Hafer heads to private life

[Freddie Stubbs]

After 16 years in Harrisburg, she's starting her own firm
Sunday, January 16, 2005

By Bill Toland, Post-Gazette Harrisburg Bureau

HARRISBURG -- Departing state treasurers spend their last days on the job as the rest of us do. Barbara Hafer, treasurer for eight years and auditor general for the eight years before that, has busied herself the past few weeks by cleaning out her desk, attending going-away parties, reminiscing with old colleagues, packing knick-knacks into cardboard boxes.

The knick-knack packing helps to explain the recent office appearance of a squawking stuffed chicken, which Hafer held to the phone for a reporter to hear, presumably to establish that she was, in fact, in possession of such a creature.

"People have just given me these things over the years. Toy donkeys, elephants," gifts given to her as she switched from one party to another, from Democrat to Republican in 1975, then back to the Democratic side of the aisle just more than a year ago.

more: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05016/442551.stm