Wolf to keep Pa. corrections chief

HARRISBURG - Gov.-elect Tom Wolf's cabinet is filling up.

On Monday, he announced that he had asked Corrections Secretary John Wetzel to stay on in that job.

Wolf also said he had selected Curt Topper, head of purchasing for Georgetown University, to lead the Department of General Services, and Teresa Miller, a partner at the Crowell & Moring law firm and a former administrator of the Oregon Insurance Division, to head the commonwealth's insurance department.

Wetzel, who has spearheaded efforts to reduce the state's prison population, is the first member of Republican Gov. Corbett's cabinet to be asked to remain on the job by the incoming Democratic governor.

Wetzel "shares my view that we need to be tough on crime and put the rights of victims first, while protecting the taxpayers with smart reforms that reduce nonviolent prison sentences and ensure inmates gain skills to become productive members of society," Wolf said in a statement.

The news came on the same day that the Corbett administration announced what it called an "historic drop" in the prison population, attributing it to changes set by Corbett and executed by Wetzel.

The number of inmates in state prisons fell by 908 last year to 50,756 - the lowest total since 2009.

"This also was the largest one-year drop in our population since 1971, and only the fourth time in the past 40 years that our population has shown an annual decrease rather than an increase," said Bret Bucklen, the Department of Corrections' director of planning, research and statistics.

Wetzel rose from a jail warden in rural Franklin County to run one of the largest prison systems in the country when he was named by Corbett to run the agency in 2011. He has emerged as a national leader in corrections.

Last month, he was named to the Charles Colson Task Force on Federal Corrections, a national panel on prison reform.

Wolf said Topper, who was deputy secretary of procurement in Gov. Ed Rendell's administration, has been instrumental in modernizing systems and reducing costs for public and private sector entities. Miller has received national recognition for improving the insurance rate review process in Oregon.

Wolf has roughly two dozen cabinet and senior staff posts to fill and has so far made his choices known for secretaries of revenue and community and economic development, along with senior level staff, including chief of staff and general counsel.

All cabinet secretaries must be confirmed by a majority of the Senate.

Yet to be named are Wolf's picks for the two biggest agencies: human services (formerly the Department of Public Welfare) and education. Wolf has said he will fill the positions by his inauguration next Tuesday.