Pennsylvania (finally) prosecutes longtime Harrisburg Mayor; who's next?
What about everyone who helped Stephen Reed rip off the people?
A Pennsylvania grand jury reports that "Mayor Stephen Reed, abetted by associates in government and the professsional community, exploited the availability of capital in the municipal debt market to raise money for purposes utterly unrelated" to the projects the city sold many milions of dollars' worth of bonds to investors to pay for.
Reed, mayor of the state capital, Harrisburg, from 1981-2009, faces a long list of criminal racketeering, bribery and theft charges, for ripping off investors, leaving citizens exposed to large losses, and using public funds to obtain, at least, hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of collectibles amid Reed's abortive museum projects.
Why now, long after he left office? And why just Reed, when so many other elected officials and professionals collecting taxpayer fees had to cooperate for Reed to commit his alleged crimes? State Attorney General Kathleen Kane, like Reed a Democrat, told the Harrisburg Patriot-News more charges are likely. Read the Grand Jury report here.
"The people of Harrisburg will finally receive justice," suggests Christopher Papst, TV reporter, whose book, Capital Murder, looks back on the Reed years and notes the mayor's popularity helped delay law enforcement action (despite the many people who complained to federal prosecutors in Harrisburg and Washington and to Kane's Republican predecessors, including future Gov. Tom Corbett.)