Fifty cents on the dollar.
That was Harrisburg’s return on investment after the weeklong Wild West auction on City Island, according to Guernsey’s auction house.
Estimated spend by former Mayor Steve Reed: $8.3 million. Total return to Harrisburg: $4.17 million (including two previous auction rounds).
Sigh.
And even that money isn’t going to fix our broken city or get a few more cops on the streets. No, it’s going to pay off a loan that Reed took out to fill a hole in the city’s budget back in 2006.
But that’s the way Reed operated — borrow today with no mind for tomorrow. And, when tomorrow comes, borrow more.
In part, that’s why I have such a problem understanding those who still defend Reed’s mayoralty. Yes, I understand that, today, Harrisburg seems better off than 30 years ago, when he first became mayor. However, the ends don’t justify the means — and the means were not just ugly, but, in many ways, arrogantly self-destructive.
The failures of Steve Reed are long and deep. Having come up with some idea, he seemed unable to let it go, even after it was questioned by the public, rejected by City Council or began turning sour. He was chastened many times, even by the court, for ignoring legislative and legal processes, but simply went right back to it, embracing dubious and self-serving interpretations of the law and funneling money through his favorite sandbox, the Harrisburg Authority.
This isn’t effective government. This is government run amok.
There are reasons there are checks and balances and restraints on power in this country. It’s so that one man cannot unilaterally impose his will. That’s called arbitrary power, and that’s what Steve Reed practiced.
You want to know how millions were squandered in an effort to build a hydroelectric dam on the Susquehanna? How millions more were lost in loans to unproven and unworthy businesses? How an untested, ultimately failed, technology was chosen to retrofit the incinerator? How 10,000 Wild West artifacts ended up in a warehouse? How Harrisburg got into the investment banking business?
These ideas all sprung from the mind of Stephen Reed.
Reed also was the master of not facing up to realities. According to former receiver David Unkovic, Reed overspent for two decades, hiding the growing deficits through gimmicks and trickery. So, he overcharged suburban utility customers for water and sewer service, bled the Harrisburg Authority dry, borrowed money in excess of what was needed for a project, originated bond deals so he could sweep up the guarantee fees and, when all this failed, borrowed heavily against city assets. In the end, he was borrowing money just to pay off past borrowings.
Is that a successful mayoralty? I daresay that, with access to a fraction of these funds, most of us would have made much wiser, more responsible choices than thinking what Harrisburg most needed was a Wild West museum. Seriously, would anyone other than Reed have come up with this idea?
Indeed, Reed’s defenders seem to believe that only this great man could have saved Harrisburg. They ignore the reality that, like in Harrisburg, restaurants and nightlife have blossomed in cities throughout the country over the past three decades, while porn theaters and street-level prostitution have virtually disappeared from sight.
As I’ve written before, when you serve as mayor for 28 years and leave your city effectively bankrupt, you have failed. When you squander money on stuffed bison, African masks and a failed garbage-burner, your failure is almost cartoonish, a tragic-comedy that the residents of Harrisburg live with and pay for still.
