Monday highlights: Two yays and two sighs

• Grumpy local bits
  
  
  
  • Developers' ties to a councilman test finance law: Nearly 25% of Jack Kelly's primary campaign funding was from entities tied to two brothers. This may be legal, but it's certainly not within the intent or spirit of the law, which gives Kelly some bad press just as his challenger, David Oh, is nipping at his heels.
    
    
  • Report: Philadelphia Parking Authority bloated with patronage. This Sunday story serves as the culmination of a series running all week that indicates that the PPA has been raking in the money, but giving little or none to the city/schools, instead growing its own beauracracy at a stiff pace. Another successful state take-over!
  
  
• Happy bits
  
  
  
  • This is promising news: two of Donna Reed Miller's opponents have come up with an objective way to determine which of them should withdraw (so that they don't repeat the spring primary result of dividing the field to give Miller a victory with only a third of votes cast): they've signed an agreement that whichever of them gets 2/3 of the major local newspaper endorsements will get to stay in the race. It will still be an uphill battle for an "independent Democrat" to beat a party nominee, but at least this would put it into the realm of the imaginable.
    
    
  • It's been a while since I highlighted some great local photos, but Phillyskyline has a wonderful tour through West Philadelphia ("streetcar suburb"), which highlights the large, porch-ringed old houses that make that part of the city unique. (It appears to be from spring, so dotted with forsythia and the like.) A nice visual snack.