Moosic officials want a councilwoman to resign amid charges she embezzled $41,000 by padding her sick time while she was borough administrator.
Jane Sterling, 65, charged with crimes Thursday, had not resigned either as a councilwoman or borough planning commission member as of Monday afternoon, Mayor Bob Bennie said.
The borough asked for her resignations from both in a statement issued Friday.
Bennie declined further comment, except to refer to the statement.
“We are devastated to bring these allegations of abuse of power to light,” Bennie said in the statement. “We understand that the trust of borough residents has been betrayed. Our trust has also been betrayed. Together, we welcome the input and support of borough residents to rebuild from this moment.”
Efforts to reach Sterling were unsuccessful. Attorney Robert J. Munley, Sterling’s lawyer, declined to comment.
“If I made a mistake and I owe Moosic Borough, I will write a check right now, and I think I made a mistake,” she said during a March 20 interview with investigators that included Munley.
Sterling won her council seat in the November 2023 election and resigned as administrator the next month. She took office in January 2024.
A month after that, a new borough administrator, Paul Thomas, discovered the theft, according to an arrest affidavit filed by Lackawanna County Detective Renee Castellani.
Sterling worked for the borough for years before taking over as administrator in 2007. She had exclusive access to its Freedom Systems payroll, according to the affidavit.
The borough required her to train employees so they could manage the payroll system once she left.
“Sterling did not provide complete access and training, which made it very difficult for other employees to get into the system,” Castellani wrote in the affidavit.
Eventually, Thomas figured out the system and found Sterling added hours of sick time for herself, then generate payroll checks to get paid for the sick time between Oct. 14 and Dec. 29, 2023, according to the affidavit.
When she retired, Sterling was entitled to be paid for 905 hours of sick time. Between 2007 and her retirement, she added another 1,291 hours and cashed out at her hourly wage of $31.93 an hour, according to the affidavit.
The total theft was $41,221.63, according to the affidavit.
Castellani charged Sterling with unlawful use of a computer and theft by unlawful taking. A preliminary hearing is scheduled for April 22 at 10 a.m. Sterling is free on $25,000 unsecured bail.
The borough says it has taken steps to avoid a repeat of the theft. The statement says the borough:
- Hired a professional company to process payroll last year.
- Conducted an audit of accumulated time off and asking an auditor to review payroll before an employee retires and is paid for unused sick time.
- Hired the Pennsylvania Economy League to develop a five-year financial plan that will include “appropriate internal controls.”
- Updated policies and procedures and distributed them to employees.
- Now requires two administrative staff members to sign off on payroll.
- Eliminated the annual carryover of accumulated time for non-union administrators. Borough administrators, including Sterling, follow time accumulation rules in the borough Department of Public Works union contract, according to the arrest affidavit.
The Sterling name is well known and beloved in Moosic. Sterling is married to a grandson of Ben Sterling, who owned the once wildly popular Rocky Glen Park, an amusement park that went out of business in the late 1980s.
