Witness: Fumo backed daughter’s political opponents

November 11, 2008 at 12:00a.m.

Pa. state Sen. Vincent Fumo is on trial on corruption charges.

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Democratic Sen. Vincent Fumo of Philadelphia worked against his estranged daughter, a Republican, in her losing 2003 bid for local office, a campaign consultant testified Monday in Fumo’s corruption trial.

Consultant Howard Cain told jurors he was assigned to help Nicole Marrone’s opponents in a 2003 race in Whitemarsh Township, Montgomery County. The effort was funded through his contract with the Fumo-led state Senate Democratic Appropriations Committee, Cain said.

The testimony came in the third week of Fumo’s corruption trial. The 65-year-old lawmaker, a veteran of 30 years in the statehouse, is charged with misusing more than $2 million of Senate funds and an additional $1.5 million from the coffers of a Philadelphia charity and a seaport museum to fund countless personal and political endeavors. Fumo denies the charges.

Cain, who has pleaded guilty to tax evasion, told jurors that he helped other Fumo-backed Democrats with their campaigns and undertook opposition research and other political work on time he billed to the state Senate. He did not have to account for his time until 2004, when he started submitting itemized invoices to the Senate.

“I will tell you right now that I padded the hours,” he testified.

Cain admits he failed to pay any taxes on income that included $500,000 in Senate contracts from 2000 to 2006 and nearly $100,000 more on commissions he earned steering campaign printing to a vendor. He has not yet been sentenced.

On cross-examination from Fumo lawyer Dennis Cogan, Cain acknowledged that some of the work he billed to the Senate committee had a legitimate legislative purpose, including many hours spent, at Fumo’s request, on the startup of a charter school in South Philadelphia.

Cogan estimated that Cain, who earned about $150 an hour as a Senate consultant, might have legitimately earned $70,000 or more for his work on the charter school. And Cogan suggested that other work Cain did may have had a dual legislative and political purpose, such as efforts to bring work to the closed Philadelphia Naval Yard.

“This is exactly what happens all the time, isn’t it?” Cogan asked. “Good politics is good government, and good government is good politics.”

Nicole Marrone’s husband, Christian, a one-time Fumo prot g , was a key government witness early in the trial. He testified that he spent most of the first 18 months on the job as a Senate aide overseeing the renovation of Fumo’s mansion in Philadelphia. Marrone said that he and his wife have been estranged from Fumo for about five years.

The trial resumes Wednesday after a break for the Veterans Day holiday.