MuniLand

The near-bankrupt city of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania was charged this week by the Securities and Exchange Commission with securities fraud. Here is the official language (emphasis mine):

The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged the City of Harrisburg, Pa., with securities fraud for its misleading public statements when its financial condition was deteriorating and financial information available to municipal bond investors was either incomplete or outdated.

An SEC investigation found that the misleading statements were made in the city’s budget report, annual and mid-year financial statements, and a State of the City address. This marks the first time that the SEC has charged a municipality for misleading statements made outside of its securities disclosure documents. Harrisburg has agreed to settle the charges.

The charge adds weight to my concern about the veracity of the statements made by public officials in stressed fiscal situations. These officials have had essentially no responsibility to make accurate statements concerning financial issues. For bond investors there are often no current financials on file for the issuer. Hopefully this SEC order sets a higher bar for disclosure.

Often I think public officials have little understanding of complex financial issues, and sometimes they are just misrepresenting the truth for political purposes. Occasionally there may also be illegal activities (see Jefferson County, Alabama). In Harrisburg I think we may have seen all three: A lack of understanding, political games and illegal activities. The SEC crackdown is a good start to clean up the first two parts of the problem. Here is what I wrote about Harrisburg’s lack of disclosure in 2011:

Last year, muniland watched as the mayor, city council members and state legislature went through a tortuous period of fighting over filing municipal bankruptcy for Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. The city council filed a bankruptcy petition, but the mayor objected. Then the legislature passed a law that denied Harrisburg the right to file until November 30, 2012. The bankruptcy judge threw out the bankruptcy petition and the governor appointed a receiver to take control of the city’s finances.

The first-state appointed receiver, the seasoned bond attorney David Unkovic, worked for about six months and then resigned from his position because he felt he was being obstructed in his efforts. He testified to the state senate about the substantial problems with the city’s debt issuance. Roxbury News captured his testimony about the cronyism and his recommendations to legislators:

The delay that occurred last year gave Unkovic enough time to review the bond offerings that pushed the city into insolvency. Unkovic said in his testimony:

We are now watching Harrisburg crash and burn. The busted Pennsylvania capital of 49,000 is crushed by $463 million in city debt and an additional $282 million in debt for the public school system. The state senator representing the area, Jeff Piccola, used his power last June to pass state legislation (Act 47 amendments) that shackled Harrisburg with accepting a receiver appointed by the governor and barred the city from filing bankruptcy until June 30, 2012.

Adhering to the Act 47 requirement that the mayor work with the city council to approve a fiscal recovery plan, Mayor Thompson fought a months-long war that resulted in her plan being rejected three times and the governor’s appointment of a receiver, David Unkovic. After the Dauphin County court approved Unkovic last November, he tried to help the city balance the budget, sell assets and negotiate with bondholders. Amid all that action, a subset of the city council, against the mayor’s wishes, filed a Chapter 9 municipal bankruptcy petition that was ultimately rejected by a federal judge as a result of Senator Piccola’s Act 47 legislation.

Harrisburg’s biggest albatross is its responsibility for the debt of the Harrisburg incinerator – a monstrosity of design and a debacle of public financing. The responsibility for this debt first lies with the city and then with Dauphin County and bond insurer Assured Guaranty.

Federal bankruptcy judge Mary France dismissed the Harrisburg City Council’s petition to file municipal bankruptcy last Thursday. According to Bloomberg her ruling stated:

“For Chapter 9 bankruptcy to work, all of the branches of the municipality must be on the same page,” France said. “Therefore I find that city council was not authorized to file the petition.”

Judge France has hit the nail on the head. The legislative and executive branches of Harrisburg’s government have been behaving like two sides of a family fighting over a deceased parent’s estate. The battle has been brutal and family members have talked past each other. Harrisburg mayor Linda Thompson seems to have little patience for others’ views, which is a tough way to govern.

Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett took the next step in the process of pushing the bankrupt capital of his state towards fiscal recovery today. Bloomberg reports:

David Unkovic, chief lawyer for the Pennsylvania Community and Economic Development Department, is set to run the finances of Harrisburg after Governor Tom Corbett nominated him as the state’s first municipal receiver.

Once approved by a state court, the overseer may act without the consent of the bankrupt capital city’s elected officials. Unkovic’s appointment may be reviewed as soon as Nov. 28.

Harrisburg is a town that’s been crushed by debt and years of incompetent management. The city has been led by a mayor, Linda Thompson, who is unable to work with a majority of her city council and who will likely find her role greatly diminished as the state takes fiscal control of the insolvent city. I’m not sure that I’ve ever seen a politician who has so little control over the affairs of her city. Edith Honan and Kristina Cooke of Reuters did an outstanding backgrounder about the level of dysfunction among the Harrisburg’s political class:

Prayers notwithstanding, [Linda] Thompson and [Comptroller] Dan Miller, the city’s top financial official, refuse to speak to one another, even as the city they lead continues hemorrhaging money. Thompson characterized Miller as a “political opportunist who will stop at nothing to accomplish his self-centered ambitions.” Miller, who plans to challenge Thompson for mayor in 2013, said he considers Thompson “paranoid,” “not well educated” and “a phony.”

His words seem kind compared with those offered by four former Thompson aides. They told the local newspaper that the mayor isn’t fit to hold office.

Harrisburg, Pennsylvania is being smothered by its outstanding debt of $463 million. The sharks are circling and the city has only about $244 million in assets that can be liquidated easily. Let’s guess how this game will play out.

The debt consists of two buckets. The first contains publicly-issued bonds, capitalized leases and various other loans and obligations that are considered “general obligations” of the city. This debt totals about $130 million and is in the form of stadium, redevelopment, sewer and other sundry municipal debt. The city has been paying approximately $12 million a year, or 20 percent of its annual revenue, to service this debt.

The second and bigger bucket is for approximately $330 million of bonds and loans that the city did not directly issue but did guarantee to fund the local incinerator and sewer plants. Although the city is backstopping this debt, it has been unable to make these payments recently and they have been paid by the bond insurer, the county and Covanta, a private company which as a management contract to run the incinerator plant. These debt payments were about $14.6 million for 2010.

The capital of the Keystone State is swirling with political infighting and power grabs over the issue of money. There is just not enough of it to pay all of Harrisburg’s creditors who have appeared at the door. Now that the county has said “Enough!” to providing more loans to cover debt payments, it’s the end of road and events are accelerating.

Harrisburg had already filed for municipal bankruptcy a week ago, but that didn’t stop the state from finalizing legislation that will put the city into receivership. Pennsylvania’s latest move adds another layer of complexity to the resolution process. The Harrisburg City Council responded to the state’s action with the following statement published in the Patriot News:

“First, they attempted to restrict the city’s ability to generate revenue and negotiate with its creditors, which were allowed in the Act 47 law, as well as penalize the city if it filed for bankruptcy. But that wasn’t good enough. Now, this takeover legislation gives a receiver unlimited power to sell any resource the city and its authorities have, without allowing Harrisburg an alternate source of revenue.”

The current bankruptcy drama in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania is just the third act of a long running effort to make the city something more than a corridor for those who commute into the city for work. Most of the current debt problems of Harrisburg stem from failed projects intended to revitalize the city and extremely bad business decisions.

The chart above shows the massive increase in Harrisburg’s population that occurred up to 1950 then starting falling steeply since mid-century. The city’s population was actually smaller in 2010 than it was in 1900. It’s just one of many American cities that has seen its vitality and population fade away.

Almost all the news coverage now is focused on the current players and their attempts to use the law to bend events towards their vision of the future. For example, the mayor, the county and the state are petitioning in bankruptcy court to halt the actions of the city council who filed for Chapter 9 bankruptcy. The bankruptcy judge will sort out these claims in an emergency court hearing on Monday. It’s high drama and makes for great journalism.

“Who benefits from all this tap-dancing? Who’s interest is the Commonwealth promoting? Not the public, not the city of Harrisburg. They are promoting the interests of the bond insurers.”

That is a quote from Mark D. Schwartz, the attorney for the city of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania who filed for Chapter 9 bankruptcy on October 11. Harrisburg is the center of a multi-year, multi-player fiasco over an enormous, under-utilized waste incinerator. The city stopped making payments ages ago on the incinerator bonds and is past due on about $85 million of principal and interest.

The missed payments were made up by the county and a bond insurer, Assured Guaranty, both of whom have sued the city. The city filed for bankruptcy, in part, to halt that litigation and work out their debts in an orderly process under the purview of a federal bankruptcy judge. It’s a creditor scrum and further complicated by efforts from some in the state legislature to take over the city and put it in receivership.