A pair of Lehigh County politicians are clashing over a change to the county’s budget that would see some staffing funds allocated for a senior care facility and corrections shifted to administrative roles.
Lehigh County Commissioner Ron Beitler last week spoke out about a proposal from county Executive Josh Siegel to cut eight positions — two licensed nurse practitioners, three certified nurse practitioners and one treatment case manager from county-run Cedarbrook, and two corrections officers — to fund the creation of four jobs — a multimedia specialist, a communications director, a chief of staff, and a community and intergovernmental liaison.
In a statement, Beitler said the chief of staff position was eliminated in 2014 due to it being seen as “an unnecessary cost to taxpayers and political in nature.” Furthermore, he questioned the need for a multimedia specialist.
“In passing former Executive Armstrong’s 2026 budget, our Board of Commissioners paid for Nurses, Caseworkers and Corrections Officers, not a Chief of Staff to do the Executive’s job or a Multimedia Specialist to create County TikTok videos,” Beitler’s statement reads.
Siegel was quick to release his own statement, accusing Beitler of playing politics in lieu of governing, and defending the creation of the positions.
According to Siegel, these roles will help with communications, connecting residents with local government across various platforms and throughout the county’s townships and boroughs. In addition, the chief of staff would help to “better communicate the administration’s expansive agenda,” Siegel said.
“This proposal reflects the new reality of the local media environment — that governments must now advocate for themselves and tell their own stories or risk residents never understanding or hearing about the services we provide,” Siegel said.
Communications from the county show the elimination of the eight positions would cut $417,656 from the budget. Adding the four jobs would add $385,556, with a total savings of about $30,100.
While Beitler has gone on record stating the new positions are unfunded and unsponsored by the board, Siegel confirmed that all positions had been filled save for the multimedia specialist role.
County records show the multimedia specialist listed with a salary of $54,166 with $19,952 in benefits; the communications director with a salary of $76,667 with $28,239 in benefits; the chief of staff with a salary of $76,873 and $28,316 in benefits; and the community and intergovernmental liaison with a salary of $$74,793 and $27,549 in benefits.
Beitler said while Siegel has the authority to fill the positions, the hires still must be approved by the board of commissioners, and Beitler questioned whether Siegel would have the board’s support.
Siegel said the positions would need to be approved by the board when commissioners consider next year’s budget, which he will introduce in the summer.
In an interview Friday, Siegel stated the roles he aims to cut have not been filled since the COVID-19 pandemic, even though they have been budgeted for each year.
“There’s always been a recruitment and retention crisis. It’s just difficult to fill those jobs, and candidly, they were never going to be filled for the foreseeable future,” Siegel said.
He said the directors of both Cedarbrook and county corrections agreed to the change.
Siegel said while those care and corrections roles remained unfilled for years, service did not suffer, pointing to Cedarbrook’s five-star review from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services as proof. Beitler concurred Cedarbrook was appropriately staffed at the moment.
The county executive said they are about three or four years out from needing to fill those roles, though he is exploring methods to increase job retention.
But for now, “we have the flexibility to use some of those open and vacant positions to create other roles that I think are immediately necessary and would provide immediate value to taxpayers and our residents,” Siegel said.
Beitler acknowledged the difficulty of attracting and maintaining medical professionals for Cedarbrook, though he felt it was still necessary to allocate for those positions in the budget, which he said he will continue to fight for.
As for shifting the funding to administrative communications roles, Beitler was skeptical of the decision.
“It’s pretty fair to say that he is using taxpayer money to fund his political operations, which is common in higher levels of government. It hasn’t yet been common at the county level, so I was disappointed to see that element being introduced here,” Beitler said.
Lehigh County Commissioner Ron Beitler (contributed photo)
In addition, Beitler stated former County Executive Phillips Armstrong left a robust team for Siegel to accomplish his intended goals, and their performance to date has been on par with many other Pennsylvania municipalities in terms of engagement and accomplishments as far as social media goes.
Siegel said he convened his staff and department heads to put together a detailed and transparent explanation of how the roles were created and funded.
“Now, people are certainly welcome to disagree with the merits of the jobs, and certainly welcome to vote ‘no,’ obviously. I am not attempting to force anything. The board has to sign off, obviously, and approve this broader plan,” Siegel said.
Siegel defended the communications positions as vital to a modern government and said they would help his office reach more constituents in the digital world.
“I believe, for the sake of our constituents, that we need to be creating our own content. We need to be our own advocates. We need to be communicating the value of the services we provide directly to them,” he said.
Ultimately, Siegel said, he inherited a county that has “had services atrophy, or there’s just been no interest or regard paid to them.”
“And I am trying to fix that, and ultimately, what I consider modernizing and optimizing county operations so that we can more efficiently and effectively deliver services to our constituents and do things that are necessary in a changing environment,” Siegel said.
Beitler, on the other hand, remains steadfast in his opposition to the county executive’s move.
“We’re going to have to budget for them again. I don’t think the logic changed. We need those positions. They’ve been difficult to fill because of trends that go far beyond the county with a shortage of nurses and caseworkers, etc., and just corrections being generally a tough job to fill. That hasn’t changed,” Beitler said.
Brian Myszkowski is a freelance writer.