As if we needed another political scandal spawned by a shady phone call, incoming Scranton school Director Tara Yanni trumped the President of the United States.
A week before the Congressional impeachment hearings went public, Times-Tribune staff writer Sarah Hofius Hall revealed that Yanni called the district’s human resources director in a futile attempt to land her husband a job.
The story soiled the populist narrative of Yanni and three other newcomers who vowed to reform the board and revitalize the district. Suddenly, one of the freshwomen appeared to get caught old-school abusing the power of her office before she was sworn in.
“It’s very upsetting,” outgoing Director Greg Popil said. “If this is what she did as a board member-to-be, what will she do when she has real power?”
It’s a fair question — one of many Sarah would have asked Yanni, but the director-elect did her talking through her attorney, Richard Fanucci. When Yanni lawyered up, many naturally read it as a declaration of guilt.
Yanni spoke up Tuesday, telling me her side of a story she deeply regrets seeding.
“I shouldn’t have picked up the phone and made that call,” she said of her Aug. 13 conversation with Chief Human Resource Officer John Castrovinci.
Yanni’s husband, Rich, missed the deadline to apply for a Scranton High School assistant baseball coach job that pays $2,853 per year. Her husband applied for the job before the May primary, and she asked the HR director whether the application was valid when the job was re-posted in July.
Castrovinci said no. Yanni was disappointed, but said she and Castrovinci discussed Rich helping out as a volunteer at no pay.
“He’s coached these kids since they were knee-high” and he wanted to stick with them, Yanni said. She said she regrets making the call, which was Rich’s job.
About that call: Yanni said she made it at Castrovinci’s request. She asked outgoing Director Tom Borthwick, a member of the board’s Personnel Committee, to ask Castrovinci whether Rich could get an interview despite the blown deadline.
Yanni said Borthwick delivered the bad news, and said Castrovinci wanted her to call him directly.
For those keeping score, that’s Castovinci to Borthwick to Yanni, an inside baseball triple-play.
Except Castrovinci wouldn’t play ball. He told me it would have been ethically wrong to interview Yanni’s husband after he missed the deadline. With an ongoing state investigation into district corruption, he thought it was “a really bad idea” for an incoming school director to ask for such a favor.
“The job had been posted for a month,” Castrovinci said. “If her husband wanted the job, he should have made the call.”
Castrovinci said Yanni reminded him she would soon be on the school board and said she would go over his head to then-Superintendent Alexis Kirijan, Ed.D., and state-appointed Chief Recovery Officer Candis Finan, Ed.D. Castrovinci understandably read that, as well as a text Yanni sent to Borthwick — “I will be applying for personnel committee” with a smiley emoji — as “thinly veiled threats.”
Yanni said the emoji was innocent and the only higher-ups she discussed the issue with were Popil and Borthwick. She spoke with Popil just once, but discussed it with Borthwick several times, she said.
Borthwick (you guessed it) has a different recollection of events. He insisted he wasn’t doing a favor for Yanni when he asked Castrovinci about her husband’s application. He told me he was innocently asking a question about a deadline, something he would have done for any random Scrantonian.
“In no way, shape or form should that be construed as I wanted her husband to get a job,” Borthwick said. Also, Castrovinci’s message to Yanni through him was that Rich — not the incoming school director — could — not should — call the HR director for an explanation.
Castrovinci said he couldn’t remember exactly what he said, but Borthwick’s account sounds right because Yanni’s husband was seeking the job.
Yanni insisted Borthwick specifically told her to call, and that there was nothing random about Borthwick’s request, which she said is clear in this text exchange she showed me:
“I hoped he’d (Castrovinci) just make an exception,” Borthwick wrote. “But the deadline passed and it sounds like he’s a hardass.”
“He’s has (sic) made such an issue of it now, I would never have Rich interview for it,” Yanni replied. “Could you imagine what the newspaper would say?”
And that’s as far down this she said/they said rabbit hole as I’m willing to go. All I’m burning is newsprint. The district is actually spending taxpayer money investigating this farce, which was sparked by a shady phone call made by a political novice who should have known better.
Unless district solicitor John Audi finds a Ukrainian connection to this caper by the end of the week, the board should drop the probe before it costs more in legal fees than the $2,853 Rich Yanni would have made coaching high school baseball.
Nepotism is a chronic, crippling problem for the district. Any whiff of it damages the trust of taxpayers who went to the polls and entrusted a slate of women to end the good-old-boys corruption that cratered the district.
Tara Yanni should never have picked up the phone and made that call. If any hard evidence shows she threatened the HR director, she should not sit on the board. Absent any, it’s time to move on to doing the public’s business.
Yanni says she learned a lesson and will prove it over the next four years.
“I’ve got four years on this board to prove to everybody what I’m all about,” she said. “Everybody” includes the other newcomers swept to power in the election.
“The last thing I wanted was something like this to overshadow what we accomplished,” Yanni said. “I don’t want to bring down these other women.”
I spoke with the other women — Catherine Fox, Sarah Cruz and Ro Hume — on Tuesday. All took a wait-and-see approach until the district’s internal investigation wraps up. None felt brought down.
“I’m willing to work with anyone who wants to change the district for the better,” Fox said. “We’re going to be doing it for the next four years, so everybody buckle up.”
CHRIS KELLY, the Times-Tribune columnist, thought we were done with this stuff. Contact the writer: kellysworld@timesshamrock.com, @cjkink on Twitter. Read his award-winning blog at timestribuneblogs.com/kelly.