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Last week, we learned of a new legal standard in Montgomery County: it doesn’t matter if one blatantly ignores the letter of the law as long as one adheres to the “spirit of the law.” This bold new precedent was unilaterally set by Montgomery County Solicitor Barry Miller in explaining why law firms do not need to submit to the bidding process to get contract work with the County. We also learned from Mr. Miller that there are apparently only eleven––eleven!—law firms in existence that are qualified to do work for the County. As Mr. Miller explained, why bother to submit them to a bidding process when the talent pool is so small?

Whether Mr. Miller believes that “following the spirit of the law” is contingent upon the law firm question having donated to the election campaign of his mentor Jim Matthews is a bit unclear at this point.

The only snag in this brilliant legal reasoning is county ordinance 98-2. This ordinance, implemented during perpetual-candidate-for-any-available-office and ethics crusader extraordinare Joe Hoeffel’s first pass through the County Commissioners’ office back in the late nineties, specifies that any business performed for the county should go out to bid on a Request for Proposal (“RFP”) to no less than five businesses. Ordinance 98-2 was put into place to enable the County avoid the appearance of favoritism, or pay to play, if you will, when soliciting bids for work.

As some more astute folks might point out, if there is no need for law firms, or any other such business that has such a “small pool” from which to draw, to submit competitive bids, what would said business’ motivation be for billing the County at its lowest, most competitive price, when eventually, that business’ turn for a sweet, uncontested, no bid County contract will come its way?

So wonders Bruce Castor, in a memo sent to Barry Miller earlier today:

I have attached a copy for convenience of Ordinance No. 98-2. Your statement at the publicmeeting that the hiring of bond counsel for the most recent issue was done within the “spirit of the law” led me to think you must have been thinking of a different law. Ordinance No. 98-2 requires a written request for proposals go out to prospective lawyers seeking to do legal work of any kind for the county. The system you described where we simply call law firms from an approved list and rotate the business around provides no incentive for the firms to keep costs down. Such firms can charge anything they want knowing that they are on a “wheel” and that our business will eventually get to them. The “spirit of the law” is that firms compete for every job and thus give us the best price each time. If the same firm always gives us the best price, and does a capable job, I see no reason why that firm shouldn’t get all the county’s work. We are not in the law firm welfare business. Our job is to get the best possible professional work at the lowest possible price for the taxpayers, while at the same time avoiding accusations of favoritism. The system we are using does not advance those goals and, in fact, is directly contradictory to the very law we enacted to combat allegations of pay to play.

Since this ordinance applies to all professional services, I wonder if we have routinely failed to comply with its provisions since the current Board took office? Based on your comments last week, I’m guessing we have never followed it. Can you reassure me in this regard? Is it not your duty as Solicitor to make certain that we follow the law, especially those laws the County has enacted itself? Are there other county ordinances that we have decided not to follow? I cannot recall the commissioners ever once discussing (in my presence anyway) the awarding of a contract for an outside law firm. Surely the potential for mischief is obvious when we fail to use the request for proposals system, as required by our own ordinance, and compound that failure by making the selections in secret with no public scrutiny of how these law firms are selected.

I would like a list of all professional service contracts entered into since the current Board assumed office. Further, I would like to know, for each one, whether we sent out written RFPs to at least five professionals as required by Ordinance NO. 98-2 and to whom the requests were sent. As I am sure you realize, this is an issue of great public interest and I request that you provide me with this information at your earliest convenience.

Oh, and Mr. Miller, do you think you can bring this request in for under $245.75?

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David Hentosh at the Jefferson Club blog looks at Mike Fitzpatrick’s announcement…

Former Congressman Mike Fitzpatrick is challenging Murphy for his seat and has asked the GOP not to endorse him until after an open primary (http://tinyurl.com/y99tr6o). Is that a conviction or is it a weather vane reaction? Fitzpatrick was ranked by the National Journal in 2005 as the 24th most liberal Republican in the House of Representatives (http://tinyurl.com/yk6flhp). That may have been an asset then, but the liberal wind is not currently filling many sails.

For whatever reason, it is good for the GOP to delay endorsement. Fitzpatrick needs to clarify his stances such as backing Card Check and the Hate Crime bill and voting against the Marriage Protection Amendment and drilling in ANWR. If his views have changed on matters such as these, voters need to know – and they need to know why.

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You know the RCA dog Nipper? His cute, little head tilted to one side when he heard sound from the RCA phonograph in years gone by.

Well, my head went “RCA dog” when I attended the Mike Kelly meet-and-greet at Beans on Broad in Grove City, PA. Kelly is one of many GOPers who want to unseat Kathy Dahlkemper in PA-3. When I showed up, many of the party insiders were there. I briefly spoke to Kelly before he was about to give his speech – seemed like a nice guy.

Mercer County GOP Chairman David King stood in front of the group to introduce Kelly. And that’s when it happened – King called Kelly “our” candidate. Really.

I asked him about it afterward, wondering if I missed an announcement about an endorsement. King quickly got defensive and said he must have misspoke since the MerCo GOP has an open primary. Fine. I’m not naive, but people do make mistakes. Explanation accepted.

I then asked him if he was going to the Clayton Grabb event in Hermitage that afternoon. He knew NOTHING about it. It was an incredibly strange admission for the person who is the leader of the county party. I had heard rumors that Kelly was the GOP pick, and when coupled with the “accidental” endorsement, this ignorance of Grabb’s event was quite striking.

Then Grabb’s event came along, which I sadly missed – my class at Duquesne was calling, of course. Fortunately, The Herald showed up to report on it (Matt Snyder was also at the Kelly event). To my “surprise” it seems that Chairman King took Grabb to task when he said that the GOP needed to return to its roots of conservatism. Now, in all fairness, I don’t know how much of the story is embellishment. The encounter might have taken ten seconds. But the substance is what matters.

A participant in several Tea Party events, Grabb promised to bring conservative values back to the Republican Party.

David O. King, Mercer County’s Republican party chair, took issue with that. He said he’s been active locally for 20 years and wasn’t aware their values had changed. He also asked why more Tea Party activists can’t swing by the Republican headquarters in Mercer.

Grabb initially said that Republicans had swung too far toward the center, which King said he “doesn’t believe.”

Several members of the audience, who said they attended Tea Party rallies, took issue with that. They cited the 2008 presidential run of Sen. John McCain and last year’s House race in New York in which party leaders chose liberal Dede Scozzafova as their nominee. Conservative opposition to that choice sunk Scozzafova’s campaign and highlighted the gulf between party leaders and rank-and-file voters.

You see, King said NOTHING when Kelly said basically the same thing. In fact, he was glowing as Kelly spoke. Kelly lampooned the fiscal mess the GOP and the Dems have made.

And BOTH Kelly and Grabb are right. The GOP is a mess. You only have to look at the slobbering support for McCain (a socialist Republican if there ever was one). When you get to the county level, there was support for Arlen “he’s with us when it counts” Specter and continual glowing praise for Phil “I never met pork I didn’t like” English. And then there’s state senator Bob Robbins who gladly catalogs his pork on his own Web site. Most recently, we have seen overwhelming support for Tom “I’m too busy campaigning to do my job” Corbett. Ugh.

Yes, King has a job to do – to show a unified GOP. Personally, such a job would make me sick. I’m conservative first and foremost. The GOP just happens to be the closest political party to match my views. But it has been a pathetic shadow of its former self since 1994. After that, the GOP congress got greedy and sloppy. Bush killed us with his spending and getting TARP I underway. Our Harrisburg contingent (with few exceptions) went spending-silly, including the disgusting payjacking, WAM abuse, and staff bonusgate.

If King isn’t aware that the GOP has steered violently to the left, then perhaps he should step down. And if he can’t appear equal during an “open” primary, then he absolutely needs to step down immediately.

-Rich Talbert

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“FOJ” of course, meaning “Friends of Jim Matthews”.

As the Times Herald reported last night, Montgomery County awarded two contracts for legal work on a bond issue to Cozen O’Connor and Pepper Hamilton. According to a county ordinance enacted in 1998, during the first tenure of Government Floater Joe Hoeffel, all county work must be put out for competetive bid to at least five companies. County Solicitor Barry Miller, who, of late, was attempting to charge County Commissioner Bruce Castor $245.75 to view the RFP that was supposedly put out to bid on the county health care contract (The health care brokerage contract was awarded, coincidentally, to another FOJ, CBIZ) claims that the awarding of those contracts follows the “spirit of the law.” The Times Herald reports this morning:

During the discussion, Castor pressed Miller about Ordinance No. 98-2 that calls for providing RFPs to “not less than five” persons who have submitted statements of their qualifications and interest in a contract.

“Did we follow our own law or not?” he asked.

Miller didn’t believe the procurement ordinance, adopted when Hoeffel, Mario Mele and Richard S. Buckman served as commissioners more than a decade ago, applied in all cases to contracting for lawyers, accountants, architects, engineers, consultants and other professional services.

“We have not sent out RFPs for every bond issue,” Miller said. “I think we’ve complied with the spirit of the law.”

The measure is not subject to the competitive bidding process nor must a contract be awarded to the “lowest responsible bidder,” according to Section 4 of the law.

Instead of sending out RFPs, Miller said county officials called law firms on the phone.

According to a county official, Pepper Hamilton would be paid between $75,000 and $85,000 for its services as bond counsel; Cozen O’Connor $49,000 as underwriter counsel.

A review of Matthews campaign finance report filed Jan. 29 by the Friends of Jim Matthews reveals that in December, a Cozen O’Connor political action committee contributed $2,000 to Matthews’ campaign. Miller is Matthews’ campaign treasurer.

Miller’s explanation of the County’s failure to send out the required RFP’s was that there is such a “small pool” of law firms available to do that work. County officials drew up a list of 11 qualified law firms.

That’s right, Mr. Miller: 5 is a much larger number than 11. No need to give those other nine firms a chance at a county contract, much less give three more of them a chance to bid on it. Especially when one of them has been so generous to the man who got you your job: Jim Matthews.

Via Facebook, State Rep. Mike Vereb informs me that Harrisburg Attorneys have already been engaged to look into the allegations of “pay to play” in Montgomery County, in particular the authenticity of the RFP for the health insurance contract that was supposed to have been distributed by another very good FOJ, CBIZ.

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The Times Herald is reporting that soliciting bids for County work without the required five RFP’s is apparently CBIZness business as usual.  For two of the three commissioners, at least:

Montgomery County approved a $35 million bond issue Thursday, but may have violated a 1998 ordinance that requires request for proposals be sent out seeking competitive bids for bond counsel.

When Commissioner Bruce L. Castor Jr. raised the issue just before the vote, Solicitor Barry Miller said the county had not sent out the required five RFPs for the legal work to be performed by Cozen O’Connor and Pepper Hamilton law firms.

Commissioners James R. Matthews and Joseph M. Hoeffel voted to approve the bond issue; Castor voted against it.

Color me shocked—SHOCKED, I tell you—-that the vote on this bond counsel issue went down as it did.

And speaking of RFP’s, the infamous CBIZ RFP apparently appeared on Mr. Castor’s desk today, if not exactly by “magic,” at least free of charge. If you haven’t read it yet, don’t miss the whole story on Bill Shaw’s WRITEMARSH.

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Lisa, I’m at a loss to understand exactly why Montgomery County’s Office of the Solicitor put restrictions on the reading of the RFP…

Stunned for being charged for information commissioners’ staff retrieved for him, he asked chief operating officer Robert Graf for the RFP on Monday, but he was referred to solicitor Barry Miller. Later that same day, Castor was told he would be allowed to view the RFP, but he first had to agree to review the 375-page original over a 24-hour period in his office, not make any copies and not to take the documents out of One Montgomery Plaza, he said. He refused to sign for the material.

“I didn’t actually get anything,” he said.

He called imposing such restrictions on an elected commissioner’s access to critical county business an abuse of power.

“They think they can do anything they want,” he said.

Surely Commissioner Hoeffel, would-be Governor, would not permit these kind of restrictions in our new age of political transparency. Backrooms deals are a relic of the past, eh, Mr Hoeffel?

Hoeffel, Matthews & CBIZ are up to something, and the sand is running out of the hourglass.

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The Times Herald’s request for information regarding CBIZ’s RFP for the county has hit a $265.25 snag:

In response to a Dec. 3 records request, The Times Herald was told the county did not have the CBIZ’s solicitations for health care; however, in January an RFP appears on a list the county solicitor provided to the publication. Also on the list is a “vendor payment history” for CBIZ from 2003 to 2009. However, Miller’s office is asking The Times Herald to pay $265.25 for copies of records prior to their release.

Furthermore, CBIZ is insisting on charging County Commissioner Bruce Castor $245.75 for a copy of the document prepared at the request of the County for benefit of the County. Now setting aside the enormous fees that CBZ receives for the exclusive insurance brokering deal they have with the County, it is especially egregious that they have the gall to charge the County taxpayers for a document that has so much bearing on the County’s budget. Furthermore, you’d think they could just scan it in and send Mr. Castor and the Herald a .pdf, which wouldn’t cost them any paper or ink at all.

That being said, the Times Herald is in the business of reporting the news. If they have to pay to get that information, right or wrong, they should just man up and pay the bill and quit whining about the expense so that the people finally can get to the bottom of this story.

In their capacity as exclusive insurance broker for Montgomery County, CBIZ gets a nice fat fee from Blue Cross for assuming no risk by convincing the County to self insure. The County had to self insure simply because CBIZ claims, due to the $6 million loss Blue Cross claims it incurred on insuring the County last year, that there were no other insurance companies willing to insure the County. One would think that the document used to supposedly solicit those bids from other insurance companies would be a matter of public record for the County, given the expense and the fact that the insurance risk that will now be borne by the County.

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Marcy Toepel won the endorsement of the MontcoGOP tonight to be their candidate for the vacancy in the 147th district, vacated when Bob Mensch became a State Senator.

The special election will take place on May 18th, along with the 2010 primaries.

Bill Shaw notes another victim of the Matthews Effect…

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While the clock ticks on that Times Herald freedom of information request, looking for, among other things, a request for proposal (RFP) for health insurance prepared on behalf of the county for that benefit the county that is apparently so “proprietary” to CBIZ that Bruce Castor, one of the three of the Montgomery County Commissioners, is unqualified to even look at it, I wonder:

When was the last time Montgomery County bid out property and casualty insurance? And who has that contract?

And will the RFPs for the P & C business, assuming that they even exist, of course, also turn out to be “proprietary” information?

For those who may be unfamiliar with what an “Request for Proposal” is, Wiki defines an RFP as follows:

A request for proposal (referred to as RFP) is an invitation for suppliers, often through a bidding process, to submit a proposal on a specific commodity or service. A bidding process is one of the best methods for leveraging a company’s negotiating ability and purchasing power with suppliers. The RFP process brings structure to the procurement decision and allows the risks and benefits to be identified clearly upfront. The RFP purchase process is lengthier than others, so it is used only where its many advantages outweigh any disadvantages and delays caused. The added benefit of input from a broad spectrum of functional experts ensures that the solution chosen will suit the company’s requirements.

The RFP may dictate to varying degrees the exact structure and format of the supplier’s response. The creativity and innovation that suppliers choose to build into their proposals may be used to judge supplier proposals against each other, at the risk of failing to capture consistent information between bidders and thus hampering the decision making process. Effective RFPs typically reflect the strategy and short/long-term business objectives, providing detailed insight upon which suppliers will be able to offer a matching perspective.

Similar requests include a request for quotation and a request for information.

In other words, a request for proposal is is just a tool of a fair and open bidding process between rival vendors. Of course, an RFP would be unnecessary and nonexistent if there is no competition for said business.

So if the RFP for the health insurance contract is not made available to the public, let alone one of the County Commissioners, it would suggest that either there are literally no insurance brokers in the Montgomery County area interested in bidding for county business, or that CBIZ was the only broker considered.

And knowing that there are other insurance brokers in the area, presumably many who would enjoy a nice contract with one of the richest counties in the state, one would then have to wonder why CBIZ was the only broker considered.

That’s IF the RFP is not produced, of course.

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Stumbled across this on YouTube.

Remember that the worst offender is now Joe Hoeffel’s best friend.

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What’s this?

The Times Herald previously reported that since 2006, CBIZ officials have contributed a total of $24,463 to Matthew’s political campaign coffers. In 2007, contributions totaled $14,875, with five executives making monetary contributions adding up to $12,375 on Oct. 9, 2007, less than a month before the 2007 election, according to campaign finance reports.

Just 12 days earlier, CBIZ gave the Damsker-Hoeffel campaign five equal contributions adding up to $12,500. However, Castor, who was favored to win a seat on the board, was apparently not on the consultant’s donors’ list.

On Feb. 12, 2008, CBIZ senior executive F. Bruce Walter gave Matthews, by then the commissioners’ chairman, a $1,000 campaign donation. Three months later, Walter gave $200 to Hoeffel’s campaign, according to 2008 campaign records.

However, a search through Castor’s 2007 campaign finance reports showed no donations from the consultant’s employees.

So after Bruce Castor procures the most votes in the county election, with Joe Hoeffel and Jim Matthews bringing up second and third, respectively, Jim Matthews cuts that notorious “power sharing” deal with fellow CBIZ contributee Joe Hoeffel effectively leaving Castor out in the cold.

Joe Hoeffel, well known in Montgomery County as the perpetual candidate for any available office, is currently ramping up his campaign for PA Governor.

Requests by County Commissioner Castor to view the request for proposal (”RFP”) that was submitted on behalf of the county for benefits for the county have been deemed “proprietary information” by CBIZ senior executive F. Bruce Walter.

Hmmm……

In response to an open records request, the Times Herald is expecting more documents by January 29. Stay tuned.

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Looks like Don Patrille is live tweeting the conservative candidates forum.

Keep refreshing.

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Written by Roberta Biros

The news was official on December 31st. The former County Nursing home, Woodland Place, has officially been sold and is off the County’s books. The story was worthy of a multi-page write up in The Herald, and the current County Commissioners were reportedly celebratory. I hate to be the party pooper, but I’d like to step back and put the news story into perspective.

First, I’d like to thank Matt Snyder for a well-written and well-rounded article that appeared in the December 30, 2009, issue of The Herald (read the full story HERE). Matt did a great job of talking to all of the parties involved and organizing a neat little historical review. I’ve written many articles about Woodland Place and I know how difficult it is to pull the facts together (read my Woodland Place articles HERE). I only have one complaint about the article, and that is that Matt Snyder is just too darn nice sometimes. I, on the other hand, am not afraid of being a little more critical where I think it is deserved. That is, of course, the purpose of today’s blog post.

In the case of the article in The Herald, there seemed to be lots of back patting of the current Commissioners (or perhaps that was them patting their own backs . . . I’m not absolutely sure), but in my opinion Woodland Place was sold despite the efforts (or lack thereof) of the County Commissioners. My own experiences gave me the impression that the County Commissioners weren’t losing any sleep over finding a buyer for the failed nursing home. Instead, my perception (and the perception of others) has been that the Commissioners were sitting by waiting for someone to find a solution to the problem in hopes that they could take credit for it. Allow me to explain . . .

The article in The Herald stated that the current commissioners all ran for office in 2007 on the platform of cleaning up the mess that was Woodland Place. That part of the story is absolutely true. It was then implied that “once the commissioners were all on the same page”, they were able to work hard together to find a new buyer. This is the portion of the story that I have issues with (and I’ll come back to those issues in just a minute).

The Herald also mentions that the buyer of Woodland Place was brought to the commissioners by State Representative Michele Brooks. That tidbit of information is also factual. What the article doesn’t mention, however, is that the Commissioners weren’t falling over themselves to look for or court the potential manager / buyer. My sources within the Mercer County political scene tell me that the commissioners were somewhat unresponsive and actually ignored the original queries posed by John Hughes of South Western Alpha. It was only through contact with the office of Representative Michele Brooks that Hughes was able to get the attention of the Commissioners office. So I ask, should the commissioners get credit for the deal or were they simply taken along for the ride (kicking and screaming, perhaps)?

Some people might find the suggestion odd, but I do not. I was contacted by an interested party just last January under similar circumstances. An organization from eastern Pennsylvania contacted me by email asking if I could put them in touch with the people responsible for a possible deal regarding Woodland Place. They were interested in discussing the possible purchase of Woodland Place but their queries were going unanswered. I provided names, email addresses, and phone numbers of the three County Commissioners. Several weeks later I was contacted again by the same individual. This time the complaint was that none of the commissioners were returning calls or email messages. The contact asked if I could get involved to assist. I contacted the commissioners again by email but I never received a response.

How many other “potential buyers” were out there? How many “interested parties” were turned away or discouraged because Commissioners Ken Ammann, John Lechner, and Brian Beader weren’t doing their job? How many “opportunities” knocked but received no answer because Ammann, Lechner, and Beader ignored calls, letters, and email messages?

At that time, the ‘story’ was that the commissioners were already attempting to strike a deal with Hughes, and they weren’t interested in pursuing new offers. As a taxpayer in Mercer County I found the lack of interest from the Commissioners’ Office to be insulting. Even if a deal was in the works, it would have been to the benefit of Mercer County taxpayers for ALL offers to be put on the table. After all, a little competition could have gone a long way to sweeten the deal for taxpayers. Unfortunately, that never happened.

Based on my experiences and those reported to me by others, it seems that the commissioners were simply waiting for the right deal to “fall into their lap”. It gives the appearance that the commissioners wanted a solution with as little effort as possible . . . and that is exactly what they got. Unfortunately, that is also what Mercer County taxpayers have been asked to settle for. Why? . . . because Commissioners Ken Ammann, John Lechner, and Brian Beader were only willing to do the absolute minimum.

Was the final deal for Woodland Place the best deal for Mercer Countians? We will really never know. The people of Mercer County were simply treated like mushrooms . . . kept in the dark and fed “manure” (yes, I just edited myself there). If there was a better deal out there, none of us will ever know about it, and I would expect that the Commissioners weren’t looking for it either.

On another stream of consciousness, I’d like to discuss a different issue and concern. Commissioners make quite a deal of them “all being on the same page” and “presenting a united front”. I guess this is supposed to be a way to criticize past Commissioners, but I find the argument silly (at best) and misleading (at worst).

I’m of the opinion that maybe our three commissioners all being on the same page isn’t the best for us, the taxpayers. Government was originally established with a set of checks and balances in place. This prevented corruption and protected “we, the people”. Diversity promotes discussion, argument, and new ideas. The “three commissioners” (a.k.a., Moe, Larry, and Curly) all want to just sit comfortably in the courthouse and share in chuckles and back patting (nyuck, nyuck, nyuck). They figure that discord makes waves and waves make for difficult (and expensive) re-elections. Unfortunately, while they are celebrating the “Mercer County Good Ol’ Boys Club” the taxpayers of Mercer County will continue to be handed tax increases and excuses from “the team”.

I’d love to see one of the “three commissioners” stand up for something . . . anything! Rather than rubber stamping each other, the “three commissioners” should be double checking each other.

So I say to Ammann, Lechner, and Beader (Moe, Larry, and Curly) . . . “grow a pair (or ‘find a pair’) . . . if you can’t, let me know and I’ll lend you mine.”

As always, just my opinion.

~Mercer County Conservatives

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Maybe, maybe, maybe.

Now comes word that, after sitting out a 2008 rematch against Democratic U.S. Rep Patrick Murphy, who defeated him in 2006, former U.S. Rep. Michael Fitzpatrick may be ready to challenge Murphy in the Eighth District, which covers Bucks County and parts of Montgomery County and the Northeast.

Harry Fawkes, Bucks County GOP chairman, said Friday that he expected a decision from Fitzpatrick within five days. He said Fitzpatrick would give Republicans a “pretty good” shot at winning.

The GOP has also set its eyes on a number of other Democratic seats in Pennsylvania that it thinks are in play because of the shifting national mood. An early hint of that might have been seen in November, when Republicans won six of seven appellate-court judicial races in Pennsylvania.

But as the Republican Party goes on offense, it must try to defend the ground it holds. That’s where Gerlach comes in.

A battle-tested candidate, Gerlach can expect big-money support from the National Republican Congressional Committee in his effort to retain GOP control of the Sixth District, which spans portions of Chester, Montgomery, and Berks Counties.

Gerlach said Thursday that he was dropping out of the May 18 gubernatorial primary because he was having trouble raising money for a statewide campaign.

After he announced Friday that he would run again for his House seat, Congressional Quarterly moved the contest from its widely watched “toss-up” list to its “leans Republican” list.

“Gerlach has saved that seat for Republicans. I think they would have lost it otherwise,” said Larry J. Sabato, who conducts election forecasting at the University of Virginia Center for Politics.

Best quotes come from Montgomery County Democrat Chairman Marcel Groen…

Marcel Groen, veteran Democratic chairman of Montgomery County, said Gerlach was probably the front-runner. Democrats haven’t sorted out their crowded field of primary candidates.

But Groen said Democrats would concede nothing to the GOP this year – not in the suburbs, not elsewhere in Pennsylvania, not anywhere.

“Twelve months ago, Democrats assumed that the Republican Party in the Northeast was dead,” Groen said. “We were wrong . . . but they haven’t accomplished much yet.”

The election was in November and the victors took office last week.

.. said Mr Groen, who despite a 30000 vote registration advantage, lost six of seven judicial elections in his home county. Big words from the man who was the architect of the Pampers and Luvs campaign. “We dont have any Democrat judges in Montco, waaaaaaah.”

All that being said, it’s good news in Bucks County is Mike Fitzpatrick comes back. “Blue Dog” Patrick Murphy has gotten a slide on his liberal record for far too long.

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I acknowledge depending on me for anecdotal evidence on what the hoi polloi think is generally a poor strategy.

But one thing I am NOT hearing regarding Jim Gerlach’s decision to finally settle, for now, on running for his old Congressional seat is this:

Oh, that’s great. I really wasn’t that crazy about any of the other candidates, and he’s a wonderful Congressman. This will ensure we win the seat, and that’s the most important thing.

This is pretty much Gerlach’s pitch, but I have heard it from exactly one person. And I have spoken to probably about fifteen committeepeople about this mess.

But, as everyone knows, I like Curt Schroder, and the people I talk to may not exactly be a representative sample. My biases– and identity– are as transparent as Marsh Creek ice. Unlike that of, say, some of our commenters. Anyone sensing a different pulse from the street than I am?

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Montgomery County commissioner & far-left progressive candidate for Governor Joe Hoeffel has injected himself into the story over Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl’s veto of a prevailing wage bill.

Mr. Hoeffel’s intervention in the city of Pittsburgh dispute reverberated in the competition for the Democratic nomination in that its target, Mr. Ravenstahl, is a close ally of Mr. Onorato, who is one of Mr. Hoeffel’s chief competitors. The North Side native is expected to report a fundraising total later this month that will dwarf Mr. Hoeffel’s war chest.

Speaking after Mr. Ravenstahl’s inauguration earlier this week, Mr. Onorato professed to be unconcerned by Mr. Hoeffel’s foray into his political backyard, or by his overall strategy of more liberal elements of the party’s base.

“I think Mr. Hoeffel may be surprised by the support I have with progressives, including progressives in [southeastern Pennsylvania],” Mr. Onorato said.

Asked for his reaction to the veto, Mr. Onorato declined to criticize his North Side neighbor. Without offering details, however, Mr. Onorato did say that he favored the general concept of a prevailing wage for projects supported by local government economic development funds.

Despite Mr. Hoeffel’s embrace of the Pittsburgh proposal, his own county has no similar measure on its books.

However, his co-campaign manager Lauren Townsend said he likes the idea and added that he had directed his staff to explore the idea of a similar requirement for Montgomery County.

The prevailing wage is an average of wages for a particular job (trade, position) in a certain area (in this case Pittsburgh), and it would affect projects with at least $100K in city money or 100,000 square feet in size. Which means that any city project or any office development. Mandating pay like this tends to discourage development. Ravenstahl was right to veto it.

The news that Hoeffel plans to “bring it home” to Montco is troubling. The Philly suburbs have long the beneficiaries of the City of Philadelphia’s fiscal messes and business unfriendly revenue schemes. Indeed, we can point to the King of Prussia and Fort Washington and Pharm belt developments as evidence of the migration.

Chester and Lehigh counties (especially) will be thanking you in a few years for their new jobs, Joe.

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I break some news in here. Read on, and see if you can guess what it is!

Jim Gerlach announcing his premature ejection from the gubernatorial race was only a surprise because, if this was his plan, we would have expected him to back out already. He never got any traction. His own county chairman– a man Jim made look good by winning close election after close election– wouldn’t get behind him early, and completely screwed him by outright endorsing Corbett about a month ago.

Does this mean Jim will want his old Congressional seat back? The one in which  four or five Republicans have already declared interest?

Well, maybe. Let’s think this through.

Jim did not call and tell the other campaigns he WASN’T interested in the seat The easiest course for Jim and his campaign stash is for him to run again for his seat via an uncontested primary.

Millionaire and recent Democrat Steve Welch is in this race, and was persuaded to switch to it by party committee types to clear the way for another gubernatorial flame-out: Pat Meehan. So Steve, one would hope, is finally done listening to those people, and perhaps in his heart of hearts wishes he listened to the regular voters who told him to stay in PA7 in the first place.

As an aside, I should acknowledge flameout is a little harsh. All the committee bigwigs lined up behind Corbett early. Meehan and Gerlach were never seriously considered by them, and were treated poorly. By extension, those party types basically gave the finger to voters in PA6 and PA7 by trying to dictate how their congressional primaries would go from Harrisburg.

Curt Schroder, by most accounts the frontrunner in this primary right now, has been intending to run this race for a long time. Gerlach waited a long time before officially declaring, and now he’s backed out pretty darned late. I don’t have any inside information on this one, but I would wager Schroder isn’t particular interested in stepping aside at this point. That dude is ready to rumble.

What about the others: Cohen, Sellers, and that other dude I got mail from today? What’s his name? The geologist with solar panels on his house?

Well, what they think is pretty inconsequential, except for the fact that the more crowded the primary, the better their respectively small chances will be. So Gerlach coming in probably won’t chase any of them out. Except for Cohen, maybe, who is trying to run on the “I already know how Washington works, because I’ve been there!” platform. As if that were a recommendation.

So my guess is Gerlach is trying to figure out if the others will get out of his way. They will say no. Then Jim will consider the Lt. Governor’s race. Personally, I think that’s ideal for him. He can increase his name-recognition across the whole Commonwealth by running in that race, prepping himself for Governor or Senate.

Thing is, that’s what the state party dudes have been telling him to do all along. And Jim is cheesed at those dudes. A while back he expressed some interest to have talks with Curt Schroder about an endorsement swap. This would have been weird for him to do, since the primary field was so crowded, and one of Curt’s opponents had a conceivable chance of winning.

I think Jim considered it because he knew Curt was not the favorite of the party leaders, but of the party grassroots. And, at least partly, this was a way for him to make a little dig at those leaders.

So, is Jim prepared to do what those same leaders always wanted him to do, which was run for Lt. Governor? Does he want to drop a nuclear daisy-cutter on PA6 and create one of the biggest clusterf**k primaries of all time? Does he actually feel like practicing law or becoming a government affairs specialist at Merck, making himself very wealthy without having to work much, but spiking his further political career? Is he rich enough to do nothing, and just start running for Senate?

If the last one is not possible– and I don’t know one way or the other– expect him to do the first one. Jim did not get this far by thinking too far outside the box. We should expect this pattern to continue.

UPDATE

Shows you what I know:

http://www.rollcall.com/news/42090-1.html

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Times-Herald:

A bill under consideration in the state Senate would allow dozens of counties, including Luzerne, to eliminate the position of jury commissioner by a simple majority vote of county commissioners.

Luzerne County has two jury commissioners, one elected by Republicans and one by Democrats. On Monday, Republican Jury Commissioner Frank Semanski was sworn in to another four-year term. No Democrat took the oath because the man the party members elected to serve, Jerry Bonner, pleaded guilty in federal court last month to passing a bribe and could get probation when he’s sentenced. Voters reelected Bonner while he was under federal indictment for the charges in November.

That’s epic victory for the Democrats.

But sadly it’s not just crooked Luzerne County Democrats.

Closer to my home, Montco’s Democrat Jury Commissioner, Joanne Olszewski, resigned her post in 2007 when it was discovered that her bar had illegal poker machines.

She was nominated by her party and re-elected in 2009.

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Keep counting on that progressive wave, Joe.

Montgomery County Commissioner Joe Hoeffel, one of the Democratic candidates for governor, sent out a release late Monday proclaiming the fact that he will report receipts of more than $400,000 for the filing period that ended on New Yea’s Eve. The statement characterized this as good news for his campaign, and maybe it will prove to be. But our friends at the Philadelphia Inquirer reported recently that Mr. Hoeffel had told supporters that his goal was to raise $1 million by Dec. 31.

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Way back when, about 2 years ago, Jim Matthews would have the good people of Montgomery County think he was interested in running a bipartisan government, an agreement he made with commissioner-elect Hoeffel in a power grab designed to leave Republican Commissioner, Bruce L. Castor, Jr. out of the proverbial “loop”, subsequently empowering he and J-Huf to pack the courthouse with his political buddies, in the worst case of patronage gone wild that anyone can recall.

Well, today, in the true spirit of bipartisanship, The county commissioners, along with the row officers, all came to Norristown High School to witness history…the first time in the history of our county that there has been 7 judges sworn in, the first time that 5 female judges have been sworn in at one time, and the first time a democrat has been elected to the bench in the 38th district, court of common pleas.

Only, Joe Hoeffel was nowhere to be found. That is, until Lois Murphy, the lone democrat elected to the bench, was sworn in.

J-Huf waltzed in right before Murphy was to be sworn in, and left right afterward. Truer bipartisanship has never been demonstrated…

Even Jimbo stayed for all 7. Joe…you ought to be ashamed of yourself.

On a side note, it was a very nice morning, as I got to see people I think an awful lot of sworn in to the bench…respect to each and every one of them.

B.

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