Tha Harrisburg Authority and King Reed.......

I was reading the December 7 issue of the Central Penn Business Journal yesterday, and there is an interesting interview with the new Harrisburg Authority Chairman and CEO. The new chairman is James E. Ellison, a partner at the law firm of Rhoads & Sinon in Harrisburg.

In the interview Mr. Ellison was asked what he thought the downfall of the incinerator was. His response: "It was several things. No. 1, I think the figure was that there was between $30 (million) to $34 million spent on artifacts from Harrisburg Authority proceeds over the last 17 years. I'm not just talking about Wild Wild West artifacts. I'm talking about artifacts, period. Any time you divert that kind of money away from operations into a black hole that returns nothing to the Harrisburg Authority, you are compromising your ability to build infrastructure and to prepare yourself for future unknown contingencies like construction problems that you'll have to address. I think that was one of the biggest problems in addressing the more recent incinerator work because we didn't have the money available to immediately address these issues as they came due. Secondarily, there's also politics. When you remove political considerations from the table, everything comes down to a business decision. Business decisions are pretty cut and dry. Numbers dictate how you act."

Now, let's discuss this statement. Jeez Louise! $30 - $34 million over 17 years?? This is a staggering amount of money that King Reed took out of the Authority, and with the obvious permission of past Harrisburg Authority Chairmans and Board members. My God that is a lot of money. How did this happen? How was this allowed to go on for 17 years? Where was the oversight? Jeez Louise!

Mr. Ellison was asked another question about what makes the Authority less political now. Mr. Ellison answered: "My team doesn't answer to anyone but the board; whereas before, the Harrisburg Authority was run in essence by the mayor. I've gone through correspondences from the past 5 years or so, and there are reams of letters from the mayor to the authority executive director or the authority chairman, particularly when it came to funding the city's special-projects fund. I've got dozens of letters from the mayor's office directing the executive director to put XYZ number of dollars in the special-projects fund. When it came to decisions, such as which contractor we were going to go with to do the retrofit, I think it's pretty well documented that that was the mayor's decision. That was a decision made between the mayor and special counsel Andrew Giorgione and a member of the mayor's staff, Dan Lispi. That wasn't a circumstance where the authority board went out and did their own due diligence and research. That was a decision made by the mayor's office. The authority at the end of the day had to make the legal decision to award Barlow (Projects Inc.) the contract, but most of the behind-the-scenes work was the mayor, Giorgione and Lispi."

Wow. King Reed was a very busy man. We just didn't realize how busy did we? This is corruption of power, greed and deception on a major scale by Stephen Reed, King of Harrisburg. This man is not fit to serve out the rest of his term as mayor. Get him out of there before he causes any more damage. Can we blame Reed, Giorgione and Lispi for the $250 million debt incurred by the authority? All of this must be looked into more closely, and I think maybe the Attorney General of Pennsylvania should be asked by City Council to investigate all of this NOW. My God what a mess. Jeez Louise!

All I can say is this.....thank God, thank the courts, and thank City Council that new leadership was put in charge of the Harrisburg Authority. Mr. Ellison and the other new people at the Authority have an awful lot of work to do to get the incinerator working as it should and to pay down that HUGE debt. After reading that interview, I have faith in Mr. Ellison and the board that they will be able to get the job done. It will not be easy, but I believe they'll be able to do it.