Wilkes-Barre/Scranton International Airport officials refused to say Friday whether Lackawanna County Commissioner Chris Chermak is on a short list of seven applicants for the airport’s executive director job.
Florida-based ADK Consulting and Executive Search, a consulting firm the bicounty airport board contracted in March to help find Executive Director Carl Beardsley Jr.’s successor, reviewed 20 applications for the position and winnowed that broader list down to seven. Those seven applicants are known to members of a local search committee, though officials won’t release their names or say whether Chermak, the airport board’s chairman, is among them.
“It’s a personnel matter,” airport Co-solicitor Donald Frederickson, a member of the search committee, said Friday. “We can’t discuss any of the candidates at this time, so I can neither confirm or deny.”
Chermak, who did not participate in Thursday’s airport board meeting, did not deny interest in the executive director job when asked about it in April but declined to comment earlier this month when asked if he applied by the May 10 application deadline.
“I’m down in sunny Florida visiting my kids,” Chermak said in a text message Friday, noting he didn’t realize he’d miss the meeting until it was too late and that interviews for the executive director post will begin in the near future. “As far as whether I applied or not I still have nothing to discuss at this point. I will keep you posted.”
In addition to Frederickson, the local search committee includes fellow airport Co-solicitor Harry Skene; Luzerne County Councilman Chris Belles, the airport board’s vice chair; Lackawanna County Commissioner Thom Welby, an airport board member; and retired airport Assistant Director Gary Borthwick, Frederickson said.
The committee plans to hold a Zoom meeting Monday with ADK to discuss what the interview process might look like going forward. The ultimate hiring decision belongs to the airport board made up of Chermak, Welby and fellow Lackawanna County Commissioner Bill Gaughan; Belles and fellow Luzerne County Council member Lee Ann McDermott; and Luzerne County Manager Romilda Crocamo.
“At some point the (airport) board has to get involved,” Frederickson said Friday. “The question is going to be do we have the board interview all seven? Or does the committee maybe whittle it down to like a top three or four and then let the board interview (them)? So that’s what we’re going to discuss on Monday.”
Gaughan requested in an email lists of the 20 original applicants for the executive director job and the seven finalists, along with their application materials, but hadn’t received that information as of early Friday afternoon. He reiterated Friday that he wants to be involved in interviewing the seven remaining applicants.
Also reached Friday, Welby declined to disclose the names but said all airport board members should be given copies of application materials submitted by at least the seven applicants on the short list.
“Without question,” he said.
Whether Chermak is among the seven remains unclear, and it remains to be seen who the board might ultimately hire for the job. But Chermak’s hypothetical resignation as commissioner to take it would mark the second commissioner resignation in Lackawanna County in as many years.
Chermak, the county’s lone Republican commissioner, has held the position since 2020. His current term expires in early January 2028.
Last year, then-Democratic Commissioner Matt McGloin’s surprise late-February resignation sparked a bitter monthslong legal battle over the county Home Rule Charter’s replacement process. That process involving the Lackawanna County Democratic Committee, since McGloin is a Democrat, and the county Court of Common Pleas, ultimately survived a legal challenge brought by Gaughan and the county, resulting in the temporary appointment of interim Democratic Commissioner Brenda Sacco.
She finally took office in October and was replaced in November by Welby, the Democratic winner of a special election to fill the remainder of McGloin’s term.
The applicant the board ultimately hires for the airport director job will replace Beardsley, who began his tenure at the airport in January 2015 and went on sabbatical leave for a nondisciplinary reason late last year. Frederickson later confirmed Beardsley is unable to return, prompting the ongoing search for his successor.
Stephen Mykulyn, the airport’s longtime director of engineering, is serving as interim executive director amid the search.