Business as Usual: PA Sen. Camera Bartolotta

Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for your patience. Everyone knows that we run right on time. But this is just another reason why we need high speed internet. In some of the counties that we're gonna have a pleasure to talk to. We have Pennsylvania senator camera battilana, and she is from the 46th district. But before I bring her on, let me just give you a couple of things. First of all, we have Jonathan kersting. here with us today. He's vice president of all things media and marketing, he's going to manage the questions. And I want to give a shout out to our sponsors Huntington bank, at&t and 40 by 80, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Pittsburgh tech council working on workforce development. But our partners, Huntington bank, and at&t are heavily involved with us in all things related to a lot of matters. And today is no different. We're very thrilled to have Senator on and she will probably crack some really important policy jokes about the importance of high speed internet in the counties that she represents and beyond. But I'm going to bring her up to the front. This is not a chance for you to sell your wares is all about the senator today. It's all about her. So thank you all for joining. So thank you, Senator, thank you so much for being here. And I know that you had some trickiness in signing on this morning, and you may have funny isms about it. I think it's pretty timely. But before we talk policy, let's just take a few minutes to talk to talk about your background and talk about your district. You have been in the General Assembly since 2014. But before that you were a small business owner. And I would like you to talk about how you went from your roots in entrepreneurship and small business to the Pennsylvania Senate.

Okay, well, I, my late husband and I opened up the very first drive through quick lube in the mon Valley in 1988. And until just the beginning of 2020, I was working in that business and the first six and a half years that we had that location. I was literally there every hour that it was open. every entrepreneur business owner gets it, you live there you eat, breathe and sleep your business to try to grow it. So here I am, this 23 year old who just moved to southwestern Pennsylvania from Los Angeles, and left a pretty interesting acting career. To come to Managua. Hello, Pennsylvania and drop trainee pans and flush power steering fluid. So that was interesting.

Hey, um,

I met my late husband, Bruce bartolotta, out in Southern California, he was a lawyer and he was doing a record deal for a cousin of his who actually is from the Pittsburgh area and was living out there trying to, you know, break into the biz. And apparently, I've done a lot of television shows with Ernie Pantera. His like, late husband's cousin. didn't remember that. But anyway, um, so it was a blind blind date. And you know, do you want to go out there like, Oh, my God, what? Who is this person. But being a typical Southwestern Pennsylvania boy, Bruce was the most authentic, genuine, real person I've ever met in my life. And that's what you get from Southwestern PA. And it just, it just was like night and day compared to the life that I was living in Hollywood. So anyway, the we started the business in 88. And for six and a half years, I lived there constantly doing everything every hour of the day. And I never would ask one of my employees to do something I hadn't done. So I you know, change the oil and change in trainee, paint fluid and all kinds of stuff. So that was that was surprising until I, my second child was born. Who is my son, my daughter came first my son who I think is half rhesus monkey. Because he loves to climb on everything and out of everything. So it's like, okay, I cannot be in a facility with open pits,

and a child who is Houdini, so I spent the following years running it from home and being there as often as I could and all that but everybody understands, you know, you do everything that is required of every employee you have. The best compliment I got was a couple of different phone calls during the first 1015 years or so where I would train our new employees coming in. And the first week was what you do under the car and under the hood. And then the second week was, let's let me show you how to scrub a toilet. So I got a couple of phone calls from moms that said thank you so much for teaching my son how to.

Okay, so little

things like that. You never think that those are going to be a highlight of the day. So, moving to southwestern Pennsylvania, like I said, and working really hard and raising a couple of kids, and realizing the difference in the culture, and the values and the magic of southwestern Pennsylvania, that I had never been exposed to before that, you know, neighbors say How you doing? And they wait for an answer. You know, if you need directions, somebody will say, oh, here, I'll take it, or follow me, or just the incredible generosity and just hometown nice field, no better place to raise your kids than Southwestern Pennsylvania. But I saw a lot of that disappearing over the years, as again, I was here in 88. But then over the years, you start seeing a lot of these industries closing down a lot of these young families having to move out of Pennsylvania to find a decent family sustaining job. And I kept saying, isn't anybody going to do something about this? And then finally, it was okay. Well, as I've always taught my kids, if you're not going to be part of the solution, you're part of the problem. So I was recruited into politics never thought I was ever ever going to do that. I'd helped some campaigns here and there, but in 60 seconds or less, what really sparked the whole thing for me to run for office was when again, I was asked to run for house. And petitions were going out already. I was like, wait a minute, what are you talking about? You know, my husband had just passed 18 months prior, my son was still in high school, I'm running a business, I'm handling family and all these other things. And I said, you guys are nuts. So no. So they came back a couple of months later and asked if I would run for State Senate. They said you have two years until that race said fine. I immersed myself in every council meeting borough tells you everything I could do called everyone I knew talk to everyone I knew about this. Because as women in politics will tell you, we think we have to have a PhD in whatever before we jump in. You know, oftentimes, you'll ask a guy if you know they'll, they'll want to run up. Sure. Yeah, I can be governor, let's go. So there's a little bit of a difference there. We just want to know everything and be an expert. So I said, Give me six months. And then I'll I'll tell you if I think I can do a good job. I will. I'll run but if I don't. I'll help anybody who can in that six months time. My daughter came home from Ohio University on spring break. Sure, her freshman year. And she said, Hey, Mom, I've got a couple of my sorority sisters going on mission trips, for spring break. I thought that is so wonderful. God bless them. I have friends who've been to Cuba or Jamaica, you know, Vanessa, Vanessa is the town across the river from my house. And at the time, it was part of the 46 senatorial district and with you know, that year, every district did out so okay, I'm in. This is ridiculous. Let's do it. So that was my very first phone call. My first official phone call was to the mayor of monessen, even though it wasn't the district anymore. I said, this is how I got involved. This is why I'm here. And what's good for you is good for me. We're all part of the mon Valley. Let's work together.

So that's how I got started. Your district. What does it include? now talk about the district itself.

It includes all of Greene County. Okay. Almost all of Washington County except for Peters Township, one municipality that's not involved in the district, and then six municipalities up in beaver County. So I've got Aliquippa help well, Hanover, independence, South heights and okay. Anyway, there's six municipalities I got. I do man alphabetical order. I threw one in there. out of order. So I got stuck. But from Aliquippa to the arms of West Virginia, the whole corner of the Keystone state is district 46.

How would you describe the district looks like your overview, some of the unique challenges?

Well, a lot of unique challenges are just typography. For one. Now, you know we've got loads of mountains and valleys and things like that. So that is prohibitive for a lot of broadband to be set up easily and efficiently and economically. So we're working on a lot of different issues down there when it comes to literally getting schools and and folks who are having to work remotely. Good luck to a lot of those folks who live in Greene County and Southwestern Washington County. It broadband is extremely sparse in those areas. And we're doing all kinds of things to to alleviate that. We just got some grants and through my office and we have provided funding for a couple of Like 5g receivers down in the green County area, you know, three of them as a matter of fact. So that will really help the western school district and all of those businesses and parents in that area. Get online. But again, geology is a big challenge. Because when it comes to slips and slides, for our roads or bridges and things, it's just non stop. Because of the geology in southwestern Pennsylvania. It's different even from north eastern Pennsylvania. So even Penn dot issues are a real challenge. Where we are when it comes to all the slips, I think we had over 800 in one year. Yeah, yeah, there are a lot of things to consider. And it's it's a lot of things are done differently in southwestern Pennsylvania because of things like that.

Wow. So what let's talk about the state's upcoming budget, right. But before we do that, can you talk give us an update on the vaccination efforts?

That has been a very big challenge for all of Pennsylvania. And to me, it should not have been, we knew months and months and months and months ago, that a vaccine was going to be rolled out. So where was all of the planning? And, you know, I hear a lot of people say, Oh, well, you know, that's the federal government's fault. It's, you know, it's Trump's fault. Well, correct me if I'm wrong, but Pennsylvania and Puerto Rico are the only two United States entities that did not have a comprehensive plan for rolling out the vaccine. And I think that Pennsylvania and Puerto Rico were not the only two entities that had Trump as a president. I think the whole rest of the country did. And there are so many other states who've done it so much better than we have. And my statement has been from the very beginning of this pandemic, back in March of 2020. Our the governor and the the administration never brought in experts. They didn't talk to the the leaders of the Senate, Democrat or Republican, or the house, Democrat or Republican. They didn't bring in Jeanne board president of the Pennsylvania Chamber of Commerce, or Manufacturers Association, or the realtors Association, the restaurant is none of them were considered and they were all clamoring to say, look, here's our plan. This is what we can do to save lives and livelihoods. That's been my motto since day one. They're not mutually exclusive. Pennsylvania suffered the most strict lockdowns of almost every other state in the country. They they shut down all construction, all construction. And no other state had real estate sales. Well, where are people supposed to move to? If they've already sold one home and they're looking for? It left so many people in limbo, and then shutting down industries for as long as they were? You know, there are ways to do things to protect people's health, but not destroy everyone's lifelong investments. I mean, the suicide rates have skyrocketed, the overdose rates have skyrocketed, depression and poverty. A lot of these things would have been avoided with just proper communication, and collaboration and transparency, working with local governments.

What do you think about now? I mean, so here we are vaccines are available? I mean, I don't think there's enough of them. But vaccines are available. Where do you think we are now?

We're 42nd in the country for getting vaccines in arms?

Do you think that anything's going to change over the next few weeks?

Well, my my hope is, and what I'm hearing is that there are many counties taking things into their own hands, saying, look, we've waited long enough for the administration to roll out some sort of a plan. And there really isn't one, I think there were on the fourth or fifth iteration of some kind of something. You know, the and I want to assure people, our hospitals are not hoarding the vaccine. They're distributing them as quickly as they come in. But they're not even made aware, sometimes, three, four or five days if they're lucky a week beforehand that they're getting vaccines and what and how many they're getting. So it's become very challenging for our healthcare systems, to establish any kind of appointment schedule and any of those things. I heard and I wish I remembered what's next. It was and maybe you can help me with this. But most recently, there was a state that was in one particular area, they were having people wait two hours in line to get their vaccines. So what did they do? They went to chick fil a.

Yeah, I saw that

management at chick fil a. And they said, Oh, okay, well, we'll set it up this down to 15 minutes. You know what, find people who are doing it right, and get their advice. Do you have hope for us for the next few weeks? You know what I absolutely do, because I do know that again, there are a lot of counties out there, there are only 10 counties in Pennsylvania out of 67 counties that have their own department of health. And they sort of have their own way of doing things. And they're, you know, up and running with their own system pretty much. But the 57 other counties were waiting on advice or guidance or something and just haven't really been getting it. So I know, at least here Washington County, one of the counties I represent the county commissioners, they bought two big subzero freezers, and they applied and are now going to be a distribution site. So you know, and I also have been talking with a good friend of mine, actually, he learned how to fly on my airplane. But he is now working with a company called curative and what they do is they go state to state to state Have you heard about them, Audrey? Okay, phenomenal. And they do all the logistics they have they train people and with 40 people, they can open up, you know, you closed Macy's or JC Penney's anywhere that they can get a large area to bring people in from out of the cold and cue them, you know, so that they're socially distant, they can set it up, and they can dole out vaccinations at about 1000 a day. And with a little bit of a ramp up, they can do up to 5000 in a day when we get to the point where we're vaccinating the largest group of individuals. And again, to that point, exactly. When we started this, the one a phase in Pennsylvania with health care workers, and those, you know, hands on with with folks. There was about one and a half million folks on that list. And all of a sudden was like, Oh, wait a minute, we're gonna add all this whole other group into one. And also, that added 2.5 million people to that list.

who listen, your entrepreneurial roots, you know that you have to be chomping at the bit, because we got more. Yeah, we just get it done. Right. Yeah. You guys on our team is like, hey, let's just buy, let's just buy a freezer, let's just do it. Right?

Well, but again, it's like you're looking at these people in your community, desperate for some sort of help desperate for anything. And people are going and they're lining up to hours ahead of time in the cold, elderly, people with delicate conditions are lining up, when all they need is just somebody with leadership skills, and the ability to take control and say, Okay, this is what we're going to do. And this is how we're going to do it. And you're going to get an appointment here and you're going to get an appointment there. Stay in your car until this time, come on in. We'll take care of you.

But we're still can't get an appointment. So Right. Right. This is just all over the place. Except before we get to a question. I want to I want to ask you something here. You um, a couple of things. Lieutenant Governor Fetterman on, we had him on the program and we keep up with him. And he talked about a few issues, including his hopes to legalize marijuana use broad champion for criminal justice reform. Can you talk about those efforts? And does his lieutenant governor actually have a point relative to decriminalization of marijuana related offenses?

Well, I actually have a bill that I've worked on with Senator Sharif Street. And it is to decriminalize marijuana. I'm not at the point right now for legalizing recreational because when we passed legalizing medicinal cannabis back in 2016, the point was, okay, now we're going to use the great minds of Pennsylvania and we're going to do research and development. We're going to follow the lead of Israel who's been using medicinal cannabis for a laundry list of diseases and all sorts of health issues with great success. And for 50 years they've been doing that. Let's take that lead and let us use this resource that is cheap. That is prevalent that you know, it's been around for a really long time, and find all of these ways that we can benefit the health of our citizens of Pennsylvania. money wasn't going into research and development the way it should have been. People were getting lost. senses that shouldn't be getting them. You know, we were told it wasn't a political thing, but near anyway. You know, I know from a lot of different research, one of my studies in college was psychology. And we studied the brain development from in utero to geriatric, the whole thing, and brain synapses, the effects of THC and all that, at least that wasn't my dog. I just heard that. I can't find out my head a little bit, I'll fight the other day. And I'm like,

the choice of zoom. I

love it.

I love it.

But I think we need to focus on research and development and the true benefits of medicinal cannabis before we unleash recreational because you know, what happens, then, we're done with the research for medicinal and that would really be tragic. For a lot of these these parents of kids with dorabase syndrome, and even Parkinson's and all these other possibilities for it, I would much rather see it focused on that. And and secondly, I'm all about workforce development. I'm all about re entry. For those coming out of incarceration, you open up recreational marijuana. And, you know, as business owners that are watching, you know, now or in the future, you want someone who can pass a drug test. It's pretty difficult right now, to have people to have enough people in the workforce who can pass a drug test, and you open up that door. And I just think it's going to do a big disservice to a lot of our entrepreneurs, our business leaders who are looking to hire and train people who who wouldn't be able to, because they wouldn't be able to pass the drug test.

One of the things I mean, you're making a lot of good points, one of the things is that on siebers at all around us are legalizing it. So yeah,

exactly. opportunity for revenue. Well, but the thing is to to, you know, let's not have Pennsylvania put more people behind bars for doing something that they can do legally in other states. I'm all for that. That's fine. And we have far too many people behind bars for technical violations already. That's another bill that I have probation reform, stop putting people behind bars for a technical violation of probation. And there's the majority of people in county lockup are there for technical violation.

So an example of a technical violation,

a technical if you're on probation, and you're at a halfway house, and you have a I don't know, a six pack of beer under your bed, they find it you go back to jail. Oh, a mom who's working three jobs. And three years into her probation, you know, finds out her manager says no, no, no, you can't leave at 10 o'clock tonight, I'm keeping you till midnight. While I'm supposed to call my probation officer I'm supposed to check in or whatever. Hey, sorry, you know, you're fired if you leave. Okay? Well, if she doesn't make that phone call, she could go back behind bars for violating probation. There's a long list of requirements when you're on probation and parole, and if you violate those, they can put you back in jail. And that's not keeping our streets safer. That's not keeping families together. That's not keeping people employed. I just had lunch with a person three days ago, who was on probation, and was riding with a friend, he wasn't even driving. And the friend experienced this issue of road rage.

Okay.

And it wasn't even him who was doing it. This other gentleman chase that didn't like being cut off, Chase these two guys into a parking lot, pinned them in and pulled the gun on him. I called the police. But because he was on probation and had any kind of interaction with law enforcement. I couldn't afford bail. They put him in jail for a month and a half. Because he just happened to be there. He lost his job. So I mean, these are things that we have to look at. I'm all for making our streets safer, but not for wasting taxpayer dollars on things like that.

Jonathan, I'm going to go on mute for a second, pull out a couple of good questions. Good question. There's statements. But there's some good questions. And

Senator, thank you for joining us today. It's a pleasure to have you on the show today. So a question from Zach wants to know, I'm having grown up in the mine Valley and moved away from the area due to local economics situations. What are you doing to keep your word and to give back to that community that inspired you to get into politics?

I love that question. That's fantastic. I am continually looking for ways and finding ways to actually to infuse the mon valley with business opportunities with employment opportunities with grants for re educating for Workforce Development. For all sorts of things. I'm also on the LSA board. Some people know what that is the local share account, which is casino money, every year, there's a pot, a small pot of money that gets put into this local share account. And on the board, we see applicants for uses for that funding. The majority of it are for nonprofits or historical sites or but a lot of them too are for economic development. So those are things that I'm very passionate about. Let's get people back to work, let's make our communities welcoming to businesses so that people want to build a home here, they want to raise their family here and go to school, hear all of those things. I'm very passionate about our local school districts, and making sure that they are doing the absolute best that they can. I've I've worked very hard to support the the fair funding formula for education dollars moving forward so that, you know, just because you're in a rural area doesn't mean that your kids that grow up here deserve a mediocre education. Not that that's what they're getting, but you know, what they can afford iPads or you know, Chromebooks and things to go home with. And, you know, through through my wonderful district director, Renick Remley who's I think listening somehow on here. Because there's one school in my district that is in a very impoverished area, they didn't have enough money to buy computers for their students to take part in. And this was before COVID, to be able to do their own version of cyber school. So they were losing all of these students to a different cyber school. And mind you that school districts still has to pay for them. That money comes out of that school district. And unfortunately, many times when a child leaves the school district and goes to cyber, they're automatically put into an IEP, they're automatically considered, you know, a special needs. So that costs triples out of the school district. So through renix, help and connections, he knows we were able to get 40 computers for that school district. All those students were able then to do their own cyber school. It saved the school over $200,000 a year. Little things like that. And it was a donation was a donation. So we do all we can to try to think outside the box to make sure that we're doing everything we can to bring jobs, good paying jobs and industry manufacturing into the mon Valley.

Oh, you're actually involved senator with the film industry and the film tax credit. We just had dawn Keizer on. I think it was Friday, Thursday.

He told me.

Yeah, yeah. So tell us what your role is. And any thoughts about that? Well, I

started the first ever film industry caucus. And there's so many people who are very much involved in it really want to participate in it. And having grown up in Los Angeles and been in the film industry for so long. I know how beneficial the film industry can be to a region. The return on that investment is incredible. So I have legislation out right now, we don't even have a bill number on it, because we're circulating it right now to get co sponsorships and interest from other senators. But it is too we have to rebrand the film industry. Well, it's a tax credit is what they're calling it right now. So it's called the film industry, the film tax credit in Pennsylvania. And that's absolutely wrong. It's the wrong thing to call it because the independent fiscal office, the CFO in Pennsylvania was asked to they answered the right answer to the wrong question. How much tax money? Is the film industry bringing back to Pennsylvania? You can't ask it that way. That's not that's not the way to do it. You're looking at a pile of money through a keyhole, and you're seeing 20 bucks. No, there's a roomful. This means 1000s of good jobs. This means tourism dollars. This how many people still go to Philly and climb the rocky steps was that 40 years ago? There are so many places like that right now. And you know, the Joker was filmed here. And it's just astounding, the ripple effect economically for any community that has the film industry come into it. And there is no more move mobile industry than the film industry. So my legislation would change the verbiage and rebrand it to the film industry incentive and raise the cap right now. I mean, Don, and I started Trouble, like mad people two years ago to get it raised to 70 million. But if we could at least get it up to 125 million, that would, that would catch all of these, you know, these Netflix and Hulu and, and, you know, Amazon Prime all of these entities that are trying desperately to produce content, and they want to do it in Pennsylvania. And we just need to open the door and they'll be here.

Well, here's the last thing because I know we started a few minutes late. But I want to get this point in because I really care about your opinion here. So like most state governments, right, Pennsylvania is facing a substantial, as I mentioned earlier about the marijuana budget shortfall. Critical isn't for Congress to provide some relief to the state government. Then related, we saw the governor proposed nearly 50% increase in personal income tax rate, which as you can hear by my voice, I'm not, you know, excited about at all this is that most small businesses would be taxed in Pennsylvania. So here we are people who are living in the city, just as I am, we probably live in the antithesis of an environment. But I live in in clute in the city proper, and we would pay now a combined 7.5%. So let's put that in context with who we're competing with Austin and Miami. 00 personal income tax rates with aggressive recruitment, aggressive recruitment. So with Congress set to an optimistic Florida and Texas, they're cleaning our clocks, they really are. And and what do we do? Is the governor's tax proposal really warranted? No,

no and and, you know, one of the other my degrees in business, and I can't imagine anyone who's ever even had economics one on one, thinking that that budget is going to be helpful in any way. The only thing that's going to do is Chase more capital investment out of Pennsylvania, and taxing our our mom and pops are small businesses to the tune of 46%. It's a 46% increase on their personal income tax, every single small business pays personal income tax on their business. And a lot of that isn't even on their on their balance. I mean, you don't even take that home. I know from 31 years of experience,

okay. Yeah,

it's it's a non starter, because we have literally seen our mom and pops our small businesses in Pennsylvania beaten, like up in Jada, for a year, almost a year closing down everything, they they're resisting, this will, we'll never see 1000s of them open their doors, again, 1000s of businesses are done for good. And then for those that are left to throw them an Advil and call it a life preserver. That's ludicrous. So to me, that is an absolute non starter. If you want more money in the coffers of Pennsylvania, by tax revenue. Let's invite people in. Let's stop being so unfriendly to business. There's no predictability in Pennsylvania when it comes to anything when it comes to taxation, regulation, zoning, permitting, oh my god, there's no predictability whatsoever. So we have literally shut our doors on billions of dollars in capital investment that has gone elsewhere. And we just keep doing it. Those are 1000s and 1000s. of good paying jobs, that would what pay taxes, bring them in, be welcoming, stop trying to tax the crap out of everyone and every industry and shutting your doors on what could be beneficial to the bottom line of Pennsylvania.

Listen, we're gonna count on you to move this agenda forward. Okay. Yep. We've made a lot of comments today. I know that we started late. I apologize for that day here. No, I'm just trying to be sensitive to everyone's time. We care about you have we put up we care about supporting you and making sure that this agenda gets, you know, articulated and raised, because it the magic that you conveyed earlier about living here. I mean, coming from the west coast and being in you know, in film and being around that sort of, you know, cadre of people, you get it, you totally get it. So, first of all, my hat's off to you for having the passion and being someone who is a small business owner and driving the agenda forward. If anyone wants to reach out to you, there should be a link that we put out there. I'm sure that you will listen to people whether or not they're inside your area or not always do we always

do and it's easy. I The only state senator named camera, pretty easy to find.

We really love them. We love them. So I, so everyone reached out to Senator xi, what you see here is what you get. And I really appreciate that. We're going to continue to figure out ways to make sure that this is an amazing place for people to live and work. We have to be competitive. We have to be

we didn't even get into the severance tax or the racehorse development fund or any of the other wackadoodles. Right. To do so, next time. Well, we're

gonna have to have you back. We're gonna have to have you back. We'll stay connected. There were lots of comments out here. We'll capture them, and share them with your team. And I want to thank everyone for your patience for being with us today. Thank you, Senator, thank you for your work. Thank you for your passion and join today.

So thanks everyone so much keep doing what you're doing.

Well, we having tomorrow. Who do we have tomorrow?

We have Jennifer Coyne stopping by she leads up additive manufacturing at web tech talking about that in neighborhood 91. her resume is impressive. cannot wait to talk with her tomorrow.

That's great. All right. Well, thank you everyone. Sorry that we started late. But as you can see, it was well worth waiting. Senator Thanks, everyone.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai