Lackawanna County Controller Gary DiBileo said that if he mentioned it would be nice to have a private shower in the renovated Gateway Center office suite where he and his staff will relocate later this month, it was not a formal request and certainly not a serious one.
The county administration saw it differently.
Amid the escalating rancor between the two offices, the administration released a letter in which it said the controller requested the addition of a shower to an existing private bathroom during renovations to the basement of the Gateway Center on Jefferson Avenue.
"The commissioners flatly denied your request as excessive and totally inappropriate," Chief Financial Officer Thomas Durkin wrote in the letter he sent to Mr. DiBileo on Thursday, the same day the controller publicly took the commissioners to task over a lack of bidding for the county newsletter.
Mr. DiBileo said Friday the three-page letter, in which Mr. Durkin summarized the circumstances surrounding the controller's pending move, contained "inaccuracies and untruths."
"They are just trying to make me look bad because we ask the tough questions of them," he said of the administration.
The controller's office, now in leased space in the Scranton Electric Building, is scheduled to relocate May 25 to the county-owned Gateway Center. The new space, previously occupied by Magisterial District Judge Alyce Farrell's offices and courtroom, underwent a $33,000 renovation.
Mr. DiBileo acknowledged he mentioned a shower to someone - he couldn't remember whom - while touring the space in 2012.
"In the one room, I said, 'There is a bathroom in this office. Too bad there is no shower,'â" he said. "It was just a comment. I don't believe I asked for one, and if I did, I was not serious."
Chief of staff Maria Elkins said Friday she recalled a later phone conversation with Mr. DiBileo in which he told her that he would "appreciate a shower and a couch" in the office. Her response, she said, was no to the shower and maybe to the couch.
Commissioner Corey O'Brien said the request was a nonstarter.
"You know what, Lackawanna County is not building Gary DiBileo a hotel room. ... If he wants to shower, he can go home. He lives seven minutes away," he said.
While Mr. O'Brien said there should be healthy tension between the administration and the controller, he and fellow majority Commissioner Jim Wansacz accused Mr. DiBileo of politicizing the office.
An issue like the newsletter brouhaha, which ended with Mr. DiBileo agreeing the administration acted properly, could have been resolved "in two minutes by talking," Mr. O'Brien said. Instead, he said, the controller chose to take his concerns to the media.
"His job is not about politics. It's good government," Mr. Wansacz said.
Mr. DiBileo said the commissioners are the ones playing politics.
"Politics has nothing to do with me doing my job and doing it in the way I believe it should be done," he said.
In his letter, Mr. Durkin said Mr. DiBileo came to the commissioners and indicated he wanted an office on another floor of the Gateway Center because an elected officer of his "stature" should not be in the basement.
Mr. DiBileo acknowledged he asked about the possibility of relocating his office to the building's third floor but said nothing about his stature.
The commissioners agreed to consider moving his office into a third-floor space now occupied by the assessor's office. However, Mr. DiBileo said he nixed the move and agreed to relocate into the basement space as originally planned after learning it would cost $30,000 to relocate the assessor's office.
Contact the writer: dsingleton@timesshamrock.com