\n\t\tLuzerne County tax increase may impact homeowners\t<\/a><\/p>\n\u201cThat would take us right back to those days where people think that they could profit personally off of the public,\u201d voiced Mayor Cognetti (D).<\/p>\n
\u201cI want evidence of me being sued by the Greenridge neighborhood association. You\u2019d better be careful what you\u2019re saying here, Mayor,\u201d interrupted Eugene Barrett, Independent candidate.<\/p>\n
A heated mayoral debate took place at the University of Scranton on Thursday evening. Democratic incumbent Paige Cognetti faced off against republican candidate Patricia Beynon, and two independents, Eugene Barrett and Rik Little, in the Scranton mayoral race.<\/p>\n
A number of issues were discussed, but Cognetti took aim at two of the other candidates, making things personal.<\/p>\n
\u201cMr. Barrett ran toxic landfill waste under Greenridge, skirting the approval process of a public board. The Greenridge Neighborhood Association sued him for that,\u201d stated Cognetti.<\/p>\n
Barrett fired back, questioning the lawsuit.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe mayor is telling me that I\u2019m violating federal rules and regulations? We\u2019re operating under a consent decree. That consent decree comes from the Department of Justice to EPA, DEP, Scranton Sewer Authority, and so on,\u201d expressed Barrett.<\/p>\n
Cognetti also took issue with Republican Patricia Beynon.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the case of Miss Beynon and the construction company for which she works, we did do many audits throughout these last few years, and unfortunately, in one of those audits, we discovered that there was $238,000 that had been given to said construction company in the prior administration, and the work was never performed,\u201d said Cognetti.<\/p>\n
We met with Beynon following the debate, who says the city paid the company in advance, but couldn\u2019t complete the work until the city gave them the green light. She says the green light never came, resulting in a legal battle.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was never an issue with what we did, although she made it sound like it was. She did the wrong thing; she shouldn\u2019t have said that. She misspoke, which was unfortunate and on her part. If you\u2019re gonna lie, you shouldn\u2019t be a mayor,\u201d stated Beynon.<\/p>\n
We also caught up with Mayor Cognetti after the debate to ask about her plans to run for Congress, something she says is to help the city of Scranton from the federal level.<\/p>\n
\u201cI love being mayor, and I plan to continue being mayor next year. The reason I\u2019m running for Congress is because it\u2019s going to be very hard for us to do our job here in the city if the federal government continues to cut out our legs underneath us,\u201d said Cognetti.<\/p>\n
Cognetti says if she wins, there would be a special election to fill the remainder of her term. Beynon, however, says she finds Cognetti\u2019s interest in helping Scranton hard to believe.<\/p>\n
\u201cDo you think her priorities lie with Scranton?\u201d asked Nape.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, they do not lie with Scranton. We\u2019re a stepping stone. They\u2019re for the next political position that she wants to obtain,\u201d said Beynon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SCRANTON, LACKAWANNA COUNTY (WBRE\/WYOU)\u2014 \u201cFree Palestine, over 100 thousand people killed, two years of genocide,\u201d exclaimed a debate…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6795,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[6061,178,180,179],"class_list":{"0":"post-6794","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-scranton","8":"tag-lackawanna-county-wbre-wyou-a-fiery-start-to-the-mayoral-race-debate-in-scranton-when-someone-got-up-from-their-seat-and-started-yelling","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\/6794","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=6794"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6794\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6795"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}