Nice Work

The state took over the city's parking authority to ensure that it could be a patronage system for those who don't have anything to do with the city instead of a patronage system for those who do. It's a nice trick, like all state takeovers of city functions, because its entirely unaccountable to locals, the grift goes elsewhere, and the city-haters in the rest of the state just blame "the city" even though the city has no control.

Three months after Vincent Fenerty Jr. lost his $223,000-a-year job as executive director of the Philadelphia Parking Authority, he pocketed a $227,000 check for nearly 2,000 hours of vacation time, paid leave, and comp time.

But Fenerty, forced out of the agency in September amid sexual-harassment complaints, isn’t the only PPA boss who stashed away comp time.

Records show that more than a dozen senior PPA staffers at the longtime patronage haven accumulated significant amounts of comp time – in some cases hundreds of hours – while earning six-figure salaries to run agency departments or oversee its finances.