5 city aides claim they were maced

Say Parking Authority bosses made them pay $275 a year to GOP

Author: BOB WARNER warnerb

@phillynews.com Staff writer Erin Einhorn contributed to this report.

Article Text:

FIVE employees in the Republican-controlled Philadelphia Parking Authority say they were pressured on the job to
contribute $275 a year to the Republican Party.

They say the pressure to contribute is widespread among workers hired in recent years. Campaign-finance records
show dozens of $100 contributions this year from workers making $25,000 or less.

"It's extortion," said Michael J. Vecchione, the only one of the five who agreed to let the Daily News publish his name.

Vecchione, 38, was hired in September 2002, to work in the authority's impoundment lots. He gets paid $24,951 a
year.

He'd been been on the job about a month, Vecchione said, when his supervisor asked him to buy a $100 ticket to the
Republican City Committee's fall dinner.

"I told her, "I'm not really a political person.' Then she told me, 'You should understand, this is a patronage job and
you have to buy three tickets a year.' At that time, I refused to pay, but two days later another supervisor came up and
said I was still under probation. If I didn't buy the tickets they could fire me."

Vecchione said he had gotten one other call, from a woman named Susan Burns in the office of state House
Republican leader John Perzel. Perzel, now the House speaker, had engineered the GOP's takeover of the Parking
Authority in mid-2001.

"I told her, no one ever told me before I was hired about buying these tickets. And she said, 'I'm telling you now.' "

Burns did not return a call from the Daily News. She now works for the Parking Authority in a $58,225-a-year job as
"manager of community outreach," involved in the authority's new effort to regulate Philadelphia taxicabs.

Prompted by an inquiry from this newspaper, the Parking Authority's executive director, Joseph M. Egan Jr., warned
his staff last week that they could be fired for soliciting money on the job or threatening workers who refuse to
contribute.

In a memo to all 823 authority employees, Egan announced a ban on any fund-raising on Parking Authority property
or during any employee's work hours, with the exception of the authority's annual charity campaign or other causes
that Egan must approve in advance.

"Employees must be free from any pressure, real or perceived, to contribute to any activity or group," Egan said.

Regardless of Parking Authority policies, state law makes it a misdemeanor for anyone to "demand" political
contributions from public employees or contractors, a once-common practice known as "macing."

When muckraker Lincoln Steffens published "The Shame of the Cities" in 1904, his chapter on Philadelphia described
how schoolteachers and principals were required to contribute 2 percent of their salaries to the city's Republican
political machine.

Vecchione and others who spoke to the Daily News said they had been asked to give three times a year.

Either their Republican ward leaders or their Parking Authority supervisors would sell them tickets to the Republican
City Committee's fund-raising events - $100 dinners before the primary election in the spring and the general election
in the fall, and a $75 clambake in August.

"It's in every department - impoundment, ticketing, booting, towing," said Vecchione. "Everybody has to buy these
tickets."
Usually, their supervisors at the Parking Authority would collect the money - rarely mentioning their jobs, but saying it
would be "in your best interest" to buy the tickets, according to three of the Parking Authority employees.

They asked that their names not be published for fear of reprisals.

Campaign-finance records filed by the Republican City Committee with the Pennsylvania Department of State show
contributions last spring from at least 128 Parking Authority employees, including 88 with jobs paying less than
$30,000 a year.

All but one of the 88 contributed $100, the cost of a ticket to the party's primary-election fund-raiser.

Democratic Party records show that 15 employees at the Parking Authority bought $150 tickets to the Democrats'
spring fund-raiser, including seven people with salaries under $30,000.

Besides being asked for money, several Parking Authority employees said they had been asked to do voter-
registration work or other chores on behalf of Republicans - on their own time.

"I was told when I got the job, I had to buy three tickets a year and work the polls," said a former authority employee.
"I was out of work and I did what I had to do."

Several said the political activity appeared to be coordinated by Egan's top deputy, Vincent J. Fenerty, a Republican
ward leader who has worked for the authority since 1983. He makes $139,323 annually.

Fenerty denied the allegations to the Daily News.

"We don't do any fund-raising on Parking Authority time or anything like that," he said at the outset of a telephone
interview.

Informed of charges that some Parking Authority supervisors had asked for donations from employees they direct,
suggesting that it was tied to their job, Fenerty said: "They should not be doing that. . . . Neither I nor anyone I've ever
known of has ever forced someone to make a contribution. . . . You can't say your job depends on it or your livelihood
depends on it."

But Vecchione alleged that Fenerty's name repeatedly had been mentioned when he complained to his supervisors
about having to buy tickets.

And six months ago, Vecchione said, after he told his supervisor he would not buy a $100 ticket to the GOP's spring
fund-raiser, Fenerty personally drove his authority car to the authority's auction lot at Delaware and Allegheny
avenues and collected $100 in cash from Vecchione.

"Fenerty motioned me to come over to the window and he said, 'I heard you haven't paid for the ticket. . . . You know
you need to pay for these, this was part of the deal when we gave you the job.'

"I told him that no one told me that until after I was hired," Vecchione said. "Then he said, 'They should have told you
that.' " Vecchione said he reluctantly pulled $100 in cash from his pocket and turned it over to Fenerty.

Informed of Vecchione's name and asked specifically about that incident, Fenerty acknowledged that, contrary to his
earlier denial that he'd ever collected political contributions on authority time, he had accepted a $100 donation from
Vecchione, in person.

But Fenerty cast the events in a totally different light. He said that he'd driven to the impoundment lot to check on
auction arrangements and that Vecchione had approached him with the $100, asking Fenerty to make sure the
money got to his ward leader.

Fenerty described Vecchione as a "disgruntled employee," frequently complaining about his work assignments and
arguing with his supervisors.

Vecchione acknowledged problems - including a physical altercation - with one supervisor who had tried to borrow
money from him, Vecchione said. He insisted he was telling the truth about his exchange with Fenerty.*