That was fast.
Harrisburg Mayor Eric Papenfuse was sworn into office just 12 days ago, but already we’re witnessing a dismantling of the structure put into place by the state to guide the city to financial recovery and help ensure more professional governance.
On Tuesday, Papenfuse announced that he is asking City Council to defund the position of chief operating officer and, yesterday, the state petitioned the Commonwealth Court to eliminate the state-imposed receivership. Assuming these requests are granted, Harrisburg will be back organizationally to a strong mayor who controls most of the levers of city government.
Whether you judge this to be a welcome development depends upon two key factors.
First of all, do you believe that Harrisburg continues to need the strong hand of the receiver and the professional management (at least in theory) of a COO?
The state created the receivership to formulate and implement a financial recovery plan for the city, to force that solution on feuding parts of the city government and to fortify the Thompson administration with additional expertise and oversight.
Over the course of two-plus years, the receiver accomplished these goals, although a few elements of the Harrisburg Strong plan, notably a new labor agreement with the firefighters’ union, are unfinished. The city will remain under Act 47, which means that a coordinator appointed by the state Department of Community and Economic Development (DCED) will continue to have some influence over city operations.
As for the COO position, it was one of the key reforms of city government proposed by David Unkovic, the city’s first receiver, and, until recently, seemingly supported by the second, William Lynch. It was designed to professionalize how government operated on a daily basis, helping to ensure that the city was not again brought low by the political and personal agendas and limitations of its powerful mayors.
Many municipalities, in fact, are run daily by a professional city manager, and, under the reform, Harrisburg, though structured differently, would largely have followed that model.
On Tuesday, in his budget address to City Council, Papenfuse characterized the change more as a reclassification than an elimination. The COO, he said, would morph into the position of business administrator—with a $30,500 pay cut.
However, this is no reclassification. If defunded by City Council, the COO job is gone, and Harrisburg will revert to its strong-mayor form of government. The business administrator will serve as the mayor’s right-hand man (or woman), important but clearly beneath the mayor in the hierarchy. The huge pay cut emphasizes this point, with the business administrator’s salary tellingly just a whisker ($500 a year) below the mayor’s.
These changes are quite an achievement for Papenfuse, so early on in his administration. If both the receiver and the COO go away, he will have effectively re-consolidated the power of the office of the mayor. He also will have clarified the city’s hierarchy of authority, which has been muddied for more than two years, first by the creation of the receiver then by the addition of the COO.
Evidently, Lynch and others at DCED have enough confidence in Papenfuse that they no longer deem either office necessary. On Tuesday, Papenfuse told council that Lynch supports ending Harrisburg’s COO experiment, which, admittedly was no great success under two short-lived, if very well paid, administrators.
And that brings me to the second way of judging these developments.
Ultimately, how you view the re-creation of the powerful mayor’s office depends upon how you view Papenfuse. If you believe he can handle the office effectively and responsibly, you might be happy that he has consolidated power so quickly. If not, then you probably aren’t.
So far, I like what I’ve seen from the administration. Papenfuse’s appointments have been solid, and I support his decisions to work closely with council and to make government more accessible and friendly. His early moves have been pragmatic, not dogmatic or personal.
That said: it’s very early. I would be reluctant to reach any conclusions until at least six months have passed—and that’s why these recent moves give me pause.
I expected the receivership, which was extended just in November, to end well before its two-year term, but not just weeks into it. I expected the COO job to go unfilled for some time, until the administration got its bearings and the flow of government settled.
As a resident, I would have felt more comfortable had the receiver allowed more time, so that the new administration could settle in and show itself capable of governing well. As it stands, these changes appear rushed. I understand that the re-opening of the budget was viewed as an opportune time to make adjustments, but the resulting changes are huge. A more gradual evolution in the city’s power structure may have better served the still-wary, skeptical residents of this city.
