A Tuesday decision on 75 American Rescue Plan awards totaling $60 million is unlikely, Luzerne County Council Vice Chairman John Lombardo said Sunday.
“There’s a lot more digestion of the information that has to be done before money is allocated,” Lombardo said.
The county administration publicly released the names of the applicants and the dollar amounts of their proposed awards last week because county council was slated to vote on the awards Tuesday. No project summaries were prepared for the released list because the applicant submissions are housed in the county consultant’s electronic portal that had been viewed by council members to complete their scoring, with each council member using a unique password.
Lombardo said council members did not receive the average scores and other useful information until after the list was publicly released.
For example, he said council members learned approximately five applicants had scores of zero. Council had scored applicants in several batches, and Lombardo said the ones with no score were in the same group. While some council members may have abstained from scoring due to a conflict of interest with a specific applicant, Lombardo said more clarification is required to determine why these applications were not scored by any of the 11 council members. He also wants to know if the council members not scoring that particular group intentionally chose not to participate or whether they reported technical issues accessing the link.
“That in itself is enough to call the entire thing into question,” Lombardo said, referring to those with no score.
Lombardo said he believes a majority of council members have enough lingering questions to hold off. Inquiries also have been made about whether any of the 75 received other coronavirus funding assistance through the county, Lombardo said. Although that was not expressly stated as a prohibition in advance, council members may have the right to make this an eligibility condition now, he said.
Furthermore, Lombardo said he has been contacted by some of the 75 applicants that made the cut informing him they would be willing to accept lower dollar awards and still be able to complete their projects. Council members had agreed to fully fund all requests, as is, because they wanted to ensure all projects were completed in compliance with program requirements. However, Lombardo said there may be a way for some recipients to scale back their plans or complete only one phase so that they would show progress and help people while freeing up more American Rescue funds for additional recipients.
Scoring process
Instead of relying on a council or administrative committee recommendation, the 11 council members decided to screen the applications themselves so they would all have an opportunity to participate.
The county’s American Rescue consultant — Columbia, Maryland-based Booth Management Consulting — set up the online portal for council members to individually review and score the 139 outside applications based on uniform factors, such as a project’s impact on county priorities, community outcomes, racial equity and inclusion and a review of the overall project budget.
Because the list of awards is based on council’s independent scoring and parameters, council members are not supposed to alter it without cause because adding and deleting once the names are released would defeat the purpose of the evaluation system that had been set up, officials have said.
Council members have said this is an unusual situation because they did not collaboratively choose recipients through the typical discussion, debate and majority preference.
The list of recipients is posted on the main page of the county website at luzernecounty.org.
Councilman Chris Perry said Sunday he looks forward to continued discussion Tuesday.
“I want to respect the process set up by council, but I also want to keep options open because there’s no way of knowing what additional information may be presented Tuesday,” Perry said.
Tuesday’s meeting starts at 6 p.m. at the county courthouse on River Street in Wilkes-Barre. Instructions for remote attendance are posted under council’s online meeting link at luzernecounty.org.