Try getting fired by Ed Rendell

Let's say you are allowed to drive a company car for business purposes. You can take the vehicle home, but your boss tells you specifically that you are the only person allowed to drive the vehicle.

You decide to allow your wife, husband, girlfriend, boyfriend, etc., to drive the car. He or she crashes the car. You tell several different versions of how the car was damaged when the boss finds out it was involved in a crash.

Let's see a show of hands. How many of you would still have a job after you wrecked the company car, broke company policy against non-employees driving it and then trying to cover up the crash?

Now, let's say your boss is Ed Rendell. And the vehicle you wrecked is paid for by the taxpayers of Pennsylvania. Do you lose your job? Nope. You're suspended and your privilege to drive a state-owned care are taken away. And you have pay for the damage. But you still get to keep your job and your big fat state pension. Is this fair?

Ask Gov. Rendell. This is exactly what happened. Rendell has a history of cronyism. It's not good public policy. It's not government. It's not good business practices.

Here's the Associated Press account a Rendell aide who broke all kinds of rules but still got to keep his job:

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — An aide to Gov. Ed Rendell returned to his job this week, more than two months after being suspended following the crash of his state-issued vehicle.

Norman Bristol-Colon, executive director of the Governor's Advisory Commission on Latino Affairs, served the paid suspension from Jan. 5 until Monday for allowing someone else to drive the vehicle when it was damaged in a Dec. 20 crash, the governor's office said.

The driver, Adriana Malpica of Lancaster, veered off Interstate 283 near Elizabethtown and hit a highway sign and parked truck, according to police.

Only state employees may drive state vehicles, and Malpica was not a state worker.

"He is going to have to pay for the damage to the automobile, he's going to have to pay for the damage to the truck that they hit, and he is no longer allowed to drive a state car," Rendell spokesman Chuck Ardo said Wednesday. "So there are consequences."

Ardo said there was also "some dissatisfaction with the accuracy of his reporting" regarding the crash.

Bristol-Colon filed a state report saying conditions were foggy and wet, the tractor-trailer was parked illegally and his vehicle brakes malfunctioned. A police report said it was clear and the road was dry, the truck was parked properly and the brakes worked.

A phone message left for Bristol-Colon at his office was not immediately returned.