Biography

Bill Green is a City Councilman At-Large in the City of Philadelphia.
In Bill's first week in office, he introduced legislation to end the City's controversial DROP program. Over the course of his first term, Bill has focused his work in City Council on accountability and fiscal discipline, constituent service, and quality of life for city residents.
Among other initiatives, he has:
1. successfully sued the City to prevent the permanent closure of 11 library branches;
2. identified more than $150 million in budget savings - through using technology and retirements/attrition to gradually reduce the size of the workforce - as alternatives to tax increases;
3. passed legislation to reform Philadelphia's broken property tax system by creating a new agency to handle assessment functions, bringing much-needed governance reform, professionalism, and standard-setting to our property tax system; 4. passed significant campaign finance and ethics reform legislation, which was supported by the Board of Ethics, the Committee of Seventy, and other key stakeholders;
5. released a detailed policy paper analyzing the state of education in the city and recommending 30-plus actions to improve early childhood education, expand school choice, enhance the quality of teaching and instruction, improve the condition of school facilities, and create merit scholarships for college;
6. passed legislation that banned handheld cell phone use and texting while driving within Philadelphia;
7. passed legislation that enabled the Philadelphia Historical Commission to protect historically significant public interior spaces;
8. passed legislation designed to clean up city streets and commercial corridors through more efficient and stricter regulation of dumpsters; and
9. played an integral role in helping to save Philadelphia's citywide wireless network, which is one of the largest municipal wireless networks in the United States and a critical piece of our public infrastructure.

Bill is continuing his family's strong commitment to public service: his father served as Congressman, Chairman of Philadelphia's Democratic City Committee, and Mayor of Philadelphia, and his grandfather was a Congressman and Chairman of Philadelphia's Democratic City Committee.Though the tradition of public service runs deep in Bill's family, Bill is not a career politician.  Prior to first seeking office in 2007, Bill spent most of his career in the private sector, having traded options and futures in New York, London, and Amsterdam. After obtaining his law degree, Bill founded several businesses, represented top Fortune 500 companies and start-ups as a corporate lawyer, and served as president of VistaScape Security Systems. (Read more...)

Accomplishments

Since taking office in 2008, Bill has focused his work in City Council on accountability and fiscal discipline, constituent service, and quality of life for city residents. (Read more...)