Scranton Tax Collector Bill Courtright will hire a new solicitor for the Single Tax Office because of the recent death of office solicitor Mark Walsh.
Mr. Walsh, 53, died Tuesday after a three-year battle with leukemia.
Although state law mandates that the city solicitor is supposed to serve as the solicitor for the Single Tax Office, it has been the practice of several tax collectors over many years - including most recently Mr. Courtright - to hire their own solicitor for the tax office.
Mr. Courtright said he will follow the past practice and continue to use a separate solicitor instead of the city solicitor. He said he believes this practice stemmed many years ago from the city and Scranton School District agreeing that the Single Tax Office needed to have its own solicitor.
"My understanding is that years ago, the city and school district said you need to have a separate solicitor. I think the city and school district agreed it was too big of a job and the office needed its own solicitor," Mr. Courtright said. "That's been the practice for as long as I can remember."
He said he has not decided whom to ask to become the office's new solicitor.
The issue is similar to the Single Tax Office's longstanding practice by several tax collectors over many years of commingling taxes collected from the city, Scranton School District and Lackawanna County, even though the law specifically forbids intermingling and an audit last year recommended separate accounts.
As for Mr. Courtright planning to continue the practice of the tax office hiring its own solicitor, Mayor Chris Doherty said, "The (city's) Law Department is reviewing it."
The city's Law Department is headed up by city solicitor Paul Kelly, who was a Single Tax Office solicitor for many years in the 1990s and 2000s.
Scranton schools Superintendent William King said he believes the tax office having its own solicitor goes back nearly three decades at least, and sees no need to end the practice.
"I personally don't have a problem with them hiring their own solicitor to handle tax office issues," Mr. King said. "I think it makes more sense for the tax office to have their own solicitor."
However, the Lackawanna County Commissioners said through spokesman Joseph D'Arienzo, "Whatever the law may be in a given area, we expect the law to be followed."
That reply was an about-face from a response on commingling earlier this week by county chief financial officer Thomas Durkin, who said, "It's not a big deal to have one (commingled) account," and county taxes are "accounted for in the proper fashion. On the books, they know who is owed what, whether it's in one account or 25 accounts."
Mr. Courtright said ending commingling is not as simple as it sounds, and would incur extra manpower and expense. The tax office can distinguish how much taxes are collected and distributed.
But earlier this week, city Business Administrator Ryan McGowan said the city administration hopes the tax office would follow the letter of the law regarding commingling so there are no issues similar to problems uncovered in 2008. That was when then-Tax Collector Marilyn Vitali-Flynn discovered an office bank account with $12.3 million in undistributed taxes from when Ken McDowell had served as tax collector. An independent forensic audit determined the tax office had disbursed much of the surplus money, but about $1.6 million in wage taxes from 1997 to 2004 remained missing. An FBI probe resulted in no charges, according to Times-Tribune archives. A federal prosecutor had said problems with the tax office's computer accounting system made prosecutors "incapable of proving beyond a reasonable doubt" whether $1.6 million was simply unaccounted for or really missing.
As for commingling, Mr. King said that ideally the funds would be held in separate accounts at the tax office, but he understands Mr. Courtright's questions and concerns of how best to accomplish the task.
"We're fairly confident that the funds we are receiving are appropriate," Mr. King said. "In light of what occurred a few years ago (under Mr. McDowell), we try to stay on top of it and stay in close contact with the tax collector to ensure the funds are rolling in and rolling in consistently."
Contact the writer: jlockwood@timesshamrock.com, @jlockwoodTT on Twitter