erin coleman: pain in the wallet. philly homeowners could see their property taxes jump. today, mayor jim kenney joins us to make his case lar pains, the future of public unions is now in the hands of the supreme court. what that could mean for workers in our area. and later, desperate search. a local woman reaches out to nbc10 for help. all she wanted was to h we'll explain the heartbreaking reason that kept them apart, and what nbc10 had that finally brought them together. male announcer: "nbc10@issue" starts now. erin: good morning, and thanks for joining us. i'm erin coleman for "nbc10@issue." six percent, that's how much your property taxes could go up if you live in philadelphia. mayor jim kenney unveiled his budget proposal to city council on thursday.

the extra taxes are aimed at supporting philadelphia's public schools. the mayor says the goal is to improve the districts' programs. jim kenney: we have to make this a reality. these are our kids. they're no one else's kids, and no one else is coming to their rescue, not from harrisburg and not from washington dc, god knows. erin: the plan is already getting some pushback from council members. nbc10's aundrea cline-thomas was in city hall when the mayor announced his budget. aundrea cline-thomas: knowing his budget would be a tough sell, mayor kenney evoked the spirit of the beloved eagles football team. jim: students for the first time are holding onto the realization they are no longer underdogs, they are champions. aundrea: but becoming a champion comes at a price. the mayor's proposing giving nearly $1 billion to the school district of philadelphia over the next five years. to pay for it, employees who work in the city will have

to wait even longer to get relief from the wage tax. and the mayor is also proposing increasing property taxes by 6%. jim: no one else is coming to their rescue. aundrea: even with the city taking over control of the district, council president darrell clarke says paying for the schools is still part of the state's responsibility. darrell clarke: i'm not going to step back and say, "well, we own it not. you guys are no longer responsible." that can't happen. aundrea: and there's concern for people like harold belcher. harold belcher: low-income people like me, why should i have to put money up? aundrea: many agree the school district deserves more. female: the burden is on residents, and it's not equally distributing the sacrifice to large businesses. aundrea: but expect a fight about how to meet the district's needs. jim: we can't keep on talking about it unless we pay for it. aundrea: aundrea cline-thomas for "nbc10@issue." erin: and with me now is philadelphia mayor jim kenney. mayor kenney, thanks so much for being here. jim: good morning, thank you. erin: all right, so how do you sell a 6% tax increase

to homeowners who say, "i don't want to pay anymore. i'm paying enough already"? jim: everyone--no one wants to pay taxes. obviously the suburbs, some suburban communities around philadelphia, the level of taxation on real estate is three, four, five times what it is in philadelphia. and for too many years, we have been putting off funding our schools fully because we always expected that harrisburg would live up to their constitutional responsibilities to fund schools. and they don't, and they're not. so, the question is, do we let our kids continue to flounder? do we let the gains that have been made by dr. hite, and his staff, and his team in increasing test scores and graduation rates, do we allow our kids to slip back into a period of time where we're cutting counselors, cutting nurses, cutting librarians, cutting-- increasing class size? or do we give our kids the opportunity they need to meet their potential, and ultimately become employees and taxpayers in the city?

we've been--we've been shortchanging our kids for a generation, and it's time to fully fund the schools now on our own because there's no one from harrisburg or washington that's going to fly in to save us. and people say, you know, "i'm going to move-- i'm going to move out of the city if you raise my real estate taxes." well, you're going to move into a community where your real estate taxes are much higher than they are in philadelphia. and you're going to move into a community where schools are better because their real estate taxes are higher. so, i don't want to raise any tax, and i'd live everybody to live for free, but we have to run a city, and we have to provide police and fire protection and sanitation, and we have to provide education. so, we are either going to--we're either going to take care of our children and pay for our kids' education or we're not. and you know, a 6% increase in property taxes for a house worth about $200,000 is probably about $95 a year. if you have a homestead exemption at $30,000, that's probably about $70 a year. and we're going to increase-- we're going to ask council to increase the homestead to $40,000. and some of those folks would actually experience a tax reduction. erin: you have said that the benefits to the schools

won't be seen in your lifetime, so. jim: i'm hoping that some of the benefits will be seen, but i think the overall benefit will probably take, you know, another 10 years or so or more to see. erin: so, how do you explain that to parents who say, "well, you want me to pay more, but my kids are not going to be on the receiving end of this"? jim: well, they will be on the receiving end. they won't receive the cuts. if you have a child that's in a public school now, they won't--they won't experience those cuts that the kids experienced back in 2008, 2009, 2010 and onward. but education is the fundamental way to end poverty. and we've been told that since we were kids. i mean, our parents themselves, they wanted us to have a good education so that we could become, you know, responsible adults that pay taxes and earn a living, that can raise families. and if we continue this cycle of poor education and poverty, this city will never dig itself out of its problems. erin: the soda tax, let's talk a little bit about that. that's fallen short of expectations.

what do you say to critics that say, "well, how do we know that the same thing's not going to happen here"? jim: what i say to critics is stop listening to the beverage industry, which has spent $15 million over the last two years lobbying to end the beverage tax. our--this is a first time tax. it's one of the only cities in the country this size that had a beverage tax. we estimated a $92 million return. it was a $79 million return. that's not chump change, $79 to $80 million in new money to provide 2,700 kids so far with quality pre-k experience, 11 community schools, and our program to improve rec centers and libraries is being thwarted by the beverage industry, whose ceos have a base salary of about $30 million, who spend millions of dollars on lawyers and lobbyists and television commercials, and don't--and actually peddle a product that is unhealthy for our kids. and they do it more so in poor neighborhoods than they do in other neighborhoods.

so, i think they're--that industry has been unconscionable in their approach to this issue, and they don't have to pass this tax on. they make enough money on the margins right now. and they're misguided, they're misleading people. so, we've collected almost $80 million out of $92 we projected, and that's paying for pre-k. if we could stop having to fight lawsuits against the beverage industry, we could roll out our full pre-k program, accomplish our 25 community schools, and already be working on rec centers and libraries in our communities to improve them. you know, our kids need equity. our kids deserve facilities that are respectful to them and equitable to them. and to go to a, you know, a struggling school in a struggling neighborhood, and leave at 3 o'clock, 3:30 in the afternoon, go to a library who can't keep the rain out of the bookshelves, or the rec center's roof is falling in, and you can't control the heat, that's not what our kids deserve. and to pay a little bit more for something that you really don't need to drink anyway, we're not taxing air,

we're just taxing soda. and people get a little crazy about that. erin: what's your plan b? so, this all has to be, you know, approved by city council, so what is plan b if council comes back and says no? jim: if council comes back and says no, then they're going to have to explain to their own constituents why their children are not important enough to them to raise what is less than $100 worth of taxes on average a year to pay for education for our kids. yeah, we--the people that we lose, we're very good on millennials, we're very good on seniors, and we're very good on immigrants. the time we lose people is when they get married and decide to have children. and then they start thinking about where to send their kids to school. and more times than not, sadly, they decide to move out of the city, ironically to a place where their real estate taxes are three or four or five times higher, so they can send their kids to a good school. my argument is let's raise our real estate taxes modestly and send our kids to a good school in the city so these families don't have to move out, and then return when they're empty

nesters and their kids are out of college. erin: some people are calling this a very politically dangerous move-- jim: i don't care because if i'm the mayor of a city with 26% poverty rate and i don't do anything to fix it, and do nothing to educate our kids and allow them to meet their potential, then i really don't deserve to be mayor. and as i said in the past, if i knew now that fully funding our schools for the next five, six years would cause my reelection effort to fail, i'll go do something else because there's nothing more important than educating our kids. and people have to kind of grow up a little bit, and be mature, and be adults, and say that we understand that i'm tired of locking our kids up. i'm tired of having to deal with our kids' drug addictions. i'm tired of dealing with dysfunctional families and dysfunctional neighborhoods because our kids aren't educated. when i go into a pre-k or a kindergarten or elementary

school, and i see three and four or five-year-old beautiful babies, who are just full of love and full of learning, they want to learn. they want to be--they don't see race, they don't see it. they're not spoiled. and when we allow our kids to drift, when our kids are not reading at grade level by fourth grade, they're acting up in seventh and eighth grade, they're dropping out in ninth and tenth grade, and then they wind up at state road in one of our prison facilities, or wind up dead in the cemetery because they're hustling on the street, we have to end that. and if we can end that and turn those folks into responsible adults and parents and taxpayers, our city will have a larger tax base and we won't have to worry about these problems. erin: mayor jim kenney, thanks so much for being here. jim: thanks. erin: next on "nbc10@issue," supreme court showdown. we're going to discuss a case being decided that could have a major impact on union members right here in our area.

and workers opposed to paying union fees made it to the supreme court last week. the case could be a game changer for unions,

especially in pennsylvania. the supreme court case hinges on whether or not unions can collect dues from workers who don't want to participate in the union. the union fears if the court rules against them, it will weaken their ability to negotiate. the illinois government worker who brought the case argues the first amendment should allow him to avoid paying union fees that bargain on his behalf since he disagrees with their political activity. pennsylvania governor tom wolf weighed in, releasing a statement calling the case, quote, "a decades long effort to destroy unions. special interest groups have formed throughout the country with the goal of weakening unions and making it easier for their donors to make money at the expense of working families," end quote. with me now are bob dick, he is a senior policy analyst for the conservative public policy think tank commonwealth foundation. and also michael merrill, a professor at rutgers university. merrill is a labor historian and an expert on public

and private sector unions. thanks to you both for being here. both: thanks for having us. erin: appreciate you. okay, so bob, let's start with you. we just heard some words from the governor, some strong words about this case. so, how do you respond? bob dick: this case is about whether or not a public worker should be forced to pay a fee to a union just to keep their job. and this really is what it's going to come down to when we're talking about the janus v. afscme case with the supreme court. and they're going to have to decide whether government unions should continue to be in the position to tell public workers across the country, "hey, you either have to pay union dues to our organization, or there's a possibility that we're going to get you fired." erin: do you feel like this really is a backdoor way to hurt unions? bob: this is about really protecting workers. and this is a fundamental--an issue of fundamental rights. so, the freedom of speech, the freedom of association, and the freedom of conscience. and these are all the things that are on the table in the supreme court case. michael merrill: it's not a free speech issue, and it's also not about protecting workers. it's about destroying unions. even conservative legal scholars have agreed that this--

there's no free speech issue involved here. it is a standard question of the government having the right to make this kind of policy, and no taxpayer gets to decide, "i'm not going to pay my taxes," if they disagree with something the government wants to see people do and thinks is the best way to handle things. bob: but private unions are not government entities, right? so, you can't have this private entity saying, "we're going to set these terms for public employment." that's what they're basically saying. "and we're going to have you continue to pay us money just because--even though you may not want to, we're still going to force you to do this. and then we're going to take that money and then use it for political causes that you may disagree with. that's where the first--the free speech issue really comes in. that's just--it's morally wrong to force someone, to compel someone to subsidize political speech that they disagree with. michael: none of this money goes--none of the public sector dues goes for partisan political purposes. the unions ever since abood, which is the main case that is being reviewed by janus, which was in 1977 that established the right to collect agency fees, made it perfectly clear

that money that's collected in agency fees cannot be used for partisan political purposes. and unions every year are required to fill out what's called a hudson report, which details how much money is spent on partisan political purposes and how much money is spent on their representative services. the claim that's being made by janus's lawyers, who are well funded and paid for by very well financed groups, is that collective bargaining in the public sector is inherently political, and therefore it counts as political speech. but actually, in a democracy, every speech about something that affects the public ought to be seen as political. and i think that the real danger, the sort of the trojan horse that this represents, is an assault on local democratic governments and the ability of the government to decide that it's going to, you know, delegate important responsibilities to the citizens to manage themselves in a constructive way. bob: well, the assault really is on the public workers because what unions are trying to say is,

"you're going to have to pay fees no matter what. even if you disagree with our politics, if you disagree with the kind of representation that we're providing to you, it doesn't matter." so, teachers like jane nattaly or keith williams and greg harnett, which they're pennsylvania teachers, they want out of their union. they want a choice, and this is what-- it's again a fundamental issue of freedom of choice. should people have the choice to decide whether or not they want to belong to an organization? and if we say no, then we're stripping them of their dignity because they ultimately should be the people who decide. michael: if we follow this--but if we follow this through consistently, we should give every taxpayer the right to decide how much of their taxes-- bob: government is not the same as a union though. michael: the government is the same as the union. the government has decided specifically to delegate the responsibility for managing the workplace to a collective body of citizens. bob: they're a private organization, but they are a private organization. government unions are a private organization. erin: let me jump in here. all right, what is the impact? michael, we'll go with you here. what is the impact if the supreme court rules

against the union in this case? michael: unions existed before there was agency fee. they will exist after. they will be weaker for a while. they will also be more militant, more insistent on representing workers. and it will be a disruption in the same way that if suddenly the supreme court decided that philadelphia can't collect taxes because its actions are political and there are taxpayers in philadelphia who don't agree with the mayor on union issues, or don't agree with the mayor on this issue. it's exactly the same issue on the basis of principle. it'll be disruptive, but the unions will adapt and fight back. should they have to--should agency fees be mandatory? there are many mandatory fees. the burden of exclusive representation, which the government requires unions adopt, they have to represent everybody at the workplace, whether they want to be represented or not, whether they agree with them or not.

and in return for assuming that burden of exclusive and fair representation, which is also a legal duty of the unions, they ask for the benefit of mandatory fees. this is placing a burden without the benefit, which would be a greater injustice. erin: bob, i've got to give you the last word. and i want to ask how confident are you that the supreme court will rule in your favor? bob: well, we are definitely optimistic. but just to get back to the point that he made about exclusive representation, this is something that unions have been lobbying for. so, if they don't want to be the exclusive representative of all public workers, they can simply say, "you know what? we're going to say no to that political privilege. and anyone who wants to bargain outside of the collective bargaining process can do so." michael: it can't. they can't do that. the law doesn't allow them to do that. bob: unions lobby for that law, though, right? they can get it overturned and simply say, "you know what? we're going to represent all our members. and anyone outside the collective bargaining process--" michael: janus could lobby for getting rid of the public sector unions. erin: gentlemen, we're going to have to leave it right there. i thank you both for your passion, and thank you

for being here, professor merrill, bob dick. we appreciate your time. bob: thank you. erin: next on "nbc10@issue," heartbreaking but also heartwarming, the story of a reunion 30 years in the making that gives one local woman a chance to hear her mother's voice for the first time since she was a baby.

make a dream come true for a woman who's been searching her entire life for the mother she never knew. sharday yates reached out to us after she learned nbc10 interviewed her mom decades ago. nbc10's lauren mayk brought mom and daughter together in a reunion 30 years in the making. sharday yates: most of these pictures are from time at my grandmama's. lauren mayk: sharday yates has some family snapshots. female: but no pictures of your mom. sharday: no, no pictures, not at all. lauren: she has no idea what her mother looks like. female: how much did you wonder about her growing up?

sharday: every day of my life. lauren: her mom died when sharday was a baby. sharday: when i did ask my grandmother, it was like the hurt that i seen in her face that i never asked again. lauren: with a son of her own now, sharday started searching, a search that led her to nbc10. sharday heard her mom had been interviewed by nbc10 decades ago. we combed through our archives from the '80s and found the images of the mother sharday had no memory of. we took the video to sharday so she could see her mother, yvonne. female: are you okay, you ready? sharday: okay, i'm ready. cherie bank: from her hospital bed, yvonne yates tells me she used to be hooked on heroin, but in recent years-- sharday: she looks like i imagined she did. lauren: sharday held tight to her cousin rachel as they watched sharday's mom vow to stay off drugs and make a fresh start for the little girl on her lap, sharday. yvonne yates: i love my baby. rachel: your mom just kissed you.

sharday: she loved me, rachel. lauren: thirty-two years of emotion pour out as sharday sees herself in her mother's arms. nbc10 found a second story about sharday's mom, too, yvonne's funeral. five days after the long-ago interview with nbc10's cherie bank, yvonne died from years of drug use. a baby lost her mother that day, but today isn't about loss. yvonne: i loved my baby even when i was pregnant. sharday: i love you, too, mom. lauren: it's about hearing your mom's voice. sharday: to go out there and face the world, and not to have to have something to fall back on, to be a good mother. lauren: seeing her face and seeing how she looked at you. sharday: all my life, i felt like there was something missing. and i just got that last puzzle piece, and it's complete now, it's complete.

lauren: sharday told me seeing this video was life-changing. and hearing her mom tell her that she loved her, that was the part that meant so much to her. she told me she wants to record those words on her phone so she can listen to them over and over again. for "nbc10@issue," i'm lauren mayk. erin: although this ends the mystery for sharday, it doesn't end her journey. she is now interested in meeting her mother's doctor at the time to possibly help other moms with drug problems. that could happen this week. we'll keep you posted, we'll be right back.

erin: and that's it for this edition of "nbc10@issue." i'm erin coleman, thanks for watching. and don't forget to find us on twitter. that's where you can pitch the issues that you'd like to see us cover. have a great sunday. ♪

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