good evening and welcome to our p t republican pennsylvania's senatorial debate tonight we'd like to welcome all of you for coming out and being part of our audience and we'd also like to welcome those of you will be joining  via television broadcasts later on and we'll be linking that to our web site so that plenty of people will have a chance to hear all these candidates down the line and so right now i'd like to introduce to you the man who'll be our next  general in the state of pennsylvania representative debate for the entire senatorial district is it's encouraging to see this sort of a turnout it's an important decision that lies ahead but i hope one decision is going to be easy i do hope to be your next daughter general you know  never had a c p a as our general ever we've never had anyone as author general who knew how to audit yeah i think that explains a fair bit and i'm hoping to change that history and with your help i'll be able to do it but  enough of that's tonight's not about that race tonight is about another matter but as is our custom reverend rogers a seat top aster emeritus at center presbyterian church here locally and we're very glad he could join us this evening was very kind of him to be part of our opening ceremonies and right now i'm going to call to my cohorts to my fellow mendelssohn choir choristers forward and i hope you'll all join us as we are going to do a on the national anthem and should help us a little bit thanks jones going to come back out here and just for a second before we get started i wanted to recognize the mo of some of our people that really help to make elections move and shake and get things done when it comes time for candidates and issues and where to vote and all of that good stuff we're lucky tonight to have our chairman of washington county party mr tommy ram stand up tom de up for a minute now stay up and with him or his two vice chair is mr buzz rich buzz an art other vice chair is mary telfer is also here they're both vice shares of washington county republican party and if they remain standing i'd like to ask our state committee members we have three  committee members that are residents of peters township two of them are here this evening one is bill merrill if he'd stand and join our officer there and also al be mercer our past  peter's republicans is now the southwest caucus chair of the republican state committee and we're happy to have them as right here in peter's township the next group of people i'm really proud of and that is township republican committee they're a great group and i'd like all my committee members to stand and stay standing please thank you and i believe we also have a few of our election board members here these are also people that are elected and serve you they'll be serving you on april twenty fourth when everybody comes out to vote so with the election board members that are present please stand or if you're an election board member somewhere else outside of peter's you could stand and we would honor you as well some of us in on committee are also election board people raise your hand if you're both you've got some that do both of those jobs and i thank them all because it wouldn't happen without them thank you very much now a couple more things from john meyer and we'll get started signals clear i do want to also say thank you to all those with the committees locally you've been a huge help to me over the years and this year especially when it came to seeking the party's statewide in doors the support have a very happy responsibility tonight i get to address the three candidates for the thirty seventh senate tauriel seat and it's a happy duty because i know each and every one of them well and i like them all they're all good people and i've made up my mind but the object of this evening is for you to make up your minds and for those who are or may be watching at home to gain information so they can make an informed ways to serve the district center and moon township but it's been a great colleague of mine and i can tell you on the house floor we actually sit beside one another and while we don't always agree on things when we disagree we do it purposely and thoughtfully and not attack in a stickley and having said that i'll say we tend to agree and the guys the guys fantastic so mark good to see it and i think who's a podium number two was one of the very first people who rallied to my side and everything she possibly could and i was happy to indorse to when she ran for the state house and when she's run for state committee so obviously she's someone i feel very well about as well and that  and i got to know each other a bit during the course of his campaign for the allegheny county chief executive and i was proud to stand up beside him and indorse him in that contest he's a businessman and i think you probably all know that we haven't we haven't served together the way that mark and i have or that sue and i have but i also think very highly of him so tonight you've got your work cut out for you i understand the questions are already in the possession of the questioners and i expect because of the qualities people is going to have very civil discourse and i hope it will be helpful for you as you reach your decisions about who should be our next hour or so best wishes good evening it's very nice to see everybody here tonight and thank you congressman mark for your comments i would like to just very briefly tell you kind of what the rules for the debate are so everybody understands what's going on i don't want to make this  hearing but as your as your where this is a debate between the three candidates for the thirty seventh senatorial district it's intended to be an informational debate it's not a gotcha debate it's an opportunity we hope for the questions the candidates to answer the questions and try and give some information and you know kind of show you who they are and what they're about the candidates have drawn lots for the podium the first lottery we've conducted today and each candidate will be allowed two minutes for an opening statement then they will be allowed at the end of the program two minutes for a closing statement when the when the time  up our time or where is a so over here our time or will indicate that the two minutes are up and we'd appreciate it if you would kind of cut it off at that point the panel which is the c and  bob over here they will they will present a question alternating questions the first question will be addressed to podium one answer first then the second and third podium positions the second question will be addressed  questions so if we could keep it a you know the comments and so forth all the precursor to the question at hand i would appreciate it i would ask also that the audience if there's anybody that has a cell phone or beeper or whatever if you kindly turn it off that would be great and if there's a you know if you're so overwhelmed by a candidates answer that you feel impelled to applaud at the end of it please applaud at the end of it let them say their thing statements of sorry finally got to say with mr much leo first thank you i also would like to thank the feeder township republican committee for hosting this event and i'd like to thank all those in attendance and those watching on that will be watching on cable agree that tonight i think will be a really good discourse on the issues and i look forward forward to a spirited debate on the issues thank you one more thing i think i do want to address upfront prescription drug plan for seniors my legislative history there are ten thousand people over the age of sixty five that i'm bothered expense money was to come into our offices and i was going to use that to hire an individual part time to work with those seniors a thousand of whom are low income seniors to coordinate that donut hole to remember hearing about with the pace and pace the program in pennsylvania when the paycheck came in august was not on budget expense like they told us it was going to be it was in my paycheck i immediately returned it immediately sponsored legislation to repeal the payroll so i regret doing that looking back on it absolutely but at the time coming for i came where i come from not taking ever taking a stake or ever getting reimbursed for miles in my legislative district not using the state cellphone i think consider myself the pig that they called at that time so i wanted to kind of set the record straight on where i came from when i made that vote at that time and what my intentions were because i think there was some other things out there but thank you thank you very much as a ma to thank everyone for inviting us here today my name is sue me and i am a candidate for the pennsylvania senate seat district thirty seven because i'm concerned about the direction of our country and the out of control spending in harrisburg i stand before you today with a sense of urgency every man woman and child and pennsylvania oh it's about ten thousand dollars and and state and local government debt career politicians have been outstanding our state's revenues and growing the size of our government to the detriment of our calling to me and our freedom i am the mother of five and the grandmother  two i don't need a new job or a new career i'm running for the senate because the people need and deserve someone to champion their liberties after graduating from nursing school i worked at children's hospital i'm a nurse surgical unit with a strong heart and a steady hand i ministered to this chick for twenty seven years i have been a grassroots activists for limited government and parental rights selflessly serving others and i am now volunteering to go to harrisburg because our state is sick our government isn't affected with parasites it isn't over eating eating glass consuming our liberties and our prosperity our government needs to place on a strict diet called a balanced budget and given a strong dose of the constitution to cleanse evening everyone i want to thank the peters republican committee for hosting this event all of you for a dandy i'll start a little bit of my background and tell you some of the reasons why i'm running i came here twenty five years ago to go to school and sometimes people said i came from india said why did you come to pittsburgh with all the snow i can because print gave me a scholarship to go to school here then many years later i got an m b a from carnegie mellon shortly after i got to work for lockheed martin i worked for have over three hundred fifty employees here well paid american jobs and great headquartered here with several offices across the country but one thing i want to share with you is as i grew the company to tens of millions of dollars never go estate taxes not once but twice i was also the chapter the republican party and mount lebanon pull this off quickly i am pro life and i'm pro second amendment i was endorsed by life fact i was endorsed by the n r a and for like in my last place which was a cow to be exact race and when i ran for county executive realized a lot of the issues there that i talked about including assessment of both the port authority need to be addressed i came here without a lot of money or contacts allegheny county and most importantly get the results big thank very much better now we and we get to the in prisoners ok first question we're going to start with mr musto the economy of pennsylvania is experiencing a very anemic recovery new business starts are low and job creation is slow this state has a reputation for being a business unfriendly state we'd like to know what you would propose to do to make pennsylvania a desirable destination for business and to promote business formation and job creation i think some of what you're asking we've already implemented and certainly there needs to be more more to be done particularly in the business tax climbing the corporate income tax to be reduced and i'm on legislation to do that by helping to close the deliberate loophole  addition keystone opportunity zone legislation that we just passed unable to crack a plant to come in the beaver valley which will generate ten thousand jobs into our local economy which benefits certainly all of us i think  local tax impact making pennsylvania a place where we want to keep our residents i think from a property tax standpoint we need to address those issues not only do they affect corporations but also in the vigils and that's why i  voted for the moratorium on the property assessments the the impact on education certainly we need to quality and train workforce and that i think will help improve the environment in pennsylvania i think one of the things that we've noticed in my legislative district was because we were able to work in a bipartisan manner with senator pippy and harrisburg and county executive on a rado and county executive roddie we were able to get infrastructure in place so as we saw the u s airways bankruptcy take place and we lost thousands of employees there actually my legislative district grew in the last eight years by fifteen percent so i think if we focus on the tax rates and infrastructure investment that really is what i think the responsibility of government is for the infrastructure and then let the private sector come in and invest their dollars to grow companies as they've done in the airport for thank you thank you mr bush manges well we cannot be we must look at our and we must look at our our programs and only those that work we must set a goal for every program to measure it to see if its meaning its goals and t cut funding to programs to do not work and we need to look at the two thousand laws every year two thousand laws are introduced in harrisburg and there are over two thousand registered lobbyists maybe we need to you look at the corporate tax when you talk about the corporate environment it's nine point nine nine percent and that's just been ok to a competitive standpoint why would people want to come here so we are fundamentally flawed the second thing i want to say is our regulation are we have onerous regulation and regulations the cost of business and you to look at that and the one thing you notice as our economic development spending in the state is high what does that mean we keep our taxes high build a wall around you know the state and tell businesses don't come here we're not open but yet the politicians will pick and give handouts economic development funds hey you come here we shouldn't be picking winners and losers that's not our business we need to have create a platform that's organic that can that can work and let me give an example of an area where i differ from my opponent mark must feel is prevailing wage is an example prevailing brings reform needs to happen he is against it and has voted but the unions where it cost us millions of dollars for example to mount lebanon school district we spend one hundred thirty million dollars we were to say twenty to thirty million dollars if the school districts were example meant that is the kind of regulation that's stopping businesses from coming here i would fully support a prevailing rates reform that would be a right to work state and that's an important aspect of what need to do what we need to do start this one with mrs main governor corbett his proposed two thousand and twelve two thousand and thirteen general fund budget is three point eight percent less than the previous actual and anticipates a seven hundred million dollar deficit the state cannot continue to operate at the deficit balancing the budget will require adjustments in spending and revenue no one wants to see the programs that affect them cut and certainly no one wants to see their taxes increase what are your thoughts on achieving a balanced budget well almost thirty percent of our kid goes to welfare and we need to take a serious look at welfare fraud  there are people that are collecting benefits for people who are passed away it's hard times cause to call for hard decisions and we need to cut our spending by our government at least twenty five percent because we have to pay off our debt as i mentioned in our opening statements every man woman and child in pennsylvania owes ten thousand dollars because for decades career politicians have been spending more than our revenues and borrowing to balance the budget it's our it's it's it's going to be hard decisions but they need made and we need to privatizing everything we can we need to s thank you balanced budget essentially of two sides of the equation for the long term you're going to look at the growth in revenues growth in the economy but that doesn't happen overnight you've got to make sure structurally your taxes follow your regulation is uniform and consistent so that can be a long term goal to balance the budget short term you've got to cut spending it's just it's as simple as that when you look at the stuff that areas of significant fraud and you know welfare likes to mention this is a great area that are people who have bought a lexus on the welfare budget and against who were you know without it being audited you know just and welfare was meant to get those people and me help them and get them on their feet the system itself is just fundamentally not working the number of people staying on welfare continue to stay expenses like that and really so to me when it comes down to go to prioritize make sure that's a priority of what we need to do in our public safety infrastructure so you go through the list that that's important education to go to the list that's important and then you look at programs government like you know sees that shouldn't be in the business of liquor stores what are the other areas that are not core areas of government and those are the areas we need to look at the state we do not participate but that set the role of government is to provide the best service for the i support governor corbett's plan which is we're not to spend any more money than we take in and the only way we're to spend more money is to improve the economy and we've we've touched on some of the ways that we're going to be able to do that by working on corporate tax rate  one of the things that we have done while i've been in office i'm one of the people up here that has a record that you can scrutinize and we have voted to reduce well for a spending in the last budget by four hundred million dollars we passed legislation now where we drug test some of the people that are on welfare which many other states have done but we finally have done that in pennsylvania one of the areas that i think we can lead in is by downsizing ourselves and last week we actually vote without having a constitutional convention to do it we've actually voted the first time since one nine hundred sixty seven to downsize the legislature people said you'll never do that and never vote yourself out of a job but we voted in past to reduce the house one hundred fifty three and the senate to thirty eight is that really me that means we're taking a look at ourselves first holding ourselves accountable giving ourselves credibility and then to go after the other compartments that we've talked about and i also support the governor's providence ation commission and have been a leader in the reform and the privatization of the liquor stores there is absolutely no reason why we need to have the trifecta that we have right now in pennsylvania which is for service for product selection and for pricing we need to get into the twenty first century and do what other states done and by getting it into the private sectors hands we power in a few people's hands and makes them last accountable the problem with our government is that we have three are politicians and downsizing and what to skip those individuals more power and that's the harder for those constituents to get in touch with their state legislators thank you structure to our ears like to touch on one is set up with regard to pensions i will not be taking a pension because we have a forty billion dollar unfunded liability and that's part of the reason why you know likes to mention scare your politicians to death that is a huge deficit and what i want to do is to lead by example i want to introduce a four hundred one k plan like the private sector does and want to lead by example as an elected official then you can go back to the public employees public sector employees and say we want to make this change this has happened you know ten years ago you were still talk to john sarma our you know talked bunch at the people had been ten years ago in the sale of the liquor stores that he is there while he says he is for privatization he is the one who got his this big in committee that has prevented what the governor corbett and my tours i want to do which is to sell the liquor stores and that's what i'm in favor of and that's what i i'd like to set the record straight on that the reality is when you're in paris for working it's not a kingdom where you're king you have to work with other people so i'm on the lecture committee and if you don't have enough votes to get the lot of committee the reality of the situation is i'm on that committee to make sure that this legislation gets passed out of the house and over to the senate the privatized as far as the downsizing the legislature goes  understand people talk about term limits and that seems to be a buzzword but the reality of the situation is in the last four years we have half of the houses new members in the last four years so every two years we are up for election and we put our resume in the house of representatives in front of you to be selected or not be selected to run for office or to be voted into office again so i think the problem with having term limits is then you have the bureaucrats with the knowledge and running the show and i think every two years or four years if it's a senator the public then can make that decision and i trust the public in pennsylvania to make the right decisions on who they want having them pension system this will impact all communities and especially school districts in many districts adequately funded retirement plans could add millions of dollars a year to costs what would you as state senators going to ask what a four hundred one k plan and if it's not them going to tone down the defined benefit and what will happen is over time you know build consensus to that's one of the might lead objectives is to get there so we can manage the private sector how to point to one and we need to have regulation here that people understand that you know even in the in the in the local municipalities i was at mount lebanon commission i was a president of the commission all this is you know it goes to collective bargaining and you know it's mandated by law we've got to decisions that say there's a contractual relationship between the employee and you and the taxpayers and that cannot be changed while they are currently and only so to just stand up here and say we're going to change current employees to forty one k has already been shot down  in the course from a long term perspective absolutely it's an option absolutely it's an option let's see what we did do two years ago was cut new hires and force current  us we have a constitutional convention that enables us to contractually change the relationships relationships between the employer and the employees but you bitch well i agree new hires should be put place on a four zero one k plan but the problem with school districts is that the state has not given the school boards the ability to deal with the problem the problem and we need to band teacher strike thirty seven states have bands hit your strike how many people do you know can walk off their job and come back on this under the same contract how many people do you know get a step  thirty two thousand dollars from their sixteen to seventeen year we need a band teacher strike the teachers have parents and children over a barrel while they negotiate for these on reasonable contracts they can retire at a hundred percent of their pay the other thing that influences on the high price of school districts and school taxes is prevailing wage that the park recently built a new high school it cost eighty million dollars if prevailing wage was a lemonade it was a cost sixty four million dollars a savings of a thousand dollars for every household the other thing that just the state has hired the school district on as we the taxpayers leverage but i think we need to be careful when we do ban the teacher strikes that we also amend the arbitration laws in pennsylvania as well as a former supervisor in mn township you all know that you your police fall under arbitration as well when they come up for their contracts renewals and so it's the arbiters that sometimes end up playing a key role there that we need to watch out for that i think we also need to look at school choice options you know competition is good competition is good in this right and competition is good for our schools so i'd like i like to interject something i didn't hear one topic addressed in the answers and that is how we got into the pension hole in the school districts which was primarily by underfunding the pension plan when the pension multiplier for school district employees was increased by twenty five percent had a profound impact but also certainly in the couple recessions that we've seen take away a lot of the values that was in those plan s we've adjusted the comments that mr ball was made to school districts were not required to make contributions during the rigid ministration and instead of putting money away and saving that money they kind of compounded the problem because when it came time to negotiate teachers contracts then that money was taken and used to increase our so that money wasn't there then to save for increases in the pension contributions so we have since that in the last two years have implemented a minimum contribution that the states and the local school districts must make regardless of what the environment is or what level the pension plans are funded but certainly we're well above those numbers the minimum right now is eight percent we were looking at numbers that are significantly higher than that other comments move along ok the next question is going to go to mr must  first washington in allegheny county face property tax inequities in court ordered mandates to reassess property the house recently passed legislation to allow counties to decide if they wish to proceed with delay if major adjustments are made to property taxes many homeowners and businesses are going to face onerous increases while others are going to see significant decreases delays causing problems for townships and school districts how would you propose to address them to reassess been issued to comply with court orders going to the same time mitigate adverse impacts for property owners in two thousand and five i had legislation enacted for allegheny county which is the and if they want to raise it higher than five percent and they have to go to court to do that but i did vote for the moratorium bill and i think that what we need to do is have a statewide process take place and there are some reports due out soon at the governor's direction  to take a look at that other than eliminating property taxes which you know i voted to do that a couple times that we only got about sixty five votes to eliminate them thank you well this state legislature has three years ago the court system ordered them to come up with a remedy and they have not and i can't let them because the other legislators don't want to have that reassessment come to their town look at it's just washington and allegheny county that are facing a reassessment and other areas have not been reassessed and decades it is unconstitutional to have property tax our constitution says we have the right to own property don't pay your taxes and the government will come and take your house away there is legislation being introduced by representative jim acosta called house bill seven hundred seventy six where instead of getting revenues from property tax it will be from sales tax or we can look at other states and how they do it and florida when you sell your house as fast value is set at a certain percentage and it holds there the whole time you hold your own your home it broke my heart when i ran for the house of representatives when i went door to door in mount lebanon and met several families who had paid off their house assessments but that said the issue is and i look at it from a competitive positioning standpoint you know we talk about bringing businesses here right and what their saskin system currently does is that brings uncertainty to the mix that's what's happened and when you bring that kind of uncertainty here that's the last thing businesses want so even if the regulation is really hard or onerous if they know what the ground rules are that you know they can pay they can play by those rules but having a fluctuating situation like th you know one of two states that don't do a statewide assessment and we need to change the situation that said i think we need to have zero one fall which i think addresses the issue with that with some of these other counties which don't want to do and also i like the idea of giving them the option right now until we figure out the statewide solution to participate or not but i tell you what when you talk about you know even the windfalls stuff i tell you an example i was the mount lebanon commissioner and one of the things that you know  estimated that amount of refunds that go out and they would estimate the refunds to be really high because you can assess your property and get money back and every year we were getting like one to two million dollars into the general fund because  the appeals were made hot so those are the kind of things we've got to make sure that those loopholes are closed it's truly a zero windfall we need to address those and really need to do the statewide thank you so much and how one other comment  in this in this sort of no man's land residents are appealing their assessments when the assessments are reduced then townships frequently have to refund money it makes budgeting very difficult for a township such one item and then supposing that there are some other means such as a stamp tax or whatever were to be imposed how would that be distributed between the schools the townships and the chains doesn't come quickly that can't because the government has only two conservative reform minded senators so we need to send more conservative people to harrisburg they had delayed coming up because they don't want to feel that and they don't want to deal with their constituents career politicians first thought is why do i need to do to get reelected and that is what is best i would absolutely agree that needs to be part time and i would force people to get other jobs and make payroll so they can appreciate what all of us are paying in taxes we did have a statewide referendum vote if you remember twenty five years or so ago to eliminate property taxes and that failed miserably every time we bring up i voted to to eliminate under the sales tax proposal in harrisburg as i said earlier and it garnered sixty four but so the trouble we have it sounds it took me five years to get them to cash my check to pay for part of my health insurance if i could give you any indication you know i'm not here to tell you what you want to hear i'm here to tell you the realities of the situation and so alluded to earlier that other state representatives don't want this coming to their town so what did we do in allegheny county to at least stave that off and that was to put the moratorium in place but that doesn't help us in allegheny county when we have to pay ten million dollars a year every time there's a reassessment so that's why i think there is more energy in harrisburg to get something done and we've seen some leadership from governor corbett by enacting a taskforce to give us what are the options that we can look at statewide and by having republicans in the governor's office in the house and the senate i think we have a much greater chance of getting something accomplished and we did certainly fighting ed rendell for eight years  ok i think we answered the number six moving on to the next question ok then we're going to start this with mrs means governor corbett stated in his budget message that funding transportation does not address long term transportation funding needs and that while these needs are critical they're just too big to address in his budget he said he looks forward to working with legislators to address this issue how would you propose th would work with others to legislators and you might work with the governor to address this long term transportation made public transportation that's often question you're asking me yes well let's take a look at the fort already in pittsburgh it spends three times the amount of the budget and has one third the staff as philadelphia does it is broken it needs put into bankruptcy and reorganize and the the board members of the port authority they need fire across our state we need to look at the commissions and bureaucracy and see who these people are who sit on these commissions and board and see are they qualified to do what they're doing and we need to privatized public transportation just like the liquor stores private does that are they know how to make a profit and they are more efficient and again it's the pensions and retirement funds and the heavy hand of you of organized labor that makes the port authority cost so high if it's i'm not sure if it's just a pure profit entity that those routes that are served to those people will be covered so it needs to be a combination of both privatization as well as making sure we have efficient operations i've said this before is the best those to the taxpayer at the lowest cost so that's one aspect of it and you talk about the infrastructure side of this you know one in four bridges is considered structurally deficient so if you're running writing across one for an hour in the state it's deficient we have a huge shortfall i know governor corbett asked a commission to come up with a report that's been as a couple months since it's come up i would look at their age to two to really look at this in terms of public private partnerships or some of these you know infrastructure governmental bodies are not significant so that said i think infrastructure is one of the key things that make a state successful long term an attraction of business and the residents and the governor has to commission do a study at this point you've got to prioritize and execute yes we did actually pass public private partnership legislation for highway construction and the governor did sign that legislation into law so we're looking forward to having that take place in pennsylvania as they've been doing very successfully other states particularly virginia and i do agree with roger that we do have a need for mass transit and i would like to see it primarily focused from an allegheny county perspective since that's what we were talking about the port authority in the city of pittsburgh i think that would help rejuvenate that city i think we're a long overdue for transportation like the t to the south wales to the airport if we could do that from the north side through the keys rockstar rocks coreopsis area which is not in my legislative district i think you'll see significant amount of private sector investment in that area then shoot it out to robert morris then to the airport then you're connecting one of our main economic obs which is the airport to another main economic hub which is the oakland medical area we have a significant problem with legacy costs and i am not interested in sending any more of your taxpayer dollars to the beast since the port authority of allegheny county i mean that is something that we cannot afford to do we did pass legislation to enable some private sector companies to come in and operate they did so for a short while but they did not do so successfully they canceled their routes from the north wales into the city of pittsburgh the long term impact on the long term legacy costs we have at the port authority may ultimately lead us to forcing them into bankruptcy to get this fixed because they have lifetime health care benefits whereas the septa people have three years of retirement health benefits the port authority retirees can vote which you know it's the foxes in the hen house there comment i'd just like to add that between the federal state and  comments on that i would support privatized being the the turnpike i also think under the the plan that the task force put out there were some some other funding mechanisms there as well that we need to look at i mean heck my legislative district grew because we invested in infrastructure and i think that can take place all across pennsylvania and we all need to participate i think in that and when you actually look at the cost that it takes us to drive around or is it the day that we're driving around the cost to drive around some of these matches that was a bridge was taken out of service not just under construction that cost is so much more so much greater than it is for any increase in in perhaps example a driver's license fee or a registration fee those studies have been done the governor is very sensitive to the tough economic times particularly those in pennsylvania that have been ravaged by floods to really a totally adopt his plan so i do suspect after we pass the budget  again on time this year it will be addressing the funding issues from the transportation in pennsylvania ok so much in general i'm not a big supporter of taxes and fees and those kind of things that said that areas like  i'd look at you know the tolls but i'd look at it not again you know what is the reasonable amount then what do other states pay how are we competitive in terms of these other states if our fees are really laws and maybe i'd consider those but given you know where we are was just one other thought with that is that you mentioned the infrastructure repairs that are necessary the bill for that would be manage billions and billions and billions of dollars at any comments on where something like that might come from so we need to concentrate on maintaining what we have to we are in the red i'm not i we're out of the red so we have the money to build new roads and bridges we just have to concentrate on  cemetery area until after five thirty seven issue involving the peters creek sanitary authority and the clarity in municipal authority is resolved this could take considerable time as things stand in the meantime the eastern part of peter's township can see no further building that's a major problem for township finances as well as for local builders how would you suggest getting involved in a resolution to this problem  in and make sure that we work together in addressing those it's my understanding actually there was a meeting last night i'm assuming dave that you were probably there as i go door to door i do run into people that are very in tune to that issue and one of them happened to be a developer and i had relayed to him what i was but my understanding of the situation was that there was some desire to build this treatment plant but the government at the state level was more interested i think as i would be in consolidating and bringing more efficiencies to the process but what we don't want to see happen is the people in peter's township subsidize another station so it's my understanding and correct i'm wrong as i was at that meeting last night but it's my understanding the option is if you can pay ten million dollars or forty million dollars that's how it was explained to me today now i that was a phone call from mike my perspective at the state of saying we want you to consolidate in your bill is going to be ten million dollars if you don't consolidate to the forty million dollars and the forty million dollar option isn't on the table but there's some discussion about suing over that my perspective is let's consolidate that's where we should be going with these types of operations statewide so that ultimately will drive down costs for everyone and if if i as your senator need to step in to help make that happen i would be happy to do that if he said the word e p a the founding fathers were wise they crafted a federal government that was strong it was supposed to be weak and the states were supposed to be strong our state is so to comply with the unconstitutional law to the environmental protection agency is out of line and needs to be funded and taken away at the federal level but our state legislature can stand up to the right i think just just to to to maybe give you one more shot at the at the thing the the dispute is really a question of the clinton municipal authority trying to strengthen their infrastructure rebuild their plant and the concern in the townships is that you know they're going to do it at our expense and i think that that's our responsibility as elected officials to make sure that that agreement between the state which is really holding the that that doesn't happen but you only pay for the infrastructure that you're using you're not subsidizing other communities mismanagement and that's that's what needs to take place and those meetings need to take place to make sure that your interest human services programs what can the state do to improve the value of health care services you know it's interesting we talked earlier about the welfare budget all those services a to mention come under wel only bad mouth welfare it's not just those that are getting checks it's those it's our senior citizens population it's our most disadvantaged and it's it's our responsibility to make sure that those services are being delivered and not the money is not being spent and ministre to play and my sense of the matter is that that's what's happening that the companies that are managing these services are the ones that are making most of the money and that the money that needs to be spent on those that are giving the individual care those that are making little more than minimum wage that's where we need to make sure the money is focused so that we can continue to hire or those they can continue to have good people consistently coming to take care of the turnover rate there is significant so i think from my perspective it's important that we mandate and look at how those dollars flow and i think that helps solve a lot of our funding issues by making sure that we follow the dollars how does it get down to the person receiving the service and i think we'll see that will have to come out of a lot of a lot of administration which is not at the state level it's really the entities that are hired by the state to do the work and that was what came out of one of our appropriations hearings in the spring well mr must use cracks that the welfare money goes to a lot of times most of our senior citizens are that they are nursing homes to kofi move to a better situation where they have a home health care and other programs are state blanks thirty nine and overall providing for quality we need to make sure that that money is going to the people who actually need on there like that is you know there for example the cane hospitals as you know they've been losing money that's something that i believe needs to be privatized and i said this in the earlier race we need to look at where the money's being spent and if it's being spent efficiently so that i think that that is a problem here that this is one of the things where sometimes and  says really ironic it's like a lot of the vendors like you know when they fund politicians i don't know my last race my opponent would get fifty thousand dollars checks from the vendors of the county and that's where the pod propagates this kind a situation is where the money comes in and it's not going for the best use it's going to do who the politicians and all of this is sort of going back at the carrier politician objective where you need to make sure that the money goes properly the second thing is that some of the things that the direction of money is is mandated by the federal commentators the federal government mandates this is how much money you get in the state will match it and here to sort of how it's been how would needs to be spent and some of the stuff  that you don't add the lot of you at the local level to spend money the right way and those are some of the changes that i'd like to see working with the federal government to make sure that where you know care happens that they can look at that fish and se it's done right comments ok next question this question will begin with this is means and it's about the educational system and funding the educational system in pennsylvania is receiving a great deal of attention both as to its funding and its performance governor corbett's two thousand and thirteen budget will provide districts with an increase of three hundred thirty eight million or three point seven percent over the previous budget the total spending on education will be nine point eight billion and is said to be the largest amount of state funding in pennsylvania history question what is your position on educational funding should funding be tied to performance and if so how should the performance be measured should it be tied to spending reductions and efficiencies and lastly if so assessment test then they actually get more money i mean here we have a school district who is failing in their students performance and they get more money we keep pouring more and more money into our schools and we are not getting the results and we need to look at again the school districts need to look at that look to the state governments to have the reform that they need teachers strike need than we need prevailing wage eliminated we need to put every one they build a school building and needs to go to the referendum vote of the people we have plenty of money but how is this money being spent if you look at higher education let's take a look at cal used for instance the professor there have voted twice and no confidence vote for the president of the university he built a complication center on the side of where the parking lot would be parking was free but now they had to build a parking lot and now they charge the students the president promised he would raise half of the money to build the computation center he came he only raised eight hundred thousand dollars to with this man who has immensely and because the governor cut money to higher education then what they did was they  didn't hire full time professors when they retire and said they have add or part time professors and also they have cut how many classes that you can take because the money was decreased and that's for students i mean how many classes are offered per semester and for students to go by an extra year or next or semester we need to look we are assuming that the president of all these colleges and all the bureaucracies and i think we need to be a leader in education because that sort of sets us for the next generation our kids need to be well educated kathy not only do the high school they've got to get into the graduate and master's degree program just to  fact i think when you take the bottom most failing schools and if you give at least those people the option to go to a different area that's in a competition is all to me if i said here is a good thing so i think i think that's an area and and far as part of my campaign here and the two people told me this today their kids they could not afford to send their kids to school here so they're one went to case western because being as you know living in pennsylvania and paying for  cmu or any of those schools it's been it's been they said it's much more expensive so i think we need to address the root cause of the problem you know it's you know the two should fees have increased much in excess of inflation and it goes back to again the cost control measures th did are those pensions on the line you know those are kind of measures that i think we need to get in line with the schools so we can make sure that we are competitive and that we will work with the governors are grasping that we need to work to make sure this happens last year during budget time i got an email from one of my school business managers as there was a discussion about providing a supplemental funding first public schools and he said mark don't give the school any more money they're just going to stand there and that thought they were going through a negotiations with their support staff and they just spanish i agree with some of the comments that were made earlier that we need school choice  pennsylvania we need that competition i voted to remove the construction exception from school boards to enable them to use that to increase your property taxes we need to hold spending down so that it forces them to look at some of the other options governor corbett lagrimas says we're not going to be spending any more money that we bring in so we're not going to raise taxes at the state level so we need to look we got rid of all the low hanging fruit last year and now it's now it's their responsibility to go in and start looking at howard ministering the current funding and i think by looking at charter updating the charter school law eliminating teacher strikes implementing school choice and we've already implemented the removal of the construction exception i think those will go a long way in the long term of health funding or so our funding problem the three hundred thirty plus million dollars that you mentioned which is money that's going slowly into the pension program he is committed and we have committed as appropriators to make sure that we stay on task to make sure that those spending up with pension obligations are fully funded so that we don't put additional burden on the taxpayers thank you a comment couple of things that struck me is that there seems to be some kind of an assumption that spending dollars per pupil equals performance somehow and there was a the comments have been towards charter schools maybe being can answer but what about the lower performing but not disastrous school districts how do we how do we from a from being a senator from a state perspective how do we encourage them to upgrade their performance i think of a lot of people are afraid to say what some of the problem is i mean how many of us when our kids came home with their agenda made that we sat down with them and we asked them what went on at school that day and we sat down and helped them and make sure that the t v was off and we read with them that's not happening all across our state and i can guarantee you that that's not happening in these lower performing schools and i got involved in an afterschool program in moon township was like some of the the kids that are the most disadvantaged in the moon area school district and the police and sisters  were kind enough to start this program years ago and it's very heartwarming where these kids came in and the chablis and they were just out of control but you know what they came consistently every day after school and now when you go there they run off the school bus to see those nuns holding their report because they had know that somebody inside there loves and cares for them when i first got elected in a special election in two thousand and three first visit i made was to the governor's office he didn't see me but i thought got to talk to an aide and i said you have the bully pulpit get out there and use that's what the real problem problem is that we're doing our jobs as parents in the good in the good performing schools the schools that are performing we continue to send your tax dollars there and they're not performing so we need to reach out like the sisters that those of us we can and help those who can't you need to hold us accountable to make sure that those that do have the bully pulpit get out there and preach this in my opinion that's where the problem really lies in a lot of people are afraid to say it for their coverage there's no correlation between money spent and classroom success they spend the most in the inner city schools as trental involvement but the other issue is our taxes are so high people do not have discretionary income if i had more money i would give more money to charity and that's marc mast you mentioned the faith based charity organizations work they get involved and they help but they're hurting because we're paying too much in our tax  ok our next question we're going to start with mr raja the budget for education consolidate four previous line items into one line item specifically basic education funding pupil transportation nonpublic and charter school pupil transportation and school employees social security do you think this is a wise move and will it add or detract from the effectiveness of education spending  i'm not familiar with the so you're saying the budget and had four line items and now it's moved down to a single line item yes or in the budget that's available for the public to review is that the question yes ok  and really i you know and when i run my business here you know i may have a micro level budget item but really i sort of know what goes on all the way underneath it  me if you're saying that the four levels have been removed the question is is there scrutiny out there from the public on my question and i don't know this is from asking is are the details not available for people to know and i'm just asking back to you i think that the question really good as to the point that in the budget a number of specific items have been condensed into one line item which tends to mask each one of those the you know should have measurable aspects to this and i can tell you one thing in my business says you can't improve anything that you can't measure so that's a very important aspect so if there is an aspect of these we should like to have them not only at the line level but i think that they even granular level to be able to address those because we need transparency in our government and i think that if everything was posted online there was an online database for taught it's just another toy they're cutting programs because they don't have the money they cut the strings program but they're going to give the kids another technical choice really we should have calculators being used in our schools to the upper level because it's making our students dumber and thus making their want their their lives weaker the reason that those the reason the line items were consolidated was to give your local school districts more flexibility if the money was sent for just transportation that money had to be sent spent just on transportation so the reason this works and so the reason they're consolidating those four items is because he gives the school district in the flexibility if they don't have expenses and some others to spend that money so it gives them a choice as to how they're going to spend the fixed amount of state dollars that they already get by funding formula that's a total dollar amounts are going to change this gives them the flexibility if they think on a local level that they want to make that decision locally and how they want to spend it and that's really the reason  was done is also done that way as far as funds that are allocated to the counties there were many programs that were consolidated at the county level as well other comments well if it gives more local control i'm all for  well this is about energy and it's kind of a broad question we know that energy is a major issue at all levels of government will start with you if you must know how my city and state of pennsylvania work to promote energy efficiency and cost reduction and at the same time promote economic growth you know well certainly we have had marcellus shale in the news for the last several years and i will say i am not a proponent of a moratorium but i did vote against house the one hundred fifty because i am a strong proponent of local control as a former man township supervisor who invested a lot of time and energy and comprehensive planning an ordinance and you all know the amount of tax dollars he spent to build a community like peter's township which is gorgeous and people want to come live there and then to have that taken away possibly by not having your ordinances that you want to see implemented here from a  standpoint i think is wrong drilling in peter's township washington county or allegheny county is a little different than drilling in bradford county ohio the county where there are very many people from an energy standpoint i think that's go help us from create energy independence in the future we need to also marshal that so that we use it here in pennsylvania so we need to certainly incentives and make sure that we the price for for marcellus gas certainly usery love from that perspective you you've created a market for the product at the same time we're certainly going to see a lot of revenues and jobs being created but we need to make sure that those those jobs impacting our local ordinances and that's something that i intend to be fighting and revising in harrisburg if you visit my web site you'll see i'll talk about x one twenty nine there conserve that's fine but this is the state mandating to the power companies that they have to sell us lots of electricity and if they don't sell us last electricity they'll be fined millions of dollars now this bill was passed in two thousand and eight and it does find next year the retail consumption must be reduced by four point five percent the state legislators are also needs to repeal the alternate energy portfolio act which was passed in two thousand and four which requires utilities to get eighteen percent of their power generation from renewable sources by the year two thousand and twenty and a point five percent must come from solar so this is the state picking winners and losers driving up the price of our electricity again visit my website it elects to mean dot com and look at repeal act one twenty nine again the more energy we use it means we're growing and more manufacturing more goods the state telling the power companies they have to sell us the last electricity is a bad idea it's going to drive the price of our electricity up and be the green that's not that's not something that i think we should be doing we should be creating a platform regulation that is fair and consistent taxes that are low that allows these various alternate energy sources to compete whether it's with more salads with environmental impact to those and that's why i think one of the on the bill that the governor passed i think of what forty percent of the money was going to heritage for somewhere else that's not something that i you know i think the money should stay locally because the roads get damaged water impacts so if that happens the local communities need the money to ensure that environmentally safe t well i would agree with the marcello act thirteen that i think it should be repealed because the money should stay in there in the districts where if it truly is an impact fee and it is just tax it just stays where it's going to be needed but it has that act thirteen has created a slush time as the first twenty three million dollars goes to statewide projects and what's left over sixty percent impact the community whether it's emergency services or other health care issues that are impact on the community those need to be addressed and that money should have stayed locally but unfortunately the legislation itself was not drafted that  way and that was another reason to vote no for my primary reason for voting no it was because of a lot of a lot of local control but it's imperative you know best what's going on in your communities you know best where the money should be spent so it's critical that we ma how would you propose to address this issue well as had mentioned in my opening statements are you know our status sick and at and at the core of it is the heart of a state legislature whenever you have a pension pensions are tied with careers we need time limit we need to be part time legislature we need to be citizens volunteer for duty to go to harrisburg to serve our time and how do what's best for our state marc must g o s introduce legislation to increase his term of office whether in the house from two to four years and then the senate from four to six years that makes the last accountable to the people they need that often leave you to keep them accountable they need to be citizens volunteering for duty like myself i am not a career politician i will only serve two years and i will not accept a pension i'm going because i'm worried about the direction of our country and our nation ignoring the constitution and taking usurping and taking our freedoms and liberties there and who want to give back in my case the allegheny county gave me the opportunity this western pennsylvania region gave me the opportunity to be successful here so this is an opportunity when i see that same kind of opportunity does not exist for my kids and i hear this across the board and i'm not looking this is not that carrier for me i don't need this job and i want to go because i want to focus on consults very significant issues in harris park and i want to lead in the case of the pension with the four hundred one k kind of for reform i want to lead by the farm and make sure there's transparency in everything that you do make sure those things happen those are critical things to make sure corruption gets reduced or eliminated i think the transparency piece is huge i mean right now all of us have our expenses online you can check all those out at all of our web site this is i think a really good process for all of you does that certainly checking into our backgrounds and  seven things you know it's hard for me to go to harrisburg and see what happens to some of the people that are i mean you see that over the last two four six years people that have been indicted and put to jail when that this gives all of us a bad name and you don't want to be associated with them that's not who i am that's not why race when i ran for our kids i ran to put people to work i ran whenever you know the airport area was in dire straits you losing us airways i wanted to step to the plate and help and i think i did and i'm asking for that opportunity to continue to do that you know i just would hope that our other arms of our government continue to investigate and prosecute because we continue to we need to make examples of those that are there for the wrong reasons and i don't think any of us would be there for the wrong reasons comments i would like to add that i think we should pass a law that if you are elected official you can never be a lobbyist and it's wrong to go and serve the people and then use your influence to lobby in the future and silence other people i think people need to realize there's two thousand lobbyists and harrisburg and the down there lobbying for their special interests and you need to think about who is there looking out for you so the option was ok let's try and see if there is some opportunity we're having this debate to expand those terms so that you actually could then get there and vote and get something get more things done but i  speaker of the house the leader of our bodies said i'm going to do some reading sam smith introducing a bill to downsize the legislature it was a he was an opponent of that when i forced the vote on the downsizer for a discharge resolution four years ago he was an opponent but he has changed because he's seen how our body has fracture in his difficulty getting things done and i think by downsizing i think that helps make all of us all of our votes much more accountable all of our votes much more transparent to you all of you and i really would expect and hope that the senate would act on that in the very near future so that we can get it  hands it gets the lobbyist class people to lobby and that makes them less accountable and extending their term of office just puts them in there longer they need a heart change they need to have a mindset of a servant already there's a state senator who has five counties so if we go from fifty senators to thirty eight then the people have our last said we have the most we have the largest full time legislature in the country we have a little over twelve million people california is over thirty six million people they have fifty senators and we have fifty sen and so i feel quite confident with the technology changes that we've seen in the last few years that we as elected officials can continue to service our constituents and get the answers that they need i don't think we can do it with a lot less the one thing i want to say is you know when you're an elected official and if there's a conflict of interests it's got to be fixed you know it's got to be put on the table and you've got to do things that are not a man or that sort of isolates a conflict of interest a case when you get millions in a no bid that that's what that's what the expense of the taxpayer those are the kind of things that you know we need to white as a career politician of being in politics i think that was a little bit of a reach there i read the rules ever expect to win in all regions so i'm going to tell you what i heard in that race which is you know this is one of the candidates as mother told that if you can trust your life to an indian doctor you most notably can trust a common good indian  i have a small office in india ninety four percent off my spend is in the united states personal and stop ninety four percent and that tells you that you know what the what the level of you know when you see the indian flag do you see all this stuff it's i'm focused on to solve we need to get out there and you know have to those who want to serve get results done and that's what i'm committed to doing and i'm very humbly ask for your vote on april twenty fourth thank you going bankrupt career politicians are bankrupting our state by putting their next election ahead of the next generation we need to pass term limits and stop ignoring our constitution we to drastically cut spending and live within our means and pay off our debt on april twenty fourth you have a clear choice to make the positive one i am the independent candidate not influenced by big money o big unions i am a citizen patriotic patriot volunteering for public service because i am worried about the future of our children and our grandchildren we cannot be free and less we are economically  smaller government means more individual freedom join me and seek jazzer we will redirect the past pennsylvania onto a path to prosperity my name is office in two thousand and three was because i got tired of going to meetings and hearing our politicians say we want to keep our young people here and i want to keep our young people here i want all of our students that are graduating here to have jobs here and i think it's important that you consider that when you vote for your next state senator and i ask for your vote because i'm an experienced pro business record and i've never voted for a tax increase if you want to state senator that voted for privatization of the state stores voted for allowing private transit competition voted to remove the construction exception from school districts to keep our property taxes down so tit for a moratorium on property assessments voted for tort reforms and frivolous lawsuits voted for the corporate budget that says we won't spend more than we bring in receipts which by the way was one point one billion dollars less which we probably haven't seen in our lifetime but it's accelerate the elimination of the capital stock in franchise tax again to grow our businesses to hire people voted for voter id voted for local control of ordinance yes i have a record and i'll stand then i ask for your vote for senator i'm pro life and i'm very well versed on the issues and i hope you saw that the city and i have as much money as probably not and i have more experience i'd say i do and i know the issues absolutely do those that you respect and have voted for in the past think that i can effect and state senator and have endorsed me yes they have i respectfully ask for your vote on april twenty fourth thank you i would like to thank all the candidates who are very very good bunch of debaters i'd like to introduce the peters township republican spice chairman or valeyard for some closing comments and i would remind everybody that the candidates actually will be out in the lobby following our discussion here so you have a chance to talk to the thank you everyone and i'd like to invite everybody to visit the kiosks outs to outside and be sure to stay and greet with the candidates i'm sure they'll be out there shaking hands and you can ask your own questions thank you very much and if you need to find out more peters republicans dot com and we're also on facebook thank you