School board past colors Scranton Democratic mayoral primary election

Yahoo

04-05-2025

SCRANTON — The race for city mayor has raised issues of transparency, fairness and residency.
Incumbent Democratic Mayor Paige Gebhardt Cognetti faces in the May 20 primary Scranton Democratic Party Chairman Bob Sheridan. Two Republicans, Patricia 'Trish' Beynon and Lynn Labrosky, are running against each other for the GOP nomination.
Scranton's first female mayor, Cognetti switched from Democratic to independent for the 2019 special election to fill the unexpired term of corrupt former Democratic Mayor Bill Courtright and won that crowded race. She sought reelection in 2021 as a Democrat to a full, four-year term and handily defeated Republican Darwin Shaw.
Seeking reelection to another four-year term, Cognetti has cited as achievements her stewardship in improving city finances and stabilizing budgets, restoring integrity at City Hall, modernizing processes and upgrading technology, helping local businesses and improving parks throughout the city. While challenges remain, the city has been on the right track, she contends.
The challengers, in their own ways, think the city is not on the right track in areas including crime, blight and taxes. The Republicans have refrained from fighting each other and have focused on Cognetti's tenure. During debates April 22 at the University of Scranton, the three challengers also separately raised as issues transparency, fairness and residency. Sheridan and Labrosky each stress they are lifelong city residents, while Beynon has lived in the city for over 34 years. Cognetti, a native of Beaverton, Oregon, made Scranton her home in 2016, about two years after earning her MBA from Harvard Business School.
School board bad blood
Previous challengers tried to paint Cognetti as an opportunistic interloper using City Hall as a stepping stone to higher office. Sheridan raised that opinion during the debate.
Cognetti and Sheridan both previously served on the Scranton School Board, though not at the same time. Sheridan, a former eight-year member on the school board, lost in the 2017 primary and his second term ended Dec. 4, 2017. He was board president in his final two years.
In October 2017, then-Pennsylvania Auditor General Eugene DePasquale issued a scathing audit of the Scranton School District that he called the worst he'd ever seen. The audit sharply criticized the district's poor financial condition and its bus contract payment of $26.1 million to Dunmore-based DeNaples Transportation over a 10-year period, including more than $4 million in questionable fuel surcharges.
In mid-December 2017, the school board voted 8-0 to appoint Cognetti to fill the last two years of a vacancy. At that time, her MBA and experience as an adviser at the U.S. Treasury and an investment adviser at Goldman Sachs made her a strong candidate to help the financially struggling school district.
She resigned from the school board in December 2018 to become a special assistant with an emphasis on school transportation contracts in the state Auditor General's Office. During her year on the school board, Cognetti questioned the legitimacy of the district's no-bid busing contract that was highlighted in DePasquale's audit. Board members viewed her contributions as helping increase transparency and accountability.
At the April 22 debate, Sheridan cited comments Cognetti made on an April 10 podcast that 'she blamed me for … forging a contract.'
During the podcast by The Philadelphia Citizen titled 'How to Really Run a City, Powered by Accelerator for America, Where Local Matters,' Cognetti spoke of her motivations in joining the school board and running for mayor, as well as her tenure so far and seeking reelection. She recalled how in 2017 she was reading in the newspaper about 'this corruption on our school board and in our school district,' and how she then spent 2018 on the board pushing for reforms. Then, Courtright's resignation in disgrace in 2019 also pointed to an 'unfortunate culture of corruption' in Northeast Pennsylvania, and she ran for mayor and won. Now, her primary election challenger is 'the school board president who just drained that district and gave health care to non-employees and forged bus contracts, things like that, he's running against me in the primary,' she said on the podcast, without mentioning Sheridan by name.
During the debate between the Democrats, Sheridan said he'd like to see her back up that assertion of him forging bus contracts. In an interview Wednesday, Sheridan said he never forged a bus contract.
'Absolutely wrong. Lie,' Sheridan said. 'She outright lied. Outright lied. There was no evidence, ever. … She's trying to run on what happened to Bill Courtright and now putting me in that pail. Not right. Not right at all.'
In an interview Thursday, Cognetti said, 'Bob was the president of the school board at a time when there was false billing for auto maintenance, there was non-employee health care, there were no-bid bus contracts and addendums to those bus contracts that were not procured, which was not legal. The district at the time had a financial adviser who was pulling in a commission-based payment to the tune of over $2 million in the course of four years. Bob Sheridan was the school board president when all of this happened. In the case of the health care and the auto maintenance bills, two people pleaded guilty to felonies in that. Sheridan was the board president at that time and it's interesting that he's trying to rewrite history. We're not going to let him do that.'
Sheridan stressed he was never charged with forgery. Asked by The Times-Tribune if he committed forgery, Cognetti said, 'Bob Sheridan was president of the school board when a host of bills and contracts and documents went through the school board that allowed criminal activity to happen.'
Residency rumors
During the debate at two different times, Sheridan asked Cognetti whether she would serve out the full term if elected and whether she has lived in Scranton during her entire time as mayor. She did not reply to either question. During the first question, the moderator asked Sheridan, 'are you finishing your response,' and then moved on to another topic. During the second question, the moderator said, 'There won't be questions between the candidates' and 'Questions between the candidates will not be answered,' because the candidates agreed beforehand to rules of the debate that included not questioning each other.
On Thursday, Cognetti said she has lived in the city since 2016. Regarding contentions otherwise, she said, 'It's been a false rumor for years. It's a very, very silly thing.'
As for whether she would serve out another full term, Cognetti was noncommittal.
'I am running again because we have a great deal of more work to do. We have come a very, very long way from the disappointment of the former mayor, the disappointment of corruption in our area. People don't want corruption. They want good government.'
Sheridan several times during the debate noted he is a retired city police officer and he knows what being an officer entails.
Cognetti said of him, 'This is also a person who was involved in 'Exam Scam' (a conspiracy to rig city civil service tests) in the Police Department testing in 1985. People have not forgotten that. He can try to rewrite history as much as he wants but we're just going to do what the people of Scranton want, which is to run good, clean government.'
Sheridan said he was a victim in Exam Scam and he passed the test fair and square.
'That was 40 years ago. I was just a victim like everybody else. There was 20 police officers. I took the test honestly, passed the test honestly. Nobody went to jail for that, no police officers went to jail. There was nothing (there) — it was administrative,' Sheridan said. 'There were 20 police officers, highly decorated officers, retired now most of them, living a happy life with their pensions, with their families. She's trying to make me into that whole 'back room boys.' I'm not.'
Sheridan has recused himself as chairman of the city Democratic Committee while he runs for mayor.
Financial transparency
Beynon, who has lived in the city for over 34 years, is an accounting executive with Don Scartelli Construction Services and General Contractors of West Scranton. Her job includes managing the entire office, including preparing and submitting city and state documents, overseeing budgets, processing payroll, balancing the company's books and executing and submitting bids for construction projects, according to candidate background information posted online by the university for last month's debate.
The Cognetti administration and the Scartelli firm have battled in court in recent years in two lawsuits involving renovation of the former Serrenti Army Reserve Center at Pine Street and Colfax Avenue, the Novembrino Splash Park in West Side, the South Tower of City Hall and the Capouse Splash Pad and Playground Project. The city sued the firm in 2023 to rescind the Serrenti Center contract with Scartelli, and that lawsuit referenced disputes over the Novembrino and South Tower projects. Last year, Ralph Scartelli sued the city over its rejecting the low bid of $1.99 million from the Scartelli firm for the Capouse project. This lawsuit aimed to prevent the city from awarding the contract to a different bidder, and the city agreed to rebid the project. The rebid held last month split the project into two parts.
The city and the Scartelli firm were working on a joint settlement of both cases as recently as Thursday, according to a court scheduling order.
During the debate between the Republican candidates, Beynon cited as a top priority transparency, saying, 'We don't know where all the money is going in the city of Scranton. … I would say have an audit of the city of Scranton to find out where the money is going. If we do a complete audit, we'll have a better understanding of where the money is going … something is going on behind closed doors, we need to find out what that is.'
The city has an annual audit done.
In an interview Wednesday, Beynon — who is engaged to Don Scartelli — said she'd like to see more details of finances and spending in annual budgets and audits, 'to break it down more so people could see more what's happening.' She also expressed frustration with what she believes have been unfair bidding processes.
Cognetti replied Thursday that city budgets and audits are available on the city website. The administration also presents annual proposed budgets in detail to Scranton City Council during caucuses.
'Our administration is the most transparent administration that Scranton has ever seen,' Cognetti said. 'We came in because of a lack of transparency, as was the case with the Scranton School District, when I got a board seat there to try to clean things up.'
Funding fairness
The city received $68.7 million under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic.
During the debate, Labrosky, who along with her husband owns Labrosky's Automotive Service Center in South Scranton, found fault with the city's handling of the federal funds.
'I don't believe that that money was maybe managed as it could have been,' Labrosky said. 'We had applied for an ARPA grant for our business and we did not qualify for that grant, even though we qualified in every way, except at the end we were told we could not get the grant because we didn't have an occupancy permit.' She continued: 'Not funding a small business just because they don't have an occupancy permit doesn't make sense because there's things in place in Scranton, like grandfather laws and things like that, that could have helped with that.'
The Labroskys bought the garage in 2012, according to the candidate background posted by the university. In an interview Wednesday, Labrosky said the couple applied last year to the city for a matching grant from ARPA funds to install new windows at the business, to recoup half of the total $10,000 cost. She spent weeks preparing the application but only found out at the end they didn't qualify for lack of a certificate of occupancy. When they bought the building, the garage was the same use as the prior owner and they were 'grandfathered in' and did not need a certificate of occupancy, she said. Labrosky said she suggested 'why not give money to help such those (grandfathered) businesses to mitigate to get up to code' to qualify for an occupancy permit.
Cognetti said she could not speak specifically to Labrosky's ARPA grant application, but the city contributed almost $5 million in grants during the COVID years to help small businesses stay afloat. 'We are very proud of what we were able to do to help small businesses,' Cognetti said. 'We have very specific processes. We want to make sure that all of our recipients have all of their documents in order. We make sure everybody is all paid up on their taxes. We certainly want everything to be right from a code enforcement perspective. We're very particular. We have very high standards and we were successful in pushing out quite a lot of rescue plan dollars to help keep our economy going and keep family businesses afloat.'
The winners of the primary will advance to the Nov. 4 general election.
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Scranton Mayor Paige Gebhardt Cognetti, at left, and Bob Sheridan, Democratic candidates for Scranton mayor in the May 20, 2025 primary election, shown during a debate on April 22, 2025 at the University of Scranton. (JIM LOCKWOOD / STAFF PHOTO)
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Patricia 'Trish' Beynon, at left, and Lynn Labrosky, Republican candidates for Scranton mayor in the May 20, 2025 primary election, shown during a debate on April 22, 2025 at the University of Scranton. (JIM LOCKWOOD / STAFF PHOTO)
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Scranton Mayor-Elect Paige Gebhardt Cognetti at Scranton City Hall in Scranton on Nov. 7, 2019.
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Robert 'Bob' Sheridan, candidate in the 2025 Democratic primary election for mayor of Scranton. (PHOTO SUBMITTED / COURTESY OF BOB SHERIDAN)
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Patricia 'Trish' Beynon, Republican candidate for Scranton mayor in the May 20, 2025 primary election. (JIM LOCKWOOD / STAFF PHOTO)
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Lynn Labrosky, Republican candidate for Scranton mayor in the May 20, 2025 primary election. (PHOTO PROVIDED / COURTESY OF LYNN LABROSKY)
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Current mayor Paige Cognetti reacts to comments from candidate Bob Sheridan during the mayoral candidate debate at the Loyola Science Center at the University of Scranton on Tuesday, April 22, 2025. (REBECCA PARTICKA/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER)
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Democratic candidate Bob Sheridan responds to a question during the mayoral candidate debate at the Loyola Science Center at the University of Scranton on Tuesday, April 22, 2025. (REBECCA PARTICKA/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER)
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Republican candidate Patricia Beynon responds to questions during the mayoral candidate debate at the Loyola Science Center at the University of Scranton on Tuesday, April 22, 2025. (REBECCA PARTICKA/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER)
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Republican candidate Lynn Labrosky responds during the mayoral candidate debate at the Loyola Science Center at the University of Scranton on Tuesday, April 22, 2025. (REBECCA PARTICKA/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER)
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Scranton Mayor Paige Gebhardt Cognetti, at left, and Bob Sheridan, Democratic candidates for Scranton mayor in the May 20, 2025 primary election, shown during a debate on April 22, 2025 at the University of Scranton. (JIM LOCKWOOD / STAFF PHOTO)
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