In June I read in the Inquirer that Councilmember Curtis Jones plans to retire in December 2027, right after the November election, and, if he is reelected, be sworn into a new term in January 2028. Retiring between terms lets him collect a lump sum from the city's Deferred Retirement Option Plan, which he told the paper would come to closer to $350,000.
DROP lets a city worker who is eligible to retire commit to leaving within four years, while the pension payments they would have received pile up in an account they collect on the way out. For most workers, leaving means leaving. For an official who just won reelection, it can mean a short break between terms.
I did not know that was legal. Did you? In 2010 Jones voted for the law that closed DROP to future elected officials. Everyone already serving, including him, kept it. He is doing what that law allows. He is not the point of this. The law is.
So I looked up how that law was written, and kept going.
Three bills would have stopped it
Four times, members of Council proposed keeping elected officials out of DROP. None of the four got a vote.
- 2004, Michael Nutter (040269). Barred officials who first took office on or after January 2, 2006. Jones took office in 2008.
- 2008, Bill Green (080020). Barred elected officials, except those already enrolled or with eight years of city service. Jones was a co-sponsor.
- 2009, Jim Kenney (090209). One sentence: "No elected official shall be eligible to participate in the DROP program."
- 2010, Marian Tasco (100542). Would have ended DROP for everyone not already in it.
Nutter's, Kenney's and Tasco's would each have kept Jones out.
The bill that did pass, 100095, went through 17 to 0 in 2010 because the state required it. Its title says it was "conforming the City's DROP program to the requirements of Pennsylvania Act No. 44 of 2009." And Council's version let everyone already in office keep DROP.
A year later Council voted to keep the program itself. In June 2011 one committee heard Tasco's bill to end DROP and a bill to keep it with lower costs. The second passed. When Mayor Nutter vetoed it because he wanted DROP gone, Council overrode him 17 to 0. Tasco's bill never came back.
It is not just DROP
I sorted every bill introduced from 2000 through 2023 that changed a rule for the city's elected officials by subject, and checked which subjects ever got a recorded vote. Five never did, on any bill: hiring relatives, outside jobs and income, term limits, public money for campaigns, and a redistricting commission.
That is 23 bills. With the four DROP bills, it is 27, from 11 members over two decades. About one Philadelphia bill in five dies without a recorded vote. On these six subjects it was 27 of 28, and the 28th was the one the state required.
If you want to know where your councilmember stands on hiring relatives, there is no vote to look up.
What I want, up front
Two things. First, a recorded vote on the anti-nepotism bill, pass or fail, with seventeen names attached. Councilmembers hire their own staff outside civil service, and as far as I can find, no city law specifically stops them from hiring relatives. Second, a change to Council's rules so every bill on these subjects gets a recorded vote of the full Council before the term ends.
I am not saying Council is corrupt, or that anyone is hiding from these bills on purpose. The record shows what happened, not why.
The 23 bills
- Hiring relatives: seven bills, 2001 to 2008, four from Nutter, two from Frank Rizzo Jr. and one from Jannie Blackwell. Nutter's 2001 version treated "the Mayor, the City Controller, and members of Council" as controlling every city office, so none of them could recommend a relative for a city job. It cleared committee in April 2003 and was placed on the calendar for a final vote, but it was never called up. The term ended and it died.
- Outside jobs and income: three bills. Rizzo Jr. in 2007 and 2008, and Maria Quiñones Sánchez in 2021, whose bill would have capped a councilmember's outside earned income at $25,000 a year.
- Term limits: five bills. W. Wilson Goode Jr. proposed three terms for Council in 2010. Allan Domb proposed four in 2020 and 2022, counting only terms that began in 2024, so no sitting member would have been barred before 2040. Even that version never got a vote. Council President Darrell Clarke's two 2020 bills covered Council, the Controller, the City Commissioners and the Sheriff.
- Public money for campaigns: seven bills. Kenney in 2007, then Derek Green five times between 2017 and 2022, two of them ballot questions that would only have asked voters whether Council should adopt it.
- A redistricting commission: one bill, from Derek Green in 2022.
What did get votes
On five other ethics subjects, Council passed laws, and every one got recorded votes along the way. Contribution limits passed in 2003 over Mayor John Street's veto, after an earlier version lost on the floor 7 to 10. Pay-to-play limits on city contracts passed in 2005, after an earlier version tied 7 to 7. An independent Board of Ethics went to voters 16 to 0 in 2005, along with its powers, including mandatory ethics training. Lobbyist registration passed 17 to 0 in 2010. A gift ban passed 15 to 0 in 2014. Five subjects, five laws, and even the losses were on the record.
Most bills that made the job easier got votes too. In 2003 Council raised elected officials' pay and tied future raises to inflation, overriding Street 12 to 4. The yearly raises since have come without a vote. Council voted in 2006 and again in 2014 to ask voters to drop the resign-to-run rule, which makes city officials give up their seats to run for other offices, overriding Nutter's veto the second time. Voters said no both times. A couple died without one.
My reading
Several of the laws that passed bind members. Contribution limits cap what they raise, the gift ban limits what they accept, and the Board of Ethics polices them. Council has also voted to extend its family ethics rules to life partners, to strengthen its ban on retaliation, and to ask voters to make district members live in their districts. Council does pass rules on itself.
But the rules that passed regulate what comes toward the office: money, gifts, lobbyists, contracts. The bills that never got a vote would have changed the office itself: who works in it, what else its holder earns, how long anyone holds it, who draws its lines, how campaigns for it are paid for, and what it pays out at the end. When Council did change pensions for elected officials, in 2010 and 2014, the changes applied to people elected later.
That is my reading, not a finding. I picked the six subjects after seeing which ones never got a vote, and you can draw the line differently. The full list is linked below so you can.
Arguing with myself
Dying without a vote is normal here. One bill in five does: 1,624 of the 7,890 introduced from 2000 through 2023. Some of these were messages more than serious attempts. Rizzo Jr. filed six ethics bills on a single day in 2008, and some of the 27 are a bill paired with its own ballot question. These are 27 bills, not 27 separate campaigns.
Still, bills on the same subjects came back from different members for twenty years and never reached a vote, while every subject on the other list did. Whether these bills died from hostility or neglect, the result is the same. A vote happens when someone with power over the calendar decides it should, and on these subjects, nobody did.
On resign to run, the system worked. Voters said no twice. In February 2026 Council passed a third version 15 to 1, and a month later its sponsor, Isaiah Thomas, moved to repeal it, saying he no longer believed voters would approve. In April Council repealed it and the question came off the ballot. That is a recorded vote to keep a rule on Council in place, and the institution deserves credit for it. But the public got that say only because Council chose to give it. On term limits, public campaign money and a redistricting commission, Council has never asked.
Can voters go around Council?
Not really. Under the 1949 state law behind the city charter, a 20,000-signature petition for a charter amendment reaches the ballot only if a majority of Council agrees; otherwise "the petition shall be deemed denied." The same number of signatures can force Council to create a commission to write a new charter, but Council's president appoints nine of its fifteen members. That is my reading of the statute's text.
What I actually want
A vote on nepotism. The charter exempts the staff councilmembers appoint from civil service, so those jobs come with no exam and no merit list. State ethics law bars an official from using the office for the financial benefit of a parent, spouse, child, brother or sister. Its definition of family stops there: no cousins, nieces, nephews or in-laws, and no friends or political allies. So picture an office filled with a member's extended family and loyal supporters, qualified or not, every one of them owing a paycheck to one person. That is a power base, and the public pays for it.
A nepotism rule would not stop a member from hiring friends. That is patronage, a bigger fight. But it would draw the first line, and Council has been asked to draw it seven times. One of those bills reached the floor calendar and was never called. Its author, Michael Nutter, imposed the rule on his own branch by executive order after he became mayor, and urged Council "to adopt these policies as legislation." Of the officials outside his branch he said, "they don't work for me." No anti-nepotism bill has been introduced since 2008.
Maybe there is a good case against it. Small offices hire people they trust, and sometimes those people are family. If that is the argument, make it on the floor.
A rule that forces the question. Roughly:
- It covers bills on these subjects wherever in the code they are drafted, and the sponsor flags them, so no committee chair decides what counts.
- The committee gets six months after the sponsor asks for a hearing. After that, the bill goes to the full Council anyway.
- Every covered bill gets a recorded vote of the full Council before the term ends.
It does not have to pass. A vote of 0 to 17 tells voters something. Silence tells them nothing.
Two honest problems. Members could vote no and nothing would change, but resign to run shows what a recorded vote makes possible: the public pushed back, and the sponsor withdrew his own bill. And Council writes its own rules, so a rule forcing votes on bills about Council is itself a rule about Council. The sturdier version would go in the charter, which takes 12 of 17 votes to put on the ballot. Late-filed and duplicate bills need handling too, but those are drafting problems, not reasons to keep the silence.
What to watch
- Nothing is pending. I found no bills on these five subjects introduced since January 2024.
- Resign to run may come back. Thomas said he might reintroduce it.
- The 2030 census. A redistricting commission would need a charter amendment before Council draws the next map.
- December 2027, when Jones plans to retire.
The record is public. You do not have to take my reading of it. Go look.
How I counted. Every bill introduced from 2000 through 2023 that changed a rule for the city's elected officials or the people who deal with them, 123 in all, sorted by subject. "Recorded vote" means a roll call in Legistar at any stage. Committees act without recorded tallies, so a lapsed bill with no roll call never got a final floor vote. The baseline counts bills, not resolutions. Four charter Inspector General proposals also never got a vote; I left them out because it is unclear whether that office would have covered Council. The full coded list has every bill, my call on each, and its official Legistar link.
Sources. Jones's DROP plans from the Inquirer, June 2026. The 2011 DROP override from CBS Philadelphia. Resign to run from the Inquirer, WHYY, the Inquirer and PhillyVoice. The 2003 pay veto from the Inquirer. Nutter's 2011 orders from NBC10 and WHYY (1, 2). Petition routes from sections 2, 3 and 6 of the First Class City Home Rule Act. Bills and roll calls from Philadelphia Legistar, listed below.