Taxpayer funds paid for campaign e-mails

March 2, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — A computer consultant testified Monday that a taxpayer-funded contract with the Pennsylvania House Democrats paid for him to update then-Rep. Mike Veon’s campaign Web site and send out blast e-mails soliciting campaign volunteers.

Eric Buxton told jurors in Veon’s criminal trial that he helped Veon and other Democratic candidates send out what added up to millions of e-mails during the 2006 election cycle under contracts that paid him more than $400,000 in less than three years.

Buxton said his father, Dauphin County Rep. Ron Buxton, helped him get hired as a legislative employee, and it was while working for the House Democrats that he began helping develop the blast e-mail efforts.

Eric Buxton was involved in the caucus’ purchase of e-mail addresses from a Florida vendor, and in August 2005 he signed the first of three contracts with the House Democrats. None explicitly called for him to perform campaign work, even though it became a significant part of the services he later performed under it.

Veon attorney Joel Sansone said after court that Veon and other House members were led to believe that the e-mail blasts were being done under a contract between Eric Buxton and the House Democratic Campaign Committee, although Buxton testified Monday that no such contract existed.

Buxton’s company did receive payments of a few thousand dollars from the campaign committee, and the blast e-mails he sent out contained a disclaimer that the HDCC had funded them.

“Everyone was using blast e-mails to a certain extent — you rely on those that you supervise to do it correctly,” said Veon attorney Dan Raynak. “I think it’s very clear from all this that Mr. Veon had nothing go to with Mr. Buxton’s contract.”

The contracts were issued under the authority of then-Minority Leader Bill DeWeese, D-Greene, funded by a special leadership account DeWeese controlled and paid with checks signed by his aide, Scott Brubaker.

Earlier Monday, a House Democratic aide who was involved in the e-mail program, Barbara Grill, said it was initially conceived as a way to inform constituents about legislative issues, but that within months talk turned to how it could be a tool to help Democrats win elections.

The e-mails were used to target voters for such topics as working conditions for nurses, environmental issues, candidate backgrounds and job creation, she said. Grill said she wrote many of them herself.

She recalled attending a meeting run by Veon in DeWeese’s Capitol office sometime around Labor Day 2006 in which the e-mail system’s role in the coming campaign was discussed.

“Veon asked us to create a bigger buzz about winning back the majority,” Grill said.

Two months later Democrats won back the House majority, although Veon lost re-election to his Beaver County seat.

Grill also said another defendant, former House information technology director Steve Keefer, e-mailed her a computer program to help her delete incriminating material from her computer in 2007, after investigators had begun looking into the alleged misuse of government workers and equipment, the probe that resulted in the current trial.

Grill and Buxton both testified under grants of immunity and are cooperating with the attorney general’s office.

The trial of Veon, Keefer, Brett Cott and Annamarie Perretta-Rosepink on charges of theft, conspiracy and conflict of interest is in its fifth week. Thirteen others await trial on similar charges and seven pleaded guilty in January. In the only other case to go to trial, Rep. Sean Ramaley was acquitted of all charges in December.