Sam Katz still committed to helping Phila.

the former mayoral candidate spoke to Penn students yesterday as part of the Fox Leadership program. The Philadelphia mayoral race may have ended months ago, but Sam Katz is still campaigning for a better city. Katz, the Republican who posed an unexpectedly strong challenge to eventual winner John Street last November, discussed his views on the financial future of the city before nearly 30 politically oriented students yesterday as part of the Robert Fox Lessons in Leadership program. The 49-year-old Katz, a Philadelphia native, was an investment banker and financial advisor, and is currently the president and founder of EnterSports Capital Advisors, Inc. He is certainly best known, though, as the Republican mayoral candidate who lost by a narrow one-point margin and, in doing so, came as close to winning as any Republican since 1952. In his hour-long talk, Katz discussed problems that he believes have resulted from a consolidation of the city and county of Philadelphia into one legal entity. This consolidation, which means that the city and county share municipalities and hold a joint court system, has been an "albatross" around the neck of the city for the last 100 years, Katz said. Katz also reiterated his criticism of Philadelphia's wage tax, which he called a "killer." The wage tax became a focal part of his campaign when he released an 83-page plan that outlined his goal to cut the tax from 4.6 percent to 4 percent over four years. He said the tax has prevented the kind of growth the city needs to establish itself in this technological age. Katz cited SAP America, a Germany-based software firm that had hoped to move to Center City but decided on a neighboring county instead because the prospect of re-adjusting close to 7,000 salaries in accordance with the wage tax was unappealing. "Philadelphia could be the center of the technological revolution," Katz said, if the tax could be eliminated or at least lowered. Katz's speech was also not without its criticisms of Street and his performance in City Hall to date. "I don't see in the first 100 days of this administration what I would like to have seen," Katz said. Katz also offered several possible reasons for why he lost the election, including last year's presidential impeachment proceedings, which he said created a lingering bitterness toward the Republican party. He ended the talk by fielding questions about topics ranging from school choice vouchers to the new baseball stadium. Katz's own campaign had a three-pronged focus on decreasing the crime rate, improving education and lowering taxes. Some of those who came to hear Katz speak, like Spruce College House Dean Christine Brisson, were simply "curious to hear Katz speak" so that they could "be able to compare him to John Street." Mike Janson, a graduate student in the School of Arts and Sciences, said, "I wanted to find out what he thinks about poverty in the city, what he thinks can be done about poverty in the city and where he thinks that poverty comes from." At the beginning of the talk, Katz joked, "I don't feel this speech is a matter of life or death. If I do well, I won't be mayor, and if I do bad, I still won't be mayor."

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