Fetterman records show light schedule as Pa. lieutenant gov.
the gaps in his schedule. In a statement, his spokesman, Joe Calvello, said that “this report is a misleading and inaccurate reflection of John’s actual schedule that totally fails to capture the breadth of his official work and his accomplishments.”
Fetterman didn’t respond to interview requests, but he said in a statement that he’s “shown I can have an impact beyond the prescribed power of a given office.”
“As lieutenant governor,” he said, “my record of showing up and shaking up this office has transformed the Board of Pardons, saved Pennsylvania millions in taxpayer dollars, and grown support in our state for defending LGBTQIA+ rights, weed legalization, union workers, and raising the minimum wage.”
The job of lieutenant governor is typically a stopover for politicians seeking higher office and often comes with limited duties. In Pennsylvania, the primary legal responsibilities for a lieutenant governor are presiding over Senate sessions, chairing the Board of Pardons and heading up the governor’s emergency management committee.
There’s no suggestion that Fetterman’s absences prevented the state from conducting important business, and his formal calendars may not capture the full range of his activities.
And, due at least in part to Fetterman’s criminal justice advocacy, the state agency that handles applications for pardons and commutations of life sentences saw a surge in activity while he chaired it. That produced a big jump in grants of clemency by Gov. Tom Wolf.
Fetterman’s defenders say the pandemic sapped opportunities for him to take a more active role and note that Wolf did not call on him to take on a bigger workload.
“I believe he ... would have to liked to,” state Senate Minority Leader Jay Costa, D-Allegheny, said of Fetterman. “Every time (Wolf) called on John to communicate, he did.”
In a statement, Wolf said Fetterman’s office has “limited responsibilities” but called him “a dedicated public servant who has supported my priorities over the past four years.”
Fetterman’s daily schedules offer a window into his time in office, detailing his obligations including meetings, phone calls, hearings and even drive time to events around the state.
In 2019, Fetterman’s first year in office, he regularly attended ribbon cuttings and conducted a statewide listening tour focused on legalizing marijuana. Still, on 47 different work days he had nothing on his schedules.
His workload plummeted after the coronavirus pandemic hit, the schedules show.
For months, starting in March 2020, his work days often consisted of a morning meeting focused on the pandemic that typically lasted 45 minutes, sometimes followed by interviews with local and national journalists. Occasionally he would attend virtual events.
But Fetterman also did not take an active role and seldom participated in the daily Cabinet meetings, even though he was tapped to head a task force on disparities in the COVID-19 response. It produced a 32-page report.
In some cases, he booked national media interviews during times he otherwise had state business to attend to, including presiding over the Senate, or pandemic work group meetings.
During a one-month period beginning in October 2020, the vast majority of events listed on Fetterman’s calendar were interviews with national or Washington-based news outlets, with a scattering of official duties and events mixed in, the records show.
In 2021, Fetterman’s calendars showed 115 work days with no activities or events listed. That includes a period that stretched from the end of June to mid-September where Fetterman’s schedules were largely blank, listing a total of about 11 hours worked during that period.
In the first half of 2022, lasting up to his stroke, there are nearly 70 days with nothing on listed on his schedule.
Fetterman’s work ethic has been a persistent focus of attack in the Senate campaign by Republicans who characterize the 53-year-old as a trust fund beneficiary who never had a paying job until he was elected lieutenant governor. Fetterman’s father was a partner in an insurance firm.
Asked on a radio program Wednesday to respond to the claim that he’d “never worked a day in your life,” Fetterman said it wasn’t true.
For 13 years he was the mayor of Braddock, a tiny, struggling steel town of 2,000 residents outside Pittsburgh.
He called being mayor “a full-time job, fighting to bring (back) a community that was abandoned, left behind.” Fetterman has also told of working for an insurance firm in Connecticut in the 1990s. He also held a job helping young people get GED certificates.