Nov. 18—After the state this week filed a nearly $9,400 lien against Scranton for unpaid unemployment compensation funds and interest, the city discovered it owed another $20,800, a city official said Thursday.

The city on Wednesday paid the $30,200 total to satisfy the lien and stave off another one, city Business Administrator Larry West said.

The state Department of Labor and Industry on Monday filed in Lackawanna County Court a $9,381.05 lien against the city for reimbursements that were due in four billings periods in 2021 and 2022.

On Wednesday, Mayor Paige Gebhardt Cognetti said the city was not yet aware of the lien and would look into it.

On Thursday, West cited an oversight as the cause of the lien. Officials did not realize that a fund balance in unemployment compensation money that the city was operating on had run out, West said.

In reviewing how the unemployment compensation fund led to a lien, the city discovered it owed another $20,818.95 to the unemployment compensation fund from this year, and which would have resulted in another lien if it remained unpaid, West said.

Liens stemming from unemployment compensation funds are not unheard of. The state filed liens against Lackawanna County and the Scranton Sewer Authority a few years ago. At those times, the county and SSA each satisfied the liens.

In 2018, the SSA paid $36,097 to remedy a lien on late unemployment compensation payments and interest from 2017-18. The authority was supposed to have continued contributing unemployment compensation payments for an applicable "look back" period of about 18 months after the sale of the sewer system to Pennsylvania American Water closed at the end of 2016.

Also in late 2018, the county attributed a roughly $3,800 lien to a software glitch in the county's payroll system and several late unemployment compensation payments, some in 2017 and others in 2018, that generated interest.

Then in May 2019, the county received a $20,305.81 lien for unpaid contributions and reimbursements that should have been made in January 2019 but were accidentally missed.

emailto:Contact the writer: jlockwood@timesshamrock.com; 570-348-9100 x5185; @jlockwoodTT on Twitter.