Harrisburg - State Attorney General Tom Corbett's office yesterday charged former state Rep. Frank LaGrotta (D-Lawrence) with paying his sister and niece taxpayer-funded salaries for work they never did.
"This is a case of a public servant abusing his position of trust and power to financially reward his family members at the taxpayers' expense," Mr. Corbett said of Mr. LaGrotta, who is being investigated as part of a wider public corruption probe.
Mr. LaGrotta allegedly put his sister Ann Bartolomeo and niece Alissa Lemmon on his legislative office payroll as "ghost employees." The two hires have gotten the ex-lawmaker two felony conflict-of-interest charges, and Ms. Bartolomeo and Ms. Lemmon both face false swearing allegations. The two were added to the taxpayer payroll in early 2006 and were paid $26,000 in total.
Mr. LaGrotta's career after his ten terms serving in the state House of Representatives has been a rocky one. In the aftermath of the unpopular (and quickly repealed) 2005 pay raise, Mr. LaGrotta, who voted for the measure, lost reelection in the Democrat primary to Jaret Gibbons, who went on to win in the general election.
The former legislator briefly returned to work for the House Democrats as a consultant, but Majority Leader Bill DeWeese said he ended Mr. LaGrotta's employment due to information uncovered in an internal probe. According to the Associated Press, Mr. DeWeese has stated that he provided the findings of that review to the attorney general's office. Details of the evidence have not yet been disclosed.
Tim Potts, president of the reformist Democracy Rising PA, believes it is hard to discern how much substance the Democrat leader actually provided on the matter.
"There's so much posturing going on up here, that it's impossible to tell," Mr. Potts said. "You just can't tell, in an environment that is as secretive as that place is."
Mr. Potts said the secretive nature of political life in Harrisburg indicates Mr. LaGrotta and other recent examples of alleged wrongdoers in state government are not isolated incidents.
"I think that this indictment is just the tip of the iceberg," Mr. Potts said. "We're probably going to see other indictments come in relatively short order."
Eric Epstein, founder of RocktheCapital.org said he believes Mr. DeWeese is "clothing himself in plausible deniability" by firing those who may become liabilities. The Democrat leader, Mr. Epstein noted, also let a number of staffers go in the midst of the state attorney general's "Bonusgate" probe.
"Mr. DeWeese is not innocent," Mr. Epstein said. "People need to remember that Mr. LaGrotta was defeated after the pay raise and Mr. DeWeese brought him back."
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