Scranton City Council is reviewing how an impending mayoral vacancy will be filled\u00a0when 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.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s election.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
The city\u2019s Home Rule Charter and Administrative Code have sections on mayoral vacancies that conflict with each other.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s 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 2\u00bd-year-long appointment.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s current mayoral term when she resigns.<\/p>\n
Whether council strictly follows the procedural steps taken in 2019 remains to be determined, but Schuster said, \u201cPretty much it will be the same process as in 2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cRight now, council\u2019s responsibility is to ensure that the process is orderly and professional,\u201d Schuster said. \u201cI want to see a smooth transition. I don\u2019t want to have chaos like we had in 2025 with filling the commissioner vacancy.\u201d<\/p>\n
As for whether Schuster might be interested in becoming mayor, he said, \u201cThe dynamics will change day-by-day, I wouldn\u2019t take it off the table.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Scranton mayor position comes with a $95,000 annual salary.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Scranton City Council is reviewing how an impending mayoral vacancy will be filled\u00a0when Mayor Paige Cognetti resigns to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":322006,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[201,182,883,139,28,50,178,180,179,181],"class_list":["post-322005","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-scranton","tag-lackawanna-county","tag-local-news","tag-local-politics","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\/322005","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=322005"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322005\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/322006"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=322005"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=322005"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=322005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}