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Team 4 Follow-Up: PennDOT Whistleblower

This follow-up report by Team 4 investigator Jim Parsons aired Thursday, May 5, 2005, on Channel 4 Action News at 5 p.m.


Changes are coming at the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation. A letter to all PennDOT employees from agency executives details some of those changes.

Also, an Allegheny County PennDOT worker was suspended without pay. We are told that other PennDOT employees will also be disciplined because of what Team 4 reported Wednesday night.

Video

PennDOT employee Dennis Briggs is suspended without pay after Team 4 caught him on camera, shopping at a home improvement store and transporting the merchandise on a PennDOT truck to a house he owns in Wilkinsburg.

Karl Ishman, PennDOT District 11 Executive: "We've actively investigated what you showed us the other day. A number of disciplinary conferences have been held or are being scheduled. As a result of those, at least one employee has been suspended without pay."

PennDOT says disciplinary action will also likely be taken against some of a half-dozen workers in Glyde, Washington County. We saw them goofing off for more than two hours, then they left two hours early with the approval of their foreman.

And PennDOT plans additional action because of what this worker told us about employees who drink on the job.

Worker (identity protected): "There's no one to call and say, 'Hey, why don't you check on this guy? I think he's drinking and he's driving equipment.' There's no one to do that. There's no one at PennDOT that can do that. It don't exist."

Now, that will change.

Ishman: "We're opening up an anonymous employee tipline. They'll be able to call here at District 11 and also to District 12, in two counties, so there will actually be two tiplines. That should give employees an opportunity to pass on any concerns they have anonymously."

Those tiplines are up and running, as of Thursday night.

Also on Thursday, PennDOT Secretary Allen Biehler called us to say that he plans to meet with his western Pennsylvania executives in the next few weeks to discuss long-term solutions to the some of the problems we exposed.

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