HONESDALE, PA — A Pennsylvania county commissioner’s basic job description leaves plenty of room for interpretation. At face value, it’s an administrative position, responsible for paying the bills each week, balancing the budget each year and in general ensuring that the county’s departments and employees are all working smoothly.

In Wayne County, however, the county commissioners have historically taken on a more active role. They advocate on behalf of residents to track down federal, state and private grant-funding opportunities and place that money into top priority projects.

It’s not just money. Commissioners in Wayne County tend to get involved in infrastructure issues, like when an important interstate bridge is closed; emergency response, like coordinating a food relief effort during the height of COVID-19; and environmental debates, like the longtime controversy around fracking in the Delaware River Basin.

With the municipal primary quickly approaching on Tuesday, May 16, five candidates are running for the three-person Wayne County Board of Commissioners. The current commissioners Brian Smith (Republican) and Jocelyn Cramer (Democrat) are both seeking reelection, while the more recently appointed commissioner James Shook (Republican) is looking to get elected by the voting public for the first time.

Meanwhile, Republican Jacob Hanna, a former employee with the Department of Defense, and Democrat Michael Dougherty, currently a Hawley Borough councilor, are both looking for a chance to get on board. Both have said that they would make the county run more efficiently through smarter spending.

Until polls close, Democratic and Republican constituents throughout the county will be casting votes for two candidates from their respective parties. Cramer and Dougherty are the only two Democrats in the race, so they’ll likely both proceed to the November election. Republican voters, on the other hand, will have to choose two candidates out of three choices: Smith, Shook and Hanna.

Fiscal responsibility

Hanna is an outspoken opponent of property taxes and would support eliminating them altogether. In his official campaign video, Hanna promised to “cut every department and agency budget possible before I vote to raise your taxes.” As a commissioner, he said, he would want to spend less on transportation and allocate more money for the sheriff’s department vehicles.

“You see county transportation vehicles all over creation. Either they’re idling in parking lots, or they pick up one person and drive all the way across the county,” he said. “Meanwhile, our sheriff's department is driving around in older vehicles; they have a limited budget.”

Hanna said he would want to tackle the county debt by relying less on property taxes and cutting some departments’ budgets. In both of the last two years, the county has allocated more than $2 million for debt service payments.

Dougherty said that as commissioner he would also work on streamlining the budget to eliminate waste, though he didn’t identify any particular areas of waste at this time. He did, however, say that he opposed the idea of cutting the county transportation budget.

“I think anybody who wants to cut [transportation] doesn’t understand what the county department of transportation does. I am a handicapped individual, and it is a wonderful resource,” Doughtery, who is blind, said. “[Transportation] helps not only individuals like myself who are blind and simply can’t drive, but also elderly individuals who might not be able to drive anymore.”

Smith said he disagreed with the notion of cutting the transportation budget, especially considering that much of that department is funded by the Pennsylvania Lottery. According to the state lottery’s website, in the fiscal year 2021-22, the lottery generated more than $900,000 for Wayne County’s shared and free-ride program.

“We have seniors that depend on [transportation], and the money is there to help pay for it,” Smith said. He also said the transportation department provides local drivers with employment and supports local mechanics and gas stations to keep the vehicles maintained and running. “There are real lives and real-life situations attached to every dollar that’s spent here. That’s why it’s important to have some perspective and some life experience, so you can appreciate the impact that these different services have on our quality of life… there’s a lot that goes on here that you really need to try to appreciate before you just start cutting, cutting, cutting.”

Wayne County’s chief clerk Andrew Seder later confirmed that the transportation department is funded solely by the “state and federal government and user-direct payments.” He said the county spends none of its own money on transportation.

“The only way to cut it would be turning down state and federal dollars,” Seder said.

Accessibility

All five candidates have said that the commissioners' office should be one that’s readily accessible to the public and municipalities. While Hanna and Dougherty both said that they would be easier to get a hold of than the current board, the sitting commissioners said getting in touch with them couldn’t be simpler.

“We sit at our desks every day at least five or six hours a day. The county courthouse number is 570/253-5970, my extension is 1320, and that’s as easy as it is to get a hold of me,” Smith said. “We really are commissioners of the people and are always eager to communicate.”

Shook added that beyond regular working hours, he and the other commissioners are quick to give out their personal cell numbers, so that residents have access to them any day of the week, no matter the time.

“That’s absolutely a top priority for all of us,” Cramer said. “We are always eager to help, and when we can, we do.”

Dougherty said that as a borough councilor, he has been less than impressed with the commissioners’ response time.

“We as a council have just waited a long time to get any response from the commissioners’ office,” he said. “I know that they’re doing a lot of stuff… I just don’t feel like they’re serving as well as they could be.”

Hanna said thinks he can bring more “transparency” to the office.

“What I’ve heard just from talking to so many people from across the county, is that they don’t feel like they’ve been listened to,” he said. “They feel like they’ve gotten happy talk or story time.”

A unified front

Made clear by their decision to answer the River Reporter’s questions as a group rather than separately, the sitting commissioners considers themselves an effective team, one that’s adept at finding consensus on the issues they’re voting on each week. Smith said, that doesn’t mean they always share the same point of view at first.

“Many times we have differences, and many, many times we go into an issue and I’ll think the answer is A, [Cramer] thinks it’s B and [Shook] will think it’s C,” Smith said. “We work our way through the process and recognize that maybe the best answer isn’t A, B, or C… that’s really I think a remarkable way for three people with different backgrounds, who respect one another, to do the best for their constituents that they absolutely can do.”

Cramer said that when differences in opinion do come up, it’s easy to work through them, because she knows both of her colleagues are there “for all the right reasons.” Shook agreed that no one is there to “push any agendas.”

The commissioners do, however, have top priority projects they’re hoping to see to fruition in the coming months.

As a dairy farmer himself, agriculture is “always” at the top of Smith’s list. As chairman of the commissioners, he’s pushed for the creation of an agricultural innovation center, and was involved in the effort to make agriculture a part of local school districts’ curriculum. 

Cramer said that for years, expanding access to high-speed broadband has been a top priority for the county, and that they’re expecting to make big leaps in that effort this year.

Shook said that since getting appointed at the beginning of the year, he’s been energized by the prospect of a recovery-to-work program for which the county has acquired $10 million in grant funding. The program will be designed to help individuals and families-in-crisis overcome struggles with substance-use disorder.

“My real goal is just to get past this election period,” Shook said. “Hopefully [after the election], there are still three good commissioners to get this work done, because if we don’t have this unity going forward, a lot of these projects may slip through the cracks, and we don’t want to see that.”

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