By Al Neri
Editor, Insider

It’s always been a line that can elicit a hardy laugh or a “Wow!”

When people ask me where I got my first exposure to politics, I tell them that Vince Fumo was my teacher in high school.

It’s true. It happened 40 years ago when I was a sophomore at a parochial high school in Philadelphia. Fumo, who was 25 at the time, didn’t teach politics or political science. Officially, he was a biology teacher.

The 24-year-old future powerbroker was a teacher by day, a law student by night and a Democratic committeeman and partisan by avocation.

While he indeed held a biology degree from Villanova University that qualified him to teach the subject – he had started out in life wanting to be a doctor -- he often veered off into politics and current events while lecturing to my class which was composed of bright working-class boys, most of us the first of our families bound for college.

Yes, we dissected frogs and did other mandatory biology lessons but we were also exposed to the Vince Fumo who would go on trial 40 years later for taking the Frank Sinatra song, “My Way” too much to heart.

For instance, one spring day in 1968, “Mr. Fumo” did something, well, unusual, in biology lab. He distributed piles of letters and envelopes and “asked” his students for help in stuffing the political propaganda into the envelopes. We did as we were told. Teachers in those days commanded their classrooms and there was no specific rule against it.

A month later, Mr. Fumo had another “request:” Could we greet Robert Kennedy at the Philadelphia airport? The New York senator and younger brother of the slain president was the teacher’s preferred Democratic presidential candidate in that year’s Pennsylvania primary. He hinted that showing up with a “Bobby for President” sign might reflect favorably on him at grading time. Some may have gone. I did not. I’d like to say it was out of integrity but more likely, it was simply my disinterest in politics back in those teen days. As would be true later, some of Mr. Fumo’s actions were not all self-serving, but benefited the larger school. He intimidated nearly everyone in the class to attend the Sophomore Hop and insisted we report into him with our dates once there. That part I remember doing.

Vince Fumo

I don’t relay these stories out of any wish for notoriety from my long-ago association with “Mr. Fumo,” but rather to illustrate that the tactics ascribed to the state senator by federal prosecutors during his five-month-long trial are deep-seated and were evident even back then.

Fumo bent the rules or decided they simply didn’t apply to him. Indeed, he would probably argue that as long as his students learned biology what did it matter if they did some of his political chores during class time. And that whole Kennedy at the airport thing, that was completely voluntary on each student’s part, wasn’t it?

Nearly 20 years later, in 1987, student and teacher would meet again in the halls of the state Capitol when I became the Harrisburg correspondent for a Pittsburgh newspaper and Fumo assumed the powerful chairmanship of the state Senate Democratic Appropriations Committee.

We had dealings off and on over the years. But the most memorable for me was a 2001 interview at Fumo’s Jersey Shore home when “Mr. Fumo” made another preference in a contested Democratic primary.

He was quite adamant in his support for Bob Casey Jr. for governor the following year over Democrat Ed Rendell, a fellow Philadelphian. He ripped into Rendell throughout the interview and asserted at one point that the former Philadelphia mayor “could never be elected governor” in a state where most people still go to services on Sunday. The interview got a lot of attention because of Fumo’s storied candor and bluntness.

So for now, an era draws to an end. After being found guilty March 16 on all 137 corruption counts of which he was charged, Fumo, who is now 65, will be sentenced in July and could face a prison term of upwards of 10 years – a sad ending for a once bright, memorable young teacher.

Go back to Insider Info

So now what?
The Insider’s guide to how political corruption will be unearthed in the future

So you’re appalled by former Sen. Vince Fumo’s abuses of our tax dollars and other monies that were detailed in his five-month federal trial that ended this month with his conviction on all 137 counts of corruption.

But more importantly, what’s in place or on the horizon that can stem this type of arrogant abuse in the future?

My 25 years of observation of these things leads me to these conclusions, most of them hopeful in stemming future corruption. So politicians and other public officials beware and stay clean:

The new Open Records Law: Having access to public records and expenditures is the best anecdote to abuse and corruption. Imagine five years ago, if a reporter or private citizen tried to pry open the vault of secrecy surrounding Vince Fumo, his Senate spending, his contracts. That person would have been up against a brick wall.

Change is coming slowly but it is happening. Just last Sunday, the Harrisburg Patriot-News treated us to an interesting tidbit it might not have gotten without a huge legal struggle before the law became effective Jan. 1.

The newspaper asked for the travel records not of Gov. Rendell’s Cadillac but the EZ Pass transponder affixed to its windshield. A couple of years ago, state police sources informed the Philadelphia Daily News that Rendell was routinely whipping his state police detail to drive him faster to appointments, mostly in Philadelphia, and that his vehicle traveled at rates of more than 100 mph. A recalcitrant Rendell accepted blame and said he’d do better, ordering his drivers to abide by speed limits except in the case of “emergencies.” But the newspaper found that, based on its calculation of entrance and exit times and mileage traveled, that Rendell’s Cadillac on at least 28 of 117 trips averaged 80 miles per hour or more.

The newspaper said most of the trips were between Harrisburg East (the state capital) and the Valley Forge exit leading to an expressway into Philadelphia where the former city mayor maintains a home. The speeds were calculated by examing the times the vehicle entered the turnpike and when it exited and the mileage traveled.

The Open Records Law is still in its infancy but it holds the most promise of bringing transparency to the news media, government watchdogs and ordinary citizens concerned about how their tax money is being spent and how decisions are made. On the federal level, the Obama administration’s bent toward more openness and transparency after eight years of secrecy in the Bush-Cheney era is another sign of promise.

Political enemies: Little known in the saga of the years-long probe of Sen. Fumo that the initial thrust into surveillance of his self-created, PECO-funded $17 million non-profit known as Citizens’ Alliance came from a political enemy who then fed his findings to the feds and the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Every politician in power makes political enemies by the minute every time he wields his authority. Those foes, both from within and outside the powerbroker’s political party, are always on the lookout for the Achilles’ heel that will bring down an opponent.

Tipsters: Does anyone remember how the Bonusgate scandal that still rocks the state Capitol started two years ago?

The House Democratic caucus was allegedly handing out taxpayer-funded bonuses based on employees’ campaign-related activity, although it was disguised as work related. But not all of the 700-plus employees got one.

One such disgruntled employee, aware of her co-workers’ largesse, simply provided a tip to a Harrisburg Patriot-News reporter about the bonuses as well as a copy of the letter sent out by then-House Majority Leader Bill DeWeese asking each bonus recipient to keep quiet about it because not all workers got one.

That was all it took to launch a media firestorm that soon attracted the attention of the state attorney general’s anti-corruption unit. That unit’s work ultimately led more than a year later to 12 Democrats, including former Minority Whip Mike Veon, being charged with masterminding a scheme to defraud taxpayers by using state funds to reward employees who doubled as campaign workers, often on state time.

Bonusgate continues with more pronouncements expected from Attorney General Tom Corbett. The Pittsburgh Republican has pledged to probe all four caucuses and seems more than content to string out the work (and the headlines) into 2010 when he will be running for governor on the GOP ticket.

This brings us to another source of stemming corruption . . .

Ambitious prosecutors: Busting a drug ring, tracking down a serial killer, even going after the mob, din in comparison to the media spotlight a prosecutor can get from going after and nailing a corrupt politician.

As long as there are ambitious DA’s who dream of being big-city mayors or better. And U.S. attorneys who see themselves as governors or U.S. senators, the prosecution of politicians who break the law in small or big ways will be pursed with vigor. And the advent of the electronic age makes it easier for prosecutors to find “smoking guns” in e-mails, Excel spreadsheets and other 21st Century conveniences. Even attempts to erase or delete such date results in a crime – obstruction of justice. Take former U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, Patrick Meehan. His office undoubtedly did a high degree of work in all areas of criminality. Still, the signature case that made his reputation is his office’s dogged pursuit of the corruption unraveled in Fumo World The investigation and subsequent five-month trial exposed the wealthy Democrat’s fondness of using OPM (“Other People’s Money”) whenever possible.

Pat Meehan

Oh, by the way, Meehan, a Republican, is also running for governor next year.

Ex-wives, spurned lovers and other mistreated loyalists: Who could forget the photo of a contented Vince Fumo sitting perched atop a work bench in his garage at his New Jersey shore home stocked from floor to ceiling with tools purchased for his personal use by Citizens’ Alliance.

The photo, which was acquired by the FBI, was supplied by Fumo’s ex-girlfriend, Dorothy Egrie, who was victimized by Fumo after she broke up with him in 2002. He hired a state-paid private detective to follow her, informing the senator of who she was dating and where she was going.

Another prime example comes from Erie, PA, where former state Superior Court Judge Michel Joyce was brought down by evidence pointing to insurance fraud on the jurist’s behalf after he collected $440,000 from two insurance companies for a low-speed accident he said caused him severe harm.

That tip to federal prosecutors was gladly provided by the fiance, a beautiful architect, whom Joyce left in the middle of the night several years ago to take up with another woman. She knew that Joyce golfed, scuba-dived, roller-bladed and even took flying lessons unimpeded after the accident.

Joyce, who once proudly wore the nickname, “Maximum Mike,” for his harsh sentencing of criminal defendants from the bench, received a 46-month sentence in federal prison, despite pleas to the judge that he just be put on parole. He is now seeking to stay his sentence so he can aid his attorneys in his legal appeals.

Bloggers/talk radio: There is a statue in the park leading to the state Capitol of Boise Penrose, a prominent 19th Century U.S. senator and the Vince Fumo of his era. Penrose is shown poised, with his hand in his vest pocket and the running joke is that it captures one of the few times when Penrose had his hand in his own pocket instead of others.

There is little doubt that Penrose could have survived, let along thrived, a century and a half later with the firestorm that is stoked by talk radio hosts, many of them Rush Limbaugh-wannabes and others just simply loud-mouthed populists.

Even though he had a distinguished journalism career, former CBS news anchor Dan Rather was brought down quickly by conservative bloggers. They uncovered evidence that the “documentation” that Rather presented in a CBS news report damaging to President George W. Bush about his service in the Texas National Guard was fraudulent.

Within months, Rather was forced to step down from CBS and leave the network that had been his home for four decades. He has since filed a lawsuit based on his separation from CBS.

Bloggers work both ways and in all directions. Liberal bloggers helped the candidacy of Barrack Obama while other bloggers criticized his main primary rival, Hilary Clinton.

As long as more than one person knows a secret, it has the potential of spilling. And in today’s Internet-obsessed and blog-infested world, chances are good it will be aimed at a politician or appointed official’s misdeeds.

The “mainstream” media: People have come to rely on and many prefer the free Internet to get their news and that is making it tough, especially for old-fashioned newspapers and broadcast outlets (TV and radio) that now must rely on diminished ad revenue in an ailing economy to survive.

Still, there are some bright spots. Pennsylvania is blessed with a number of dogged newspaper reporters, too numerous to mention by name, and as long as there is a First Amendment to protect them, the news media will always seek out the prize pelt of a politician’s scalp.

And some of the more arrogant office-holders, such as Fumo, have actually taunted the press into pursuit.

Remember Gary Hart? The Colorado senator was the front-runner for his party’s nomination in 1984 but he had a reputation as a womanizer. Hart publicly dismissed the rumors and dared the press to “follow” him. One newspaper did and it tracked Hart to the Bahamas where he spent time with a woman lobbyist named Donna Rice on a pleasure boat called, “Monkey Business.”

Within days, Hart’s support for President disintegrated and he had to withdraw from the race and forfeit re-election to his Senate seat.

It can be as easy as that or it can be as tough as the Philadelphia Inquirer’s dogged five-year investigation of Fumo and the Citizens Alliance non-profit he founded with $17 million extorted from PECO Energy, articles that attracted the attention of federal authorities.

Fumo tried to blunt the Inquirer’s efforts as a personal vendetta or an ethnic targeting of a politician because of his last name and he dismissively referred to those on his trail as the “Fumo Desk” at the newspaper.

And even though the newspaper has filed for bankruptcy, it is still in a better position than “Mr. Fumo” who now faces 10 or more years in federal prison.