Parades, Fairs, Press Conferences, A Meeting Gone Horribly Wrong, Toasting to Water with Water, Hustling Pool with the Kids, Knocking on Doors again, and The Dungeons and Dragons guy is royally creeping us out. No, he really is creeping us all out. We’re not kidding.

It figures. Now that the traffic on my blog has reached an all-time high, I have become too busy to do regular updates. A whole lot has happened in the past couple of weeks. Here’s a not-so quick recap:

I recently spent the weekend in Burgettstown, where I had a booth set up for Burgettstown Community Days. The people in the Burgettstown area have really made me feel like a part of the community, and we had a great time. Not only did my staff and I run our Mobile District Office, we also volunteered to work a game booth and I helped out with the annual 5k race by firing the starter pistol and handing out the prizes.

And really, what community event would be complete without letting your State Representative fire a couple of rounds into the air?

 

Lawyer. Politician. Carney. It's a trifecta of trust.

I also took some time to participate in the annual Oakdale Fireman’s Carnival Parade. Although the parade route is relatively short, we managed to go through quite a bit of candy.

 

Making it rain Double Bubble in the streets of Oakdale.

I also had the honor of welcoming Governor Rendell into the area for a press conference to promote $4.9 million coming into Washington County to aid our efforts in job creation and economic development, as well as announce that we had secured funding to repair structurally deficient eight bridges in Washington County. For more information, check out the article from the Observer-Reporter.

Later that evening, I headed over to the Burgettstown Kids Center for the annual Burgettstown Crime Watch community picnic, which was unfortunately moved indoors due to the threat of bad weather. But the silver lining was that I got to hustle a few preschoolers’ lunch money playing pool.

 

OK, so Paul Newman I'm not, but I did win a Trapper Keeper as a door prize, so that's something.

 

This past week, the Washington County Legislative Delegation unveiled our proposal for the estimated $12 million in Local Share money from the Meadows Casino. As widely reported in the media (Observer-Reporter, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, Observer-Reporter again) the plan was not met with much enthusiasm from the County Commissioners, to put it mildly.

I have PLENTY to say on this topic, but because this is an ongoing process with a whole lot at stake, I will say just three things:

• We had NO IDEA that the County Commissioners were going to propose a property tax cut, despite all of our public meetings on this issue. I am all for property tax relief, but that simply isn’t possible for this money under the law. We were there to try and improve the existing distribution formula, not to discuss a property tax reduction plan that is most likely legally impossible to implement.
• I am extremely frustrated that the people of Washington County have been continuously confused by people when it comes to the permitted legal use of the Local Share funds. It’s not fair to our constituents and it is intellectually dishonest. (So it should come to no surprise that my opponent and his media guru took a break from their Dungeons and Dragons adventures to slam me again this week.)

 

"If only you guys could vote..."

 

• That meeting to discuss the Local Share process was probably the most disfunctional and frustrating meeting I’ve ever attended, and I’m going back to when I was in Cub Scouts.

"Hey, keep us out of this. The Dungeons and Dragons guy is royally creeping us out."

Moving on to happier news, we spent all last week at the Washington County Agricultural Fair. I had two separate booths; one was my “Mobile District Office” that handled all of the legislative duties like constituent outreach, and I also had a campaign booth for my re-election campaign. I felt it was very important to keep the politics separate from the official duties, and I would like to thank all of the volunteers who made the week an enormous success. 

I snuck away from the fair last Friday morning to celebrate the completion of a new water line in Hanover Township. While it may not seem like a big deal on the surface, this is the only way to bring infrastructure into our rural communities- piece by piece. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette had a great article about the completion of the water line extension and the difficulties that small municipalities like Hanover Township face when it comes to planning and funding these types of projects.

 

Yes, we toasted the completion of the water line extension with glasses of water. What did you expect?

And finally (yes, there really is an end to this post), I had the opportunity to really get out and knock on some doors this week as we begin the march towards Election Day. My volunteers and I hit a few hundred homes this week and plan on being everywhere in the days and weeks to come.

I was really touched by the amount of people who not only knew me when I knocked on their doors, but immediately told me that I was doing a good job and that I would have their vote in November. That kind of positive reinforcement really energizes me and makes me want to do everything I can to justify their faith in my abilities.