Another top Kane aide quits Pa. AG's office

HARRISBURG - A second top aide to Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen G. Kane is leaving.

Linda Dale Hoffa, senior executive deputy attorney general, told Kane this week that after two years in Harrisburg, she has decided to return to Philadelphia to be with her family. Her last day is Sept. 30.

"It's time to go home," Hoffa wrote in an e-mail to colleagues Friday informing them of her decision.

Hoffa, in an e-mail exchange with The Inquirer, said she had promised her family she would return to Philadelphia after spending two years in Harrisburg.

As for her next move, she wrote: "I have some coals in the fire."

In June, Kane's top deputy, Adrian King, returned to private practice.

Hoffa's departure follows several tumultuous months at the Attorney General's Office after The Inquirer revealed that Kane had shut down a long-running sting investigation in which four Philadelphia state legislators and a Traffic Court judge had been caught on tape allegedly taking payoffs.

It also comes as Kane's office prepares to mount a signature public-corruption trial: the pay-to-play case against former top officials at the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission.

Kane, a Democrat, inherited the turnpike investigation from her predecessor, Republican Linda Kelly. Shortly after taking office in January 2013, she decided that the evidence was strong enough to charge eight people, including a former state senator, with crimes ranging from bribery to bid-rigging.

The case is widely viewed as Kane's first test at handling a high-profile, high-stakes prosecution. The case suffered a blow last month after the prosecutor who was handling it, Laurel Brandstetter, left the Attorney General's Office.

Kane also has been under scrutiny in recent weeks by a special prosecutor who has been tasked with investigating whether her office leaked secret grand jury information.

Kane has declined to comment on that inquiry.

Hoffa, a longtime federal prosecutor in Philadelphia, was part of a team of top lawyers that Kane brought in after winning the office in a landslide.

Before coming to Harrisburg, Hoffa worked for 25 years in the U.S. Attorney's Office in Philadelphia, at one point heading its criminal division and supervising all investigations and prosecutions.

She also served as Sen. Arlen Specter's senior criminal counsel for the Committee on the Judiciary.

717-787-5934 @AngelasInk