Members of the bicounty board that oversees the Wilkes-Barre\/Scranton International Airport will interview candidates for the airport\u2019s executive director job this week.<\/p>\n
The board of officials from Lackawanna and Luzerne counties, members of a local search committee and ADK Consulting and Executive Search, a firm the board hired in March to facilitate the process of finding a successor to former Executive Director Carl Beardsley Jr., will conduct virtual interviews Thursday with the five remaining director candidates, airport co-Solicitor Donald Frederickson confirmed last week.<\/p>\n
The interviews will be the latest step in a hiring process made controversial by Republican Lackawanna County Commissioner Chris Chermak\u2019s candidacy for the director position. Chermak, who chaired the airport board before confirming his candidacy in June<\/a> and announcing his leave of absence pending a hiring decision, is among the five remaining finalists.<\/p>\n That bothers fellow Lackawanna County Commissioner Bill Gaughan, a member of the airport board who insists Chermak isn\u2019t qualified for the position. Lackawanna\u2019s lone Republican commissioner since 2020, Chermak has a private pilot\u2019s license and has served on the airport board since becoming a commissioner, including multiple stints as chairman and vice chairman. He\u2019s also claimed to have stepped up to help run the airport in recent years after Beardsley developed health problems.<\/p>\n Gaughan peppered the airport board with pointed questions last month<\/a> after Chermak said in a mid-July interview with WVIA that he has the support of the airport\u2019s staff and administration and \u201cmost of the other board members.\u201d Among other questions, Gaughan specifically asked if any airport board members communicated support to any candidate prior to interviews and hiring deliberations and whether any board member asked ADK, the consultant, to advance Chermak as a finalist.<\/p>\n Other airport board members, some of whom sharply criticized Gaughan\u2019s approach, subsequently denied intervening on Chermak\u2019s behalf or having already made up their mind about the pending hiring.<\/p>\n \u201cI did not speak to or direct ADK to advance any candidate,\u201d board member and Luzerne County Manager Romilda Crocamo said in a text message July 23. \u201cThat is not the way I do business or we do business in Luzerne County. Merit hiring means merit hiring. It means every applicant gets a genuine look. It means the process is not a formality designed to validate a decision that was already made.\u201d<\/p>\n In addition to Gaughan and Crocamo, the airport board includes Luzerne County Council members Chris Belles and Lee Ann McDermott, Lackawanna County Commissioner Thom Welby and local attorney Chris Munley, who is temporarily replacing Chermak on the board while he remains a candidate for the executive director job.<\/p>\n Gaughan also criticized last month\u2019s 2-1 vote by commissioners to appoint Munley to the airport board, arguing among other things that Chermak taking a leave of absence due to a conflict of interest didn\u2019t constitute an actual vacancy on the six-member body. After citing a potential conflict of interest and initially abstaining, Chermak, acting in his capacity as a county commissioner, voted with Welby on July 15 to appoint Munley<\/a> to the airport board as his temporary replacement.<\/p>\n Whichever candidate the board ultimately hires will need the support of a majority of both Lackawanna and Luzerne counties\u2019 representatives to get the job. Under a new agreement the counties ratified earlier this year for the continued joint operation of the airport, any motion or resolution requires the majority support of both partner counties to pass.<\/p>\n Beyond Chermak acknowledging his own candidacy, officials have not identified the candidates for the airport position.<\/p>\n Following virtual interviews Thursday, Frederickson said officials could conduct in-person interviews with a finalist or smaller number of finalists at some point thereafter.<\/p>\n There\u2019s no set date for an airport board vote on the hiring at this point, but Frederickson said such a vote could happen as early as later this month or next.<\/p>\n MONDAY UPDATE<\/p>\n THEN: The monthslong process of finding the next executive director of the Wilkes-Barre\/Scranton International Airport has featured controversy over Lackawanna County Commissioner Chris Chermak\u2019s candidacy.<\/p>\n NOW: Officials will interview remaining candidates for the job this week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Members of the bicounty board that oversees the Wilkes-Barre\/Scranton International Airport will interview candidates for the airport\u2019s executive…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":262415,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[201,182,803,139,28,178,180,179,802,729],"class_list":["post-262529","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-scranton","tag-lackawanna-county","tag-local-news","tag-luzerne-county","tag-news","tag-pennsylvania","tag-scranton","tag-scranton-headlines","tag-scranton-news","tag-top-stories-cvc","tag-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262529","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=262529"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262529\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/262415"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=262529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=262529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=262529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}