a firm hired to consult on the search for the airport\u2019s next executive director narrowed a list of 20 applicants to seven top contenders.<\/a> Luzerne County Commissioner Chris Belles, the vice chairman of the airport board, said a selection committee will meet with the consulting firm on Monday to discuss how to proceed with interviews.<\/p>\nThe board met in an executive session before the public meeting to discuss the search, and Pennsylvania\u2019s Sunshine Act does allow for such private meetings to discuss personnel matters. But Belles also said the search process is confidential, so applicants have not been identified.<\/p>\n
We find that troublesome, considering the possibility that Lackawanna County Commissioner Chris Chermak applied for the position. Chermak serves as the chairman of the bi-county airport board, which ultimately will be tasked with making the hire.<\/p>\n
Chermak\u2019s interest in the position has been rumored practically since it opened in March, after the board found out that former executive director Carl Beardsley Jr. did not intend to return to the post after taking a sabbatical late last year. Chermak did not attend the meeting on Thursday and did not comment afterward.<\/p>\n
Ideally, the committee would keep taxpayers abreast not just of the progress of the search, but of the qualifications of the candidates themselves. That is true transparency, after all. But even members of the bi-county board insist they are being kept in the dark about the breadth of candidates and their qualifications.<\/p>\n
\u201cI asked for a list of who the 20 people were that applied, and I asked for a list of who the seven were that made the cut,\u201d Lackawanna County Commissioner Bill Gaughan said. \u201cAnd I don\u2019t have that information yet.\u201d<\/p>\n
We concede there are some far-from-nefarious reasons big businesses prefer to keep job searches as private as they can. For example, it is entirely possible that a strong, qualified candidate who applied would not want his or her current employer to know of any interest in an outside position.<\/p>\n
In this particular search, though, the board should make over-communication of its process a goal.<\/p>\n
What the public wants is simple: Peace of mind that a job this important goes to the best possible candidate a nationwide search could net, and not a political insider. This is not a suggestion Chermak isn\u2019t somehow the best-qualified applicant, but a reminder that taxpayers and those invested in so many different ways in the airport deserve to be convinced of that.<\/p>\n
We see no drawback to disclosing whether Chermak or any public official applied for the job, and whether he was one of the seven who advanced to the next round of interviews.<\/p>\n
The public has a right to know who is being considered to run a vital piece of regional infrastructure, especially if an elected public official who also serves as the chairman of its board might be under consideration. The pursuit of true transparency invites public confidence not just in the actions of those who govern, but the decisions they make under our names.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Wilkes-Barre\/Scranton International Airport is arguably the region\u2019s greatest asset. It is our connection to the outside world.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":174069,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[9079,201,803,1559,28,231,178,180,179],"class_list":["post-207699","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-scranton","tag-editorials","tag-lackawanna-county","tag-luzerne-county","tag-opinion","tag-pennsylvania","tag-schuylkill-county","tag-scranton","tag-scranton-headlines","tag-scranton-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207699","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=207699"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207699\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/174069"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=207699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=207699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=207699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}