SCRANTON — Lackawanna County commissioners approved last week a new agreement with neighboring Luzerne County for the continued joint operation of the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton International Airport.

The agreement, which the Luzerne County Council approved late last month, establishes a new operating entity called “AVP Bi-County Partnership” for the purposes of federal grant administration and compliance. That entity will serve as the federal sponsor of the airport in Pittston Twp. and receive funding disbursed by the Federal Aviation Administration, which had asked the two counties to ratify a new partnership agreement replacing one from 1968 under which both counties were sponsors.

Attorney Donald Frederickson, a co-solicitor for the airport board made up of officials from both counties, told Lackawanna County commissioners last week that the new agreement is the product of a “two-year endeavor that we’ve been working through to get resolved with Luzerne County, our sister county, and the FAA, which have all signed off on this agreement.”

“Just by way of a little bit of history, (in) January of 1945, 81 years ago, Lackawanna and Luzerne County entered into an agreement with the U.S. government to develop the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton International Airport,” Frederickson said. “In 1968, 58 years ago, the counties entered into their first agreement to run the airport. It’s two pages, literally, but it worked. … And the counties have run, developed the airport into what it is today, which is a showpiece for Lackawanna and Luzerne County.

“Two years ago the FAA came to us and said: ‘we don’t like your two-page agreement, it doesn’t give us protections particularly with regard to the FAA funding,’” he continued. “We get a lot of FAA funding. They wanted language in there that guaranteed where the funding was going to, who is going to account for the funding and so forth, so that’s when we started redrafting the agreement.”

The new partnership and operating pact “preserves what we have historically done at the airport,” Frederickson said, with both counties serving as equal partners on a joint board of managers made up of three representatives from each. Lackawanna County’s commissioners will continue to serve as its representatives on the airport board, while Luzerne’s representatives will continue to consist of the county manager and two members of the county council.

The chairpersonship and vice chairpersonship of the board will also continue to rotate on an annual basis, with Lackawanna holding the chair in even-numbered years and Luzerne holding it in odd-numbered years. The vice chairpersonship rotates annually on the opposite schedule, with Lackawanna holding it in odd-numbered years and Luzerne in even-numbered years.

The airport board recently reorganized to make Lackawanna County Commissioner Chris Chermak chairman and Luzerne County Councilman Chris Belles vice chairman for 2026.

For a motion or resolution to pass under the new partnership agreement, each county must agree to the action and a majority of each county’s member representatives “must be obtained.” That, too, is unchanged.

“In other words, you have to have a majority of each county to pass anything at the airport,” Frederickson told the Lackawanna County commissioners. “I’ve been there for, it’ll be 15 years in March at the airport, and I can honestly say there’s been very few disagreements between the two counties in running the airport, which I think is a testament to both counties.”

Chermak, who said keeping the airport going is “critical,” thanked Frederickson and Luzerne County officials for their work on the agreement.

“Getting this done now allows us to continue getting our funding through the FAA and the federal government,” he said. “We get compliments … all the time. We have one of the nicest, cleanest, safest, convenient airports in the country, let alone in (the) northeast.”

Luzerne County Councilman John Lombardo touted the agreement in late January.

“It definitely resolves a lot of the issues that I think we’ve been trepidatious about,” he said at the time. “So I’m very happy to support this, and I look forward to more partnerships with Lackawanna County because I think that there are a lot more opportunities than just here at the airport.”

Lackawanna County’s vote to approve the agreement was unanimous, with Chermak and fellow Commissioners Thom Welby and Bill Gaughan all voting to ratify the pact.

Each county “shall share equal responsibility for all costs and expenses associated with operating the Airport,” the agreement notes.