Scranton City Council is reviewing how an impending mayoral vacancy will be filled when Mayor Paige Cognetti resigns to be sworn in to Congress. The process is likely to involve a temporary appointee serving until the winner of a special election is seated, the council president said.
Cognetti, a Democrat, defeated Republican U.S. Rep. Rob Bresnahan for a seat in the House of Representatives from the 8th Congressional District in Tuesday’s election.
The 120th U.S. Congress is scheduled to be sworn in Jan. 3 at noon. Cognetti has not said when she intends to resign as mayor, a position which she has held since January 2020.
The process to fill a mayoral vacancy likely would follow steps taken in 2019, which was the last time the city had a mayoral vacancy, said Scranton Council President Tom Schuster.
At that time, Mayor Bill Courtright, snared by the FBI in a City Hall corruption scandal, resigned July 1, 2019, from a term that ran through 2021.
The city’s Home Rule Charter and Administrative Code have sections on mayoral vacancies that conflict with each other.
The charter calls for council to appoint a person to serve until the end of the year, when the winner of a special election would be seated. The code calls for the appointee to fill the remainder of a mayoral term.
In 2019, then-council Solicitor Amil Minora recommended following the charter, arguing a court would give it greater weight if the decision produced a legal challenge, as it is essentially is the city’s constitution. Several council members in July 2019 said a short-term appointment and special election was the more democratic route. Minora also said that path was less likely to generate a lawsuit than a 2½-year-long appointment.
The council president at the time, Pat Rogan, served as acting mayor until council selected a temporary mayor. Council also agreed on an appointment process that involved collecting letters of interest and resumes from potential appointees, conducting public interviews and holding a special meeting to vote on the temporary appointment.
The council in 2019 also stipulated that whoever would be appointed temporary mayor may not seek candidacy in the special election; and council also agreed that applicants should not contact or communicate directly with council members ahead of the decision to avoid any attempted lobbying.
Council in 2019 selected Wayne Evans as temporary mayor and set a special mayoral election to be held during the Nov. 5, 2019, general election. For the special election, the Lackawanna County Democratic and Republican parties each could select a candidate and independent candidates also could run by filing nomination papers with the county Department of Elections.
Cognetti ran as an independent in that 2019 special mayoral election and won, and took office Jan. 6, 2020. She won reelection as a Democrat in 2021 to a four-year term, and won reelection in 2025 to a four year term that runs through 2029. So, there will be about three years left on Cognetti’s current mayoral term when she resigns.
Whether council strictly follows the procedural steps taken in 2019 remains to be determined, but Schuster said, “Pretty much it will be the same process as in 2019.”
With the timing of mayoral vacancies then and now differing by about six months, one option for council could include picking a temporary mayor, after Cognetti resigns, and holding a special election during the May 18 primary.
“Right now, council’s responsibility is to ensure that the process is orderly and professional,” Schuster said. “I want to see a smooth transition. I don’t want to have chaos like we had in 2025 with filling the commissioner vacancy.”
As for whether Schuster might be interested in becoming mayor, he said, “The dynamics will change day-by-day, I wouldn’t take it off the table.”
The Scranton mayor position comes with a $95,000 annual salary.