Rapaire is right -- the news has changed. The crisis has been averted. The Pennsylvania state legislature approved a "relief package" to prevent what Philadelphia mayor Michael Nutter called a "doomsday" plan that would have seen massive layoffs of police officers, firefighters and other city workers as well as the closure of all public libraries and other buildings such as recreational centers.
Basically, what happened was that the state legislature did not pass a state budget when it was supposed to, and it's been in a staring contest with the Philadelphia government for months. The state finally blinked, one day before the "doomsday" scenario would have to have been played out in the city.
I live in the suburbs of Philly, so I've been watching this from the sidelines. I was confident that this would be the outcome; it's typical of the politics around here. But it angers me that these political games caused such stress for so many people who were on the verge of receiving pink slips. On the local news today, there was a video of a bonfire made up of a pile of those pink slips. What a waste of people's time and energies (not to mention the waste of paper!).
So the sales tax will be going up to 8% in Philadelphia, which is one of the things the state didn't want to happen... and which is even less of an incentive for us suburbanites to go into the city to shop, when we can shop locally and pay only 6% (and park our cars for free instead of paying the parking rates in Philly).