This is an encouraging development. The bill introduced by Councilmen James Kenney and W. Wilson Goode would establish a:

6 percent tax credit for businesses that did not previously provide online pharmacy health care to transgendered employees or life partners[. This] is a key aspect of this bill and would be the first credit of its kind in America.

The ordinance would also require gender-neutral restrooms in city building and protect the right to dress as appropriate to one’s self-identified gender.

While the article also quotes law professor Kermit Roosevelt’s sense that the law may not survive if challenged in state court, it’s heartening to see my home city championing legislation to improve the resources available to LGBT employees. Even more heartening is the focus on transgender rights, which are often lost in the much louder debates about homosexuality.

Philadelphia Councilman James Kenney made the following comment at the Restaurant Industry Summit, quoted by Randy Lobasso at Philadelphia Weekly's PhillyNow blog:

After 9/11, everyone became a ‘terrorist’—including that Mexican guy on a bike going from his lawn care job to his restaurant job. He is no threat to me, whatsoever. He is no threat to this country, whatsoever.

Kenney doesn’t like the immigration policy pushed by some “lunatics in Harrisburg” and wishes they would “exempt the city of Philadelphia” when they pass harsh immigration measures. Further, he stated that if he were mayor he wouldn’t cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (presumably beyond what the law requires).

I think there are more eloquent and nuanced ways to make the argument against strong immigration restrictions and criminalizing undocumented immigrants, but I respect the hell out of Kenney’s verve for the issue, which he said reminds him of problems his Irish ancestors faced in the earlier days of our nation.