![\"Lehigh](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/TMC-L-Beitler-01-1.jpg\")
Lehigh County Commissioner Ron Beitler (contributed photo)<\/p>\nA pair of Lehigh County politicians are clashing over a change to the county\u2019s budget that would see some staffing funds allocated for a senior care facility and corrections shifted to administrative roles.<\/p>\n
Lehigh County Commissioner Ron Beitler last week spoke out about a proposal from county Executive Josh Siegel to cut eight positions \u2014 two licensed nurse practitioners, three certified nurse practitioners and one treatment case manager from county-run Cedarbrook, and two corrections officers \u2014 to fund the creation of four jobs \u2014 a multimedia specialist, a communications director, a chief of staff, and a community and intergovernmental liaison.<\/p>\n
In a statement, Beitler said the chief of staff position was eliminated in 2014 due to it being seen as \u201can unnecessary cost to taxpayers and political in nature.\u201d Furthermore, he questioned the need for a multimedia specialist.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn passing former Executive Armstrong\u2019s 2026 budget, our Board of Commissioners paid for Nurses, Caseworkers and Corrections Officers, not a Chief of Staff to do the Executive\u2019s job or a Multimedia Specialist to create County TikTok videos,\u201d Beitler\u2019s statement reads.<\/p>\n
Siegel was quick to release his own statement, accusing Beitler of playing politics in lieu of governing, and defending the creation of the positions.<\/p>\n
According to Siegel, these roles will help with communications, connecting residents with local government across various platforms and throughout the county\u2019s townships and boroughs. In addition, the chief of staff would help to \u201cbetter communicate the administration\u2019s expansive agenda,\u201d Siegel said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis proposal reflects the new reality of the local media environment \u2014 that governments must now advocate for themselves and tell their own stories or risk residents never understanding or hearing about the services we provide,\u201d Siegel said.<\/p>\n
Communications from the county show the elimination of the eight positions would cut $417,656 from the budget. Adding the four jobs would add $385,556, with a total savings of about $30,100.<\/p>\n
While Beitler has gone on record stating the new positions are unfunded and unsponsored by the board, Siegel confirmed that all positions had been filled save for the multimedia specialist role.<\/p>\n
County records show the multimedia specialist listed with a salary of $54,166 with $19,952 in benefits; the communications director with a salary of $76,667 with $28,239 in benefits; the chief of staff with a salary of $76,873 and $28,316 in benefits; and the community and intergovernmental liaison with a salary of $$74,793 and $27,549 in benefits.<\/p>\n
Beitler said while Siegel has the authority to fill the positions, the hires still must be approved by the board of commissioners, and Beitler questioned whether Siegel would have the board\u2019s support.<\/p>\n
Siegel said the positions would need to be approved by the board when commissioners consider next year\u2019s budget, which he will introduce in the summer.<\/p>\n
In an interview Friday, Siegel stated the roles he aims to cut have not been filled since the COVID-19 pandemic, even though they have been budgeted for each year.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s always been a recruitment and retention crisis. It\u2019s just difficult to fill those jobs, and candidly, they were never going to be filled for the foreseeable future,\u201d Siegel said.<\/p>\n
He said the directors of both Cedarbrook and county corrections agreed to the change.<\/p>\n
Siegel said while those care and corrections roles remained unfilled for years, service did not suffer, pointing to Cedarbrook\u2019s five-star review from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services as proof. Beitler concurred Cedarbrook was appropriately staffed at the moment.<\/p>\n
The county executive said they are about three or four years out from needing to fill those roles, though he is exploring methods to increase job retention.<\/p>\n
But for now, \u201cwe have the flexibility to use some of those open and vacant positions to create other roles that I think are immediately necessary and would provide immediate value to taxpayers and our residents,\u201d Siegel said.<\/p>\n
Beitler acknowledged the difficulty of attracting and maintaining medical professionals for Cedarbrook, though he felt it was still necessary to allocate for those positions in the budget, which he said he will continue to fight for.<\/p>\n
As for shifting the funding to administrative communications roles, Beitler was skeptical of the decision.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s pretty fair to say that he is using taxpayer money to fund his political operations, which is common in higher levels of government. It hasn\u2019t yet been common at the county level, so I was disappointed to see that element being introduced here,\u201d Beitler said.<\/p>\n
Lehigh County Commissioner Ron Beitler (contributed photo)<\/p>\n
In addition, Beitler stated former County Executive Phillips Armstrong left a robust team for Siegel to accomplish his intended goals, and their performance to date has been on par with many other Pennsylvania municipalities in terms of engagement and accomplishments as far as social media goes.<\/p>\n
Siegel said he convened his staff and department heads to put together a detailed and transparent explanation of how the roles were created and funded.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow, people are certainly welcome to disagree with the merits of the jobs, and certainly welcome to vote \u2018no,\u2019 obviously. I am not attempting to force anything. The board has to sign off, obviously, and approve this broader plan,\u201d Siegel said.<\/p>\n
Siegel defended the communications positions as vital to a modern government and said they would help his office reach more constituents in the digital world.<\/p>\n
\u201cI believe, for the sake of our constituents, that we need to be creating our own content. We need to be our own advocates. We need to be communicating the value of the services we provide directly to them,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Ultimately, Siegel said, he inherited a county that has \u201chad services atrophy, or there\u2019s just been no interest or regard paid to them.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd I am trying to fix that, and ultimately, what I consider modernizing and optimizing county operations so that we can more efficiently and effectively deliver services to our constituents and do things that are necessary in a changing environment,\u201d Siegel said.<\/p>\n
Beitler, on the other hand, remains steadfast in his opposition to the county executive\u2019s move.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re going to have to budget for them again. I don\u2019t think the logic changed. We need those positions. They\u2019ve been difficult to fill because of trends that go far beyond the county with a shortage of nurses and caseworkers, etc., and just corrections being generally a tough job to fill. That hasn\u2019t changed,\u201d Beitler said.<\/p>\n
Brian Myszkowski is a freelance writer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A pair of Lehigh County politicians are clashing over a change to the county\u2019s budget that would see…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":123025,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[119,121,120,433,182,139,28,432],"class_list":["post-123024","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-allentown","tag-allentown","tag-allentown-headlines","tag-allentown-news","tag-lehigh-county","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-pennsylvania","tag-top-stories-tmc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123024","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=123024"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123024\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/123025"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=123024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=123024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=123024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}