Last October, the state of Pennsylvania made a promise to the city of Harrisburg.
In signing the “Declaration of Fiscal Emergency,” Gov. Tom Corbett declared that it was necessary to intervene in city affairs “pursuant to the Commonwealth’s paramount right and duty to maintain law and order and protect and preserve the health, safety and welfare of its citizens.”
At the time, I wondered whether Corbett took his pledge seriously.
Having stated its responsibility, would the state really act to protect the “health, safety and welfare” of the people of Harrisburg?
Would Corbett make investments and deploy resources into his capital city to help ensure safe, clean streets, a functioning infrastructure and respectable schools–the things I believe are necessary for a healthy, safe, and productive society?
Or if it was just a pro forma declaration he signed, a legal formality, a hoop he had to jump through so that the state could do with Harrisburg what it wanted?
The verdict is now clear: pro forma, legal formality, hoop.
A year is plenty of time to see there are no more police on our streets (in fact, there are so few that nearby towns last month had to send in cops to bolster the city’s depleted force), no more workers to fix our crumbling roads, no attempt to address the many problems in the city and schools.
In sum, there has been little investment or effort by Corbett to ensure the health, safety and welfare of the city’s people.
That’s not to say that the state hasn’t coughed up any money–it has. A million or so has been spent on lawyers, consultants and bureaucrats to do what the architects of the state takeover always had in mind–force the people of Harrisburg to sit down and take their medicine.
Property taxes have been raised. The city’s most valuable assets are being sold. The state last month went to court to force the City Council to raise the earned income tax on residents. Municipal bankruptcy has been taken off the table–twice.
The state won’t even throw in for several new positions, such as chief operating officer and communications director, that it is forcing upon the city. These jobs may or may not be necessary, but, regardless, they are state-mandated burdens placed solely upon already stressed city taxpayers.
Harrisburg residents always knew we’d have to accept a share of pain to help retire the incinerator debt, now estimated to be somewhere north of $320 million.
Maybe that’s our punishment for naively trusting the people we elected to act in our best interest, along with their advisers and hangers-on. We accept that.
However, there has been no corresponding responsibility from the state and, with the exception of District Attorney Ed Marsico, little help from Dauphin County, which is neck-deep in the incinerator debacle.
Instead, the state and the county have worked tirelessly to ensure that the complicit creditors get paid in full solely by the people of Harrisburg.
Going forward, that obeisance to Wall Street will further strip the city’s ability to serve its people.
By selling assets, making the city a more expensive place to live and insisting creditors are made whole, less money will be available to police our streets, fix our roads, invest in infrastructure, educate our children.
And, assuming that past is prologue, I expect little future help from higher levels of government.
Almost a year ago, Gov. Corbett pledged, in writing, to protect the health, safety and welfare of the people of Harrisburg. Since then, he has done little more than watch the city continue to flounder and struggle. In fact, the situation may be worse today, as some of our best firefighters, police and municipal employees, tired of the dysfunction and fearing the future, have fled.
It’s now obvious that the statement signed by the governor was just a banality. It was a way to rationalize asset sales, tax hikes and the transfer of money to speculators who, years earlier, knowingly made a very risky bet–and lost.
