HARRISBURG -- The mayor of Scranton headed to Harrisburg Friday to meet with Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf.
He believes new leadership in the state capitol could help the city's financial future.
Scranton Mayor Bill Courtright says he asked for this meeting when Governor Wolf was campaigning in Scranton last year.
Wolf, Courtright, Senator Bob Casey, and some Scranton city officials met in a closed-door meeting for almost an hour.
Their conversation mostly covered Scranton's financial problems.
Governor Tom Wolf has been in office less than a month. Scranton Mayor Bill Courtright considered it a quick response to a request to meet with him about Scranton's troubling finances.
"The problem that Scranton faces, the problem that cities around Pennsylvania face, are very pressing. I don't know if three months, four months, ten months, one month, this is not something that we can kick down the road much longer," Governor Wolf said.
The trio wouldn't discuss specifics but said they spent time talking about Scranton's distressed city status with the state.
Mayor Courtright says he feels more confident in his ability to work with the state with Governor Wolf now in office. He says the closer his relationship with the capitol, the better for Scranton.
"The governor gave us much more time than I thought he would and he was very interested in what we had to say. And I could tell by the look on his face that he's sincere and he really wants to help us. I think he has some ideas, we had some ideas that we presented to him. So, we're going to try to work together and try to, as the governor said, it's not just Scranton, there are other cities facing the same problems as we have," Courtright said.
"We need to work together, federal government, state government, municipal government, county government; we've got to work together. There's not a one government solution to some difficult challenges and we certainly want to help at the federal level as well," said Senator Bob Casey / (D) Pennsylvania.
While we were waiting for the meeting to wrap up, we spoke with state Auditor General Eugene DePasquale. His office recently did an audit that revealed that Scranton has one of the worst funded pensions in the state. He said that if Scranton's mayor doesn't get help with the pension fund soon, the city could go bankrupt.