Bomb thrower or bridge builder? Justin Douglas reflects on his first year changing Dauphin County.

After flipping Dauphin County blue for the first time in 100 years, Justin Douglas looks back on his first year in office, bringing reforms to the county and fighting ingrained institutional corruption. 

Bridge builder or bomb thrower? 

In his first year as a Dauphin County Commissioner, Justin Douglas has been a bit of both. 

Douglas, who  helped Democrats flip the Dauphin County Commissioners office for the first time in nearly 100 years,  ran on shaking up the county’s political establishment, and so far, has done exactly that. 

But if you focus only on his confrontations with entrenched power, it’s easy to miss the quieter work being done. 

“One of the criticisms right now is that I’m just throwing bombs and I’m not building anything,” Douglas said in an interview with The Keystone. 

“I just want to say [from] the list of things I’ve gone through, [it’s] evident that I am working to build things and I am willing to work with anybody to champion good for Dauphin County. I’m just not willing to look the other way when there’s corruption.”

Douglas, a former pastor with a progressive following, flipped the Dauphin County Commissioner’s office in 2023 after spending $12,000 in his campaign highlighting the problems at the county’s prison. Since then, he’s played key roles in pushing for changes at the prison, voting reforms, and making sure county employees are paid a living wage. 

His accomplishments include increasing the amount of ballot drop boxes throughout the county and implementing a ballot curing process that allowed over 400 voters to fix simple mistakes on their mail-in ballots in the most recent election. 

“If you have the wrong envelope, if you have the wrong date, if you didn’t put your signature the right way — these are all reasons that your vote might not count,” Douglas explained. 

Voters who made those errors were sent notices informing them of the need to cure their ballots to ensure they count, Douglas said.

During his campaign, Douglas spent a bulk of his funds on a billboard highlighting the 18  inmates who’d died at the Dauphin County prison since 2019. 

Since getting elected, Douglas has helped make changes at the prison. 

Two of the biggest changes Douglas has brought to the county prison this past year include allowing inmates to go outside and use the prison yards for the first time in 20 years, and eliminating the pay-to-stay system that burdened inmates with $65 million in debt. Inmates at the prison were previously forced to pay $10 a day to stay at the prison. 

Douglas has also gained a reputation as a bomb thrower by using props and his platform at commissioners’ meetings to highlight the institutional corruption surrounding former county commissioner Jeff Haste and a consultant who has a sprawling web of government contracts tied to many facets of the county’s day-to-day operations. 

According to Douglas, highlighting the county’s corruption has bipartisan support from both Democratic and Republican voters. 

“You’d be surprised how many Republicans are in my DMs or are finding me while I’m walking down the street and, tap me on the shoulder and saying, ‘thank you for what you’re doing,’” Douglas recalled.

“I think it’s a bipartisan issue to do everything we can to save the taxpayers money, to do everything we can to eliminate waste, and I’m committed to that.”