Toomey for Senate

By Mike Wereschagin
PITTSBURGH TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Republicans criticized U.S. Rep. Joe Sestak yesterday for requesting an earmark they say would have sent $350,000 to a company, in violation of House rules.

The House in March banned giving earmarks to for-profit companies. Sestak, a Delaware County Democrat running for U.S. Senate, sponsored a $350,000 request for the nonproft Thomas Paine Foundation for research into a new kind of wind turbine.

The foundation's 2004 IRS filing says nothing about energy research, but its president, Drew Devitt, last year started New Way Energy, a for-profit company to develop turbines and energy-related equipment.

U.S. Rep. Bob Brady, D-Philadelphia, requested a $1 million earmark for the same project, according to his website. He could not be reached for comment. The House appropriations subcommittee on Energy and Water rejected the requests.

The Thomas Paine Foundation's 2004 IRS filing says its purpose is "popularizing the ideas of Thomas Paine," the Revolutionary-era author of "Common Sense," "Rights of Man" and "Age of Reason."

"It's hardly the group you would expect to be in line for a $350,000 energy earmark," said state Republican Party Chairman Rob Gleason.
Sestak is running for Senate against former Rep. Pat Toomey, a Lehigh County Republican.

Toomey, during his first term in Congress, sponsored earmarks for companies, but there was no rule against it, his spokeswoman, Nachama Soloveichik, said. Since then, he has "sworn off" earmarks and pledged not to seek any if he wins the Senate race, she said.

Sestak campaign spokeswoman April Mellody blamed Devitt for misleading Sestak staffers when he pitched the project. She said Devitt did not talk to Sestak about the project directly.

"If someone misled a congressman, certainly that should be addressed appropriately," Mellody said.

Devitt, chairman of the Delaware County manufacturing company New Way Air Bearings, denied misleading Sestak but declined to give details about what he said.

"I don't believe I misled them," Devitt said. He said New Way Energy, not New Way Air Bearings, "would have been working with the Thomas Paine Foundation" if he got the money.

Another nonprofit that partners with the Thomas Paine Foundation, the Freethought Society of Greater Philadelphia, had "nothing to do with the request to Sestak," despite Republican claims to the contrary, Devitt said.

Mellody said "all the appropriate due diligence was done" before Sestak agreed to sponsor the request, but Republicans and government watchdog groups say a cursory Internet search should have turned up red flags. The warning signs should have included the lack of any energy research conducted by the Thomas Paine Foundation.

"Does Joe Sestak's office do any research on these projects at all before doling out our hard-earned tax dollars?" Gleason asked.

"One would think you'd at least look at any kind of history (the organization has) in the particular area of research," said Tom Schatz, president of Citizens Against Government Waste. "That's the minimum amount that can be done."

A better way of avoiding controversies such as this, Schatz said, is to avoid earmarks altogether.

"If a member says they're not requesting earmarks, this doesn't happen," Schatz said.