Luzerne County Council appoints three to manager search committee

Luzerne County Council selected three citizens to serve on the new manager search committee this evening: Danielle Ader, David Fusco and Charles Sciandra.

In another matter, Council members Brian Thornton, Stephen J. Urban, Kevin Lescavage and Kendra Radle provided the four votes required to introduce an ordinance asking voters if they want to reexamine the home rule government structure. The ordinance would require a public hearing and majority council approval at a subsequent meeting for the question to be placed on the May 16 primary election ballot.

Required by home rule, the manager search committee must seek, screen and interview manager applicants and recommend the candidates it believes are the most qualified to council for its consideration.

Council had publicly interviewed six other citizens interested in serving on the volunteer committee — John Bonita, John Dean, Robert Fisher, Margaret Gushka and former council members Harry Haas and Linda McClosky Houck. Fisher and McClosky Houck were nominated for consideration but did not receive the required majority vote.

Ader, of Kingston, is a senior executive recruiter for a private consulting business that performs national searches to identify candidates for management positions. During her recent interview, she told council she has nearly seven years of recruitment experience and believes her skill set could be helpful in the search.

Fusco, of Pittston, has been the president and owner of Mechanical Service Co. since 2005. He said he started working for the company he now owns in 1985 and has experience in interviewing and selecting employees at the business.

Sciandra, of Duryea, operates a consulting company that helps family-run companies with succession planning and strategic development and serves as chairman of the county Transportation Authority. He told council he would “go deeper” to determine if applicants should advance rather than relying primarily on resumes and interviews.

Study commission

The ordinance introduced this evening would ask county voters to decide if they want to convene a seven-citizen, elected commission to study the government.

Citizens interested in serving would simultaneously run in the primary, with the top seven vote-getters taking office if the ballot question passed. These commission members would then have up to 18 months to study the current structure and decide if they want to keep it intact as is, make changes, switch to a different structure or revert back to the three-commissioner system, officials have said.

Any commission-recommended change would have to be approved by future voters to take effect, which is what occurred before the county’s 2012 switch to home rule.

Seven of the 11 council members have said they advocate proposing changes in-house instead of forming an outside committee, with some emphasizing they don’t want to risk a committee recommendation to throw out home rule. Those members voting against the ordinance introduction this evening: Chris Perry, Gregory S. Wolovich Jr., Carl Bienias III, John Lombardo, LeeAnn McDermott, Tim McGinley and Matthew Mitchell.

After the vote, Urban said many “inexperienced” people drafted the charter now in place and said he is skeptical a council majority can muster the time and consensus to address its deficiencies. He said he was not a proponent of home rule but believes it has some “good qualities” that should be retained in a new commission recommendation.

“I’m very tired of the black eyes in Luzerne County,” Urban said.

Bienias said there will be more discussion on the matter to come but wanted to point out he is not ready to risk a return to the prior commissioner system and leave recommendations up to seven citizens when there is no way of knowing in advance which citizens will run for the study commission seats.

“It could go any direction,” Bienias said.

Bienias said he has been talking to council colleagues about warranted charter changes and intends to propose an initial round of amendments in weeks. If council members are unsuccessful in proposing charter amendments on their own, an argument can be made that a commission should be formed, he said.

“But we haven’t even tried,” he said.

McGinley said drafters of the current charter worked very hard and had good consultants to assist them. He agreed council should be afforded an opportunity to propose improvements, with the option to place the study commission question on a future ballot at any time if council does not make progress.