Fumo

S Michael Palermo a former associate executive director at the Pennsylvania Turnpike and longtime flunkey to jailed state senator Vincent Fumo apologized in US District Court today, and said he had been wrong to sign on for no-work contracts with agencies of the state of Pennsylvania.

Former Pennsylvania Turnpike staffer and "consultant" S Michael Palermo, 69, pled guilty to fraud today in US District Court in Philadelphia. Charged with receiving $290k in state funds through phony work contracts arranged with Democrat Senate leader Vincent Fumo, Palermo admitted receiving the payoffs and agreed to repay the money to the state in return for 12 months house arrest and five years probation.

Convicted on all 137 counts of corruption and thievery in a US Court ex-senator Vincent Fumo was today sentenced to 55 months in jail and ordered to make $2m in restitution and pay $411k in fines. Fumo, 66,  who was for years a dominant figure in the state senate stole an estimated $3.5m from the state and from non-profits he ran.

Pennsylvania Governor Edward Rendell says in a letter released this morning that he is removing the chairman of the Turnpike Commission, Mitchell Rubin as a commissioner because of his links to corruption. Rubin had asked Rendell for a "leave of absence" from the chairmanship, but instead the Governor today fired him from the Commission.

The Governor gives four reasons in his letter to Rubin:

Vincent Fumo, the Pennsylvasnia Turnpike's leading legislative patron while a Democrat state senator and Ruth Arnao, wife of the chairman of the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission have been found guilty on all 182 counts in the big corruption case against them tried in Philadelphia by the US Government.

Longtime powerbroker in the Pennsylvania state senate Vincent Fumo on trial for corruption in federal court in Philadelphia used some Blagojevich style language about a Philadelphia Daily News reporter Erin Einhorn in an email picked up by the Feds. The email was introduced in the trial today as an exhibit.

Fumo emailed his press spokesman Gary Tuma:

The Texas Turnpike Division of TxDOT has lost its longtime director of operations and information technology, David T Powell. He is now at Stantec - manager toll systems and operations. Powell continues to live and work out of Austin Texas.

Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission chairman Mitchell Rubin is under pressure to resign - set to feature in US Court next month as a crony of the high profile defendant Vincent Fumo. Fumo a longtime state senator is about to go on trial accused by the feds of 139 counts of fraud, conspiracy, obstruction of justice and income tax evasion.

Pennsylvania's biggest problem in getting permission to toll I-80 may turn out not to be intricacies of federal highway law and regulations, but simply whether the Federal Government should turn over control of a major interstate to a bunch of crooks to make money out of. A local thinktank in the state capital Harrisburg, the Commonwealth Foundation puts this bluntly in a two-page letter from its president Matt Brouillette addressed to James Ray, Federal Highway Administrator.

You wouldn't read it in a work of fiction, it would be too far-fetched. Nothing however is too absurd in Pennsylvanian government, it seems.

Vincent Fumo the most notoriously corrupt politician in the state who shortly will be spending his days in US Court facing no less than 139 charges of public corruption is - he claims - sponsoring ethics reform at the Pennsylvania Turnpike.

We aren't making this up.

Here it is on his website:

Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission CEO Joe Brimmeier and Vice Chairman Timothy Carson today told a state house appropriations committee hearing in Harrisburg that they are "very optimistic" and "we feel strongly" that the Federal Government will approve Turnpike plans to toll I-80.

Congressman John E Peterson (Repub PA) has asked US Secretary of Transportation Mary Peters to suspend consideration of granting a permit to The Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission (PTC) to toll I-80 pending investigation of possible links with the public corruption case being pursued by the FBI and the USDOJ against top Turnpike officials and their supporters in the state legislature.

State senator Vincent Fumo was quoted at the weekend as saying of the Pennsylvania Turnpike under the present arrangements: "(It) is what it is, and I think it works very well." (Harrisburg Patriot-News 2007-09-08)