Crocamo: Luzerne County IT, not consultant, will run virtual meetings

Luzerne County Acting Manager Romilda Crocamo said the virtual attendance option for county government meetings will now be handled in-house by the information technology department instead of an outside vendor.

A representative of the outside vendor — New Jersey-based Paradigm Technology Consulting — informed the county Wednesday it cannot continue to provide virtual meeting support services without a valid contract ensuring it will be paid, according to a communication Crocamo provided to council.

County Councilman Walter Griffith recently discovered IT was using a consultant after he reviewed a staff listing and determined the person handling the virtual meetings was not an employee. He questioned the IT department’s ability to incur the expense without a contract approved by the county manager and notification to council that a non-employee had potential involvement in closed-door executive sessions.

In Wednesday’s email, Paradigm said it has provided support to the county on several projects since 2016, including virus remediation and help desk support.

The company has provided virtual meeting support since September in good faith that it would be paid because the county IT department was experiencing staffing changes and shortages, it said.

Crocamo said she is compiling a tally on the dollar amount of the work performed by Paradigm that was requested by IT without her authorization. She also has asked the controller’s office to perform an audit of the information technology department’s contracts, expenses and hardware/software inventory and a survey of all proposed IT projects.

In a dramatic presentation Tuesday, county Information Technology Director Mauro DiMauro told council that $3.1 million is needed for essential technology work.

He requested the earmark from the county’s $113 million American Rescue Plan funds, although a council majority has delayed approving expenditures from that pot until the federal government issues final rules on how the money must be spent.

DiMauro’s funding request included $465,000 for virtual meeting support. He said he has used up all available funds for an outside contractor to run the combination in-person/remote meetings since his staff IT analyst resigned in September.

If funding is not quickly identified for virtual meeting support, DiMauro said the county will have to return solely to in-person meetings or accept that his existing staff will have to forego other pressing duties to handle the task.