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Living testimony from a Pa. ghost employee

HARRISBURG - For decades, Pennsylvania government has been haunted by ghosts - the illegal kind embodied by patronage hires who, though flesh and blood, don't do a stitch of work for their government salaries.

HARRISBURG - For decades, Pennsylvania government has been haunted by ghosts - the illegal kind embodied by patronage hires who, though flesh and blood, don't do a stitch of work for their government salaries.

But rarely do they unmask themselves for all to see as Sue Cornell has done.

It was 2006, and Cornell, a freshman state representative, had just been booted from office by Montgomery County voters, and she needed a job.

She turned to the person who had recruited her to run - then-Speaker John M. Perzel.

Perzel found her work, assigning her to the office of his fellow Philadelphia Republican, then-Rep. George Kenney, for the same $72,187 salary she had as a legislator.

"I'll sit and answer phones. I'll pick up your dry cleaning," she recalled telling Kenney when she first approached her new boss.

How did Kenney, a legislative veteran, respond? He "just kind of laughed," said Cornell.

For a month and a half, Cornell collected a state paycheck without doing any work or setting foot in Kenney's office. Then Perzel got her another gig, one in which, she said, she did actual work: in-house lobbyist at the Philadelphia Parking Authority, a job created just for her.

These allegations and comments came from Cornell's testimony to a grand jury and were used by Attorney General Tom Corbett as an example of how Perzel misused the public purse.

Corbett charged Perzel and nine others this month with spending $10 million in taxpayer money on private consultants to build computer programs and give Republicans a leg up on Election Day.

But the 188-page grand-jury presentment goes far beyond that, and serves as what might be an insider's guide to how some in Harrisburg operated when they thought no one was watching. It includes accusations of do-nothing state workers and do-little state and campaign workers who got paid by taxpayers.

Or, as longtime activist Eric Epstein, founder of RockTheCapital.org put it, the grand-jury report "reads like a rogue manual on how to operate a banana republic."

Corbett leveled similar allegations in July 2008 when he charged a dozen House Democratic insiders with using state resources for campaign purposes.

A Harrisburg tradition

To be sure, what Perzel is accused of is not novel in Harrisburg. Other pols have been convicted of the offense.

State Sen. Henry "Buddy" Cianfrani (D., Phila.) did it in the 1970s. The Democrat who replaced him in the Senate, Vincent J. Fumo, is serving a 55-month federal prison sentence in part for putting friends on do-nothing state contracts.

And finding government work for displaced lawmakers is a time-honored tradition in Harrisburg. Most often, those defeated for new terms are put on short-term contracts - typically less than a year, at their legislative salary - to advise incoming lawmakers.

The standard defense: It was a temporary assignment, and former lawmakers worked hard for the money.

That's what makes the Cornell case stand out: She has admitted she was put in a no-work House job.

In an interview last week, Cornell declined to elaborate on her testimony, saying parking authority officials had instructed her not to discuss the matter. She now makes $67,894 as the authority's manager of government relations.

Cornell told the grand jury that at the beginning of her tenure there, she had struggled "to find anything to do." But the position "evolved into a legitimate job," she said.

Cornell was not charged. But another alleged ghost employee was.

Sam "Buzz" Stokes was known by everyone in GOP House circles as not only Perzel's brother-in-law but also a top campaign aide.

Stokes, who was charged with 42 counts, was on the state payroll for eight years. When he left last year, he was making $41,418, records show.

Stokes explained to a district office staffer, unnamed in the presentment, that he needed health benefits that the campaign couldn't offer, so Perzel put him on the state payroll.

The staffer said Stokes had once confided that he found it "amusing," in light of his work duties on the campaign, that he was on the state payroll.

Few others, according to the presentment, knew Stokes was drawing a state check.

A 'parking lot'

The grand jury went on to allege that Perzel stocked a separate division of House Republican employees known as District Operations with campaign workers and those who specialized in political opposition research.

The ostensible mission of District Operations was to help a legislator's local office cope with staffing and equipment issues and to help with constituent outreach.

But from 2001 through 2006 - the major period covered by the charges - it instead served as "virtually a taxpayer-funded, wholly owned campaign subsidiary" for the political arm of the House GOP, the grand jury said.

It grew to about 20 people and, at times, became a "parking lot" for political hires, the grand jury said.

In the fall of 2006, Perzel hired two new legislative aides, Scott Migli and Daryl Fox, at six-figure state salaries to work for him in Harrisburg in jobs the grand jury said involved a mix of campaign and legitimate legislative work.

Then Perzel was dethroned as speaker, leaving Rep. Sam Smith (R., Jefferson) as the ranking House Republican. Smith, the grand jury said, "parked" the two aides in District Operations.

Migli, under a grant of immunity, told the grand jury that he had to try to find work to do.

He said that "from a staff standpoint, we did a lot of sitting around." Migli is now the campaign manager for U.S. Rep. Jim Gerlach, who, along with Corbett, is vying for the GOP gubernatorial nomination.

In an interview last week, Migli said that he wouldn't characterize the work "as a total ghost job," and that, among other things, he had helped freshman lawmakers with constituent service.

"There was nothing wrong with it," he said of the job. "But I knew it wasn't what I signed on to do. From my point of view, I simply needed to be busier."

Gerlach, who has said Corbett should step down as attorney general if he plans to continue to lead the corruption probe known as Bonusgate, did not respond to requests for comment.

Smith said last week that he had inherited the workers from Perzel and hadn't felt it would be right to fire them, especially given that they had just moved from New York to Pennsylvania.

Smith acknowledged putting the two aides in District Operations offices, but insisted that they had performed legitimate state work there.

Migli, who made $100,000 annually, and Fox, who was paid $120,000, have since left the public payroll.

Perzel, 59, denies doing anything wrong and has vowed to fight the charges, alleging that Corbett is using the case to improve his odds in the governor's race.

All 10 defendants have been released on bail and are awaiting preliminary hearings to determine whether there is enough evidence to take the cases to trial.

Kenney, Cornell's oh-so-brief boss, said in an interview last week that he hadn't known beforehand that Perzel put Cornell on his staff, and that he hadn't approved of it after learning of it.

"I didn't need anybody. I had a full complement of staff," he said, adding that it was one of many things Perzel did in secret without telling others.

Kenney wouldn't elaborate on that point, other than to say, "There was a lot going on that many members didn't know anything about, and I was one of them."