! Hurrah!

What exactly they're looking into remains to be seen. So far, it appears their probe is about general Harrisburg financial records, including the fact that the city's 2009 audit has not been completed and filed.

But while the SEC is in town, let's invite all the other investigatory arms of the local, state and federal government to set up camp, too.

"There's no Marcellus shale drilling here, so there are plenty of hotel rooms,'' said Bill Cluck, a board member of the embattled Harrisburg Authority, the place where $288 million in debt emanates.

Cluck is right. Whatever has brought the SEC here could lead to a "spillover effect.'' You start pulling a thread in this town, the whole thing unravels. So invite them all in. Party time for forensics. Including the school district debt, Harrisburg and its 47,000 citizens are on the hook for about $1 billion in debt.

The SEC's arrival dovetails nicely with an effort by the Harrisburg Authority to authorize a forensic audit of its massive debt associated with the incinerator. But the incinerator is not really the problem. That's the key.

Why? Because before there was a $288 million debt crisis in Harrisburg, former Mayor Stephen R. Reed's Miracle on the Susquehanna involved the use of copious smoke and mirrors.

That system included the Harrisburg Authority and involved many people, including bond counselors, solicitors, law firms and the ultimate scapegoat, Barlow Projects. This obscure engineering firm just happened to come along and promise what no one else could or would; that it had the technology and management expertise to pull off an ill-advised, high-risk plan to retrofit an incinerator that was already $100 million in the red.

The debt that has put Harrisburg on Wall Street’s “Most Wanted List” is the result of gross and deliberate negligence, or worse.

And despite the illusion of

who have declared Harrisburg a distressed city, here’s the real truth: Harrisburg can only solve its debt crisis after the Harrisburg Authority produces all the evidence about how city taxpayers were so royally, and deliberately, screwed.

Only then will the city have the basis for going back to the bond insurers, Dauphin County and all other parties associated with this horrific deal and remind them all that they either knew the high risk, or failed to perform their own due diligence. That makes them part of the problem, as well as the solution.

For years, the very effort to decode this high-finance debacle was thwarted. Those in charge shrugged and tried to pass a lame excuse, “Sometimes public projects fail.” Then they ran the clock, hoping to sell off a 75-year lease of the city’s parking garages before everyone understood the flimsy construction of this municipal house of cards.

With the garages still a city asset, now we see. Harrisburg used a series of financing deals to “fix” an incinerator already $100 million in debt by flaunting every known regulation and safeguard known to responsible fiscal practices. For instance, why doesn’t the self-liquidating debt report filed by Barlow Projects to the state of Pennsylvania even in 2003 mention that, in addition to the $125 million borrowing, the incinerator already was in the red for $100 million?

“It doesn’t say the revenue will be able to pay back the stranded $100 million and the newly indebted $125 million,” Cluck said.

That’s why it’s critical that the Harrisburg Authority proceeds as planned to spend money for a forensic audit of the incinerator retrofit project. For a municipal authority that’s best trick was to burn millions in public money, there’s no reason not to.

The record of suspicion surrounding the incinerator make it impossible for the financial marketplace to approve any Harrisburg Authority financing. The bond ratings of almost every entity associated with Harrisburg is at junk level. At this point, the Harrisburg Authority is effectively beyond repair, so the good-intentioned board now in charge might as well take some of what’s left in the cash drawer to clear the record for the rest of us.

Here’s what we want to know: Was the due-diligence process in studying, bidding and financing the incinerator adequate, independent, competent and correct? If not, then why not?

All of the professionals stood to make considerably more in fees if the transaction was undertaken, some indeed would only be paid out of proceeds of a deal.

The deal was so implausible that all design, development, construction management and operational roles had to be consolidated into one company, Barlow — a firm with little proven experience and a balance sheet completely incapable of justifying such a major risk.

Legal artifice had to be constructed via subversion of the Municipal Authorities Act in order to justify not adhering to the state mandate for a performance bond. Barlow, the untested developer, couldn’t qualify for one, let alone afford it.

As Harrisburg dithers in Act 47, we say bring on the feds, just as we say bring on a forensic audit. There's history to parse here. Verification of these probable circumstance would serve as a powerful basis for a significant “claw back” in a Chapter 9 bankruptcy action.