By Brad Bumsed

March 13, 2013

HARRISBURG--The Pennsylvania Turnpike, carved through the Allegheny Mountains, opened shortly after midnight on Oct. 1, 1940 as "America's Dream Highway." At that time, the nation's first superhighway ran from Carlisle to Irwin. Grants from the Roosevelt administration got it rolling.

Brad Bumsted (PennLive photo by John L. Micek)

When it opened, drivers went joy riding. At least four motorists got so caught up in the experience they ran out of gas. In Irwin, the first driver on the turnpike was Carl A. Boe, 43, of McKeesport. Toll collector Morris Neiberg welcomed him. The first driver in Carlisle was Homer D. Romberger, a feed and tallow dealer, who took a 47-minute drive to Fort Littleton, according to The Pennsylvania Turnpike: A History by Dan Cupper.

The toll highway was this state's version of the Autobahn (though there's no actual fair comparison) because there was no speed limit initially. It was celebrated in a 1970s country song "Pennsylvania Turnpike, I Love You" by Vaughn Horton.

How did I miss that one?

Sure it evokes nostalgic memories. Stopping for dinners at Howard Johnson's--a rare treat in the 1950s. And flat tires, misplacing toll tickets, operating by old-fashioned map when there were no GPS or directions via cell phones. Speed traps. Long lines of traffic. You name it.

Fairly or unfairly, the turnpike has had a reputation for two things: providing your safest route in winter with dry roads--even after a major storm--and as a place where a nephew or cousin who knew the right pols landed a toll taker job or a summer paving job. Management jobs were available to really well-connected folks.

But it was costly and inefficient.

In his landmark 1993 book on turnpike corruption, When the Levee Breaks: The Patronage Crisis at the Pennsylvania Turnpike, the General Assembly & the State Supreme Court, author William Keisling wrote of "outright lawbreaking, waste, two-party privilege and politics at the Turnpike."

"Girlfriends, brothers, husbands, sons-in-law and other close relations and associates were still being hired left and right into well-paying Turnpike jobs. Two patronage chiefs, one for each party, were still employed by the Turnpike," Keisling said he was told in an anonymous letter apparently from a "mid-level employee of the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission"--a device used to open the book.

Critics complain of Keisling's exaggerations as a writer, but several lawmakers in the mid-1990s told me about his book and they said it was spot on.

In the book, he gives names and calls into question the legality of hiring practices based on a 1990 U.S. Supreme Court ruling. In a 1990s series for Gannett newspapers, I was able to confirm many of Keisling's assertions.

The practices continued unabated. "The politicians weren't about to merrily give up any piece of this pie," Keisling wrote. He noted the unusual degree of cooperation between the two major parties to share the spoils.

According to Keisling, here's how it worked at the agency: New hires were "rubber stamped" by a personnel committee, comprised of friends and relatives of the pols. They in turn appointed more friends and relatives, he suggests. On paper it looked good.

What Keisling unearthed was more than doling out toll-taker entry level jobs. He also showed the complex web between the Senate, the agency and then the Supreme Court.

He revealed widespread "pinstripe patronage" where big law firms that donated thousands of campaign dollars to the party in power--and the party out of power at the Capitol--landed turnpike contracts with lucrative fees often for boilerplate legal work on bonds.

Today, the Peter J. Camiel Service Plaza remains as a monument to the bond between pols and turnpike officials.

Camiel was a former Democratic senator and former chairman of the Philadelphia Democratic City Committee. He was charged and convicted along with Sen. Vincent Fumo, of Philadelphia and former Senate Majority Leader Tom Nolan, of Allegheny and Westmoreland counties, in a "ghost" payroll scandal.

In 1981, a federal judge overturned a jury's guilty verdicts on mail fraud charges and acquitted all three men.

Maybe it takes an acquittal to get a service plaza named after you.

* * *

Scandals and corruption had persisted at the turnpike for decades.

In 1957, five people including two turnpike commissioners were convicted in a make-work scheme under a $19 million contract. Mine voids were needlessly being filled and bills inflated in the Manu Mine scandal. Former Gov. George Leader called it "literally highway robbery." The president of the construction company was the nephew of one of the commissioners. The nephew was also convicted in the nine-week conspiracy trial in Dauphin County Court.

A turnpike commissioner appointed following the '56 scandal was charged with bribery, extortion and conspiracy in 1963. Six years later, the FBI arrested the agency's general counsel for taking cash to steer a company to a builder. Then in 1978, former Turnpike Commissioner Egidio Cerelli, whose case was mentioned in Keystone Corruption and which I covered in federal court in Pittsburgh, was convicted for extorting money from contractors for contributions to the Democratic Party when he worked as a PennDOT supervisor. Cerelli was a good-natured pol who stood trial after an earlier mistrial. He was a friend of then-Gov. Milton Shapp and a power in Westmoreland County politics. He drew a three-year prison term. At his death, he predicted the practice of politicians demanding money from contractors, often known as macing, would continue in one form or another.

Another scandal I saw--well, fortunately I didn't literally see it--unfolded in 1999 after nude pictures of former Senate President Pro Tempore Robert Jubelirer's wife were discovered on turnpike computers. His wife resigned from her $65,500 a year job as assistant deputy executive director. Jubelirer filed for divorce. A male turnpike worker who took the photos was fired. Earlier, a female turnpike employee won a $250,000 court settlement on grounds she had been passed over for the post given to Jubelirer's wife, saying his wife lacked credentials. By 2013, the romance of the grand opening was long gone.

LICENSE TO BORROW

Republicans controlling the state House were moving to abolish the Turnpike Commission and fold all operations into the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation. Rep. Donna Oberlander, a Republican representing Clarion and Armstrong Counties, said she considered it an "outdated" and "corruption-infested" commission running an "antiquated and mismanaged" agency.

The bill didn't get traction. The commission's $9 billion debt proved problematic.

Kudos to Oberlander and previously Rep. Mike Vereb, R-Montgomery County, for trying. But even if they won House passage, the Senate represented a steel barrier against such foolishness. Why? Because for decades, Senate leaders controlled it.

As designed, the five-member commission running the state's toll road and major east-west highway was an independent state agency. If the Turnpike Commission became part of PennDOT, the debt wouldn't disappear. Taxpayers would be responsible for it. That's a bitter pill for most lawmakers to swallow.

Staying in debt, oddly enough, assures the agency's survival.

"The Turnpike itself remains in existence only so long as it remains in debt," said a presentment by the 33rd Statewide Investigating Grand Jury. "When all bonds, notes or other obligations and the interest thereon have been paid . . . the Turnpike and the connecting road, tunnels, and bridges shall become a part of the system of State Highways and shall be maintained by the Department of Highways free of tolls; and thereupon, the Commission shall be dissolved," the Grand Jury said quoting an incorporating document of the agency. "The Grand Jury finds this to be of particular note given the practices of the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission regarding the expenditure of state dollars discovered during the course of this investigation."

Note the free tolls never happened. Never will.

The original planning called for the turnpike retiring its debt in 1954 and becoming part of PennDOT, according to The Pennsylvania Turnpike: A History, by Cupper.

The agency was in effect given a free license to spend-- and borrow.

And spend they did.

PennDOT manages 41,000 miles of roadway. It's run by seven executives or one for every 5,857 miles of state roadway. According to Oberlander, the turnpike had nine executives at that time for 545 miles of roadway. That effectively is one executive for 60 miles of highway.

There are different ways to calculate it but the comparison is apt. The turnpike is an extremely costly operation given the relatively small share of roadway it operates. Drivers pay a premium to ride on it.

By 2014 after opening a section of the Mon-Fayette Expressway in western Pennsylvania, the road mileage crept up to 550. The agency employed about 2,100 people, about the same as 10 years ago despite the advent of electronic tolling and less need for toll takers.

The debt and tolls have been increasing steadily since the enactment of a 2007 transportation law. That law used expanded turnpike debt to pump $450 million a year into highways, repair, transit and bridges throughout the state. The turnpike has forked over $4.5 billion for other state uses. Under a 2014 law effectively raising the gas tax and motorists' fees, the bulk of the $450 million will be spent on mass transit.

In 2016, for a cash-paying customer, it cost $46.10 to ride from the Delaware River Bridge in Philadelphia to the Gateway Toll Plaza. Essentially that's from the New Jersey to Ohio state lines. The E-Z Pass electronic toll was discounted to $32.95. The cross-state distance is almost 357 miles.

From 1956 to 2013, cross-state tolls increased from $3.90 and 1.1 cents per mile to $9.15 and 10.9 cents per mile in 2013, Turnpike records show. (The E-Z pass rate was $30.77 or 8.6 cents per mile.)

* * *

Few knew the outrageous spending by commissioners and other agency officials over the years. Tolls, a share of the state gas tax and vehicle registration fees, pay for the highway and its maintenance. The part-time commissioners, who are political appointees, traveled and entertained like medieval barons. They doled out jobs to friends and relatives.

TURNPIKE EXCESSES

A series of articles by the Tribune-Review in 2005 showed:

Audits from 1987 through 1997 found weaknesses in hiring procedures but those audits were repeatedly ignored. Patronage and nepotism flourished.

Former Turnpike Commissioner Jim Dodaro helped his son, Daniel, get a job as an operations auditor for $55,795 in 2003. Ex-CEO Joe Brimmeier hired his cousin, Ed Schauer, as a plumber for about $34,000. He also hired the son of former Turnpike Commissioner Robert Brady, the Philadelphia Democratic Chairman and now a U.S. congressman. Brady's son got a $74,637 job as assistant director of operations in the east. Dodaro stated he was proud of helping people get jobs, including the guy who cut his grass. "Hell yeah I'm proud of it," Dodaro told the Trib. "I've helped a lot of people." The problem with patronage: no one else has a shot at the jobs and we can't be sure the best qualified folks got the jobs. Brimmeier insisted he first made sure people could do the work.

The influence of former Senate Democratic powerbroker Vincent Fumo and former Senate President Pro Tem Robert Jubelirer, an Altoona Republican, on internal agency decisions. Fumo was of counsel with a law firm that landed turnpike work. But it was "going too far to say they controlled the commission," said Mike Long, then Jubelirer's top aide. He called that "patently false" and said the commission ran the agency. However Long admitted "we weighed in" for a turnpike equipment operator whose wife worked in Jubelirer's district office to ensure a promotion and more than $5,000 a year raise. Long is now one of the most powerful lobbyists in Harrisburg. Jubelirer was defeated in 2006 after engineering the 2005 legislative pay raise.

Mitchell Rubin, the former chairman, racked up $72,000 in meals and travel over five years. His expenses included $6,268 for trips to Paris and Madrid, according to a sidebar to the series by former Trib reporter Chris Osher. A $1,869 bill at Topper's at the Wauwinet Inn in Nantuckett included $125 for Beluga caviar, $76 for four quail salads and sirloin steaks for $46 each. He also dined at two four star restaurants in New York at public expense. Rubin didn't reveal who it was he treated. They were listed as unspecified legislators. On four occasions, Rubin billed the public for his trips to Manhattan for an annual political event called the Pennsylvania Society. One expense: a $3,277.36 dinner at Alain Ducasse. A former turnpike auditor told the Trib he flagged Rubin's expenses but no one did anything about them.

It was later revealed in a federal indictment of Fumo that Rubin was a "ghost employee" of the Senate collecting $150,000 from taxpayers over five years. Rubin's wife, Ruth Arnao, had been Fumo's top staffer and co-defendant.

THE TURNPIKE INDICTMENT

All of this was the backdrop for the searing indictment Attorney General Kane and State Police Commissioner Noonan would deliver at the March 13, 2013, news conference.

The hype surrounding Pennsylvania's Turnpike Corruption case was incredible.

The Grand Jury's findings "open the window to the operation of the Pennsylvania Turnpike commission and many of their associates in the private sector," said Noonan. "It shows a culture of greed, corruption and political influence that is beyond imagination. The people of Pennsylvania deserve better."

Kane, at that joint news conference with Noonan, called what happened at the agency "stealing from the public pure and simple." The indictment alleged a sweeping pattern of influence peddling and bid-rigging.

Finally, I thought, someone was going to get to the bottom of the patronage pit and scandalous agency that was an anachronism and was on the table for elimination by the legislature. But getting any turnpike abolishment bill through the Senate faced an uphill battle, aside from the issue of dealing with agency debt. There's the treasure trove of political goodies that historically existed for a few select Senate leaders: jobs and steering contracts to donors. For decades, it had been the playground of Senate leaders of both parties. The Senate caucuses kept their influence because two-thirds support was required for confirmation of gubernatorial appointments to the commission. One party couldn't do it alone so deals on nominees were necessary.

In fact, the grand jury presentment alleged a 60-40 split of the political spoils with the party holding the governor's office getting the majority.

When Corbett, the former hard-charging attorney general, became governor he named Roger Nutt, the father of his campaign manager, Brian Nutt, as the turnpike's executive director. Roger Nutt had highway experience, but it smelled bad coming from the would-be reformer. Remember, it was Republican Corbett who launched a turnpike investigation in 2009 so he knew a lot about the inside dealings there under Rendell.

"No bid contracts and pinstripe patronage have been common practices at the Turnpike Commission, but no serious reform has taken root since the institution serves up favors, jobs and projects to Democrats and Republicans," said Eric Epstein, co-founder of Rock the Capital, a political reform group.

Eight former turnpike staffers were charged a little more than two months after Kane, a Democrat, took office in January 2013. The so-called "pay to play" case from the outset sounded like a winner. For one, any jury comprised of reasonably aware Pennsylvanians would know how much more they pay each year to ride on the turnpike. Politicians have been milking it since 2007 to pay for road improvements in other parts of the state. The average prospective juror might also be aware of longstanding rumors of corruption.

So showing that some turnpike officials were showered with contractor-provided gifts, many of which were not reported as required on disclosure statements--from gift certificates at plush resort Nemacolin Woodlands to tickets for sporting events, limos, expensive dinners and travel--would be relatively easy. So the theory went. There'd be no question those vendors obtained or maintained their contracts with the agency. So what if each gift could not be linked to a specific contract or sponsored fundraiser for a favored politician? The grand jury investigating the case didn't make those specific connections. An insightful lawyer-legislator at the Capitol told me he had no doubt a Dauphin County jury still would make the connections on its own and convict all or many of the six defendants technically part of the "pay to play" case. Two other defendants, it later became clear, were a minor part of the case.

Some of the principals were charged with commercial bribery, a statute that includes a subsection not requiring a quid pro quo.

The big players: Mitchell Rubin, former turnpike chairman and former Democratic Senator Vincent Fumo's go-to guy at the agency; longtime Pittsburgh pol Joe Brimmeier, the agency's CEO and an appointee of Gov. Ed Rendell; former Senate Democratic Leader Robert Mellow, of Scranton; and another top-ranking agency official, George Hatalowich, of Harrisburg.

Hatalowich faced 15 charges--seven ethics counts for not reporting. He had the most "gift"-type counts piled up. The other major figures faced nine charges. A defense attorney later told me it was consistent with what he considered the Fina case-building strategy: overcharge the defendants and hope one charge sticks. The defense lawyer's concern though was that Brandstetter, who was hired by Fina, would not entertain plea bargains and would if necessary take every case to trial and roll the dice with a Dauphin County jury.

He was probably right.

She had learned extremely well from Fina.

For the record, under Pennsylvania law, statewide grand juries technically don't indict. They issue presentments. The presentments effectively are like indictments in the federal system. State prosecutors then decide whether to file charges based on the presentment.

At the end of 2012, a lot of rumors were swirling that the turnpike case might be spiked altogether. Linda Kelly, Corbett's appointee as his successor, was handing off the case to Kane. No one knew what Kelly or Kane would do. It was secret grand jury material.

Dauphin County jury pools, from in and around the state's capital city, provided the jurors for the major state corruption cases of Bonusgate and Computergate. It was quite a risk to go to trial there on political corruption charges. Of ten political corruption cases that actually went to trial, prosecutors won seven verdicts. Two defendants were acquitted. Those are bad odds if the outcome is prison; the vast majority of the others entered pleas to reduce their exposure to prison time. It's the way it works.

The turnpike officials and vendors were supposedly part of an illegal fundraising machine raising campaign cash for favored elected pols. For some select few vendors, it meant big contracts at public expense.

One big difference between the turnpike case and Bonusgate: more of the top turnpike defendants had top-shelf defense attorneys.

And the office of attorney general behind the scenes was in turmoil as a result of a time bomb left by Kane's adversary, former Chief Deputy Attorney General Frank Fina, and the constant internal issue of how to handle her investigation of Corbett's Sandusky investigation that she had promised to the voters. Capitol Hill wags were calling it the "investigation of the investigation."

(Editor's Note: The defendants eventually convicted in the Pa. Turnpike scandal received no jail time and were allowed to keep their taxpayer-funded pensions.)

Brad Bumsted covers Pennsylvania government and politics for The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. The above is an excerpt from his new book: "Keystone Corruption Continues: Cash Payoffs, Porngate and the Kathleen Kane Scandal," now published by Sunbury Press in Mechanicsburg, Pa.