Luzerne County is inviting Lackawanna County officials to a meeting on Nov. 19 for a discussion about the Wilkes-Barre\/Scranton International Airport.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis meeting aims to bring all voices to the table for an open and frank discussion regarding law enforcement presence at the AVP airport,\u201d County Manager Romilda Crocamo said.<\/p>\n
At the county council meeting on Oct. 28, airport Assistant Director BJ Teichman said Luzerne and Lackawanna counties need to approve a new partnership agreement by Jan. 1 to avoid losing Federal Aviation Administration funds.<\/p>\n
The counties signed an agreement in 1968 to share ownership of the airport, which is primarily in Pittston Twp. in Luzerne County and is known as AVP because of its proximity to Avoca. At the Oct. 28 meeting, Luzerne County council members expressed various concerns with the proposed partnership agreement and noted Lackawanna County\u2019s unwillingness to provide funding to pay law enforcement officers at the airport.<\/p>\n
Avoca police used to provide the officers with funding from the federal Transportation Security Administration, but Avoca dropped out in 2021. The Luzerne County District Attorney\u2019s Office took over the Law Enforcement Officer (LEO) program, and the TSA funding for the program ended in May 2024.<\/p>\n
Lackawanna County Commissioner Bill Gaughan has said law enforcement officers don\u2019t need to be at the airport because the airport spends $500,000 a year on a security force. Security guards can\u2019t arrest anyone but can detain people and call local police for arrests, Gaughan said.<\/p>\n
The LEO program costs $144,000 a year, Luzerne County District Attorney Sam Sanguedolce said Monday at a county council work session to review his budget proposal for 2026. The airport pays $5,000 a month to help fund the LEO program.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can\u2019t believe that in 2025, we\u2019re having a discussion about not putting police officers in an airport, but the funding has become the issue,\u201d Sanguedolce said. \u201cI am continuing to go to our federal government to hope that they will reinstitute the funding that caused us to get reimbursed before. And I\u2019ve been working with Manager Crocomo, different discussions about how that fee can be split up so Luzerne County can get some of its money back from that program. It\u2019s basically being funded because of the vacancies in my office right now.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Nov. 19 meeting is scheduled for 5 p.m. at the Luzerne County Operations Building on Wyoming Avenue in Wyoming. Luzerne County will make the meeting available to the public via Zoom, Crocamo said.<\/p>\n
The Luzerne County Office of Law is working on a new partnership agreement with Lackawanna County to address concerns raised by council and the administration, Crocamo said.<\/p>\n
\u201cCouncil first must decide which of the three options presented by the FAA attorney they consider appropriate for the residents of Luzerne County,\u201d Crocamo said.<\/p>\n
The three options are: Luzerne County taking over ownership of the airport, establishing an authority as owner or agreeing to a new partnership agreement with Lackawanna County.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Luzerne County is inviting Lackawanna County officials to a meeting on Nov. 19 for a discussion about the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":33494,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[201,182,883,803,139,28,50,178,180,179,802],"class_list":{"0":"post-33493","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-scranton","8":"tag-lackawanna-county","9":"tag-local-news","10":"tag-local-politics","11":"tag-luzerne-county","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-pennsylvania","14":"tag-politics","15":"tag-scranton","16":"tag-scranton-headlines","17":"tag-scranton-news","18":"tag-top-stories-cvc"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33493","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=33493"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33493\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33494"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}