HARRISBURG — Defense lawyers and prosecutors said Tuesday they were concerned the judge presiding over the public corruption case of a former state lawmaker and three aides could soon limit testimony to speed up the case.

Lawyers said Dauphin County Judge Richard Lewis has told them he was considering setting a deadline by which the attorney general's office would have to finish putting on its witnesses.

The eighth of what could be 30 or more prosecution witnesses remained on the stand at the end of the court session Tuesday. The defendants can also put on a case and have subpoenaed dozens of people.

Senior Deputy Attorney General E. Marc Costanzo said prosecutors were vehemently opposed to an arbitrary end date for their case or any restriction on the number of witnesses.

"We have no problem with time limits when it comes to the orderly prosecution of the case," he said.

Costanzo said the case against former state Rep. Mike Veon, D-Beaver, and aides Annamarie Perretta-Rosepink, Brett Cott and Steve Keefer was, in many respects, unprecedented.

"I don't think it should be a shock to anybody that we have a lot of evidence and a lot of witnesses to call," he told reporters.

Keefer's attorney, Bill Fetterhoff, said the defendants have to be able to put on their defense against dozens of felony counts of theft, conspiracy and conflict of interest.

"This is a big case, there's no getting away from it," Fetterhoff said. "It's unfortunate, but it is what it is."

Testimony has been interrupted regularly over the past 3Z\x weeks by sidebar meetings at Lewis' bench, and lawyers have vigorously disputed even seemingly minute points. Many of the e-mails and other documents have been displayed time and again on the courtroom's enormous video screen.

Earlier Tuesday, former Veon aide David Bliss testified that Veon's legislative staff in the Capitol and in his district office all pitched in to campaign during his losing re-election effort in 2006.

"Every staff member in some way, shape or form was involved" in the fall election, Bliss said. He also said the entire staff — including those who worked for Veon's legislative nonprofit, the Beaver Initiative for Growth — helped circulate their boss' nominating petitions early that year.

Bliss, currently working for House Democratic Whip Frank Dermody, is cooperating with the attorney general's office under a grant of immunity.

Bliss said his legislative duties in 2006 mostly involved shepherding through so-called "walking around money" grants, taxpayer-funded expenditures that critics have described as pork-barrel spending.

Bliss earned a total of $139,000 in regular salary over 2004-06, and received $22,000 in bonuses. News that millions of dollars in bonuses had been handed out quietly to the General Assembly's employees sparked the investigation three years ago, resulting in the arrests of the four defendants and 21 others.