PureBunkum

Luzerne County’s former president judge, Mark Ciavarella, is now a number.  And to add insult to injury, he wants to be declared a pauper.

How low can you go?

In filing his expected appeal of his racketeering, money laundering and tax evasion convictions and his 28-year prison term, Ciavarella also asked an appellate court to declare him ”in forma pauperis” status, which would qualify him for food stamps and a room at Sherman Hills Apartments.

He has nothing, declared his attorney William Ruzzo.  Even his car is “virtually valueless,” Ruzzo told the court.  Just what was he driving all the while he was awaiting sentencing?

Because he is “indigent,” Ruzzo wants the Third Circuit Court of Appeals to name him and Al Flora as Ciavarella’s court-appointed attorneys and allow them to be paid the federal rate of $125 per hour - $5,000 per week – $260,000 a year.

Talk about chutzpah.  Ciavarella stiffed taxpayers when he didn’t report the hundreds of thousands of dollars he reaped from his role in the building of two privately-owned juvenile detention centers.  And now he wants taxpayers to pay his legal fees throughout  his appeal process?

If George Banks is any barometer, that could take decades.

Furthermore, since when do paupers get to pick their own attorneys?  If we do this for Ciavarella, why not for all criminals? 

We can just see it now.  A penniless Joe Shmo gets in serious trouble and is appointed a public defender, someone low on the totem pole.  And he’s not very happy about that.

Mr. Shmo:  Wait a minute.  I don’t want this guy.  I want Attorney Joe Quinn as my lawyer.  Isn’t he the one who gets those million dollar verdicts?

Chief Public Defender Al Flora:  Sorry, sir,  it doesn’t work that way.  Besides, lawyers like Attorney Quinn don’t take cases like yours, only ones which are a slam dunk at winning multi-million dollar awards.  And, besides, you couldn’t afford them if they did.

Mr. Shmo:  But you and Ruzzo are pretty good and took a leave of absence to represent that crooked judge.

Flora:  That was different.  He’s our friend.

Mr. Shmo.  Okay, I’ll be your friend too, and I’ll let you represent me if  I can’t have Mr. Quinn.

Flora:  Let me see if the county will extend my leave of absence.

Isn’t it interesting that all of Ciavarella’s legal woes, the ones he was convicted of anyway, stem from the nearly $1 million he accepted from Robert Mericle, builder of the two juvie centers? 

Mericle even lied to the FBI and grand jury for Ciavarella, explaining, ”I didn’t want to be the person to lay Mark out.”

That didn’t exactly turn out very well, now did it?  We wonder how Rob likes being the person who landed his buddy  in the slammer for 28 years.

And we still wonder why Mericle offered Ciavarella $1 million without being asked, what he made building those two juvenile detention centers and what role he played in getting that $58-million county lease approved.

And we wonder if Mark Ciavarella is sitting in his Philadelphia holding cell wondering how he plummeted from being a millionaire to a pauper in a few short years.

- Betty Roccograndi

The Wilkes-Barre City Council likely didn’t realize just how serious Mark Robbins was when he attended its last two meetings to complain about his car being towed and what he was charged.

Last month, Robbins, a Forty Fort resident who ministers to the poor, told the council that after his car was towed in June, city police officers mistreated him while defending Leo Glodzik, owner of LAG Towing.  Robbins, who’s someone to take seriously, said he was forced to call 911 after Glodzik screamed in his face.  Take a look at his website, www.gratefulhands.com, to see what I mean.

If the council, city Mayor Tom Leighton or Glodzik thought Robbins was simply venting before dropping the matter, they were wrong.  Were they ever.

He not only has contacted multiple investigatory agencies to look into the city’s and, more specifically, Leighton’s relationship with LAG, he has put out a call to others to join him in his fight.

“We need to become a force,” he said.  He wants others who have been mistreated by city officials to come forward.  He has informed the FBI and state Attorney General “about a despicable scheme taking place in Wilkes-Barre, PA,”  and charges that Glodzik has doubled and tripled industry standards for towing and impounding vehicles and is doing so with the city’s blessing.

Glodzik has an exclusive contract to tow illegally-parked vehicles in the city.  For that monopoly, he pays the city $50,000.  We’ve wondered ourselves whether this constitutes a kickback of sorts, even though it’s in the open.

Robbins unapologetically calls this arrangement a bribe.  Surprisingly, neither Leighton nor city police Chief Gerard Dessoye have responded to Robbins’ accusations of a kickback scheme.

“After the police brutally treated me on June  1st, I endeavored to find out why this tow owner was protected by the police  ‘as one of their own,’ ” he writes on his website.

Robbins said he paid $650 out of his own pocket to take a lie detector test to protect himself.  He said the police officers who responded to the dust up between him and Glodzik protected the city towing contractor like goons would protect a rogue dictator.  WOW!

And what’s with the city paying $18,000 to Glodzik for a vehicle only to reverse the transaction, as reported in The Citizens’ Voice?  And what’s with the city buying said vehicle without first getting the title for it?

The city did the same thing when it reneged on a sales agreement to sell  him the former Old River Road Bakery property, assessed at $478,000, for $38,000.

Speaking of that, when is the city going to advertise the sale of this property, which the Wilkes-Barre Area School Board set as a condition for forgiving $440,000 in back taxes?

Oh, that’s right, Luzerne County, needs to approve the deal.  Whatever will the county do?

-  Betty Roccograndi

When Mark Ciavarella, Michael Conahan and Michael Toole traded their Luzerne County judgeships for cash and gifts, they shattered our faith in our justice system.

Money should never, ever exchange hands in the sacred halls of a courthouse.  A Robert Mericle or a Harry Cardoni should have been thrown out when they dared to offer cash and gifts in exchange for a judge’s help.

But they were dealing with judges who proved they were on the take.

Perhaps, this scandal should have been called, “Judges for Cash,” instead of  “Kids for Cash.”

Now, ironically, Ciavarella does not believe the justice system treated him fairly, that it was not interested in pursuing the truth.  Was HE when he sent vulnerable teens to detention without allowing them enough time to defend themselves?

“You see, your honor, this case has never been a search for the truth,” a desperate Ciavarella said to Judge Edwin Kosik on Thursday, moments before being sentenced to an astounding 28 years in prison.  “It has always been, let’s get a conviction at any cost … even if the crime never occurred.” he continued.

The crime Ciavarella begs us to believe never occurred is that he sent kids to detention in exchange for cash.  But, let’s face it, “Kids for Cash,” was a very catchy phrase.  Ciavarella contemptuously credited U.S. Assistant Attorney Gordon Zubrod with coining it.

“It seems to me Mr. Ciavarella says I was not selling kids retail.  We agree.  We think he was selling them wholesale,”  Zubrod said, according to The Times Leader’s report.

That’s a pretty inflammatory statement considering the federal government did not pursue the “Kids for Cash” angle in this case.

But now, Ciavarella told Judge Kosik he’s considered “the personification of evil” and the “anti-Christ.” He certainly is in the minds of the parents, whose minor children Ciavarella sent away in handcuffs.  They were jubilant after hearing the sentence.

Some of the reaction was “After what he did to those poor kids, throw the bum in jail.”  “It couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.”  “All the damage he did to those children.”

They don’t realize that Ciavarella wasn’t sentenced to 28 years for any of that because he wasn’t convicted of any of that.

He got 28 years for taking a kickback, hiding it and not paying taxes on it, and his attorney, Al Flora, plans to argue that that constitutes cruel and unusual punishment, which is a violation of the U.S. Constitution.

Flora also plans to argue in his appeal that Judge Kosik was prejudiced against his client from the get-go.

So it may be premature to rejoice that Ciavarella is going to prison for 28 years.

And the ultimate irony in this horrid saga may be due to prosecutor Zubrod’s earlier contention that the $1 million Robert Mericle gave to Mark Ciavarella was not only not a bribe;  it was a legal finder’s fee.

Yes, the man who played a key role in putting Ciavarella behind bars may be the very same man who gets him released earlier than planned.

This is far from over.

- Betty Roccograndi

This morning all eyes will be on U.S. District Judge Edwin Kosik.

Judge Kosik not only holds the key to Mark Ciavarella’s fate;  he also holds the key to our faith in our justice system.  Ciavarella shattered that faith when, as a judge, he took a big payoff from a powerful developer.  He sold his judgeship, and in the process harmed taxpayers and juveniles.

His lawyers are requesting leniency.  He does not deserve leniency.

Defense Attorney William Ruzzo told Kosik that Ciavarella will be abused in prison.  Abuse wasn’t a consideration, though, when he sent some, and we mean some, undeserving  juveniles to detention centers following hearings that reportedly lasted mere minutes. 

Ciavarella destroyed lives.  A judge, of all people, destroyed lives.

Ruzzo also bemoaned the fact that Ciavarella will be forever remembered as the “Kids for Cash” judge. 

That’s what this tale of corruption and greed was called, but even federal prosecutors did not go there.  They probably realized that in a court of law, not a court of public opinion, a “Kids for Cash” case was lacking.

Controversial radio talk show host Steve Corbett likes to say that Ciavarella sold kids into slavery for cash.  I can’t say I agree with that assessment.

I’m with those who believe that some of those juvenile delinquents deserved detention, not all of them, but some.  I do agree that in some cases Ciavarella did not consider the ramifications of his court rulings.  And now he expects mercy from the court on his behalf?  He is a hypocrite.

But as I’ve said before Ciavarella and his racketeering partner, Michael Conahan, got the bulk of their money up front when wheeler-dealer developer Robert Mericle paid them handsomely when he got the contract to build two privately-owned juvenile detention centers. 

And PAChild Care did not need Ciavarella to send kids there to ensure the center’s profitability.  That was done complements of Greg Skrepenak and Todd Vonderheid who signed a 20-year lease worth $58 million plus generous annual rent hikes.  And the appalling thing is that , under that lease, PAChild Care would get its rent even if the place was not fully occupied.

Skrepenak and Vonderheid should have been charged with malfeasance.

Fairly or not, Sandy Fonzo is convinced that Ciavarella is to blame for her son’s suicide.  As a national audience witnessed, Fonzo confronted Ciavarella after he was convicted of 12 crimes and demanded to know if he remembered her or her son.  He didn’t.  He knows who she is now, as if that’s any consolation to this childless mother.

It will be a tense day in the courtroom Thursday morning when Judge Kosik sentences Mark Ciavarella and closes one of the most sordid chapters in Luzerne County history.  We’re guessing that the public will not be disappointed with the sentence.

And to think all Ciavarella had to do was tell Robert Mericle, thanks, but I can’t take your money.  This former judge, who’s 61, would not be heading to prison, possibly today,  possibly for the better part of the rest of his life.

- Betty Roccograndi

When the Wilkes-Barre Area School Board so generously forgave $440,000 of taxpayers’ money owed on the former Old River Road Bakery property, it may have overlooked something.

In addition to requiring Wilkes-Barre City to advertise the sale of the property – which the city intentionally did not do the first time around – the school board said that Luzerne County must approve the deal for making the delinquent taxes disappear.

But what if Luzerne County does not approve the deal?  The school board did not address this issue at its early morning meeting.  Will it then fall apart?

Luzerne County has every reason to be wary, and city  Mayor Tom Leighton does not have a friend in county Commissioner Steve Urban.  Actually, Urban told The Citizens’ Voice he doesn’t trust Leighton, and he has good reason.

In 2006, the city convinced the county to forgive almost $43,000 of  its share of the back taxes on the bakery when its assistant solicitor, William Vinsko, said townhouses were going to be built there.  That was then.  Three years later, the city hand-picked who would get the property, and Leo Glodzik had no plans to build townhouses.  The city’s contracted tower, a personal client of Mayor Leighton, who is also in the real estate business, was going to use it for his towing business.

You might say Luzerne County got duped, but what goes around, comes around.  And now the county commissioners are back in the driver’s seat with two new members, Maryanne Petrilla and Tom Cooney.  Urban and then commissioners Greg Skrepenak and Todd Vonderheid had approved forgiving the back taxes after hearing that townhouses would be built.

So, is it now payback time?

It would be highly unusual if the county commissioners approve this tax forgiveness deal without getting something in return like they did the first time around, now that they know the school district will get 20% percent of the sale proceeds.

The county has plenty of options.  First of all, it could also demand a 20% cut.    It can also refuse to forgive the additional taxes the city owes on the property, which The Citizens’ Voice learned is $6,236.  Or it could say, sure we’ll approve the deal, but first we want to know what is going to be built there, and this time we’re not taking your word for it.

Let’s face it, once all of the taxes are forgiven, what’s stopping the city, even if townhouses are built there, from forgiving property, state and local income taxes for the next 9 years as it did for the owners of  the city’s luxury suites at Elevations, Lofts on Main - ”City Living at it’s best”?

The Luzerne County Commissioners have a lot to consider here.  Let’s hope they take a little longer than 20 minutes, which the WBA School Board did, before playing fast and loose with taxpayers’ money.

- Betty Roccograndi