Where are we? Lourdes?
The Browne family has benefited from miracle after miracle. There has been such a profusion of amazingly fortuitous events that it can only be ascribed to, well, Providence. Somebody up there likes state Sen. Pat Browne and his wife, Heather.
That's all there is to it.
I'll get to the evidence of divine intervention shortly, but first I was alarmed on Tuesday to see Tim Potts mentioned in a story about the Brownes in The Morning Call. Just four days earlier, discussing the sleaze of state government, I began a column with Potts' name.
Potts, whose integrity made him a breath of fresh air when he worked in state government for 21 years, now runs a citizen advocacy organization, Democracy Rising Pennsylvania.
"It certainly does not look good," Tuesday's story quoted Potts as saying about the wondrous news involving Heather Browne, who has landed a job as a lobbyist for an outfit involved in multimillion-dollar Allentown projects made possible through legislation engineered in Harrisburg by her husband.
Potts noted there are hundreds of lobbyists lurking under Harrisburg's rocks, although he did not put it exactly that way, and he wondered how Heather was lucky enough to be the one selected by East Penn Real Estate, owned by J.B. Reilly, who is planning a $50 million City Center office complex in Allentown, financed largely with taxpayer money.
I am disappointed that Potts would be such a doubting Thomas? Has he no faith in celestial blessings?
Those blessings began in 1994, when Pat Browne first got elected to the state House. Around the time he was celebrating victory, he had a glitch — his first drunken-driving arrest, but such things do not necessarily bother those with charmed lives.
In 1999, tipped off, no doubt, by satanic forces, I wrote a column divulging his guilty plea in connection with a second drunken-driving beef and other charges. I also reported Browne's heavy-handed efforts to cover them up, including a threat of legal action against me if I spilled the beans.
Soon, however, Reilly, the East Penn Real Estate guy, out of the kindness of his heart and for no other reason, I believe, began shoveling thousands of dollars into Browne's political campaign coffers and, in the spring of 2005, Browne was elected to the state Senate in a special election.
In 2009, legislation, written by Browne, was enacted to let Allentown and the city's Neighborhood Improvement Zone create a 130-acre project with a new $158 million hockey arena as its central shrine.
The next year, Browne, a Republican, was up for re-election and it seemed to some that his drunken driving and other convictions might be a problem. That's when the angels of the Democratic Party stepped in. They selected Richard Orloski, perhaps the most hapless politician the Lehigh Valley ever saw, to run against him.
When the political bosses of Harrisburg's smoke-filled rooms (liturgical censer smoke?) saw Browne pull off that miracle, they decided to anoint him Senate majority whip, a powerful legislative position.
With Pat Browne now in a position to pull a lot of strings, Heather Browne was hired last March by Vaughan Communications, a company that now handles public relations for — you guessed it — Allentown's City Center project, headed by Reilly.
A few months later, Reilly got manna from heaven in the form of a $20 million loan from the Allentown Commercial and Industrial Development Authority, even though the authority had not yet come up with its required guidelines for such loans.
Shortly after that, Joseph Topper, Reilly's partner in the City Center deal, also hired Heather, and pretty soon Reilly announced plans for his $50 million downtown office complex, funded largely by taxpayer money through the Neighborhood Improvement Zone. On Tuesday, we learned that Heather Browne had been hired by Reilly.
Sen. Browne, according to Tuesday's story, insisted he had nothing to do with his wife's employment successes. So if it was not because of influence exerted by a powerful legislator, whose legislation facilitated multimillion-dollar enterprises, some will say it was pure luck. I prefer to think it was something heavenly.
So Potts and others should suppress their sacrilegious skepticism toward the Brownes' good fortune. Instead, we all should find the holy spring, from whence they drink here in Lourdes, and take a sip or two.
paul.carpenter@mcall.com 610-820-6176
Paul Carpenter's commentary appears Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays.
TOWN SQUARE
Somebody up there likes Sen. Pat Browne and his wife
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