I advocate Pennsylvania renders its own version of Colorado’s GAVEL Amendment (Give A Vote to Every Legislator), which requires that every bill introduced must be assigned to a committee, receive a public hearing, and be voted on by the committee members. This effectively eliminates pocket vetoes where a committee chair can kill bills by never scheduling them. The amendment was approved by 72% of Colorado voters in 1988 and led to a massive increase in legislative visibility and productivity, although it isn’t directly correlated with a significant increase in legislative enactment.

Procedural changes such as this will force our elected officials to take positions on legislative proposals, making them more answerable to us. Given the PA General Assembly’s tendency to gridlock on partisan lines, I believe this type of reform is necessary to making real progress.

As taxpayers, we are paying full-time premiums for part-time effort from many of our elected leaders. Pennsylvania is one of 10 full-time legislatures in the United States and has the 3rd highest paid legislature in the nation. But despite their generous salaries, benefits, and pensions, many PA legislators want more. There are no limits on gifts legislators may receive and the provisions allowing them to avoid reporting it are libera (see HGOC report, page 27). Further, approximately half of the 50-member Senate and a fourth of the 203-member House of Representatives maintain other business activities in addition to their legislative duties. Unlimited gifts and private business interests bias elected officials’ decisions and distract them from the important work they have been elected (and richly compensated) to perform.

They may treat their sacred duty like a lucrative side-hustle, but I commit to not engage in private business activities while in office - you will have my undivided attention and fidelity. Further, as your senator, I will work to ban full-time elected officials from receiving gifts or engaging in external business activities and bribery for the duration of their tenure. Help me create a Commonwealth where your public servant’s efforts are spent not in service of self or corporate lobbyists, but exclusively in service to you.

Because campaign donations are unlimited, the wealthiest donors wield outsized influence over policy, leaving everyday folks without a voice. For instance, both parties in Harrisburg are supportive of allowing billionaire-owned data centers even though the electrical demands of those centers are already driving electricity prices higher for working Pennsylvanians and small businesses. The ability of a few ultra-rich individuals to provide unlimited rewards or punishments discourages politicians from standing up for our interests and say "NO!"

Until candidates have an alternative source of campaign funds, such as a system of publicly funded campaigns, we need to limit the amount any individual can contribute to a politician.

Nearly every other state already has individual contribution limits - it’s about time Pennsylvania got up to speed. That’s why I support legislation like SB11 and HB555/HB542, to reign in the influence of moneyed interests on our elections and make Harrisburg work for us.

Corporations of all kinds should not be able to spend on elections. For over a century, we've given corporations unlimited power. It turns out, we don't have to do that.

Pennsylvania can change its laws to make clear that spending on elections is not a power granted to “artificial persons,” with no federal law required. Enter the Montana Plan, which stops corporations from spending money in elections by limiting political spending to real people, as it was before Citizens United. The plan is expected to be on the ballot in Montana and Colorado in the Fall. Legislation has also been introduced in twenty state legislatures and is expected to be introduced in Pennsylvania soon.

If we’re going to see real change in our state, we need to curtail the influx of dark money influencing politicians and their decisions. I support the Montana Plan as a reasonable, common-sense answer to the problem of dark money influencing our state government.

8 of 10 Pennsylvania budgets in the past decade were passed late. Pennsylvania does not experience statewide government shutdowns as a result of missing budget deadlines, but budget impasses place a heavy financial burden on county governments, as we witnessed in 2015-16. Therefore, we need to aggressively incentivize our elected officials to treat this responsibility as imperative. I am interested in exploring financial penalties (e.g. paycheck freezes) for legislators and heads of the executive branch when they are unable to pass a timely budget. Coupled with restrictions on external sources of income, I believe this would be a powerful motivator for our General Assembly to swiftly negotiate budgets.

I support the creation of an independent redistricting commission along the lines of that proposed by Fair Districts PA. Having served the legislature in a heavily-gerrymandered district, I can attest to the logistical challenges and suppression of regional preferences gerrymandering can cause. It is simply too tempting for the ruling body to utilize the powers at their disposal to secure their jobs - we need external accountability to ensure the preferences of Pennsylvanians, and not elected officials, are most accurately represented on election day.