By Peter L. DeCoursey
Bureau Chief
Capitolwire
HARRISBURG (Jan. 14) – The top staff announced by Attorney General-elect Kathleen Kane last week is a strong sign that Gov. Tom Corbett has a lot to worry about in the coming investigation of his handling of the Jerry Sandusky child abuse case.
Simply put, Kane announced a war-time cabinet and a number of top advisors with long institutional knowledge of the attorney general’s office.
Since Republicans have held it since we started electing attorneys general in 1980, more than any other row office, the attorney general’s office has featured a stable set of middle and top staff, and tremendous institutional memory.
The assumption of several attorneys general has been that if a Democrat was ever elected, those folks would leave, so the inside stories about how decisions have been made in that office, especially political decisions, would never be told.
Now Kane has won that office, as the first Democrat to do so, and the first female, and her initial staff features a blend off top former staff of that office, top former legal staff of Gov. Ed Rendell, and a big dose of federal prosecutorial experience.
So as Kane probes what happened before she took office, she will have Bruce Beemer, former chief of staff to appointed Attorney General Linda Kelly, as a senior advisor. During the campaign, Beemer and others reached out quietly to Kane to help her, Republicans said, and now they have a chance to help her do more than talk about what she thinks Corbett and Kelly did wrong.
A former Allegheny County prosecutor, Beemer will not bring vast institutional knowledge of how the office works, but a clear picture of what is going on now.
For institutional memory, Kane will have James A. Donahue III, who will run the public protection unit, on an acting basis. He has worked for the office since 1985, and has been head of the anti-trust section for 15 years.
In the civil division, Executive Deputy Attorney General for Civil Law Susan J. Forney will continue. She joined the attorney general’s office in 1978, and headed the litigation division from 1998 to 2010, so she will have a lot to share with Kane.
Lawrence M. Cherba will serve as Executive Deputy Attorney General for Criminal Law. He served as Senior Deputy Attorney General, Drug Strike Force Section, Drug Diversion Unit, where he prosecuted drug crimes. He adds more experience and institutional memory.
But you need more than “How We Did It” people to run the office. And perhaps the most surprising appointment was Kane’s first deputy attorney general: Adrian King. Widely viewed as one of the more talented and able Rendell appointees, King had the unenviable job of getting the most active and energetic governor in modern times to focus, decide and stick to what he had said on homeland security and other legal matters.
Few know better the boundaries and gray areas where a governor and attorney general conflict than King, and he should be invaluable to her both as a guide and negotiator.
The surprise in the capitol was that King wanted this job, and he is widely viewed as being able to help Kane in a number of ways.
The only appointment Kane made so far drawing a significant number of raised eyebrows from the Democratic prosecutorial world, and some glee from the GOP prosecutors, is that of senior Executive Deputy Attorney General Linda Dale Hoffa. Widely viewed as a fine trial attorney in white-collar crimes during two decades in the U.S. Attorney’s office, Hoffa left that office after her superiors decided she was a fine attorney, but a poor manager and a “micro-manager.” The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that judges and attorneys under Hoffa and her boss, Laurie Magid, gave them poor ratings.
Hoffa denied the criticisms.
But if Kane’s goal was to assemble a strong team, with both institutional memory and folks from the federal and gubernatorial worlds to add their perspective, she did so.
Which may be good for Pennsylvanians, but could make life more difficult for Corbett.
