Report: Kathleen Kane's office rampant with patronage

Keeping a campaign promise made when the Jerry Sandusky child sex-abuse scandal was fresh in the public's mind, newly elected Democratic Attorney General Kathleen Kane created a separate unit to prosecute adults trolling the Internet and streets for children.

To lead the Child Predator Unit, she tapped a low-level deputy attorney general who was out of compliance with her legal training and had spent her five years with the agency working on civil cases.

But the lawyer had something Kane apparently valued over experience: a family tie.

​Three months after Kane took office, her twin sister, Ellen Granahan, was named chief deputy attorney general and head of the Child Predator Unit on April 15, 2013. With the new title came a 20 percent raise, which has since inched upward to $88,509, according to public records.

Granahan would find many familiar faces amid her sister's underlings. Not counting the hires Kane made for her executive administrative team, she has used the state payroll to hand out at least 20 lower-level jobs and multiple promotions to relatives, political supporters and Scranton-area associates, according to a Morning Call investigation involving more than a dozen interviews and records filed with the Attorney General's Office, State Employees' Retirement System and the Office of Administration.

At least two of those promotions — including Granahan's — were to positions for which no criteria had been established to fill the vacancies.

The state Ethics Commission, acting on a request by state Rep. Daryl Metcalfe, R-Butler, investigated Granahan's hiring and determined it broke no rules, according to commission records obtained by The Morning Call.

Then-First Deputy Adrian King told the commission in an Oct. 2, 2013, letter that he chose Granahan for promotion because she was the most qualified candidate based on her experience as an assistant district attorney in Lackawanna County, according to the records.

In a Jan. 9, 2014, letter to Kane, which was part of the records obtained by The Morning Call, Ethics Commission Chairman John J. Bolger wrote that while there was no evidence Kane used her office to benefit an immediate family member, her process created suspicion.

"The selection process, coupled with a lack of documentation establishing the criteria used to fill the vacancy concerning the chief deputy attorney general of the Child Predator Section, created a perception that the promotion of your sister was not free of your influence," Bolger wrote.

Four months after Granahan's promotion, the state Supreme Court threatened to suspend her license unless she completed mandated education credits within 30 days, according to a Supreme Court order Aug. 21, 2013.

Granahan finished the classes. Since then, she has spent little time in court.

Of the 281 cases she and the other attorneys in the unit handled between April 26, 2013, and Sept. 15, Granahan was responsible for six — or about 2 percent, according to a Morning Call analysis of Attorney General's Office news releases and county court records detailing the unit's arrests.

By comparison, the three attorneys assigned full time to Granahan's unit carried the load. Senior Deputy Attorney General Christopher Jones handled 82 cases, Deputy Attorney General Rebecca Elo, 77, and Deputy Attorney General Anthony Marmo, who has since left the Attorney General's Office, 74. Jones and Elo prosecuted more than 20 of those cases in the geographical area Granahan was assigned to cover, the data show.

Granahan's caseload is low because she oversees each case handled by the unit's attorneys but doesn't handle day-to-day prosecutions, said Chuck Ardo, Attorney General's Office spokesman.

"I'm not doubting your numbers," Ardo said. "All I can say is the job that Ellen has is supervisory, and that might help explain why she appears in court so seldom."

Granahan's position was among several that Kane created. Since taking office Jan. 15, 2013, Kane added multiple managerial jobs her Republican predecessors did not have.

For example, while there was one top-level supervisory agent in each of the three prior administrations of Mike Fisher, Tom Corbett and Linda Kelly, Kane hired three and paid them $140,010 to start — 23 percent more than the lone agent they replaced. In 2014, Kane hired a senior executive attorney general, a position that never existed. Kane created from scratch other lower-level management jobs, including that of a managerial janitor, a position outside the union pay scale.

Kane also awarded two bonuses in 2014 to more than 100 managers, according to a Morning Call analysis of state pay records published by the Office of Administration.

Those decisions helped increase the attorney general's payroll by more than 7 percent to $37.3 million between July 15, 2013, and July 15, 2014, the first full fiscal year of Kane's term, state data show. The bump was covered by the 12 percent state funding increase the Legislature gave Kane's office in the 2014-15 budget. Her budget now stands at $122 million in state and federal funding.

Using the state payroll to hire her family and friends wasn't illegal. As the elected head of her office, Kane has authority to hire almost anyone she wants.

Others have done it before her, Ardo said. The Attorney General's Office has more than 830 employees, so it stands to reason some would have connections to Kane, he added.

"In general, it is not uncommon for elected officials to look for people they trust to fill roles within their administration," he said, adding that the only reason Kane's hiring practices are being scrutinized is that she is under a media microscope now.

Grand jury leak 

Kane has spent the past year embroiled in controversy over an alleged grand jury leak from her office. She was charged in August with perjury, a felony, for allegedly lying to a grand jury about the leak. Montgomery County prosecutors say Kane directed others to leak grand jury secrets in an attempt to discredit her critics. The charges led the state Supreme Court on Monday to suspend her law license, which could force her from office.

One of Kane's hires, Patrick Reese, is charged with contempt of court for allegedly breaking a witness intimidation order issued in the leak case. Another, David Peifer, one of the three supervisory agents she hired, testified against her at the Aug. 24 preliminary hearing to avoid the same fate.

Kane has maintained her innocence and vowed to remain in office.

In suspending her license, the Supreme Court concluded the charges have damaged Kane's ability to oversee her office.

The charges, along with Kane's managerial decisions, have affected morale, said Laurel Brandstetter, who worked five years as a deputy attorney general before going into private practice last year in western Pennsylvania. Kane created a climate of fear by protecting some employees, Brandstetter said, and firing and suspending others she deemed against her.

"I've been very reluctant to speak out because of my prior employment," she said. "But it's awful. There are agents and attorneys at that office who are attempting to work very hard for the commonwealth and do a job, and the decision-making that has been going on is making it a difficult and painful job. Those people need a voice."

One of those voices was heard in court documents filed with the charges against Kane.

"If I get taken out of here in handcuffs, what do you think my last act will be?" First Deputy Bruce Beemer told grand jurors Kane said to him, which he took as a threat to terminate anyone who did not help quash the leak investigation, the court records show.

Kathleen Kane, Democratic Pennsylvania attorney general who was elected in November 2012 and entered office in January 2013. She was a Lackawanna County assistant district attorney turned stay-at-home mom and political fundraiser for key Democrats such as Hillary Rodham Clinton. After an unflattering story appeared in a Philadelphia newspaper in March 2014, Kane declared "This is war," according to the criminal complaint detailing the charges against her

David Peifer, special agent in charge of attorney general's Bureau of Special Investigations since Kane took office. Conducted interview of agent Michael Miletto, who worked on the 2009 grand jury investigation into possible misuse of grant money by several individuals. The interview outlined details from the 2009 grand jury probe. Kane disclosed this material to the press in violation of a judge's order, according to the charges against her.

Along with Granahan, Kane has hired a cousin and numerous political allies as well as relatives and associates of those allies, including several from the tiny Lackawanna County borough of Dunmore, which is just outside her native Scranton. Among the Attorney General's Office employees with connections to Kane, and their salaries, according to state pay records, are:

• Colleen Tighe, Kane's cousin, who worked as her campaign aide before being hired first as a $56,948-a-year executive secretary and then as a civilian intelligence analyst making $39,629, though, sources say, she lacks the required college degree for the second position.

• Becky Berkebile, who submitted a gushing letter to the editor about Kane to various newspapers. "As an employee of the office and an insider with no ax to grind, I can tell you that Attorney General Kathleen Kane is in firm command of those aspects of her office with which I am familiar," Berkebile wrote in the letter, which was published May 6 in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. In June, she received a 27 percent pay raise and a new position that still has no written job description or classification, according to Attorney General's Office records.

• Renee George Martin, a former Kane campaign aide who received several raises that pushed her salary to $95,335. She is Kane's director of education and outreach coordinator. Kane also hired Martin's daughter, Sadie Martin, as an assistant press secretary at a salary of $40,841 and two others who sources said were her daughter's friends. They were hired as executive secretaries, earning $35,717 each.

• Reese, a former Dunmore police chief who was hired to head Kane's security team and serve as her driver, at a salary of $97,244.

• Five other Dunmore residents related personally or politically to Reese were added to the payroll for an additional $271,534 combined, according to state payroll data and Lackawanna County marriage, voting and real estate records. The Dunmore residents include Reese's brother-in-law, who was given the management-level janitorial job; the Dunmore mayor's daughter, who was made a secretary; and the Dunmore solicitor's son, who was made a deputy attorney general.

The Morning Call's findings raise serious questions about the employment practices in the state's top law enforcement agency, said David Thornburgh, president and CEO of the Committee of 70, a nonpartisan government watchdog group in Philadelphia.

"It's a veritable family tree," he quipped.

When public officials hire and promote, they should publish clear job descriptions, qualifications and benchmarks candidates need to meet, he said, otherwise morale in the office suffers and public confidence in government drops.

"They do not want to see government as a hiring mill for your pals and cronies," Thornburgh said.

Such hiring practices stretch the bounds of fairness and spur distrust in government, added Wilkes University political science professor Thomas Baldino.

"When people in government do things to benefit themselves or their friends, which is cronyism; their family, which is nepotism; their political party or political supporters, which is patronage, that brings down people's perception of government," Baldino said. "When people lose faith in government, cynicism increases and democracy can't function as well."

Bypassing unions

Kane has few restrictions when it comes to hiring. Mainly, she can't violate pay scales outlined in union contracts with the Fraternal Order of Police and the American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees.

Her office does not have to abide by the state Civil Service Law, which requires applicants to take tests for certain state jobs.

"I have no control over who gets hired," AFSCME Executive Director Dave Fillman said. "But once they become our members, we represent them."

There are limitations, however. The state Ethics Act precludes public officials and public employees from using their positions to enrich themselves or their immediate family members, defined as "a parent, spouse, child, brother or sister." The law is silent on in-laws, cousins and other relatives. Since Granahan was hired by Corbett in 2008 and her 2013 promotion was signed by then-First Deputy King, Kane apparently broke no laws, according to the Ethics Commission report.

Incoming governors have the right to fill about 250 appointments of at-will employees, everyone from Cabinet secretaries to legislative liaisons, said G. Terry Madonna, political science professor and pollster. They can't hire willy-nilly, however, since they must fill lower-level management and rank-and-file jobs from the civil service ranks.

Kane doesn't have the Civil Service barrier, he noted. She inherited an agency that had been run by Republicans since it was made an elective office in 1980, he added. So she might have wanted loyal staffers around her, Madonna said, especially because she had accused the staff she inherited from Corbett of moving too slowly to arrest Sandusky. That's not uncommon, Madonna said.

What is unusual, he said, is the number of jobs Kane has filled with people she knows.

Kane has been generous with her new hires and others in the office, payroll records show. She doled out two sets of raises to 107 managers — one in January 2014 and one six months later.

More than three-quarters of the managers who got the two raises had no change in title or position, including a chief deputy attorney general whose salary went up nearly 34 percent to $104,001 and a human resources manager whose salary jumped 28 percent to $48,078, records show.

"They are not called bonuses, rather, merit increases," a source said of the July pay raises.

The January raise was a cost-of-living increase for all managers, keeping them on par with the percentage increases union employees were getting. The second raise was arbitrary.

Pennsylvania good-government activist Gene Stilp said Kane's employment practices are ripe for a deeper state Ethics Commission complaint, and further evidence for why the Republican-controlled Legislature and Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf must act to remove her from office.

"This is not what the taxpayers want to see in state government, especially by the chief law enforcement officer," Stilp said. "This is a prime example of what the attorney general should be fighting against not contributing to and a prime example of why she should be leaving office."