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City council votes 4-1 to pass legislation authorizing amendments despite Mayor Doherty’s repeated threats to seek legal action.

The battle over Scranton city council’s 2010 budget amendments continued Tuesday night as council members voted 4-1 again to pass the legislation despite Mayor Chris Doherty’s recent threats to sue them if they persisted.

The council could have suspended the rules and moved to a final vote on the matter, as they did last month to dissolve the Scranton Public Library Authority, but chose not to in hopes of convincing the mayor to speak to them about the amended budget first. “The mayor has never contacted council regarding his concerns and, rather, chose to discuss them and threaten council in the newspaper,” said council president Janet Evans.

Evans compared suing council to suing the taxpayers and invited the mayor to council chambers to discuss the “$6 million annual structural deficit” and their differences over the budget at the next meeting. She said that the mayor’s threats were “not surprising, since the mayor has a record of court cases and appeals to every circumstance that he cannot dictate.”

“Article 9, Section 909 of the Home Rule Charter states that ‘the mayor shall make recommendations to minimize the deficit and for that purpose council may reduce other appropriations,’” she said. “It appears that the mayor has violated the Home Rule Charter throughout his terms as mayor by failing to reduce the structural deficit of Scranton. Also, it appears that the mayor has violated the city’s recovery plan.”

During citizen participation, most in attendance encouraged council to move forward with their planned amendments, while some asked them to forgo litigation that would end up “costing taxpayers more money in legal fees” and concentrate on the 2011 budget. Evans promised that no matter how things turn out, Doherty “will lose the war” over the 2011 budget, referring to the 4-1 supermajority’s power to override the mayor’s veto if he chose to do so.

Councilman Bob McGoff, the only member of the previous majority who approved the original 210 budget, was later grilled by Councilmen John Loscombe and Frank Joyce before the vote over his continued opposition to the budget. McGoff stated why he would again be voting “no,” citing that the budget was balanced and included no tax increases, which prompted Loscombe and Joyce to point out specific positions he eliminated and cuts he made in the last version of the budget. This was in response to McGoff’s similar criticism of Joyce’s budget last week, where he questioned his reasoning for removing specific jobs and went through the amendments line by line, asking what each position entailed and why they were being cut.

Council acknowledged they have received criticism that their amendments were politically and/or personally motivated.

“I do realize the strain that is caused by cuts,” Joyce said. “However, these cuts are in the best interest of the city in order to prevent Scranton from incurring any more debt.

To share my own personal story, I myself received an approximate $7,000 reduction in pay in 2009 in comparison to my salary from 2008. The company I worked for decided to make pay cuts in order to respond to a debt that was incurred as the company was losing money during recent economic struggles,” he continued.

With reductions in his benefits as well, Joyce said he received a decrease of more than $10,000 total, a figure he said is on “the conservative side.” He also maintained that his cuts do not favor unions, and he has never been part of a union himself.