Central Penn Business Journal reports:
The partners who want to lease Harrisburg’s parking garages made a forceful case in a three-and-a-half-hour meeting with the City Council last night, but the immediate decision makers were not sitting in front of them.
Those decision makers are the members of the Harrisburg Parking Authority union, which can block the $215 million deal under the terms of its contract. Union members occupied the left flank of the hearing room and reiterated their passionate opposition to the lease.
“The HPA employees feel like they’ve been lied to from the beginning of this whole thing,” union leader Gail Lewis told the council.
Employees said they were promised repeatedly that they would remain employed by the authority, but the deal now on the table would put them on the payroll of the leasing partnership. Lewis also said Jacob A. Frydman, a leader of the leasing partnership, originally said he would not fight if the union decided against the deal.
