Posted: Wednesday, 21 October 2009 10:47AM
Now You See 'Em, Now You Don't
Steve Corbett Reporting
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
If Luzerne County Register of Wills Dottie Stankovik was flustered when I called this morning to see if she was working, she didn’t show it.
She even called me “hon.”
“Guess you taking a lot of heat this morning,” I said.
“About what?” Dottie asked.
“The story in the paper,” I said.
“What paper?”
Dottie indicated that she hadn’t read Michael Buffer’s article in today’s Citizens Voice.
I told her that Buffer had documented that she only used her county security access card 61 percent of the days that her row office was open in the past 21 months. But Dottie told Buffer that her not using her card does not mean she was not working at her elected position in her office in the Penn Place office on North Pennsylvania Avenue in Wilkes-Barre.
“I was in the office and somebody else used their pass to open up the door,” Dottie told Buffer. “One opens it up and five or six go in.”
Security might be questionable, but Dottie said her work ethic is sound.
“I’m always here,” she said. “I’m here now.”
At 9:36 this morning, Dottie was indeed on the job.
And she promised to call “Corbett” at 3:35 this afternoon to talk about her responsibilities to uphold the public trust and explain criticism from her opponent that she does a half-hearted job of public service.
Democrat Dottie is the only one of seven elected county row officers who is up for re-election this year.
Republican opponent Gina Nevenglosky claims that she has stopped by Dottie’s office “some 20 times this year” and that Dottie was never there. But just because Nevenglosky didn’t see her doesn’t mean that Dottie wasn’t there.
Now-you-see-me-now-you-don’t mysteries shape much of the frustration with trying to trust Luzerne County row officers, who are not officially accountable to anybody but themselves. And we know from experience that row officers historically have used the position as a cushion for other interests, including private business.
State requirements do not require row officers to work any set number of hours. They can come and go as they please and do just that. They hire top aides who also have wildly fluctuating schedules and often come and go as they please as well.
One May weekday morning about 10:30, I caught county Clerk of Courts Bobby Reilly selling cars at a lot when I expected him to be earning his public salary at the courthouse.
On another May morning I caught Deputy Recorder of Deeds Mark Carey whom I reached at his Avoca insurance office at 2:30 on a weekday afternoon. Carey is a full-time county worker who is paid $42,200 a year plus benefits. Recorder of Deeds James “Red” O’Brien hired Carey after Carey headed up O’Brien’s campaign for public office out of the same insurance office where Carey was working when I called.
For weeks, tipsters had alerted me to Reilly’s other job and Carey’s concern for his own business rather than for the people’s business.
Recently tipsters have also alerted me to Dottie’s absence from her public office.
Reilly told me he was just filling in for a co-worker. Carey promised to call the show and explain but he broke his word. And now Dottie say’s she’s “always” on the job during courthouse hours.
A former federal prosecutor recently told me that a federal case of honest services theft could be made against public employees who receive public funds for time spent working elsewhere.
It might be a tough case to make, he said, but enough leeway exists in the statute for creative federal investigators to make examples out of goof-off county workers who take advantage of the system that protects them and not the people who pay their salaries.
Get creative.
Maybe some row officers and their pals are working 60 hours a week at home, in their cars and even on vacation – which they don’t have to put in for, anyway. But maybe they’re not even working 20 hours a week.
The FBI might want to punch even harder than they’re already punching in the ongoing public corruption probe in and around Luzerne County. It’s time to make an example out of somebody.
Whoever you are, this means you, hon.
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