HARRISBURG, Pa. - Newly discovered meeting tapes from 2003 may shed additional light on Scranton's 2002 pension incentive, Pennsylvania Auditor General Eugene DePasquale said Tuesday, but the development will briefly delay his department's report on the deal.
"My team is working hard to review all relevant information regarding a 2002 retirement incentive the city of Scranton offered to non-uniformed employees who are receiving doubled pension benefits," DePasquale said. "As we were nearing completion of our report, audio tapes of previously unavailable city council meetings and other information were dropped in our laps."
When auditors asked for all City Council and pension board meeting minutes at the start of the review, they were told minutes for some of the May, June, and July 2003 council meetings were not available, DePasquale said.
Last week as auditors were completing field work, they learned that audio tapes of those meetings were discovered by city personnel. Upon initial review, auditors found that at least one tape was mislabeled and contained a recording of a February 2003 meeting where a resident asked for specific information regarding the retirement incentive.
"It's encouraging that DePasquale is digging deeper," Gary Lewis, a private-sector financial consultant and former Scranton mayoral candidate, said in an interview. "All kinds of things have come out of Scranton - lack of oversight, double pensions, finger-pointing, lack of controls over the years."
In February, DePasquale launched an immediate review of the issues related to the eligibility of retirees and criteria used by the city to award doubled pension benefit payments to non-uniformed employees in 2002 and 2007.
"It is too soon to say if the tapes from 2003 will provide relevant information about the double pension payments, but we must take the time necessary to review all of the information available," DePasquale said Tuesday morning.
DePasquale has said that Scranton is at risk of bankruptcy.
