After only 13 months on the job, Lackawanna County Commissioner Matt McGloin announced Friday he will resign Monday.
Unavailable for questions since rumors he would leave began Sunday, McGloin, 35, of Waverly, announced his resignation in a county-issued statement. The statement did not say where McGloin will coach, but numerous sources said he is leaving for a football-related job at Boston College, whose head coach, Bill O’Brien, was McGloin’s last head coach when he played quarterback at Penn State University.
The resignation is effective Monday, according to his letter to county chief of staff Brian Jeffers.
“This was not an easy decision to make,” he said in the letter. “But I have to do what’s best for my family and explores other options outside of county government. Lackawanna County always will be my home, and I will bring a part of home with me wherever this journey may take me.”
The county Democratic Party will have five days after that to develop a list of three potential replacements. The party will submit the list to the judges of the county court of common pleas, according to the county home rule charter.
The judges, sitting as a group, must pick one from the list, according to the charter.
The charter also says “a special election according to the Laws of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania shall be held at the next primary municipal or general election to permanently fill the vacancy.” A municipal primary is scheduled for May 20, but a county official said no special election for commissioner will take place then.
County solicitor Don Frederickson said the state code governing counties requires a commissioner replacement serve until a term ends. McGloin’s term expires Jan. 3, 2028. The next commissioner election is Nov. 2, 2027.
The resignation will interrupt – at least temporarily – a budding career in politics fueled at least partly by McGloin’s sports past.
At Penn State, McGloin, a star quarterback at West Scranton High School, walked on without a scholarship and developed into one of the school’s all-time leading passers.
After two years playing for legendary coach Joe Paterno, McGloin played his senior season, 2012, under O’Brien and flourished even further under O’Brien’s tutelage.
No NFL team drafted McGloin the following spring, but he signed a rookie free-agent contract with the Oakland Raiders. He played four seasons for the Raiders. In 2017 and 2018, he had brief tenures with the Kansas City Chiefs, Philadelphia Eagles and Houston Texans. McGloin joined the Texans in November 2018 when O’Brien was head coach there, but was cut four days later. In 2019, he played briefly for the New York Guardians in the XFL and scored the team’s first touchdown. The league disbanded in April 2020, effectively ending McGloin’s professional football career.
McGloin, who earned several million dollars as a professional football player, worked as a sportscaster before deciding to run for commissioner in 2023. McGloin and Gaughan won election as commissioners that November.
Last year, he won election to Penn State’s board of trustees and as a Democratic national convention delegate for Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign.
Many speculated McGloin might run for Congress or a state office someday, but the resignation will likely end such talk for now.
As a commissioner, McGloin and Gaughan inherited a whopping budget deficit, a dysfunctional Office of Youth and Family Services that lost its full license to operate and a planned Department of Health stuck in limbo.
To fix the budget deficit, the commissioners shut down the Department of Health as too costly, hired a financial consultant to develop a long-term plan, instituted hiring and spending freezes, instituted more efficient technology to track spending and adopted a widely criticized 33% property tax hike.
They hired another consultant to study the Office of Youth and Family Services who helped the office upgrade staffing and eventually regain its full license.
“When we took office in January 2024, we inherited one of the worst financial crises our county ever has seen,” McGloin said in the statement. I take great pride in having turned it around in less than one year.”
McGloin said he and Gaughan also “fought crime by helping to develop a community violence intervention and prevention strategy, and have supported local businesses.”
“I am particularly proud of the work we did to have our Office of Youth and Familty Services’ operating license resstored by the state Department of Human Services in December, after the office nearly collapsed under the previous administration,” McGloin wrote.
McGloin thanked Gaughan “for being a great majority partner during my time.”
“And I urge the Lackawanna County Democratic Party Executive Committee to honor Bill’s choice as my replacement,” McGloin said.
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