implement. instead, firefighters and police sued claiming measure b is unconstitutional. reed is standing firm. what is the one thing that keeps you up at night. the long-term fiscal impacts of these problems. spend the money if you have it. if you don t have it, don t spend it. we began this hour from this spot because wall street is the center of modern finance. but we end here on a different thought. behind me is federal hall. that is where our national government first met after the constitution was is ratified. one of the framers gravest concerns is that the nation could be profoundly weakened if debts run up by the states were not handled in a responsible way. not everyone agreed about what to do then and, yes, the issues are different today but two core ideas of the founders still apply. first, out of control debt can destroy is country s ability to chart its own destiny.
very smart man. the taxpayers trusted in him. he left them with a mess. the question now, how to deal with it. the state-appointed receiver put together his plan to pay back the debt by, among other thing, raising harrisburg s earned income dispax leasing out some of its parking garok rages. the mayor got behind that plan. controller dan millert and city council however, don t think harrisburg residents should be the only ones making concessions at this point. they want a bankruptcy court to sort it all out. what do you say to the people who say, that s a copout? the reality is, you can only get so much blood from a turnip. but this man doesn t want to hear tthe ceo of assured guarantee, which has insured the harrisburg bonds. that means assuredville to pay off the investors to the extent harrisburg fails to. is your view on the bond deal, even if the project goes kaput
$15 $15 million dev sympt we have $1.6 million. we have a health insurance bill that needs to be paid and the payroll is $1 million every two weeks. if we can make payroll and pay that bill, we have no money. it s very bleak. bleak, that about captures it. harrisburg is deep in hough to wall street and can t make the payments on billions of dollars millions of dollars of bonds. harrisburg don t have a credit rating. people are not moving in. businesses don t want to locate here. how did it come to this? the story begins in november, 1981, when voters elected steven reid mayor. he remained in office 28 years, a tenure marked by a public building boom, financed by a series of big debt deals with wall street. the first n1986. in 1986.