AG Kane hires new spokesman

HARRISBURG — Attorney General Kathleen Kane said Wednesday that she has hired former Gov. Ed Rendell’s spokesman to help get her message out amid her legal problems and newspaper editorials calling for her resignation.

Chuck Ardo began work Wednesday as the seventh spokesman to work for Kane since she took office in January 2013. His initial six-month contract provides $60,000 in salary but no benefits.

“Although we’ve accomplished a great deal, our accomplishments haven’t been widely recognized,” Kane said in announcing several staff changes.

On Monday, Kane and Thomas Carluccio, the special prosecutor in the grand jury investigation, are to appear before a three-judge panel that will decide whether her firing of a prosecutor who testified before the panel violated the supervising judge’s seven-month-old order not to retaliate against witnesses.

If the panel decides the order was violated, a separate hearing would be held to determine whether to impose a contempt of court punishment.

Teacher accused of intimidation

PITTSBURGH — Police say a high school teacher intimidated a female student who has accused another teacher of illegally having sex with her, by identifying the student in front of her classmates.

Police say Plum High School teacher Drew Zoldak told his class Monday that he had missed class the previous Friday “because of her” — pointing out the student and saying he was questioned by detectives. The other teacher, 40-year-old Joseph Ruggieri, faces a preliminary hearing next week on charges of having sex with the student and other charges.

Zoldakdidn’t immediately return calls to his home.

Another Plum teacher, 38-year-old Jason Cooper, on Wednesday was ordered to stand trial on charges he, too, had sex with a different student.

By The Associated Press