individual customers as a sales tax—not by businesses. As a regional hub, Philadelphia will continue to attract suburban visitors and tourists as well as local residents, none of whom will be deterred from patronizing bars and restaurants by paying an additional charge ranging from 15-50 cents per drink. Indeed research conducted by the PA Budget and Policy Center found that when this tax was first introduced back in 1996, it did not depress sales, job growth, and new business as the restaurant lobby had claimed. Rather, restaurants experienced phenomenal growth over the next several years as measured both by the number of new