i'm pleased to present diana are reborn she is running on the republican ticket for the washington county commissioner office she is an incumbent welcome diana thank you for having me your growth and i'd like to turn right away to what are your skills and qualifications you've obviously held the office what do you think you brought to the office and will continue to bring to the office i voted i've been serving as commissioner for the last twenty years and i think i have a proven track record fiscal discipline transparency keeping taxes low washing county goes back and forth with butler county and having the lowest county tax rate and all southwestern pennsylvania we have the third lowest cost of incarcerating inmates in all of pennsylvania our pension fund ranks in the top eleventh percentile in the nation over seven year tracking period so i think the fiscal discipline is a good reason to have the capabilities to continue serving and you will continue to do the if we elected another four years i absolutely will continue to do that one of the things that i've done as commissioner is to forecast budgets looking forward to make sure that we can maintain a low tax base and so we've been forecasting for the next five years to see that we can maintain taxes at the rate that they are right now could what do you think is the most important issue you're going to face as you hadn't if you head into the next four years  fiscal standpoint it's obviously going to be implementing the reassessment plan that's going to be before soon we will have the information at the beginning of next year homeowners will get that information property owners they can review the information they can call the office if they find in accuracies there will be an informal appeal process that people can appeal informally the assessment they've been given and then if they're not satisfied they can go through a formal appeal process before the tax assessment appeals board and finally they can appeal to the court of common pleas so there's a four step process in place to make sure that everything is done accurately and fairly can you explain to the citizens who may be watching this the importance of giving accurate information about their resilience yes the information we gather will determine how accurate the reassessment is so having accurate information provided by the property owner is essential to making sure that this goes well and this is so from a fiscal standpoint this is the the biggest issue we have but from a community standpoint i believe the biggest issue we have facing all of our communities is the issue of illegal drugs and and move into the it's you know it's had such an enormous impact on families are correctional facilities or system our judicial system we have so many challenges even with the work force trying to get people to pass a drug test or work force so you know it's a huge issue that affects all aspects of the community and government and employment so we really have to look at new ways to change the way we're doing things and get people the help that they need so they can move on to an independent and productive life do you see any new ideas up there to try to make a difference here in this county yes we're currently working on a couple of new next we're working on more of a diversionary program pretrial services on may twelfth we will be hosting our first we entry conference for prior offenders and we're opening up to the public but we have over seventy registered already and this is the first one washing counties ever held showing people how to go into the path of finding a job with a criminal record how to get your driver's license back how to clean up your record and they say don't do your sponsoring this  doing it along with job training program and also president judge katherine emery so jointly we're putting on this conference and so hopefully that will allow us to provide to the employees that are locating in washing county more of a workforce and help these individuals get to the pendency these are the people who have already paid their debt to society and also we're looking at new ways to address the dependency issue right now we don't have a lot of options while they're incarcerated and when individuals are incarcerated their insurance goes away and all these different benefits that they could receive go away and so there's a limited amount of funding but we're looking at things a little differently because for a nonviolent blow risk offender is encouraged and it doesn't make smart financial sense because if you put someone in jail for six months the cost of incarceration is going to be just over eight thousand dollars if you put them in a forty five day residential treatment facility and intense treatment facility for forty five days it's just over a thousand dollars so we have to look at what's going to be effective at getting these individuals who have to pay a debt to society number one they have to pay that debt but number two to not have to come back into the system where the burden falls once again on the taxpayers so if we can get them to a path of independency and to be productive citizens and contributing citizens who can you know work and provide for their families that's the better way to go are other counties doing things like this do you know beaver county for the last several years has had a reentry conference that they've sponsored and they've looked at some new ideas and corrections nationally there's a new move it's called the thinking for a change and it's a new approach to how you handle individuals it's anywhere from when they're coming in if that's it's their first offense and you have the diversionary court treatment programs or whether it's the services you provide in the facility while they're incarcerated and then there's a change with how probation officers are dealing with the individuals you know while they're seeing them and we usually have people twelve to eighteen months who are on probation after they're out of the facility that the costs are enormous for these individuals so we have to find a more cost effective way to get these people to a path to end to end dependency so you know we're not forever paying the way and you're working with the court to  establish some means of doing this we are working on president judge emery is fully on board and participating with this conference that we're doing and in this change for thinking for a change as is our warden in the facility you we're talking about jobs the gas industry has brought lots of jobs in some ways to the county are you concerned at all about any safety aspects of it or environmental air or water issues the need to be addressed or do you feel that those are being adequately addressed first you should know that about forty percent of washing counties job growth can be attributed directly and indirectly to the natural gas industry being here so we've had a tremendous amount of job growth we're third in the nation in job growth and washed in county so we've we've had tremendous tremendous on the environmental side are always concerns but our experience has been pretty good obviously all of this falls on the state with the department of environmental protection during their right laws in place in the right  enforcement in place the right tracking in place but we're also providing information to them as well when things happen and we've tried to make sure that we've put all the resources needed into our public safety department is they will be the responders when there is a situation there arises where someone could be injured or there could be an environmental spill or hazard so we've looked at all of that but our experience at cross creek park where range has been drilling is been a very good one so far do you think legislation was put in place and washing county started receiving its portion of the local what we call the local share down of the gaming revenues we took the washing county economic development roundtable and that's a group of individuals who run economic development agencies in the county and that group was enhanced by local representation in this group of individuals they take applications only after we have an entity that goes out into the communities into three different areas holding public hearings and public  conferences explain to people what qualifies and how to apply so once they bring the applications in this group looks at everything they've got the applications people come and make a public presentation and then this group then recommends to the commissioners  the projects that they would have funded we as the commissioners vote on this and i will tell you that we have never reached across and change the recommendations of this independent board group i want to stop you because i want to give you this final few seconds to make a plug for your candidacy to the voters thank you i hope that the voters of washing county feel that i have done a good job and would deserve reelection my heart is really with the people of washington county it's an honor and a privilege to serve and i hope that the voters give me a chance to serve for four more years thank you very much running on the republican ticket for washington county commissioner don't forget to vote