On the drama scale in City Hall, a bill getting voted down on the floor sits somewhere between a fistfight and an FBI investigation.

Philadelphia City Council introduced over 15,000 bills and resolutions in the last two decades. According to a Billy Penn/PlanPhilly analysis, since the start of this century, all legislation that made it to a floor vote has passed — with just five exceptions.

Councilmembers often tout their prodigious lawmaking. But many were shocked to learn just how much of their own legislation actually gets turned into law. Most guesses hovered around a 10% success rate.

Between 2000 and 2019, Philadelphia lawmakers passed about 75% of the bills they introduced, and 92% of resolutions — like the ceremonial gestures recognizing a spring day in 2004 as “Southwest Airlines Day,” or October 2013 as “Philly Plays Scrabble Month.”

City Council’s high rate of passage stands in stark contrast to the gridlocked U.S. Congress, where only 5% of bills and resolutions pass, and the partisan Pennsylvania legislature, which passes only a few hundred of the thousands of proposals introduced every year.

The analysis offers a window into what Philly’s 17-member ruling body has accomplished over the last two decades — and what it hasn’t. Despite plenty of talk about solutions, one thing that hasn’t budged is the city’s distressingly high poverty rate.

“We’re 20 years down the road and we’re still the poorest big city in the country with kids struggling in under-performing schools,” said Dan Fee, a longtime political operative in the city. “It’s not just about passing bills. It’s about measuring results.”

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What was Council actually working on? Billy Penn/PlanPhilly found that 1 in 4 bills detailed some form of councilmanic prerogative, the oft-criticized tradition that allows the city’s district councilmembers near-total control over planning and land use matters.

At least 1 in 6 legislative efforts involved some type of honorary resolution, commemoration or ceremonial statement urging action from another government body.

Substantive policy proposals, while hard to quantify, have been rarer — but also appear to be on the rise over the last decade.

In January 2020, four new lawmakers will join what former Mayor Bill Green once called the “worst legislative body in the free world.” The new wave joins a Council that’s become more independent and forceful, often leading the charge in sweeping policy changes.

How only 5 bills failed in 20 years

The few council bills that didn’t pass illuminate some of the challenges of lawmaking in a big city facing deep systemic challenges and shallow pockets.

Just ask Councilmember Bill Greenlee. Last spring, the retiring lawmaker was the primary sponsor of one of the five bills that failed over the last two decades. In 2018, Greenlee and Councilmember Cindy Bass were whipping their colleagues to back a proposal to put restrictions on doctor gifts from the pharmaceutical industry.

The measure was pitched as a counter to the overprescribing practices many say contributed to the opioid crisis. But critics argued the bill was overly broad, while pharma and hotel lobbyists leaned on lawmakers, many of whom received campaign donations from those industries. Greenlee, sensing danger, ordered the bill to the floor suddenly on a chilly Thursday in February.

“The lobbying effort against it was so intense, and it wasn’t going to lessen,” Greenlee said. “So why give the lobbyists one more week? We might as well take a shot at it.”

Council struck down the bill down by a decisive 9-to-5 margin.

“I got kinda dramatic,” the veteran councilmember recalled. “I was shocked by a few votes.”

So apoplectic was Greenlee that he violated one of the unspoken rules among councilmembers and engaged in public smack talk, tweeting a list of every colleague who voted “no” on the bill.

That kind of fanfare is rare on City Hall’s fourth floor. The only other “failed” efforts in the last 20 years:

