Candidate for
State Representative; District 72; Democratic Party

No School Tax for Seniors: I believe that all seniors at age 62 should receive a 50% reduction in property school tax. At age 65 they should receive a full 100% reduction. This program would come with strict guidelines to be eligible to qualify for this tax relief. This would only be eligible on your primary residence and you would have to own the home for ten years prior to age 62. You must also be current and in good standing with all property taxes during that ten years. You also couldn't have filed bankruptcy during that same ten year period or anytime after for you to qualify for the tax relief. This would be a great economic boost to our senior community and to our business economics.

Economic Development: Pennsylvania needs to be a more business friendly state. Our area and state continues to lose population and jobs to our neighboring states. We need programs and funding that help businesses expand and develop their products and services. Pennsylvania ranks 37th in the country in business friendly growth, and 44th in economic growth. We should set goals to always be in the top 10 for all business and economic development. As my wife and I own multiple small businesses, I have a high degree of interest in Pennsylvania's environment for small business and entrepreneurship. Small businesses are the backbone of Pennsylvania's economy as there are close to a million small businesses statewide that provide a great number of jobs for state residents. In 2007, Forbes Magazine awarded Pennsylvania an overall rank of 39th Best State for Business, which included rankings of 38th in Business Cost and 46th in Growth Prospect. Those rankings reflect evaluations of labor, energy, and taxes, along with projections for growth in the number of jobs, income, and gross state product. Quite frankly, those rankings are not good enough for a state that Forbes also ranked 7th in Quality of Life--a measurement of schools, health, crime, cost of living, and poverty rate. It is obvious that Pennsylvania is a great place to live, but we must do more to make Pennsylvania a great place to do business. We need to continue growing Pennsylvania's population and we cannot do that without growing businesses. One of my focuses as a State Representative will be to meet with small business owners and find exactly what they need to improve Pennsylvania's business environment.

Minimum Wage: Minimum wage needs to be seriously looked at. We can't continue to let this be ignored like we have in the past. In the past, we went ten plus years with only 1 small increase, then turned around and enforced a $2.00 per hour minimum wage increase and expected businesses and the general public to absorb and fund such a raise. Minimum wage should have been raised in smaller increments every fifteen to eighteen months over that ten year period. What is really sad about how this was handled in the past is that we forgot the major impact that this mistake will have on our senior citizens on fixed incomes. As employers increased their products and services to handle such a large increase in wage cost in a short period of time, we forgot what this does to our seniors on fixed incomes. A slow moderate increase from $5.15 to $7.15 over a 10 year period helps the senior population absorb the increases easier, rather than what we have to deal with now.