Attorney General Tom Corbett said yesterday that Rep. John M. Perzel; his top aide, Brian Preski; and their wives also had tried to turn a profit on voter databases allegedly built with millions of dollars in taxpayer money.

In 2003, they shopped one software program to Sam Katz's Philadelphia mayoral campaign - at a price of $1.4 million, according to grand jury testimony.

Katz didn't bite.

"If there was such a proposal, and if it had been made to me, its mere price would have been laughable," Katz said last night.

He did, however, wind up hiring the wives, Sheryl Perzel and Kelly Preski, as paid aides in his losing bid to unseat Mayor John F. Street.

The allegations about profit-seeking, which Perzel has denied, come from a former staffer. Perzel's trusted, longtime legislative aide, William Tomaselli, told the grand jury about a company called Greystone, later renamed SKP (S for Sheryl, K for Kelly, P for Perzel and Preski), that was created to profit off the databases.

Tomaselli, testifying under a grant of immunity from prosecution, told the grand jury that Brian Preski said the goal of the company had been "to make us millionaires."

The two wives, who were not charged with any crimes, made the seven-figure proposal to have the company supply Katz's campaign with data from GCR & Associates, a New Orleans software developer, the grand jury found.

Eventually, Tomaselli testified, he helped the Katz campaign deal directly with GCR, buying the same data for $300,000 - far less than what Greystone wanted.

Corbett said that although there was little evidence that the business venture had succeeded, it showed an attempt to gain personally from the taxpayer-funded databases.