To her, if you can just go quietly, well get you something. Ill give you another job. What was the real inside scoop on this and why is she not running for reelection, terry . Well, shes not running simply because someone told her not to. She dances to her own tune, but the fact of the matter is, theres real questions about whether she could have gotten the sufficient petitions to get on the ballot. This is sort of like the greek tragedy. As you point out, she faces trial in august for 12 counts, 2 of them are perjuries, so a criminal count is pretty serious. In addition to that, she narrowly missed being removed out of office by the senate, and now she faces an investigation by the house, and that will commence soon. And that could impact whether she ever runs for office again in the state, meaning if they impeach her, she cannot, and she also wont get her pension. So lets talk about where does that leave not only her, but the state, because its been an embroiled mess and not a lot has been getting done. She says its the fault of the oldboys network coming after her because she turned on a few folks, as she said, and done a little bit of naughty emailing a lot more than a little thousands of emails. She released some of them, about half. Lets listen to her sound bite about why shes leaving to focus on her children now. My sons have learned that you dont stand on the sidelines, that you fight the fight, and you fight it the best that you can each and every day. I believe that my legacy is going to be, in time, that i have torn down this good oldboy network. She is the first woman attorney general in pennsylvania. She says its run by old boys that dont want her to get ahead specifically because shes a woman. Did she have any impact on the socalled oldboys network, or what did she do positive, dom . I think shes an embarrassment i cant say it enough to females and being the first in the job, and the repercussion of that is always negative. The idea that these guys in harrisburg were doing what they did. Some of them have suffered, and they should have for it. Oldboys network, in fact, i think is a woman. And i did the governor corbett show with him and many times would ask him. I think they were afraid because she was a first. She had star power. And i think they didnt challenge her. She is very, to me, incompetent. She cant take questions. She does some national show. She did the News Conference the other day. She did an interview with you guys. I was shocked. She almost never does it, and i think the reason is, she was a figure that was not competent, and this is a key post. It underlines that again and again. Well, the governor from her own party asked her to step down in august. Her own party wouldnt back her for reelection. She really was sort of an island, if you will, sitting out there by herself, and was it her own doing . Was it a fait accompli at this point . Oh, it absolutely was, and terry referenced the greek tragedy. What happens in the greek tragedy is its usually hubris, false pride that puts someone in the position where they dont see their own flaws. They wind up doing inexplicable things. Theyve really done more harm to themselves than anyone else could, and the appeal to feminism really does ring hollow. She sounds more like Madeleine Albright warning women that theyll go to hell if they dont vote for hillary. Right. Its a very dated view, and, also, as terry and dom have both indicated, we just dont have enough time in this program to go in detail through all her missteps. Right. So lets talk about a couple of things quickly. With her, now, this isnt the end of what were going to hear about her, is it . Do you think, sharmain . No, its not gonna be the end because were gonna hear all about the investigation thats going on in the house, and then if they decide to impeach her, were gonna have a trial in the senate. So its not gonna be the end of what we hear, but it is extremely disappointing, i think, for a number of people. Certainly for women who definitely were looking forward to having someone come into that office and really do a terrific job, and the fact that she came in with such high hopes for a lot of folks really is extremely disappointing. It doesnt mean, though, that theres not an oldboys network. I just dont think that all of her missteps and all the mistakes that she made had anything at all to do with that. I think she made some really bad political judgments early on, and they just continued to be compounded. And five people are pretty excited that she is not running for reelection, and those happen to be men who are running. So lets talk about whats gonna happen now with josh shapiro, steve zappala, john rafferty, joe peters, and john morganelli. They must be cheering out there because that sort of side show, if you will, that became the main circus act for a while is now at least gonna be a side show in the race for attorney general. Dont you think . I dont know if theyre cheering because i think some of them, like shapiro here i know him. They have a tremendous record as an executive, no corruption, none of that, and he reeks of competency. So he plays well off that, i think. I think it was helpful to him. Theres another aspect of this. The race on the democratic side is going to pit two different philosophies. Yeah. Stephen zappala, the District Attorney from allegheny county, is going to make the argument, i was a prosecutor. He hasnt been in a court in 25 years. I know how to try cases. I understand the law. Ive been there. Shapiro, on the other hand, whos not prosecuting cases, is gonna say, we need reform in the office. We need administration thats efficient and effective. Im gonna make sure that office runs and runs right. So youre going to have two different views of what the Attorney Generals Office should be how it should be conducted, and its probably a little of both thats important, but youre gonna hear two different world views. Right. One nugget i would throw in, too theres 40,000 or so penn state alumni in the state. Ive had their pr spokesperson on this woman. They claim to have taken down corbett. They sent a message the other day. Everybody that wants to be state attorney general, stop the charges against the big three Graham Spanier and the other two at penn state. I find that to be appalling that weve not gotten to the bottom of that, but theyre trying to chill them right out of the box. All right, well keep an eye on that, as well. Well, the other issue here is, theres still lots of folks who defend children who think that there were additional victims. You hear that all the time. On the Jerry Sandusky case, which is part of what Kathleen Kane was trying to get forward. Thats correct, but her own investigator, geoffrey moulton, former prosecutor down here, federal prosecutor, said, no, thats not the case. He did say that the Corbett Administration didnt move quickly enough, but it wasnt for political reasons to advance the governor, who was then attorney general, to the governorship, and that was a big issue. All right. Were gonna move on to talk about some other chess moves that are happening in harrisburg. Interesting. The state representative brian sims decided to drop out of the race for congressman chaka fattahs seat fattahs under investigation, as you know, by the federal investigators and endorsed dwight evans, a representative, instead. Whats going on behind the scenes there . What do you think, sharmain . Well, i think, number one, petitions were due for a lot of people this week, including people who are running for state rep, and brian certainly needed to file petitions not only for congress, but also for state rep. You can run for both at the same time for people that dont know. But i do think that in the end, he had to make a decision one way or the other. The momentum clearly seems to be flowing towards dwight evans. I will tell you that dwight is certainly a friend of mine, but i have gotten calls for fundraisers for him almost every day. There definitely seems to be those who are looking for a different candidate other than the current candidate, congressman fattah. It seems to be coming in dwights direction. In the meantime, a new poll. Lets move on to other things in harrisburg the governor. Governor tom wolf, freshman governor, has still not gotten his first budget passed. Its time for the second budget to be proposed now. How long can this game go on of sort of brinksmanship, both sides digging in and giving nothing, and here we are with year two . Are the schools gonna have to keep borrowing money . What do we do . When the schools get to the point where they cannot borrow money, and the cuts start leading to reductions of services and closed classrooms, that is when i suspect theres going to be a critical mass, and right now i think its hard to predict whos going to come out on top or bottom in all this whether its the governor or the legislature. Well, the polls show that people of pennsylvania disapprove of how the governors doing. Theres a very bad 77 disapproval rating currently for him, but if you look at a similar poll of the legislature, they dont like the way the legislators are going about this, either. Critical mass could come, though, with the holidays, the easter holidays. The last time with the christmas holidays, they had to do some patchwork because its convenient to say were not going to come back after the holidays. I think people i cant speak for the rest of the state. I know my listeners, they dont care. They dont feel affected by any of this. Its a pox on both sides. They dont care about it. The problem in terms of the voters is simply that in a 2009 Supreme Court decision, state employees are staying on the job, so most services are being performed, so it doesnt affect the average voter, but the biggest takeaway from my point of view is this relationships are worse after the governors budget message a couple of weeks ago than they were before. There are no meetings taking place, and it now looks like this stalemate could go on. The real crunch will come about april and may when the schools begin to run out of the First Six Months money they got. County Human Services and nonprofits that are providing services will begin even more acutely to feel the pain. Weve once gone in the 60s 15 months with stopgap budgets. Wow. Here we go again. Yep. Well said. Here we go again. Lets talk about mayor jim kenney, new in office in philadelphia, and he did lay out a Business Plan to members of the chamber of commerce last week and had some interesting ideas. Lets run through just a couple and see what your reactions are. Of course, hes been talking about money for universal prek to get started right away by this fall. Jobs for prisoners. He wants a plan to cut wage and business taxes to make it a friendlier city for business and recruit suburban business and help smallbusiness folks, but he also wants to improve parks and recreation centers, and i read an interesting statistic im sure you saw it, too that hunting park redid its local park and rec area, and 5 million was invested, but they got an 87 improvement in three years less crime, and more activity for young people because the studies show mostly after school is when these crimes are being committed. They have nowhere to go and nothing to do unless you give them a place to go. What was your takeoff of his idea on parks and recreations . Well, its a very interesting thought, and it dovetails with what the mayor wants to do in terms of universal prek, and he also did point to some metrics that say, this is a very effective way to fight crime over the longterm. The tone of the presentation was very good, very engaging. He said to the Business Community, normally mayors come in here and give a long list of heres what we want from you. Lets talk about what we can do together. All of that was great. The devil will be in the details, and the mayor did say that he didnt ask the Business Community to pay for these things. No, not directly. But he said, that will come in my budget message to city council. That will be very interesting because philadelphia, like other big cities, is caught in this bluecitymodel trap where pension costs are draining any operational monies that you would put to purposes like that. How are you going to deal with that pension cost so youve got the money to do all these other good things . I agree with ed. I thought the tone was fine, but, again, based upon his politics, kenneys politics, i think it has to come back to things that business is not gonna like if they dont buy into this, and it involves i think its 60 millionplus for the prek program. Where is it gonna come from . It doesnt like look the state. Right. But i think in the end, if you look at the priorities that he set, hes really focusing on what we would call the prevention side of problems, and weve got to get to that point. But it does take longer. Its not a quick fix. It takes longer, but if we start to intervene now, we can really have an impact on poverty. One thing i will give him, during the campaign, he said, ending and lowering poverty in philadelphia is critical. You cant do it on the back end. Youve got to do it on the front end. Youve got to do it with kids going to rec centers and schools, working, and its going to take time. All right. The other point i would make is, i think what were seeing is a slow, steady process here. Nothing revolutionary. Nothing thats gonna strike huge controversy out of the gate. He reminds me much less of mike nutter and much more like john street. You know more about this than i do. Mmhmm. It just seems the style a lot of people were saying, well, hes going to be bill de blasio, hes going to come out and be, you know well see. Yeah, we might still see. But the fact is that right now the slow, steady, pretty responsible start. But he also knows the city well. Having served in council, having worked in harrisburg, i mean, he really does know the city and communities, and i think he has a good sense that its now time to really focus in. If were gonna really deal with the really tough problems we have, weve got to focus in on the city. And he also mentioned stopandfrisk, which was a big campaign issue, and he implied that it was being misused. He said, in his words, that he wants that tool to be used correctly. So, did you have a take on that . Just hes trying to allay that in the minority community. So, yes, and its a rhetorical flourish to try to bring back into use a tactic that, quite frankly, had been effective. Heres the problem. We go through these periods like this where the crime gets out of control. People demand more aggressive policing. They get it, and then its an overreaction. Well, as the problems diminish, they say, we really dont need this anymore. All right. And we will always be coming back to this issue because that cycles never going to end. But minority communities, im sorry, dont want to deal with levels of crime that are there, but at the same time, they dont want people treated unfairly, they dont want people stopped just for the sake of the fact that theyre walking down the street. They want there to be some probable cause there, and just the fact that youre just going to see a person of color, primarily a boy or a young man of color, and assume that you can arrest them and then ask questions later no, thats not acceptable, and its something that were still gonna be fighting very hard against. All right. Well take a break. Inside story continues right after this. Inside story is presented by temple university. Temple fuels students with academics and opportunities to take charge. Plugged into the city, powered by the world. Temple. Edu takecharge. Welcome back to inside story. A huge decision last week by the pennsylvania Supreme Court that the School Reform commission in philadelphia can no longer cancel or bypass provisions of the state school code, and, in fact, they were allowed to for years because it was an ability to expedite School Closings if they needed to, limit charter expansion, even cancel builtin raises for teachers and not have to bring back people who had been laid off because of seniority if they didnt think they were the most effective. Those rights were granted to them many years ago, but the Supreme Court said they were wrongly granted, and, essentially, it rolls back about 15 years of work. Some people would say for the good or for bad. Whats your take on that, dom . I think for the bad. I mean, i love a guy like bill green, who gave up a lot of other things and went there to turn things around. I think theyre hamstrung now. I like the src because i dont think philadelphia can run its own system. I think its been proven time and time again, and i wanted to see them put these reforms in that i thought were good reforms. And one of the members of the src reacted to this decision, saying its gonna cost tens of millions and be disastrous for the children of philadelphia. I think in the end, theres a big push now to say we need to regain local control. Its not about having the state take over. Its unfortunate. When you look nationally at state takeovers, theyre primarily in cities and primarily in cities where the majority of the students are students of color. This is a pretty dangerous precedent. I think in the end, as much as the src, i believe, has been working on the best interests of kids, i think we need to really, again, look at local control of our schools. Even jerry jordan with the pft, the Philadelphia Federation of teachers, says this is a mixed decision because it can hurt the kids, but help the teachers, in fact. This decision could have an implication for Charter Schools and School Districts outside of the city, and were gonna have to see where that goes as time moves on. Lets talk about the Supreme Court. Antonin scalia passed away after 40 years on the high court. What was your impression of his legacy from all those years . He was an extraordinary jurist. He had a very specific constitutional point of view in terms of being a textualist, looking at the original intent, and i think over time, people i actually think his reputation will grow over time, because when people pause to delve deeply into what he was saying, a lot of the popular representations of his views are going to disappear. He was not nearly what many of his critics thought he was. It did certainly bring a big political ball game into motion because people running for the presidency now say, look. All three branches of government are at play. We have a balance of liberals and c