The Insider - January 16, 2009

Ever since I was a congressional intern while in college, I've always had a strong sense of the public sector and public policy issues are what really motivates me. After law school, I decided to go into business and commercial banking. I had a broad range of experience at Philadelphia National Bank and all different types of financing. Then I moved over to the City of Philadelphia where I was deputy director of finance. That's where I developed my core public sector finance skills under Mayor Bill Green, who opted to serve only one term. At that point, I had to decide between law and finance and I pretty much was down the path of finance.

Insider: Can you tell us if you found any surprises in your job assignment as state treasurer?

Wiessmann: I was an advisor to a number of state treasurers and as a municipal investment banker; I have a very keen appreciation about state budgets. I have a pretty strong sense of how government works. What I'm now experiencing is the actual concrete experience of government finance. No, there hasn't been any one major surprise.

The staff has been very experienced and very professional about what they perceive as their role in their jobs and that's been very pleasant. One thing is the speed at which things get done. It's much slower in government than the private sector. Absolutely.

But I made it very clear to my staff that my goal was to leave (Treasury) better managed and well positioned to meet the challenges of the future.

Insider: How or what did you put in place to cushion the blow of the financial market meltdown in late 2008?

Wiessmann: I did anticipate that there could be major stress put on the financial market, and therefore the Pennsylvania Treasury. One of the things we did was initiates a comprehensive cash flow study of the Treasury. Broken into its simplest terms, the Treasury's job is to the inflow of funds accounted for properly, the investment of that money while it is here and then the expenditure of funds according to the law. I sometimes make the analogy to what people do with their household budget and personal investments.

We liquidated (removed from the investment market) $4.1 billion during my term, including $3.4 billion last June. We've gone to a more conservative portfolio to make sure we are as prudent as possible. As the market first stated to turn in 2007, we navigated away from some of the riskier investments and I think we did a pretty good job.

Insider: How was the transition to (elected) Treasurer Rob McCord going?

Wiessmann: Very well. I think I will be handing over a department that is greatly enhanced in terms of its management template. He has met the staff members and we are directing him to the areas that really need to be his focus. I think he's very responsive and will do the right thing.

We have released a Treasury Report, which is recommendations for the Treasurer's office regardless who is here. It has the overarching theme of safeguarding the Commonwealth's funds, reinventing our technology strategies – all of those will be very relevant and valuable going forward for a long period of time.

I've been doing a fair amount of speaking during the financial crisis. I'm very glad I had the foresight to put some of these parameters into place at Treasury. As a consequence, I've testified in Washington. I've been very pro-active in offering my suggestions on concrete steps to mitigate the crisis.

Insider: Will you go back to your business after you leave here.

Wiessmann: Well, the firm I found it, Armistice Capital that was sold in 1998. Since then, after a mini-sabbatical, I've been working in the financial industries service but as a consultant. I've been very gratified by this position. We made some concrete progress.

I could step out and do something in the private sector again or I could run for office at some point but I'm really just at the evaluating stage of all that.

Insider: There's been some speculation that you might run for governor, that you might run for lieutenant governor on a geographically and gender-balanced ticket with Dan Onorato (the Allegheny County executive)?

Wiessmann: I'm not precluding any opportunity. I have not made any decisive plans for any political candidacy announced or not announced at this point. But I expect that will be happening pretty soon. As President-elect Obama tells the news media – That's all you're going to get out of me right now.

But his family roots are in row-house Philadelphia where he grew up in the Northeast and of which he still speaks fondly on the air. He wore a Phillies cap on "Hardball" in October when the Phillies were in the World Series and won it. His younger brother, Jim, a Republican, is a Montgomery County commissioner and ran unsuccessfully for lieutenant government in 2006 on the gubernatorial ticket with Steelers great Lynn Swann.

Matthews' father was a Democratic Party committeeman and Matthews ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 1974 shortly after finishing college at Holy Cross and serving a stint in the Peace Corps. He spent some time as an aide on Capitol Hill and then wrote speeches for President Carter.

After his stint in the White House, Matthews found a home with former House Speaker Tip O'Neill as a top advisor and then became a Washington-based columnist and bureau chief for the San Francisco Chronicle.

In that role, he began making frequent appearances as a political analyst on television and he struck gold in the cable news boom of the late 1990s, becoming the host of "Hardball" on MSNBC 11 years ago.

His rapid-fire interrogation of his political guests gained him a following, earned him fatter paychecks and made him a favorite target of the comics at Saturday Night Live who spoofed his brash, intimidating take-no-prisoner style with glee at the sister network.

Matthews' current contract is due to expire this June and NBC reportedly wants Matthews to take a drastic pay cut. In the months leading up his new contract talks with MSNBC, Matthews began his dance with Pennsylvania Democrats about running for the Senate but he insists it was not a negotiating tactic.

Matthews told the Inquirer he expected a new deal with MSNBC to be finalized by next week. "I'm going to be here a long time," he said.

Let's introduce the newest Costa, who is still a city resident:

Dom Costa comes from a family of plumbers but did not follow in the family profession and even as a child wanted to be a police officer. A family friend and mentor, the late Mayer DeRoy, who himself rose to city police chief, allowed the boy to sit in his police car when he visited the Costa family. A dream was born. In 1979, Costa applied to several police departments and was accepted as a city police recruit. Ten years later, while working as a plainclothes officer, he stumbled into his niche, when he defused a North Side hostage situation by talking the hostage-taker into surrendering.

Domimick Costa

During his career, Costa engaged in 150 such situations from would-be jumpers on bridges to criminals who had taken hostages at gunpoint. He exhibited much skill in that regard and it was to such a situation that he entered in February 2002 when he went to a scene in the city's Homewood section. Officers had gone to arrest a narcotics suspect but the man, Cecil Brookins, had taken refuge on a rooftop with an automatic pistol.

According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette at the time, Costa, after much persuasion, had talked Brookins into coming back into a window of a third-floor apartment, where he was to be arrested, when things went horribly awry.

Brookins pulled a pistol hidden in his waist band and fired on two SWAT officers who were protected by life vests. But Costa, still on the roof, dodged one bullet whizzing past his ear only to be struck by a second that entered through his shoulder. The suspect was shot five times by police officers but survived to stand trial for attempted homicide and other charges.

(Editor's note: For a full account of the episode see this May, 2003, article on Costa's recovery. The Post-Gazette keeps its electronic library files open to the public for free, a rarity among newspapers these days: http://www.post-gazette.com/neigh_city/20030504costa0504p1.asp)

Costa remained on disability from the city force until 2005 when he accepted a position as public safety director of Penn Hills, an eastern suburb of the city. He remained in that position until January 2006 when he was appointed by the city's new mayor, Bob O'Connor, as police chief after passing medical exams.

"..If he's good enough to take a bullet for this City, he's good enough to serve as my chief of police," O'Connor said when appointing Costa.

But shortly after the mayor unexpected fell ill with cancer in July and died on Sept. 1, 2006, Costa offered his resignation to the new mayor, Luke Ravenstahl, citing his deteriorated health, including numbness in his left hand that, he said, made it difficult for him to perform his duties.

"I can't do it anymore -- the pain, I'm losing weight, I just can't do it anymore," Costa told the Post-Gazette at the time. "I've got numbness in my hands. I guess if I were younger, it would have helped.''

For the brief nine months that he was in the mayor's cabinet, Dom Costa also served with his cousin, Guy Costa, who is brother to Jay Jr. and Paul and still serves as city public works director.

Still restless after his retirement, Costa began to think of elective office and opportunity knocked when Benninghoff announced she would not seek re-election after winning in 2006 as a reform candidate against veteran state Rep. Frank Pistella, D-Pittsburgh.

The district encompasses parts of the city and some suburban area. The city neighborhoods include Morningside, Stanton Heights, part of Shadyside and part of Lawrenceville as well as the suburban towns of Millvale and Etna and part of Ross Township.

In the primary, Costa faced two opponents with previous electoral success, former city Councilman Len Bodack Jr., son of the former state senator, and Brenda Frazier, who under the Allegheny County charter had to resign as a county council member to seek the new position.

Bodack had been dethroned from his council seat a year earlier by reform candidate Patrick Dowd while Frazier enjoyed limited support in the city portion of the district, including the endorsement of the Post-Gazette.

Costa, a first-time office seeker, used direct mail citing his police experience and citations of heroism to make his case with the Democratic super-voters and it worked – just narrowly.

He won the primary --- which in this district is akin to November election – with 34.7 percent of the vote, versus 33 percent for Bodack and 32.3 percent for Frazier. Costa won by just 273 votes of more than 18,000 cast in the primary.

Now, when he arrived in Harrisburg Jan. 6 to be sworn in, Don Costa knew right where to go if he had any questions. He could simply do dial-a-cousin on his cell phone and get the quick answer.