As Democratic Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti seeks re-election, she’s facing another challenge from within her own party.
Besides that, this time, the Republican Party — long in the minority in Scranton — has two candidates looking to end Cognetti’s City Hall reign at six years.
Potentially, if Cognetti wins the May 20 Democratic primary election, she will not only face the Republican primary winner but maybe two independent candidates.
That’s at least five people who think they can do a better job, one short of the six Cognetti faced in her first election six years ago.
“I'm not interested in going down the list of challengers and enumerating why I think they want to challenge me,” Cognetti said during an interview Thursday.
Instead, Cognetti concentrates on her record. She argues she governed the city deftly through the COVID-19 pandemic, ended the city’s 30-year-old state-imposed distressed status, modernized city systems and created more online and other access to city government. All that earned the city an award for municipal excellence from Gov. Josh Shapiro’s administration last month.
“We have come a long way in the last five-and-a-half years here in Scranton. We came in with a lot of trust to build back and systems in place in the city that needed to be modernized,” Cognetti said. “We've really, really rebuilt the government, and we've also rebuilt the finances and put ourselves on a track of stability.”
She did make an exception to her desire to avoid explaining all the challengers: former Scranton School Director Bob Sheridan, also the city Democratic Party chairman.
Sheridan represents her third Democratic opponent with roots in the “creaky” but still breathing city Democratic “machine,” she said.
“I will always be someone that the party line wants to get rid of,” Cognetti said.
Her campaign includes the slogan “Paige Against the Machine,” a play on the name of the rock band, Rage Against the Machine.
Sheridan and Cognetti’s other opponents say they’re running because she’s allowed crime, deteriorating streets and blight to flourish. They say they hear a lot about each as they campaign door to door.
“We have an increase in crime, homelessness, gang activity, shootings, not enough police. Roads are deplorable,” Republican candidate Lynn Labrosky said.
Cognetti says she’s methodically addressing each problem.
As opponents in previous elections have done — unsuccessfully — the other Republican candidate, Trish Beynon, brought up Cognetti’s Oregon origins.
“I feel that she just doesn't get the people in Scranton,” Beynon said. “The longer you live here, the more you see how people in their communities, in their area, stick together, and they bond, and they work as a community ... You know, every city has their feel, and I think she’s missing the feel.”
Beynon is an accounting executive for Don Scartelli Construction Services & General Contractors Inc. in Scranton. The city and the company are in mediation over the lawsuit the city filed over the construction of a splash pad and renovations to a public works building.
Beynon said that has nothing to do with why she’s running.
Cognetti, 44, a Harvard Business School graduate who settled in Scranton in 2016 and is raising two daughters with her husband, points out voters elected her twice, knowing her Oregon roots, because they wanted change.
“When you choose to live in a place, perhaps you don't have the memories of the way that things were in the 1980s,” Cognetti said. “But I certainly lived the 1980s and '90s in Oregon, which was growing and is still growing at a very fast clip. So, to me, I know what it looks like to have a community grow and look forward and be positive. I think that's actually a helpful element for being mayor here.”
After moving here, she became seriously involved politically when she joined the Scranton School Board in December 2017, two months after a scathing state auditor general’s office showed huge deficits, “serious financial instability,” and questionable business practices.
A month later, at Cognetti’s urging, the board asked for a criminal investigation. Eventually, state Attorney General Josh Shapiro’s office charged the district’s business and fleet managers with wrongdoing. Both pleaded guilty.
Sheridan, a school director between 2009 and 2017 and board president when the audit came out, lost his 2017 re-election bid.
Cognetti says Sheridan would like voters to forget the district’s failures when he was a director and his role in "Examscam," a tainted 1985 police civil service test.
She’s reminding everyone.
In Examscam, a police sergeant provided answers to a civil service test to would-be police officers, who had to pass to be eligible for the force. The sergeant, promoted to lieutenant after a simultaneous but separate test, and a City Hall secretary were eventually convicted.
The 20 test-takers included Sheridan, a reserve officer who wanted to join the force full time. Sheridan passed the tainted test with a score of 90, according to a Dec. 27, 1985, Scranton Times newspaper story.
Sheridan, who dropped out of high school at 16 to work to support his family and earned a graduate equivalency diploma after he was a reserve cop, thinks it’s unfair to bring up something that happened 40 years ago.
He portrays himself and the other officers as “victims.”
“I took the test legally, and I passed the test legally,” he said. “No, I didn’t take any (answers) and use any answers ... I can’t remember back then, but if I got a paper, I did not use them ... We were victims.”
Sheridan left the police force for good with a disability pension in 1996 after a work-related injury, according to newspaper archives.
Sheridan said the school district deficits and other problems began years before he took office. One of nine school directors, he said it’s unfair to blame only him, he said. He personally fired the fleet manager, he said.
He pointed to federal criminal charges against two city police officers for abusing overtime and a state food-stamp fraud charge against the city’s former economic development office executive director during Cognetti’s tenure.
“Those people that did something wrong, we got rid of them,” Cognetti fired back. “We see something wrong, we immediately take action.”
Sheridan's candidacy
Cognetti won the office partly because of others’ corruption.
In 2019, federal extortion charges forced incumbent Mayor Bill Courtright to resign and serve prison time. His resignation required a special election to fill the last two years of his term.
The city Democratic Party, chaired by Sheridan, endorsed attorney Chris Cullen, but in a seven-candidate race, Cognetti beat Cullen and five others. Four years ago, the city party, still led by Sheridan, endorsed Cognetti.
“I figured, okay, we have a new mayor. Let's give her the opportunity. That's my job as a city chairman. I try to work with her. I try to befriend her, okay? And ever since then, my city has gone downhill,” Sheridan said, citing roads, blight and crime problems.
As a former police officer, former school director, neighborhood leader and used car and towing company owner, Sheridan, 71, said he’s ready to lead the city.
“I’m born and raised in Scranton. These are my people. This is my city,” Sheridan said.
As mayor, Sheridan said he’ll open up City Hall — which now has security doors restricting access to much of the building — generally be more accessible, improve communication and fairly bargain with city unions, pave more streets, crack down on gangs and crime, fight blight, and boost parks. He does not offer specifics on how he’ll do that, but he accused Cognetti of failing to pave enough streets while having $68 million in federal American Rescue Plan Act money.
Sheridan called Cognetti an inaccessible, absentee mayor.
“She's claiming that there are no problems with the crime here. Everything's good,” Sheridan said. “Well, there is. Open your doors, ladies and gentlemen, and look at the crime. Look at your infrastructure in your neighborhood. Look at the crime in the neighborhood. Look at your recreation, your parks.”
Labrosky's Candidacy
Labrosky, 52, said she has a varied background — mother of three, former waitress and bookkeeper, former Friendship House mental health technician and business owner — and an ability to learn quickly that makes her right for mayor.
Labrosky said she became involved in politics a few years ago. She decided to run when she realized only about a quarter of registered city voters voted in the 2021 mayoral election.
“I said, ‘This is not acceptable,’” she said.
Her husband, Jeff, urged her to run for mayor, but she laughed at first.
“And he’s like, ‘No, you would be a really good mayor. You learn fast, you’re organized, you have an attention for detail, there’s nothing you can’t do,’” she said.
As her top priorities, she listed curbing crime, controlling taxes and paving more streets, partly by forcing utilities that damage streets to repave.
She said she would eliminate wasteful spending on lawyers by settling union contracts before arbitration; end reliance on costly consultants and studies; hire more police officers and generally boost morale among police, firefighters and public works staff.
“They don’t feel appreciated, they don’t feel supported by the mayor,” Labrosky said.
Labrosky wants to focus on lowering the city’s 2.4% earned income tax. (The school district levies another 1% for a total of 3.4%). Lowering the tax would attract homeowners and businesses to Scranton.
“I’d have to get in there and look at it,” she said when asked how she would lower the tax. “Look at different ways to do things, put the right team of people together.”
She said Cognetti has allowed crime to get out of control because “our police are understaffed” and concentrated instead on adding pickleball courts.
“She added all these (police) cars, but we don't have enough officers, and we have gang problems, and we have drug problems and all kinds of things,” she said.
On blight, Labrosky said she would explore the city rehabilitating decrepit homes, then selling them for a profit or attracting buyers or developers to renovate them.
“When I’m out, door-knocking, I don’t think there’s a block without a blighted property,” she said.
Beynon's candidacy
Beynon, 60, said concerns about city taxes and crime convinced her to run. Her daughter moved to Avoca because she didn’t feel safe after someone tried to break into her home, she said.
Beynon contends the city is less than transparent about its spending. Her priorities would include increasing transparency, fighting crime and concentrating on reducing the wage and local services taxes.
Asked for specifics on how she would do that, she said, “We could see if there’s incentives out there, government, state, local, see what we can get coming in here ... to compensate for it (the wage tax).”
“Find out where the problems are, work to fix it. That’s what I would want to do,” she said. “I think the people deserve that.”
To fight crime, she would learn from officers what tools they lack.
“Do they need — I don’t know — equipment?” she said. “Do they need supplies? What do they need that they’re not getting right now so they can control crime again? ... Why is the crime coming in? Maybe we could try to figure out that.”
She would battle blight by cracking down on absentee landlords and ensuring they maintain their buildings.
“Make sure the grass is cut, make sure that the homes are in good condition, make sure their taxes are paid,” she said.
On ensuring smooth roads, she said she would seek better patching options, she said.
“If you can get roads to stay fixed longer, they don’t have to keep coming back and fixing them over and over again,” Beynon said.
Beynon said she studied business and accounting at Luzerne County Community College but didn't finish her degree because she decided to work full-time for Scartelli, where she's been since 1992. She's familiar with city government and its permitting process through preparing bids and following through on city contracts.
"I have enough of an accounting and bookkeeping and educational background to know how to financially run the city. And of course, if you have the right people in the city government to support you, ... you can make anything work," she said.
Cognetti's candidacy
Cognetti took on each criticism one by one.
She said she’s created a more transparent government with audits, budgets and many other documents online. She added an online “pothole reporter” and a 311 phone hotline for non-emergency problems. She's accessible, she said.
“Hundreds of residents have my phone number. I pick up when they call. If I can't call them back, I will ask somebody from my team to get back to them,” she said.
On paving, she said the city spent $9 million on road repairs or paving during her tenure. She blamed many rocky roads on the installation of new natural gas, water and internet lines by utilities.
The city recently adopted a new pave-cut ordinance that more strictly requires utilities to pave streets after installing lines, she said.
“We are having robust discussions with the utilities about our new ordinance,” she said. “I am extremely displeased with the temporary restoration work in a lot of places. Really, really bad and really, really frustrating.”
The city also hired a company to enforce the ordinance, she said.
A lot of repaving will happen this summer, she promised.
Cognetti said the city could only have used $10 million of the American Rescue Plan money for paving. The city spent about $1.5 million and committed the rest to other projects.
About $23 million in rescue plan money will go toward controlling longstanding rain runoff problems on East Mountain, Minooka, North Scranton, West Scranton and the Keyser Valley, she said. Overall, the city has attracted $155 million in state and federal grants for projects, according to a Cognetti campaign flier.
On blight, she points out the city has demolished 72 rundown buildings with many more “teed up.”
Demolition takes not only money, but time because building owners have property rights under the Constitution, she said. That means the city must tread carefully and take legal steps to reach demolition, she said.
“It’s easy, if you’re a candidate, to say, ‘Why hasn’t this come down yet?” she said. “There are a lot of legal hurdles to get through to demolish those houses.”
The city is about to seek developers interested in acquiring up to 50 city-owned houses and vacant lands, she said.
The city bought cars for its code enforcement officers, who previously drove their own, she said. Code enforcers are also now required to take training and have more technology to stay on top of problems, she said.
Cognetti said she addressed public safety with almost $5 million in spending on better technology, equipment and training for police and a new fire department ladder truck.
The city added five police officers, and acted aggressively to fight gangs, drugs and guns in coordination with federal, state and local law enforcement agencies, she said. Major crimes "almost always" lead to arrests, she said.
“We have a great chief in Tom Carroll who has reorganized some of the operations within the department to put more cops on the beat ... more police officers walking around the neighborhoods in different places,” she said.
Regarding access to City Hall, Cognetti reiterated what she has said several times, including at a recent debate: measures restricting public access to the building beyond offices on the first floor were necessary given increasing violence in civic and political life. It was a point she also discussed following last month's attack on the Governor's Residence in Harrisburg.
The city has also developed a long-term plan for its parks, invested $26.7 million in its 32 parks, including 14 new parks and amenities, and will soon build another dog park, she said.
In the last three years, the city issued almost 9,600 building permits and last year developers invested $5.8 billion across the city, she said.
“You see developers buying new places, opening restaurants, opening houses, opening retail,” Cognetti said. “I think that the proof of our success and the stability that we've brought is in the nature of those investments.”
In a new term, she wants to make the city budget more interactive online, make building inspection results available online, follow through on streetscaping projects and slow traffic downtown with two-way streets.
“We can calm traffic down and make it safer for motorists, safer for pedestrians, safer for bicyclists, safer for everyone,” she said.
Two announced independent candidates, former City Councilman Gene Barrett and Michael Mancini, are not on the primary ballot because primaries are only for Democrats and Republicans. They could be on the Nov. 4 general election ballot if they obtain enough signatures by Aug. 1.
