Former Allentown Mayor Ed Pawlowski, who was sentenced to 15 years in prison in 2018 after his conviction on 47 charges including corruption and wire fraud, said he will be released from federal prison this summer after serving only about half his sentence.
According to a message from Pawlowski on the prison messaging system CorrLinks, he expects to be released into a halfway house in June.
It is unclear how long he will remain in the halfway house before he can return home; halfway house placements can last up to 12 months, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons website.
Pawlowski was set to be released in August 2030, and that date is still listed on the federal agency’s inmate information site.
Pawlowski said he’s being released early because he earned “good behavior” credits via the First Steps Act, a bipartisan law passed in 2018 that allows inmates to shave time off their prison sentences by participating in rehabilitation and other productive activity programs.
In an interview with The Morning Call in 2023, Pawlowski said he was leading a Bible study among his fellow inmates, teaching GED classes and [participating in a service dog training program. He is being held at the Federal Correctional Institution in Otisville, New York.
Pawlowski said he has circulated a letter to friends and family about his plans for release, though The Morning Call has not viewed a copy of the letter.
Alan Jennings, former director of Community Action Lehigh Valley and a friend of Pawlowski, said the former mayor will be under pressure to secure a job upon his release because he depleted his savings on unsuccessful legal appeals. He no longer has an attorney representing him.
“I would like to try to help him,” Jennings said. “He has got a valuable set of skills, I would imagine he is pretty employable, if not for his record.”
As part of an FBI probe into Allentown City Hall corruption, Pawlowski and five co-defendants were charged for pay-to-play contract schemes between 2012 and 2015. Investigators found that Pawlowski and his co-conspirators steered city contracts toward donors to his campaign.
Pawlowski was found guilty on multiple counts of conspiracy, bribery, mail fraud, wire fraud and other charges. He was sentenced to 15 years in federal prison in 2018. His co-defendants pleaded guilty and received lighter charges as a result.
Throughout his sentence, Pawlowski attempted unsuccessfully to overturn the charges, including filing a “writ of habeas corpus” to argue that his detention is unlawful, and filing a Freedom of Information Act request for prosecutorial evidence that he claimed could exonerate him, although a judge disagreed. Most recently, a motion to have his sentence reduced was denied in October, according to federal court records.
Pawlowksi consistently maintained his innocence, but in 2024, while seeking a commutation from President Joe Biden, he issued an apology letter, saying he fell under the influence of “corrupt campaign consultants” who helped run his unsuccessful campaigns for higher office.
Pawlowski was mayor of Allentown from 2006 to 2018, winning reelection four times, including in the midst of the FBI probe. Before his time as Allentown’s mayor, he was executive director of the Lehigh Housing Development Corp., now known as the Alliance for Building Communities, and Allentown Director of Community and Economic Development under former Mayor Roy Afflerbach.
Reporter Lindsay Weber can be reached at Liweber@mcall.com.