Yo, Philly in the News

• Holy crud! Well, this Phillyist's prediction about how the whole casino thing was going to go has just been totally shot to hell: yesterday the City council unanimously approved putting that referendum about casinos on the May 15 primary ballot, which "would change the city charter to ban casinos within 1,500 feet of any residential neighborhood." We'll be jiggered!
• All the Brady news that's fit to print! First of all, he and his legal team are now saying he didn't forget but deliberately did not declare his city pension on his nominating papers because he thought they did not need to be included. Regardless, legal challenges to his nomination will not be cleared up quickly; it sounds like we could look forward to weeks more of this, with the case probably eventually going to the state Supreme Court. Meanwhile, there is some good news for Brady: he got the top spot on the ballot. Assuming he ends up on it, of course.
• The strike at the Community College of Philadelphia continues. There's a state labor mediator now involved, but no date set for another round of bargaining.
• The Philadelphia School Reform Commission approved a preliminary budget document for the school district on Wednesday. It's a $2.18 billion budget, and it is balanced, but only if they make $103 million in cuts and get $82 million more from the city and state. If that doesn't happen, cuts would have to go deeper - key personnel would have to be let go.
• Besides having a pretty shaky budget, the school district is apparently pretty poor at keeping track of its art collection. A preliminary audit by City Controller Alan Butkovitz was unable to locate 85 of the pieces.
• Nutter wants to offer Philly businesses tax credits as incentives to hire ex-cons, the idea being that the best way to keep former criminals from becoming repeat offenders is to give them a job.

Image Credit: Flickr user xjohnpaulx