September 29, 2014 12:00am Pittsburgh Post-Gazette by the Editorial Board
What kind of a knucklehead circulates nude photos and graphic videos of sex acts at work? The answer out of Harrisburg, sadly, is a whole bunch of knuckleheads.
State Attorney General Kathleen Kane’s office found explicit sexual images in email accounts of staff in the prosecutor’s office from 2008 to 2012, when now-Gov. Tom Corbett and his temporary successor Linda Kelly were in charge. The discovery came as her office was reviewing the child sexual abuse investigation of former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky.
Although Ms. Kane has refused to release the complete email files, she showed some examples to reporters Thursday without indicating which email accounts were associated with the offending visuals.
Unfortunately, the attorney general has released enough information to titillate, not fully illuminate.
Her aides said at least 30 former and current state employees received, and in many cases sent, the inappropriate messages. They identified eight former AG staffers involved, including two who now are members of Gov. Corbett’s Cabinet – State Police Commissioner Frank Noonan, who received 338 such emails, and Environmental Protection Secretary Christopher Abruzzo, whose account showed receipt of 46 of the emails and eight sent to others.
She did not say when the email exchanges took place or whether the messages had been opened. Another fault was that Ms. Kane, a Democrat, named the former employees of her Republican predecessors but withheld the names of current workers, giving cover to her staff with the thin excuse that human resources policies and union contracts prevented her from doing so.
In releasing the information this way, Ms. Kane has reduced a scandal over inappropriate and offensive behavior by employees to just one more volley in her too-frequent game of playing politics with her office.
This shameful situation demands action. Gov. Corbett has taken the appropriate step of requesting complete information from Ms. Kane before imposing any discipline, and Ms. Kane should follow suit with her own employees.
An office culture in which demeaning, sexually explicit emails is tolerated is intolerable.