The biggest issue facing Pennsylvania families is the cost of living. I will fight to raise Pennsylvania’s minimum wage to $22 an hour and adjust it annually to keep pace with the cost of living. I will push to standardize property assessments so wealthy homeowners pay their fair share while easing the burden of school taxes on working families. I will fight to cap out-of-pocket costs for medications like insulin and cut out middlemen who drive up prescription drug prices. I also support a moratorium on new data centers until the Legislature passes laws that hold developers accountable to the community. I approach public service with a simple belief: I am for the people, not the powerful.

Our elections should be easy to use, hard to tamper with, and easy to trust. I support more early voting, clear mail ballot rules, and enough polling places so no one is shut out by time or distance.

Every ballot should have a paper record, and every election should trigger routine audits. I would also create a public chain-of-custody log so people can see when ballots were printed, sent, received, and counted. Not who voted for whom, but whether the process was followed. Programs can be used to flag misinformation and unusual patterns for review, which will require humans to review the patterns. Access, security, and transparency have to work together.

The budgeting process has proven ineffective. Everyone is playing games, and no one is being held accountable. I would require a public draft at least 60 days before the deadline and prohibit any vote unless it has been public for two weeks. If the deadline is missed, consequences must be immediate and visible. Legislative pay stops, and discretionary funding pauses. At the same time, non-critical state operations begin to slow on a defined schedule, so the public feels the impact of the delay. The goal is to force action, not allow stalemates to continue without consequence. I would also move major spending into multi-year frameworks to avoid repeating the same conflicts each year.

Yes, the state should act because the scale of these projects now affects everyone. One data center can use as much electricity as 150,000 homes. That is the number of homes in Lehigh County. It is not just a local land use question. That is a regional cost and grid stability issue.

The state should set baseline rules on energy use, water, and cost responsibility so projects cannot shift grid upgrades and price increases onto residents. If a project increases demand, it should fund capacity or provide direct rate relief.

At the same time, municipalities must retain authority under the MPC over zoning, siting, and conditional use. The state defines the impact and the terms. Local communities decide if they accept the tradeoff.

Affordability is the biggest challenge facing my constituents, touching nearly every area of their lives. My approach has been to look at how government makes things more expensive, then tackle those issues. For example, in June I voted for House Bill 1667 to eliminate the gross receipts tax on electric bills, lowering costs for consumers by almost $2 billion a year, and to create a sales tax holiday for school supplies. That bill is now awaiting action in the House. I’ve also focused on cutting red tape to make homes more affordable. According to the PA Home Builders Association, nearly one-third of a new home’s cost comes from complying with state and local regulations — almost $100,000 of a $300,000 home. That’s unacceptable

Ensuring election equipment is properly tested before Election Day is a straightforward way to build public confidence in the process. I introduced Senate Bill 313 to strengthen equipment testing and establish statewide standards, making pre-election logic and accuracy testing predictable and transparent. The bill also creates a criminal penalty for election officials who knowingly falsify logic and accuracy testing records, a misdemeanor punishable by up to a $1,000 fine, two years imprisonment, or both. Together, these provisions reduce the risk of programming errors and strengthen public trust in our elections.

While budget timeliness matters, my bigger concern is the unsustainable fiscal path Pennsylvania is on. When I first ran for office, I committed to voting only for budgets that spend no more than the revenue we bring in and don’t grow faster than inflation. Three of the last four budgets failed that simple test. Pennsylvania’s Independent Fiscal Office found the 2026-2027 budget carries a $5 billion structural deficit, papered over by delaying $2.6 billion in Medicaid payments to the next fiscal year to appear balanced. That’s not fiscal responsibility — it’s kicking the can down the road. Taxpayers will ultimately pay the price for this charade, and that concerns me more than whether the budget was enacted on time.

Pennsylvania has a long history of empowering local communities to address complex development issues, which is why I introduced Senate Bill 1345, allowing municipalities to enact temporary moratoriums of up to 18 months on new high-impact data center applications. Personally, I don’t believe these projects are a good fit for the communities I represent, though other areas welcome them. This legislation tries to balance local control with the statewide impact these projects can have on energy and infrastructure. On electricity usage, I believe data centers shouldn’t just be self-sufficient — they should be required to generate excess power that feeds back into the grid, lowering prices for everyone else.