Archive: March, 2009
Gov. Rendell today appointed a retired company executive from Montgomery County as the chief accountability officer of a new commission tasked with tracking $10 billion in federal stimulus funds.
In the post, Ronald J. Naples, who retired last fall as the CEO of Quaker Chemical Corp. in Conshohocken, will ensure the money is spent “wisely, effectively and as quickly as possible,” Rendell said.
The governor called Naples, a Republican, “a good hard-nosed businessman who understands what work is all about.”
Naples will be paid $120,000 annually out of the stimulus funding in the part-time post.
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Former U.S. Attorney Pat Meehan of Southeast Pennsylvania today announced a line-up of advisers for his expected campaign for the Republican nomination for governor in 2010. It's an all-star lineup with years of PA experience, and it comes a few days after his team let it be known he's raised $700,000 in last couple months of "exploration."
Here are the advisers:
Acting Labor and Industry Secretary Sandi Vito is back on the job after a week-long stint in rehab stemming from a recent public drunkenness incident, Rendell announced today.
Vito was picked up by Harrisburg police at the Harrisburg Hilton just over two weeks ago for public drunkenness. The Patriot News of Harrisburg has reported that she was too intoxicated after a night out to sign a citation (which carries a $200 fine) by a city police officer. She also shouted obscenities at the officer, according to the newspaper.
Dominic Pileggi appears to be a man of his word.
When former Rep. Mike Veon was charged Wednesday with using a nonprofit he created for political gain, Attorney General Tom Corbett admonished the General Assembly to look inward to prevent such a thing from happening again.
Hours after the Veon news broke, Pileggi, the senate majority leader, said in an interview that he wasn’t sure what could be done along those lines.
I inadvertently left out a statistical caveat to the Franklin & Marshall College Poll in today's story about Sen. Arlen Specter's political challenges. F & M interviewed a subsample of 211 Republicans on some questions, notablyi those about next year's GOP primary for Senate. Results for the subsample are subject to a margin of error of plus or minus 6.7 percentage points.
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Eighty-five percent of Pennsylvanians believe the state should outlaw the use of hand-held cell phones while driving.
Even more – 89 percent – believe texting should be banned as well.
Eight months after being swept up in the Bonusgate scandal, former top State House Democrat Mike Veon is now facing a new set of corruption charges -- this time stemming from a western Pennsylvania non-profit he controlled.
State Attorney General Tom Corbett announced today that he had charged Veon, 51, the former House Majority Whip, with more than two dozen counts of theft and other charges for using millions in state grant dollars for political purposes.
Also charged today was Veon’s former top aide, Annamarie Peretta-Rosepink, 46. She had worked as a legislative aide and the top financial officer at the nonprofit, the Beaver Initiative for Growth, which Veon founded in 1991.
The latest Quinnipiac University poll shows Republican U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter trailing former conservative Congressman Pat Toomey - a potential candidate in the Republican primary for the 2010 Senate race.
The poll, released today, shows Specter behind Toomey 41 to 27 percent, with 28 percent undecided.
Attorney General Tom Corbett has scheduled a news conference for 1 this afternoon in Pittsburgh to announce that his office has filed new criminal charges against former House Democratic Minority Whip Mike Veon and one of his staffers, Anna Marie Peretta-Rosepink.
The charges deal with the Beaver Initiative for Growth, a nonprofit that Veon created and helped fund with state grants. Other details were not immediately provided by Corbett’s office.
Ending a political drama that threatened his reelection, Sen. Arlen Specter (R.,Pa.) said moments ago that he would oppose a bill that would make it easier for workers to form unions, legislation on which he was positioned to be the crucial swing vote.
On the Senate floor, Specter said that he was concerned the bill would elminate the secret ballot vote on whether to unionize. The proposed legislation, named the Employee Free Choice Act but called "card check" by detractors, would allow a union to be recognized if a majority of workers in a shop signed cards acknowledging their support.
He said that the "secret ballot is the cornerstone of how contests are decided in a democracy." Specter also said he was concerned about a compulsory arbitration provision in the bill that would force empoyers and employees into binding arbitration if no contract was reached within 120 days of the recognition of a union.
