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Once dubbed Harrisburg’s ‘mayor for life,’ Stephen Reed leaves complicated legacy

The indelible mark made by Harrisburg's seven-term mayor remains to this day -- for better and for worse.

  • By John Luciew/PennLive
FILE PHOTO: Former Harrisburg Mayor Steve Reed looks over the crowd before the start of the first game at the completely renovated Metro Bank Park.

 Joe Hermitt / PennLive

FILE PHOTO: Former Harrisburg Mayor Steve Reed looks over the crowd before the start of the first game at the completely renovated Metro Bank Park.

(Harrisburg) — Former long-serving Harrisburg mayor Stephen R. Reed — once proclaimed the city’s “mayor for life” only to be bested in a party primary and later criminally charged as his beloved Harrisburg descended into debt — died Saturday at age 70.

Reed was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2006 and had battled it “courageously” ever since, according to a statement from his family.

Although Reed last led Pennsylvania’s capital city in 2009, the indelible mark made by Harrisburg’s seven-term mayor remains to this day — for better and for worse.

On one hand, Reed is credited with bringing Harrisburg back from the brink.

When he took office in 1981, the city had been badly battered by white flight, population loss and business closings that had hollowed out a once-vibrant downtown.

On the other hand, Reed is blamed for using city money to fund a personal obsession with historical artifacts — to the tune of tens of millions of dollars.

He also oversaw a botched incinerator project that burned through some $350 million, a move that buried the city in debt, forced it into state-monitored financial rescue and resulted in the sell-off of parking assets that sent rates skyrocketing.

Reed’s loyalists defended him to the end.

“It only demonstrates that we all are capable of making mistakes and bad decisions, including myself,” Fred Clark, former president of the city board that approved millions worth of Reed’s artifact purchases in the 1990s and 2000s.

Harrisburg Mayor Stephen R. Reed Reed during the dedication of the new headquarters of Corporate University

Christine Baker / PennLive

FILE PHOTO: Harrisburg Mayor Stephen R. Reed Reed during the dedication of the new headquarters of Corporate University

“No one is perfect. I also believe that Steve Reed is an honorable, dedicated public servant who has dedicated himself to others and to the city,” Clark told PennLive in 2017.

Reed rose to power in Harrisburg’s City Hall as an idealistic John Kennedy Democrat, a two-term state representative and former Dauphin County commissioner who believed in the ability of government to do big things.

Reed, who lacked a four-year college degree, having attended Dickinson College for a semester before withdrawing, promptly went to work on “big things” in Harrisburg.

While Kennedy had his race to the moon, some of Reed’s Harrisburg “moonshots” included bringing minor league baseball to an overrun, crime-ridden, seedy City Island, a Hilton hotel to the capital’s bereft downtown and later Restaurant Row to a city that once “rolled up the sidewalks” after 5 p.m.

These successes and more were credited with bringing Harrisburg back from the post-Agnes depths of the 1970s. Flooding from the 1972 tropical storm helped push residents and businesses from Harrisburg, a city already hit hard by white flight to the suburbs.

But as Harrisburg was branded an “All American City” in the 1980s, the man credited with leading the comeback was dubbed “mayor for life.”

FILE PHOTO: Former CEO Jim Taylor (left) and former Harrisburg Mayor Stephen Reed kick off work at the future headquarters for Penn National Insurance at Market Square in Harrisburg.

Courtesy / PennLive

FILE PHOTO: Former CEO Jim Taylor (left) and former Harrisburg Mayor Stephen Reed kick off work at the future headquarters for Penn National Insurance at Market Square in Harrisburg.

Ironically, these triumphs would provide positive reinforcement and political cover for some questionable financial practices that would help lead to Reed’s – and his city’s — eventual undoing.

Reed’s penchant for big projects bankrolled by bloated bond issues would saddle the city, and later the Harrisburg School District, with hundreds of millions in debt. Meanwhile, bond lawyers, banks and financial advisers handpicked by Reed would pocket big fees. These paydays only compounded when city debt would inevitably be refinanced, sometimes repeatedly, as Reed stretched out the payments further and further into the future.

Reed’s stated goal was to establish Harrisburg as a tourist destination, positioning it as the third point in a geographic triangle, with Gettysburg to the south and Hershey to the east.

Harrisburg’s attraction — along with the ornate Capitol, itself, and baseball on City Island — would be a series of museums, all the brainchild of Reed.

At one point at the height of his power and spending in the early 2000s, Reed envisioned five museums for Harrisburg. He began modestly with what he called the National Fire Museum in the city’s midtown area. But for Harrisburg’s next attraction, Reed would go big in more ways than one.

By the mid-1990s, Reed had more than a dozen years in office under his belt. He had honed Harrisburg’s bond-issuing agency, known as the Harrisburg Authority, into a finely tuned money machine.

By then, the authority was issuing bonds for other municipalities and public agencies outside of Harrisburg. Reed convinced the authority’s friendly, hand-picked board to direct the substantial fees it received from non-city bond deals into what Reed dubbed his “special projects fund.”

The account’s balance swelled into the millions, and Reed began using the money to amass a huge collection of Civil War artifacts. The authority board retroactively approved the purchases as scores of invoices streamed in from high-end artifacts dealers, the byproduct of the mayor’s spending sprees.

History was a hobby of Reed’s. Now he was turning it into one of Harrisburg’s biggest projects ever — what Reed dubbed the National Civil War Museum.

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge, left , looks on as Harrisburg, Pa. Mayor Stephen Reed shows him a model of the National Civil War Museum during a news conference in Harrisburg, Pa. Wednesday, July 28, 1999. The Museum will be built in Reservior Park in Harrisburg

John S. Zeedick / AP Photo

FILE PHOTO: Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge, left , looks on as Harrisburg, Pa. Mayor Stephen Reed shows him a model of the National Civil War Museum during a news conference in Harrisburg, Pa. Wednesday, July 28, 1999. The Museum will be built in Reservior Park in Harrisburg.

By the time Reed publicly announced the project, to be built atop Harrisburg’s Reservoir Park, the mayor had amassed a $17 million trove of Civil War artifacts, including Abe Lincoln’s hatbox — but, alas, not the president’s signature stove-pipe topper, itself.

Around this same time, Pennsylvania was earmarking hundreds of millions for four new sports stadiums to be split among Pittsburgh and Philly. Not to be left out, Reed managed to shake loose $16 million-plus in state capital projects funding to build the museum, with Harrisburg’s $17 million in artifacts serving as the local match.

The National Civil War Museum opened in early 2001 to great fanfare. Already, Reed was privately envisioning his next museum project. And he was not only envisioning it. He secretly purchasing millions more in artifacts that he hoped to use as a local match for yet another state-funded museum.

This time, it would be a National Museum of the Old West — but located in Harrisburg.

That September, when Harrisburg’s newly opened Civil War museum should have teeming with school bus trips, the triple terror attacks of Sept. 11 struck in New York, Washington and a field in Somerset County, Pa.

Tourism – the very currency Reed was counting on as the city’s economic lifeblood – ground to a halt.

Harrisburg’s Civil War museum began missing attendance projections in what would grow into a decade-long setback. But it wasn’t just the fallout from 9/11. Critics said the museum’s location atop Reservoir Park made it difficult for out-of-town tourists to find.

Former Harrisburg Mayor Stephen R. Reed arrives to the Dauphin County Courthouse for sentencing on theft charges. January 27, 2017

Sean Simmers / PennLive

FILE PHOTO: Former Harrisburg Mayor Stephen R. Reed arrives to the Dauphin County Courthouse for sentencing on theft charges. January 27, 2017

But by this time, however, Harrisburg had far bigger problems that threatened to blow a huge hole in the city’s already-tight budget.

Reed had perfected the practice of paying off the city’s old debt by borrowing anew. He applied this technique to budget-busting perfection when it came to the city’s aging trash incinerator.

Problem was, the incinerator, located off Cameron Street in south Harrisburg, not only spewed smoke; it had been bleeding red ink, for decades. Worse, much of the money from Reed’s repeated bond issues tied to the incinerator was never invested in fixing it.

Finally, the federal Environmental Protection Agency ordered the outdated plant to close in the early 2000s because it could no longer meet stricter air quality standards.

When the incinerator wheezed its last, the plant – and therefore the city – was saddled with $100 million in stranded debt, all due to Reed’s repeated borrowings.

Money to pay the old incinerator bonds was now coming out of Harrisburg’s general fund, and city deficits were piling up.

Believing he had no other choice but to double-down on the debt-ridden incinerator, Reed and a close cadre of lawyers, staff and advisers plowed ahead with a risky, $125 million renovation plan for the incinerator. The plan pinned its hopes on a new burn technology being touted by a small, untested company.

The result was a slow-motion, multi-year financial disaster that would ultimately saddle Harrisburg with $350 million in debt tied to the failed incinerator project. All that debt was a financial millstone that threatened to sink Harrisburg – pushing Pennsylvania’s capital city to the brink of bankruptcy. But it would takes years for the full dimensions of this debt disaster to play out.

Harrisburg Mayor Stephen R. Reed signs his name on the 10-foot steel beam adorned with flags and an evergreen tree that was hoisted to the top of the Whitaker Center for Science and the Arts. The "topping off" ceremony marked the completion of the building's steel structure, May 15, 1998.

Harrisburg Patriot News

FILE PHOTO: Harrisburg Mayor Stephen R. Reed signs his name on the 10-foot steel beam adorned with flags and an evergreen tree that was hoisted to the top of the Whitaker Center for Science and the Arts. The “topping off” ceremony marked the completion of the building’s steel structure, May 15, 1998.

“I think his legacy will be the mayor who borrowed the city into oblivion,” businessman Jason Smith, who unsuccessfully ran against Reed in 2001, told PennLive.

In the meantime, Reed was still spending lavishly on western artifacts – including Annie Oakley’s underwear – during multiple, city-financed trips to places like Arizona and Colorado. Word quickly spread among artifact dealers about the free-spending mayor from back east, and they rolled out the red carpet for Reed.

By the time the Patriot-News uncovered the breadth of the mayor’s spending on Wild West artifacts in July 2003, Reed had spent $4.8 million for what he then publicly unveiled as a National Museum of the Old West.

Reed also outlined his full vision for Harrisburg as a heritage tourism draw: five museums, including an African-American history museum, a sports hall of fame on City Island and the Wild West museum to join the already opened Civil War museum and the much smaller-scale National Fire Museum.

This time, however, word of Reed’s prodigious spending on Western and Native-American artifacts, which first appeared in a July 6, 2003, front-page story in the Sunday Patriot-News, marked the beginning of his political undoing.

Knocked off balance by the criticism, Reed put his Wild West museum plans on hold in early 2004, then scrapped the idea altogether in fall 2006. He reluctantly agreed to begin selling off the 10,000-item Western collection. But it was too late in many ways.

Beginning in 2001, Reed would face a series of three different Democrat challengers in the party primary for mayor. The third time would be the charm, when then-City Council President Linda Thompson won a shocking upset in 2009.

Mayor Reed speaks at a press conference about Dauphin County Democratic Party unity in Strawberry Square, October 1991.

Harrisburg Patriot News

FILE PHOTO: Mayor Reed speaks at a press conference about Dauphin County Democratic Party unity in Strawberry Square, October 1991.

Ironically, the closest Reed ever came to realizing his vision of a Wild West museum was the lavish artifact display put on by a high-brow auction house in Dallas, Texas, one of several sales for the $8 million-plus collection that never recouped what Reed spent.

In a confessional March 2009 interview, as Reed was preparing to face Harrisburg voters who would turn him from office after 28 years, he expressed rare regret for his artifact obsession to the Patriot-News:

“The biggest mistake that I made was not securing broad community buy-in to the plan to create nationally scaled museum facilities clustered in Harrisburg, Pa. It wasn’t that there was any secret about it, but there wasn’t any broad community process where everything was unveiled at one time, input invited, and so forth and so on. In retrospect, it would certainly be done differently… The genesis of all of this was the concept of Harrisburg becoming a much bigger player in … the tourism business.”

Reed’s lavish artifact spending – along with the nearly $350 million in debt from the bungled incinerator project – generated many calls for criminal investigations of Reed.

At one point, now-Mayor Eric Papenfuse claimed there was an ongoing FBI investigation of Reed and that he was a source who was given a code name and asked to wear a wire.

The FBI never confirmed nor denied the investigation, but no federal charges ever materialized.

In June 2015, investigators with the state Attorney General’s office raided Reed’s Cumberland Street rowhome, hauling away saddles, a totem pole, what looked like a stuffed fox, a whiskey barrel and assorted other artifacts.

The publicly humiliating raid forced Reed to break his near-total silence since being turned out of office. As he vowed to a collection of press that all the artifacts in his home were his, the gaunt-looking former mayor also announced he was battling stage 4 prostate cancer.

Mayor Steve Reed at the scene of a building fire on the corner of Verbeke and Penn Streets. The fire was believed to have started in kitchen.

Joe Hermitt / PennLive

FILE PHOTO: Mayor Steve Reed at the scene of a building fire on the corner of Verbeke and Penn Streets. The fire was believed to have started in kitchen.

A grand jury would go on to charge Reed with 499 criminal counts, many related to corruption by a government official for Reed’s actions regarding the artifacts. But most of those charges were dropped after a judge ruled the statute of limitations on the crimes had expired.

In the end, Reed received a sentence of two-years’ probation for convictions on 20 counts of theft by receiving. The convictions were related to city-owned artifacts found in the former mayor’s home.

A second attempt to prosecute Reed – this time for the failed incinerator project – fell short.

Nearly 13 years after the incinerator deal was struck, Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro called the city’s incinerator financing a “house of cards” but said no criminal charges would be filed in connection with the questionable dealings.

The April 2017 announcement capped a state investigation into Reed begun in 2013 – a full four years after he left office.

The incinerator was sold to Lancaster County Solid Waste Management Authority in December 2013 as part of the city’s financial recovery. The recovery also included city tax increases and the long-term leasing out of Harrisburg’s parking assets, causing rates to soar.

In the irony of all ironies, the incinerator is now operating better than it ever has. Unfortunately, Harrisburg no longer owns this moneymaker that its residents paid so dearly for.

Born Stephen Russell Reed on Aug. 9, 1949 in Chambersburg, Pa., Reed moved with his family to Harrisburg in the 1950s. He attended Bishop McDevitt High School, graduating in 1967.

Despite being named a Finnegan Fellow at Dickinson College in 1970, he never graduated.

Instead, Reed returned to Harrisburg and went to work as a first responder on ambulance crew, beginning a life of public service that would lead to the state house, the Dauphin County commissioners’ office and, finally, Harrisburg’s City Hall in 1981.

Harrisburg mayoral candidate Linda Thompson listens to Harrisburg Mayor Stephen Reed during a press conference and ribbon cutting ceremony for five new affordable homes nearing completion at Swatara and South 16th Streets. The homes, including a net zero-energy home, are part of the Mount Pleasant Homes community being developed by Tri-County HDC, Ltd.

Paul Chaplin / Harrisburg Patriot-News

FILE PHOTO: Harrisburg mayoral candidate Linda Thompson listens to Harrisburg Mayor Stephen Reed during a press conference and ribbon cutting ceremony for five new affordable homes nearing completion at Swatara and South 16th Streets. The homes, including a net zero-energy home, are part of the Mount Pleasant Homes community being developed by Tri-County HDC, Ltd.

Reed would never fully shake his impulse to respond to emergencies. Throughout his nearly three decades as Harrisburg’s mayor, he was known to show up day or night at fires and crime scenes, right along with the city’s emergency personnel. This nocturnal habit earned Reed the nickname, “Bat Mayor.”

But it was no joke.

Reed was at his best when his city was threatened by floods from the slowly swelling Susquehanna River. Throughout several flooding disasters in Harrisburg, the chain-smoking mayor was a constant, calming presence, even as his usual poker face was lined with worry.

As the flooding threat loomed, Reed provided citizens real-time, reliable information on river flood stages. And when food waters struck, he donned hip waders to go into threatened neighborhoods, along with first responders, to oversee evacuations and eventual clean-up operations.

“I devoted my life to the city of Harrisburg,” Reed began in his defiant statement upon being criminally charged with corruption in 2015.

That part was true.

 

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