Wednesday, on a cool, dry morning after days of rain, the Municipal Financial Recovery Advisory Committee—if the label is unwieldy, you can call it by its acronym, MFRAC—convened in the City Council Chambers.
The MFRAC meetings, which bring together the city’s receiver, the City Council President, the Mayor, and others to discuss the progress of the recovery plan, are supposed to occur on the 2nd and 4th Wednesday of each month. But the committee had skipped its previous meeting, presumably because it fell on the Wednesday after Mayor Thompson’s ouster in the Democratic primary.
As with most meetings in the Council Chambers, the MFRAC meeting set aside time to take comments from the public. When the floor was opened, it was the rare moment of heat in an otherwise room-temperature affair. A man identifying himself as a resident of 3rd Street stepped forward and lambasted the receiver, William Lynch, for letting Harrisburg’s health officer go.
In this case, “let go” is not a euphemism. The health officer was not fired. He elected to leave the city this month to work in another municipality. The speaker blamed Lynch because, as City Council had explained the night before at its legislative session, Lynch had denied Council’s request to give the officer a raise.
The health officer, whose name is Cornelius Johnson, departed for a $50,000 salary he’d been offered by Susquehanna Township. His salary in Harrisburg was $40,000; Lynch had consented to a $2,000 raise, but would not go higher.
Johnson is the third city employee to leave Harrisburg in the past few weeks. (The budget manager, Joseph Bream, and the Chief Operating Officer, Ricardo Mendez-Saldivia, left shortly after the primary.) Everyone believed it was someone else’s fault.
Council, at its session on Tuesday night, pinned Johnson’s departure on Lynch and Thompson. Lynch, replying to the man at the microphone, referred to the pay freeze affecting all employees under the recovery plan. He said that making an exception for the salary of one officer would have a “corrosive” effect.
Thompson, meanwhile, blamed Council, and took credit for Johnson’s hiring in the first place. “I hate going back down memory lane, but the position was cut out by City Council for two years,” she said. “My administration finally got it back in.” She added that she pushed for the hiring of Johnson because she “found him to be one impressive man.”
It’s not exactly true that Council “cut out” the position for two years. The health officer’s job is to inspect city restaurants to ensure they’re complying with health codes. The previous health officer, Heather Kreeger, resigned in June of 2011. For nine months, a codes officer, David Patton, covered inspections in his spare time. (His spare time, needless to say, was insufficient to cover the 600-odd inspections the health officer would conduct each year under normal circumstances.)
Johnson wasn’t hired until March of 2012. It’s not clear why the city stalled. They seemed to have hoped that the state Department of Agriculture would step in and do the inspections on the city’s behalf. The Department of Agriculture, itself strapped for resources, did not leap into the breach.
Once Johnson was hired, in any case, all parties seemed to be pleased. The city paid for his certification with the Department of Agriculture. This investment was among Council President Williams’ laments when she learned that Johnson was leaving. “City Council did everything they could to try to retain him,” she said, and shook her head.
The various regrets and accusations miss the mark. There’s a whiff of mismanagement in the wrangle over Johnson’s wage, to be sure. And the mayor’s comments, as they have before, turned an opportunity to solicit goodwill into sour grapes. (She might have focused on other employees, whose sacrifices during the pay freeze were honored, rather than on her role in acquiring the employee that she lost.)
But there is little in the receiver’s actions that warrants controversy.
It might be pointed out that the one person no one was quite willing to blame was the health officer. That, given the details of his tenure, is peculiar. Johnson took a position and, one year later, during a period of fiscal constraint, attempted to bargain for a $10,000 raise. Moreover, he left after the city, as his employer, paid for the certification he’ll carry to his new job.
Perhaps Johnson’s skills were such that he really was worth the extra money. Councilwoman Brown-Wilson, on Tuesday night, said Johnson was Susquehanna’s “number one choice” for the job. It’s not clear what makes for an exceptional health officer; it would seem to be a matter of experience, rather than natural aptitude. (Does Johnson have a sixth sense for detecting warm milk?) But if his skills were such that the city couldn’t afford him, there’s no shame in acknowledging that and letting him leave with its blessing.
Harrisburg’s employees—health officers included—are public servants. An expectation that they prioritize more than their earnings ought to be implied. To the extent that the receiver refused to bargain with someone so eager to leave, he did right by the city’s residents, as well as its other employees.
Harrisburg is weathering a period of financial distress. Whether it survives will depend on people who work here because they love the city and want it to prosper. If a worker is motivated purely by something else, we might be better off without him.
