WILKES-BARRE \u2014 Luzerne County Council voted Tuesday to approve a two-year agreement to pay law enforcement officers at the Wilkes-Barre\/Scranton International Airport.<\/p>\n
The agreement would end on an ongoing beef with Lackawanna County over the Law Enforcement Officer (LEO) program at the airport. The counties share ownership of the airport in Pittston Twp., and Luzerne County officials have been upset that Lackawanna County has not been contributing to fund the LEO program.<\/p>\n
The program has had a monthly cost of roughly $12,000, and the airport has been providing $5,000 a month to help Luzerne County fund the LEO program. Last week, the counties announced they had agreed to a tentative deal in which the airport would cover 50% of the LEO program cost and each county would cover 25%.<\/p>\n
The bi-county airport board approved the tentative agreement last Thursday with five members approving and Lackawanna County Commissioner Bill Gaughan casting the lone no vote. The Lackawanna County commissioners now have to approve the deal for it to take effect.<\/p>\n
Gaughan dismissed the LEO program as \u201cexpensive security theater.\u201d The Luzerne County District Attorney\u2019s Office took over the LEO program in 2021 when it was funded by the Transportation Security Administration and continued the program after the TSA stopped funding it in May 2024.<\/p>\n
The airport spends more than $500,000 a year on an armed security force, and TSA also has armed personnel at the airport, Gaughan said. The security guards can\u2019t arrest anyone but can detain people and call local police for arrests, Gaughan said.<\/p>\n
Luzerne County Controller Walter Griffith criticized the airport agreement because it doesn\u2019t include an hourly pay rate for law enforcement officers and a total cost amount for the county.<\/p>\n
Luzerne County Council voted 10-1 to approve the LEO program agreement with Councilwoman Joanna Bryn Smith casting the lone dissenting vote. She said after the meeting she wanted to see information that the TSA agreed the added law enforcement coverage was necessary.<\/p>\n
The Luzerne County members of the airport board are County Manager Romilda Crocamo and council members Lee Ann McDermott and Greg Wolovich. Lackawanna County\u2019s three commissioners serve on the airport board.<\/p>\n
Thom Welby took the oath of office as Lackawanna County\u2019s newest commissioner on Tuesday joining Gaughan and Chris Chermak on the board of commissioners. Welby won a special election Nov. 4 and replaced Brenda Sacco, who was appointed to a vacant seat last month. Litigation initiated by Gaughan delayed filling the vacancy Matt McGloin created by resigning in late February.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WILKES-BARRE \u2014 Luzerne County Council voted Tuesday to approve a two-year agreement to pay law enforcement officers at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2498,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[182,178,180,179],"class_list":{"0":"post-44989","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-scranton","8":"tag-local-news","9":"tag-scranton","10":"tag-scranton-headlines","11":"tag-scranton-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44989","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=44989"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44989\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2498"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}