![\"Lackawanna](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/STT-L-COMMISSIONERS-0205-04.jpg\")
Lackawanna County Commissioner Thom Welby listens to public comment at the county government center Wednesday, February 4, 2026. (SEAN MCKEAG \/ STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER)<\/p>\nA new Lackawanna County public communications policy implemented by Commissioners Thom Welby and Chris Chermak requires at least two commissioners to sign off on any statement, publication or posting issued on behalf of the board of commissioners \u201cor purporting to represent a position of the County.\u201d<\/p>\n
It provoked the ire of Commissioner Bill Gaughan, who contends the policy amounts to an attempt to silence him after recent video clips of his scathing commentary on federal immigration enforcement and artificial intelligence data centers, posted on the county\u2019s Facebook page, \u201cresonated with the public and reached far beyond the walls\u201d of the county building.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe voters of Lackawanna County did not elect me to seek permission before speaking,\u201d Gaughan said Thursday in an email to his colleagues, certain county employees and several local journalists. \u201cThey did not elect me to have my words filtered, diluted, or vetoed by two other commissioners. They elected three independent voices \u2014 not a two-person communications review board.\u201d<\/p>\n
Welby, who defended the policy, sent an email announcing it Thursday afternoon, eliciting Gaughan\u2019s response.<\/p>\n
\u201cEffective immediately, any statement, publication, or posting (whether electronic, print, or social media) issued on behalf of the Board of County Commissioners or purporting to represent a position of the County must be approved in advance by at least two commissioners,\u201d the policy reads. \u201cThis policy applies to all personnel \u2026 with the ability to issue communications for and on behalf of the Board of Commissioners in public relations matters.\u201d<\/p>\n
It follows recent postings on the county\u2019s official Facebook page of video clips of Gaughan voicing his opinions at commissioners meetings on the controversial issues of federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations and data center development, respectively. A Jan. 21 post of Gaughan blasting ICE on moral and other grounds, for example, went viral, racking up about 78,000 views, 1,300 comments and more than 350 of shares on Facebook as of Friday.<\/p>\n
Gaughan said in his email the new communications policy attempts to condition speech on majority approval, \u201cblurs the line between institutional communications and individual speech\u201d and appears to be in direct response to \u201cpublic reaction to my comments on ICE and Data Centers.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe should be honest about what this is,\u201d he said. \u201cThe clips that went viral were not \u2018issued on behalf of the Board.\u2019 They were my remarks. We serve in a democracy. Majority rule governs legislation \u2014 not speech.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lackawanna County Commissioner Thom Welby listens to public comment at the county government center Wednesday, February 4, 2026. (SEAN MCKEAG \/ STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER)<\/p>\n
Noting he agrees with much of what Gaughan has said about ICE and data centers, Welby nonetheless said such posts can create the perception that Gaughan\u2019s views are the official position of the county or board.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that one person shouldn\u2019t give the impression to the public that his opinion is that of the entire board without an opinion being made by the entire board,\u201d Welby said, noting Gaughan can post anything he wants on his own social media pages, send letters to the editor, issue individual press releases or get his message out via some other means.<\/p>\n
Gaughan can also sit down with his fellow commissioners and discuss what he wants posted by the county, Welby said. A majority of the commissioners might agree to post something as is or with slight changes, or with a header making clear the substance of the post is personal commentary from one commissioner, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know that they (Gaughan and Chermak) would both agree to that, but I think that\u2019s a good vehicle for each of us to consider for various things that the others might not agree with,\u201d Welby said.<\/p>\n
He also believes the policy to be a return to how things were done in prior administrations, he said.<\/p>\n
![\"Lackawanna](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/STT-L-COMMISSIONERS-0122-03.jpg\")
Lackawanna County Commissioner Chris Chermak looks on during the commissioners meeting at the county government center in Scranton Wednesday, January 21, 2026. (SEAN MCKEAG \/ STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER)<\/p>\n
Efforts to reach Chermak were not immediately successful.<\/p>\n
Gaughan insists the policy is meant to stifle him and maintains that he is, in effect, the board\u2019s minority commissioner despite he and Welby both being Democrats and Chermak being the lone Republican commissioner. He\u2019s made that case since the board\u2019s early January reorganization meeting where Welby and Chermak voted together to make Chermak vice chairman of the three-member board after Gaughan and Chermak voted to make Welby chairman.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re trying to weaken my ability to speak out and use channels within county government to get whatever message I think is important out to the public,\u201d Gaughan said, emphasizing that those same channels are also available to the other commissioners. \u201cThey\u2019re trying to shut me up.\u201d<\/p>\n
Commissioners next meet Wednesday at 10 a.m. in the fifth-floor conference room of the county government center in downtown Scranton.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A new Lackawanna County public communications policy implemented by Commissioners Thom Welby and Chris Chermak requires at least…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":92877,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[201,182,139,28,50,178,180,179,181],"class_list":["post-113276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-scranton","tag-lackawanna-county","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-pennsylvania","tag-politics","tag-scranton","tag-scranton-headlines","tag-scranton-news","tag-top-stories-stt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113276"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113276\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/92877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}