Jun. 19--Pity the poor board at the Convention Center. 

Here it picks Bob Judge as new executive director to replace the retiring Bob Butera. (Under the One-Good-Bob-Deserves-Another Theory?) Judge's main mission: Persuade the Pennsylvania legislature to cough up half of the estimated $464 million it will cost to expand the center. 

Judge brings a lot of political connections to the table. He was state revenue secretary in the Ridge administration. His father is chair of the Republican Party in Delaware County. His brother is chief administrative officer for Upper Darby Township. 

Turns out he's a little too connected. 

As my colleague Marcia Gelbart reported, Judge's appointment violated a 1986 state law that forbids the Convention Center from hiring managers whose family members are political party officers or public officials. 

The provision was inserted to prevent those terrible Democratic pols from Philly from larding the center's payroll with relatives. 

And here it comes back to bite a family of suburban Republican pols on the derriere. I believe this is called dramatic irony. 

Bottom line: Judge has withdrawn from the job as director. 

Convention Center board members meet today and will renew the search for a new director. They are in a rush. 

They want the $232 million included in the capital budget bill now under consideration in the legislature. 

The legislature is reluctant to approve such a big-ticket item. Want a short explanation why? As one legislator put it: "the union stuff." 

He was referring to the fact that the six unions that work at the center keep chasing conventions away with inter-union jurisdictional disputes (read: fistfights) and rigid work rules (read: price-gouging the exhibitors). 

This is not new. 

In January 2001, Mayor Street intervened to get the unions to behave. 

Street was responding to the shocking fact that the center had only a 25 percent return rate for conventions -- compared with 50 percent to 85 percent for other centers in other cities. 

The complaint by convention organizers was this: Loved the center, loved the city, hated the union hassles. Goodbye, Philly. Hello, Atlanta or L.A. or New York... 

Since then -- and after great effort involving all parties -- the Convention Center's return rate has gone to... 17 percent. 

The book today is that organizers love the center, love the city, hate the union hassles. 

So much for Street's treaty. So much for Philly as Destination City. 

Convention Center board members are considering various and sundry solutions to the problem, including making the union members state employees. I wish them luck. 

But let me ask this: With that lousy return rate, how can one justify asking the state and city to spend nearly $500 million for a major expansion? 

The official answer is that it will enable us to compete with the newer, larger centers for big conventions. 

In other words, we'll get a whole new class of conventioneers to come to Philly once and vow never to return because of union hassles. 

And instead of having an empty 1 million-square-foot Convention Center, we'll have an empty 2.3 million-square-foot Convention Center. 

I'm from Philly, so I have a very modest definition of progress. 

This doesn't meet even that low threshold. 

How about this instead? 

The legislature should refuse to spring for the $232 million until the Convention Center proves it has solved its union problems. 

Not "on the way to solving" or "holding serious discussions about solving" but actually, factually solving them. 

The best way to do this? Improve the return rate. Get the return rate up to 40 or 50 percent, then fund the expansion. 

Otherwise, it's a joke. Only no one is laughing. 

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