WAYNESBURG -- Adolph Deynzer went to the administrative offices of the West Greene School District five years ago to examine public documents because he and others had become suspicious of the activities of the superintendent, Dr. Charles Rembold.
That visit in August 2001 led to a public condemnation two months later by Dr. Rembold of Mr. Deynzer and school board members Anita Ross and Dan Smith. In a letter read at a school board meeting, Dr. Rembold accused Mr. Smith of illegally recording the visit to the administrative office and asked for their resignations. He also claimed Mr. Deynzer, Mr. Smith and Ms. Ross were part of a conspiracy against him.
Mr. Deynzer filed a defamation lawsuit against Dr. Rembold and settled last year for legal fees, money and an apology.
"That kind of satisfaction is not my game," said Mr. Deynzer, 74, a retired salesman and farm supply business owner. "I'm not an unreasonable guy and I don't believe in suing, but that's the only way I could get this guy's attention."
As it turned out, there was reason for Mr. Deynzer and the others to suspect Dr. Rembold. Dr. Rembold has been investigated by the State Ethics Commission twice in recent years for activities as superintendent of two Greene County school districts and as president of the county's economic development board.
He will be sentenced Wednesday in Columbia County Common Pleas Court in northeastern Pennsylvania for conspiracy and conflict of interest for the theft of nearly $28,000 while he was West Greene superintendent.
Those charges were from the first Ethics Commission complaint three years ago. A second complaint, issued publicly two weeks ago, charges that Dr. Rembold engaged in questionable activities as superintendent of another Greene County school district, Jefferson-Morgan, and as president of the county's economic development agency, the Industrial Development Authority.
The allegations in the second complaint -- contract kickbacks, hiring his son as a computer technician, incriminating e-mails and the misuse of publicly owned computers -- have dismayed Greene County officials.
"I was a little sick to my stomach, to be honest," said Pam Snyder, chairwoman of the county commissioners. "It's not the kind of thing you want to see happen in this town or this county."
Days before the first complaint became public in 2003 and Dr. Rembold agreed to pay a $26,400 fine, he arranged kickbacks of about $27,000 to be split among himself and two others for a consulting contract linked to a $260,000 grant from the Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation.
In an e-mail to the friend of Dr. Rembold who owned the consulting company, an associate said Dr. Rembold preferred his kickbacks in cash.
The Ethics Commission took the unusual step in the second complaint of requiring that Dr. Rembold agree not to hold any public office or public employment in Pennsylvania or to apply for any grants ever again. Generally, the commission would "normally chastise" a public official caught with his hand in the cookie jar, but the prohibition from public life for Dr. Rembold "says it all," the Ethics Commission concluded.
Dr. Rembold has been fined more than $40,000 by the Ethics Commission in the past three years.
The criminal charges from the first complaint were filed earlier this year by Attorney General Tom Corbett's office. Though the Ethics Commission agreed in the second complaint not to recommend any specific charges against Dr. Rembold, the complaint was nevertheless forwarded to Mr. Corbett's office.
"We're reviewing the material Ethics sent us and we'll decide on the appropriate course of action," said Nils Hagen-Frederiksen, a spokesman for Mr. Corbett.
"I've had to go out and mend a lot of fences to put Greene County back in good standing," said Ms. Snyder, one of two Democratic commissioners.
PULSE role kept hidden
Dr. Rembold, 59, retired from the Jefferson-Morgan School District 16 months ago and still lives in Waynesburg. He did not respond to requests for comment.
He is a 1965 Carmichaels High School graduate who returned to Greene County in 1993 to take over the West Greene School District after stints in education in Virginia. It was while in Virginia in the early 1980s that Dr. Rembold helped start a company, King's Bridge Inc.
King's Bridge holds a copyright for a program for at-risk youth, alternately called PULSAR in Virginia and PULSE in Pennsylvania.
At West Greene, Dr. Rembold obtained federal and state grants to fund the PULSE program without disclosing his financial interest in King's Bridge, the Ethics Commission has charged. Another player in King's Bridge, M. Stephen Wilcox, also benefited financially from contracts he arranged for the PULSE program while he was superintendent of the Southern Columbia School District in northeastern Pennsylvania.
Mr. Wilcox, 56, who has pleaded guilty to theft, conspiracy and conflict of interest charges, is also scheduled to be sentenced this week.
Dr. Rembold's financial role in King's Bridge for the PULSE program was hidden from public view because money was funneled through what the Ethics Commission called a "middleman" -- a Huntingdon company, Mainstream Counseling. The company, which on paper was the main contractor for PULSE, received 5 percent of the contract for PULSE and paid the rest to King's Bridge.
Some Greene County officials say one reason Dr. Rembold was able to escape detection was because he was a master at the complicated art of grant writing. In many of the grants, Dr. Rembold included a provision to use the PULSE program and Mainstream Counseling.
"He had the expertise in those areas and we relied on his judgment," said Joe Simatic, manager of the Southwestern Pennsylvania Water Authority, who replaced Dr. Rembold as president of the Industrial Development Authority.
Dr. Rembold was president of the Industrial Development Authority from December 1996 until his resignation in June 2004. Three years ago, Dr. Rembold included in a grant application to the Benedum Foundation a consulting contract with a company called Prosocial Solutions Research. It was through this company, based in Virginia and owned by an Army lieutenant colonel, that Dr. Rembold received kickbacks, the Ethics Commission charges.
Splitting the kickbacks
The kickbacks for the $30,000 contract were split by Dr. Rembold, Prosocial owner Stephen Ellsworth and Linda McCracken, director of the 21st Century Community Learning Centers program in Greene County, a program for rural and urban public school students.
Mr. Ellsworth was stationed at Fort Lee, Va., when the contract was signed three years ago. He could not be reached for comment. Mr. Ellsworth met Dr. Rembold in 1998 at Indiana University in Bloomington and was paid over the years for his work on the PULSE program.
Ms. McCracken helped write the grants for the 21st Century program that eventually was funded by the Benedum Foundation and which contained the Prosocial consulting contract. It was Ms. McCracken who noted in an e-mail to Mr. Ellsworth that Dr. Rembold directed her to request cash payments for the two of them.
"[Dr. Rembold] says this is only a beginning; as we are successful with future grants you will always be the evaluator," Ms. McCracken wrote in the Dec. 12, 2003, e-mail. "I hope I have explained it clearly enough. Can you live with this? Oh, he wants us to be paid in cash. It doesn't make a difference to me how you pay me if some other way works out for you. Tell me what you think."
Ms. McCracken continues as director of the 21st Century Learning Centers in Greene County, which is overseen by a board of representatives from the county's five school districts. She could not be reached for comment. Jerome Bartley, the Central Greene School District superintendent who is in charge of Ms. McCracken's program, also could not be reached. Mr. Bartley is also a member of the Industrial Development Authority.
Both Mr. Simatic and Don Chappel, who was the executive director of the Industrial Development Authority at the time the kickback scheme occurred, said they had no knowledge of the deal until it was revealed recently by the Ethics Commission.
"I was shocked," Mr. Chappel said.
Mr. Chappel is no longer involved with the Industrial Development Authority, but remains director of the county's Industrial Development Corp., a private nonprofit organization that parted ways with the authority earlier this year in a restructuring of county economic development efforts.
Ms. Snyder said she doesn't understand how top officials with the Industrial Development Authority could not have known what Dr. Rembold was doing.
"As a public official, I am just appalled at the role the IDA played in what the Ethics Commission called a 'money-making scheme,'" she said. "If you are running an organization and you can't figure out that someone is taking kickbacks, something is wrong."
First Published: December 17, 2006, 5:00 a.m.
