The future of this region depends on the quality and effective management of our schools. We need to allow local school districts to develop programs which fit that district, and then provide the resources necessary to address the needs of our students. And we need to end the cycle of financially strangling schools in poorer districts having lower property values and higher property tax rates. And we need to hold developers more accountable for the impacts they have on schools. I believe a formula can be developed that will result in better schools without a net tax increase.
We must make the following changes:
Rather than rely solely on property taxes within a school district, district public school funding should come in larger part from state and county pools that can direct resources where they are most needed. These pooled resources can be derived from a combination of the current local property taxes and state income taxes. Property taxes should be phased out and ultimately eliminated as a source of funding for public schools. Proposals to accomplish this have been floated before around last election time (2002), and then languished without a trace. It's time to act.
Restore state resources to their former level of 50% of public school funding, at a minimum.
Explore the application of impact fees on new residential developments that developers would pay to the local community of at least 5% of each new house selling price. These fees will help encourage redevelopment of existing communities, discourage suburban sprawl, and lower property taxes. Even in the current recessionary economy, the housing construction market has been robust with strong profits, which developers can afford to pass back into the community. Even if some of these costs are passed on by the developers to the new home buyers, it is most fair to the existing community that residents of new developments help further defray the costs of their new impacts on the community schools. Currently, the new property taxes paid by new developments pay only one-third of the cost to the schools that result from those new residents.
Allocate special education funding towards the special education students, where it belongs.
Tax Reform
The state tax structure must be more fairly distributed so as not to punish senior citizens and less affluent school districts with accelerating property tax increases. We must:
Cut property taxes.
Reduce reliance of schools on local property taxes by pooling state and county resources and imposing impact fees on developers. (See comments on school funding, above.)
Exempt seniors and the disabled from school tax increases.
Insist that developers pay more to municipalities for the impacts that they impose on schools, traffic, and the environment (See comments on open space protection, below.)
The best way to reduce the overall tax burden in the long term is to improve the state's economic performance by establishing it as an engine for new and better jobs. A stronger educational system, tax incentives for small business growth and redevelopment in targeted areas, and access to transportation and a well-trained population are the building blocks for a better quality of life in Montgomery County and the Commonwealth. With energetic leadership, we can move beyond the delaying tactics of think-tank studies of the problems, and into positive action with long-term vision for our community.
Open Space Protection and the Environment
We need to maintain our municipalities' voice in controlling development, and to require developers to address more of the long-term impacts of their developments. Our representatives must work towards curbing suburban sprawl. They must introduce legislation demanding that developers direct portions of their proceeds towards reducing the impact of their new developments on schools, open space, and local infrastructure. Developers and new residents must bear more of the responsibility for the costs imposed on existing residents and municipalities by overdevelopment, including roads and forced sewer hookups.
The first line of defense in protection of open space is preservation of our public parkland for the benefit of all. There is no excuse for selling out our public space for the benefit of an elite few. Smart development which addresses the need for high quality and affordable housing, while being sensitive to protection of open space and the environment, must be promoted. Existing zoning laws must be enforced, and communities must be encouraged to develop fair and workable plans for their future course.
Matthew supports Governor Rendell's "Growing Greener II" program for environmental preservation.
Urban Revitalization and Economic Development
Blighted properties must be returned to beneficial use so that they can contribute to the tax base, create jobs, and improve the general quality of life within our vital urban centers, including our county seat of Norristown. Both urban and suburban/rural areas will benefit from a concerted program to revitalize our urban districts. We need representatives with experience working with government agencies, municipalities, the public, industry and developers to successfully clean up and redevelop brownfields, and return them to the tax base as productive components of our urban areas. Our state representative must introduce legislation promoting urban redevelopment with tax incentives and innovative programs to attract investment in our urban communities.
Governor Rendell's Economic Stimulus package is an excellent start towards putting Pennsylvania at the forefront of the 21st-Century economy. Together with Matthew's experience in environmental cleanup for site redevelopment, these programs can help make Pennsylvania an economic engine with better jobs, better opportunities, and lower taxes for all.
Keeping Our Good Doctors in Pennsylvania
Many good doctors are being driven out of business, or out of the state, by outrageous costs of medical malpractice insurance. These insurance costs have been driven to ridiculous levels by skyrocketing jury awards. It only takes a couple of absurdly high jury awards to lead to huge insurance costs for every doctor. As a result, some doctors in risky but necessary specialties like obstetrics have had to pay more for their insurance than they receive in income. Clearly that is an untenable situation. Similarly, doctors might feel greater necessity to perform tests which, while medically unnecessary and wasteful, serve a purpose of protecting that doctor from a malicious lawsuit later on. While it is important that patients are protected from medical malpractice, we must find a way to protect patients without unfairly punishing responsible physicians. Because otherwise, in the end, we will have fewer doctors available to serve in these critical specialties, with increasing workload pressure leading to even more medical mistakes.
I will work to find a solution to this developing health care crisis in a fashion that is fair to malpractice victims, fair to the community as a whole, and fair to responsible physicians. I would explore a three-pronged approach:
We must work to develop methods of measurement to maintain high standards and accountability for physicians, so that poorly-trained physicians can be corrected early, or bear the higher costs of insurance themselves, or be prevented from practicing. Responsible physicians should not have to bear the cost for an irresponsible few.
Juries are understandably highly sympathetic to victims of medical malpractice. There may seem no limit to the amount of money that could fairly compensate a victim of a tragic mistake. Also, in many cases, juries have a natural antipathy to doctors or insurance companies, whom they often see as relatively wealthy and powerful. This often results in punitive damages and "pain and suffering" awards that fail to recognize the limits that society can bear. While there is no denying the tragic situations that many victims face, we must also recognize that there may be no remuneration that can ever be enough. By attempting to compensate individuals for the uncompensatable, we may be making the practice of medicine infeasible. Impartial judges or panels, trained to review these awards, should be ultimately responsible for determining appropriate award levels to expose and punish malpractice, and discourage future malpractice, without damaging the availability of medicine in the process. Caps for punitive damages and pain and suffering awards might also be appropriate in this regard; I would definitely consider such legislation, although a "one-size-fits-all" cap might not always be appropriate.
Trial lawyers should be required to limit their fees for malpractice awards. Too often the litigation process is driven by attorneys' motivation for major multi-million-dollar fees (which causes trial lawyers' PACs to have a major stake in propagating the current, untenable system). Attorneys should be compensated to a reasonably generous level for their risk, time and expenses. However, in many cases, the exorbitant fees taken by the attorneys rival the compensation received by the victims themselves. This drives insurance costs higher for everyone, and does little to compensate the victims. Therefore, I believe that a cap should be placed on attorneys' fees from malpractice awards.
I am open to all ideas to rein in the costs of medical malpractice insurance. But it is undeniable that the current system needs to be reformed. I will work to find creative solutions that are as fair as possible to individual victims, without victimizing the entire medical profession, and the entire community, in the process. In balancing these legitimate interests, as in other tough decisions, I would place the public interest, as a whole, paramount.
Reducing Prescription Drug Costs
After years of talking, it is past time to take actions such as instituting state bulk discount programs that will help make necessary medications affordable to those that need them. In addition, prescription drug cost reduction programs must be expanded to include middle-class seniors and others requiring assistance. While we need to support the pharmaceutical industries and its contribution to our local economy and the health of people worldwide, and to recognize the high cost of research and development borne by the industry, we do need to hold them to task to justify the costs imposed on US consumers. For example, prices for the same drugs in Canada are typically 20% cheaper. One possible approach which might provide a more fair resolution for both the pharmaceutical companies and consumers is to allow a longer period during which the pharmaceutical companies can retain intellectual property rights on their drug development. This would enable the pharmaceutical companies to lower prices in US markets by allowing the pharmaceutical companies a longer period to recoup their investment.
Our state representative must explore innovative ideas like these to develop cooperative solutions which all the stakeholders (industry, government, and consumers) can embrace.
Campaign Finance Reform
We need to reduce the corrupting impact of money on our legislation. Legislators must be freed to represent the people of their districts (who are guided by a moral view towards improvement of the quality of life)- rather than forced to represent the moneyed special interests (who are guided by a goal of increased profits).
The current political system is corrupted by special interest money. All of our representatives, from the President of the United States down to our local governmental officials, are dependent on this money to get elected. The campaign financing provided by the special interests is an effective investment for the corporate lobbyists to have their agenda for increased profits passed. However, the major corporate lobbyist interests only rarely coincide with the interests of the general public.
The Enron scandal provides only the most blatant example of campaign financial contributors exerting undue influence on our governmental policy at the expense of the people. The leaders of Enron benefitted in an extreme fashion from tax breaks, regulatory changes, and advocacy by the politicians whom they bought with campaign contributions. The political investments by mega-corporate lobbyists yielded those corporations huge returns, for pennies on the dollar. But somehow these returns failed to trickle down into the economy, while those at the top absconded with the money. In Enron's case, they left teachers' pension funds and citizen 401K funds holding the books. Citizens even in our area are now paying for it with increased taxes and emptied accounts.
While the lobbyists will have people believe that corporate tax cuts benefit small businesses, the corporate tax cuts passed by the previous Ridge/Schweicker administration are accessible only to the major corporations, not small businesses. The same holds true for the Bush tax cuts. The federal tax cuts granted for the vast majority of people were eaten up by the increases in state and local tax increases to cover the cuts in state funding. That's not to mention the stealth tax cut that will be coming in the form of increased interest rates caused by the federal deficit. Make no mistake, the ones that will truly benefit from these tax cuts are the mega-corporations, who are rewarded for moving jobs overseas and increasing CEO megabonuses to obscene levels. Those of you waiting for the trickle-down from the Bush economy will be left high and dry.
Locally, in the 70th district, the major corporate interests contributing to state candidates tend to be the land development and real estate firms and Political Action Committees. These land development firms and PACs understandably want to increase profits and remove roadblocks for development. Though they cover themselves with names like the "Committee for Affordable Housing", their lobbying objectives are about eliminating the influence of the community and the state in controlling development. Their goal is to weaken environmental protections and municipal powers over their communities. Candidates and representatives like my opponent, who have historically gained much of their campaign financing from developers and their PACs, vote accordingly in their contributors' interest and are selling out the public interest. (To check on candidates' campaign finance contributors, visit the PA Dept. of State web site.) We the People are left with the bill in the form of overcrowded schools, congested roads, ruined streams, lost open space, and a lower quality of life.
Pennsylvania currently has no limits on campaign spending. This creates a political arms race where corporate lobbyists exert undue influence at the expense of the citizenry. Races are won on the basis of who has raised the most money to mislead the public, rather than on who has the best ideas and approaches to increasing our quality of life. We need a legislator who will introduce bills to limit campaign spending and contributions from corporate special interests. Campaign finance reform is a key component of any program to increase our quality of life and provide fair representation of our citizens.
Other Issues
For information on positions on other issues of concern to voters in the 70th district, please visit Project Vote-Smart's web site.
The future of this region depends on the quality and effective management of our schools. We need to allow local school districts to develop programs which fit that district, and then provide the resources necessary to address the needs of our students. And we need to end the cycle of financially strangling schools in poorer districts having lower property values and higher property tax rates. And we need to hold developers more accountable for the impacts they have on schools. I believe a formula can be developed that will result in better schools without a net tax increase.
The state tax structure must be more fairly distributed so as not to punish senior citizens and less affluent school districts with accelerating property tax increases. We must:
We need to maintain our municipalities' voice in controlling development, and to require developers to address more of the long-term impacts of their developments. Our representatives must work towards curbing suburban sprawl. They must introduce legislation demanding that developers direct portions of their proceeds towards reducing the impact of their new developments on schools, open space, and local infrastructure. Developers and new residents must bear more of the responsibility for the costs imposed on existing residents and municipalities by overdevelopment, including roads and forced sewer hookups. 
Blighted properties must be returned to beneficial use so that they can contribute to the tax base, create jobs, and improve the general quality of life within our vital urban centers, including our county seat of Norristown. Both urban and suburban/rural areas will benefit from a concerted program to revitalize our urban districts. We need representatives with experience working with government agencies, municipalities, the public, industry and developers to successfully clean up and redevelop brownfields, and return them to the tax base as productive components of our urban areas. Our state representative must introduce legislation promoting urban redevelopment with tax incentives and innovative programs to attract investment in our urban communities. 
After years of talking, it is past time to take actions such as instituting state bulk discount programs that will help make necessary medications affordable to those that need them. In addition, prescription drug cost reduction programs must be expanded to include middle-class seniors and others requiring assistance. While we need to support the pharmaceutical industries and its contribution to our local economy and the health of people worldwide, and to recognize the high cost of research and development borne by the industry, we do need to hold them to task to justify the costs imposed on US consumers. For example, prices for the same drugs in Canada are typically 20% cheaper. One possible approach which might provide a more fair resolution for both the pharmaceutical companies and consumers is to allow a longer period during which the pharmaceutical companies can retain intellectual property rights on their drug development. This would enable the pharmaceutical companies to lower prices in US markets by allowing the pharmaceutical companies a longer period to recoup their investment. 
We need to reduce the corrupting impact of money on our legislation. Legislators must be freed to represent the people of their districts (who are guided by a moral view towards improvement of the quality of life)- rather than forced to represent the moneyed special interests (who are guided by a goal of increased profits). 
