SCRANTON — Congresswoman-elect Paige Cognetti will continue to serve as Scranton’s mayor until the day she’s sworn into Congress Jan. 3, triggering a replacement process at the city level that’s expected to involve a temporary appointment by city council and a subsequent special election to fill her unexpired term.

Interviewed days after her decisive midterm election victory over first-term Republican U.S. Rep. Rob Bresnahan in the 8th Congressional District, Cognetti confirmed the timeline for her pending resignation as mayor and briefly discussed what she hopes to see in the city’s next executive.

The Democratic congresswoman-elect did not endorse anyone in particular to succeed her as mayor following the temporary appointee’s tenure, but said that choice must be left to Scranton voters.

“I will resign from the mayor’s office the day that I am sworn in as a member of Congress, so we have a couple more months for a transition and then at that point it will trigger 30 days where the council president becomes mayor, (council will) pick an interim mayor and there’ll be a special election,” Cognetti said Friday. “The people of Scranton need to choose their next mayor.”

Democratic City Council President Tom Schuster, who’ll become acting mayor upon Cognetti’s resignation, recently said council was still reviewing how the mayoral vacancy will be filled, but noted it will likely more or less mirror the process a prior council followed in 2019 when the last mayoral vacancy occurred. Former Democratic Mayor Bill Courtright’s resignation and guilty plea to federal corruption charges prompted the process that saw then council President Pat Rogan become acting mayor before council appointed Republican Councilman Wayne Evans interim mayor, with Evans serving until Cognetti — the winner of a 2019 mayoral special election — took office in January 2020.

“Pretty much it will be the same process as in 2019,” Schuster told the newspaper last week.

At that time council pursued an appointment process that involved soliciting resumes and letters of interest from potential appointees, conducting public interviews and holding a special meeting to vote on the temporary appointment. The 2019 council that ultimately appointed Evans also stipulated that the appointed temporary mayor would not seek candidacy in the special election, though its unclear if the current council would insist on the same.

A likely special election would see the Lackawanna County Democratic and Republican parties nominate their respective candidates, who’d face off against each other and any potential independent candidates who secure a spot on the ballot by filing nomination papers with the county Department of Elections.

Cognetti ran as an independent in the 2019 special mayoral election she comfortably won, taking office as the city’s first female mayor Jan. 6, 2020. She won reelection as a Democrat in 2021 to a full four-year term, and won reelection again last year to another four-year term running through 2029. There’ll be about three years left of Cognetti’s unexpired mayoral term when she resigns Jan. 3.

A special election coinciding with the 2027 primary election would take place May 18.

As she prepares to join the incoming 120th Congress as a member of a new Democratic House majority swept into power last week, Cognetti said she’s very proud of the “work we’ve done” at the city level these past seven or so years.

“We’ve had incredible talent in our administration,” she said. “We’ve been able to implement systems and processes and technology that have helped us really move this city forward and be able to do a lot more and communicate better internally, and then externally with the people.”

“I would hope that the next mayor will continue on that, continue to be very outward facing, continue to make sure that those financial controls are in place, that we’re being very austere with the budget and making sure that we’re hiring people who understand what public service is and that working for the city of Scranton is hard and you’re underpaid — you’re paid as much as we can pay you but we’re funded by tax dollars, not private dollars — and it’s a real service,” she said.

The newspaper will publish in Sunday’s print editon more from its recent interview with Cognetti, which included discussion of her Congressional goals and priorities and the posture she thinks the new Democratic House majority should take toward President Donald Trump and his administration.