FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – September 10, 2008, PM

Contact: Alex Allen, President, N.E.P.A. Public Access Project
ph: 570-504-5803, email: nepapap@gmail.com

NON-PROFIT GROUP FILES EXPLOSIVE COMMENTS IN CHANNEL 61 SCANDAL
DOC. CLAIMS FEDERAL FUNDS SLATED TO BENEFIT SCRANTON MAYOR’S RE-ELECTION CAMPAIGN

A document released Monday charges that Scranton Mayor Christopher A. Doherty commandeered the city’s public access cable television channels for the primary purpose of benefitting his own political campaign and that the scheme stands to be funded by federal tax dollars from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

The allegations were filed by NEPA Public Access Project in response to a comment period opened by Scranton’s Office of Economic and Community Development (OECD) seeking opinions on a pending transfer in the allocation of $90,000. The money would be transferred from an existing OECD-administered small business loan program to a grant for Electric City Television (ECTV), the embattled new operator of Scranton’s public access cable channels.

ECTV is slated to receive a $90,000 grant of HUD Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funds through OECD. But the funding will not be available until an amendment to the CDBG Action Plan is approved. The Public Access Project urged OCED to abandon the amendment “because it would violate public policy” and to “acknowledge that the course of events that gave ECTV the authority to operate the Channels was a fraudulent ruse with the intent of obstructing the public’s access to public government meetings.”

The citation-heavy 15-page document lucidly outlines the Mayor’s history of “attempts to obstruct the public’s access to the content of public government meetings.” It further claims that the Mayor’s recent installation of ECTV as operator of channel 61 was “a shameless manipulation of a publicly-owned media outlet as part of a campaign to control his image amongst the electorate in the year preceding his re-election campaign.” It charges that broadcasts of City Council meetings, a popular venue for criticism of the Mayor, have been cut down dramatically since ECTV’s takeover.

In addition to ECTV’s relationship with the Mayor, the document questions ECTV’s solvency, competency, honesty, and ability to sustain operations. NEPA-PAP President Alex Allen expressed fear that further turbulence for the channels is on the horizon. “Public access television is absolutely vital to civic awareness in the 21st century, especially in a one-paper town like Scranton. The unconscionable upheaval that our channels have endured is a direct result of the Mayor’s reckless misconduct. We have demonstrated that, due to its startling incompetence, ECTV is likely to fail regardless of whether it receives the pending $90,000 HUD grant. When ECTV fails the channels will, at the sole discretion of the Mayor, either go blank or go through another painful transition period,” Allen said.

The document’s conclusion likens the ordeal to the “Bonusgate” scandal that rocked Harrisburg this July because of what it labels an “attempt to use public funds for political purposes.” It chides the Mayor for his “self-serving tactics” used “out of an apparent lack of faith in democracy, a free press, himself, and the public’s right to information.” Finally, the complaint expresses outrage that the Mayor’s self-serving political effort “stands to be funded by money set aside for society’s least fortunate.”

The full text of the document is available at openlackawanna.org or directly at http://openlackawanna.org/NEPAPAPs-ECTV-OECDpublicCommentRevised&Cited.pdf.

N.E.P.A. Public Access Project is a non-partisan non-profit charitable organization founded last year for the purpose of facilitating the public’s convenient access to vital public documents. It operates Lackawanna County’s only online source of campaign finance reports for local political campaigns.

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