{"id":1859,"date":"2011-06-24T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-06-24T15:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/06\/incinerator-forces-harrisburg-to-sell-off-parking-lots.html"},"modified":"2011-06-24T11:00:00","modified_gmt":"2011-06-24T15:00:00","slug":"incinerator-forces-harrisburg-to-sell-off-parking-lots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/06\/incinerator-forces-harrisburg-to-sell-off-parking-lots.html","title":{"rendered":"Incinerator forces Harrisburg to sell off parking lots"},"content":{"rendered":"After defaulting on its incinerator bonds<\/a>,\nHarrisburg, PA, gets even more desperate and starts selling off pieces of itself.\n

\nWilliam Alden wrote in huffpo 15 June 2011,\n\nHarrisburg’s ‘Bad Deal’: City Forced To Pursue Parking System Lease Despite Fears<\/a>:\n

\n\n<\/a>\nThe finances of Harrisburg, Pa., are so desperate that local officials are\nconsidering a deal they fear will ultimately make the city more miserable.\n

\nA state-appointed panel, charged with crafting a financial recovery plan\nfor the city, announced this week that Harrisburg must pursue the sale of\npublic assets to help resolve its fiscal crisis. The nearly-bankrupt state\ncapital, weighed down by debt more than four times the size of its budget,\n“is not in control of its own destiny,” the state team said in a report.\n

\nThree years ago, confronted with a similar budget shortfall, the city\nconsidered leasing parking garages and meters in exchange for quick\ninfusion of cash, but that deal was never approved. Last month, the offer\nresurfaced when New York-based developer LambdaStar expressed renewed\ninterest. Some city leaders harbor a growing fear that Harrisburg will\nbe forced into a deal that will bleed its coffers over the course of\ndecades, after it surrenders valuable assets to a profit-driven company\nwith the power to raise rates on a captive base of customers.\n

\nBut those misgivings may not matter, as a budget crisis chokes Harrisburg\ninto submission.\n

\n“This is a situation where Wall Street will get paid, and the little\nguys on Main Street, taxpayers, are going to get stuck holding the bag,”\nHarrisburg City Council Member Brad Koplinski said.\n<\/blockquote>\n

\nCouldn’t happen here, right?\nOur local governments would never\n\nhastily approve bonds that could force raising taxes or default<\/a>,\nwould they?\nOh, right: they already did.\n

\n-jsq\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After defaulting on its incinerator bonds, Harrisburg, PA, gets even more desperate and starts selling off pieces of itself. William Alden wrote in huffpo 15 June 2011, Harrisburg’s ‘Bad Deal’: City Forced To Pursue Parking System Lease Despite Fears: The finances of Harrisburg, Pa., are so desperate that local officials are considering a deal they […]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[120,14,2,88,21,32,478,178],"tags":[8738,728,4243,8701,4242,4131,4244,4245,7,8734,2878,1798,1188,8749],"class_list":["post-1859","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biomass","category-economy","category-government","category-lowndes-county-commission","category-planning","category-pollution","category-solid-waste","category-vlcia","tag-biomass","tag-bonds","tag-default","tag-georgia","tag-harrisburg","tag-incinerator","tag-junk-bonds","tag-lambdastar","tag-lowndes-county","tag-lowndes-county-commission","tag-parking","tag-pennsylvania","tag-privatization","tag-vlcia"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-tZ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1859","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1859"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1859\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}