Feuding adding to courthouse pressure

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

was at the courthouse and on the phone Tuesday afternoon urging a Times Leader reporter to investigate his complaints about fellow Commissioner Maryanne Petrilla when Petrilla suddenly opened the door and burst into his office, shouting that he was spreading lies.

Skrepenak

Petrilla said after the confrontation that she was retrieving a document from the computer printer outside Skrepenak’s office and repeatedly heard him say her name “loud and clear” through the door, prompting her to listen to what he was saying. She said she reached a boiling point when he made false allegations.

“See what I put up with?” Skrepenak told the reporter after Petrilla left his office. “How dare she come into my office? I didn’t defame her.”

The exchange illustrates the growing hostility between two of county government’s top three leaders. Though Skrepenak and Petrilla usually put on a cordial front during public meetings, they haven’t stopped feuding since they split after winning as Democratic teammates in the 2007 election.

Skrepenak said he and Petrilla have reached the point that they can’t have a productive working relationship, and he said he’s been informed of things she said about him that were not true.

“I think there’s a lot of animosity on both sides, and I think it’s at the point that it becomes personality not principle,” Skrepenak said. “It is what it is at this point, and it’s unfortunate.”

Petrilla said Skrepenak will have to “show up for work” to have a working relationship.

“He works maybe – and I’m really stretching it here – five hours a month. He never talks to anyone who was appointed by me because he treats them like the enemy,” she said.

Skrepenak has argued that he doesn’t have to be in the office to be working on county business. There is no policy or county law that determines how many hours or where a commissioner must work.

Petrilla said she is contemplating a defamation suit against Skrepenak because some of his allegations were “egregious.”

“I am sick of sitting back and allowing Greg Skrepenak to accuse me of things that are completely false,” Petrilla said.

The main comment that prompted Petrilla to storm into Skrepenak’s office had to do with a rumor he says he heard that Petrilla was being investigated by federal authorities.

Petrilla said that’s false. As soon as she left his office, she contacted federal investigators and said they told her that she is not under investigation and has had no allegations made against her.

When she was in Skrepenak’s office, she indicated that he should be the one worried about a federal investigation.

Skrepenak told her to sue him and said he isn’t worried about federal authorities because he hasn’t done anything illegal.

This glimpse into the dramatic fighting between the two commissioners doesn’t surprise Gene Klein, a former county chief clerk/administrator who worked through several commissioner administrations.

He said he’s worked for commissioners who refused to talk to each other and who would wage battles against each other through the media. Klein said he knows previous commissioners have listened to what others were saying behind closed doors, and he’d sometimes be asked to relay insults from one commissioner to another. Klein made sure the message was conveyed in a “diplomatic way” because he didn’t want anyone to blame the messenger.

Though Skrepenak and Petrilla won as a Democratic majority, Petrilla has become more aligned with Republican minority Commissioner Stephen A. Urban. Skrepenak now describes himself as the minority commissioner.

“The minority commissioner is adversarial by nature, so you would expect conflict with the minority. That’s the nature of the beast,” Klein said. The only exception was when Joseph “Red” Jones was in the minority because Jones regularly voted with the Democratic majority, Klein said.

Klein said “the worst and most tense times” were when two commissioners of the same political party didn’t get along.

The chief/clerk administrator has historically been expected to step in to keep communication flowing and attempt conflict resolution, Klein said. Without an intervention, battles escalate to the point that commissioners and the administration can’t focus on the business at hand, he said.

“These people are out of control, and they need a stabilizer, and that stabilizer was always the chief clerk,” Klein said.

Chief Clerk/Administrator Doug Pape said he treats all three commissioners equally and approaches them individually about pending developments, but he hasn’t attempted to intervene in conflicts between Petrilla and Skrepenak.

“As long as it’s not stalling county business, I don’t think it’s my job to bring them together. If they don’t get along, it’s got to be up to them to extend the olive branch,” Pape said.

Pape would not predict whether Petrilla and Skrepenak would ever get over their differences.

“I’ve kind of given up on them getting back to the relationship they had when they ran for office,” he said.

Jennifer Learn-Andes, a Times Leader staff writer, may be reached at 831-7333.