Jill Porter: Fumo's out of business, but will others get the lesson?Fumo's out of business, but will others get the lesson?
THE TRIUMPH of the government against former state Sen. Vince Fumo is intended to send a reassuring message that corruption won't be tolerated.
THE TRIUMPH of the government against former state Sen. Vince Fumo is intended to send a reassuring message that corruption won't be tolerated.
As U.S. Attorney Laurie Magid put it Monday:
"We hope that our investigation and prosecution and the jury's verdict of guilty has served to restore some of the public's confidence in the integrity of our system of government."
So why do I still feel so cynical? I have lingering disgust not just for Fumo but also for the morally bankrupt culture in which this town's business and politics are conducted, which was highlighted during the trial.
Pay-to-play isn't news, of course.
But to hear a phone-company executive testify that Fumo allegedly tried to shake him down - and that he negotiated a deal rather than report the alleged extortion - is confirmation of a sorry picture.
Former Verizon executive Daniel Whelan damned himself and the whole system when he testified that he came to secret terms with Fumo, just as Peco had already done, rather than blow the whistle.
Instead, Whelan went to two of the city's top lawyers - David L. Cohen and Arthur Makadon, who are friends with Fumo - presumably to enlist their influence to mitigate Fumo's demands.
So, Fumo may be out of business - but is this sleazy approach to business out of business?
And will this stunning conviction of one of the most powerful elected officials in the state change anything? Will politicians learn any lessons from Fumo's conviction? I asked Zack Stalberg, head of the Committee of Seventy.
Perhaps not, he said.
"I'm a little worried that Vince is seen as doing things that were so different and so unusual and only Vince would do it, and so it might be a little harder for people in elected office to stay awake at night and ponder the meaning of all this. They can say 'Oh, that was Vince.' "
But the conviction of Ruth Arnao, Fumo's top aide - who ran the charity he founded and helped him plunder it - may be a cautionary tale, Stalberg said.
"Here's the trusted aide and chief of staff and the person who did what her boss wanted her to do, and now it seems like she's going away for a long time.
"And so, I think the people who are around public officials and who have to say 'yes' or 'no' may actually be moved more by what's happened to Ruth than what's happened to Vince," he said.
"I know, as someone who's run things myself, that if the most trusted aide comes in and says, 'You really can't do this,' then you stop and think about it. And in a sense, that person is your conscience.
"So, I think in terms of the real way the world works, the Arnao conviction may have some real punch to it."
I hope so.
I hope some lesson gets learned, as yet another prison cell is being prepared for yet another of our city's elected officials.
The lesson - for me - is in the long face of Vince Fumo and the hands he was holding as he left the federal courthouse on Monday, "heartbroken."
He clasped his youngest daughter's hand on one side, and his girlfriend's hand on the other, as he waded through the madhouse of media after the verdict.
I wish all the greedy politicians would understand that, in the end, that's what matters: the people who are there to hold your hands.
Your friends, your family, your loved ones.
What matters isn't power, or wealth, or the strings you get to pull.
And yet, in stunning succession, they follow each other to prison for the sake of cash or cachet, desperately clasping the hands of the people they've hurt.
Fumo clearly seemed to have crossed the line not only from legal to illegal, but from sanity to something else.
As one observer put it, he was worth millions of dollars, but got caught "stealing vacuum cleaners."
"The public is weary of public officials playing by their own rules and ignoring lines," U.S. Attorney Magid said after the verdict.
But will that message get through this time? *
E-mail porterj@phillynews.com or call 215-854-5850. For recent columns: