Amendments to the Home Rule Charter — essentially the city’s constitution — must be adopted by City Council and then approved by voters.
This year’s primary ballot has a single ballot question on whether the city should provide legal backing for Registered Community Organizations, or RCOs, in relation to their work on zoning matters. Every voter will see the question on their ballot, even non-party-affiliated residents who do not vote on candidates in the primary.
Residents can vote in person at their polling sites on April 23, or send in a mail ballot before then.
Former Council President Darrell Clarke introduced the amendment in October and Council gave its approval in November.
What you’ll see on the ballot
Should the Philadelphia Home Rule Charter be amended to require the City to provide for the indemnification and defense of registered community organizations in connection with claims made against them arising directly out of their lawful participation in the City’s zoning variance process?
What it means
Registered community organizations or RCOs are community groups that have official standing with the city to weigh in on real estate and land use decisions.
When a developer wants to put up a building not allowed by a site’s zoning, the area’s RCO may negotiate with the developer and vote to support or oppose a needed variance. City officials then take the group’s opinion into account when deciding whether to grant the variance.
Here’s some info on the zoning process and on the history of RCO designation, which was established in 2011.
Developers sometimes sue the officers of RCOs that oppose projects or ask for concessions. The suits may or may not have legal merit — they are sometimes described as “strategic lawsuits against public participation,” or SLAPPs, that are meant to intimidate critics.
Defending against such lawsuits, or even just paying for insurance, can be so costly that it threatens the continued existence of an RCO. In 2013, the Old City Civic Association dissolved after repeated lawsuits led its insurance carrier to drop the group and it couldn’t get new insurance. Another RCO, the Greater Bustleton Civic League, saw its premiums increase 12-fold last year.
Clarke proposed tasking the city’s Law Department with coming up with a system to aid RCOs, perhaps by paying their legal fees or helping them buy insurance. The amendment tries to protect the city from paying excessive amounts or supporting dubious legal positions by allowing the Law Department to write regulations governing the system.
Who’s for it?
Council passed the amendment unanimously. Clarke argued that the city must support RCOs given their essential role in the zoning process. “I don’t believe that it’s fair for us to require that they be participating in the zoning without any support from the city,” he said, per the Inquirer.
Jack O’Hara, president of the Greater Bustleton Civic League, said the group’s experience with losing its insurance had “terrified” other community organizations. “This is going to be really welcome news to the hundreds of our RCOs in the city,” he said.
RCOs often ask developers to improve their projects by including affordable units, beautifying the design, and doing things like fixing up sidewalks and nearby parks, and shouldn’t be threatened with dissolution for their efforts, their defenders say.
Who’s against it?
Developers say building in Philadelphia is already complex, costly, and time-consuming, and the city should not be helping community groups delay or kill economically beneficial projects.
“This bill gives RCOs a blank check to fight developers,” Mo Rushdy, who is now president of the Building Industry Association of Philadelphia, told the Inky. “If this bill passes, every single project will be appealed indefinitely, which increases development costs and the chances that nothing will get built.”
Critics of RCOs argue they sometimes try to block projects for bad reasons, such as a general antipathy to denser development, opposition to affordable housing or having low-income neighbors, or overblown fears about parking.
“Do you want to give insane people a pot of money to sue over any housing they don’t like?” one commenter wrote on Reddit. “Do you want your city tax dollars to be paid out to RCOs even if a court finds that a lawsuit was filed frivolously or in bad faith?”
