PA Governor Tom Corbett and Attorney General Kathleen Kane rocked by patronage, insider privilege, and secret government policies
Gov. Tom Corbett can’t pass his legislative agenda. Those around Attorney General Kathleen Kane complain of a battle between Kane and the long-entrenched GOP staffers in the AG’s office.
AG Kane, the first Democrat to hold her office in 30 years, acrimoniously removes a Republican judge in charge of grand jury investigations.
A warehouse full of cowboy memorabilia is put on the auction block in bond-bankrupted Harrisburg. A close Democrat associate and relative of AG Kane’s chief of staff is named to head the $9 billion Hershey Trust.
AG Kane indicts administrators of the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission, charging the managers with running the turnpike by secret, off-the-book patronage policies.
So what’s going on in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania?
Newcomers to state government, and those only looking at these events from the vantage point of 2013, are certainly confused.
The apparently unrelated events listed above in fact are all related. Those of us who’ve been following Pennsylvania state government for the last two or three decades fully understand, and even predicted, what’s going on now.
The question is: does Attorney General Kathleen Kane understand what’s going on?
Pennsylvania state government’s long-suppressed patronage crisis, ignored by a succession of Republican attorneys general, is now in full bloom. These blatant patronage problems today have grown so bad and disruptive that they are obvious, if mystifying in origin.
This much is clear to even the most casual of observers: Harrisburg is in political convulsions.
But, as old-time insiders know, this train wreck was 20 or more years in the making, and was even predicted by many.
But today’s story isn’t actually about now, or even here.
To understand why all this is happening now, you have to look back in time, to at least the 1980s, when the state attorney general’s office was first made an elective office, held by Republicans.
It’s a story that also runs beyond the borders of Pennsylvania.
Whether one wants to believe it or not, the origins of many of today’s staggering problems in Pennsylvania government begin with a state worker in, of all places, Illinois. The state worker’s name was Cynthia R. Rutan.
1983 to 1990: Rutan v. the Republican Party of Illinois
Cynthia Rutan worked for the state of Illinois as a rehabilitation counselor. She lives with her family in Springfield, the state capitol of Illinois, the hometown and final resting place of Lincoln.
Rutan had a state job since 1974. In 1983 Cynthia Rutan applied for a promotion. She was tested and interviewed, and was even chosen for the job by a supervisor. There was one last hurdle. Her application had to be sent to the governor’s office for approval. She was denied the promotion.
This was happening to a lot of people she knew. The prevailing attitude, she says, was defeatist. What’s the point of trying to fight the governor’s office?
Rutan’s problem was the result of an executive order issued by Republican governor James Thompson of Illinois on November 12, 1980. The order proclaimed a hiring freeze for every agency, bureau, board, or commission subject to his control. It prohibited state officials from hiring any employee, filling any vacancy, or creating any new position. Approximately 60,000 state jobs were affected, as well as more than 5,000 openings that became available each year due to resignations, retirements, deaths, expansion, or reorganization. Thompson’s order stated that “no exceptions” were permitted without the governor’s “express permission.”
Requests for the governor’s “express permission” became routine. Permission was granted or withheld through an agency created for this purpose, the Governor’s Office of Personnel. Agencies screened applicants under Illinois’ civil service system, made their personnel choices, then submitted them to the governor’s office for approval or disapproval. Among the decisions requiring approval were new hires, promotions, transfers, and recalls after layoffs.
“By means of the freeze… the governor has been using (his) office to operate a political patronage system to limit state employment and beneficial employment-related decisions to those who are supported by the Republican Party,” U.S. Supreme Court justice William Brennan would later note. “In reviewing an agency’s request that a particular applicant be approved for a particular position, the governor’s office looked at whether the applicant voted in Republican primaries in past elections years, whether the applicant has provided financial or other support to the Republican Party and its candidates, whether the applicant has promised to join and work for the Republican Party in the future, and whether the applicant has the support of the Republican Party officials at state or local levels.”
In 1984 Cynthia Rutan applied for a second promotion. She was picked a second time, by a second supervisor. Again she was refused the job.
“It was getting to everybody,” Rutan told me. “These were jobs that were posted and advertised. But I kept seeing I was losing promotions to people who weren’t even qualified.” Her job, she says, is complicated — determining eligibility for Social Security — yet the state was hiring unqualified people who seemed to lack aptitude.
One day she decided to follow the procedure outlined by the governor for landing a job. She visited the appropriate party boss, and asked for a patronage application. She describes the application as ludicrous. How had she voted in the last fourteen primary elections? the form wanted to know. It asked kids how they’d voted. “It was ridiculous. For some of these summer jobs for kids — like a job at the state fair — most of the kids were fifteen or sixteen years old and couldn’t vote. So they wanted to know how did your parents vote?”
Testing the waters, she asked the patronage boss if it would help if she gave money to the Republican Party. “Oh yes,” he told her.
“How much should I give?”
“That’s up to you.”
Later she learned the going rate for the promotion she sought was $2,000 to $3,000. “I’d only get that much more if I got the promotion.”
Cynthia Rutan had become a victim of patronage.
One day while Cynthia Rutan was grousing about her inability to get a promotion a friend suggested she call Springfield, Illinois, attorney Mary Lee Leahy. As it turned out, several other state workers had recently contacted Leahy.
Rutan told me she was lucky to “find someone like Mary Lee Leahy who isn’t interested in the buck but in doing the right thing.” It turned out to be a long, bumpy road, taking eight years. They lost in court the first time out, then partly won an appeal. Word came that the United States Supreme Court agreed to hear the case.
Right up to the day in 1990 when the U.S. Supreme Court verdict came in, Rutan says, she expected she’d lose. “I knew how deeply rooted patronage was in this country,” she recalls, “so we knew we were taking on the big monster.”
The Big Monster — both political parties and the political establishment –would predictably drag the fight out for decades.
It would be a knock-down, drag-out, and largely secretive fight over political patronage that runs to this day in 2013 Pennsylvania.
Bill Keisling is author of the book: When the Levee Breaks: The patronage crisis at the Pennsylvania turnpike, the General Assembly & the State Supreme Court.
