Joe Soriano, Penn Pike maintenance manager fired (ADDITIONS)

The Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission recently dismissed Joe Soriano, a senior maintenance director who worked out of the District 4 Turnpike maintenance shed facility in Plymouth PA. No official reason has been given but he is said by people familiar with the case to have had a personal 'racing car' in the shop and is accused of having used Turnpike time and employees to work on it.

He is also accused of having threatened staff with dismissal if they used the 'tip line' to the Turnpike's Inspector-General's Office.

Apparently someone disregarded that order.

An official told us there's a chronic lack of work for maintenance staff at the Turnpike and so it is common for them to fill in time working on personal vehicles. He said setting patterns of barriers for work on busy eastern segments of the Turnpike is only possible for two to three hours a day because of congested conditions.

Work rules negotiated in the labor contract prevent part-time  workers being employed. So full 8-hour shifts often are only able to put in two or three hours real work.

ADDITIONS: Soriano says he was wrongly dismissed. He got permission to work on his drag racing car, he says, from his supervisor. No Turnpike staff worked on his car, and he himself worked on it there at the maintenance shed, but out of Turnpike hours. Soriano says his remarks about the 'tip line' were misconstrued. He said at a meeting with his staff that the Turnpike was a great place to work and people should not make trouble for the Turnpike with the tip line. There were no threats.

Turnpike says uncommon and when discover "we stop it"

Turnpike spokesman Carl de Febo says:

"The Pennsylvania Turnpike absolutely does not condone the misuse of Commission resources and time; to claim that such behavior occurs regularly is just not true. Such abuses are isolated, and if the commission finds out about it, we stop it."

TOLLROADSnews 2010-04-19 ADDITIONS 2010-04-20 1430 & 1630