Rendell defends hiring Surra

HARRISBURG - In his first public comments on two recent controversies, Gov. Rendell yesterday defended his hiring of a former legislator to a high-paying state job and distanced himself from a key figure in a New Mexico corruption probe.

The first issue: Why did Rendell hire former State Rep. Dan Surra (D., Elk) to a newly created $95,000-a-year post four months into an administration-wide hiring freeze?

Rendell called Surra, a nine-term representative, "eminently qualified" to serve as a senior adviser to Michael DiBerardinis, secretary of the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources.

Surra's primary role in the job he started Monday will be to increase ecotourism and development in the northern part of the state.

Rendell stressed yesterday that the hiring freeze was never iron-clad and that there would be exceptions in special cases.

Asked what the special need was in the case of Surra's job, Rendell said he needed someone to "continue the momentum" of the state's ecotourism efforts.

But six GOP House members from the Harrisburg area urged the governor to rescind Surra's hiring.

"We feel this is truly an egregious slap in the face to hardworking Pennsylvanians across this commonwealth," Reps. Ron Marsico, Glen Grell, Sheryl Delozier, Mauree Gingrich, Sue Helm and Will Gabig wrote in a letter.

Rendell acknowledged that the state never advertised the opening and that Surra was the only one considered for it. Yet he insisted the job was not created just for Surra.

"It was created because there was a need and he was the best person for it," Rendell said after an unrelated news conference yesterday.

At one point, the governor grew testy at reporters for peppering him with questions about the hiring.

"We have an economy that's crumbling . . . and we have a health-care crisis and you guys are obsessed with Dan Surra," he snapped.

Rendell's hiring freeze was prompted by plummeting state revenue. In December, he froze wages for more than 13,000 nonunion state workers.

Under the hiring freeze, 4,649 positions have gone unfilled, but Surra is one of 300 people who have been hired in jobs considered critical to government operations.

Surra found himself searching for a job in November when voters in Elk and Clearfield Counties voted him from office. When his term ended Nov. 30, he immediately landed a one-month consulting contract with his fellow House Democratic colleagues. Surra's job at DCNR pays about 9 percent more than the $86,847 he made as a legislative leader.

As he was leaving the news conference, Rendell briefly address another controversy: his relationship with David Rubin, whose Beverly Hills, Calif., company is at the center of a corruption probe.

Federal authorities are reportedly looking into $1.5 million in government work that Rubin's company, CDR Financial Products, received in New Mexico after contributing $100,000 to Gov. Bill Richardson and his efforts to register voters.

Richardson has denied any wrongdoing.

Rubin gave $40,000 to Rendell's two gubernatorial bids in 2002 and 2006. Rendell had tapped Rubin to sit on his transition team to advise him on revenue issues.

Asked why he appointed Rubin, Rendell said, "He is a very knowledgeable guy - probably one of the experts in the nation on swaps." The governor was referring to interest-rate swaps - complex investments brokered by companies like Rubin's on behalf of governments.

Rubin's company had made $599,000 since 2003 under a lucrative no-bid contract to serve as a swap adviser for the Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency, which helps arrange funding for first-time home buyers.

The governor insisted yesterday that he had nothing to do with the company's getting the work.

Hiring CDR, he said, was the decision of PHFA chief executive officer Brian Hudson, who began negotiating with the company in 2002 before Rendell took office. Hudson had previously corroborated those statements.

"I had nothing to do with it," Rendell said of the CDR contract, which he said was the only one the company has had with state government. "I didn't even know about it."