BILL GREEN is a City Councilman At-Large in the City of Philadelphia. Prior to seeking public office, Bill established a successful career in the private sector. Before attending Auburn University, Bill traded options and futures in New York, London, and Amsterdam. He later obtained a law degree from the University of Pennsylvania. In the years since, he has founded several businesses, represented top Fortune 500 companies and start-ups as a corporate lawyer, and served as President of VistaScape Security Systems. Bill is Special Counsel at the law firm Duane Morris LLP and serves on the board of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

Since taking office in 2008, Bill has focused his work in City Council on accountability and fiscal discipline, constituent service, and quality of life for city residents. Among other initiatives, he:

• successfully sued the City to prevent the permanent closure of 11 neighborhood library branches, receiving a court order that is still in effect;

• identified over $350 million in budget savings – including through using technology and retirements/attrition to reduce the size of the city’s workforce – as alternatives to tax increases; successfully prevented a series of proposed regressive tax increases; and pressed for a more transparent budget process;

• serves on Philadelphia’s Criminal Justice Advisory Board (CJAB), whose collaborative efforts over the past several years have resulted in the prison population being reduced from 9,800 in 2009 to less than 8,200; $25 million/year in savings due to increased efficiencies in the criminal justice system; and a series of cross-agency reforms that have improved the administration of justice;

• introduced and passed legislation to bring much needed governance reform, professionalism, and standard-setting to Philadelphia’s property tax system (a change that had been attempted since Mayor Joe Clark was in office), including by removing the property assessment function from the Board of Revision of Taxes and creating a new agency to perform assessments for the City of Philadelphia;

• introduced significant business tax reform legislation to eliminate the net income tax, which puts Philadelphia-based firms at a competitive disadvantage; disproportionately hurts small businesses; creates a major barrier to profitable firms locating in, growing, and staying in the city; and violates basic tax structure principle (broad base/low rate >>> small base/high rate);

• passed legislation making interim changes to the city’s business privilege tax (BPT) to help level the playing field for local businesses and encourage small/start-up businesses; the legislation exempts the first $100,000 in business receipts from both the gross receipts and net income prongs of the BPT and implements single-sales factor apportionment, meaning local businesses that sell tangible goods will no longer have to pay the high-rate net income tax on their sales outside of the City;

• played a leading role on the Zoning Code Commission, the body  responsible for drafting Philadelphia’s first new zoning code in almost 50 years, which was passed by City Council in 2011 and should help spur development across the city;

• passed significant campaign finance and ethics reform legislation, including requiring lobbyists to register with the city and disclose their lobbying efforts, which was supported by the Board of Ethics, the Committee of Seventy, and other key stakeholders;

• wrote  and released a detailed policy paper analyzing the state of education in the City and recommending 30-plus action items to improve early childhood education, expand school choice, enhance the quality of teaching and instruction, improve the condition of school facilities, and create merit scholarships for college;

• wrote and released a policy paper calling for comprehensive changes to the structure of the School District of Philadelphia, including the creation of a statewide Recovery School District that would be responsible for taking over and turning around failing schools across the state; returning local control to a Board of Education, which would be responsible for the remaining functioning/successful schools; and making important changes in how charter schools are authorized and monitored to ensure that successful charters are able to expand and failing charters are shut down.

• introduced and passed legislation that banned handheld cell phone use and texting while driving within Philadelphia, addressing a public safety and quality of life concern for residents;

• introduced and passed legislation that enabled the City’s Historical Commission to protect historically significant public interior spaces bringing us in line with every other major city in the Country;

• introduced and passed legislation designed to clean up city streets and commercial corridors through more efficient and stricter regulation of dumpsters; and

• played an integral role in helping to save Philadelphia’s citywide wireless network, which will allow us to increase police presence on the street by 20% without increasing manpower and can be used to help take a chunk out of the significant “digital divide” existing in Philadelphia, where over 45% of citizens do not have access to the internet

Bill resides in the Chestnut Hill neighborhood of Philadelphia with his wife, Margie, and their two children.  A native Philadelphian, Bill is continuing his family’s strong commitment to public service: his father served as Congressman, Chairman of Philadelphia’s Democratic City Committee, and Mayor of Philadelphia, and his grandfather was a Congressman and Chairman of Philadelphia’s Democratic City Committee.