Blog Response: CREDC’s Dave Black reacts to “Stick to the Plan.”

October 28, 2013 | by Dave Black

I am writing to comment on Paul Barker’s article on the Comprehensive Plan process and the recent meeting at John Harris High School (“Stick to the Plan”). A comprehensive plan is a land use document. This effort will also attempt to identify some economic development strategies. I’m not going to defend the legality of process. That’s up to professional planners and attorneys.

What I will defend and credit Mayor Thompson with in her final months is starting a process that will first begin with community meetings, giving residents a voice. The first steps include community meetings. It is important to note that the process described will take at least 18 months, so the new mayor and council can clearly change, correct or stop the process.

Most importantly, this is an opportunity to start a dialogue between city government and its residents and businesses. It’s abundantly clear, over the last 30 years, there has been a “disconnect” fueled by the fiscal mess. That’s one of the reasons I believe the [mayoral candidate Eric] Papenfuse campaign’s “Together We Can” resonates so well.

My point is dialogue and community input is a very good thing that should be encouraged. Bringing the business and development community together with the larger community to discuss the opportunities we have to build a better city is a very good thing. The process involved in a good comprehensive plan is many times more valuable than the outcome. The appropriate bureaucracy and crossing the legal “T’s” will come in due time.

I sincerely believe that, as a city, we need to focus on things that bring us together rather than focus on things that divide us. Thank you for TheBurg’s continued good coverage of our city.

Dave Black
Harrisburg Regional Chamber & CREDC
213-5032 (dd) 648-7099 (c)

Stick to the Plan

October 25, 2013 | by Paul Barker

“Here goes everything,” the British folk musician Linda Thompson sings, on the title track of the album “Won’t Be Long Now,” released on Oct. 15. “No more lies.”

The same morning as the album’s release, Harrisburg’s own Linda Thompson held a press conference to announce what appears to be the outgoing mayor’s last hurrah. The conference concerned a proposed update to the city’s comprehensive plan, a document that’s meant to spell out a broad vision for the city’s development, which Harrisburg has not updated since the mid-70’s. I wrote a bit about the history of comprehensive planning, and about the disarray at the first public meeting on the plan, in a column last Friday.

It’s with a certain amount of disappointment that I return to the plan this week. As I’ve already written, comprehensive planning, however lifeless it sounds, ought to be a chance for a positive, community-driven discussion about what the city needs in years to come. The usefulness of a plan is not trivial: having a well-drafted roadmap in place can significantly help the city attract state and federal funding. And even if the announcement was mostly for show, so that the mayor could claim credit for one more initiative at the end of her run—well, no harm, no foul.

But, as a number of sources now show, the process that has guided the plan thus far meets virtually none of the marks laid out by the mayor last Tuesday. This week, the city responded to a request for records of the bidding process and eventual contract with the consulting firm, Mullin & Lonergan, to draft the plan. The city’s COO and the receiver’s office have provided a few clarifying comments. And yesterday it was revealed that the office of city controller is withholding its stamp from the latest contract due to concerns about the process. Taken together, these sources are a window onto the dysfunction, half-truths, and contempt of procedure that seem to hover over Harrisburg government.

Here’s a run-down of the ways in which, in my view, the Thompson administration has botched the process:

1. A comprehensive plan should start with City Council.

The Municipalities Planning Code, which contains the state statutes that govern city planning, clearly says that comprehensive planning should begin with City Council. Nevin Mindlin, previously an independent candidate for mayor, expressed this during public comment at last week’s meeting. The code explains that a planning agency “shall at the request of the governing body have the power and shall be required” to prepare a comprehensive plan. It defines “governing body” as the elected council in cities of the third class, like Harrisburg.

This isn’t a technicality. Council, unlike the mayor’s office, holds regular, public meetings during which residents are invited to offer comments. Its members come from neighborhoods across the city, and more than any other elected body, its makeup reflects the actual composition and values of the population. If the goal is a community-driven process, the best way to achieve it is to put council in the driver’s seat. Instead, this process began behind the closed doors of the mayor’s office sometime in 2012.

Thompson, last week, made a few flimsy attempts to justify council’s late involvement. First, she said she’d invited them but that, in a reflection of “apathy,” none of them had replied. Then she acknowledged that Bruce Weber was indeed a member of her appointed “steering committee.” Then, when Mindlin raised his objection on Wednesday, she pointed to where Weber was sitting in the audience to show that council was part of the process. Either Thompson can’t tell the difference between council driving a process and merely participating, or she doesn’t think the difference matters. Neither possibility is reassuring.

2. The plan should be driven by a planning commission, not a steering committee.

Another subject on which the Planning Code is rather clear is the makeup of the agency tasked with overseeing the comprehensive plan. The governing body (council) can elect to create a planning commission of “not less than three nor more than nine members.” All of its members must be residents of the municipality, and the majority—from two on a three-member commission up to six on a commission of nine—are to be ordinary citizens, meaning residents who are not officers or employees of the city. Their appointments, meanwhile, are to be approved by council.

Instead, the mayor’s office has handpicked a “steering committee” of more than 30 members. Some of them are developers. Some of them are elected officials. Several are city employees, or directors of city authorities. They appear to have been invited at different times, and are reportedly communicating primarily by email, with varying degrees of involvement. One of the members is Dave Black, the CEO of CREDC, who appears to be more closely involved than anyone so far—he sat beside the mayor on stage during the first public meeting and helped with the presentation.

The city has a planning commission, but rather than engage it, the mayor’s office came up with the novel invention of her committee. This is unfortunate, because a commission, at least, would have a clear guide on how to conduct itself in the planning code. (Among the guidelines is a requirement to keep records on all of its business.) Instead, the plan has a steering committee whose rules, meetings, and methods of appointment are based on Thompson’s whims.

3. The contract for a consultant should be awarded in such a way as to be above suspicion.

Initially, when Thompson was asked about the consulting firm hired to draft the plan, she said they had not been part of a competitive bidding process, because they were already working on the city’s housing strategy. Then, at the public meeting, she corrected this, saying they were one of several firms that submitted proposals in the spring of 2012. She promised to provide records of the request for proposals and the records of the firms that submitted, which were obtained this week.

The actual sequence of events is more complicated than either version Thompson presented. Mullin & Lonergan did indeed bid for a consulting contract in 2012. They were chosen, as the lowest responsible bidder, for a three-year, $30,000-per-year contract to provide consulting on a range of community development projects. Among the proposed services is a pledge to assist with “revisions to the City’s Comprehensive Plan,” although the item is one of 11 under the heading “Other Technical Services.” But this fall, they were awarded a second contract, this time specifically concerning the comprehensive plan, for $153,000 over 18 months.

It’s not clear exactly what negotiations led to the new contract, or whether the new contract’s services were actually included in the older one. Mullin & Lonergan did not return calls, but Bob Philbin explained in an email that, each year, Mullin & Lonergan and the city “negotiate a contract to provide services that will assist the city based on what the city needs for that year.”

Does that mean the initial contract got the firm’s foot in the door, but that subsequent costs and services were open-ended? Philbin wrote that the “Comp Plan work is a service/product that is beyond the typical HUD…consulting services. That is why this is a separate work/contract.” However, he added, the “work still falls under the original procurement of services.”

So whether the comprehensive plan was in the original bid depends on which question you’re asking. If the question is whether the new contract should have been competitively bid, the answer is no: comprehensive planning was part of the original contract. But if the question is whether there needs to be a new, larger contract for planning, the answer is yes: comprehensive planning was not part of the original contract.

All of this muddle should have been avoidable. The planning code outlines a clear process for comprehensive planning—but the city abandoned it and needlessly decided to chart its own irregular course.

Thompson seems to have done this partly because she’d been given Lynch’s nod. A spokesman explained that the receiver reviewed the plan’s scope and budget and gave it his blessing, because a qualified firm “was on-hand to do the work and there was no issue from our standpoint in having them do it.” He also explained that, in the interpretation of Fred Reddig from DCED, a competitive bidding process was not necessarily required for projects of this sort, and that “an internal decision was made” to engage Mullin & Lonergan, based on their knowledge of Harrisburg. (The firm has been consulting the city on various projects since 2001.)

But I think there’s something else that explains the blunder better: a persistent culture of dysfunction in City Hall. There was a way to do this correctly, readily available to the mayor had she wanted to use it. That she didn’t, and that her advisors didn’t point her towards it—and that no one, short of the controller’s office, felt it necessary to halt the process until it was done properly—speaks to an attitude of indifference or, worse, distaste for the actual work of governing. The citizens of Harrisburg deserve better management. Well, as the other Thompson had it—it won’t be long.

This article was updated to reflect that the city does have an active planning commission, whose regular schedule of meetings can be found here.

Native Son

October 23, 2013 | by Paul Barker

“To God be the glory,” Mayor Linda Thompson said at the start of her inaugural address. It was January 2010, and Harrisburg, whose population at the time was 52 percent African-American and 30 percent white, had elected its first black mayor. As Thompson spoke, voices in the crowd assented, as if to a sermon. “To God be the glory,” she repeated, nodding.

Three and a half years later, in the Democratic primary, Thompson was resoundingly ousted. She carried a mere 28 percent of votes, a smaller share than either of her opponents. In some neighborhoods, her returns were shockingly low for an incumbent. In the 5^th Ward, which roughly corresponds to the Midtown neighborhood between Forster and Verbeke, she received 9 percent of votes. In Shipoke, she received 1.6 percent, representing a mere two supporters.

Yet other parts of town remained Thompson strongholds. Her support in the 10^th Ward, 2^nd Precinct—an area bordered by Maclay, Schuylkill, 4^th, and 7^th streets—was nearly 64 percent, constituting the largest share of any precinct by any candidate. The neighborhood’s population, estimating from 2010 census figures, is close to 80 percent African-American. In her inaugural, Thompson had urged Harrisburg citizens to overcome the “temptation to view the challenges facing our city through the prism of racial, economic, and geographical differences.” But if the primary returns are any measure, the prism remains electorally significant.

So it is with considerable interest that many folks have been watching the write-in mayoral campaign of Aaron Johnson, the city’s deputy director of public works. If you don’t know who Aaron Johnson is, or that he’s running for mayor, you’re not alone: he has run what you might call an unorthodox campaign. He did not officially announce his candidacy until October 4, after denying rumors in August that he planned to run, according to the Patriot-News. (A Facebook page, “Aaron K. Johnson for Mayor,” went live on September 26.)

Since then, the public face of his campaign has been a mixture of serious endorsements and makeshift electioneering. When Johnson made the live announcement of his candidacy, on a baseball diamond in Hall Manor, City Council President Wanda Williams stood by his side. Jennifer Smallwood, the school board president, endorsed him in a Facebook post in late September. (After mentioning Johnson’s role in reviving the city’s Little League baseball team, where he has coached for more than 20 years, Smallwood wrote, “This is the man I will support in November!”)

James Ellison, the former chairman of the Harrisburg Authority and a close aide to Mayor Thompson’s 2009 campaign, has also indicated his support on Facebook. And the campaign signs that have cropped up around the city—including across the street from the Midtown Scholar, the bookstore owned by Democratic candidate Eric Papenfuse—note that they were paid for by Revitalizing Our Communities, the political action committee that had previously boosted Smallwood, school board candidate Autumn Cooper, and former City Council President Gloria Martin-Roberts.

In the mainstream press, however, Johnson’s presence has been remarkably scarce. Johnson himself has not returned calls. A self-identified assistant to his campaign, Charisse Grayer, returned an initial call and then, after explaining that the campaign was run entirely by volunteers and has no payroll, promised future correspondence which was never received. Gina Roberson, Aaron’s sister and, according to Grayer, his campaign manager, has also not returned calls. Both Roberson and Grayer, meanwhile, are full-time city employees under Johnson; Grayer is a secretary in the department of parks and recreation, and Roberson is a grants officer.

Yet the campaign has an active Facebook account, with just short of 300 likes. That pales to the nearly 2,100 on Papenfuse’s page, and the 1,200 or so on Dan Miller’s, although post for post, they draw about an equal number of likes and comments. In contrast to the campaign of the other write-in candidate, Lewis Butts, the Johnson campaign appears to be prominently and proudly backed by a core of influential public figures. Meanwhile, the NAACP has announced yet another mayoral debate, to take place tomorrow night—Thursday, October 24—at the Allison Hill Community Center, which Johnson has confirmed he’ll attend.

What does all of this mean for November? Write-in campaigns, of course, are notoriously unlikely, though it’s not unheard of for them to draw meaningful support. (Wikipedia’s run-down of notable write-ins makes for an illuminating read.) But barring the outside odds of a Johnson victory, the real question is what portion of disaffected primary voters his ticket will corral. The difference between Miller and Papenfuse in May was 400 votes—a sizeable margin, but far below the 1,800 votes for Thompson that are presumed to be up for grabs.

The other question posed by the Johnson campaign is broader and, you might say, more existential. In one section of the community, he is known as a Harrisburg native, a military veteran, a legendary mentor and coach, and all-around upstanding man. In another, he’s largely notorious for one event: carrying out Wanda Williams’ order to bulldoze a community garden in Camp Curtin, in a spectacle whose fallout was racially charged. (Gina Roberson, who spoke before City Council after the event, in 2012, distinguished between the gardeners, who were sitting in a row behind her and were apparently all white, and “our community.”)

I referred above to Johnson’s silence in the mainstream press. But a fair reply might be: whose mainstream? In November 2009, when Thompson won the general election, James Ellison introduced her at her victory party by saying Thompson “is of us, she is by us, she is for us.” It would be a mistake to assume that Ellison’s “us” corresponds neatly to racial and geographical lines. But it would also be a mistake to think Johnson’s campaign means nothing. All voters want a candidate who is for them—and for a significant number in Harrisburg, he’s not on the official ballot.

Comprehension Test

October 18, 2013 | by Paul Barker

File photo: Mayor Linda Thompson.

At a press conference Tuesday morning, Mayor Linda Thompson announced that the city was at last embarking on an update to its comprehensive plan.

“Comprehensive” and “plan” were just two of many words that produced, at least in this reporter, a tremor of despair. (Others were “grassroots,” “people-centric,” and “consulting firm.”) At a certain point, one tires of hearing about initiatives and starts longing for achievements. In a city saturated with unconsummated plans, could the mayor really be unveiling a new one?

A so-called comprehensive plan, unlike a recovery plan drafted by a receiver, is not a Harrisburg novelty. In 1928, the U.S. Department of Commerce published a Standard City Planning Enabling Act, one of a pair of acts that would help states delegate their powers to local governments for the purposes of zoning and planning. They were called “enabling” because their goal was to activate, through standardized legislation, the states’ existing but largely untapped authority to shape their inhabited land. “We have helped to prove that these slumbering powers of legislatures can be used for the benefit of growing cities,” Edward Bassett, an attorney who helped draft the acts, said at a 1928 conference in New York City.

In Pennsylvania, the legislation that governs city planning is the Municipalities Planning Code, which includes a section on comprehensive plans. Such plans are called “comprehensive” because they incorporate strategies for transportation, housing, land use, and historic preservation, among other things. Their primary aim, according to Tom Daniels, a professor at the UPenn City and Regional Planning Program, is to “set forth a vision for a city over the next twenty years or more.” A secondary purpose is to ensure that the city’s zoning ordinances, which determine what sorts of buildings can be built where, are coordinated with the community’s overall vision of its development. (The lack of a plan, Daniels said, “leads to a lot of court cases.”)

There’s wide agreement that Harrisburg needs a comprehensive plan. The city last commissioned one in 1974, and it hasn’t been updated since; one of the receiver’s early recommendations was to reboot it. And the sort of planning involved is not typically a subject of controversy. Communities broadly want the same things—good roads, good jobs, safe schools, clean parks—and the planning process should be an opportunity for shared dreams rather than discord.

Yet by Wednesday night, when the mayor hosted the first of several public meetings, the process had already been polluted by the usual mix of skepticism, indifference, and squabbling. The event, at the John Harris High School auditorium, was sparsely attended, in part because it competed with the highly anticipated Miller-Papenfuse debate at the State Museum. During public comment, Nevin Mindlin, the one-time independent candidate for mayor, lashed Thompson and her team for a lack of transparency and for failing to follow the planning code.

“A comprehensive plan is supposed to start with the governing body, which is City Council,” Mindlin said. “I would urge we take this to City Council and do this properly.” There had been talk of a steering committee, appointed by the mayor, that had already begun meeting with the consulting team. Mindlin, citing open-records law, demanded access to the names of its members and minutes from their meetings. At some point, Robert Philbin, the city’s chief operating officer, tried to wave him along—“Mr. Mindlin, we’ll pursue this issue later,” he said—but that only led to further hectoring from the aisle.

Why did this happen? An unfortunate hallmark of Thompson’s mayoralty is that occasions that ought to be uncontroversial wind up generating ill will. In the case of the comprehensive plan, the trouble was a combination of vagaries, contradictions, and legal improvisations.

First, at Tuesday’s press conference, it was immediately apparent that Thompson was not prepared to reveal the nuts and bolts of the process—either because she didn’t know what they were, or didn’t want to share them. Asked about the members of the steering committee, for example, she initially described it as “a cross-section of people that represent the city,” but wouldn’t name names. I asked her to confirm that Dave Black, the president and CEO of the Capital Region Economic Development Corporation, was a member.

“I wouldn’t say Dave Black,” Thompson replied. “I would say ‘CREDC.’” (Actually, Black’s involvement is substantial. CREDC has volunteered time and staff to develop an “economic development strategy” alongside the comprehensive plan. At Wednesday’s public meeting, Black sat on stage with Thompson and members of Mullin & Lonergan, the consulting firm the city has employed to help draft the plan.)

Second, the mayor kept scrambling basic facts which, had she gotten them right, would have raised the undertaking above suspicion. On Tuesday, she initially said that City Council was involved in the steering committee; then she amended this, saying council “was asked to send four people, and I haven’t seen any representation,” a fact she attributed to “an apathy in the atmosphere.” Councilman Bruce Weber, however, had told me late last week he was a member, though he had only been invited in June. When I asked Thompson about Weber, she immediately amended her answer once again: “Bruce Weber is, yes, absolutely.”

The same confusion extended to the consulting firm, which the city has retained on a relatively scant budget of around $150,000. On Tuesday, Thompson told reporters the project had not been competitively bid, because the city had already employed Mullin & Lonergan for help with its housing strategy. On Wednesday night, when I tried to confirm this, she and the consultants offered a correction: the firm was actually chosen from a group of four that had submitted proposals in 2012. She promised to make the request for proposals, the names of competing firms, and the Mullin & Lonergan contract available, but on Thursday, her office qualified this promise, saying they would exercise the five days the right-to-know law grants them to provide the information.

And finally, in launching the planning process, the Thompson administration appears to be rather loosely interpreting state law. The planning code spells out that a planning commission, comprised of between three and nine members, is meant to spearhead any initiative to draft a comprehensive plan. The appointments are to be confirmed by the city’s “governing body”—Mindlin interprets this to mean City Council, though it’s actually a legal gray area, according to Weber—and its ranks are to be dominated by citizens who don’t work for the government.

Instead, the mayor has designated a “steering committee” consisting of 25 seats, 10 of which are to be filled by government officials, including the state-appointed receiver, and three of which are filled by developers.* In her defense, she’s working under extraordinary constraints. The city’s planning commission is essentially defunct, and under Act 47, governance by the books has been thrown into limbo. Thompson appears to have initiated the process at the receiver’s behest, and her committee appointments appear to have his blessing. Yet the muddle has compromised any perception that the plan will be community-driven.

Despite this, the mayor has continued to emphasize the need for public involvement. “People have always accused their government of not involving them,” Thompson said at one point during the press conference. “Under my government, that hasn’t been the case.”

But inviting the public to be involved is not the same as ensuring they are. A surefire way to achieve low engagement is to bury proceedings under layers of executive decisions and foregone conclusions. The public has been asked to add its voice to a process that apparently began a year and a half ago, and which has only very gradually been brought to light—and a murky light, at that. It would be nice if residents came out in droves to contribute, but if they don’t, it won’t be a surprise.

So if the process is not about community engagement, then what is it really about? Among the words repeated on Wednesday were two familiar ones, uttered mostly by the mayor herself: “Thompson” and “administration.” “I’m honored to have launched this,” she said on stage, in a phrase that was characteristically Thompson: half gracious, half self-laudatory. If the process so far is any measure, her focus is not so much on “community” as on a word that went unsaid. That word is “legacy,” though for Thompson, regrettably, it may not mean what she thinks.

*On Friday, the city published an updated list that contained additional members. The list can be reviewed here.

Correction: An earlier edition of this article incorrectly listed Professor Tom Daniels’ school as the Penn State School of Design. Prof. Daniels teaches in the City and Regional Planning Program at the UPenn School of Design.

Debate Wrap

October 17, 2013 | by Lawrance Binda

Republican candidate Dan Miller makes a point, as Democrat Eric Papenfuse looks on, during last night’s mayoral debate at the State Museum.

Alternately bitter and friendly–at times illuminating–last night’s mayoral debate had few dull moments, as Republican candidate Dan Miller and Democratic candidate Eric Papenfuse sparred for nearly 90 minutes before about 150 people at the State Museum.

In no particular order, here are my quick takes on last night’s action.

1. Miller came out swinging. Right out of the box, Miller was on the attack, accusing Papenfuse of being vulnerable to corruption and incompetence and of not being genuine. (“If we continue down the path we’ve had, we’re going to continue with corruption, and we’re going to continue with incompetence.”) It was strong language and a strong charge. Papenfuse countered that he could not be corrupted (“Your whisper campaign basically saying that I cannot be trusted is really beneath you and is the hallmark of a career politician”). Papenfuse then quickly switched gears to his main message for the evening–his support of the Harrisburg Strong financial recovery plan.

2. Miller is not really a Republican. Miller distanced himself immediately from the Republican Party, characterizing himself as a committed Democrat who just happens to be running on the Republican ballot because he won the GOP write-in vote in the primary. (“When you look at my picture here [in the program], and it says, ‘the Republican candidate,’ I want everyone to know that that’s somewhat untrue because, as you know, I’m a Democrat.”)

3. Miller is not Ted Cruz. Papenfuse tried to link Miller with Cruz, the Texas Republican senator often viewed as an ambitious political grandstander. The comparison, which Papenfuse made twice, flopped with the audience, prompting the only boos of the evening.

4. Does Miller support or oppose Harrisburg Strong? In my opinion, Miller’s changing (and confusing) position on the Strong plan was the biggest news to emerge from the debate. When the plan was released, Miller, long a supporter of municipal bankruptcy for Harrisburg, quickly moved to passionate, vocal opposition. Last night, he told the audience he remains opposed to many elements of the plan because, he said, the numbers don’t add up, it relies on many shaky assumptions, and it won’t lead to a balanced budget (receiver William Lynch isn’t doing “a job for us,” but “a job on us,” he said). Ironically, Miller then said that, as mayor, he would implement it anyway–in fact, as a financial professional, he was the best person to implement it. He also distanced himself from his own financial recovery plan that he had developed in 2010, which he had promoted during a debate just two weeks ago, as well as his years-long advocacy of bankruptcy.

5. Papenfuse has financed most of his own campaign. As he has before, Miller criticized Papenfuse for accepting substantial campaign contributions from “one man” and a PAC he helped organize.* Papenfuse countered that he has self-financed most of his campaign, taking out a $100,000 loan against his own assets. He said he did so because, as a latecomer to the race, he needed to raise money quickly. Assuming personal risk also demonstrated his deep commitment to the city, he said. Miller responded that taking on such personal debt was financially irresponsible, saying, “I’m the guy with zero debt. He’s the guy with all the debt.”

6. Miller supports “targeted tax abatement.” In Harrisburg, tax abatement has been a controversial issue, one most identified with Papenfuse, who supports revival of the city’s tax abatement program as an economic development strategy. In fact, Papenfuse’s opponents have linked his advocacy of tax abatement to some of the developers supporting his campaign. However, Miller last night said that he also supports abatements, at least in certain areas, to spur redevelopment.

In case you couldn’t attend the Harrisburg Watch Coalition debate at the State Museum, I strongly encourage you to watch it for yourself at Roxbury News (www.roxburynews.com).

* That person, while unnamed in the debate, is Alex Hartzler, who also is publisher of TheBurg.

Sage Advice

October 11, 2013 | by Lawrance Binda

Almost four years ago, Linda Thompson entered the mayor’s office vowing to work closely with the Harrisburg City Council.

As former council president, she seemed to understand how vital it was to forge alliances with council members, who had felt alternately ignored and attacked under former Mayor Steve Reed.

Therefore, it’s more than surprising that Thompson’s rocky relationship with council may have been the Achilles’ heel of her administration, a fact she seemed to acknowledge at this morning’s State of the City address at the Harrisburg Hilton.

During the question-and-answer period, she advised her successor as mayor and members of City Council to tend to their relationship, to put in an effort to work together to get things done. Excellent advice indeed. But then why did Thompson have such a continual problem with the legislative branch of the city’s government, the very body she headed for several years?

As with so many things in this city, the root of the problem lies in the near-dictatorship of Reed’s mayoralty.

In his collection of columns, “City Contented, City Discontented,” former Patriot-News writer Paul Beers describes the early years of Reed’s administration. Beers, who ceased writing his column in 1984, appeared optimistic about the young man’s prospects, but sagely noted his combative, take-no-prisoners approach to governance.

Beers lived long enough to see Reed continually bump up against and do battle with council through multiple terms. When he couldn’t co-opt council members, Reed sought either to go around or through them, regarding them more as an impediment than an ally.

By the time Thompson beat Reed handily in the 2009 Democratic primary, the consequences of years of unchecked executive power and profligate spending were becoming clear. So, if anyone should have understood the necessity of working with, not against, council, Thompson should have been that person.

But, bizarrely, she wasn’t.

Almost from day one, Thompson adopted Reed’s combative style, going to war with council after a majority rejected her first budget, which called for large increases in property taxes and water rates to cover incinerator bond payments. She followed with battles over Harrisburg Authority appointments, her ombudsman, her spokesman and, most importantly, various financial recovery plans. She fought with members of her own staff, the public and the press.

When asked why council opposed her, she usually responded harshly that it was all political, that a majority wanted Controller Dan Miller to replace her as mayor. But those of us who attended every council meeting knew that ambition and political spite weren’t what drove them.

The council wanted to be consulted, not dismissed; respected, not rolled over. In addition, the council was adamant in tossing aside any remnant of Reedism. It rejected the notion that residents should pay the price for the former mayor’s financial chicanery and buckled every time Thompson proposed hiring another group of high-priced consultants.

So, yes, Thompson offered excellent advice this morning (even though she stuck most of the blame on council). It is absolutely vital that the next mayor establish and nurture healthy relationships with council. How might he do that?

To start, the next mayor must attend every City Council meeting, even if it means just sitting there in the audience. It sounds so simple, but is something that neither Reed nor Thompson did, evidently believing it to be beneath them.

Doing so, the mayor will learn so much: the airing of issues behind legislation; what makes various council members tick; the challenges members face; what the public cares about; which issues in the city are emerging that haven’t yet hit the mayor’s radar.

It would also would give the mayor valuable face time with council members, who, busy with their daytime jobs and lives, typically only see one another at meetings and see the mayor even less often.

Otherwise, the mayor should be respectful of council members and their positions, friendly, willing to give and take. He should keep his door and phone lines open and get to know their interests and concerns. He needs to regard them as a vital part of the Harrisburg community and the city’s future.

The next mayor needs to build alliances on City Council, doing all the things that Thompson didn’t begin to do until it was too late. Things that, just maybe, would have given her the second term that she’s been denied.

What Parties Do

October 4, 2013 | by Lawrance Binda

So, Nevin’s gone. Officially.

The decision that came down today from the Commonwealth Court ensured that independent candidate Nevin Mindlin will not be on the November ballot.

Furthermore, he stated that he will not run a write-in campaign, calling it “the ploy that political parties use to fake democracy and political participation and to dupe the unsuspecting public into believing that they have choices.”

Indeed, the political parties do control the process, though it seems surprising to me that this would be news. The two major parties have had a lock on power in this country for about 160 years. After savaging one another, their next priority is to preserve their duopoly.

I have repeatedly stated that Harrisburg is worse off for not having Mindlin on the ballot, and I continue to believe that. I had hoped the court would rule in favor of ballot inclusion. That said: not filling out a section of a nomination petition that says, “All nomination papers shall specify,” is a ticket to getting kicked off.

Why? Because, following a nomination deadline, the first thing that party operatives and candidate supporters do is drive down to the county courthouse and examine the nomination papers of opponents. If they find an error, a challenge invariably ensues.

You may not like this; I don’t like this. However, it’s a basic fact of running for office in this country. Heck, Dan Miller ran unopposed for city controller in 2009 after his presumptive primary opponent, long-time Controller James McCarthy, had his petition challenged and then denied for missing a deadline by three days. And petition challenges have sunk several other would-be candidates, just in this town, just in this election cycle.

So, you can believe, as Mindlin does, that “moneyed interests” and “the established regime” are behind his ballot access woes. You can believe that Mindlin just made a mistake. You can believe that the Dauphin County Bureau of Elections gave him bum advice on filling out his petition.

But, really, it doesn’t much matter. If you want to run for office, and a petition asks you to name a “committee to fill vacancies,” name one. When it says to file by a certain date, file by that date. When it states a residency requirement, make sure you meet it.

Know that, if you hope to be a candidate and don’t follow the law’s strict guidelines, you will get challenged. Political pros and party operatives would consider it the height of malpractice not to challenge a petition when they’re able. That’s just what happens; that’s just what they do.

Financial Lesson

October 3, 2013 | by Lawrance Binda

Life in Harrisburg can be wonderful, but it also can be a test of one’s temper.

The most recent smoke-from-the-ears news arrived last night, when Peggy Morningstar, the school district’s new chief financial officer, told the school board that she may have unearthed about $12 million that the district hadn’t previously accounted for. This comes just months after yet another round of school tax increases and staff furloughs, in addition to salary cuts.

Shocking? Not really.

Last year, covering the school district’s budget hearings, I was left scratching my head on how, over the course of a month, a threatened $17 million budget deficit could just shrivel up and disappear. Here’s what I wrote in July 2012:

Nevermind.

That was the message that rang forth from the Harrisburg school district last month.

Remember that multi-million deficit and unbalanced budget? Nevermind.

The cancellation of kindergarten, of all school sports, of band, of extracurricular activities? Nevermind.

Residents, taxpayers, parents, schoolchildren, furloughed teachers—please forget about the recent past because nothing has really changed after all.

Like most city residents, I’m delighted that public education in Harrisburg has not been stripped to the bare bottom. Harrisburg’s children already have lost much over the past few budget cycles, and they cannot afford to lose any more.

However, the rapid, perplexing shrinking of the deficit—from $17 million to $8 million to $6.6 million to a balanced budget to a surplus with all the cuts restored—underscores an unfortunate truth: living in this city has become an unceasing leap into the great unknown.

At the time, I repeatedly asked school officials how this could happen. Yes, some of the extra money came from last-minute state aid, but that assistance flowed in only after school officials threatened the near-collapse of the system: no sports, no kindergarten, no extracurriculars. In my mind, the head-spinning financial reversal was never adequately explained, nor has it been explained in other years when this same pattern–massive, crippling deficits suddenly disappearing–has been repeated.

The Harrisburg school district seems to suffer from terrible financial management, or perhaps something more calculated is occurring. Either way, it’s concerning.

Chief Recovery Officer Gene Veno told me today that, while the extra money is probably not enough to give taxpayers a refund or restore salary cuts, he plans to find out what is going on. For her part, Morningstar said she would prepare a more extensive report and present it to the school board soon.

Based on those results, Veno may order a forensic audit, which would open the books into years past, he said. That might finally reveal why the district has been on a financial roller coaster ride for so long, a pattern that must come to an end.

A Debate Debate

October 2, 2013 | by Lawrance Binda

Alan Kennedy-Shaffer (left) at a Harrisburg Hope forum earlier this year with Geno Veno, the school district’s chief recovery officer.

Note: Just after this was posted, Republican candidate Dan Miller announced that he would take part in tomorrow’s Harrisburg Hope mayoral debate, which now will be moderated by Destini Hodges, vice president of Harrisburg Hope. The event starts at 6 p.m. at HACC’s Cooper Student Center.

Candidate debates are supposed to inform and enlighten voters, not become issues themselves.

Unfortunately, in Harrisburg, the latter has happened repeatedly, as debates in the primary–and now in the general election–have become infused with personal and political drama that threatens to overshadow the substance of the events.

Tomorrow night, Harrisburg Hope holds the first highly anticipated mayoral debate of the general election season, and it now seems that, instead of a spirited exchange of ideas, Democratic candidate Eric Papenfuse may have the room largely to himself, delivering comments unchallenged by others.

According to organizer Alan Kennedy-Shaffer, Republican nominee Dan Miller still has not said if he plans to attend (he also has not officially turned down the invitation, so Kennedy-Shaffer isn’t sure whether or not Miller will be there). Meanwhile, independent Nevin Mindlin said late yesterday that he had changed his mind and would not participate.

In turning down the debate, Mindlin focused on Kennedy-Shaffer’s support of Papenfuse, in addition to the role of the Democratic Party in challenging Mindlin’s nominating petition.

Indeed, Kennedy-Shaffer is a Papenfuse booster, as well as a party activist. But he’s also president of Harrisburg Hope and, in that role, has proven himself to be a highly capable, fair moderator who is sincerely interested in helping to inform the people of Harrisburg on a wide range of public policy issues. Through the years, Harrisburg Hope has capably hosted other candidates’ nights, as well as held forums on subjects as varied as the city’s debt crisis and the legal status of marijuana. In fact, Mindlin and Miller both have participated in past Harrisburg Hope events.

As I’ve written previously, I respect all the mayoral candidates and believe it’s a tragedy that Mindlin was thrown off the ballot after his nominating petition was successfully challenged (his appeal is still pending before the Commonwealth Court). However, without Miller and Mindlin attending, the real losers will be not Kennedy-Shaffer or Harrisburg Hope, but the people of this city.

In a month, residents of Harrisburg will go to the polls to elect a new mayor, and they need as much information as possible to make the best decision. Debates provide the opportunity for voters to hear the candidates speak unscripted, perhaps even field unexpected questions. Otherwise, voters are left with little more than canned campaign rhetoric and toxic direct mail, neither of which is very helpful.

In a representative government, debates are vital tools in helping voters decide who will lead them, who will make public policy, who will better spend their tax dollars and more efficiently provide their services. Debates should be an instrument for the common good, a way for candidates to reach and inform voters. Instead, they’ve become another sign of the city’s division, another casualty of its highly personal politics.

Lawrance Binda is editor-in-chief of TheBurg.

Gaining Ground

October 2, 2013 | by Paul Barker

“In this cemetery, we have slaves,” said Barbara Barksdale. “Some who came off the ship, some who were born here.”

Barksdale was standing in the shade of a few trees near the entrance of the Midland Cemetery, a burial ground of six or so square blocks on the outskirts of Steelton, Pa. She wore gray sweatpants, a visor, and a pink shirt that said “Cemetery Lady” over a woven insignia of a gravestone. She addressed a small crowd of volunteers, most of them employees of Capital Blue Cross, who had signed up for the United Way Day of Caring. It was early September.

“We also have Buffalo Soldiers,” she went on. “We also have Tuskegee Airmen. We have the men from World War I and World War II. We have a lot of our people who helped us start our area here, as far as the African-American communities. We have the slave who actually broke ground for the AME church that’s down on 2^nd and Adams Street.”

To her right and left, over uneven land, stretched a few hundred graves and markers. Behind her, in a forested patch, were others, lost beneath weeds and trees.

Twenty years ago, the forest covered almost the entire cemetery. Barksdale, who is the president of Friends of Midland, a nonprofit she founded to restore the site, only knew the graves existed because of visits she had made as a child. “My parents would just park down at the bottom, across from that brown house over there, and then they would disappear into the woods to visit my grandfather,” she said. “I never knew and I still don’t know where he’s buried at.”

Barbara Barksdale.

She recruited help from conservationists and local volunteers, and in a few years they managed to clear much of the overgrowth. But many of the headstones had sunken into the soil. Every year, with the help of an ancient map, she and her volunteers unearthed new gravesites. “It’s like a pimple on a face,” she said. “You keep on wiping it, something’s gonna pop out.”

With a warning to “watch out for lumps and bumps,” the volunteers dispersed over the grounds. Some, equipped with a pry bar, set about wresting markers from the weeds and propping them up with bricks. Others mowed. A few slopped sealant into little plastic buckets and began coating the cemetery’s wooden fence in preparation for winter.

Barksdale stayed near the entrance, setting up lunch, and spoke with one of her regular helpers. “He’s a descendant of some people out here,” she said. “He has kinfolk.”

The man nodded. “I grew up right over the hill, not even three minutes walking distance, and I never knew this was here til I started here with her. Never knew it.”

“I call him one of my revolving door inmates,” Barksdale confided as he walked off. Early in the cemetery’s restoration, she had seen inmates operating mowers near the county prison, and had asked the warden to loan her some laborers. They had been coming every year since. Some, like that day’s helper, continued helping after they’d been released. “When he first came out,” Barksdale said, “all this side was filled with stumps. And he would get down in the holes, and I said, ‘Twist it out like a tooth!’”

Midland is one of a network of cemeteries involved in the Hallowed Grounds Project, a statewide effort to recover the neglected burial sites of African-Americans, particularly members of the United States Colored Troops. “The United States Colored Troops (USCT) were segregated in death as they were in life,” a recent pamphlet explained. “Until recently, their final resting places were vanishing from the landscape.”

A few weeks before September’s Day of Caring, Barksdale met with Lenwood Sloan in the offices of Jump Street, an arts-education nonprofit on North Cameron Street and a partner in Hallowed Grounds. Sloan—a “jack of all trades,” Barksdale said—is one of the project’s organizers, as well as a driving force behind various heritage initiatives in the region. They were preparing for Hallowed Grounds’ annual public meeting, which would be held on Oct. 12.

Sloan described the dramatic extent to which some cemeteries had been forgotten. One had been covered by the parking lot of an Applebee’s in Reading; another was under a playground in Carlisle. “Sometimes the cemetery is sliding down the hill due to erosion,” he said.

Sloan, who speaks with a resonant, preacherly baritone, has a knack for the lively phrase. He referred to physical labor as “sweat equity,” and described the Hallowed Grounds network as “an affinity group, a connect-the-dots, a constellation of advocacy.” The Oct. 12 meeting, he said, was a chance for conservationists and caretakers to share best practices, identify labor and funding sources, and swap resources like bricks and mulch. “It’s more like a family reunion than a conference,” he said.

On the Day of Caring, an hour into their work, a small group of volunteers discovered a stone submerged in the grass. As they dug it free, they saw it was connected to another stone—which was in turn connected to another.

“It kept going and going and going,” one volunteer said. “Then we all jumped in and—”

“Went for it!” someone concluded. Soon, they had exposed an entire stone boundary, perhaps sixteen feet square. No corresponding headstone was found.

A little ways off, another group of volunteers reclined on a shallow slope and reflected on the outing. “I think it’s just neat that, you’re looking at the year they were born, the year that they died, and back then, they didn’t live very long,” one of them reflected. She pointed at a nearby pair of stones. “That one, the wife was covered up completely.”

Barksdale paused at the entrance, where medals from the Civil War through the Korean War were affixed to a granite memorial. “It’s rewarding,” she said. “It’s fun, it’s beautiful. You can look around and say, well yeah, I did something here. This is part of my dash.”

Her dash?

“The dash,” she repeated. Barksdale, ever the Cemetery Lady, was invoking the image of a headstone. “You know. I’m born in the 1950s, I’ll die in, uh—3000 and something, maybe.” She grinned.

“And that little dash represents what I’m doing here. That’s your lifeline. You got it? That’s my dash. Part of my dash was being born, part of my dash is going to school, becoming a nurse, being a teacher, having children, having grandchildren—that’s part of my dash. You know, meeting you, part of my dash. Taking care of this cemetery. It’s part of my dash. You know? Doing reenacting. Part of my dash. So, like, what did you do with your life? Look at my dash.”

The Hallowed Grounds Project will host a benefit concert tomorrow, Thursday, Oct. 3, at the Midtown Scholar Bookstore at 7:30 p.m. The gospel group Spiritual Messengers will perform a free concert; donations are encouraged. Readers interested in the Oct. 12 meeting, at 599 Eisenhower Blvd., can sign up at the invitation page or email Barbara Barksdale at [email protected] for more information.

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