Ed Rendell: Mayor Kenney's Goals Are 'Terrific'
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - Former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell addressed the controversy over the soda tax proposal in Mayor Jim Kenney's budget, giving the Mayor credit for his willingness to confront problems.
Rendell told Chris Stigall on Talk Radio 1210 WPHT that the Mayor's goals are laudable.
"I sympathize with the Mayor. I think the goals the Mayor wants to use the money for are terrific. There's nothing more important than early childhood education and every child, in my judgement, if we wanted to do this country right, should have a quality educational experiences as a three-year-old and a four-year-old. Mayor Kenney just wants to get four-year-olds into pre-K. It's a very laudable way to do it. He's pretty much hamstrung with our basic taxes because you can't raise the wage tax. In fact, we've lowered the wage tax for the last 15 years and we've got to keep lowering it to be competitive. The property tax is tough because I'm sure Mayor Kenney would love to just raise the property tax on commercial buildings because, you see all the cranes, people are going up like crazy, but you can't do that in Pennsylvania because of the equality clause in the Constitution."
However, he thinks three cents per ounce is too high of a rate and would like to see it lowered.
"At the three cent level, I think it's tough. It's great to say we should all stay away from sugary drinks, but we all should stay away from donuts. We all should stay from Big Macs. We all should stay away from a lot of things. At three cents, if you have a 12 pack of 12 ounce cans of soda, that would double the price of that 12 pack."
Overall, Rendell thinks Kenney is doing a great job in City Hall and expects him to make significant progress moving the city forward.
"Anybody who is giving Mayor Kenney grief, the thing that I love about Mayor Kenney is he wants to do something. He wants to attack problems. To me, with the shape that all cities are in, you need a Mayor who is going to get out there, put his rear end on the line and attack problems. I think we elected the right guy for this time."
