www.Parctel.com: SIX YEARS after Republicans took control of the Philadelphia Parking Authority in a political coup d'etat, the number of people on its payroll has doubled and top salaries have soared, making the patronage haven one of the best-paid addresses in municipal government.
In 2001, when House Republican leader John Perzel engineered the takeover, the Parking Authority had 512 full-time employees. Only two of them were making six-figure salaries.
Six years later, the full-time payroll has grown to 1,051 people, including 20 who are making more than $100,000 a year.
The authority's top job now belongs to Vincent J. Fenerty Jr., a longtime Republican ward leader who joined the authority as a booting supervisor in 1983, initially earning less than $28,000 a year.
Fenerty now makes $194,830 annually as the authority's executive director - more than any of the doctors, lawyers and other professionals on the city payroll, and $50,000 more than Mayor Street.
Meanwhile, the agency has delivered just a sliver of the money that Republican leaders promised to the Philadelphia School District when the GOP takeover sailed through the Legislature - just $4 million in six years.
The authority's growth is fueled in part by new and expanded duties.
On top of its old functions - writing parking tickets, collecting coins from parking meters, booting and towing scofflaws - the authority now runs the mammoth lots at Philadelphia International Airport, tows the cars of drivers who are caught without valid licenses or insurance, administers a new traffic-light camera program that catches drivers running red lights, and regulates the city's taxicabs.
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