Totalitarian Harrisburg Update.

As Tipsy O'Neill used to say, "All totalitarianism is local". Check out the mess our moral and intellectual superiors have made of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania's capital from The Harrisburg Patriot-News.


Cities caught in cash crunch
$13.4 million deficit, a proposed tax increase and the threat of employee layoffs don't make Harrisburg unique...

Ooh! Ooh! Let me guess! It's Bush's fault!

Cities are vulnerable because they have little or no room to grow and large numbers of people with lower incomes who require social services. Plus, many contain a lot of tax-exempt property, she said.

In Lancaster, for example, 25 percent of city properties are exempt from real estate tax, said Mayor Rick Gray. In Harrisburg, state buildings help push that number to more than 48 percent.

Wow! It's the fault of runaway government growth at all levels. Who knew?

Added to these problems is a continued decrease in state and federal aid, Miller said.

Heehee!


Council refuses $14 million bailout
Harrisburg's cash crunch just got tighter.

The City Council voted 5-2 last night to table a $14 million budget bail-out loan that city officials say is needed for the city to meet payroll and avoid layoffs for the rest of this year.

As anyone with a credit card can tell you, a loan is not really a bailout if you must repay it.

In delaying action on the loan, council members complained of incomplete information, hinted that the deficit may be inflated and pointed out the lack of a long-range financial plan to fix the problem.

"It seems irresponsible to borrow $14 million with no plan in place," said Councilman Dan Miller, a certified public accountant.

Wowee wow wow! How did that guy get elected?


Police, fire crews lead city's layoff list
Police and firefighters will be among the first to go if Harrisburg is forced to lay off workers to resolve its financial crisis.

The city's 268 nonuniformed, nonmanagement workers are protected through the end of this year by a no-layoff clause in their union contracts.

Instant translation: The bureaucrats fat asses are covered.

That means the city's 173 police and 90 firefighters are likely to bear the brunt of the burden.

Ain't it funny how those city employees the citizens value and need most are always the first to be laid-off? I detect a whiff of berechtigung-verrücktheit.

Layoffs would come at a time when the city has been working to put more officers on the streets to combat what Mayor Stephen R. Reed has called a "culture of violence."

No! Say it ain't so, Stevie!

BTW, for how many consecutive terms have you controlled the city?

At the same time, the city's firefighters are operating with staffing levels below those recommended by the National Fire Protection Association.

Meanwhile, Harrisburg's Bürgermeister-For-Life, (Ha! Just kidding. He's a proud Democrass babykiller! I love that ol' double entendre.) Steve "Bareback" Reed, struggles to keep his dream of a Wild West museum for Harrisburg alive...

Selling off Wild West artifacts would provide a good faith test in straightening city's finances

While it may not be directly relevant to the current mess, Councilwoman Linda Thompson nevertheless was on point in calling on the mayor to liquidate his collection, valued at nearly $11 million, of artifacts ostensibly gathered to form the collection for the National Museum of the Wild West he aspires to build.

Reed has used funds from the Harrisburg Authority to amass this collection, spending $100,000 in each of the last two years, despite little interest or financial support for this undertaking. Earlier, he had agreed to sell off part of the collection.

If the collection were sold, the proceeds could be used to limit or eliminate future increases in water rates, which are up more than 26 percent this year alone, or they could be transferred to the General Fund to pay off the bail-out loan.

Let the peasants drink out of the horse troughs in Stevie's latest museum...