TheBurg

02.16 | theburg | 13 council." "If you don't re-elect Brad Koplinski, we get a new council president," he said. In the primary, voters obliged, by a narrow margin—in the race for three four- year seats, Koplinski came in fourth by only 16 votes. Addressing the results, Papenfuse said he was "elated" that Harrisburg would be getting "new leadership to move the city forward." But when it came time to elect a president, it seemed council was content to preserve a piece of the status quo. At a reorganization meeting in January, members nominated Williams, the incumbent president, to keep her post. When it came time to nominate any challengers, no one made a sound. "I don't put as much emphasis as the rest of the world does on those positions," Johnson responded, when I asked him about it. Even if the president is the "face of council," he said, "it's only a council of seven. Everyone gets one vote." He would have been open to supporting other nominees, but he was also confident in Williams' leadership—she "has shown herself to be fair," he said. In other words, he played that one down the middle, too. I n the general election of November 1968, Harrisburg voters appointed a charter commission to reevaluate the form of their government. For half a century, the city had operated under a "commission" structure run by five co-equal council members. Each member was both a legislator, proposing and passing ordinances as council members do today, and an administrator, directing a particular department in city hall. e arrangement could be cumbersome, especially as government functions became more complex and social problems more pernicious. Councilors' department assignments were arbitrary; as the commission's report put it, the electoral process "seldom attracts trained and experienced departmental administrators." e commission recommended the city switch to a mayor-council government, popularly known as a "strong mayor" form. Under that structure, council would handle legislation, while the mayor, as an independently elected executive, would manage the city's day-to- day affairs. Existing council members fretted about the loss of checks and balances, but the commission dismissed such fears. e "risk of continuing to operate with divided, indecisive leadership," its report said, "far outweighs the risk of an overconcentration of executive power." Furthermore, the structure preserved an essential role for council—the commission envisioned a "vital, deliberative body, broadly representative of all segments of the population of the city," which would "keep a close watch" on the executive. Battles between council and the mayor in the decades since have tested the boundaries of their respective powers. In the 1990s, a group of citizens sued Mayor Stephen Reed over his use of $7 million in proceeds from the sale of the city's water system. e power to appropriate the money, they said, belonged to City Council. A decade later, council openly challenged Reed by giving themselves the power to appoint directors to the Harrisburg Authority, the financing arm that had borrowed steeply to retrofit the incinerator. Reed sued, saying he had to "protect his essential executive powers" from a "misguided, power-hungry City Council." e case went all the way to the state Supreme Court, which sided with Reed, though, by that time, he'd been replaced by the former council president, Linda ompson. ompson, too, had notable skirmishes with council, including in 2011, when members tried to outmaneuver her with a 4-3 vote to declare bankruptcy. In short, some amount of friction between council and the mayor is customary. Sometimes, the disputes are about policy. Other times, they can seem like sport. Jeff Baltimore, another of the council members elected last fall, told me he'd been embarrassed at times to see a public meeting erupt into what seemed like a needless, personal dispute. "I'm not comfortable with other adults seemingly talking disrespectfully to other adults," he said. "If you're not gonna respect the person, at least respect the office." Baltimore first arrived on council by appointment, after the sudden death of Councilwoman Eugenia Smith in the spring of 2014. Sixteen people applied for her seat; Baltimore ultimately secured it with a tie-breaking vote from Papenfuse. He ran a lackluster campaign last spring, but won handily, perhaps through some combination of an incumbent's advantage, his eloquence and civility, and his deep roots in the city. His endorsement by Papenfuse likely didn't hurt, either. While he appreciated the mayor's support, he told me, he hadn't sought it, and he wanted to make clear he and the administration weren't "aligned." Jeffrey Baltimore

• Cover