Investigators removing artifacts from the Midtown home of former Mayor Stephen Reed in early June. (File photo.)
A statewide grand jury probe into Harrisburg’s debt crisis has been extended another six months to late January 2016, a court administrator confirmed this week.
James Koval, of the Administrative Office of Pennsylvania Courts, said the state Supreme Court approved the extension on May 26, after a majority of the jurors voted to request the additional time.
The grand jury has been meeting in Pittsburgh under supervising Judge Norman A. Krumenaker III of Cambria County, with an 18-month term originally set to expire in late July. The extension means it will now last up to 24 months, the maximum length allowable for grand juries, Koval said.
The grand jury is reportedly probing the financial crisis that bloomed under former Mayor Stephen Reed, focusing particularly on a set of risky borrowings related to the city incinerator but including other areas of governance during his 28-year reign.
The extension was previously reported by WITF news.
Grand juries are protected by secrecy rules, but there have been occasional hints about the probe’s scope and progress.
Attorney General Kathleen Kane, whose office is spearheading the probe, said during a Senate committee hearing in March that she hoped it was nearing a conclusion but that “no stone will be left unturned.”
Mayor Eric Papenfuse acknowledged testifying before the jury in 2014, but he said Tuesday he is now under a judicial gag order and cannot comment on his testimony.
Bill Cluck, a board member of what was formerly the Harrisburg Authority, which borrowed to retrofit the incinerator in 2003 and 2007, has also said he testified.
The Patriot-News published photographs in April of past city officials arriving in Pittsburgh, either to testify or to meet with prosecutors.
Among those identified were former city controller James McCarthy, Daniel Lispi, a project manager of the incinerator retrofit, and Reed himself.
TheBurg also reported that month that records of a $33,000 reimbursement paid to Reed in 2003 for artifacts he ostensibly bought for city archives were among the materials presented to jurors.
Just last month, investigators raided Reed’s Midtown home, carrying out boxes and various Western-style artifacts, including saddles, barrels and a stuffed coyote.
Reed later told reporters that everything removed was his personal property.
