Rep. Bud Shuster Is Retiring

U.S. Rep. Bud Shuster, a 14-term congressman rebuked by the House ethics committee in the fall for allegedly accepting improper gifts and favoring a lobbyist, announced that he is retiring at the end of January.

Shuster, R-Pa., cited recent "health scares" and the realization he had "reached the pinnacle of my Congressional career" with recently passed transportation legislation in making his decision.

He said he would leave office on Jan. 31.

"In recent months, both my wife, Patty, and I have been in hospitals with different health scares. While we remain optimistic, these experiences have caused me to reevaluate my priorities and responsibilities," Shuster, 68, said in a statement.

Shuster's chief of staff, Darrell Wilson, said that Shuster was more concerned about his wife's health than his own.

"It's a personal decision," Wilson said. "He stuggled with it for a long time. It took him a year to make."

Shuster said he didn't want to become a lame duck.

"By retiring at the end of this month, effective January 31st, the Governor can call a special election to quickly elect my successor for the new Congress," Shuster said in the statement.

Shuster in December finished his sixth and last year as chairman of the Transportation & Infrastructure Committee.

In September, the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct criticized Shuster for "serious official misconduct" but spared him further penalty.

The committee found Shuster engaged in a "pattern and practice" of allowing his former top aide Ann M. Eppard - who lobbies for companies with business before the Transportation panel - to appear before him in his official capacity in the year after her resignation from his staff. This "created the appearance that his official decisions might have been improperly affected," the committee report said.

Shuster, who has represented the 9th District in south-central Pennsylvania since 1973 and was re-elected in November without opposition, said he negotiated an agreement with the ethics committee just to end the investigation and admitted no wrongdoing.

In October, a 60 Minutes broadcast showed Shuster hiding in the back seat of a vehicle driven by Eppard to conceal how often he stayed at her home. Eppard later said the woman driving the car was her sister.

Eppard was fined $5,000 in 1998 after pleading guilty to a federal misdemeanor charge of receiving improper compensation. She had been accused of illegally receiving money and gifts to intercede with Shuster and government agencies on behalf of companies threatened by the Big Dig, Boston's massive federal highway project.

Shuster has said his work on the Transportation Committee, including extensive improvements to the country's ground and air transportation, will be better remembered than the ethics committee rebuke.

He once sngled out the legislation to improve roads and highways throughout the country the 1998 Transportation Efficiency Act, which authorized $218 billion over five years. He has also cited his efforts to change the funding formula so airline taxes are used for airport improvements rather than for the general fund.

Shuster said he was thankful to help thousands of people and author "major legislation to re-build America."

"Like my boyhood baseball idol, Lou Gehrig, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth - to have realized my dream of becoming a U.S. Congressman," he said.