Judges deny Sacco entry in litigation over Lackawanna commissioner vacancy
The litigation was started last month by Democratic Commissioner Bill Gaughan and the county over filling the vacancy of former Democratic Commissioner Matt McGloin for the nearly three years remaining on his unexpired term.
Brenda Sacco. (TIMES-TRIBUNE / FILE PHOTO)
In a decision issued Wednesday, Senior Judges Carmen D. Minora, Robert A. Mazzoni and Vito P. Geroulo determined Sacco has no 'legally enforceable interest' in the case. That renders moot her companion motion for a protective order against the media from reporting on her, and thus the ruling also dismisses that motion.
The judges noted the Lackawanna County Democratic Committee's legal response in the battle to fill a commissioner vacancy closely mirrored Sacco's petition to intervene in the matter. The committee and Sacco both contended the county's Home Rule Charter trumps a state court rule that would cut the committee out of the candidate selection process.
'In fact, the Democratic Committee's Answer is identical to Sacco's Proposed Answer. It is apparent to this court that the Democratic Committee simply copied Sacco's Proposed Answer' and adopted it as its own, the ruling says. 'It is so identical that the Democratic Committee's claim for relief is advancing Sacco's interest,' instead of its own 'in requesting a denial and dismissal of Gaughan's Petition to Amend. That claim has since been amended' by the Democratic Committee.
The Home Rule Charter process had the Democratic Committee picking three candidates to forward to county judges, who then would select one of the three to fill the McGloin vacancy. The committee named three candidates — Sacco, who is a former county director of economic development, Olyphant Borough Council President James Baldan and Scranton School Director Robert J. Casey — as candidates to potentially replace McGloin. The Gaughan/county challenge claims the charter is trumped by Pennsylvania Rule of Judicial Administration 1908 of 2019, which says the county court — not a political party — shall receive applications from any interested candidates for the position.
Noting she is the Democratic Committee's top candidate, Sacco sought court approval to formally enter the litigation, claiming she is victim of a 'smear campaign' against her via reporting by The Times-Tribune. If allowed to intervene in the case directly, Sacco would have backed the Home Rule Charter/county Democratic Committee process that made her the top finalist; and she also would have filed a separate motion for a protective order against Gaughan/the county 'from orchestrating false news stories about (her) in the local press,' according to her legal petition prepared by attorney Paul James Walker of Clarks Summit.
In response to such claims in Sacco's petition, Lackawanna County Solicitor Donald Frederickson issued a statement Friday saying: 'To the extent that Lackawanna County is being accused of 'leaking' information to the press, this accusation is completely false and not based in reality. Any information which the county has provided to the press is public information which any citizen and taxpayer is entitled to receive. At no time was any confidential or privileged information relating to any employee or former employee disseminated by the county government.'
The Democratic Committee's answer, filed Monday and prepared by attorney Adam Bonin of Philadelphia, claims the court rule was not established to guide Courts of Common Pleas when filling a county vacancy, but rather was created to give guidance when filling other elected office vacancies pursuant to statutory authority, including under the Pennsylvania Borough Code and the Pennsylvania Public School Code.
'It is specifically denied that the resignation of Commissioner Matt McGloin created such a scenario, as his vacancy must be filled pursuant to a Home Rule Charter provision and not pursuant to statutory authority,' the Democratic Committee reply states. 'The Supreme Court cannot simply promulgate internal rules that change the scheme of an enacted Pennsylvania Home Rule Charter.'
Meanwhile, Republican Commissioner Chris Chermak opposes the county's participation in the litigation and also has filed in court a legal action to remove the county as a party to the case.
The panel of judges has scheduled oral arguments in the litigation to be heard April 22. Briefs from all parties in the case must be filed with the court no later than Monday.
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Los Angeles Times
2 hours ago
- Los Angeles Times
News Analysis: Newsom's decision to fight fire with fire could have profound political consequences
Deep in the badlands of defeat, Democrats have soul-searched about what went wrong last November, tinkered with a thousand-plus thinkpieces and desperately cast for a strategy to reboot their stalled-out party. Amid the noise, California Gov. Gavin Newsom has recently championed an unlikely game plan: Forget the high road, fight fire with fire and embrace the very tactics that virtue-minded Democrats have long decried. Could the dark art of political gerrymandering be the thing that saves democracy from Trump's increasingly authoritarian impulses? That's essentially the pitch Newsom is making to California voters with his audacious new special election campaign. As Texas Democrats dig in to block a Republican-led redistricting push and Trump muscles to consolidate power wherever he can, Newsom wants to redraw California's own congressional districts to favor Democrats. His goal: counter Trump's drive for more GOP House seats with a power play of his own. It's a boundary-pushing gamble that will undoubtedly supercharge Newsom's political star in the short-term. The long-game glory could be even grander, but only if he pulls it off. A ballot-box flop would be brutal for both Newsom and his party. The charismatic California governor is termed out of office in 2026 and has made no secret of his 2028 presidential ambitions. But the distinct scent of his home state will be hard to completely slough off in parts of the country where California is synonymous with loony lefties, business-killing regulation and an out-of-control homelessness crisis. To say nothing of Newsom's ill-fated dinner at an elite Napa restaurant in violation of COVID-19 protocols — a misstep that energized a failed recall attempt and still haunts the governor's national reputation. The redistricting gambit is the kind of big play that could redefine how voters across the country see Newsom. The strategy could be a boon for Newsom's 2028 ambitions during a moment when Democrats are hungry for leaders, said Democratic strategist Steven Maviglio. But it's also a massive roll of the dice for both Newsom and the state he leads. 'It's great politics for him if this passes,' Maviglio said. 'If it fails, he's dead in the water.' The path forward — which could determine control of Congress in 2026 — is hardly a straight shot. The 'Election Rigging Response Act,' as Newsom has named his ballot measure, would temporarily scrap the congressional districts enacted by the state's voter-approved independent redistricting commission. Under the proposal, Democrats could pick up five seats currently held by Republicans while bolstering vulnerable Democratic incumbent Reps. Adam Gray, Josh Harder, George Whitesides, Derek Tran and Dave Min, which would save the party millions of dollars in costly reelection fights. But first the Democratic-led state Legislature must vote to place the measure on the Nov. 4 ballot and then it must be approved by voters. If passed, the initiative would have a 'trigger,' meaning the redrawn map would not take effect unless Texas or another GOP-led state moved forward with its own gerrymandering effort. 'I think what Governor Newsom and other Democrats are doing here is exactly the right thing we need to do,' Democratic National Committee Chairman Ken Martin said Thursday. 'We're not bringing a pencil to a knife fight. We're going to bring a bazooka to a knife fight, right? This is not your grandfather's Democratic Party,' Martin said, adding that they shouldn't be the only ones playing by a set of rules that no longer exist. For Democrats like Rep. Laura Friedman (D-Glendale), who appeared alongside Newsom to kick off the effort, there is 'some heartbreak' to temporarily shelving their commitment to independent redistricting. But she and others were clear-eyed about the need to stop a president 'willing to rig the election midstream,' she said. Friedman said she was hearing overwhelmingly positive reactions to the proposal from all kinds of Democratic groups on the ground. 'The response that I get is, 'Finally, we're fighting. We have a way to fight back that's tangible,'' Friedman recounted. Still, despite the state's Democratic voter registration advantage, victory for the ballot measure will hardly be assured. California voters have twice rallied for independent redistricting at the ballot box in the last two decades and many may struggle to abandon those beliefs. A POLITICO-Citrin Center-Possibility Lab poll found that voters prefer keeping an independent panel in place to draw district lines by a nearly two-to-one margin, and that independent redistricting is broadly popular in the state. (Newsom's press office argued that the poll was poorly worded, since it asked about getting rid of the independent commission altogether and permanently returning line-drawing power to the legislators, rather than just temporarily scrapping their work for several cycles until the independent commission next draws new lines.) California voters should not expect to see a special election campaign focused on the minutia of reconfiguring the state's congressional districts, however. While many opponents will likely attack the change as undercutting the will of California voters, who overwhelmingly supported weeding politics out of the redistricting process, bank on Newsom casting the campaign as a referendum on Trump and his devious effort to keep Republicans in control of Congress. Newsom employed a similar strategy when he demolished the Republican-led recall campaign against him in 2021, which the governor portrayed as a 'life and death' battle against 'Trumpism' and far-right anti-vaccine and antiabortion activists. Among California's Democratic-heavy electorate, that message proved to be extremely effective. 'Wake up, America,' Newsom said Thursday at a Los Angeles rally launching the campaign for the redistricting measure. 'Wake up to what Donald Trump is doing. Wake up to his assault. Wake up to the assault on institutions and knowledge and history. Wake up to his war on science, public health, his war against the American people.' Kevin Liao, a Democratic strategist who has worked on national and statewide campaigns, said his D.C. and California-based political group chats had been blowing up in recent days with texts about the moment Newsom was creating for himself. 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Shortly after Trump took office in January, Newsom walked a fine line between criticizing the president and his policies and being more diplomatic, especially after the California wildfires — in hopes of appealing to any semblance of compassion and presidential responsibility Trump possessed. Newsom had spent the first months of the new administration trying to reshape the California-vs.-Trump narrative that dominated the president's first term and move away from his party's prior 'resistance' brand. Those conciliatory overtures coincided with Newsom's embrace of a more ecumenical posture, hosting MAGA leaders on his podcast and taking a position on transgender athletes' participation in women's sports that contradicted the Democratic orthodoxy. Newsom insisted that he engaged in those conversations to better understand political views that diverged from his own, especially after Trump's victory in November. However, there was the unmistakable whiff of an ambitious politician trying to broaden his national appeal by inching away from his reputation as a West Coast liberal. Newsom's reluctance to readopt the Trump resistance mantle ended after the president sent California National Guard troops into Los Angeles amid immigration sweeps and ensuing protests in June. Those actions revealed Trump's unchecked vindictiveness and abject lack of morals and honor, Newsom said. Of late, Newsom has defended the juvenile tone of his press aides' posts mocking Trump's own all-caps screeds, and questioned why critics would excoriate his parody and not the president's own unhinged social media utterances. 'If you've got issues with what I'm putting out, you sure as hell should have concerns about what he's putting out as president,' Newsom said last week. 'So to the extent it's gotten some attention, I'm pleased.' In an attention-deficit economy where standing out is half the battle, the posts sparkle with unapologetic swagger. And they make clear that Newsom is in on the joke. 'To a certain set of folks who operated under the old rules, this could be seen as, 'Wow, this is really outlandish.' But I think they are making the calculation that Democrats want folks that are going to play under this new set of rules that Trump has established,' Liao said. At a moment when the Democratic party is still occupied with post-defeat recriminations and what's-next vision boarding, Newsom has emerged from the bog with something resembling a plan. And he's betting the house on his deep-blue state's willingness to fight fire with fire. Times staff writers Seema Mehta and Laura Nelson contributed to this report.
Chicago Tribune
2 hours ago
- Chicago Tribune
‘A terrible position': Illinois sprints to lower new SNAP costs without booting people who need it
As an outreach coordinator for one of the Chicago area's largest food banks, Joann Montes is already seeing an impact from President Donald Trump's reductions to public assistance programs even before those cuts take effect. Anxious older adults who for years received what were once called food stamps are approaching Montes at senior centers to ask if those benefits will continue and whether they'll have to return to jobs 'to be able to feed themselves.' 'Our folks who are 60 and older are asking questions about whether they're going to be able to receive SNAP,' Montes, who works at the Greater Chicago Food Depository, said about the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. 'Will they have to go back to work?' A little more than a month after Trump signed into law a sweeping Republican domestic package that expanded work requirements for SNAP benefits to previously exempt groups such as adults ages 55 to 64, the state and people receiving benefits are getting ready for a recalibration. Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker's administration is sprinting to figure out how to avoid a potential $700 million price tag by changing operations to achieve a level of payment accuracy that the vast majority of states currently do not meet. At the same time, Illinois also must handle the federally mandated work requirements on new groups that experts say could lead to people losing benefits. 'It would be almost easier if the federal government just did what they set out to do, which is say, 'You are no longer going to be eligible for this program.' But instead, they are putting states on the front line to create bureaucratic barriers to turn individuals and families away,' Grace Hou, the deputy governor covering health and human services, said at a panel discussion in Joliet on Friday. 'These cost savings in the Trump spending bill will result in families getting kicked off their benefits because they can't manage the red tape.' In all, about 1.9 million Illinoisans receive aid through SNAP, which provides assistance for low-income families to buy food. The program's benefits have been fully funded by the federal government for six decades, while the administrative costs have been split between the federal government and states. Monthly benefits in Illinois among people receiving assistance averaged $192 for each member of a household in fiscal 2024, or $6.33 per day, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a progressive think tank. But state officials say the changes written into the new federal law could place hundreds of thousands of Illinoisans at risk of losing those benefits. That jibes with a recent Congressional Budget Office report that estimated about 2.4 million fewer Americans will receive food assistance as a result of the new work requirements. 'Here the state is with less money and more challenge, going to have to take lemons and turn it into lemonade,' said Danielle Perry, vice president of policy and advocacy at the Food Depository, which, on top of its work as a food bank, helps people apply for and keep SNAP benefits. The GOP-led megabill that Trump signed into law July Fourth extends tax breaks that were set to expire and expands spending for the military and border security, funded in part by cuts to SNAP and Medicaid. 'Illinois' goal is to mitigate to the greatest extent possible the impact of the Trump spending bill on the SNAP program, and try to mitigate the harm it's going to wreak on poor families across the state,' Hou said in a separate interview with the Tribune. 'Our administration is going to do everything in our power to quickly put our structures in place to protect Illinois families.' Among the biggest reasons Illinoisans might get cut from SNAP is because of the key provisions in the megabill that initiate new work requirements for recipients who were previously excluded. The GOP bill expanded work requirements for able-bodied adults ages 55 to 64 — the cohort Montes was referring to — and those with dependents age 14 and older, among other groups. About one-third of SNAP recipients in Illinois are in a household with someone older than 60 or who has a disability, according to the progressive CBPP. What's more, many Illinois SNAP recipients have been exempt from work requirements altogether for years because of a waiver tied to unemployment in the state. But that exemption is expected to end this year, as the new bill hikes the state unemployment threshold. States are awaiting guidance from the federal government on the new work requirements, including the timeline for implementation. 'This will create a constant churn of applications as people fall on and off eligibility,' Illinois Department of Human Services spokesperson Rachel Otwell said in an emailed has already included funding in its budget for about 100 new caseworkers and operations staff with IDHS to begin addressing the added paperwork that is expected to be created from the new requirements, as well as changes to Medicaid. Officials with the Pritzker administration said they anticipated earlier this year that they would need additional staff even without knowing the specifics of the Republican-led tax bill. Now, the department is looking into the number of additional staff it might need to deal with SNAP changes, according to the governor's office. Beyond that workload, Illinois faces potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in added costs. The Republican-led bill raises the administrative levy for states, which in Illinois would mean spending an additional $80 million, according to the governor's office. Those costs are expected to kick in October 2026, according to the Center for American Progress think tank. Plus, any further improvements to computer or communications systems will likely cost even more, at a time when the state will likely be looking to keep costs down, said Jeremy Rosen, director of economic justice at the Shriver Center on Poverty Law. But most crucially, Illinois could be on the hook for an additional annual $700 million bill to pay for some of the benefits, according to the governor's office, though that contribution could be eliminated if the state manages to bring down a measure known as the payment error rate. The combination of costs and new requirements puts the state in 'a terrible position,' said Alicia Huguelet, a senior fellow at the CBPP who previously worked as a program administrator at IDHS. As one of several factors that experts use to gauge the success of a state's SNAP program, the payment error rate isn't a measure of fraud, but rather overpayments or underpayments commonly resulting from mistakes by applicants, staff or computer systems. Illinois' error rate is among the 15 worst in the nation, though Pritzker has defended it as comparable to other large states. 'We are working very hard to make sure that we've got a process for determining the eligibility of people, making sure we hit the error rate that we need to as best we can, and we're working very hard every single day to effectuate that, but it's going to take money to do that,' Pritzker said Wednesday, noting to reporters at an unrelated news conference in Springfield that the new requirements do not come with funds for implementation. Efforts to lower the payment error rate can result in people being removed from the food assistance program, Rosen and other experts said — an outcome the state says it's trying to avoid. Still, starting in October, the state said it will be in a yearlong sprint to bring down the error rate measure ahead of cost-sharing measures that go into place after the year is up. If the rate comes down below 6% — from more than 11% currently — by fall 2026, then Illinois could avoid the more than $700 million burden, which would take effect starting in fall 2027. The state has said it can't cover that expected contribution, which is close to the looming transit fiscal cliff or the entire amount by which Illinois increased its operating revenue for the current fiscal year. To bring down the rate, IDHS is using an existing contract with Deloitte to diagnose exactly where those mistakes happen and what changes could be made to the program, according to the governor's office, which did not provide an estimated timeline on those efforts. IDHS is also reviewing its own policies to see how it could reduce the error rate, according to the state. Close to half of the payment errors in Illinois come from inaccurate wage and benefits data, including errors in what people report as their income, the state said. As a result, the governor's office said Illinois is exploring whether it could implement more stringent verifications in some areas, rather than relying on self-reporting, which is typically faster. But trying to bring down the error rate while also needing to implement new work requirements poses a major challenge, experts and the state said. 'If the application process is more stringent … it will be definitely a challenge,' said the Rev. Gary Gaston, CEO at Lessie Bates Davis Neighborhood House, a social services organization that Pritzker visited earlier this summer to highlight the challenges to SNAP. 'People have gotten acclimated to the current process. Any new processes that will be put in place could be challenging.' In the East St. Louis area where Gaston works, people might have difficulty finding work to meet the new requirements, and in some cases also face a lack of transportation options to make appointments, he said. On top of that, the area is already considered a food desert, with no major grocery store in the city — 'a double whammy,' he said. Demanding more information and verification up front can make it harder for people to access benefits, which is likely to result in some people losing benefits, Rosen at the Shriver Center said. The Pritzker administration, for its part, argues that the loss of benefits that could come from efforts to reduce the error rate is an intentional move by the Trump administration to reduce benefits and, in turn, lower the cost of the program to the federal government. Still, the state said it's working to reduce the rate in a way that keeps as many people as possible from losing benefits, as lowering the measure is the only way to avoid the massive potential $700 million bill. 'We want to make sure that we're actually delivering to the maximum number of people that need SNAP,' Pritzker told reporters Wednesday at the state fair, emphasizing that both underpayments and overpayments are considered errors. 'Republicans don't care that we're under-providing. They just want to cut everybody off of SNAP, and that is why they've set this SNAP error rate so low.' Haywood Talcove, CEO for government at LexisNexis Risk Solutions, said he wants to see Illinois and other states simplify their application process for benefits — in an effort to both reduce fraud and improve the experience for people who need benefits — from lengthy paperwork with many self-reported boxes to basic identification information and verification. Republicans have cited fraud and waste as reasons to crack down on parts of the benefits program, and Talcove, who is based in Washington, testified at a Republican-led congressional hearing this year about benefits fraud. If states are pouring millions into benefits and changes to the program, Talcove said, 'I'd like you to fix it, please.' The governor's office has noted that SNAP fraud is not the same as the error rate and that any fraud comes out of $4.7 billion in SNAP benefits that the state issues each year. Statewide, Illinois found about 0.07% of SNAP cases had an intentional program violation, which would have resulted in an IDHS penalty and potentially a court penalty, according to the governor's office. Additionally, there were more than 23,000 claims that benefits were stolen from recipients last year and an estimated $12.5 million in that type of fraud, according to a report from IDHS to the General Assembly. Rosen of the Shriver Center said the state should aim to get the information it needs, 'without being in a world where we make people bring so much stuff so often that they fall off the program.' 'Because inevitably somebody's kid gets sick, so they miss the appointment, and they can't take the three-hour bus ride to get to the office, the website doesn't work and they can't upload something. Those are not good reasons for people to be cut off who are eligible,' he said. In six years at the food bank and more than two decades working in social services, Montes said SNAP has felt 'stable, as far as the rules are concerned.' Now, even the work requirements by themselves are 'going to isolate many people from food, from accessing food, just that alone,' she said. 'Personally, it scares me.'
Chicago Tribune
2 hours ago
- Chicago Tribune
Stacy Davis Gates: Chicago families deserve to go back to fully funded schools
For the first time in years, when parents drop off their children to school this year, they will be in smaller class sizes. Elementary students will have access to the state-mandated recess Chicago Public Schools previously didn't provide. Libraries are reopening. Our homegrown national model for public education, sustainable community schools, is expanding to 16 more campuses this year. Black students will be taught in classrooms where the right to learn their history is enshrined in our contract and all students will have greater access to sports, arts, music and a nurse and counselor. School will be one of the safest places immigrant students can be due to our expanded sanctuary protections. Students with disabilities will be supported by 215 new case managers. LGBTQ+ students will arrive at schools with staff support, access to all-gender restrooms and protocols against bullying. All of these improvements to the school day are a result of the contract educators fought hard for over the past year and ratified in April. And they all require the governor and Democratic majority in Springfield to pay our district what is owed. While parents were fulfilling back-to-school shopping and educators were equipping classrooms with supplies out of their own pockets, the state that withholds money from CPS was holding a hearing to find out why the district is in financial trouble. The answer is obvious. It's a choice. It is not a math problem. The difference between a cost and an investment is one's values. The difference between a deficit and a robbery is one's tax bracket. At a time when Illinois' wealthiest 5% are getting handed $8 billion in tax cuts from President Donald Trump, Gov. JB Pritzker's budget provided $10 billion in tax breaks and other incentives at the state level to tech corporations and the ultra-rich. Combine those and you're looking at $18 billion in giveaways to those who need it least. That's enough to eliminate CPS' entire $1.6 billion funding gap more than 11 times over. The governor says he wants to fund Illinois schools fully, but has yet to create a budget to reflect that desire. Meanwhile, books are locked in libraries because schools don't have librarians. We're losing art and music teachers at schools deemed 'fine arts.' High schools operate without math and science teachers. CPS just laid off crossing guards, security guards, janitors and — at a time when Trump is cutting SNAP for families — CPS is planning to cut the one hot meal some students have access to. Our schools have been cut to the bone and constantly asked to do more with less. But this isn't just underinvestment. It is also extraction. While banks prey on the false scarcity by demanding an even higher premium on loans, research shows that for Cook County is being shortchanged in terms of state funding. For every dollar it sends to the state of Illinois in tax revenue, it receives only 90 cents back. Meanwhile southern regions in Illinois receive $2.81 for every dollar of tax revenue created. The Blackest school district in the state, with the highest homeless student population, the highest bilingual population and the highest special needs population hasn't just experienced disinvestment. Black and brown families in Chicago have been subsidizing the education of students outside city limits for as long as the system has been designed to deprive our own children of equal opportunity. This back-to-school season is the result of more than a decade of work to undo the damage done by privatizers and school closers. We are in the midst of a reconstruction in our city to make good on what formerly enslaved ancestors dreamed of for their descendants when they broke the back of the Confederacy, ended the Civil War, and created public schools, labor rights and public health. We need a partner in our governor and the Democratic supermajority, not just a debt that's past due. We need being a blue state during Trump's authoritarianism to mean something. As much as is spent to try to demonize our union, we're more in-line with the people of our state than anyone arguing for cuts or to deny our children the education they deserve. Ninety-one percent of Illinoisans, when asked, believe in the right to a public education and 71% support increasing funding for schools. When asked where that money should come from, 63% of Americans say raise taxes on corporations and the ultra-rich. States such as Massachusetts are proof positive that this isn't rhetorical, it's successful. There they implemented a millionaire's tax that raised $2.2 billion in its first year alone — double what was expected. This revenue was used for universal free school meals, free community college and transit improvements. No millionaires fled the state. The state's millionaire population increased by 38%. Just last week, Massachusetts adopted an initiative to Trump-proof their education infrastructure while Illinois Democrats hold hearings asking why schools are broke. With 78 Democrats in the House and 40 in the Senate, that's more than enough to call a special session and do the same. Trump is actively dismantling public education, attacking communities of color, and transferring wealth to billionaires. The question for our state is simple: Will you be a beacon that stands up to the president, protects democracy and fights for our children? Or will you passively complement his plan for our schools through inaction? The state set the goal of at least adequately funding our schools by 2027. But the most recent budget opens that gap to $1.6 billion dollars owed instead of closing it. The steps are simple. End the tax breaks. Fund our schools. Turn the political theater into political leadership. Our students are waiting. Stacy Davis Gates is president of the Chicago Teachers Union.
