The Allegheny County district attorney has filed a 20-count complaint against state Rep. Jeffrey E. Habay, R-Shaler, charging him, among others things, with falsely claiming to police that a political opponent had sent him an envelope containing suspicious white powder.

	John Heller, Associated Press Pennsylvania State Rep. Jeffrey Habay, R-Shaler, faces a 20-count complaint. Click photo for larger image.

The political harassment charges, filed yesterday, outline a broad pattern of vindictive acts by the veteran lawmaker aimed at opponents who had questioned his official spending.

With the complaint, the district attorney joins the state Ethics Commission and the state Attorney General's office in targeting Habay's conduct in office.

Habay, 38, a graduate of Fox Chapel Area High School and American University, was the youngest member of the state House when he was elected in 1994. Now he faces a litany of complaints of ethical and criminal lapses.

Last year, the ethics panel found that the lawmaker had used state employees for campaigning, and ordered him to pay $13,000 in restitution. Later, the state attorney general charged him with two felony violations of the state ethics act over the same charges of mixing official and political business.

Habay, who could not be reached for comment yesterday, appealed the ethics panel finding and pleaded not guilty to the earlier state charges, which are still awaiting trial. A preliminary hearing on the new complaint is scheduled for Tuesday, according to Mike Manko, a spokesman for District Attorney Stephen A. Zappala Jr.

George Radich, whose wife formerly worked in Habay's district office, is one of several constituents to have raised questions in recent years about the legislator's official spending. Last May, he sent Habay a letter in connection with the constituents' legal request for an audit of Habay's campaign finances.

Habay told Shaler police and U.S. Postal inspectors that the envelope contained a white powder, which the postal inspectors determined to be harmless. Radich, who had mailed the envelope from a local post office and paid for its postage with a credit card, denied any knowledge of the white powder. Yesterday's complaint states that Habay knew that his complaint against Radich was false.

The complaint enumerates an extensive campaign of harassment against other litigants who had turned the spotlight on Habay's conduct and spending. It states that Habay had made telephone threats to one of them, Indiana Township Manager Dan Anderson, who had been Habay's opponent in his first primary race in 1994. Habay also is accused of directing state-paid staff members, on at least five occasions, to investigate Anderson and members of his family in a search for derogatory information.

The filing names Nick Havens and Melissa Farabaugh as staffers who were ordered to conduct the investigation and copy materials on Habay's opponents.

"[Habay], while in possession of fifty to seventy copies of the Anderson packet of papers, drove to the Indiana Township Building for Community Day with staffer Bruno Morelli and there," the complaint says, "in a surreptitious manner so as not to be seen or identified, distributed those packets ... onto car windows that were in the area parking lots."

Habay also is reported to have told postal inspectors that either Anderson, or his father Ray Anderson were potential suspects in the mailing of the mysterious white powder.

The false reports about the white powder are the basis of two felony counts in the criminal complaint. He also is charged with the felony of theft of services over his reported use of state employees to seek and distribute derogatory information about his rivals.

"It all started with the audit," said Radich after news of the latest charges against Habay circulated. "All he would have had to do was amend his [campaign finance] report. Instead he did this powder thing. None of this had to happen."

Habay also is accused of four counts of solicitation to commit perjury based on the allegation that he instructed staff members to sign statements that they had circulated his official petitions to seek re-election when they had not.