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Perzel, nine others charged in 'Bonusgate'

HARRISBURG - The computer programs had catchy names: "Election Day Complete," "Candidate Connect," and "The Edge." The software, brainchild of State Rep. John M. Perzel and his aides, was designed to "slice and dice" voter data and help Republicans win.

HARRISBURG - The computer programs had catchy names: "Election Day Complete," "Candidate Connect," and "The Edge."

The software, brainchild of State Rep. John M. Perzel and his aides, was designed to "slice and dice" voter data and help Republicans win.

It would have been perfectly legal, high-tech politicking, except that taxpayers were footing the $10 million bill, a grand jury found.

Perzel, the former House speaker, was charged yesterday with 82 counts of theft, conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and conflict of interest. The grand jury said he and others had misused public money for campaign purposes and then tried to cover it up.

Perzel, who has represented Northeast Philadelphia for 30 of his 59 years, thus became the most prominent political figure charged to date in the long-running investigation unofficially known as Bonusgate.

Nine other people with ties to the House Republican caucus were charged yesterday. They included Perzel's former chief of staff, Brian Preski; four other former Perzel aides; and former Rep. Brett Feese of Lycoming County, who once headed the House Appropriations Committee.

"Perzel was the architect behind a sophisticated criminal strategy that spent nearly $10 million of taxpayer money purely for campaign work," said Attorney General Tom Corbett, a Republican whose critics had, before yesterday, accused him of protecting members of his own party.

The allegations, described in a 188-page grand-jury presentment, came 16 months after Corbett brought charges against a dozen House Democratic insiders.

In a statement released as the attorney general was still announcing the charges, Perzel said he was innocent and accused Corbett, a Republican candidate for governor next year, of "political opportunism."

"I have faithfully served the people of my district, my city, and my state for more than 30 years, and I have never used public funds for my personal or political gain," Perzel said in his statement.

"This investigation has lasted for nearly three years, and it's only now, on the eve of his gubernatorial campaign and in response to claims that he was unfairly pursuing only Democrats, that Attorney General Corbett has decided to bring charges against 10 Republicans, including me."

William Winning, Preski's attorney, called his client "a dedicated public servant who . . . has done nothing wrong or illegal." He predicted that Preski, a Philadelphia lawyer, would be "fully exonerated."

Asked to respond to Perzel's statement, Corbett said he had no comment.

"I just laid out what we've been doing for two years," he said at an afternoon news conference.

Corbett said Perzel's interest in gaining a high-tech advantage in elections grew out of his near-defeat in 2000, when a little-known candidate came within 100 votes of knocking him from office.

It was then, the attorney general said, that Perzel vowed never to face another close race again, and instilled that mind-set in his staff.

Perzel turned to computer programmers to help him win elections, ordering up as many as a dozen separate software programs between 2000 and 2007. Some analyzed mountains of data to help direct campaign e-mails to likely supporters. Others helped target fund-raising pitches.

All were built to give Perzel and fellow Republicans an advantage at the polls. Corbett said most of the money had gone to two software developers: GCR & Associates Inc. of New Orleans and Aristotle Inc. of Washington.

Executives and programmers at the two companies testified before the grand jury with a grant of immunity from prosecutors.

At one point, according to the charges, Perzel and his former chief of staff, Preski, hatched an idea called "ID Verification System" after seeing thousands of spectators at a NASCAR event in Harrisburg.

The two men came up with a plan to scan license plates at such events and build a database of potential supporters to target with campaign literature, the grand jury presentment said.

When Perzel saw 20,000 people, he viewed them as "a database walking around," Anthony Painter, an executive with Aristotle and a former House GOP computer aide, told the grand jury.

The presentment said Perzel had used taxpayer-funded software contracts not only to help fellow GOP candidates but also to punish Republican legislators who had fallen out of favor with him. The tactics included classic political "dirty tricks," Corbett said - so-called robocalls and "push polls" intended to cast candidates in a negative light.

All along, Corbett said, Perzel and Preski built in layers of deniability for the software's funding. He said they had the House Republican Campaign Committee - the campaign arm of the caucus - enter into software contracts of its own to create the illusion that millions of dollars in public money wasn't being spent.

Yesterday's charges differ dramatically from those that Corbett brought in July 2008. Then, a dozen people with ties to House Democrats were accused of scheming to hand out state bonuses to legislative staffers as rewards for working on campaigns.

Democrats arranged bonuses and "used labor," Corbett said yesterday. "The Republicans, under Perzel, used technology."

The presentment also detailed how Feese, a former Lycoming County district attorney, had left a trail of handwritten notes during the investigation in 2007 and 2008 in an effort to appear unaware of any illegal activities, Corbett said.

He said notes produced by Feese and his aide, Jill Seaman, had been designed to show that they had begun their own investigation into misuse of public money. In fact, Corbett said, the grand jury found that the notes had been fabricated to mislead investigators.

Feese, who represented the Williamsport area in the House for a dozen years, resigned last week as the House GOP's top lawyer, a post he had held since leaving the legislature in 2006. His lawyer, Jane Penny, could not be reached for comment yesterday.

Corbett said the notes were part of a second conspiracy - a series of "deliberate acts by House Republican members and employees to obstruct and hinder the investigation."

He said that in February 2008, after serving subpoenas on the House GOP caucus, investigators learned that boxes believed to contain relevant documents were shuttled from basement storage to Perzel's Capitol office.

Two Perzel aides denied knowing about the boxes, in which investigators later found evidence of illegal campaign work, Corbett said.

That led to obstruction charges against Perzel, Feese, and two others, the attorney general said. He said their actions had made the investigation longer and costlier.

Asked what troubled him most about the latest allegations, Corbett said quickly, "Obstruction is the worst.

"You're interfering with justice," he said, "with the people who are trying to find out what truly happened."

He said his investigation continues.

Perzel and the other defendants have been directed to surrender at 9 a.m. today at the office of District Judge William Wenner in Harrisburg.

Read the attorney general's announcement and the grand jury report at http://go.philly.com/charges

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