$120,000 for ex-head of Pa. gaming board

HARRISBURG - The former head of the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board will be paid a total of $120,000 over the next four months even though she no longer works for the agency.

That $120,000 includes a newly disclosed $60,000 severance payment that she will receive in the fall.

Anne LaCour Neeb, who resigned her post two weeks ago citing family reasons, will earn the money between now and October, according to a copy of her contract and separation agreement made public yesterday.

While the board's executive director, Neeb made $180,000 annually. Her last day on the job was Friday.

The $60,000 disclosed yesterday is in addition to four months of pay, also worth $60,000, that she had been promised earlier.

The compensation has incensed a number of lawmakers, who yesterday alleged the board deliberately misled the public about Neeb's severance pay, and called for the resignation of the gaming board's current chairwoman, Mary DiGiacomo Colins.

"It's the only remote possibility of restoring integrity in this gaming board," said State Rep. Mike Vereb (R., Montgomery).

When Neeb announced her resignation late last month, gaming board officials said terms of her contract required the agency to pay the four months' salary.

But they did not disclose the one-time $60,000 severance payment.

Gaming board spokesman Doug Harbach said yesterday that the agency did not make public all the terms of Neeb's severance package because it was not yet official.

Harbach also said that the $60,000 lump-sum severance payment was intended to cover work that Neeb is expected to do for the board over the next few months as a consultant.

"This is money to gain her continued assistance in projects that the gaming board is involved in and to which . . . she brings valuable knowledge and experience," Harbach said. "There was nothing hush about it."

Neeb could not be reached for comment yesterday. After leaving the board, she returned to Louisiana to be with her family.

Neeb came to Pennsylvania in September 2005 from Louisiana's gambling control board, which she headed. Soon after she arrived, a controversy erupted there: Louisiana's inspector general issued a report asking Neeb to refund $2,700 for 57 hours that it said she did not work. The report said the investigation of Neeb was prompted by a complaint that Neeb had stopped showing up for work.

At the time, Neeb said the report was an effort by some Louisiana officials to impugn her reputation because she had alerted the FBI about concerns she had over the awarding of three gambling licences.

Prosecutors there later declined to pursue the case.

During Neeb's tenure in Pennsylvania, the board has drawn criticism from lawmakers and others about how it issued licenses for slots parlors.

One of the licensees the board approved in 2006 - Scranton businessman Louis A. DeNaples - was charged earlier this year with perjury for allegedly lying to state gaming investigators as he was pursuing a license for his Mount Airy Casino Resort.

DeNaples is fighting the charges.