thanks for coming back again this is bill maher all your host and more talking politics in western pennsylvania our guest today is representative mark must be a currently representing the forty fourth district mark once again very very nice to have you on the show today thank you for inviting me you have been known in the pennsylvania house for a number of years but known in the coreopsis area more than this area for sure you're running in a seat that is currently held by a friend john pippy who's decided not to run again and he has represented this district very well as well as as anybody can possibly expect you know i said johnson on the program and he's an interesting person and it seems to be a secret what he's planning to do now but that's ok you know he's certainly allowed to do that let's talk about you a little bit let's discuss a little bit on your bio you want to grow city ok you've been in the represent as a representative from many years when i was elected in a special election to replace senator pippy when he became a senator my district is the communities in allegheny county surrounding the airport and also those communities including slickly those surrounding slickly on the other side of the ohio river so i've been in the forty fourth legislative district since june of two thousand and three killing john c at that point ok and senator pippy and i actually are housemates in harrisburg when we're in session so john and i have become very very good friends and clearly he's going to be missed not only for the work that he did in the legislature but also the work that he's done in the armed services serving our country force so that's why i'm very pleased to have that up there and i'm honored to have isn't orson yes yes you have his endorsement we also have another friend john mars indorsement representative john maher and i are seatmates on the house floor actually i had approached john m about running for the senate seat and that many people know that when senator pippy had sort of made it known that he was not announced at that point but that he was not going to run for reelection and i knew that john mark had shown an interest in a seat when congressman murphy had moved on to that from that seat years ago so we approached approached senator pippy with john moore to confirm that senator but he was not running and said that i would support john moore and he so let's see how this auditor general  qualified person in that position he always a good man well john has been on the program a number of times and so that i consider him a personal friend and i certainly support his his actions it's always interesting to see how politics plays i don't believe i don't think and i may be wrong i don't know that we've ever had a person in from the this side of the aisle the republican side in that position or if it has been it's been a very long time i think the last of may have been may have been barber safer but then she ended up switching parties anyway so i don't doubt that but the three of us worked really hard together and worked very well together trying to service southwestern pennsylvania and him trying to develop the an environment for job creation and you know of really focusing our efforts in that area and we're starting to see the fruits of those efforts well when i  website as i always do in the appropriations committee you supported senate bill two hundred one k which in fact is known as the safety in the new sports act which is something that's very important to peter sonship dealing with concussions things this is been an issue around here for the past few months and it will continue to be an issue we found that the one thing that i guess is interesting is the p i a supports that for all sports covered under them but the one sport i consider a sport that in fact is not covered as cheerleading and i hope that that bill will will fill that blank because i found out whenever we are in that process the cheerleaders have more concussions on average than most other sports which i never realized but it's coming out of realization that yeah it's something while they don't have the protection and they don't have a soft field or turf to land on or something like that and so it's very important that we have a bill in the state that in fact covers all students not just you know certain sports fields but that's i noticed that you supported that program and i'm very glad to see that some of the other things well like i said you have two children i do and what's really great is the reason i ran for office originally i was a supervisor and township just trying to help the community  improve but when john pippy moved on to the senate that john had asked me to run for the house seat and one of the main reasons i ran was i was going to meetings and hearing elected officials say you know we want to keep our youth here once they graduate from school and i said i can help do that and my primary focus has been in economic development not only was i a supervisor in them but i have a small business in the new area but also was chairman of the chamber of commerce and one of the areas that we really focused on was economic development around the airport if you recall back in two thousand and three a couple years after nine eleven u s air was going through another one of their bankruptcies and you know we were seeing a significant loss of employment in the airport area airport get infrastructure in place taxpayer subsidized or loan money for infrastructure water sewer and rose to entice then the private sector to come and invest and we've seen a significant amount of  office as warehouse come into play and then we were able to get the missing ramps the seventy nine connecting with the parkway and the family connector which goes from the airport to twenty two thirty which the next rung that we rule in i get is from twenty to thirty to seventy nine which i think would you see a significant impact not only ease of transportation from the south hills but also a lot of economic development in this area that helps keep our young people here you know as i'm knocking on doors particularly and in peter township you know i see a lot of the the flags for the colleges out or bumper stickers on cars you know such and such university mom that means there's kids that are going to school in this area and we want to try and keep them there that's important and i'm fortunate enough that my kids did stay you know when my son is an architect that it has to reno my daughter has a photography business but also works for the only employee at a at a nonprofit in pittsburgh that houses writers and artist quality of family life that we have here we have a nucleus of the family which is basically intact unlike most school districts and things we have a very high percentage of students going on to  college which is probably i mean in the mid ninety's percentage of the high school students i graduated from peter's way back when before the earth's crust cooled and had the opportunity to go different route i went to the military which then supported my education after that which was beneficial for me my father never made we had four kids and you never know actually had the income back then when the salaries were averaging five and six thousand dollars a year you never had enough money to in fact send all of us and i was the baby so guess what i was a lot of one liners but anyhow the the the district itself is gone through really an opportunity to shine in so many areas there i said pleasant valley school here just received the blue ribbon high school dance team we have a hip hop dance team which came in third nationally i was watching e s p n the other day it's so interesting to see mary p uniqueness which i found is something that brought me back and it's it's interesting i'm glad that you're going to be sticking in the area now the area that you will represent if in fact you're you get the seat will be peter and well there's a whole larger area because as a representative was it eighty thousand people you know we have roughly seventy thousand now my district grew really should have about sixty three thousand but over the last ten years my legislative district because of the initiatives getting the infrastructure in place actually grew by fifteen percent but the typical average house member seat has about sixty three thousand people and a senate district has about four times that two hundred forty thousand and certainly peters township is a beautiful community as i've spent the last couple weeks knocking on doors by the time the election is here i will not that every super voter republican door in peter's township but in addition to that last weekend i met with they've all who's the commissioner supervisor commissioner and in peter's township asked him to please give me a tour of peter's it's one thing to knock on doors and get a sense of the community and and talk to people and and hear the issues that are important to them but it's another to speak with an elected official get a tour of the community so that you have a sense for ok here's our history here's some of the challenges that we've had over the years here some of the  challenges with the d p in harrisburg so it's good that i was able to be brought up to speed so that on that particular issue so that when i do get elected we're able to continue to hit the ground running you know it's certainly different the thing that differentiates me from a couple the other candidates is not only can i win elections but the knowledge and history on the issues that i've been working on not only with pippin more over the years but even locally as a supervisor bringing bringing to four the importance of local control for example well this lady said to have a politician actually involved in politics is really interesting most of the time teaching school somewhere or doing something as an almost a sideline as the as the political world most of the politicians that i've had the opportunity to meet in and out of will exclude john mara and yourself do have a sort of another line you do you know so it's been it's been a real benefit to have that experience my background is business insurance so it's gives me the opportunity to interact over the years with a lot of different types of business owners and hear what's helped them grow but  also some of the struggles and challenges that they have whether it's with government regulation the need for workers comp reform on employment compensation all those types of things that impact their ability to grow and hire more people so i look at my function as being responsible to create an environment to help more people work so if more people were paying a smaller tax rate ultimately the government collects more money and there's more money then for school districts there's more money f there's more money to protect the environment improve our roads and bridges so that that's really the goal that that and my philosophy that i try to work on well you brought up a lot of issues that are in fact in front of the public at this point  i'll discuss some of those issues right now if you don't mind one of them is going to be the ballooning of the retirement system for the public employees this fixed retirement  know i realize that teachers at one time received limited pay when i was talking earlier about the teachers or the salaries being around five or six thousand to bring people qualified people competent people into the field one of the things the school district had to do was to figure out a way to in fact entice them because it was not you know dealing with one hundred fifty kids every day whenever you have to probably go home and deal with your own is not something that everybody sat for and that's a unique individual so the bottom line is the state kicked that bucket down the road during this last legislative period maybe two years ago on the rendell  and but it's going to leave a horrendous burden upon the community and i said the school district which i happen to be a member of the school board here in peters has to face a growing distribution per instructor of less than five percent last year their retirement to up to a little bit under thirty percent here in a couple years i was just looking at at say the top hundred teachers that we have here that figure goes from about a half a million a year to about two point seven just for those hundred teachers that's going to i mean peter sidesteps unlike charters valley for example if you raise one millet hacks it goes to about twelve one point two million computers timeship of you raise one no attacks i don't give you about three hundred thousand so there's a great discrepancy whenever somebody says that some of these tax rate is low or high or whatever what does that tax bring in the local community what can be done at the state level on me and we it's impossible to keep this kind of thing up because you know it's estimated to go from what i what i remember reading like nineteen thirty and then the figure the is going to be lowered right well i think we really need to do is look at some of the history you touched on some of it you know years ago those that worked and that were paid by the tax dollar when i was in municipal employer a public school teacher or a government  worker the salaries were low but the benefits were usually very good and then you had a very high pension multiplier for what the pension may not have been a high dollar amount but it was a hot it was very good compared to the private sector for sure but salaries are low health insurance benefits in the in the public sector are usually very good but then the re came the kind of the thought that well for us to get good people we need to have private sector sec type salaries right then that salaries started to be implemented in private sector but the benefits didn't change to private sector benefits they didn't change to for a one k benefits they kept the same benefits so you had these higher salaries and the stock market was doing really well for a while so what the error that was made i think at the state and the local level was that when there was iraq contributions made now the law's been changed we've changed the law where there has to be a minimum contribution amount every year had that been done previously prior to senator pippy mar and i being elected years ago we wouldn't be in this mess that we're in right now so instead of having a fixed contribution the state said to the schools we're going to contribute zero because the funds the balances are very high you don't need to do that either so what happened and that money wasn't set aside by the state or the local schools to prepare for days like today it was spent on maybe higher salaries so that kind of compound then the problem as we move forward to next then the stock market tanked right significant investment loss and then there was not the under the randell years he continued to send more money in this is where the the kind of the spin is you know there's those that say there were was work cuts in education certainly we lost the federal funding but under rendell we did not did not fund the pension programs but sent the money for basic get right so there was there were no that's not the contributions coming in through the retirement system you've seen that change under governor rendell there's three hundred million dollars that's being spent additionally on pensions this year so we're starting to address that we we cut pension benefits for new hires by twenty percent with that reform that you talked about earlier some people looked at it as cutting the cake kicking the can down the road but quite honestly that's the best that we could get done at that point the actuaries say if you actually implement some other changes it has more drastic effect so i'm not an actuary so you kind of take the data in and you make your decisions based on the numbers that are in front of you but clearly the market the market needs to return and that's why we need to get this economy going not just in the state level but at the federal level so we need more people working paying a smaller tax rate so that we have more money coming in to help solve this problem that you're talking about so it all gets back to people working at good paying jobs a lot of these other problems that we see out there go away when that takes place but that that issue is going to continue to be addressed and there are other bills looking to do just that in harrisburg we're sensitive to it because as you know we have to match the number at this rate that you do right at the local levels the whatever the postal service years ago was starting to have problems they started into a tier system for employment so the people that were already entrenched and their system in fact kept the old system going but people who were coming in then had a lesser portion of a fixed system and then i believe this time went on then they went to a more for a one system you know i'm looking at it from the standpoint of is it right to have judges make a ruling on this whenever they're benefiting from the system personally i don't think that is correct and i think that's certainly part of the problem and their pension system is the richest of all as you know  they make the rules and they sometimes change the laws based on their decisions so that that is something that's certainly a troubling but the tears system that you talked about is certainly something that can be implemented the struggles that we have as there have been some supreme court rulings that say you can't change benefits for existing employees because that's sort of a contractual relationship so we really do have to look at new hires existing employees contributing more which is what's happening under the current based on the last three days the supreme court has been discussing what is commonly referred to as obamacare if you read the little quirks that are coming out the oh you'll hear that it looks like it's had a death nail ok now when no one knows exactly what because they are supposed to decide by june or july or something on this how does that affect the money's being spent in pennsylvania for medicaid we know it's interesting i listen to i guess i don't have a very exciting life but last night from about eleven to one i listened to the debate for the presentation to the supreme court on c span and i found it quite interesting and certainly the argument is being made and i think we've seen history of this at the state level you know you've seen programs that are started at the state level there's funding provided but then years later the funding disappears and then the locals then have to make the decision are we going to continue with this program or not and that's the fear at the federal level is that the states are going to be so burdened with these medicare and medicaid costs that they're not going to be able to hold up under them that the federal government says we're going to fund these in the short term but then ultimately the state's going to be responsible so then you're going to be looking at again programs for individuals that aren't funded appropriately and then are going to be looking at significant tax increases at the local level and that's something that i think that's the the primary argument against the program bamma care is the basically the coercive nature of the implementation of the program well as you my life must be very boring because i was listening to the program all three days and one of the judge justices brought up the idea if that federal government can require you and demand you to buy insurance then they can also demand you to buy broccoli right ok because it's good for you and george bush wouldn't like that oh yeah that's true and one of the other things that is an issue for the school district all right because and i'm very partial to this right now in the past the state had funded and this is years ago and i correlate this to whenever of i went to school the united states was number one in almost every area of education science math everything now we're looking right number thirty thirty to thirty five depending upon the field but the state had funded education in pennsylvania at a seventy percent rate back then ok now that rate is thirty percent or lower and the rest of it is depending upon the homeowners to pick up that tax how is the state and washington county has been under a court order to reassess for years there's areas you know you were on my street a couple weeks ago there's areas in that area that are spending eight to ten thousand dollars per home and want to write used to sell real estate and the other side of the timeship homes just as big are paying maybe oh eight hundred to two thousand dollars in taxes so the inequities in the properties just in our own township is ridiculous so if you raise my taxes it's going to be a substantial  though that's one or two or three mills i'm going to be spent and spending a substantial chunk of money as a comparison to the other people who are reaping the same benefits all right what is the state going to do to pull this back in the line they're required if i recall correctly to fund one hundred percent of state education because that's and i'm in the funding is supposed to be coming from the state and the overall management of the local school system is local which is unusual because the california of the state system is one whole big state school district you know and some some areas in west virginia it's a county program the school district is run by the county what is the what is the state going to do to change or adjust or fix this underfunding but i don't think there's a requirement at the state level to fund one hundred percent what there is in the constitution is to provide for a system a public education system and certainly there's a huge debate over where those tax dollars go now and we start talking about vouchers but i'm all for local control and i think that if we get back to more local control as opposed to centralized government control i think we see our test scores improve as well because certainly years ago when we were in school those were the th the area that you were taught citing well right when us was number one and we didn't have the system set up the way we have set up today but also local control means that you have local control over salaries over benefits and you're  those aren't being negotiated at the state level now if there is once to be a change where you're saying we want everything to be controlled at the state level the funding then i think we're looking at a system where you're having one contract basically for  your your state education system i think what has happened to help put some of the controls and a border around some of these increases as as the referendum in allegheny county and not in washington but i was elected as a house member in allegheny county it was my legislation that forced the windfall after a property rand sets reassessment so in allegheny county if there's a reassessment every taxing body has to roll back their milage rates to whatever that average increase zero chance of a taxing entity getting additional revenues so then there has to be a separate vote taken to increase taxes at that point and then it's capped at five percent but from the state level what we need to do is increase the economy increase the number of jobs and once we increase that once we increase revenues to the state that's the only way we're going to have more fun for whatever program it is as i mentioned earlier whether it's public education the environment there's no appetite on the part of the governor as you know to to raise taxes so what we need to do is increase the number of people that are paying taxes get people off of the welfare rolls reduce those welfare expenses so there's monies available in other parts for other parts of the budget which we're seeing that you know it's this is the first time in pennsylvania history this past year that we're actually able to drug test comics that have that are on welfare you know so we're starting to see those changes under this new administration to cut waste make more efficiencies so that funding is available for all these programs that are that are due to all of us locally well we're going to be taking a break now but when we come back i want to talk about those reassessments in allegheny county i'm sure your phone rings off the hook whenever those those take place we hear the horror stories on the news i bought some person in one house is identical to the neighbor his taxes are reassessment goes up seventy thousand this person's goes down twenty eight thousand how washington county is is almost as crazy because they have one person going around and not using any system started going ok you you get this and you get this rating and you get that rating and you know it has test whenever they go to court but whenever we come back we'll have the opportunity to discuss that was and thank you very much i hope you come back on the other side of the commercial for something's happening to the polar bear  go to save the polar bear dot org today coming back once again this is talking politics and western pennsylvania our guest today is representative mark must feel currently of the forty fourth district but looking to run in our friend john pippy seat for the senate since he decided not to run again we were before the break we were talking about the reassessment allegheny county i said your phone must be ringing off the hook whenever that happens because the t v news people always have the folks that are are basically i don't even know the words for that one house is appraised another seventy thousand dollars in the house right next door exactly the same that was built in the one nine hundred twenty s is  decreased by twenty thousand i don't know how this system works i'm afraid something like that's going to be happening in washington county what can the state do to do that to fix that well as i mentioned before the break one of the things that can be done is to put some controls on what happens after there is a reassessment of the problem we have at the state level is not every county is impacted by this if every county was impacted i think you would see some sort of moratorium or a consistent system put in place but because every county is not impacted the representatives from those areas are quite honestly not anxious to invite that problem into their own communities right so from a political standpoint how does that benefit them it doesn't so what that i need to do once i got elected in two thousand and three after the last reassessment in allegheny county was to structure a law that again prohibited any increase in revenues so that forced at least the milage rates to be rolled back so the average homeowner would not see any increase in their taxes after a reassessment but that still doesn't help the expense of the reassessment of the allegheny county is probably going to spend roughly ten million dollars on this court was so narrowly confined to one county so absent absent a moratorium there's really nothing else that can be done other than putting this anti windfall provisions in place and i think that that's a tool that really needs to be looked at for for washington county certainly we touched on many topics so far one the one topic that i have brought up whenever i was talking to john meagher in that seat a few months ago was the immigration problem the illegal immigration problem here in pennsylvania i mentioned i related a story that i took a course on the university of texas in arlington last year and used in paper had an entire big article about this illegal group coming out of arizona so they actually stopped them in texas and wherever they were at that time and were asking them questions about where you're going and one of the things that i found interesting is that they were going to pennsylvania and the reason that they said going to pennsylvania is because of the fact that the benefits flow easily they can get welfare stamps thing get unemployment the medical care and everything else that they need is up there now when you realize that most people don't go from a warm climate to a cold climate just for the possibility of getting a job or something at that time also i had noticed  that there was a group that i forget the name of the right now that in fact follows this kind of thing and in two thousand and eight kinds of a had spent about eight hundred million dollars on education incarceration and medication for illegals last year that figure went up about six hundred million dollars to about one point for me billion dollars and this state i know th something that governor corbett as tried to do something about especially in the philadelphia area because that's that's the area that many of these folks are going to because philadelphia considers them a sanctuary city i guess a couple  questions for you how do we stop that from happening the influx of illegals tasking our citizens to in fact pay for them the second thing is why this philadelphia receive a penny if they're consider sanctuary city and you know when we look at the crime statistics philadelphia has a very high crime rate and i lot of this is brought on by people who come here don't have money don't have a job are in the process i would imagine  trying to do something and then try to get food for their table or whatever i mean i don't i don't know why people rob or steal or or commit crimes but the bottom line is how do we stop pennsylvania as being the focal point where these people actually telling people i don't want to pennsylvania because the benefit is shut off you shut off the economic attractiveness of pennsylvania and that's what we're doing with legislation under governor rendell there was no interest in doing that the house of representatives was also under democratic control at that point they're all mcafee's a representative out of butler county has really taken the lead on that illegal immigration watch and in fact one of the pieces of legislation that was mine that was passed out of the house would removes the professional license of anybody that knowingly hires someone that's illegal in pennsylvania so we're trying to not only  disincentive the worker from coming here but also to distance sent the employer from hiring someone that is illegal clearly those scenarios that you outlined are happening in pennsylvania it's tough to quantify the actual dollar amounts but not only those but the the last tax revenue should we have a person that's on the books working right the state income tax and other taxes that would be paid so we're doing it through legislation we've had actually two bills passed mine and also one that addresses the benefits the welfare and the worker's comp type benefits so we're working on that in addition the trouble we have at the federal level is the actual forsman you know you have we've had testimony in front of our state government committing on these bills that the local police agencies will arrest but the federal ice officials the immigration service so just let them go you know because they're focused elsewhere and that's the real challenge and struggle and it's totally frustrating because it's costing us so much money that we could be using elsewhere to fund all the other programs including the retirements that you and i spoke about earlier so we're trying to address that with legislation and we have certainly with with the governor someone that wants to look at look at all these things now that what was it like that before we have a situation and by the way you will be on a debate on april tenth here at the peter sounds of middle school with the other candidates that are running for you for the general john pippy old seat  so i mean some of these questions may sound similar familiar to you are we have a bunch of different situations going on in the state we've talked about the retirement we've talked about the emigration we've talked about the as problems we talked about the the increase retirement program all of these things are cons going to cost the taxpayers more i mean substantially or not talking about a one or two million koreas and the school potential is  ten mill easily in the next few years what is the state possibly going to do to be able to not just tax everybody to death you know whenever you have close to fifty percent of the people paying taxes and now we have almost fifty percent of people receiving benefits how is that stop but what stops by getting people off of welfare and putting them to work under the previous administration the department was told basically let the people apply let him on it and that's stopping i mean governor corbett has taken a totally different approach there are a lot more reviews and tests being done verifications the waste is really being eliminated in harrisburg and that is something that is such a welcome thing to hear because for years we could be totally frustrated with the administration in their inability to look at legislation that we would offer up to make changes even had their auditor general democrat auditor general point our problems with various programs in the within the administration but all that fell on deaf ears so we had a situation where you had someone in the governor's office that was very interested and an appetite to spend but not look at the long term fiscal nature not look at the indebtedness which we just passed legislation last week that's going to reduce the amount of debt that pennsylvania is in so when you reduce your total amount of debt you reduce the amount of money you're putting towards at that so it frees up more dollars to spend in other areas that we talked about so the idea is to reduce expenses so that we can focus the savings in those areas on these areas that we see coming as as critical high costs that you've already identified but at the same time  reducing and making government more efficient that's keeping expenses down for business so that they can then be the job creators that we want them to be and hire more people and we're starting to see that for example with a cracker plant that's going to repros than a couple years and the online and beaver county that's ten thousand jobs and seen anything like that here in pennsylvania and in decades in decades so there's a lot of positive things happening you look at the growth around the airport which is my legislative district a significant amount of opportunity good things happening so there are there are a lot of challenges and we've identified those challenges but our responsibility as leaders is to say ok let's think long term how are we going to solve those challenges and let's get back to the basics get back to the blocking and tackling  what was wrong with the system what got us there are we putting people on benefits that shouldn't be there you've identified two areas right now those that shouldn't qualify for welfare and those that are illegal to the state let's fix that that's that's an easy fix right that's low hanging fruit we should be able to do that administratively and the governor is doing that let's let's privatized areas that need to be privatized in our state you know the liquor stores is a huge opportunity for us particularly from a wholesale level i know that you know there's going to be a lot of pushback even the bipartisan push that the liquor stores is an interesting topic i've been on that committee since i was first elected i don't think that the government should be in that business but there are some in my party from the tea party of the state they call that the bible part of the state that says if you privatized the state stores that is expanding the sale of alcohol and they think that's evil you know i think personally that right now in pennsylvania we have the trifecta we have poor price poor product selection and poor service so those are the that's the trifecta we don't want you know i think we need the opportunity to have the private sector invest at the same time we would see an increase in tax revenues that would help solve some of the problems we talked about and then the sale of that asset which would  bring us almost a billion dollars just on the wholesale side so that that those handful of items that we just talked that i talked about right there i think are just the tip of the iceberg of what can be done to solve our our financial problems in the long term well i have another one for you then peter sonship has twenty two to twenty four police officers our taxes are raised to in fact the for them to afford them and their salaries and their benefits and everything else there are some local communities that have given up their police departments to save taxes but now they rely on the state police all right my problem is my state taxes are now paying for their police protection as well as mine their stay their local taxes aren't paying for their police i mean they are through their state taxes on that but it's not  should i be paying for them it's not a commensurate amount but they have bottom line is they're probably paying a lot less in state taxes than your community is in addition to paying for your police out of your pro local property tax and wage tax you're paying for  theirs and that's not right so what we're looking at in harrisburg is to offset a lot of the revenues that they get for example with liquid fuels money so that there's more money available for communities like peters township that are paying for their own police force so we need to in sent them to if they want police protection we need to and sent them to pay for it themselves and that's going to be done by either withholding some monies or having them prior the room police forces that has to be done you can't keep pushing those costs off on to others you need to he need to show leadership right we're we're elected officials literally as well so you need to you know to identify your problem if you want local protection and local  control then you need to pay for it and that's that's only fair you talked about peter's creek sanitary authority and when i was on the consul this problem existed all right and it hasn't seemed to get hasn't gotten any better in term the problem that we're having of course is the infiltration of additional waters through sewer lines and things peter signs of f m everything that i've seen has not caused that problem but the rest of the systems  right and they've stopped the taps now i am a firm believer that our building in peter sonship has condition and has constantly been going up even during these tough times and we've had they slowed down a little bit but we're still building and we're providing new homes to those people who are leaving allegheny county in these other areas to come out to peter's how do you control an organization like th who for one reason i mean peter sprigg senator did everything that they said to do they provided their plan they provided it again and again and made all the changes the d p and then all of a sudden they're told no we're not going to do it you have to you have to different if my understanding and that's one of the reasons i toured with mr ball was to get an idea of what's going on in the community and certainly that isn't has a really hot issue locally so you have two different watersheds is my understanding in the township of a system set up and the other watershed that's self contained in there of paying for itself and take care of it and then the peters creek is part of the system that you've described where you know you're doing your job you're holding up your end of the bargain but the rest of the system downstream is not in the d p is saying to you  reason i'm repeating this is make sure we've got it right right is that we're not going to give you any more taps until this entire peters creek sanitary system connected with the mon valley is fixed and you for gone forward with a proposal that says hey we want to do this and take care of it ourselves and here's the cost if we're going to be part of this fix with them on a ballot we're not going to pay more than this and that's a reasonable that's a very reasonable approach to take and a fair approach that thing just being brought into this within the week i think that if the d p had made a commitment in one area then their feet need to be held to the fire to follow through on that commitment i certainly would not expect and i hope they don't expect peter's township residents to subsidise a system that has deteriorated not your fault well and here's here's the problem and it's quite interesting we have builders out there now they can't build in your community right because you can't get the t can't get the taps until peter's creek signs this new agreement which will tie peter's creek into this old system for the next thirty years because they'll be floating bonds and everything else the problem comes that if they sign that piece of paper now there's overages already done and cleared the get the taps how does that how does that signing that piece of paper correct that problem if it doesn't that's a lie you said so we're being held up as a community and i extend into other communities that would give nottingham a nor'easter vein those other areas that you're going to be involved with the opportunity to develop and grow also but if they're still tied in to the c a they're going to this is going to be a never ending problem because they're on their system is very antiquated is very old they have no growth of little growth on their lot of us commercial industrial going in and now they're turning around and talking about increasing the cost per month to make up for their fracking water that they were taking and was discontinued by the court well it's critical for peter's township that residents pay a consistent right so you have to authorities it's certainly not fair for for an area of the township to pay a different rate than and in another so the i don't know what level the p this is risen to at this point but certainly the reason the argument of peter's creek is making is very reason and if that's the case we need to make sure that those at the higher level hear that argument and that the proposal or pushback that the d p is making needs to be altered and changed so that's why we as elected officials get involved at times in situations like well that's what les said it has been played out now for six or seven years it's not just something new i remember talking to one of those over what did well probably three years ago the same issue they weren't getting taps until senator pippy and john mara got involved and then they released taps again but they said the problem of an overage at that plant is not going to fix and if they sign the agreement that c m a wants them to sign then in fact peters creek will be tied into their old system again and this could happen every year for the next thirty years and there needs to be guarantees that the system's going to be fixed critical for infrastructure and that was one of the reasons that senator pippy and i were so successful in the airport corridor was because of making sure that the infrastructure was in place right now you have developers that are stymied in peter's township because of the frustration in dealing with getting infrastructure we didn't have those issues because we were able to work them out we had a lot of new terrain or we had systems that didn't have the baggage that you're talking about down in the modern valley so we need to focus on those areas and quite honestly show what we've done in other parts of the state use that as an example to get this problem fixed yeah it's it's well you said it's an ongoing problem it's like a nagging to think that isn't bothering you for years let's put out well and that's something's got to be done and something's got to be done on the construct of them not just to meet the requirements of builders now but to meet the requirements of those homeowners that are we taking over the homes as they build you know i don't want to have a two hundred or monthly sewer rate that's so that's some of these systems environmentally and those type of things so we'll need to look at so there's going to be some other opportunities hopefully coming down the road once once and come certainly well needless to say you brought up that issue and i'm going to i'm going to head a lot of my last questions for you peter sonship had an excellent an actual and ordinance dealing with gas drilling we fought it the community fought it as a whole as a referendum question it went down to i believe it was an eighty three seventeen percent vote against what the referendum was was basically no drilling moratorium yes but the community spent years working on their plan to limit to forty acres and above which brought out like sixteen properties here in the township it limited the size it basically controlled as many things as possible through zoning the times whenever they operation the amount you know the air quality standards everything then we right after that the state came along with their one size fits all and basically took away all the powers of the local community which you know i find oppressive for the local community how how do we how do we follow the law when the state wants to change the law you know it's a hard  my background before getting elected in the state house was as a supervisor and then township and communities like move in upper st clair bethel park mount lebanon peters township have spent millions of dollars  on ordinances and comprehensive planning to build the communities that they have that have attracted all this development and have true attractive people to live there great school systems and that's because of the planning in the vision that you had and maybe some of these communities had little shallow or gas wells in them but certainly nothing was anticipated like the marcellus shale fracking was being proposed and the technology to drill certainly  would be in my opinion used on the way you had originally planned it or it's it's critical for me and that's one of the reasons i voted no on the house bill nine hundred fifty that the locals have control of their communities even as i said millions of dollars and you've you have your vision of what your communities to look like to have a one size fits all law for peter's township be the same  county that is just basically open land in my opinion is ridiculous and i thought very strongly that we're going to be back revisiting in amending that legislation because it's one thing to see it on a piece of paper we see lots of pieces lots of bills passed but then once they actually get implemented and it's the law of the land and we see ok this needs to be tweaked for change here there is absolutely nothing unreasonable with the ordinance and when i sat down community that the entire township probably could be reached if those people were willing to to to give up their rights their mineral rights to do that so i hear you i heard you my experience in the township supervisor is what has ingrained in me and seeing the communities as i'm walking and knocking through them really validates my no vote on that piece of legislation because you have a beautiful community here that a lot of people have done it and a lot of time to to make it the way it is today well how mark we've had an opportunity to discuss where you came from your bio and everything else a lot of these issues that in fact are important the senate i find out which camera we're on here i'm going to ask you to speak into the camera talk to the folks on why they should vote for you all right why why is it important for you to in fact get their vote in april as well as the november well thank you very much for having me on the show today  one of the things that's been really important for me is to make sure that i communicate to the voters that my background and my background is being locally raised and educated also as a small business owner i understand the impact that government regulations has on the ability for a business owner to hire i also understand the impact that increased taxes has on a business in their ability to hire as well so i voted for  every against every tax increase that was offered under governor rendell and it's such a pleasure now to work on a governor corbett who says we're going to spend the money that we get in the only way we're going to spend more money because if we grow the economy and that's what senator pippy and i were able to do in the airport corridor and i want to be able to do that in the south hills as well by investing in infrastructure having then the private sector come in and invest in companies it's important for me that our young people when they graduate have jobs here so what i did in my company when i needed somebody to work to hire in my company we would go to the local colleges and say ok here is the type of person that we want let's set up a program to train them that's important to me some of the legislation that i voted on or support  uminating the state's star system as we know it today is critical that will raise a lot of money for our state in a time that we need it it's also critical that we have local control not only in our school districts and in educating or our students but also in our municipalities and that's why i voted against the house bill nine hundred fifty i think we have a huge opportunity and i said earlier i'm buying stock in this region if it was up for sale but it's not but there's there is this a tremendous amount of potential and i wan thank you for inviting me today to see the incredible up operation here at the peters township high school and the students here are just really enjoying what they're doing and that's so refreshing  see kids involved in something that you know they're going to have to use productively in their lives and you've indicated to me before the show that a lot of them have gone on to careers in television and advertising that type of thing so thank you for what you do