Feb 3, 2007 By Alison Hawkes For The 5 min read

HARRISBURG – House Democratic Leader Bill DeWeese handed out bonuses to all but one of his 28 legislative staffers last year, and to at least 20 additional House employees who separately participated in campaign work in various ways. The bonuses to DeWeese’s employees, in his Harrisburg and his Greene County district offices, added between 1 percent and 62 percent on top of their established salaries. They expanded his $1.3 million taxpayer-funded payroll by $123,700, or 9 percent, in 2006.

The top bonus of $20,250 went to DeWeese’s Chief of Staff Michael Manzo, raising his overall compensation last year by 16 percent to $144,250.

That’s well above the $112,681 salary last year of former Speaker John Perzel, who was the top-paid elected official in the House. Manzo’s total compensation also substantially topped DeWeese’s $104,524 salary last year.

Additionally, a review of DeWeese’s campaign finance reports show many of the same legislative staff who were reimbursed for expenditures they incurred for campaign work, such as travel costs, separately received bonuses for their legislative work.

Nearly half of DeWeese’s 25-member staff were reimbursed from his campaign funds for campaign-related expenditures they incurred, indicating they had some level of activity with the campaign. On the campaign expenditure reports one staffer was also reimbursed for what was termed “payroll.”

Another 20 House Democratic staffers, who don’t work directly for DeWeese, received reimbursement from DeWeese’s campaign coffers and then separately received bonuses for legislative work. Those bonuses ranged between $2,000 and $15,000, according to records.

Their baseline salaries were not immediately available.

It was impossible to tell, however, if any of these employees were taking a leave of absence from legislative duties while doing campaign work, meaning they weren’t collecting a state paycheck or were merely volunteering to do campaign work after hours, which is permissible.

While DeWeese said the bonuses were granted for hard work, he provided no justification for individual bonuses. However, DeWeese’s spokesman, Tom Andrews, said the bonuses were not for performing political work.

“We know that’s illegal,” Andrews said.

Andrews went on to call the match-up of names on the two lists “a coincidence,” but would not corroborate the listings when offered the chance to do so.

As the chief House Democratic fund raiser and Democratic leader, DeWeese uses his campaign committee accounts to reimburse other candidates’ campaigns throughout the year, Andrews said.

That means some of the staff reimbursed by DeWeese’s campaign may have been working for others.

The state Ethics Act prohibits state employees from engaging in any activity if it results in personal gain while being paid with public money.

“In most cases it would be considered a violation of the Ethics Act if someone on state pay is working for a private individual,” said Nils Frederiksen, spokesman for Attorney General Tom Corbett.

But Fredricksen said the devil is in the details.

“If they’re not on the state clock, then there is no conflict of interest,” he said. “In theory it would be possible for someone to be a state employee during the day and doing something during their off-hours.”

Regarding payment of legislative bonuses, Fredricksen said the Attorney General’s office is reviewing a request brought by Sen. John Eichelberger, an Altoona Republican, for an investigation into the link between political work and the state Senate staff who received an accumulated $366,118 from Senate Republican leaders in bonuses the last two years.

Reform activist Gene Stilp has also filed a lawsuit in Commonwealth Court against DeWeese, Speaker Dennis O’Brien, and acting Treasurer Anthony Wagner in an effort to get to the bottom of whether bonuses were linked to campaign work.

“It’s important for citizens to know exactly what is going on in Harrisburg with their money,” said Stilp.

Stilp said he will be visiting DeWeese’s Waynesburg office on Wednesday with his 25-foot inflatable pig, the mascot of the 2005 pay raise fight, and calling for DeWeese’s resignation.

“It’s too much,” he said. “He was a leader of the pay raise and leader of the bonus insult to the citizens of Pennsylvania.”

DeWeese handed out bonuses to employees high and low, from part-time legislative assistants in his district office to the top-ranking positions in his Harrisburg power base.

House Democrats, as a whole, distributed $2.4 million in bonuses to staff over the last two years, the highest of the four caucuses in the House and Senate.

Their information was made publicly available late Thursday, a day after House Republicans and Senate leaders from both parties revealed their bonus lists for the first time, although the practice has been around for years under the radar. DeWeese initially refused to give out his party’s bonus information, calling it an “internal personnel matter.”

Andrews justified the multi-million dollar bonus total as a result of the fact that staff salary schedules have not been adjusted in recent years. Bonuses were given out to those who had reached the top of their pay scales, he said. Some of the 600 names on the House Democrat’s bonus list include those receiving holiday bonuses, not merit bonuses, although the two were not distinguished. Andrews could not explain why more than 200 of the 814 House Democratic employees received no bonus whatsoever last year.

DeWeese’s staff bonuses lagged those of former Democratic Whip Mike Veon, whose 31 employees in his Harrisburg and Beaver Falls district offices received bonuses totaling $252,164 in 2006.

Manzo, who was reimbursed for campaign-related expenses last year, asserted that his bonus, as well as the others, was unrelated to campaign work.

“I hate to put words in Bill’s mouth, but I assume he is happy with my performance,” wrote Manzo in an e-mail concerning his bonus. “Because we never implemented the new pay scales last year, my salary, as is the case with the majority of our staff, lags pretty far behind my counterparts in the other three caucuses.”

However, that information could not be independently verified by press time.

Alison Hawkes can be reached at 717-705-6330 or ahawkes@calkins-media.com