ETC Centerfold

Electronic tolling is a bit lacking in glamorous presenters. The industry clearly needs a little something to stir the juices. A bitta spice. At the Penna pike this sentiment was taken to heart recently. Kenneth Manhertz, 45, a computer tech and a high frequency kinda guy it appears, persuaded the Turnpike’s ETC marketing manager Deborah Jubelirer to dispense with most of her clothes and pose for some sexy pics in the pike’s boardroom. On the big boardroom table. A mid-summer frolic? Nothing kinky or hardcore, we’re assured, although the pics were described as “pretty lively.”

The killjoys in command at the pike’s Harrisburg HQ got wind of the risque pics of Debbie and demanded her resignation. She could have been charged with misusing Turnpike property, namely a digital camera, which turned out to be the source of the naughty pics, and which were soon being displayed on computer screens around the Turnpike. Manhertz was fired.

Some thought Manhertz deserved recognition as an employee of enterprise and sensibility. As those who have been privileged to know her can attest, as well as being a personable and professional person and knowledgable about the Pike’s plans Debbie’s a real ‘looker.’ Very handsome face. Well built. She has looked after a great figure. Very photogenic. She represented the Penna pike as a speaker at the ITS American conference on electronic payments in Reston VA we attended earlier this year. (We had a very helpful talk with her afterwards.)

Manhertz may have had in mind bringing fame and fortune to the Turnpike by playing off one men’s mag against the other, a kind of RFP with that Heffner gal and is it Guccione or Flynt as the pre-qualified bidders.

There had been chatter that Deborah Jubelirer only got her $66k job at the Turnpike because of family connections, that she didn’t have all the academic qualifications... but then that is said eventually about almost all of the 1,800 employees of the Turnpike. For those unfamiliar with the politics of the great Commonwealth to our immediate north – they announce “The real America starts here” on a billboard at the border – Robert Jubelirer is a state Senate heavy, and a fellow dealer in road pork with DC huckster Bud Shuster (see report on the Breezewood strip, p16). Both backwoods boys from the mountains around Altoona made good. Maybe good’s not quite the word... made it big.

We’d thought until this event that Deborah was a daughter or a young niece of the old state pol. In the arduous work of checking out our facts for this report however we were disabused. We learned that this talented, gorgeous and very lively young lady is his wife!

WE ARE IMPRESSED. Here’s one pol who has just gone way up there in our esteem. We say “Wow.” Watch out Al Gore, this Jubelirer guy has White House credentials.

But a politician’s gain is a turnpike’s loss. And for the ETC industry this is quite devastating. ETC needed many many Debbie Jubelirers, not just one... and now we’ve lost her.

Couldn’t these chiefs at the Turnpike just loosen up, and have said: “Debbie not on Turnpike premises next time, please, it’s a distraction. Now about that draft marketing plan for E-ZPass on the Northeast Extension...”