Editing Harrisburg, Pennsylvania (section)

===City of Harrisburg===
{{Main|List of mayors of Harrisburg|Harrisburg City Council}}
[[File:Harrisburg Market Square and City Government Center.jpg|thumb|Harrisburg Market Square showing the [[Penn National Insurance]] Building (left) and Martin Luther King Jr. City Government Center (right)]]
The Martin Luther King Jr. City Government Center, the first government building and only city hall in the United States named after the [[Civil Rights Movement]] leader, serves as a central location for the city's administrative functions.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.harrisburgpa.gov/visitors/centerCity/centralBusiness3.html |title=Center City Sights : Central Business District |website=HarrisburgPA.gov |access-date=December 24, 2005 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20050830165308/http://www.harrisburgpa.gov/visitors/centerCity/centralBusiness3.html |archive-date=August 30, 2005}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news |last=Baer |first=John M. |date=November 14, 1990 |title=Voters in Pennsylvania Capital Revoke a Tribute |url-access=subscription |language=en-US |newspaper=Washington Post |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1990/11/14/voters-in-pennsylvania-capital-revoke-a-tribute/9b14975d-a5ec-47c6-82cf-56893e42bb85/ |access-date=June 23, 2021 |issn=0190-8286}}</ref>
Harrisburg has been served since 1970 by the "[[Mayor-council government|strong mayor]]" form of municipal government, with separate executive and legislative branches. The Mayor serves a four-year term with no term limits. As the full-time chief executive, the Mayor oversees the operation of 34 agencies, run by department and office heads, some of whom form the Mayor's cabinet, including the Department of Public Safety (which includes the [[Harrisburg Bureau of Police|Bureau of Police]], [[Harrisburg Bureau of Fire|Bureau of Fire]], and Bureau of Codes), Public Works, Business Administration, Parks and Recreation, Incineration and Steam Generation, Building & Housing Development, and Solicitor. The city had 424 full-time employees in 2019 (Water and Sewer employees were transferred to Capital Region Water effective 2013).<ref>{{cite web |title=City of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania Comprehensive Annual Financial Report Fiscal Year Ended December 31, 2019 |url=http://harrisburgcitycontroller.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/2019-CAFR.pdf |publisher=City of Harrisburg |access-date=June 23, 2021}}</ref> The current mayor of Harrisburg is [[Wanda Williams]] whose term expires January 2026.

There are seven [[Harrisburg City Council|city council]] members, all elected at large, who serve part-time for four-year terms. There are two other elected city posts, [[city treasurer]] and [[Comptroller|city controller]], who separately head their own fiscally related offices.

The city government had been in financial distress for many years in the 2000s. It has operated under the state's Act 47 Harrisburg Strong Plan provisions since 2011. The Act provides for municipalities that are in a state akin to bankruptcy.<ref>{{cite news |last1=McCabe |first1=Caitlin |title=Colwyn: Can this town be saved? |url=http://www.philly.com/philly/news/20150525_Colwyn__Can_this_town_be_saved_.html |access-date=May 26, 2015 |newspaper=Philadelphia Daily News |date=May 25, 2015}}</ref> The city balanced its budget in the late 2010s, was expected to have a surplus of $1&nbsp;million in 2019, and maintained a surplus in 2020 despite [[COVID-19]].<ref name="december-news"/><ref name="abc27.com"/>

====Property tax reform====
Harrisburg is also known nationally for its use of a two-tiered [[Land value tax in the United States|land value taxation]]. Harrisburg has [[Land value tax|taxed land]] at a rate six times that on improvements since 1975, and this policy has been credited by its former mayor [[Stephen R. Reed]], as well as by the city's former [[city manager]] during the 1980s, with reducing the number of [[Abandoned property|vacant structures]] located in [[downtown Harrisburg]] from about 4,200 in 1982 to fewer than 500 in 1995.<ref name="earth">[http://www.earthrights.net/docs/success.html Pennsylvania's Success with Local Property Tax Reform: The Split Rate Tax] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090208235315/http://www.earthrights.net/docs/success.html |date=February 8, 2009 }} Earth Rights Institute. Hartzok, Alanna. 1995. Accessed February 12, 2010.</ref> During this same period of time between 1982 and 1995, nearly 4,700 more city residents became employed, the crime rate dropped 22.5% and the fire rate dropped 51%.<ref name="earth" />

Harrisburg, as well as nearly 20 other [[Pennsylvania]] cities, employs a ''two-rate'' or ''split-rate'' [[property tax]], which requires the taxing of the value of land at a higher rate and the value of the buildings and improvements at a lower one. This can be seen as a compromise between pure LVT and an ordinary property tax falling on real estate (land value plus improvement value).<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.lincolninst.edu/pubs/dl/1275_Hughes%20Final.pdf |author=Mark Alan Hughes |title=Why So Little Georgism in America: Using the Pennsylvania Case Files to Understand the Slow, Uneven Progress of Land Value Taxation |publisher=[[Lincoln Institute of Land Policy]] |date=2006 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140823024415/https://www.lincolninst.edu/pubs/dl/1275_Hughes%20Final.pdf |archive-date=August 23, 2014}}</ref> Alternatively, two-rate taxation may be seen as a form that allows gradual transformation of the traditional real estate property tax into a pure land value tax.

Nearly two dozen local Pennsylvania jurisdictions, such as Harrisburg,<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.ourcommonwealth.org/news/lvt-jurisdiction-rates |title=PA two-rate cities and rates as of Nov. 2009 |publisher=The Henry George Foundation of America |access-date=January 15, 2010 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110419232223/http://www.ourcommonwealth.org/news/lvt-jurisdiction-rates |archive-date=April 19, 2011}}</ref> use two-rate property taxation in which the tax on land value is higher and the tax on improvement value is lower. In 2000, Florenz Plassmann and [[Nicolaus Tideman]] wrote<ref name="markovchain">"A Markov Chain Monte Carlo Analysis of the Effect of Two-Rate Property Taxes on Construction", Journal of Urban Economics, 2000, vol. 47, issue 2, p. 216-247</ref> that when comparing Pennsylvania cities using a higher tax rate on land value and a lower rate on improvements with similar sized Pennsylvania cities using the same rate on land and improvements, the higher land value taxation leads to increased construction within the jurisdiction.<ref>Oates, W. & Schwab, R. "The Impact of Urban Land Taxation: The Pittsburgh Experience." National Tax Journal L (March) 1–21. (1997)</ref><ref>Cord, S. "Taxing Land More Than Buildings: The Record In Pennsylvania." In C. Lowell Harriss, ed. 1983. The Property Tax and Local Finance. New York: The Academy of Political Science 172–179.</ref>