Bickering Montco commissioners to seek ethics ruling from Pa.'s high court

Montgomery County commissioners voted Wednesday to take their beleaguered countywide ethics proposal to the state Supreme Court, but not before a shouting match between two bitter board rivals over who was less ethical.

Before they were through, Republicans James R. Matthews and Bruce L. Castor seemed in danger of running out of words to attack each other.

Hypocritical had been used. So had pathetic, complicit, farcical, and power-grab. Each also suggested the other was guilty of corruption.

At issue is a yearlong attempt by Matthews, chairman of the Board of Commissioners, and his unlikely board ally, Democrat Joseph M. Hoeffel, to expand the administration's 15-year-old policy to all county offices.

Among other things, it would ban hundreds of employees from running for political office while on the county payroll.

Hoeffel and Matthews say the policy is an attempt to crack down on office politicking and ease pressure on county staffers.

"I continue to believe that this county needs more ethics, not less ethics, and that this courthouse needs less politics, not more," Hoeffel said.

Castor and other critics have countered that the two commissioners were really trying to quash any prospective political threats.

The policy doesn't apply to employees under nine independently elected row officers, including sheriff and district attorney.

Working in those offices can offer a path to the public spotlight. Castor, for instance, was elected commissioner after serving as district attorney.

He and others say the row officers should be allowed to run their offices as they choose. Common Pleas Court Judge William T. Nicholas agreed with that assessment last year and struck down the countywide policy.

Last month, a panel of Commonwealth Court judges upheld Nicholas' ruling, leaving the Supreme Court as the last possible step.

"No commissioners in the history of the commonwealth have ever thought they had this power," And no appellate court ever thought they had to make a decision," Castor said. "So we are trailblazers in a sense."

Matthews was still livid about Castor's claim that the policy made Hoeffel and Matthews "the laughingstock" of Pennsylvania.

Matthews then reviewed county e-mails sent in 2003 and '04 in which Castor, then district attorney, or his aides discussed his campaign for attorney general. The e-mails emerged in 2009, when Castor testified for the defense during the corruption trial of former Democratic State Sen. Vincent J. Fumo.

In one memo sent to staffers, a top Castor aide sought volunteers for a forthcoming ballot-signature drive for Castor. In another, the district attorney asked a political operative to be his finance chairman and proposed setting up a shadow political action committee to collect donations, but hiding Castor as its beneficiary.

"This is all on the public dime with county material, county e-mail, and county time with the solicitation regularly of an entire staff," Matthews seethed. "If I'm a laughingstock, so be it, because these abuses go on and on."

Castor said he found Matthews' attack "ironic and hypocritical in the extreme," noting that Matthews taped a campaign commercial in county offices and used staff employees as extras.

"That's far different than a couple of e-mails flying around," he said.

Matthews responded by noting that the commercial was taped after hours and that the extras volunteered.