Site last updated: Thursday, July 3, 2025

Log In

Reset Password
MENU
Butler County's great daily newspaper

Wolf makes picks for banking, agriculture

More served under Rendell

HARRISBURG — Gov.-elect Tom Wolf is again turning to appointees of the state’s last Democratic governor, Ed Rendell, as he assembles his new administration.

Wolf, a wealthy Democratic businessman, said Tuesday that he will nominate former state Treasurer Robin Wiessmann to be his secretary of banking and former Agriculture Secretary Russell Redding to the job for a second time. Both will require Senate confirmation.

Wolf also picked longtime state Senate aide Randy Albright to be budget secretary. Albright has served as executive director for the ranking Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee since 2009.

Just a week before he takes the oath of office, Wolf still has yet to say who he will nominate to be his state police commissioner and to lead several high-profile agencies, including the departments of education, environmental protection, human services and transportation. He also must pick two people to fill vacant seats on the state Supreme Court through the end of the year.

Wolf will be making more announcements this week and expects to have a full Cabinet announced by the time he’s sworn in Jan. 20, spokesman Jeffrey Sheridan said.

In 2007, Rendell nominated Wiessmann to be treasurer for two years to serve the remainder of Bob Casey’s term after his election to the U.S. Senate. Redding served just over a year as agriculture secretary at the end of Rendell’s second term, finishing in early 2011.

Redding is the dean of agriculture and environmental sciences at Delaware Valley College in Doylestown and spent 16 years in senior posts at the Department of Agriculture under three governors. The Pennsylvania Farm Bureau quickly praised the choice of Redding, pointing to his family dairy farm background in Adams County.

Wiessmann, who has been on the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board since 2012, helped start investment banking firm Artemis Capital Group Inc. in 1990 and, before that, was a vice president at Goldman Sachs. She lives in the Philadelphia suburb of Newtown. Her husband, Ken Jarin, is active in political fundraising for Democrats and was appointed by Rendell to chair the State System of Higher Education.

Several other people already tapped to serve in Wolf’s administration also served under Rendell. They include Kathleen McGinty, who will be his chief of staff; John Hanger, who will be his policy secretary; and Pedro Cortes, who he will nominate to be secretary of state.

More in Pennsylvania News

Subscribe to our Daily Newsletter

* indicates required
TODAY'S PHOTOS