Editorial: Was Westmoreland DA Ziccarelli’s crash really minor?
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“Minor car accident” is one of those terms everyone has heard and yet is difficult to quantify.
The Pennsylvania Insurance Department doesn’t have a measure for what makes a crash minor or major. An insurance company only deals in monetary amounts. There is no sliding scale.
And so, when Westmoreland County District Attorney Nicole Ziccarelli called her crash at 3:30 a.m. Dec. 18 in Murrysville “minor,” that’s her interpretation.
However, subjectivity of the definition aside, most people would be hard-pressed to dismiss the incident so lightly.
The DA was driving a county-leased 2021 Ford Explorer XLT with four-wheel drive, a vehicle she has been using since she took office in January 2022. She was on the road after comforting a friend when she lost control of the car in the snow and crashed onto a property at Cherry Drive and Windover Road, where the SUV hit a small tree and a parked car.
It took weeks to get real information about the “minor” incident. More weeks passed before a Tribune-Review Right-to-Know Law request yielded additional facts.
Repairs to the vehicle leased through Enterprise are ongoing. The estimates total $32,700 and include fixing 180 items — everything from air bags to bodywork to the electrical system.
The county controller’s office put the Explorer’s value at $33,000. Few people would call a repair bill just $300 shy of the total cost of a vehicle “minor.”
Ziccarelli did pay for the $2,500 insurance deductible, something her spokeswoman Melanie Jones said was voluntary.
However, Ziccarelli has not complied with other aspects of using a county-owned vehicle that are enforced with employees. She has submitted no monthly logs for the vehicle’s use that would show how the vehicle is used, when and why. County Deputy Controller Rege Garris said 60% of her use is personal and has been reported as such to the IRS as additional compensation.
The only other elected officials taking home a county-leased vehicle are Sheriff James Albert and Coroner Tim Carson. Albert submitted six months of logs. Carson did one month and called the lack of others an oversight. Both said they use the county vehicles only for official business.
So why doesn’t the person responsible for weighing the rules and holding people accountable find it necessary to follow them to the same degree? Ziccarelli said she “met every county requirement,” but the lack of logs says otherwise.
If Ziccarelli can’t abide by filling out a log of how a taxpayer-supplied vehicle is used, maybe she doesn’t need to use one. If she had to claim mileage for the miles she has accumulated in official travel, maybe those reports would be submitted.
The DA should not be exempt from the policies that apply to the county’s employees. She should feel a responsibility to lead by example because following the rules is no minor thing.