Agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on Wednesday raided both City Hall and the private home of Mayor Bill Courtright....
Agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) conducted a search of City Hall and executed a search warrant to seize documents from a city department office....
Just months after a controversial decision to grant a lease to a city employee, the Scranton City Council introduced a revised ethics code Monday with tougher restrictions on conduct for local officials and employees....
State law enforcement officials raided the Administration Office of the Scranton School District this week. Media reports indicate that they removed documents and computers from the board secretary and the transportation director's offices. The other shoe is dropping. We bet there are lots of nervous former bus drivers in Scranton this weekend. Mayor Bill Courtright introduced his 2019 budget this week. No increases in city taxes but the $300 garbage fee remains in place. If approved by City Council, the Mayor's budget will represent the third consecutive year without hikes in taxes. This is Scranton and that's no small feat. Critics of the Mayor will...
John Chrin is feeling the love this week. The Monroe County Republican challenger to incumbent Democratic Congressman Matt Cartwright received back to back visits from Vice President Mike Pence and first son Eric Trump. Thursday he landed the endorsement from President Donald Trump. All the good feeling aside, one observer tells us the physical absence of POTUS may be evidence of lagging poll numbers. See: Lou Barletta Mayor Bill Courtright still hasn't answered City Council about Pat Hinton's sweetheart deal at Nay Aug Park. Maybe ol' Billy wanted to pray about it? He presided over a packed house Tuesday for the 55th annual Mayor's Prayer Breakfast. Andrea Mulrine of...
Scranton School District Superintendent Alexis Kirijan made the news this week and she was not happy. The Scranton Times-Tribune reports that in June Kirijan's attorney notified the School Board that his client had been sexually harassed by an unnamed school director. The superintendent is not happy about this public disclosure and wants to know who leaked the information. We usually take a tongue in cheek approach to the foibles of our friends at SSD, but in the age of #MeToo, there's no place for the kind of behavior Kirijan alleges. Our hope is someone gets to the bottom of it. Was President Donald...
Monday was the Case of Alexis and the No Good, Horrible, Very Bad Day. Poor Alexis Kirijan. Even though School Board President Barbara Dixon called a last minute cancellation of the regular meeting (no, BL, we mean Bob Lesh's basement did not flood again), that did not stop Directors Paul Duffy, Paige Gebhardt Cognetti, Mark McAndrew, and Tom Schuster from continuing with their Labor Relations Committee meeting. The four want Jeff Brazil's head on a platter. Who can blame them? Word around town is Brazil was asleep at the wheel while Daniel Sansky funnelled fraudulent bills to Gregg Sunday. Kirijan took the brunt...
The Scranton School District is embroiled in a web of scandal and dysfunction rarely seen in the annals of Lackawanna County politics. The arrest of one time fleet manager Daniel Sansky on charges that he defrauded taxpayers by overbilling for work performed at Danny's Auto Body comes as little surprise to those familiar with the findings of Pennsylvania Auditor General Eugene DePasquale in the 2017 performance audit report of district operations. A teacher phoned yesterday to remind us that this is all the tip of the iceberg. Bob Lesh disputes that he is the "BL" listed in the indictment. It's a hard case to make...
Councilman Bill Gaughan successfully introduced a motion at Monday's City Council meeting instructing solicitor Amil Minora to draft a new ethics code for Scranton officials. The move comes in response to the actions of Pat Hinton, the city’s licensing, inspection, and codes manager, who was awarded the lease of an unused Nay Aug Park restroom for use as a private gourmet coffee shop....
Pat Hinton’s lease of a Nay Aug Park building to open a coffee shop does not violate the city’s ethics code, according to his cousin attorney Timothy Hinton. The process was transparent. So transparent that Councilman Wayne Evans was briefed multiple times on the matter and even visited the restroom that the city manager wants to turn into a side business....