Skrep in deep doo-doo

Pennsylvania probe
Gifts buy political favors in coal region
Monday, January 25, 2010 2:56 AM
By Michael Rubinkam

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Luzerne County Commissioner Greg Skrepenak, a former NFL player, is among 23 to be charged.
WILKES-BARRE, Pa. -- After a six-year run in the NFL, Greg Skrepenak came home to Pennsylvania and parlayed his name recognition and hometown popularity into a seat on the Luzerne County Board of Commissioners.

He'd campaigned as a reformer. It turns out he was anything but: Prosecutors charged him last month with accepting $5,000 in gifts from a developer seeking public financing of a condominium project. He is scheduled to plead guilty Tuesday.

Another day, another fallen politician in the coal fields of northeastern Pennsylvania, where FBI agents and federal prosecutors have spent the past year rooting out government corruption in a hardscrabble region known for its pay-to-play politics, suspicion of outsiders and resistance to political change.

Twenty-three people in Luzerne County, including a school superintendent, three county judges, four courthouse officials and five school-board members, have been charged in a variety of unrelated schemes.

In the most-egregious abuse of the public's trust, two judges are charged with taking $2.8 million in kickbacks to place youth offenders in for-profit detention facilities -- a scandal known as "kids for cash." Thousands of juvenile convictions have been dismissed by the state Supreme Court, but youth advocates say the lives of countless children and their families were ruined.

The ongoing federal corruption probe has sent tremors through an insular political culture where graft, patronage and nepotism have been accepted practice since the golden age of anthracite coal a century ago. Then, waves of European immigrants arrived in the mountainous region 100 miles north of Philadelphia to work in mines, breweries and railroads. Their descendants still live in the tiny patch towns and tightly packed houses built by long-defunct coal companies.

Most of the charges filed over the past year involve public officials accepting cash or gifts -- a $1,500 suit, for example -- in exchange for helping contractors win government work or some other benefit. A few officials are charged with the outright theft of taxpayer dollars. The FBI is also looking into allegations that candidates for public-school teaching positions paid bribes to school-board members to land jobs.

"Things have been like this for so long that I don't think many people see a lot of wrong in what they've done," said Skrepenak, 39, a former offensive lineman who played for the Oakland Raiders and Carolina Panthers in the 1990s.

"I believe any elected official of the last five years is at risk" of prosecution, he added. "I don't think many of them truly know what they can and cannot do."

Until recently, there has been little outside scrutiny of the backroom deal making.

"There's no question this is an area that traditionally has not seen a lot of public-corruption investigations, and now there are several big ones going on," said FBI spokesman J.J. Klaver. "It is a major undertaking, but we seem to be getting it done, so that's a good thing."


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I can see where Skrep might have thought it was ok. $5k is not a whole lot especially if it is strung out over a period of time. Still though $1 is too much.