What are your top three legislative priorities in 2025?
My top priorities are and remain: universal school meals and supporting/expanding anti-hunger initiatives in Pennsylvania, establishing landslide insurance, and advocating for meaningful criminal justice reform.
What are the important issues facing your district?
As one might expect from my legislative priorities, landslides are a huge issue in my district and across Western Pennsylvania but there is no insurance available to help people mitigate the financial impact of having their property or homes damaged by a landslide. Education is another very important issue in my district and ensuring that we are fairly and adequately funding our schools in order to bring down property tax rates.
What is your favorite vacation destination?
I love to explore new places and so generally do not go to the same vacation destination so that I can spend my time seeing and exploring as many places as possible. I love learning about the history and culture of places that I have never been before.
What are the biggest challenges for grocers in your district?
As with grocers across our Commonwealth, inflation has been incredibly hard on the grocers in my district. Trying to keep food affordable but still being able to pay the bills is a constant struggle. Though one issue that we really don’t talk about often is how hard grocers were hurt when pandemic SNAP benefits ended. Those benefits not only came close to eradicating hunger among our most vulnerable populations, but also helped our food merchants to be able to keep the shelves stocked.
What are your biggest challenges and successes as a legislator?
I always say that the most frustrating part of my job is the politics of politics. It’s the behind the scenes negotiating of personalities and personal agendas that can be the biggest challenges for any legislator. But I believe that I have developed a reputation as a legislator that anyone can work with and who works hard to get things done in a thoughtful and effective way. I’m really proud of the work that I have been able to do being on the Judiciary, Appropriations, Agriculture, and Human Services Committees. Especially when it comes to Agriculture, I requested that committee because I wanted to work on hunger-related issues. I didn’t see many of my colleagues focusing on that area and I believed that, especially as we were recognizing food insecurity globally during the pandemic, that we could not allow ourselves to lose sight of the need when the miles and miles of cars waiting at food banks disappeared. I’m proud to have made anti-hunger programs an important part of budget discussions since I’ve been in office.
What is your favorite food or meal to cook?
I hate to say that my schedule makes it very hard for me to find time to cook regularly, but I love to cook spaghetti and chili. Growing up, that’s what my dad would always make us when he was responsible for dinner and they are always my go-to comfort foods.
What do you like to do for fun?
I love to read, though because of all the driving I do in this job, most of the reading that I do is through audiobooks. Thank goodness for the library’s app to be able to borrow audiobooks! I also love a good crime drama or action movie to unwind. I am working on being more intentional about spending time with friends because it’s easy to get caught up in the work and realize that I haven’t socialized outside of my official capacity in months.
What is your greatest success as a legislator over the past few years?
I got my first bill, HB 897, signed into law this Session. This bill started out as legislation that would allow Pennsylvania community college students to seamlessly transfer their credits to universities in our state system of higher education so that they could complete their 4 year degrees without needing to repeat courses. Over the course of the Session, it became an omnibus higher education package that provided the most significant changes to higher education in Pennsylvania in more than 50 years. Now Act 69 of 2024, this legislation is going to help a lot of Pennsylvania students to access higher education and be able to stay right here in Pennsylvania to do it. ■
