Attorney General Kathleen Kane’s term has been awash in scandal and lawsuits, which has poisoned the atmosphere of the AG’s office.
The staff members who remain deal with an atmosphere of trepidation, reports Wallace McKelvey of the Patriot-News.
“There was almost this sense that every day, they’d shoot another hostage,” a former staffer told McKelvey. “You never knew if they’d come for you.”
According to court filings in the criminal case and lawsuits from ex-staffers, the office was defined by a “culture of paranoia,” as Kane fought against enemies both real and imagined.
As a result of this atmosphere, many employees have left while those remaining worry about their job security.
“I joked with people initially that I was suffering PTSD,” one ex-staffer stated. “But I think that was actually true. When people [at my new job] would compliment my work product or thank me for working hard, I was looking over my shoulder all the time to see if there was a knife in my back.”
Kane does not often show up to the main office in Harrisburg, instead choosing to work in the Scranton office closer to home. Although she apparently still has eyes and ears in the state’s capital.
For his article, McKelvey was touring the office with Kane’s spokesman Chuck Ardo when Ardo received a call. The Patriot-News reporter could hear Kane from several feet away. The office is now “off limits” to the press.
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Brad Kirsch-
I like/respect you, but I’d take money from child pornographers before the school charter PAC.
It’s not like Josh needed the money AND (let’s not forget), he actively tried to hide the donation until the last possible minute, to delay the PFT pulling their endorsement until it was too late. Nothing to be proud of here.
Well said, Brad. Has Fina resigned yet?
David, I like your spirit wherein you believe that any politician must shun money in order to be moral. I can speak to moral because I have run campaigns with only my own money. Partly because I couldn’t get it as a long shot in a severely overweighted district and partly because I didn’t want to (knowing I faced an uphill battle) con anyone into paying for my long-shot attempts.
So you put me in a place where I personally like you and actually like that you believe in truth justice and fair play. But, they are concepts that are not viable or ever real in the financing of political campaigns. This is the real problem not the who of those who must live and be able to get elected in order to do any public service.
The unfortunate part is that after living almost 8 decades I have found that politics is not about truth, justice and fair play. It is about power, influence, record of achievement and the money needed to lure reluctant voters to the polls. Thus, I lean more to what the person has achieved!
I have had the luxury of being free from the worries of political correctness as my views are honest and not financed by anyone but myself. Every politician I know has conflicts with the present funding systems. So pointing to any one as not being pure is sort of a superfluous statement. Especially on a site like Politics PA where insiders are fully aware that money and attempted influence is part of the game and the problem in the game.
That being said I have also known and admired Josh for his center as a human being, his articulate and defined platforms and his ability to accomplish what he sets out to do.
I, as a former School Board Member, resist the charter movement until we fully fund schools to the former levels we once did in our state. At one time it was almost 50% not in the present levels that are totally inadequate. How we can add profits into a system that is already underfunded is insane. So we agree Charters are not a great choice except in districts that are very wealthy. To my view they create a sad and unbalanced state system.
So, I cannot use a purity test about accepting money from a phone company versus a soft drink company versus a Charter Bus or School Company. The AG will have to prosecute fraud and I do believe that Josh will not shrink from that duty when he finds it..
I also believe that we live in a real world and if voters would come out in the numbers necessary to erase the need for money we would not be having this dispute about where and how the money is distributed by the donors.
A Couple Malcontents at AG’s Office Speak Out on Condition of Anonymity