In wake of probe, House GOP makes changes to police itself

HARRISBURG - The leader of the state House's Republicans said yesterday that he and his colleagues were strengthening their spending rules, naming an "ethics officer," and living under the assumption that every one of them remained under scrutiny in the so-called Bonusgate probe - including himself.

"I think everybody in the caucus is under investigation," Minority Leader Sam Smith (R., Jefferson) told reporters. "I've got to assume that they are still reviewing stuff. That's the assumption I will go with until the attorney general says this investigation is closed."

Smith's comments came five days after state Attorney General Tom Corbett brought criminal charges against a former House speaker, Rep. John M. Perzel of Philadelphia, and nine others with ties to the House GOP caucus. They are accused of spending $10 million in state funds on sophisticated computer programs designed to give Republicans an edge in elections.

While declining to say whether any additional charges are contemplated, Corbett has said his investigation isn't over.

Smith, the GOP floor leader since 2003, said he was interviewed by Corbett's investigators but did not testify before the grand jury.

He was not charged, though his name appears several times in the grand jury's 188-page presentment. Among other things, the presentment said, Smith sat in on meetings in which Perzel and others discussed the taxpayer-funded software programs.

Smith, 54, who was first elected to the House in 1986, said yesterday that if the allegations were true, he was misled by Perzel and by Perzel's former chief of staff, Brian Preski, who was also charged last week.

Smith said the two had repeatedly told him that the software contracts were for legitimate legislative purposes.

He said he and other House members understood the line between legislative and political activity. "Frankly, it baffles me, because I felt our caucus always spent a lot of time and effort in keeping the two things separate," Smith said.

The Punxsutawney Republican also spent a moment, in effect, eating his own words.

In 2008, Corbett charged a dozen people with ties to the House Democratic caucus with scheming to award state bonuses to legislative staffers for campaign work. While the probe was under way, then-House Majority Leader Bill DeWeese (D., Greene) traveled the state to tell newspaper editorial boards that he hadn't known of the bonus scheme.

At that time, Smith scoffed at the notion that DeWeese, as the ranking House Democrat, didn't know what was going on in his own caucus. Smith told reporters in December 2007, "As big as that [bonus] program was they operated, I have difficulty believing he didn't know about it."

He made those comments on the same spot in the Capitol where he spoke with reporters yesterday afternoon.

"There is nothing worse than getting stung by your own words," Smith said yesterday. ". . . I was wrong."

He announced that his caucus was promoting a reform agenda in light of the latest charges. He said House Republicans have appointed an ethics officer to field complaints from staffers, and have instituted a rule barring the caucus from hiring contractors used by its political arm - as was the case with the software firms at the heart of the latest charges.

Charged along with Perzel are Preski, former Rep. Brett Feese of Lycoming County, and seven other legislative and campaign aides. All are free on bail and await preliminary hearings that likely will not take place until January at the earliest. Perzel has said he broke no laws and has accused Corbett, a Republican gubernatorial candidate, of "political opportunism."