It was like a coronation without a crown, a Hollywood gala without a red carpet, a relieved beat cop handing off a ticking bomb to a newly certified explosives expert.
Scranton Mayor Until January Wayne Evans and Mayor-elect Paige Cognetti beamed on the steps of City Hall as a slate gray sky spit on North Washington Avenue.
The pair called the Monday press conference to demonstrate the “kumbaya” nature of the transition, which becomes official Jan. 6.
Cognetti briefly outlined the goals and framework of her team and invited constituents to follow the incoming administration’s progress on a slick new website — scrantonmayor
altransition.com.
The mayor-elect said she wasn’t ready to address any questions about personnel. That was the only kind I brought to the party, so I asked, anyway.
“Which one of you is going to fire Pat DeSarno?”
It’s an awkward question, but it shouldn’t have surprised Evans and Cognetti. The city’s fire chief got caught using his city-issued gas card and city-owned vehicle on a July vacation to the Jersey shore and lied to the boss when he got caught.
DeSarno got into a fender-bender, which led to a tip to the newspaper. Times-Tribune staff writers Joe Kohut and Jim Lockwood did what local reporters do — gathered the facts and spoke truth to power.
DeSarno told Evans he paid for his gas on the vacation. The newspaper proved that was a lie. Cornered, DeSarno grudgingly ’fessed up and agreed to reimburse taxpayers.
He spent public money and drove his city-owned vehicle to the beach and lied to the boss and still holds the fire department’s top job. In any private-sector business, that gets you fired — from a cannon. In Scranton, it gets you a chance to “clarify” the lie you told the boss and decide for yourself how much you owe.
After a “self-audit,” De-Sarno determined he owes $559.19 for gas used for personal travel over the last 5½ years. Rather than take his word for it, The Times-
Tribune filed a Right-to-Know Law request for any documentation he provided.
In a rambling written statement to Evans, the fire chief said he had an inferred understanding with former mayor and current felon Bill Courtright’s administration that he could use the car and fuel card “as my own, in essence.” Getting caught made him see that was a “wrong-headed assumption” made without “malice or deceit.”
Malice and deceit is The Times-Tribune business model, if you ask DeSarno. Just don’t dare call him on his cellphone. The chief has never been shy in his criticism of the newspaper. He was part of the crew who got a kick out of identifying themselves as “Lt. Art Franklin” to new reporters at fire scenes back in the early aughts.
Our archives include a photo of DeSarno hosing down hot spots at a 2006 fire in West Scranton. He identified himself as “Art Franklin.” The photographer took DeSarno’s word — a rookie mistake.
Lately, DeSarno’s dislike of the newspaper has flared out of control. In emails and phone calls, he imposed conditions dictating how and when he could be contacted by Times-Tribune reporters and specifically refused to speak with Kohut and Lockwood. Kohut called DeSarno on Friday, and received this text in response:
“I’m going to be nice because I’m convinced the fault lies with your boss... He was told (well one of the things he was told) in no uncertain terms that I would never return a call to either you or Jim Lockwood, whether made to my desk or PERSONAL cellphone.
“So since he, for some reason, keeps refusing to pass that info on, consider this my personal notification to you — Please don’t waste time calling me and NEVER AGAIN call my PERSONAL cellphone. Next time this happens I will file harassment charges on you.
“You’ve been notified.”
I called DeSarno on his personal cellphone (Evans confirmed the city doesn’t pay for it or reimburse him). The chief had nothing to say until I related the question I asked Evans and Cognetti about his employment status.
“Wayne would have done it already if I had done something wrong,” DeSarno said.
And there it is, the unabashed sense of entitlement of a longtime employee who seems to think the city exists to provide him a paycheck. DeSarno used public money for personal expenses and a public vehicle for a vacation and lied to his boss when caught, but doesn’t see any wrong in what he did.
I wish DeSarno had been willing to talk, because I was itching to respond to his text to Kohut:
Notice to Chief DeSarno: Public figures don’t get to dictate how the media covers them, and calls to department heads — especially police and fire chiefs — are essential to doing our jobs. Our reporters called to get YOUR SIDE of a story YOU CREATED. If you consider reporters treating you fairly and striving for accuracy a form of harassment, we plead guilty as charged.
I might also have thanked the chief for providing the newspaper with a golden opportunity to prove its worth to the communities it serves. His taxpayer-funded road trip sparked a continuing Times-Tribune investigation that exposed a city gas card system built for unaccountable excess and abuse. As a result, new policies were enacted and Evans and city council are seeking an outside audit. (Subscribe at 570-348-9190, or at thetimes-tribune.com/contact.)
The new policy and pending audit are signs of progress, but my question about DeSarno’s future employment stands. Neither Evans or Cognetti gave a clear answer on the City Hall steps.
“I think the clock is gonna take care of that,” Evans said. “We’ll see what happens.”
“So it’s gonna be Paige,” I said.
“We don’t know that,” Evans said. “We’ll have to wait and see.”
CHRIS KELLY, the Times-Tribune columnist, wrote this column with no malice or deceit. Contact the writer: kelly
sworld@timesshamrock.com,
@cjkink on Twitter. Read his award-winning blog at timestr
ibuneblogs.com/kelly.