Goffredo and McClure Spar Over Elections and Gracedale

With a county election coming up in November, relations between NorCo's administration and county council have gone from bad to worse.  At last week's meeting, held September 4, Council member John Goffredo and Exec Lamont McClure sparred over elections offices and Gracedale. Later that evening, Goffredo got into yet another argy bargy, this time with Fiscal Affairs Director Steve Barron over a routine budget amendment that actually was tabled. Today, I'll tell you about the tiff between Goffredo and McClure today and continue with his assault on Barron on Tuesday. 

The meeting started on a sour note. A corrections officer disclosed an "ongoing issue" between his union and the bargaining unit representing deputy sheriffs over the transport of prisoners to medical appointments and to hospitals. Though corrections officers are 79 people short, they are being forced to take on this task. He complained that deputy sheriffs get whatever they want, from extra vehicles to more staff, while his union gets mandates. He said he's been mandated to serve 16-hour shifts on eight separate occasions in August alone. 

Though sheriffs are required to shoulder some of this burden, he and his fellow officers are stuck with it. He noted complaints to Human Resources have been ignored and suggested that's because the HR Director is married to the Sheriff. 

Interestingly, he noted that when the Sheriffs do these transports, they often send only one deputy, while COs must use two. (If the CO is accurate on this point, this practice is both unsafe and unwise.) 

Disputes between unions over work and contracts can be resolved through the labor relations board. 

After this first dissonant chord, GOP county chair Glenn Geissinger approached the podium. He said he'd be brief. He wasn't. His complaint was about Executive McClure's decision to establish temporary satellite offices in Washington Tp and South Bethlehem for county resident who might wish to vote there instead of making the trip to the courthouse for what most people consider early voting, though it's technically ballot by demand. 

He insisted that County Council, and only County Council, has this authority and cited a provision in the Elections Code (25 P.S. 2645) providing that it is County Commissioners who fund elections and asked Council to "end the abuse of power of this executive." He claimed this abuse of power is part of a pattern in which the executive ignores the wishes of Council, which he did with part of $5 million in retention bonuses for Gracedale's career service workers.

This has become the main issue in this year's county council and executive races, which include "Where's the money, Lamont?" signs disingenuously hinting that the money has been stolen.  

After this, it was eventually McClure's turn in the dock. He attempted to get away with an innocuous presentation about suicide prevention, but Goffredo wanted to know why he failed to get County Council's approval to fund these satellite offices. McClure said there was no need because the funds were already in the budget for the elections division.  (Under the County's Home Rule Charter [Section 705], he would only need Council's approval if he was moving funds from one division to another). 

Goffredo then complained that the decision to establish temporary satellite offices was not approved by County Council, but they are not administrators. 

From elections. Goffredo then went on to Gracedale. He was upset to learn that the county plans to use one agency (Tellavera) to require all agency CNAs at Gracedale with 500 hours of working time to transition to work for that agency. 

McClure told Goffredo that Gracedale administrator Michelle Morton was there and could answer his questions, but Goffredo wanted to hear what was going on from McClure. (In the past, Council has complained that McClure discourages county employees from coming to meetings, but now Goffredo just wanted to hear from McClure). 

Do you think that council should be part of these discussions, personally, as the executive?

In advance of doing them?

Yes.

No.

Really?

No. We just had a factually incorrect lecture from Mr. Geisinger about the separation of powers. It's for the administration, and specifically the administrator of Gracedale to administrate Gracedale. And part of that is how you manage the agency relationship. So what we're trying to do is save millions of dollars.

The spat continued. 

But I would like this to be out in the open. That's why I wanted to ask these questions because a lot is happening at Gracedale, which is the biggest issue. It has been the biggest issue and will always be the biggest.

It's only the biggest issue because we're talking about it because you demagogue it. Because you want to make it political. You want to. He's [Tom Giovanni] running on it. He's running his campaign on it.

So when Gracedale's failing, we're failing.

Gracedale's not failing.

Debatable.

It's not failing.

All right, well, that's where I would like to have different conversations and be brought into these issues, because I think staffing is the biggest thing that we're dealing with. I'm hearing that if you have over 500 hours as a temp worker, you either get on with Telavera or you get lost. Is that true?

So you need to ask her [Michelle Morton] specifically how that works because I am not in the weeds on all of the details of that.

Personally as Council, I wish we'd known about this. I wish we talk about his at the human services meeting, the meeting before this, when this was already in the works, literally two weeks ago.

So here's the thing. I know Miss Wandaowski [Human Services Director] at one of the previous meetings, did preview that a process was going to be put in place that would lead to savings with agency nursing staff. They were here and they did it. ... [W]e're trying to save millions of dollars. I understand why you don't want to, because I ultimately suspect you do not want Gracedale to be county owned.

You keep saying that.

Well, that's my personal belief.

Okay, well, I don't want that to happen.

Good.

What I would like to do is get more county employees. I would like to make it more appetizing to come work at the county, which seems to be an issue, in every department. And I think if we want to save Gracedale, we'd need to get good nurses and good workers to come work for the county. Not, "Hey, let's get a mega temp agency," because they're going to be able to consolidate all these ---. Well, what if they don't? What if they can't? What if they struggle? What if their nurses aren't as good? I don't know anything about them. So, yes, am I annoyed that we're not a part of this process? Yup. We're giving you money, you're saying, well, it's in our budget. You're moving money around all over the place. We don't know what's in our budget. We don't know where the money is.

Well, that's fundamentally false. It's fundamentally false.

If nothing else, it's clear that the animosity between Executive and Council is at an all-time high.  And when Fiscal Affiars Director Steve Barron attempted to defend a routine budget amendment, things got worse. I'll tell you about that on Tuesday.