W. Wilson Goode, Jr.

There has been a debate for decades about race-conscious public policy and its legality. Many refer to it as the “affirmative action” debate, the debate over “quotas”, or even the “reparations” debate. In the City of Philadelphia, maybe the debate should have been put to rest when Mayor Jim Kenney signed an executive order in January 2020 calling for a “Racial Equity Strategy” mandating racial equity assessments and plans for each City department. The City Law Department should probably go first. Although the City Solicitor is an African American man, the department is far from diverse and there are some entrenched interests within the department that are still advocating for race-neutral policymaking over race-conscious policymaking. They clearly did not get the memo from the Mayor or filed it in the wastebasket. The most race-conscious public policy to bear fruit has been the annual disparity study and annual participation goals for City contracting that has taken disadvantaged b

  City government is the second largest employer in Philadelphia, next to the federal government. In fact, getting a “government job” is seen by many as a path to long-term financial security, particularly for the economically disadvantaged that feel shut out of the private sector, sometimes because of race. The local government established its civil service system in the 1919 city charter, and not much has changed even since the city’s latest charter except for a few substantive amendments. In 2008, I proposed an amendment to the Philadelphia Home Rule Charter relating to civil service regulations to provide that, when eligible lists for appointments and promotions are established, those persons who have maintained a bona fide residence in Philadelphia for at least one year prior to the date of the examination shall prevail over all others who receive the identical test score. In other words, Philadelphia residents were given a tie-breaker preference over nonresidents. This is how

  In 2005, I introduced the Philadelphia 21 st Century Minimum Wage Standard Ordinance – a living wage bill – that required City-supported employers to pay at least 150% of the minimum wage to its employees. The wage standard was already required in Philadelphia under both local and state job creation tax credit laws – requiring a minimum hourly wage of at least $7.72 per hour - rather than just $5.15. For the record, someone being paid only $5.15 an hour at that time – even if they worked 40 hours per week – and worked all 52 weeks in the year – earned only $10,712 annually. Obviously, the purpose of the legislation was to assure that as many employees as possible within the City of Philadelphia earned a new wage that enabled them to live with more dignity and increased economic self-sufficiency. The City contracts with businesses and organizations to provide services to the public - and provides financial assistance to developers for the purpose of promoting economic development

  During my legislative tenure, I also created the Job Creation Tax Credit program which offers credits against firms’ Business Privilege Tax liability if they create either 25 new jobs or increase the number of employees by at least 20 percent within five years of the designated start date.   Program participants must also commit to maintaining operations in Philadelphia for five years. The annual amount of credits available for award is limited to two percent of the prior year’s Business Tax collections.   Interested firms submit applications to the Department of Revenue.   Upon acceptance to the program, an agreement is executed between the business and the City that sets forth the designated start date and the number of jobs to be created. A business has up to five years to create the agreed upon number of jobs.   Upon doing so, the firm asks the Department of Revenue to certify the number of jobs created and wages paid.   The Department of Revenue conducts a payroll review of th

Before I became a legislator, my professional track record was built upon administering community economic development (CED) grant programs - and my work with neighborhood business associations and community development corporations. My expansion of those CED programs was well-documented in the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) Study and Community Reinvestment Report, two policy papers released by my legislative office in 2000. Those policy papers found that expanding the use of CDBG resources for economic development would leverage more private investment into low-and moderate-income neighborhoods. Economic development investments have always had greater leveraging ability than low-income housing subsidies. Additionally, the utilization of community development corporations (CDCs) to undertake certain economic development activities in disadvantaged neighborhoods would bolster those organizations and their overall revitalization efforts. As a legislator, I established the C

  In January 2000, my legislative office released a business lending disparity study that showed disparities by neighborhood race and by neighborhood income. I then called on the City Controller’s office to conduct a similar study on an annual basis through a City Council resolution approved unanimously. I also required banks authorized to receive City deposits to submit an annual statement of community reinvestment goals for low and moderate income (LMI) neighborhoods through an ordinance also unanimously approved by City Council and signed by the Mayor into law. These legislative actions caused the market to respond with increased small business lending to LMI neighborhoods.  When we examined the data more closely along with data on neighborhood race, we found that lending in lower-income and majority-Black neighborhoods had not increased, but that the LMI increase was due to lending in moderate-income White neighborhoods. We were not able to determine if there was lending discrimina

  The City of Philadelphia has made remarkable progress with diversity in its government contracting over the last fifteen years, but the participation of local disadvantaged firms is still lacking. According to a recent disparity study, utilization of local disadvantaged firms is hampered by the low rate of entrepreneurship among people of color in Philadelphia.   According to the State of the City research published by Pew Charitable Trusts on the ownership of businesses in the Philadelphia region, 76.6 of businesses with employees were White owned in 2016, and Whites comprised less than 40% of the population. By contrast, in a city with a majority of people of color, African-Americans own only 1 in 40 businesses with employees (2.5%) but comprise over 40% of the population and Hispanics own only 2.2% of businesses with employees but comprise over 10% of the population. The low rate of business ownership with actual employees among people of color can naturally be linked to other

In the City of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania – there is an under-utilization of men of color in the construction labor force for both public and privately-owned development projects. This problem must be remedied to provide much needed employment opportunities for disadvantaged workers in the poorest big city in the United States of America. The issue of economic disparity was a major focus of my policy and legislative work for the sixteen years that I served as an At-Large Member of Philadelphia City Council. Prior to my election in 1999, I spent seven years as an economic development administrator in local government within the executive branch. I ran for public office to shift the public policy discussion on economic development to one with an additional focus on economic equity. I believe in economic justice, so I became a legislator. At the end of my first year in elected office, Philadelphia City Council gave approval to legislation supporting the construction of baseball and