Penn Pike CEO calls TOLLROADSnews "a rag" - challenges us to reveal source of patronage charges

Via the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Pennsylvania Turnpike CEO Joseph Brimmeier has challenged us to reveal sources at the Turnpike who have been reporting to us adversely on him. Harrisburg correspondent Tom Barnes in the April 15 edition of the Post quotes Brimmeier: " 'His publication (TOLLROADSnews) is a rag,' even though it's not on paper, but online. He challenged Samuel to...reveal the source of his information." (Slightly edited)
see http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07105/778196-85.stm

Critics of his management at the Turnpike can't reveal their identity. They'd lose their jobs and be blacklisted elsewhere by the remnants of the Fumo-Rubin gang.

As for us maybe the epithet Brimmeier's looking for is "internet tabloid"? Or "web rag"? That's got more zip.

The challenge we do accept is to report as objectively as we can on someone who chooses not to give us his side of the story or to allow his press relations people to comment on the charges made to us by his associates and whose reaction to our reports is to squeal to our advertisers and try to cut our revenue. (Our opinion - he's a dope about all this, that's all. No hard feelings.)

Brimmeier believes strongly in the Turnpike as presently constituted - as a governmentally and therefore politically controlled organization. We don't but we acknowledge that the Turnpike for all its faults performs the basic function of providing reliable road service way better than the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation. State senator Jane Orie's idea of having PennDOT take over the Turnpike would - we think - be a major step backward. Brimmeier's right there. (Our view is that the turnpike and tollroads generally are a business and should be run as a business with real shareholders, traded shares, and professional business rather than political management.)

Orie thinks that abolishing the Turnpike Commission is the only way to get rid of the deeply entrenched patronage system. She calls the Turnpike Commission a "bastion" of patronage whose role is to "serve up jobs to sons, daughters, nephews and friends of municipal, county and state elected officials." (Pittsburgh Post 2007-04-15)

The senator, a Republican from the Pittsburgh area (Brimmeier is a Democrat) got into a sparring match recently with Brimmeier over her charges of patronage. The Turnpike boss in response called Orie a hypocrite because she wrote letters to him pushing her constituents for jobs. Orie agrees she did that but it was because she was new to the senate and was told that was the only way anyone ever got a job at the Turnpike. She says she wrote "boilerplate" letters as a constituent service and made no special push on their behalf. She has since discontinued writing the letters because she's disgusted with the way the Turnpike works.

Much of the argument over "patronage" is an argument not about facts - though Brimmeier apparently does contest some of the facts we reported from our source at the Turnpike - but about whether there's anything wrong with him appointing relatives  when he says they are qualified and do a good job. And about whether there is anything wrong with politicians pushing their constituents for jobs there, and hiring some of them.

Personal connections are good, and everyone does it

Timothy Carson, vice-chair of the Commission says many state agencies including the Turnpike get "recommendations" from politicians and hire some of them.

He told the Post: "Let's look at the real world... Personal relationships operate to an organization's benefit, whether it is a private company or government agency, by getting talented people. We make no secret of the fact that, like other agencies of government, we get recommendations [for employees] from elected officials. We are looking to put together the most qualified workforce we can..."

And Carson cited the incontestably superior performance of the Turnpike in coping with the recent Valentine's Day blizzard in the Allegheny Mountains as compared to PennDOT.

Barnes reports in the Post:

"Brimmeier readily admits hiring relatives of some politicians, such as former turnpike commissioner James Dodaro, of Allegheny County, whose son, Daniel, is an auditor for the turnpike."

Brimmeier says Daniel Dodaro "does an excellent job" and so does another patronage appointment auditor Suzanne Vessella, daughter of the late Lawrence County Democratic Chairman Pete Vessella, who works as an auditor in the New Castle office of the Turnpike. Brimmeier says she worked for him in the early 1980s when he was deputy state auditor.

Another "employee with connections" the Post reports is Robert Brady, 34, son of Philadelphia Democratic Chairman Bob Brady, a US congressman and a candidate for mayor of Philadelphia.

"I've never denied that when a job applicant comes to me and has a reference from a politician, I follow it up,'' Brimmeier is quoted, adding: "If I find out that he or she is a good person and can do the job, I'll hire them. I'm not ashamed of anything I've done.''

Hire by hire response to TOLLROADSnews
Under a heading "Hire by hire response" the Post says Brimmeier "also makes no bones about giving opportunities to members of his own family."
He agrees he hired a cousin, Edward Schauer, as a turnpike plumber calling him "an excellent plumber" and well qualified: "He graduated from a four-year union apprenticeship program. Then he got a master plumber's license. Then he went to Community College of Allegheny County and got a welding degree. We got a skilled individual who does a hell of job for us.''

Brimmeier says he hired Shawn Linder, "the son of my godmother'' who had a computer science degree, to work in the Information Technology section, "but I fired him after a couple weeks because he didn't show up for work and his supervisor complained to me.''

A sister, Bonnie, is a lawyer who worked in 2005 for Meyer Darragh, which the turnpike sometimes uses for outside legal work. The firm had worked for the turnpike long before she got there and she didn't do any turnpike-related legal work while she was there. The fact Meyer Darragh did work for the Turnpike, he says "had nothing to do with my sister working there."

Another sister of Brimmeier, Jan, is an architect who has worked for an engineering company that's done work for the turnpike.  He is quoted: "I can't prevent my family from making a living just because I'm director of the turnpike... My whole family would have to move out of state.''

Brimmeier acknowledges he encouraged HMS Host, which has a contract with the turnpike to rebuild all the travel plazas, to use The Doggery as one restaurant at the newly redone Oakmont plaza, which is to open in June. It's owned by his friend, Tom Geanopolous, of Mt. Lebanon, whom he got to know when he was a county official working at the City-County Building Downtown.

A taste of Pennsylvania

"We wanted Western Pennsylvania foods that people would recognize in the plazas,''  Brimmeier is quoted. He has no apologies because he wants to promote "a taste of Pennsylvania'' at the new travel plazas.

There will be Pennsylvania Dutch food featured at the new central Pennsylvania rest stops and Philadelphia cheese steaks - a sop to Gov Rendell, known for brilliantly funny speeches lauding the Philly Cheesesteak: TRnews - at plazas in the southeast.

Palermo helped with E-ZPass and travel plaza contract

The federal indictment of Sen Vincent Fumo and of Ruth Rubin the wife of the chairman of the Turnpike Commission on scores of charges of fraud and thievery mentions payments by the Turnpike of $220,000 to Michael Palermo, a turnpike administrator in the 1970s and 80s and a friend of Fumo. The indictment says the Turnpike has no record of any work Palermo had done for the turnpike in return.

The feds say the Turnpike's payments to Palermo werre apparently in return for Palermo's work on Fumo's 100acre farm north of Harrisburg. Fumo had previously had Palermo on his payroll at the state Senate getting $5k/month. Fumo, according to the US indictment of Feb 6 also had Mitchell Rubin, currently chairman of the Turnpike Commission on the Senate payroll for $30/yr for five years. The federal indictment of Fumo says there is no evidence either Mike Palermo or Mitchell Rubin ever did any work for the state Senate in return for their state retainers.

Brimmeier and Carson also told the Pittsburgh Post that Palermo helped the Turnpike on important issues, such as implementing electronic toll collection (E-ZPass) and helped with the new travel plaza contract. (They need to get their story together. E-ZPass was designed for the Penn Pike in the years 1997 to 2000 and implemented in 2001 and 2002 which makes it difficult to use that as justification for $20k/month payments to Palermo from April 2003 through 2004. TRnews)

Brimmeier is quoted: "Mike Palermo is a bright guy and he was knowledgeable about turnpike business. There's no question he had political relationships but he was a good resource.'' (Palermo in his late 70s now lives in Florida. TRnews)

Is it illegal? - Supreme Court in Rutan
Writer William Keisling wrote two books on the Pennsylvania Turnpike's patronage system - The Levee Breaks in 1993 and Helping Hands in 1995. Keisling thinks that it is illegal as well as wasteful and wrong. He cites a US Supreme Court ruling in 1990 Rutan vs Republican Party of Illinois which prohibits the hiring or promotion of public employees based on personal and political connections below the level of high level policymaking positions or personal aides to the top people. Rutan allows the chief executive to appoint high level managers and personal aides based on personal and political considerations but outlaws such appointments below this level. In hiring generally impartial merit based procedures must be used.

So if Rutan doctrine applies to the Pennsylvania Turnpike CEO Brimmeier is entitled to hire whoever suits him among top management and in his own office, but he may be in trouble with the law being involved personally in hiring plumbers, auditors, programmers and the like, not to speak of steering contracts for food service to old buddies. But heck, what's a rag doing giving him legal advice? Enough.
TOLLROADSnews 2007-04-15