state government for a period of time now almost thirteen or fourteen years and we'll just jump to that if you will senator very welcome to have you back or have you on the program you're the only person that we've talked to this year overseas my background briefly i was born into want thailand my father was in the air force during the vietnam war went up going deciding i want to choose a military as a career went to west point but a wonderful lady there from maine kathy involved the youngest guy running at the time and the big surprise i end up winning and i've been serving since ninety seven and i've really enjoyed it i still continue to serve in the military both in the reserve and now as a member of the national guard headquarters which is in fourteen in town gap and pennsylvania has i could say the finest national guard boy in the little bias but we we have nineteen thousand men and women who serve in the air in the army national guard in pennsylvania and so at the headquarters and i work with other engineers in turn for facilities that we have we're doing a lot of military construction all across pennsylvania upgrading our existing facilities and actually putting a new training facility so it's  the men and women who serve in the military we try to make sure that they have the best resources available to them and it's funny you bring that up because i also was a member of the national guard with the i was in the active guard reserve with one seventy first since purpose was the one twel h couple of things that i found out during desert storm after desert storm of course the parades and things that came out i think the local population was very surprised on the number of military we have in the area that's true and i remember whenever they gave the military the martin luther king day off people started to complain because they figured that it cost one thousand and a half million dollars just on military expenditure for that one day that's how many military that we had so i mean it's interestingly said of course i'm i agree with you on the fact that i believe that the national guard not only is a full member of the military at this time but in fact carries a very large portion of the load and our iraq and afghanistan especially and of course you know we'll find we'll talk about immigration later and the governors of different states are looking to use the national guard along the borders so these are these are all areas where the national guard are being called upon so i'm i applaud your involvement in that still and i mentioned earlier we talked earlier that you've been with the military for approximately eighteen years ten years  nuclear biological warfare in ninety five so it's really strange that i've almost been out as many years as i spent in the military but let's let's look over some of the things the bills that have been signed into law that you criminals who fall under the reporting requirements when they've once they've convicted a big convict of a crime rate really to megan's law use of a minor a sexual predator those type of crimes they're supposed to register where they live in their workplace pennsylvania was one of the states that wasn't doing a very good job some states you could actually type in your home address and you know how many people who have committed these crimes live in your neighborhood pennsylvania all we had at that time was just our zip code and that was even accurate there was no type of unfortunate so it it came out during hearings and law and justice and some other committees that we need to do a better job so we changed our mag and saw that a base in pennsylvania so that there are greater fines and penalties for individuals who don't register made it easier for family members or individuals in the community to know if you have those type of convicted felons in your neighborhood and it's part of our right to know we believe it one it allows a community to have a sense of the individuals there and by our laws they have to report where there were living where they're working as a result of the crimes they committed now some of the restrictions for people that have committed crimes under the megan's law they can only live within x number yards or feet whatever it is for schools and things like that there are some there are some restrictions based on  mostly schools i think is the one that comes to mind that some would like to change it to bus stops as well and some other things but there are definitely definitely restrictions and that's why the reporting process is important as well one of the most challenging issues we have to deal with in pennsylvania is our high property tax we have a hole we're commonwealth which means we're an older state we are tax bases bases for the locals is based on property tax and as everyone knows it there is no fair way to run minister property tax if you're a person whose lives are a long time due to no fault of your own the property values have gone up you can't afford to have your house the people who just move in their pain three times with their neighbors paying a price to actually have the same home so it's not fair on either side what we said was what some it's in a quagmire basically as you pointed out allegheny county has been fighting this reassessment all the time washington county is the courts are looking at them to do a reassessment i don't know that the county commissioners are really jumping on board with that because of the fact that you know once again a community like peter's timeship right now it pays the lion's portion of real estate property taxes in washington county and if he gets reassessed then in fact it will probably up paying more of that portion where areas in the mon valley in that that have decreased in value will bear lesser of the burden you know so that that's a problem that we have here we also have the you know washing counties just raise their project just raise their taxes the issues for the federal government on the health care well discussed a little bit later on you know it's the homeowner or the person who's paying taxes seeing that it's actually almost the minority who are paying taxes in this country now versus that of the majority that are receiving the benefits so this is going to be a bigger burden as time goes on and we'll discuss a little bit later on the program the potential  number of demonstrators near military funerals yes that was a that's actually difficult bill to get past the ball publicly popular there were a lot of constitutional scholars and lawyers who are saying we don't have the right to limit protest and what we do is we don't limit protests people still have the right to protest but i as an individual as a family member of in the in this case a military person who was killed in the line of duty harassment so what we've done is we've limited how close you can be if you want to protest that's fine but for grieving during the time of a funeral for a couple hours before and a couple hours after there is a zone  which you cannot participate because the trauma the particular psychological trauma some of the physical confrontations that happened in the past why should i as a private citizen have to be put through that it's one thing as a public individual expect that but as a private that someone burying the father or son or daughter they have a right to privacy or at least some ability to conduct their affairs without the outside influence of individuals who have no right to be there and so that in this isn't uncommon you see you see it during a presidential visit during the g twenty they had a protester syria they didn't allow protesters to go into the main area they had their right to protest but they also couldn't disrupt the security safety and some of the other issues so we were able to get it passed it's still being challenged but i i think in the end the restrictions that we put on there were fair and will meet a constitutional muster there is an excellent movie and having been in the military i participated in a couple funerals along the way and there's an excellent movie out called take a chance and i would if you ever want to see one that actually demonstrates the care that is used from the military aspect and the respect that these people these are this is an excellent movie to demonstrate that i actually when i was a lieutenant have fort hood we got charged for a funeral deal for months and it's the ceremony the care that's taken into it i i think those families those private families and that's the key here as private citizens have a right to have to conduct that ceremony and in a manner that helps them it's one of forty five hundred world war two veterans dying per day there's an interesting story of how we got that cemetery i was involved with that well really back in the early ninety's that was committed that we would have a national cemetery because of the number of veterans over five hundred thousand vets eligible deference to be buried and national cemeteries live in and around a i forgot i think is a hundred mile radius of pittsburgh and we don't have one we didn't have a national cemetery the closest one is for the need to get so our federal legislators put in a bill that the v a would look for sites in the ninety's we were having problems financially so they pretty much no one was doing it so the legislature and this is represent walker and democrat myself and a couple others put together a task force in the state paid for and we actually went out with v a reps and we paid to investigate sites in southwestern p a washing county  eventually where it was we went up to butler we were we went across into allegheny westmoreland county and then we basically did the report in the in the federal side built it but we this net this cemetery the alleghenies is is not just for western p a but also for ohio west virginia and cetera so we that's probably one of the things we're most proud of is that we were able to get our cemetery working contract with our federal guys and so it's really if anyone hasn't been there yet it's a moving experience and it's a new one they just opened up the second one in the eastern part of the state so now we have two new ones and veterans and pennsylvania in this region will be have to be way too rested with location for myself as time goes on how that's even more of it that is that we wanted your family shouldn't have to go to forty and gap and drive for hours and that's what we were successful in getting it is that the argument was we have such a strong military then there is a economic development side of it too it highlights western pennsylvania in particular the people from ohio west virginia maryland the places for anyone who's interested the the cemetery actually is just follow valley road all the way through hill station just keep going straight where the road bends going down to morganza road and cross over and go straight up and it's on the right hand side once you cross over the interstate it is as the senator said very moving and very respectful to the the lives in the history of the military that are given their lives or given a portion of it at least for the service the one reason it was chosen is not only that it was a that each on each individual representative cost about one point five million to in fact run per year so reducing that cost of course is very important i know that there's you have five offices in the area one being in place and memory and i know it's important to have those offices in those offices staffed so it does cost money it's not you know nothing's for free no one's doing this is a voluntary thing but reducing the number that we have to the number that would be more reasonable or something how is that going good now we actually have four with two of them only full time like for example the building we pay for our own phone our rent it's about one hundred dollars so we try and slick lisa same way it's a part time office that we actually share that area with a state representative who believes in reducing legislature so we closed his weekly office  moved into a small office he moved in he hasn't really used my office and then we merged two offices so it's a lot of my business quite looks like we have a lot more but the idea was we were trying to find ways to cut our costs i've year member per member in the cross country the average full time representative has about ninety seven thousand so you can see right there in the senate we average about two hundred fifty thousand the average in the across the country excluding california is two hundred seventy so we i believe we should reduce our legislature to least be consistent with the average if not even more and so my bill would have reduced it by twenty percent and it would mandate and this is a key in the report just came out it would mandate a staff reduction or eight were duction in the funding of the legislature by twenty percent so it doesn't do us any good to reduce the number of legislators and then allow them to increase of staff even more so the overall cost doesn't change that we want to reduce the size the complexity and the cost is interesting you say that because whenever representative maher was here he has never used his entire allotment as he said the sad part about that though is that doesn't go back to the taxpayer that goes back into the fund and somebody else can pick those dollars up and use them so i really even know he's watching is pennies and watching our pennies that in fact that that doesn't necessarily mean that the state legislature as a whole are watching the pennies well so that's a that's very important you talk about your education and your background to say we talked about very lucky having only one brother i was nervous when i had a daughter and how i would deal with teenage girl years but she's been wonderful and as you mentioned she's done a little acting and has been on a t v show called army the last three years and plays the daughter of a general on the show and kim delaney i don't know if you remember her selfie played her mother in the show and so she's enjoyed that has been because of acting has had to take a lot of her section or session of course the one here the first one senate bill eighty seven as permitting active military people to in fact get intuition rights for the state i  think course not just being military but seeing that we live in a in a society that some people are trying to give in state tuition to illegals that are yeah that's a that's not and i said i think that  a person who in fact offers themselves in service of their country in fact deserve recognition and education this is a bill that was actually requested but my friends when i was visiting cal you just south of here california received pennsylvania and what they wanted to do was be have to offer online courses at the same level the chart at the same price that they charge state residents to military and workload but they do have in an online environment they do have that capability i'm actually working on a master's myself and online and what they do are laws prohibited that for some reason is just i think it they just weren't up to date so it does it would actually bring more revenue in to the system because these are people who don't necessarily would have been eligible before we bench and the large military presence we have i just spoke friday night at their graduating class and we have a significant presence so it's an economic development opportunity for the schools for the men and women who serve it's a great opportunity for them to get an excellent degree from schools and all of pennsylvania but west western pennsylvania particular i think increases a profile of western pennsylvania for the young because if they they learn about scale you neighbor actually who joined the guard while whenever he was a senior here and he went almost a year later he ended up going to basic and then in fact he was just given enough occasion that he could expect the going overseas and that's kind of a program will permit him to continue his education he's up to slippery rock right now but he will in fact be able to continue his education without having been in the military i know that whenever i was shifted from one place to another i was in programs and i was on had to withdraw all right as they didn't have online education at the time so that that cost me a lot of money but it also then prohibited my education going forward  time because of the fact that i get involved in something and then we'd have an earthquake or a plane crash or something that i would have to leave and then schools don't like it whenever you're gone in the middle of the semester for four or five weeks or six months and if they're not exactly so that's that's actually going to be the other thing i would mention on that it's not part of the bill but for those who are in our prince of a national guard we have one of the best if not the best program for educational reimbursement in the country we supplement what you get federally spencer state dollars so pennsylvania guardsmen in this case your friend probably is taking advantage of that we cover the cost to go slippery rock that's accident or ip or co you or whatever or proportion of what it would cost to go to penn state that's excellent address and but i you know as as can be seen here on this for it basically just says illegal immigration health care property taxes and publicly funded pensions and so we'll move right into the immigration portion and  said this this is something that on each one of my visitors that i've had this is been an issue because we're paying for it we're paying for illegal immigration and the sad part is that all the studies that are done are woefully behind right for example you see here the organization federation for american immigration reform and there their acronym is fair estimated and this was done i believe thousand and seven we had that figure bumped up to one hundred forty thousand recent estimates that i've seen are close to almost two hundred thousand mark so in just a couple years that figure is jumping enormously the amount that has been  the the se a p program which is the state criminal alien assistance program in ninety nine the state received over five million dollars but in two thousand and four as only about one point seven million so that that amount that the federal government has was giving to help offset these costs has gone down drastically the cost to pennsylvania the last time i saw was about eight hundred million per year to cover education incarceration and medical care for illegals through now my point is i guess what are we doing about it in the state where we couple pics we're having trouble right now  can with even more when we do identify a legal immigrants getting them out of pennsylvania even with the federal agencies who's in charge the as you mentioned the crime what we're saying is we need to start requiring proof by proof of identity you mention the cost of pennsylvania with the health care education some of the others prove your pencil or prove you're a u s citizen are eligible for program before you sign up so we have bills and a sponsor in senate bill nye which would create a proof of citizenship for see the public benefits it's a very very simple program for those who are not  then find a way to send them back to the communities or if that's unable to do and cost prohibitive then for the people who haven't committed crimes the way to integrate in paying back taxes payin paying their fair share and incorporate them into society so it's a three step approach first identify and dealing with those who are criminals and need to be shipped back and then for that it's not practical to ship everyone workers almost everyone in our country is not everyone but us significant portion of our families came from somewhere else legally most of whom so that we have a process list last month that process up to bring the legals and and i think