Corruption trial gets under way for ex-lawmaker

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Former Rep. Sean Ramaley was an aspiring legislator who “did what he was told to do” as a part-time assistant to House Democratic Whip Mike Veon in 2004, Ramaley’s lawyer told jurors Friday as testimony opened in the first trial in Pennsylvania’s legislative corruption scandal.

Attorney Philip Ignelzi said Ramaley had been required by law to quit his previous job as a clerk for an administrative judge in the U.S. Labor Department when he decided to run for the House. Ramaley was eager to learn the legislative ropes and viewed the $2,500-a-month job with Veon as “an opportunity,” he said.

“Nobody was slighted,” Ignelzi told the six men and six women on the jury. “Your taxes weren’t taken from you.”

Ramaley ran his legislative campaign out of an office in the basement of a house he owns and, later, at a campaign headquarters shared with other Democratic candidates, Ignelzi said.

“He won with hard work, determination and support,” the lawyer said.

Prosecutor Anthony Krastek said he will prove that Ramaley, a Beaver County resident who had graduated from law school two years earlier, conspired with Veon to obtain a no-work job in Veon’s Beaver Falls office to provide him a source of income while he concentrated full-time on winning the election.

Krastek, a senior deputy attorney general, said the fact that Ramaley was assigned to an office separate from the more public area where other legislative assistants sat was an indication of his special status.

“He was down the hall, around the corner, in a back office,” Krastek said.

Ramaley began the job in July 2004 and resigned five months later, after he was elected. He is one of 12 people connected to the House Democratic caucus who have been charged by the state attorney general’s office.

He is charged with four counts of theft, one count of conflict of interest and one count of conspiracy involving taxpayer money and other public resources that Veon allegedly made available to him in 2004.

After he was arrested in July 2008, Ramaley abandoned his plan to run for the state Senate and did not seek a third House term.

Stephen Webb, a House Democratic caucus employee and prosecution witness, said Veon temporarily transferred him from Harrisburg to work with Ramaley at the district office even though Webb was kept on the public payroll and did not take a leave as he had when he worked for other campaigns.

“It was understood that I was not to do any commonwealth work,” he said. “I was to work on the Ramaley campaign.”

Webb said he saw Ramaley “for the most part, every day” during the nearly one month they worked together. He said Ramaley spent mornings making fundraising calls and afternoons knocking on doors.

“I did not see him do any legislative work,” Webb said.

At Krastek’s urging, Webb acknowledged he initially lied to a grand jury in September 2007 about campaign work he has done while on the state payroll. Webb said he regretted having done so and made arrangements through his lawyer to correct his misstatements in subsequent testimony.

On cross-examination, apparently in an attempt to undermine Webb’s credibility, Ignelzi repeatedly drew jurors’ attention to his conflicting grand jury testimony.

“I was scared,” Webb recalled in explaining why he lied. He said he not been granted immunity from prosecution, although he has not been charged.

At least five of the other 11 Democratic defendants have signed plea agreements that would drop some charges in exchange for their cooperation with prosecutors, while others are preparing for trials slated to begin in January.

Attorney General Tom Corbett, a Republican who is running for governor, filed similar charges last month against 10 people with ties to the House Republican caucus, quieting criticism that he was waging a partisan investigation. Rep. John Perzel, a former House speaker from Philadelphia, is among the GOP defendants.

Veon, a one-time Democratic power broker who faces more charges than any of his co-defendants, lost his re-election bid in 2006 after 22 years in the Legislature.