POSITION 01
Local Control and Land Use
The people closest to a decision should make it.
Government works best when it stays close to the people it serves. The men and women on a township board or a borough council live on the same streets, drink the same water, and answer to their neighbors at the grocery store. That proximity is not a problem to be managed from Harrisburg. It is the entire point.
What I have done locally
As a township supervisor, I have spent years turning that principle into practice: building the first digital permitting system in the county, bringing zoning enforcement in house to save taxpayers money, and standing up a code enforcement department that pays for itself. None of that required a mandate from the state. It required local people deciding how their own community should run.
The threat from Harrisburg
Across Pennsylvania there is a steady push to strip local governments of authority over land use, usually dressed up as efficiency or progress. When the state overrides local zoning, it does not hand that power back to residents. It hands it to whoever has the most lobbyists, and the pressure of high-intensity development lands on communities that never got a vote.
I will defend the right of our townships and boroughs to control their own zoning and land use under the Municipalities Planning Code, and I will oppose preemption bills that move those decisions to Harrisburg. I am pro-growth and pro-development, on terms our communities choose for themselves. The closer a decision is made to home, the more it answers to you.
POSITION 02
Property Tax Reform
No one should be taxed out of a home they already own.
In Pennsylvania, you never truly own your home. You rent it from the school district, every year, for as long as you live there. Fall far enough behind and the county can sell the house out from under you, even if the mortgage was paid off decades ago. For seniors and working families on fixed incomes, that is not a tax. It is a hostage situation.
The numbers
Roughly 44 cents of every dollar that funds our public schools comes from local property taxes, which is why your bill climbs no matter what happens in Harrisburg. At the same time, state support for public schools has risen about 67 percent since 2014-15, reaching 16.8 billion dollars in 2024-25, and a growing share of school budgets now goes to pension obligations rather than classrooms.
Sources: Pennsylvania Independent Fiscal Office; Pennsylvania Department of Education.
My position
I support full elimination of school property taxes. Not a rebate, not a freeze, not a relief check that covers a sliver of the increase. The replacement should be a reformed, broad-based consumption tax paired with a universal essentials credit, so that necessities are protected and the change does not fall hardest on the people who can least afford it. This is a replacement, not a reduction.
Pension reform belongs in the same conversation. A district freed from property tax dependence but still carrying enormous pension debt has not been fully rescued. The goal is straightforward: fund our schools fairly, and let people keep the homes they have already paid for.
POSITION 03
Rural Healthcare and Emergency Services
Protect care close to home and the crews who answer the call.
Healthcare in rural Pennsylvania means traveling farther for less, and it is getting worse. This is really three problems Harrisburg usually treats as separate: a shortage of everyday medical care, the slow loss of our hospitals, and the collapse of the volunteer crews who carry us in an emergency.
Primary care and access
Rural Pennsylvania has about one primary care physician for every 522 residents, compared with one for every 222 in our cities. Since 2004, dozens of Pennsylvania hospitals have closed outright and others have dropped core services like maternity and emergency care. When the nearest option is an hour away, people put off care until a small problem becomes a large one.
Sources: Pennsylvania Department of Health; Pennsylvania Capital-Star.
I want care you can actually reach. That means letting nurse practitioners and physician assistants practice to the full extent of their training where doctors are scarce, treating telehealth and the broadband it depends on as essential healthcare infrastructure, and protecting the local clinics and hospitals that keep care close to home.
Volunteer fire and EMS
Pennsylvania's volunteer firefighter ranks have fallen from more than 300,000 in the 1970s to fewer than 40,000 today, and a 2022 survey found that 44 percent of rural EMS agencies had run a budget deficit. These are the people who drive down a mountain road at 2 AM. We are asking fewer of them to do more, for less, every year.
Sources: Pennsylvania Fire and Emergency Services Institute; Center for Rural Pennsylvania.
This does not require a new spending program for every problem. It means real recruitment and retention tools: tax credits for active volunteers, state reimbursement of certification costs, high school and college credit for training and service, and regional planning support so departments can decide their own future.
Veterans
Carbon County has carried the highest veteran suicide rate in Pennsylvania. The programs meant to help largely already exist. The failure is in coordination and follow-through. I will push for accountability: connect the programs we already fund, track outcomes, and report them publicly, so the people who served are not left to navigate a maze alone.
Source: Center for Rural Pennsylvania analysis of CDC data.
POSITION 04
Economic Development
An economy that works for Carbon County, not just the cities.
The problem here is not only a shortage of jobs. It is a return on investment problem. Our young people leave for school and opportunity, which is healthy, but too many cannot afford to come back, because the math of living here no longer works.
Where we are
The average commute in Carbon County is about 32 minutes, which tells you most people do not work where they live. A tourism economy alone does not pay enough to raise a family, and commuting to the Lehigh Valley is a bridge, not a fix.
Source: U.S. Census Bureau.
My position
I will push to reinvest in the skilled trades and vocational education, the paths that built this county and still go short-handed, so a young person can earn a good living without a four-year degree or a move to the city. I want to attract employers who hire locally rather than import workers from elsewhere, and I want development to happen on our terms, strengthening the community instead of consuming it. An economy built for the cities alone leaves Carbon County behind.
POSITION 05
Working Families
Keep homes in the hands of families, not funds.
A house should be where a family lives, not where a Wall Street fund parks its money. When investors buy homes by the block, they are not bidding against other families on equal footing. They are pricing your kids and your neighbors out of ever owning anything, and turning what should be ownership into rent with no end.
My position
I will work to move single-family housing back toward family ownership. That means giving families and current residents the opportunity to buy their home before corporate investors do. It means real penalties for homes left vacant and land banked, and policy that makes the rental business less attractive to large corporations and more attractive to local individuals. We can support first-time buyers in part by taxing corporate-owned housing, and we can give municipalities broader authority to regulate the short-term rentals that hollow out neighborhoods.
Working families, farmers, and small property owners are the backbone of this county. They should own their piece of it, and the law should be on their side, not on the side of the largest bidder.
POSITION 06
Public Safety
Back the people who keep us safe, and protect our rights.
Safe communities rest on two things: the local police, fire, and EMS who show up when something goes wrong, and a justice system that protects law-abiding people instead of treating them as suspects. I will make sure the people who keep us safe have the backing, the training, and the resources to do the job well.
I will also defend the constitutional rights of Carbon County residents against efforts in Harrisburg to chip away at them. Safety and liberty are not opposites. A government that respects the rights of its citizens and stands behind its first responders is protecting the same people, in the same communities, at the same time.
POSITION 07
Fiscal Discipline
Treat tax dollars like they are yours, because they are.
Harrisburg likes to act as if it has a revenue problem. What it really has is a spending problem and a discipline problem. State support for schools alone has grown about 67 percent over the past decade, and yet costs to families keep climbing, because the system rewards spending more, not spending well.
Source: Pennsylvania Department of Education.
My record
As a township supervisor, I have never treated tax dollars as an endless income stream. We built a code enforcement department that pays for itself, brought zoning enforcement in house to save six figures a year, and modernized permitting without raising taxes to do it. That is how I have governed, and the township's budget shows it.
What I will bring to Harrisburg
Every dollar the state spends came out of a family's paycheck or a small business's payroll. I will treat it that way: fund what works, end what does not, and measure results instead of intentions. The people paying the bills deserve that much by default.