When you sit at a table at the U.S. Conference of Mayors, you hear a lot of pitches. But only one mayor walked by and told me, “We’re the only bankrupt city in America.”
That’s Stefan Roots, mayor of Chester, Pennsylvania. And that opening line is exactly why I wanted him on The Good Government Show.
Chester is the first city of Pennsylvania — where William Penn landed, home to the 1724 courthouse, the longest continuously used public building in America. It sits ten minutes from Philadelphia International Airport, with I-95 running through it and the Delaware River at its front door. And for decades, it has been failed by the people running it.
Mayor Roots doesn’t sugarcoat how Chester got here: years of poor fiscal management, capped by a previous administration that failed to make minimum contributions to the police pension fund. By 2020, the state stepped in and placed the city in receivership. Bankruptcy followed. As Roots put it, the city had been robbing Peter to pay Paul — “we just robbed the wrong Peter.”
Here’s what makes this a good government story: Roots ran for office with his eyes wide open. A career engineer and a community journalist who had been reporting on Chester’s problems since 2006, he served two years on city council before winning the mayor’s office. He knew exactly what he was signing up for.
“As an engineer, deep in my DNA is solving problems,” he told me. “If you don’t recognize something as a problem, you’re not even going to try to solution it.”
Where the last administration resisted state help, Roots built a cooperative government. He worked with the receiver to replace an outdated patronage system — where council members ran city departments regardless of qualifications — with professional directors. That fight went all the way to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. The reformers won. Two years in, Chester has real leadership in finance, inspections, and public safety, and Roots says the talent pool surprised him: experienced professionals wanted the challenge of turning a city around.
The results are starting to show. This past June, Chester cut the ribbon on a $100 million sportsplex alongside the Philadelphia Union’s stadium — a facility that hosted Chelsea during the Club World Cup and will serve as a practice site when the World Cup comes to Philadelphia. A long-neglected 22-acre park is set to become the centerpiece of a corridor connecting City Hall to Widener University. And a governor who famously rebuilt a collapsed section of I-95 in two weeks is committed to Chester’s recovery. Roots likes to remind him: “If you can fix a highway in two weeks, you can fix my city in four years.”
I asked him what good government means. His answer: accountability, fiscal responsibility, and a genuine two-way conversation with residents. In Chester — a one-zip-code town where Facebook is the water cooler — that means showing up, communicating constantly, and proving through effort that government is working for the people again.
Mayor Roots told me he can get a win every day. And most days, he does.
That’s not just a turnaround story. That’s good government.
🎧 Listen to my full conversation with Mayor Stefan Roots on The Good Government Show, available wherever you get your podcasts, and at goodgovinstitute.org.