From Consumer Advocate To Policy Adviser To U.S. Attorney

After graduating from the State University of New York at Stony Brook in 1970, Barasch made a brief foray into academia, enrolling in a Ph.D. program in political science at Harvard University. But after one semester, he quit, took a job as a caseworker with the welfare department of Westchester County, .Y., and began applying to law school.



“I decided to go to law school emphatically because I wanted to change the world,” he said.



He enrolled in Cornell University’s law school in 1971, with an eye toward practicing law in the public sector. Earning his degree in 1974, he went to work for the Pennsylvania Department of Justice, where he began to develop an expertise in energy law.



Less than a year later, he joined the state Attorney General’s Office, continuing to represent the commonwealth on energy matters, but also working with the state welfare, education and health departments.



In 1977, at the height of a utility rate hike, Barasch went to work for the newly formed Office of the Consumer Advocate. Less than two years into his tenure there, Pennsylvania experienced the nation’s worst nuclear disaster at Three Mile Island.



Barasch was at the forefront of litigation stemming from that disaster — primarily focused on who would be stuck paying for the mess. While some politicians favored passing the costs onto ratepayers, Barasch argued that shareholders in the Metropolitan Edison Co., Three Mile Island’s owner, should shoulder the burden — a fight ultimately won by the Consumer Advocate’s Office.



While that case was winding its way through the courts, Barasch was appointed Consumer Advocate — a promotion he received from Pennsylvania’s first elected Attorney General, Roy Zimmerman, a Republican.



Barasch’s seminal accomplishment as Consumer Advocate came in January 1989 when his office prevailed in a case before the U.S. Supreme Court that asked whether economic regulation constituted confiscation.



In Duquesne Light Co. v. Barasch, 488 U.S. 299 (1989), the high court ruled in favor of the Consumer Advocate’s Office, concluding that the Duquesne Light Co. could not charge ratepayers for the company’s lost investment in four canceled nuclear power plants. In so ruling, the court affirmed a 1945 case that held economic regulation does not amount to confiscation.



After this success, Barasch decided he wanted to broaden his experience and began exploring other opportunities. He landed in the Casey administration as a special assistant to the governor. In that position, which he held from 1990 to 1993, Barasch helped set the administration’s policy on environmental protection, public utility and insurance regulation.



In October 1993, nearly a year after the election of President Bill Clinton, he was confirmed as the new U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Pennsylvania — a position he dreamed of holding since his law school days.

U.S. Attorney

As U.S. Attorney, Barasch ran an office of about 35 assistants responsible for federal criminal investigations and prosecutions in 33 counties in the midstate region, northeastern Pennsylvania and much of the state’s northern tier of counties. On his watch, the Middle District office launched the investigation into Rite-Aid that recently yielded convictions of a former company president and five senior officials, and secured a guilty plea from Waste Management Corp. for federal campaign fraud involving a subsidiary of the company, Empire Sanitary Landfill of Scranton. That plea included an $8 million fine — then the largest criminal fine paid in a federal campaign finance prosecution.



But Barasch is probably best remembered for the Preate case.



Bill Behe, a 16-year veteran of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Middle District, led the Preate investigation with Barasch. He described his former boss as “hands-on,” but not a micromanager.



“When there were cases that were significant, high-profile, novel, he was there working right with you, developing strategies, determining who should be interviewed and pursued, what lines of questioning should be pursued,” Behe said.



On other more straightforward cases, Barasch was responsible for approving investigative decisions, indictments and plea agreements, but he left the day-to-day matters of those prosecutions to his assistants, Behe said.



“He trusted you enough to let go of the reins, so folks could work their magic, as they have shown they can do,” Behe said.



On the Preate investigation, Behe said Barasch wanted proof beyond a reasonable doubt before taking anything public. “He made it clear,” Behe said, “that the mere presence of an investigation could affect a person’s reputation even if it didn’t go anywhere.”



Barasch said the Preate case was the first criminal prosecution he ever led. Had it not resulted in a plea, it would have been his first criminal trial.



“To put it mildly, it was a heck of a way to break in,” Barasch said.



As an administrator, Barasch said his focus was on the policy direction of the office. Part of setting a policy for a prosecutor’s office, he said, is determining which cases are worth pursuing and which are not.



“We prosecute in the U.S. Attorney’s Office about 400 cases a year in the Middle District,” he said. “There are far more than 400 potential federal criminals out there in the course of a year. You have to make decisions about the allocation of resources, the allocation of time, which matters deserve your attention the most, and also which people who might fall within the net deserve mercy and who doesn’t.”



In May 2001, with a new president in the White House, Barasch left the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Harrisburg firm of Rhoads & Sinon.



Shortly after he decided to run for Attorney General in October, Barasch joined the Harrisburg firm of McNees Wallace & Nurick, where he practices on a reduced schedule. He specializes in governmental relations, energy, communications and utility law.

The Candidate