May 3, 2007

Dear Commissioner:

            All public officials, whether elected or appointed, share a common standard of behavior that should serve as a guide as their responsibility and duties are fulfilled.  Some are legal requirements, while others are more personal in nature - rooted in the common decency and honesty that all citizens hope are upheld by those in office.

            It is with those important traits in mind that I write to voice my sincerest and strongest protest to your recent actions in your role as a member of the Board of Commissioners of the Pennsylvania Game Commission.  I believe your efforts and votes to remove Commissioner Tom Boop from the presidency of the Board on May 1^st were an ugly display of punitive power.

            Acting within a gang of four, you validated the too-prevalent complaint about the Board of Commissioners: that under its current composition of personalities, some strong and some weak, the Board has become arrogant.  Your votes showed that dissent is not only to be ignored by you and your three colleagues, it is to be silenced and publicly punished.

            Earlier this year, Commissioner Boop was retained as the Board’s president.  Two weeks ago he spoke against the Board’s policy, supported proposals which you oppose, and vented his frustration in a reserved but heartfelt way.  Two weeks after that brief statement of Commissioner Boop’s, you, in an unprecedented, orchestrated, and vindictive way, took actions that I believe embarrass the tradition of the Board and demonstrated personal qualities unbecoming of a public official.  By ignoring legal advice that your actions would deny a fellow Board member, a fellow sportsman, a fellow citizen his due process, you exhibited the very same politics of exclusion that have tainted the Board in the eyes of so many in the sporting community.

            In private business or private practice, obstinacy, intimidation, and disregard for common rules of fairness and administrative procedures may aid in success, but as a member of an agency within a democracy, those behaviors have no place.

            You, individually, have set for the Board an unacceptable precedent in the way it deals with dissent of a member, the standing it gives to corrective criticism, and the legal guidelines under which it operates.

            I believe that the way the Board operated on May 1^st, denying due process while ignoring legal counsel, with the result of a pending “trial” of one of your fellow members, did lasting and serious damage to the Board’s status as an effective governing agency and to your personal reputation as an official holding the public’s trust.  You went to that hastily-called meeting with the plan of shooting down one of your own, but you and your three colleagues instead joined the ranks of a self-destructive circular firing squad.

                                                                                    Sincerely,

                                                                                    Edward G. Staback, Chairman

                                                                                    House Game and Fisheries Committee