PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — City Council had an extremely light calendar this week, with none of the bills on final passage coming up for a vote. It turns out that’s because there was insufficient notice, under state law, about the bills that were scheduled for votes.
Last week, Council spent an unusually long time negotiating Philadelphia’s mid-year budget transfer. They ended up not voting it out of committee until after 9 p.m. that Thursday, Nov. 30, so there was a rush to get the legal notices into two newspapers — as required by the state’s Sunshine Act — five days before this week’s session, when Council was to vote.
The Philadelphia Inquirer managed to get the notice in, but the Legal Intelligencer did not. Council placed the fault squarely on the Intelligencer. The paper did not respond to KYW’s request for comment.
Because of the missed deadline, none of the bills could be voted on at this week’s session. Council made no announcement about the snag. Even some staffers were unaware that all bills were held.
There is no real impact, however. Council has one more session left in its current four-year term, next Thursday, so it still has time to vote on all the bills.
