What started last winter with a resignation ended Tuesday with an inauguration as a new winter approaches.
Former state Rep. Thom Welby took the oath of office as Lackawanna County’s newest commissioner, quieting for good any lingering doubts about who will do the job for the next two-plus years.
Welby promised to help others by making himself “available to talk to morning, noon or night.”
“I just want to do good and do right, and I know along the way I'm going to stumble,” Welby, 76, of Scranton told a packed courtroom inside the Lackawanna County Courthouse. “I know that we'll have disagreements. We're all human. We'll have disagreements, but hopefully we'll eventually get along and do the right thing.”
How Welby got there
Welby won a special election Nov. 4 to serve until Jan. 3, 2028. He replaces Brenda Sacco, who served only 34 days after taking the oath to replace former Commissioner Matt McGloin. McGloin resigned Feb. 24, sparking a lengthy court battle over his replacement that ended with Sacco's swearing in Oct. 22. Sacco did not run in the special election to keep the seat.
“You still want to do this?” county President Judge James Gibbons asked Welby.
“I think so,” Welby said with a smile.
“Raise your right hand please and repeat after me,” the judge said.
With that, Welby swore his oath with his left hand on a Bible held by his wife, Kathy, and given to him by the state House of Representatives on Nov. 17, 2021. It was the day he took the oath of office as a state representative, replacing Marty Flynn, who won a special election for state senator only five months earlier. Welby served as Flynn’s chief of staff for almost eight years when Flynn was a representative.
'The Welby wave'
Before Welby took the oath, county Treasurer Angela Rempe Jones, who also worked for Flynn and once reported to Welby, portrayed her former colleague as a kind, generous and trustworthy hard worker.
“For a decade, I just followed his lead, and he always led by positive example, and for example, with honesty, integrity, accountability, empathy, humility and the occasional -- when needed -- reality check,” Rempe Jones said. “And if we did a show of hands here in the courtroom of who Thom Welby helped, or who knows somebody that Thom Welby helped, it would be like a wave, like the Welby wave.
“The voters got it exactly right with Thom Welby as our next county commissioner, and we are embracing the change.”
'What he believes is right'
Flynn praised Welby for his professionalism, his genuine respect for people and an ability to create an environment “where it was always easy to work together productively.”
“What has always set Thom apart is his combination of fairness and the practicality he brings to every decision,” Flynn said. “Thom always has made choices based on what he believes is right for Lackawanna County. That kind of balance is rare, and it's a quality that will serve him well as a commissioner.”
Welby talks help
Welby, one of 13 children, thanked his family, friends and others for their support and Sacco for her brief service as commissioner.
After decades in the broadcasting industry, including more than 20 years selling television advertising, Welby retired intending to perform public service. He said Flynn convinced him to become chief of staff by pointing out the power he would have do good in that job.
“My dad died of leukemia in 1969 and there were 11 of us at home,” he said. “My sister Anne Marie had just gotten married. My brother Jimmy had just gone into the Navy, and I was the oldest at home at that time.”
A family that large led by a single mom required help, he said.
“We had a lot of people over the course of our lives helping us,” he said. “Not for a favor, just to help out the same thing that so many of us do every day in our lives now. And if somebody needs a hand, somebody needs help, whether it's shoveling snow or blowing snow from the front of somebody's driveway that the snowplow had built up, we do it.”
As chief of staff to Flynn and later state Rep. Bridget Kosierowski, Welby said he and fellow staff members worked “for the good of the people.”
“And that's what I want to do for the next two plus years,” he said.
Ending the enmity
Welby, a Democrat, joins fellow Democrat Bill Gaughan and Chris Chermak, a Republican, on the three-member Board of Commissioners. Gaughan’s lengthy but failed court challenge to the process that led to Sacco’s appointment led to a stormy few weeks once she took office.
In recent weeks, despite coming from different political parties, Chermak and Sacco, without consulting Gaughan, teamed up to hire a new solicitor and human resources director, fire a spokesman and attempted, unsuccessfully, to block the county reassessment’s new property values.
Gaughan, who attended the ceremony, said he and Welby agree on the need to follow the county’s financial management plan to avoid a 33% tax hike such as the one imposed this year.
Gaughan said he doubts Welby will regularly team up with Chermak the way Sacco did.
“Because the people of Lackawanna County were overwhelmingly clear that they want a Democratic majority (by electing Welby),” he said. “It wasn't just in our county, it was across the state ... and across the country. They want a strong Democratic majority, and I am very confident that that's what they're going to get. That Thom Welby and I are going to work together.”
'Just doing what's right'
Welby said only that he’s “looking forward to improving the county.”
“I'm really not into the, you know, being a Democrat or Republican,” he said. “I'm tired of all the poison that exists between those two parties and how it's manifested itself all through government. I just want to see the three of us working together, forgetting about political party and just doing what's right.”
'A cocktail and a cigar'
Later, incumbent county Clerk of Judicial Records Lauren Bieber Mailen took the oath of office to fill out the rest of Mauri Kelly's term. Kelly retired Sept. 2.
County common pleas judges appointed Mailen on Sept. 4 to serve until a successor was elected. Unlike Sacco, Mailen ran in the Nov. 4 special election and won the right to hold the office until Kelly's term expires the same day as Welby’s.
County common pleas Judge George Seig swore in Mailen and both teared up – Mailen while she took the oath, Sieg afterward.
Mailen’s father, George Bieber, died in June. Bieber was the retired director of security at the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton International Airport, but also a Moosic councilman and a former Riverside school director who was beloved, especially in political circles.
Seig’s father, also named George, was Mailen’s godfather. He died in 2015.
“I would say without reservation, there are two gentlemen that are looking down right now this picture, and I guarantee you they're having a cocktail and a cigar,” the judge said, his voice cracking.
Mailen called the process of earning the job “humbling and very hard not having my dad here.”
She thanked friends and family who stood by her.
“I could not thank you more, and for my dad's true friends that stood behind me too. That means the world to me, and I know it means the world to him,” she said, tearing up again.
