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Corbett transition committees

Corbett transition committees

A look at the composition of key Corbett transition committee membership indicates a tilt toward insiders -- lobbyists, lawyers and industry types.

Transition team members were told not to talk to the media, so their take on the direction of the committees was not available.

But in response to questions about lobbyists and other government or industry insiders on the transition committees, Kevin Harley, spokesman for Gov.-elect Tom Corbett, said team members signed ethics contracts requiring them to steer clear of conflicts of interest and prohibiting them from using their influence to obtain advantages for themselves, their families or their companies

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Women and minorities are under-represented on the team, noted Jim Burn, the state Democratic Committee chairman.

Of the 377 members, 26 are minorities and 56 are women.

Mr. Harley maintains that the team includes "a cross-section of Pennsylvanians who are subject-matter experts and who were willing to serve on the committees."

Mr. Burn and other critics point out that a number of important advocacy groups are not represented.

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For example, the are no student government groups or parent-teacher associations on the Education committee, said Barry Kauffman of Common Cause of Pennsylvania. AARP is not represented on the health and aging committee. The Sierra Club and the Chesapeake Bay Commission are not on the energy and environment committee. The committee looking into Department of State, which oversees elections, has no members from the League of Women Voters.

"These are glaring omissions," Mr. Burn said. "This team reflects that [Mr. Corbett] is only looking out for a small portion of this state's demographic, and those appear to be corporations, special interests and others with little to nothing in common with the average Pennsylvanian."

Here are reports on membership of some key committees.

LOCAL GOVERNMENT

The Corbett transition's local government committee skews suburban and rural, with nary a representative from the Democrat-dominated governments of Pittsburgh, Philadelphia or Erie.

One co-chair is Carol Aichele, chair of the commissioners of Chester County. That growing county of nearly 500,000 residents -- 88 percent white -- is near Philadelphia, but contains just one city, Coatesville, with a little more than 10,000 residents.

Ms. Aichele has engineered the streamlining of her county's government while building her portfolio as a Republican political mover, working for Supreme Court Justice Joan Orie Melvin's successful campaign and putting her name in for lieutenant governor this year, before she dropped out.

The other co-chair is Keith Hite, the longtime consultant for the Pennsylvania State Association of Township Supervisors, who is now a lobbyist with Harrisburg-based Malady & Wooten. While the top lobbyist for the state's little governments, he drew occasional criticism for his big salary. The supervisors group and related organizations paid him $561,274 in 2008, according to the organization's filings with the Internal Revenue Service.

TRANSPORTATION

The 27-member transportation committee is heavily Republican, and has nearly a dozen representatives from private engineering and construction-related companies, several lawyers and two freight railroad executives but only one representative from a mass transit system.

The panel is co-chaired by a wealthy charter school operator from Philadelphia's Main Line and two former PennDOT administrators.

Vahan Gureghian is CEO of Charter School Management Inc., operator of a successful charter school in Chester County. A lawyer and billboard company owner, Mr. Gureghian started the charter school in 1998, and its enrollment has grown from fewer than 100 to more than 2,300. He is also on the education committee.

Another co-chair is Brad Mallory, CEO of Michael Baker Corp., one of the nation's largest design and engineering companies. He served as PennDOT secretary in the administration of former Republican Gov. Tom Ridge and his successor, Mark Schweiker, from 1995 to 2003.

The other committee leader is Pete Tartline, a consultant who served as deputy secretary for administration in PennDOT during the Ridge administration. He is a member of the Cumberland County Republican Committee and served as chief of staff to former U.S. Rep. William Goodling, R-York.

The lone choice from the public transit sector is Pasquale T. Deon Sr., chairman of Philadelphia's transit system, SEPTA, and a Republican appointee to the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission.

No one from Allegheny County Port Authority, which is in desperate financial straits, was appointed. But Jim Roddey, the former county executive who served as Port Authority chairman from 1984 to 1987, is on the panel.

HEALTH AND AGING, WELFARE, INSURANCE

Watchdog and health-related advocacy groups took particular notice of the people in charge of three transition committees: health and aging, welfare and insurance.

They say a marked overlap in leadership is not unlike a rumor they have heard: that Mr. Corbett is considering merging two or all three departments.

They have pointed out that Todd Shamash, senior counsel and director at Jefferson Health Systems in Philadelphia, is co-chair of the health and aging committee, while his work colleague, David Simon, senior VP and general counsel at Jefferson Health Systems, is not only co-chair of the welfare committee, but also chair of the insurance committee. In addition, Mr. Simon is a member of Mr. Shamash's health and aging committee, and Mr. Shamash is a member of Mr. Simon's insurance committee.

Transition committee spokesman Kevin Harley said the reliance on Mr. Simon -- the only person to chair more than one of the 17 transition committees -- springs from his close affiliation with Mr. Corbett during his campaign. He did not respond to questions about the possibility of a merger of state departments.

"There may well be good reasons to do that," Barry Kauffman, executive director of Common Cause Pennsylvania, a government watchdog group, said of a potential merger. "But [the departments] may also have competing interests."

"For instance, health care and insurance certainly are in the same ball game, but they're not necessarily on the same team," he said.

Beth Heed, executive director of the Consumer Health Coalition, an advocacy organization that pushes for affordable health care, said merging all three departments "would be a drastic change that would affect a substantial number of people."

The 26 health and aging committee members rely heavily on health care officials. Seventeen of them are doctors, lawyers or officers representing some health care provider group.

"My general observation is that it's a who's-who of health care lobbyists and insiders," said Sharon Ward, executive director of the Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center, a government watchdog group. "They're generally the people whose faces you see eating lunch in the Harrisburg cafeterias."

The 31 welfare committee members come heavily from provider groups and organizations, as well as former state officials. Five of the members previously worked for the state, either in the insurance or welfare departments, including the co-chairs, Charlie Curie, the welfare department's former deputy secretary for mental health and substance abuse services under Gov. Tom Ridge, and Mr. Simon, insurance department general counsel under Gov. Mark Schweiker.

Ms. Ward said there was no outright consumer group on the welfare committee.

Lynn Keltz, executive director of the Pennsylvania Mental Health Consumers Association, said when she saw the committee list she noticed immediately that "other than Charlie Curie himself, there's little representation from mental health. There's no consumer representation from mental health or other disability groups."

The omission of consumer representatives wasn't a surprise, though. "Too many people still don't recognize the importance of having people who use the services at the table," Ms. Keltz said.

Of the insurance committee's 16 members, nine work for insurance companies and two work for health providers, including the chairman, Mr. Simon.

Ms. Ward noted, again, there were no consumers of health insurance on the committee that deals with insurance "which most of us have; certainly they could have included a small business owner, a nonprofit, or people who work with health insurance."

"It just seems to be heavy with insurance providers, just like the health committee is with health providers," she said.

EDUCATION

Tom Corbett for the most part bypassed the traditional K-12 education community and turned to charter school and voucher supporters, attorneys, former Ridge administration workers and others for his education transition committee.

The panel is co-chaired by University of Pittsburgh Chancellor Mark Nordenberg and Joel Greenberg of Susquehanna International Group.

The committee includes three top postsecondary executives and several college trustees, as well as one member of the library community, Cynthia Richey, director of the Mt. Lebanon Public Library.

The list of 34 members does not include a single active teacher, district school board member, district administrator or staff member of the state's two major teacher unions and Pennsylvania School Boards Association.

The list does, however, includes two who are former school district superintendents -- one of whom had a top post at the Pennsylvania State Education Association -- and another who has past K-12 teaching experience out-of-state.

Charter school advocates dominate the committee. Charter schools, including cyber charter schools, are public schools. Students do not pay tuition, but school districts pay a fee set by the state for each resident who attends.

The REACH Foundation, which advocates for school vouchers, tax credits, charter schools and home schooling. has a strong presence -- of the 12 members of the REACH executive committee and board, five are on the committee.

The panel has four other charter school advocates, including three charter school operators and a prominent national figure in the charter school movement, Jeanne Allen, who founded the Center for Education Reform in Washington, D.C. The charter school operators include Vahan Gureghian, a wealthy campaign contributor who started the Chester County Charter School and is also a co-chair on the transportation committee.

The list, counting some of the members of various boards, includes at least six attorneys as well as several employees of lobbying firms.

Two legislators were named to the committee, state Rep. Paul Clymer, R-Bucks, Republican chair of the House Education Committee; and state Sen. Jeffrey Piccola, R-Dauphin, Republican chair of the Senate Education Committee.

Mr. Corbett has taken some criticism for naming Ana Puig, co-chair of the Kitchen Table Patriots, to the committee. The Pennsylvania Democratic Party accused her of hate speech.

Wythe Keever, spokesman for the Pennsylvania State Education Association, declined to comment on the selections.

"The new governor elect has the right to talk to whomever he wants to talk to in transitioning to his new administration," Mr. Keever said.

Tim Allwein, assistant executive director of governmental relations for the Pennsylvania School Boards Association, said, "I don't think it was a surprise that the composition of that team leans heavily toward cyber charter school operators and those who undoubtedly support the voucher issue." But, he said, "just under 90 percent of school-age children in Pennsylvania attend a public school. To totally ignore them, I thought was not the best decision."

ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENT

The Energy and Environment Committee is heavily weighted toward industry executives.

Of the 29 members, just a handful represent environmental groups, while the rest come from the scrap industry, energy companies, a water and sewer utility, coal mining, gas drilling, the National Rifle Association and from lobbying and law firms that represent clients who often have business before state regulatory boards that the committee is meant to study. The committee's chairman is David Kleppinger of McNees Wallace and Nurick, a business law firm that specializes in energy, communications and utility law.

"It's almost all lobbyists and industry executives," said Jan Jarrett, CEO of PennFuture, a prominent statewide environmental group with no representation on the transition team.

A few members -- such as Sen. Mary Jo White, R-Venango, and Public Utility Commission Secretary Rosemary Chiavetta -- come from government.

Notable omissions from the list include representatives from tourism, the forest products industry and hunting organizations, who have an interest in protecting land from natural gas drillers.

One of the few environmentalists on the committee -- Cynthia Carrow of the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy -- has been an outspoken opponent of leasing state park and forest land for drilling.

Ms. Jarrett noted that many of the committee members have business pending before the Department of Environmental Protection, the Public Utility Commission and the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources.

"These are agencies that have to be independent watchdogs and these people picked to make recommendations about them either have business before them or will have business before them," she said. "The fact is it's hard to separate one's self-interest from the public interest, and there are very few public-interest advocates on the committee," she said.

The committee, she said, will study how state agencies regulate the industries they work for.

"The industry standpoint is that Department of Environmental Protection regs are too burdensome, too expensive and too onerous. The very people making recommendations to the new governor are people who have an interest in lightening the touch of the regulatory arm," Ms. Jarrett said.

First Published: December 19, 2010, 5:00 a.m.

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