Center critic praises probers

By Jennifer Learn-Andes jandes@timesleader.comLuzerne County Reporter

Luzerne County taxpayer and public advocate Tom Dombroski said he always suspected a county judge was somehow profiting from the Township juvenile detention center, and that is why he tried so hard to convince county officials not to lease the facility.

He told commissioners in an October 2004 meeting the county should reject a proposal to lease the building for $58 million, saying the public is in the dark about who is profiting.

“It doesn’t pass the smell test,” Dombroski told commissioners at the time.

After nearly four hours of debate and public complaints, the majority commissioners at the time – Todd Vonderheid and Greg Skrepenak – voted to lease the Pittston Township facility from Pennsylvania Child Care.

Dombroski praised U.S. Attorney Martin C. Carlson and other investigators on Monday for uncovering a scheme showing county Court of Common Pleas Judges Mike Conahan and Mark Ciavarella received $2.6 million in payments in connection with the Pittston Township center and a Western Pennsylvania center also owned by PA Child Care.

According to Dombroski, the public should also credit former county Controller Steve Flood, who pushed for answers about the detention center ownership and cost to taxpayers. Flood’s efforts to get a controversial state audit about the center into the hands of the media prompted PA Child Care to file a “trade secrets” lawsuit against him. Conahan sealed the suit, but the state Superior Court overturned Conahan’s decision.

“He saw the corruption right at the beginning,” Dombroski said of Flood. “He was really the first person that brought it out. I think he should be the one congratulated.”

Flood has been incapacitated and unable to communicate since he suffered a stroke on March 14. He was at a commissioners’ meeting complaining about the detention center lease hours before his stroke.

Flood’s close friend and guardian, Heather Paulhamus, declined to comment on the federal charges against Conahan and Ciavarella.

Pittston Township Supervisor Tony Attardo, another detention center critic, recently died.

Township residents were upset that the facility got zoning approval without any input or advance notice to the public. Jeff Pisanchyn, the part-time township zoning officer at the time, has said he approved the permit thinking it was a publicly owned youth recreation facility.

Attardo had said supervisors rezoned the detention center site from conservation to industrial to attract new business, and nobody presented juvenile detention center plans to the supervisors.

“We certainly never rezoned the property to allow a detention center there,” Attardo said in 2003.

Republican minority Commissioner Stephen A. Urban has been railing against the detention center lease since the original proposal landed on his desk in 2001, saying the county should build its own center. Urban said he still has questions about the $58 million lease.

“I wonder if investigators are looking at the commissioners’ office because that lease was brought to the commissioners’ office by (then chief clerk/manager) Sam Guesto, Greg Skrepenak and Todd Vonderheid without any public advertisement or disclosure or due diligence,” Urban said.

Skrepenak said Monday that he never would have voted for the lease if he had known judges were profiting from the center. He said commissioners were looking for a way to reduce juvenile placement costs, and that he and Vonderheid believed the county could rent out unused beds to generate revenue.

“I had no knowledge of any involvement by judges. I felt at the time that the county could make money,” Skrepenak said.

Skrepenak noted that juvenile placement expenses have gone from $15 million in 2004 to $6.5 million this year.

Urban said costs are down because the court is sending fewer youth to placement and sending more juveniles to facilities that cost less than the Pittston Township one.

Skrepenak said he’s “disheartened by the whole turn of events.”

“I think I’m still in shock,” he said. “This is going to make national news. It’s a black eye on Luzerne County.”

Vonderheid, who resigned as commissioner in 2007, said Monday that he is still reviewing details of the federal charges.

“I’m saddened for the people and the families of everybody involved and for the negative cloud that is going to sit over our community for some time. I can’t give any other comment until I learn more.”