Rendell staff chief to head Pa. gaming panel

HARRISBURG - Gregory C. Fajt - accountant, lawyer, former legislator, and onetime revenue secretary - will take over as chairman of the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board as early as next month, the Rendell administration confirmed yesterday.

Fajt, Rendell's 54-year-old chief of staff, will become the third leader of the board since it was created in 2004 to oversee slots casinos in Pennsylvania. He will replace Mary DiGiacomo Colins, who will step down within six weeks, said Chuck Ardo, Gov. Rendell's press secretary.

Also yesterday, the gaming board appointed the chief regulator of a New York Indian casino as its executive director.

Ardo called Fajt the "perfect fit," citing his experience as a two-term House member from Allegheny County and six years in the executive branch, including four years as revenue secretary.

"He is widely respected throughout Harrisburg," Ardo said. "His integrity and character are beyond dispute."

At a gaming board meeting in Harrisburg yesterday, Colins said she was not prepared to discuss exactly when she would step down.

"As far as I am concerned, I continue to oversee some really significant progress. We have some challenges ahead," she told reporters. "At some point, I will be going."

She pointed out that her three-year term had expired in July and said she had stayed on because Rendell hadn't appointed a replacement.

Colins was among the original appointees to the board. She has led it since 2007.

Colins, 60, received certification from the state judicial system in early February to serve as a senior judge on a county or an appellate bench. She has yet to receive an assignment, however, as a senior judge - a part-time job designed to fill a judicial void. It pays $497 a day.

The gaming board's chair makes $150,000 annually.

Colins, a former Philadelphia Common Pleas Court judge, has been the subject of repeated and often intense criticism from a group of House and Senate Republicans who, to varying degrees, have called for her to step down since the summer.

They say that under her leadership, the board had paid a large severance package to an official; taken expensive trips, including one to Rome last year during a travel freeze; and denied access to records.

Criticism by some lawmakers, Colins told reporters yesterday, played no role in her decision to leave.

"Criticism is not a new thing to the board," she said. "I am very comfortable with the achievements we have had."

The governor appoints three of the board's seven members and selects its chair.

Fajt served in the House from 1991 to 1996. Rendell appointed him as revenue secretary in 2003, and he served until May 2007, when he became chief of staff. As revenue secretary, he served on the gaming board as an ex-officio member.

State Sen. Jane Orie (R., Allegheny), a vocal critic of the board, said Rendell's choice of Fajt disappointed her.

"There is going to be a taint," Orie said. "There is that inference that he is an insider who can be controlled, and you just don't want that on the board."

As for that criticism, Ardo said, "Sen. Orie would be displeased if this administration appointed St. Paul to the gaming board."

Orie and several of her Senate colleagues yesterday introduced a 14-bill package that they said would instill integrity into the board. Among other things, the legislation would limit the ability of board members to have other jobs and would require the state attorney general, rather than the board's agents, to conduct background investigations on gaming applicants.

Senate leaders said they hoped to consider some of the measures by June.

Fajt will be replaced as chief of staff by Steve Crawford, who has served as the governor's secretary of legislative affairs since Rendell took office in 2003. Colleen Kopp, deputy secretary for legislative affairs, will replace Crawford.

Kevin F. O'Toole, 57, the top regulator of the Oneida Indian Nation Gaming Commission in New York, is poised to become executive director of the gaming board and take over its day-to-day operations after a background check.

The previous executive director, Anne L. Neeb, left last year.