Local Commentary

Mark Guydish

November 19

Powell’s path to ‘success’ should stop at Plunder Dome Mark Guydish Commentary

SO ROBERT “Little Bobby” Powell gets off with 18 months in prison, and his attorney promises that the former uber lawyer will rebound just fine from his collision with ethics in our continuing saga of “Plunder Dome.”

Is it a fair sentence? Of course not. The man was the axis on which most of our juvenile court scandal turned.

Was justice served? Probably. There’s little denying Powell was equally pivotal in getting some of the biggest fish in the cesspool convicted and jailed.

I’m not too troubled by how much time Powell spends behind bars; I’m more concerned with what happens after he’s out. His attorney, Joseph D’Andrea, made a pulse-stopping prediction after the sentencing earlier this month. “Don’t worry about Bob Powell,” said D’Andrea. “He will land on his feet and be very, very successful some day.”

I’ve always liked D’Andrea in my few dealings with him and I mean no disrespect, but Bob Powell being “very, very successful” is exactly what we don’t need.

Powell might be truly contrite about his part in the scandal that shattered Luzerne County. He might indeed have been instrumental in convicting three county judges and a former Wilkes-Barre Area school board member.

But he is also the cornerstone of “kids for cash.” Without him, it didn’t happen.

Let’s review Little Bobby’s successes.

• Helped to create PA Child Care, the private juvenile detention center at the heart of the corruption scandal. It got built in Pittston Township without public questions, in part, by selling it to residents not as a juvie jail but as a “youth center.”

• Laundered money paid to then-judges Mark “Shameless” Ciavarella and Michael “Cocky” Conahan by the guy who constructed the center, Robert “Bob the Builder” Mericle.

• Paid money himself to Cocky and Shameless, disguising it as rent for a Florida luxury condo owned by the wives of the corrupt judges. Powell insisted he was extorted, but as federal Judge Edwin Kosik said during the sentencing, “He could have told the judges to go to hell.”

And that’s just the egregious stuff that led to Little Bobby’s conviction. There are so many more “successes” worth noting.

• Powell, formerly of Drums, pitched a cargo-only airport in the southern corner of Luzerne County, teaming with “Iron Head” Mike Marsicano, the former Hazleton mayor who ran that city’s finances into the ground and gave police an illegal pension boost. Experts said it would take a miracle to make the airport idea fly, but that didn’t stop Powell and Marsicano from seeking half-a-billion in tax dollars to launch it. Fortunately, some state lawmakers saw through the charade and rejected the money grab.

• Powell’s law partner Jill Moran got elected as county prothonotary, then used that office to hide a lien against Powell by putting it under the name “John Doe.” Moran left office amid the courthouse scandal after inking a deal with the feds. They painted her as an unwitting pawn who didn’t know the FedEx boxes Powell told her to give to Conahan were stuffed with cash.

• Powell was part of “W-Cat Inc.,” a company that planned to develop “The Sanctuary” housing complex in Wright Township but which has since gone bust to the tune of more than $4 million in debt. Moran, Ciavarella and Conahan all were involved in that fiasco.

And when Marsicano was mayor he hired Powell as his sophistry-spinning solicitor to choke off release of public records and to justify a showboating partial city shutdown in a budget battle with city council.

Powell, of course, gets the same second chance as anyone after he’s served his time. But I think we’d all be better off if he just goes about the rest of his life quietly and out of the public eye.

We can’t afford any more of his “success.”

Mark Guydish can be reached at 829-7161 or email mguydish@timesleader.com. Follow him on Twitter@TLMarkGuydish.

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