A Forecast from Harrisburg?

The story was on Page B2 of the Inquirer Local Section, but from my vantage point the message it conveyed justified more prominent placement.  What it reported was that Governor Corbett has delivered an ultimatum directly to the mayor of Harrisburg, verbally and in writing.  In short he warned Mayor Linda Thompson to either find a way to clean up the city financial and managerial mess, or the state will take over the city.

 

Harrisburg has been in serious problems for a while, but only recently have we heard of the difficulty the city has in paying its employees, managing massive debt, with $300 million of it attached to a city owned trash incinerator.  Apparently federal bankruptcy protection is not a viable option as Governor Corbett signed a bill on June 30 that would cut off all state funding to any city that tries to walk away from its debt obligations through bankruptcy.

 

Is there a larger message here that should be making its way directly east?  I think so. If Philadelphia was run by an honest and transparent administration, and we had the kind of responsible press the public deserves, the true financial condition of Philadelphia and what it will be facing in the near future would be public knowledge and we would learn that our fate would be much closer to that of Harrisburg, Detroit, Camden and other cities nationwide who have been playing shell games and using politically-created tactics and slick accounting to mask the facts and subvert the law.

 

While there has been some background criticism coming from Sam Katz at the PICA Board that is charged with fiscal oversight, and Zach Stalberg at the Committee of 70, their voices are long overdue and much too weak relative to the seriousness of the situation. While “70” can only recommend, it can raise the decibel level and protest loudly and frequently regarding both political and managerial chicanery using its long-established reputation to make the case against whitewash at the highest level in the most aggressive language.  It just is not doing that.

 

The PICA Board on the other hand, has enforcement power as it was created as a watchdog with some teeth some years back when Philadelphia was drowning in debt and could not borrow to meet essential obligations - - something it may not be all that far from if present circumstances continue. The city still has not paid back all the emergency debt that the State provided through the creation of the PICA Board, but worse than that PICA has the power to reject city budgets that don’t reflect a legitimate approach to financial standards and mandatory obligations. The city’s pension situation is one of the worst in the nation presently and has already used stealth emergency legislation from Harrisburg to dance around funding requirements on more than one occasion.  Weak politically-affiliated board chairmen in Rob Dubow and Jim Eisenhower have let the city kick the can down the road for the last few years, and so far Sam Katz, the new Chairman let them get this year’s budget through with only a mild reprimand. Citizen/voters should want to know why.

 

While Tom Corbett seemed to be looking the other way from broad issues of malfeasance and corruption in this city, he has shown his willingness to root out corruption at the state level as Attorney General, and he began by putting several long-serving elected officials in jail and now the process is hitting some Republicans close to Philadelphia as well.  Who knows what may be in store for the future, but the very unexpected purge of Dwight Evans by his own party members from the Chair of the House Appropriations Committee is seen by many as face-saving in advance of what was to come once Corbett and his administration that controls both houses got some seasoning.

 

The power-mongers who run the city administration and political machine have been reaching new lows in chicanery in recent months, and the combination of back-channel deals like the Ackerman bailout with hidden money and the still bubbling cesspools of Carl Greene, Sheriff John Green, BRT irregularities. The multiple other investigations started but now buried will give the Corbett folks plenty to deal with if they want to begin to clean up this state and this city - - now the most pervasively corrupt in the nation. The few relatively small exposes by the City Controller and the U.S. Attorney in Philadelphia are mere window dressing to fool the public, and are trivial pursuit relative to what they know needs investigation and prosecution.  But aggressive action by state law enforcement may force them to do their jobs and not take phone calls from political leadership. It has happened before.

 

The days of papering over malfeasance and theft from the public trough with new injections of federal and state money are over. Rendell was successful at doing that as both mayor and governor, and the wreckage left behind is looming debt at both state and city levels.  Now, Corbett knew that when he ran for the job, but my guess is that the message he just sent to Harrisburg was meant to be transmitted here - - and sooner rather than later.

 

Jim Foster

Publisher/Editor