Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission and Gov Rendell - a bizarre relationship

We asked a senior official in the Rendell Administration recently: "Why does the Governor put up with having his plan to lease the Turnpike trashed every day by the Turnpike Commission? Why did he appoint these guys only to let them stomp all over him?"

There was a silence on the line and then he said: "I'm tempted, I'm tempted...If I answered that question however..." and that was about it.

He seemed to be suggesting that they were dumb appointments, or that the Governor was weak in handling his appointees, or what... we're not sure - except he seemed to agree with the thrust of our question that there was something bizarre here.

The politics and governance of the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission are extraordinary.

Appointments to the Turnpike Commission are almost a secret. We've searched the archives of official announcements and press releases of both the Turnpike Commission and Governor Rendell's office. Neither has ever announced an appointment to the Commission of any of the present commissioners, nor provided a biography of a Turnpike Commissioner. Nothing.

It's as if the Turnpike Commission is some kind of secret society, rather than an agency of a democratically elected state.

Until recently the Turnpike Commission's website "Meet the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission" showed seven members of the Commission including the Governor himself and the Lt Governor (see May nearby). Just days ago that was amended (see June nearby) perhaps after we'd emailed both the Commission and the Governor's office about this misleading presentation which said that the Commission had seven members including the Governor and his lieutenant.

There are only five members, as the presentation now shows, though the Governor and Lt Gov still feature there too - as some kind of joke on Gov Rendell?

By state law the Governor appoints four members of the commission. Appointments are for four years and overlap by two years, so two commissioners are appointed/reappointed every two years. By law they must be approved by the Senate, along the lines of the advice and consent clause common to executive office appointments.

There's an unwritten rule respected by governors of both parties since the beginning of the Turnpike Commission seventy years ago that the appointed commissioners are always two Democrats and two Republicans. A Democrat is replaced by a Democrat and a Republican by a Republican.

There's apparently no room for independents, or non-partisans.

Writer William Keisling: "The two political parties for all practical purposes own the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission... To help facilitate the awarding of jobs each party since 1985 has employed a patronage boss, officially known as assistant executive directors for the western (currently a Republican) and eastern (currently Democrat) regions. Their job has been to help the party bosses... dole out jobs to the party faithful. The booty is not just jobs. Billions of dollars in all sorts of contracts are awarded..." ("Helping Hands: Illegal Political Patronage in Pennsylvania and at the Pennsylvania Turnpike" Yardbird Books 1995, p2)

The four appointed commissioners are balanced but a swing vote, the fifth member of the Commission is as the lawyerly say in their latinate "ex officio" - out of the office. That's the state secretary of transportation, serving on the say of the Governor.

We've been told that Gov Rendell has made four appointments to the Commission since he became Governor in January 2003:

- 2004-05-18 appointed Bill Lincoln

- 2005-02-05 reappointed Timothy Carson

- 2006-06-30 reappointed Mitchell Rubin and Pasquale Deon

So all four appointed members of the Turnpike Commission, the very four who are presiding over a major lobbying and PR campaign against the Governor's policy, every one of them, owes his position to Governor Rendell.

What does Biehler think?

The Governor's formal representative on the Commission is the secretary of transportation Allen Biehler. Not a word has Biehler spoken, one way or the other, on the enormous issue of whether the Turnpike should be leased.

Isn't that weird too? It's as if Defense Secretary Gates never discussed the Iraq war, or the US Treasury secretary the state of the economy.

No announcements

We searched the archives of press releases from the Turnpike Commission. Not a word on any of the appointments to the Commission. No biographies.

Pictures and the names just pop up on the website at Meet the Pennyslvania Turnpike Commission, and in annual reports.

We searched the archives of announcements out of the Governor's office. Appointments to normal commissions, boards and other agencies are reported, but not a single one of the appointments or reappointments to the Turnpike Commission.

These appointments are treated as secret.

Nearby is the list of announcements out of the Governor's office on June 30 2006, the day the Governor reappointed Turnpike Commission chairman Mitchell Rubin and Pasquale Deon.

Nothing on those appointments.

The Turnpike Commission publishes no schedule of its meetings, no agenda for its meetings, and publishes no minutes afterwards. Commission meetings are open to the public if you get to know about them, but most decisions are made in "executive session." Only occasionally and selectively are any Commission decisions announced. There's nothing on the record on contracts awarded or consultants hired.

Major policy decisions just seem to emerge, usually from the mouth of the loquacious CEO Joseph Brimmeier or vice-chairman Timothy Carson, other times to be sure from the several professional press officers.

That emergence of decisions includes momentous issues such as the decision to move to toll I-80, and the decision to raise tolls on the Turnpike mainline by 25% next year and 3% annually thereafter. We don't know what studies were done in support of them, or what alternatives were looked at. We don't even know for sure if these were even discussed at the Commission because there are no public records at the Commission.

TOLLROADSnews 2008-06-09