New mayor takes Scrantonâs reins
This is not how Paige Gebhardt Cognetti envisioned her first year as Scrantonâs mayor.
Elected in November 2019 to fill the final two years of former Mayor Bill Courtrightâs term after his guilty plea to federal corruption charges, Cognetti took office Jan. 6 and had to start working almost immediately to put out figurative fires.
The first was dealing with the potentially devastating Lackawanna County Court decision in a tax lawsuit that threatened to drive the city into insolvency, followed in short order by the burgeoning COVID-19 crisis that prompted her to declare a public health emergency in mid-March.