In Pa. coal region, a mother lode of corruption

WILKES-BARRE - Early in the spring, the FBI made an extraordinary appeal that was carried by newspapers and broadcast media throughout northeastern Pennsylvania:

"If you are a teacher, prospective teacher, employee, or prospective employee of any kind who has been required to provide money, or anything else of value, to any individual in connection with being hired at any public school in northeastern Pennsylvania . . . you are requested to immediately contact either Special Agent Richard Southerton or Special Agent Joseph Noone in the FBI's Scranton office at telephone number 570-344-2404."

Almost immediately, the telephones were ringing. To date, six school board members have been indicted on charges they accepted bribes in exchange for hiring teachers in their districts. The FBI won't comment, but no one doubts there will be more charges.

Based on indictments and subsequent guilty pleas, the going rate for a teaching job is $5,000 in the Wilkes-Barre Area School District and the Hanover Area School District.

"The harsh truth is that it costs at least a couple of thousand dollars to get a job in a school district around here," says Thomas Baldino, who has taught political science at Wilkes University for 20 years. "You either pay it or you go well outside the area to teach. I have had really bright students who can't get teaching jobs here because they can't afford to pay for them."

Most of the attention in the federal probe into official wrongdoing in northeastern Pennsylvania has justifiably focused on the $2.8 million kickback scheme in which two Luzerne County judges allegedly sentenced juveniles to detention centers without legal representation. However, indictments have been dropping like cinder blocks outside the courthouse as well.

Indeed, as of the close of business Friday, U.S. Attorney Dennis C. Pfannenschmidt said 19 Luzerne County officials had been charged with criminal conduct in an ongoing investigation that goes well beyond the courtrooms of Michael T. Conahan and Mark A. Ciavarella Jr., the former judges who have been indicted in a "cash-for-kids" conspiracy.

The miscreants have included Charles Costanzo, who was convicted of making off with about $650,000 as county workers' compensation administrator, and William Brace, who last week pleaded guilty to accepting a $1,500 tailor-made, monogrammed suit in exchange for facilitating the award of a contract while he was deputy county clerk.

It's all merely the latest chapter in a legacy of official wrongdoing that stretches back more than a half-century and is punctuated by coal barons and mobsters - a "culture of corruption" that has snared judges and congressmen, legislators and councilmen.

Philadelphians upset with corruption in their city may find a mild tranquilizer in Pennsylvania's anthracite coal region, which includes Wilkes-Barre, Scranton, and Hazleton, where the FBI and the Justice Department have been intermittently probing public officials and racketeers for more than a half-century.

Baldino says he was born and raised in South Philadelphia and is "no stranger to crooked politicians." But, he adds, "the difference is that in Philly we have at least had episodes of reform, like Clark and Dilworth in the '50s. Here, there's never been a reform movement. What we're seeing here today is the way it's always been."

"The level of corruption is unbelievable. It's epidemic," says Robert Wolensky, a Luzerne County native who teaches sociology at the University of Wisconsin but returns regularly as an adjunct professor at King's College in Wilkes-Barre. "It wasn't until I moved to Wisconsin that I realized that corruption wasn't a normal part of government."

Baldino and Wolensky agree that the common denominator in the historic corruption has been jobs. "The Depression started here early, when the coal companies started laying off the miners in the 1920s," Wolensky said. "People became desperate for jobs, and the only jobs were with the local governments."

Baldino said at first it merely involved local politicians handing out jobs to their relatives and friends. "But before long, patronage moved into pocket-lining."

A key factor is the unusually large number of local governments. Luzerne County has four cities, 36 boroughs, and 36 townships; Lackawanna County has two cities, 17 boroughs, and 21 townships. "This is an outgrowth of the fact that every coal company had to have its own town so it could control laws and taxes," Wolensky said. "These towns survive today, and each is a little fiefdom."

"Today," he added, "paying to get a job is viewed as the proper thing to do - a way of saying thank you. Many public jobs are expected to be given only after a bribe. If you don't put the thousand dollars in the envelope, someone else will because they are as desperate as you."

Baldino said the citizens of northeastern Pennsylvania were "very forgiving" of government miscreants. He cited the case of Daniel J. Flood, the flamboyant congressman from Wilkes-Barre who was elected to a 16th term in 1978 while under federal indictment for bribery and perjury. He resigned two years later and died in 1994. The Wilkes-Barre Area School District, one of the districts where teachers' jobs were sold, includes the Daniel J. Flood Elementary School.

Joseph Vadella was forced to resign as Carbondale mayor in 1997 after being sentenced to four years in federal prison in a ballot-tampering scheme. Two years later, he was elected mayor again - even though his name wasn't on the ballot and had to be written in.

In Moosic Borough, Mayor John Segilia and Councilman Joseph Mercatili were forced to resign in 1992 after pleading no contest to fixing parking tickets and manipulating DUI cases. Both were elected to the same offices two weeks ago.

On Oct. 15, Allen Bellas was charged with taking a $2,000 bribe as executive director of the Luzerne County Redevelopment Authority. He pleaded guilty, but it was too late to get his name off the Nov. 3 ballot as a candidate for reelection to the Wyoming Valley West School Board. Despite his admission, Bellas was elected to another term on the school board. He is expected to resign.

There was one sign in the Nov. 3 election that voters' forgiveness was running thin. Judge Peter Paul Olszewski Jr. was soundly defeated in his bid for retention. Such retentions are usually routine, but a photograph was published in September in a Wilkes-Barre newspaper showing the jurist with a convicted drug dealer at a Florida condominium owned by Conahan and Ciavarella. The photo was taken in 2005, before the judges' alleged misconduct became public.

Baldino and Wolensky agreed that the "cash-for-kids" scandal had appalled the community much more than other official transgressions. Ciavarella and Conahan are under indictment on 48 federal racketeering and related charges, accused of receiving $2.8 million from the developers of two juvenile detention facilities. In February, they agreed to plead guilty in a deal with prosecutors that called for 87-month prison sentences, but a federal judge rejected the accord last month, saying the two jurists had not fully accepted responsibility for the crimes. They switched their pleas to not guilty.

Wolensky said organized crime was "part of the social fabric" of northeastern Pennsylvania, which is home to one of the nation's old mob families - the Bufalinos. The current leader has been identified by state and federal authorities as William "Big Billy" D'Elia, who is serving a nine-year term for federal money-laundering and witness-tampering convictions.

There has been testimony in an unrelated state Supreme Court case that D'Elia met regularly with Conahan for breakfast at a local restaurant to discuss pending cases.

Late Friday, Gene Stilp, a Wilkes-Barre native who has been active in opposing corruption at the state level, placed "Crime Watch" posters in the Luzerne County Courthouse to give courthouse employees a way of reporting misdeeds. The posters, which depict the courthouse with a big eye, urge respondents to send their information to a box at the Wilkes-Barre post office.

"If anyone thinks that the end of corruption within the Luzerne County Courthouse is in sight, or that all past abuses have been discovered, they are sadly mistaken," Stilp said.