Former state lawmaker, now leading Delco transit agency, charged with DUI and child endangerment
Nick Miccarelli left Harrisburg in 2018 amid the #MeToo reckoning. He's since held a low profile — but higher paying — job running Delaware County's publicly-funded paratransit agency.
Former State Rep. Nick Miccarelli, who left Harrisburg in 2018 during the #MeToo reckoning and then landed a higher-paying job running a publicly funded transit agency, is facing felony charges of child endangerment after a DUI arrest on the Pennsylvania Turnpike.
Miccarelli, 44, executive director of DELGO Community Transit, which provides subsidized transportation to Delaware County seniors and people with disabilities, was pulled over last Thanksgiving after his ex-wife called 911 as she was headed to meet him for a custody exchange of their two children.
“As she was driving near the King of Prussia exit, she noticed a vehicle ahead almost strike the center barrier,” according to a police report filed in Lancaster County in January. “She came closer to the vehicle and recognized it as Nicholas’ vehicle and it was ‘all over the place.’”
State Trooper John Huffstutler stopped Miccarelli — who was driving his two children, ages 4 and 5 — after watching him tailgate another vehicle on the highway and repeatedly swerve left and right out of the driving lane. The arrest has not been previously reported.
Miccarelli said he had not been drinking or using drugs and explained an odor of mouthwash by saying, “I drink mouthwash from time to time,” according to the complaint.
A blood sample later put his blood alcohol content at 0.198% — more than twice the legal threshold for intoxication — and also showed the presence of Lorazepam, a prescription benzodiazepine that is not supposed to be mixed with alcohol.
Huffstutler also noted in his report that Miccarelli’s children were not in a booster seat, as required by law.
Miccarelli was charged in January with DUI at the highest level (above 0.16%), DUI in combination with a controlled substance, two felony counts of endangering the welfare of children, reckless endangerment, and related offenses.
The case was transferred to Lancaster County Court after Miccarelli waived his preliminary hearing in February. He is free on bail.
Miccarelli declined to comment last week. The arrest report did not indicate whether he was driving his personal vehicle or a vehicle that Community Transit provided to him and insured.
Roger Joseph, chairman of the transit agency’s board of directors, said on Friday that Miccarelli’s arrest was a “personal incident.”
“The board is fully aware of it,” he said.
Joseph said the agency’s “insurance carrier is aware of everything that happened” but declined to say whether Miccarelli was driving a Community Transit vehicle.
Delaware County Council, which allocates state money to Community Transit and appoints some of its board members, “has not been formally notified about this,” county spokesperson Michael Connolly said on Friday.
“It’s certainly something we’re going to dig into and monitor,” Connolly said.
#MeToo troubles
Miccarelli, an Iraq War veteran from Ridley Park, was once seen as a rising star within the Delaware County GOP. He won an election to represent the state’s 162nd House district in 2008.
Ten years later, then-State Rep. Tarah Toohil and an unnamed political consultant filed a confidential complaint with House lawyers accusing him of a range of abuse when they had dated him.
The complaint, which included allegations of physical and sexual assault, was first reported in February 2018 by The Inquirer and the Caucus, a news organization that covered state politics. It came as the #MeToo movement was roiling state legislatures across the country.
Toohil, a Republican from Luzerne County, said Miccarelli assaulted and abused her in 2012, including one instance in which he brandished a gun while driving more than 100 mph and threatened to kill them both.
The consultant, who had asked that her name not be disclosed, said that Miccarelli was mentally and physically abusive when they dated and that he forced her to have sex with him when she tried to end their relationship in late 2014.
Miccarelli has steadfastly denied the allegations. Lawyers for the state House found the women credible and said their statements were corroborated by sources who were “contemporaneously aware” of their claims of abuse.
Toohil was assigned a bodyguard when in the Capitol and obtained a protection-from-abuse order against Miccarelli. She now serves as a Common Pleas Court judge in Luzerne County.
Miccarelli rejected calls for his resignation from House Republican leaders and then-Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, but declined to run for a sixth term and left office at end of the legislative session in November 2018.
That allowed him to retire with free lifetime health benefits offered to lawmakers who serve for 10 or more years. He also received a state pension.
In December 2018, Dauphin County prosecutors said they would not pursue sexual assault charges against Miccarelli, at the request of the consultant. She stood by her allegations but said in a statement at the time that “the prospect of a long and drawn-out criminal proceeding promises even more trauma for me in the future. I simply must move on.”
A new job
Four months later, Miccarelli was appointed as executive director of Community Transit, a nonprofit organization incorporated in 1983 as the Delaware County Transportation Consortium. It employs more than 100 people and provides about 2,167 trips every weekday for county residents.
Democrats at the time questioned whether he got the job due to his political connections. Republicans still had a majority on the county council.
But Community Transit’s director of business development, Wendy Petkus-Mazeika, said in a news release at the time that Miccarelli was the best person for the job: “Nick brings not only a fresh perspective, but a wealth of knowledge of human services issues in the commonwealth.”
DELGO Community Transit receives millions of dollars a year in public funds. Its medical assistance program, for example, is funded by the Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare, while its program for people with disabilities gets financial support from the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation.
In 2024, the agency received $8.9 million in government funding, tax filings show. Some of that was allocated through Delaware County Council.
Over the last seven years, Miccarelli has kept a relatively low profile. He sits on the board of the Pennsylvania Veterans Museum and posts frequently on Facebook.
He mostly stayed out of the news until June, when a flurry of new content starting to appear online praising Miccarelli’s work in the paratransit field.
Miccarelli recently put out a news release calling for more accessible transportation for seniors and veterans, and has created two websites — nickmiccarellitransit.com and nick-miccarelli.com — where he writes about “strengthening community impact and building effective, mission-driven systems.”
As a result of the PR blitz, Googling his name and agency leads to positive headlines in publications as varied as the Aspen Daily News in Colorado, WBOC news in Maryland, and a magazine called Business Matters in Sutton (England, not Massachusetts).
“For Nick Miccarelli, the most important ideas have never been about headlines or attention. They have been about creating systems that work, helping communities function better, and finding practical solutions to real problems,” reads a glowing profile, sans byline, that appeared June 28 in Brainz Magazine.
The headline: “Nick Miccarelli and the Power of Turning Service Into Action.”
Brainz says in a FAQ that it offers “guaranteed, consistent, search-engine-optimized publicity … at a very low fee.” The magazine did not respond to a question about whether the profile was paid content.
Meanwhile, Miccarelli’s salary has increased significantly in recent years.
When hired at Community Transit in 2019 Miccarelli declined to reveal how much he was being paid, telling the Delaware County Daily Times it was “probably not as much as anybody thinks.” He told the Pennsylvania Capital-Star that “people are saying it’s a six figure job and it’s not.”
Tax filings show that Miccarelli’s compensation at Community Transit in 2019 was $105,360.
As a state representative, he earned $87,180 in 2018.
By last year, records show, Miccarelli’s compensation at the transit agency had grown to $159,840.
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