ily this is i'm a grad go from your perspective we have special guest with us today the candidates for the state legislative representative for the fortieth district which includes peter township mr l  i want to welcome both of you and thank you for taking the time from your busy schedule to be with us today mr parrot since you are the end cut income and for our area is that correct the  children all married and now have him grandchildren movement of the mother sinclar who are almost twenty four years know what college penn state graduated with a degree in political science which picked up the daughter that was born while i was gone and my wife and we moved to charlottesville virginia where we attended the university of virginia graduated from the law school there program to asian went to work for westinghouse and had thirty two almost thirty three wonderful wonderful years great great experience really had three simultaneous careers it was the first one was in general management and that meant i was involved in developing the long range plans and then critiquing long range plans involved in developing and then administering budgets and then in addition working with a vast array of state and local government agencies state and local government courts second part of that career was in what i call the people business i got involved in all of the aspects of the company working with people  developing and monitoring the ministry insurance plans pension plans savings plans workers compensation unemployment insurance management development training safety and so forth  y these are all subjects that we deal with on an ongoing basis in harrisburg the third last was a bargaining i bargain with with unions local unions gnashing unions and overseas many foreign during the last twenty years of that experience i also worked in local government i worked on the particular civil service commission and then for an extended period time was chairman a commission and then was elected twice nique unusual collection of experiences has stood me in good stead special training governing college military leadership experience on my business experience three different phases of it twenty years in local government now four years as a representative in harrisburg has blessed me with the train experience that is invaluable in station off off the coast eleven on for about one hundred days in a row and then fortunately the positive advantage for the navy being a nuclear powered ship but unfortunately for the personnel you don't get any liberty when you're in a situation like that  met my wife i was in the navy we've been married nearly twelve years now my oldest daughter megan just started kindergarten this past monday and my youngest daughter patricia eighteen months old and  affairs basically use the v a benefits are and while i was in the military to get that master's degree right now i work as a last control engineer for an insurance company it's kind of a unique experience basically what i end up doing is visiting every type of business you could possibly imagine from a mom and pop general store through steel mills and coca plants back over to coke plant today and you get a good perspective on what the business people are up against i think and it's been an overall pretty good experience pretty good career you know and that's that's of all what do you have pain you know doing away over with lorien the fittest and property tax that's a good question very timely question i'm absolutely convinced that the current local property tax is unfair discriminatory it's on duly burdensome on people in fixing comes or low incomes and it can be fixed and the way to do that is to reduce the dependence on property tax while correspondingly increasing the income from income taxes same time you have to be sure that you don't lower the taxes unfairly in on this a sara lee and businesses that their taxes should remain the same to accomplish that we've got to amend the constitution uniformity clause the constitution says that if we have a property tax it's got to be uniform for everybody so we've started that process with senate bill two hundred eighty four we have provided for a lowering of the property tax for individual citizens leaving alone the higher tax for businesses that constitution mostly passed in two sessions of the legislature and then after that passed by referendum says that's on the  way the issue now is to pass legislation which will enact a different tax structure and senate bill two does just that it's that we will have a slight increase income tax to match a reduced property tax rate of a homeowner's while leaving unaffected property tax for businesses this is a community school district votes by referendum to accept opted into this new tax program if after that the school district wants to raise the property tax again they have to go back for another referendum or unfortunately the house of representatives finance committee which took senate bill two they eliminated that back in referendum and added a very complicated formula which i'm not sure provide similar protection for thanks piers my position is number one time for change the system is wrong number two sen bill two provides a platform not totally perfect but a good start on how to do that number three we've taken the constitutional steps that are necessary and number four i support that back in the referendum that was taken out i could support something else if something else provided the same protections for taxpayers against increased taxes we do like to well basically i like the simon with a lot of the basically what i was saying the less money you make the more effect it has on your income because it's not based on income and of course that is the direction we need to head now we attempted a larger type fix this type back i guess in the early ninety's and that failed state referendum so my opinion simply putting forth a bill and getting it voted on is not so much of an issue i think most policy makers in a public forum understand the need for a change of this type i think we need to start publicizing the this boat again so it doesn't fail like it did back in the early ninety's and  this this can only help the pennsylvanians and and again it can only help seniors and in the lower income people which you know there there's talk of a problem concerning generational warfare which i think is kind of overblown but it's unique could the seniors in this country share the same property tax problem that that in this whole family you know the young family has because you know quite often we're encouraged to maybe buys much houses we can afford type of thing and usually those taxes are quite burdensome on a young family as they are on a on an older family with a fixed income so i think that that bill probably is headed in the right direction but i think that we need to be very aggressive in making sure that we trumpet the merits in getting it out if we you know this is a referendum item in it and all the great work the legislatures done goes for not if we don't have the political leadership to make sure that the that it gets carried through know i know i'm in the fixed income bracket and i know how it affects me and i can see where with a growing family too that it would affect them because they've got to raise me and leave me everything i qualify for the pace program has not increased with the cost of living there for many senior citizens cannot qualify for the program any longer what can be done about this which if you would like start to start this one case i mean that  really the fix is quite simple in something like the now that's already a program that is well tested or means tested whichever direction you want to work at it from quite simply all you would need to do to make sure that it remained at the same income level  it to the consumer price index and by indexing it that way it would continue to serve the same economic level that it was designed to serve where whether my point of view is that you don't get  the cost of living goes up but the pay stays the same right in the eye that's what i'm saying as as the cost of living goes up and the cost of living is determined by the consumer price index if again the when's that right and they can't apply  hypothetical and the consumer price index went up three percent or three percent of ten thousand dollars three hundred dollars right so what you would do is then the income level of a sudden would be stepped up to that new level and so every year that the consumer price index goes up the pace maximum level it doesn't go up well that's that's what should happen and that's type of legislation would need to be enacted to correct these programs a good program conceptually it's good barely half of what it was in one hundred sixty eight the increase in the ceiling has been increase of five years it's now thirteen thousand that's i'm actually going or if you're single sixteen thousand to if you're married a bill was passed bill fifteen twenty six in the house of representatives which indexed that ceiling to cost of living adjustment which would mean that every time the source curity went up that the ceiling on pace would go up as well most people on pace have their primary source of income so security and prevent them from losing ground that passed almost unanimously i think one was the governors in his budget all of them i think are band aids they propose short term cure for example the budget program announced by the governor would add a thousand dollars for the single person and the married person would pay for it by reducing the reimbursement to pharmacies and increasing the deductibles problem is that that's a band aid fixes temporarily there's another bill member of the house to raise a two fix it is not to apply bandaids which means we have to come back next year and the year after and the year after to correct the problem to continue to correct the same from we ought to try and correct it by indexing it the difficulty is and i think as a fiscal conservative i have to point out that that is terribly terribly expensive and if we undertake that kind of expense indexing it which is the answer then we've got to at the same time find a way there are some in the federal congress for example that say well we haven't changed the funding the funding has been the same all these years we haven't cut that benefit of course it's been a benefit that's been cut even though the funding is made of state stayed the same for a long  pace program is taken care of by the lottery though isn't it but we're talking about a tremendous expansion in the cost and we're working hard to make the lottery more and more effective drawing more and more money but we're reaching a limit and clearly indexing will exceed the limit of the resources available to the program from the from the lottery like a well my last question now is that this is sort of a personal whim and i've been rattling around here for a while the senior citizen peters township would like to have a senior citizen center what is what as a group can we do to obtain a center centers started in the early one nine hundred seventy s with the federal american aging act so that today in pennsylvania there are five hundred seventy seven senior centers in addition there are one hundred fifty two four million dollars and that four million dollars frankly isn't going to do what you want it's for programs and to do fine touching up of the existing facility stuff where we are now in peters's that we have  chartered a group to study the recently abandoned school in the nation to determine whether it could be refurbished to be suitable multi purpose community center and  here i think the answer is very clear the way these things start in the way they get most of the support is through the township where you reside so the next step clearly is to schedule a meeting with m i don't know somebody sponsors your satellite senate whoever that organization is they should all support somebody comes down the line there and give land can they see from up in washington i believe that her organization could support you on areas but the start is with the administration of the township and that's the next step in the interest of time i won't go through financing parts of it which you may know in any event i'd be happy to discuss it with you later well that is w you have a necessary step in that is to sit down in term and what your objectives are and what your wishes or interests are because that in turn will help you determine what your needs are what kind of building you need big building little building you need one day a week one day a month you need a big kitchen small kitchen what kind of facility anything you can to that you know what your objectives are and what your interests are so when you do that and establish in turn what your needs are then you're prepared to go to the some resolve on the part of the citizens of pierce township to recognize that need and that's probably where where your group of interested seniors ought to go and you know you piggyback along with the you know concurrent issues like like a need for a for a good community center at the same time which is something like i said the bethel park is looking into that i think is a great idea i mean we you know the communities today we have a lot of two income earners you know man and wife the spouses working in the you know the old the front porch community isn't the same people are getting the day right right and we need i think a lot of these communities especially in the south hills they need a place to go we can the you know be with our neighbors and and recreate them and kind of the more the more burdensome of all taxes and maybe you could work in the you know some some way of using the income tax the finances and also the course the state might have a role to play in something like that  regularity and my answer has been and remains the same basically for three reasons number one i feel strongly that we have to send harrisburg people who understand our economy in the factors that affect it and make it move number two we have to have people who understand jobs how they're created by whom and how they're lost and number three we have to send people who understand government why and how it works and why and how far too often it doesn't work the second reason is i think we need to send people to harrisburg want to stay in business who have some experience in business who are used to being judged by what they do not what they say and who can take to harrisburg the lessons and experiences and skills and expertise and discipline that was a part of their everyday life in the business world and a third reason that i'm running is that all of us in our own way and our own time would come to the conclusion that we have to give back and my way of giving back for a quarter century now has been through something and obviously the first thing i'm very very proud of the opportunity to represent of course legislative district for the past four years i'm also proud of the fact that during that same four year period i have not missed also proud of the kind of service that our district office and my four associates there we provided to the district and i won't go into a lot of examples i run into people every place i go to comment on the quality  with perspectives insights into the business world and the impact of what we do and harrisburg on that world that's enabled me to bring something special to harrisburg something special  caucus on the floor in committee meetings the best example i can think of is the recent discussion of a bill to eliminate teachers right to strike and replace it with binding mandatory arbitration because of my background i knew more about mandatory binding arbitration how it works and its parts than literally anybody else in the house and so in the labor relations committee with that issue came up in which i'm a member i spoke at length on that issue i did the same thing with one hundred two members of the republicans in the republican caucus and in turn spoke at great length on the floor on that subject and my comments gave  going over if you will have a background on teacher strikes on arbitration in general and mandatory binding arbitration particular that i got a series of requests for copies of that so many requests that i finally had a print and i have provided upon request now more than two hundred copies of that speech i gave in florence a matter of fact because of so much local interest of i'm not going to bother to go into any detail on the third item which is my platform if you will a platform for an incumbent is regular changing my platform included welfare reform it included workers compensation reform it included strong measures to deal with crime and violent criminals well we've taken care of all the things that are left on my agenda our education in education we've got to stop teachers strikes and we're going to start choice we've got to stop and we've got to start really empowering our local school board and we've got to solve the financing problem second is what the tax reform you've already talked about nuisance as a sign short term inconvenience long term improvement we're finally getting done so many of the projects that are long overdue district my concerns are they getting done as fast as they should get done and as they could get done and second are they being as well as effectively accomplished as they ought to be we got us paving over deer carcasses that are lying in a road we've got to stop shuffling bids to favor single since that's what they are and until we do that i don't think anybody's going to be very sympathetic to providing either more gas tax or increased registration fees the remaining two items are very quickly one is the improvement in our economic development we've made tremendous progress and probably more progress in that single area than in any other we make great progress we reduce for example the income tax dramatically but even with that dramatic reduction still so much more to do because our state corporate income tax today with that reduction still fourth highest in the nation and last item i want to see us do something similar for white collar workers that we presently do for blue collar workers who are displaced we have lots of programs require workers we have no programs for displaced white collar workers other than that which  retired u s ex manager what he does on his own to the interfaith reemployment group with virtually no funds and reflective with that i'll stop talking so tom will have a little bit time thank you very much for the opportunity well in some let me just touch on why i want to run for state representative and i thought i heard it best explain this somebody talk about running for politics it's almost like a calling that you have i mean it's hard to really put your hand on why you know you'd be interested in going through the tremendous amount of work to run for public office of any type but it's something that i've been interested in ever basically ever since i was in high school  mean by that is we have a habit of thinking only about our local communities we need to realize here in the suburbs that if the economic hub of this region which is pittsburgh doesn't survive or are going to be in trouble with a port authority that pretty much only thinks about allegheny county we have a mass transit system that i think can be distraught best described as a cell of the system we actually need to go the expense and investment of a light rail transit system that only runs for ten miles it doesn't service the area assets that we have very well case in point would be something like the meadows which is only fifteen minutes from here i mean running that line that's an area asset that's not serviced by public transportation a brand new airport that we undertook the cost to construct not really service me physically but public transportation so the pittsburgh area  beyond that there is no there are also the issue of road which i'll touched on and you know i think that penn but i think ready fire aim is best the best way to describe their strategy now i have to drive to peter's township from bethel park every day twice a day and i me tell you something it's quite a nightmare right now where they're undertaking to many projects on one roadway at one time let alone the fact trying to get to i seventy nine from here basically only this is only one clear cut avenue for that i that that is upsetting to me but even under the best of conditions those improvements are really a band aid you know pittsburgh is not service by the beltway and that's serviced by them on fed express oil or that those those ideas and it's costing us it's costing us in economics it's costing us you know the local business leader told me that the corporate net income tax rate in this state was zero they would have trouble getting businesses into the pittsburgh area because it's too difficult to get around you can't get your workers to and from the city of pittsburgh efficiently and how is it costing us economically costing us in quality of life and why why drive to the city every day and it takes an hour to travel ten miles and that's just not right i mean we we have essentially the same method of commuting to the city from the south wales that we had forty years ago and to me i mean that that belies the idea of economic growth that we're not going to have it unless we take the steps necessary to improve our area commuting infrastructure and the public investment in general that pittsburgh is woefully lacking behind in many areas of the country so you know m coburn state represented for the for the district would be to get these areas to start thinking hey we're all in this together in the pittsburgh community and i don't really think that's happening right now that's a big problem  to face right now or any time i would imagine but well i'd like to again thank you and bad who are joining us today and i thank you very much for your time and