Today: Casimir

Saturday: Dincher

Sunday: Yaw.

State Senate race

20 Questions

 

Louis Trey Casimir

Name:

 

48

Age:

 

9 Mill St., Lewisburg, PA 17837

Address:

 

State Senate, 23rd District

Office sought:

 

Democratic

Political party:

 

Acupuncturist/exercise therapist

Occupation:

 

Married (3 children)

Marital status:

 

Graduate, Lewisburg Area High School, 1978; M.S. in Acupuncture from Swedish Institute of Massage and Acupuncture, New York, NY, 1999

Education:

The 20 Questions

Why are you seeking the office?

When I moved home to Lewisburg in 2003, I wanted to make myself useful and welcome. That led eventually to being elected to Borough Council in 2005. I have been effective at that level and wanted to see if I could make myself useful at the state level.

What are your credentials for being an effective representative?

In addition to being the only 23rd District candidate to have held elective office, my training in mind/body/spirit medicine gives me excellent preparation for dealing constructively with the variety of problems that people bring to government. Having moved home to raise my sons, I am motivated to keep Pennsylvania a great place to raise a family and to make Pennsylvania a place where our adult children don’t have to leave unless they want to. I am an excellent student. I am eager to get to work on our many challenges – I don’t consider being senator to be a cherry on my sundae, but to be the biggest, most important job I have ever had.

What have you done to prepare for holding the office?

Listened and studied. Sought the advice of previous office-holders. Completed the Center for Progressive Leadership’s Emerging Political Leaders’ Fellowship. Driven 15,000 miles throughout the District to meet people, learn the District and understand its issues. Met with anyone who wanted to meet me and called everyone I was told had an important point of view. Reached out to my Republican and Independent friends, neighbors and potential constituents to see where our similarities out-weighed our differences.

What are the top five issues as you see them?

Economy; energy; healthcare; environment; security.

What would you do about them?

Ideally kill as many birds with one stone as possible. For instance: use Keystone Opportunity Zones to create renewable energy innovation centers that provide jobs, provide home-grown secure energy to the region and help to preserve our precious environment. Or: create a one-payer system of healthcare insurance that covers all Pennsylvanians, creates more jobs in the booming Pennsylvania healthcare industry, covers participating practitioners’ liability insurance costs and creates a new industry in patient advocacy for companies that currently provide commercial healthcare insurance. Or: use best practices to drive hard bargains with natural gas drillers so that our environment is protected, our infrastructure is preserved and the state gets its fair share of gas revenues and/or preferred access to the gas which is extracted from the Marcellus Shale.

What have you been doing to campaign?

Traveling and meeting as many people as I can. Going to every parade, county fair, house party, clambake and candidates’ forum that I can get invited to. Making cards, websites and TV and radio commercials with my friends and supporters. Getting up early and staying up late. Reading and writing LOTS of emails and making and returning LOTS of phone calls. Enjoying every minute, but missing my family.

What is your plan to provide property tax relief?

Change the rules so that some percentage of the state’s natural gas revenue, instead of being distributed throughout the state as the Bureau of Forestry sees fit, stays in the district from which it is extracted. Institute a severance tax, like every other natural gas-producing state has, so that the state gets its fair share of gas drilling revenue. Freeze property taxes for people on fixed incomes and for families whose farms are lying fallow.

How do you propose funding schools, especially rural districts, in an equitable manner?

I think this is a faulty question. Money doesn’t make better schools, community involvement and a culture of excellence makes better schools. We need to provide more choice in schools while keeping schools public. Providing magnet schools in sciences, arts and technology and increasing the emphasis on vocational/technical schools are as important as providing every college-prep student with a laptop. While it is easier for school administrators to keep track of tax dollars collected and spent, it is more important to keep track of students’ successes and failures.

How would you represent Bradford County in a way that you would be visible to residents?

I would have one of my constituent services offices in Towanda, hopefully close to the Red Rose Diner.

Are you in favor of broadening sheriffs’ powers? Why or why not?

This is a tricky question. I am in favor of our law enforcement officers having the resources they need, but I am hesitant to contribute to a situation where jurisdiction is blurred between municipal and county law enforcement. There is a tendency in government to act like one size fits all, and we need our politicians to work harder to acknowledge differences and use better judgment in specific cases. Maybe in our more rural counties, sheriffs can have broader powers so that they can be more effective in supporting municipalities and filling gaps between municipalities, while in urban areas they continue to fill more limited and specific roles in law enforcement. I think this is a complicated issue and I don’t want to insult by providing a simplistic answer.

Should the Legislature define the specific duties of constables statewide,

establish strong qualifications and provide for standard training?

Yes.

Should same-sex marriages or unions be allowed in Pennsylvania? Why or why not?

Marriage should remain the province of cultures and religions, but there is no justification for providing legal rights and protections for one group of citizens while denying it to another. Property rights, inheritance, insurance, visitation and child custody arrangements should be available to all Pennsylvania citizens, regardless of race, gender, religion or sexual orientation. Why? Because America is based on the inherent freedom of the individual and every attempt to hinder individual freedoms has failed in the past and is doomed to fail in the future.

Should power utility rate caps be extended?

It depends on how the rest of the economy is doing. At this point, it looks like yes, they should be extended. However, I am sensitive to the constraints that the electric utilities are functioning under and the fact that Pennsylvanians’ current electrical rates are perhaps artificially low. Our whole system of electrical generation and distribution is deeply flawed – for instance, de-regulation was supposed to spur competition but we still have essential regional monopolies. This totally removes the justification for exposing citizens to the fluctuations of the open market, since it makes them vulnerable to market manipulation but doesn’t allow them the opportunity to strike bargains in the marketplace.

Should the Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council be extended?

Another tricky question. I am in favor of the concept behind the PHCCCC, but am suspicious of state bureaucracies. What standards is it upholding? What is its intended purpose and is it achieving those goals? How much does it cost compared to how much it is saving? These are questions whose answers a typical person doesn’t have access to. For now, I would say yes it should be extended on a provisional year-by-year basis, but like other permanent state councils and commissions, I think it could stand a very hard look by the legislature.

Should the state move ahead to lease the Pennsylvania Turnpike? Why or why not?

No. In general, it is a bad idea to privatize public infrastructure. Specifically, the projected return on the investment of the up-front fee was wildly optimistic, and a more realistic projection of investment revenue doesn’t justify the risk to state employees, motorists and taxpayers of putting such a vital state asset under the control of a foreign, for-profit corporation.

Should the legislature conduct hearings on the status of the big state-supported pension plans -- the Pennsylvania Employees Retirement System and the Pennsylvania School Employees Retirement System and the means to spare local school districts the skyrocketing costs? Why or why not?

I’m not sure what this question is asking: "…the means to spare local school districts the skyrocketing costs?" Your local school district didn’t teach you about sentence fragments and why they are bad, I think. However, making an educated guess about the question’s intent, I’ll say that we made a commitment to our public employees, and that was part of their calculation in accepting the pay and benefit packages they were offered when they took the vital jobs of teaching our children, maintaining our infrastructure and keeping our government processes going. If the state now reneges on its promises, it is guilty of a shameful bait and switch on some of our most valuable and faithful citizens. I will do everything I can to see that the state keeps its word to its retirees.

What should the state be doing about the upsurge in natural gas

exploration in the Marcellus Shale?

Change the rules so that some percentage of the state’s natural gas revenue, instead of being distributed throughout the state as the Bureau of Forestry sees fit, stays in the district from which it is extracted. Institute a severance tax, like every other natural gas-producing state has, so that the state gets its fair share of gas drilling revenue. Increase the budget line item so that we have plenty of properly trained drill-site inspectors to ensure that drillers are following the rules to protect our environment and preserve our infrastructure. Make sure that Clean and Green rules are clear and are being followed consistently from county to county, both to protect our open spaces and to make sure that the state isn’t being taken advantage of by unscrupulous landowners or fly-by-night gas exploration companies.

Should the legislature be reduced to bring its size and annual budget in line with other states of comparable populations or size?

It would disadvantage our rural district if we did. What would be more useful from a budgetary point of view would be to cut down on the number of patronage jobs and the size of the permanent bureaucracy. Also, our lobbying and campaigning laws contribute a lot to the expense and inefficiency of our state government. Legislators in PA make a good salary and get good benefits – why also tempt them with lobbyists’ and campaign donors’ gifts?

Should the state Alcoholic Beverage Control Board be privatized and the sale of such beverages be conducted in the unregulated marketplace?

I am in favor of expanding the sale of alcoholic beverages to grocery stores, but I am not in favor of privatizing the ABCB. State employees would lose their employment protections and benefits and the state would have a prime revenue stream reduced or eliminated. I am in favor of providing more choice and flexibility to the alcohol-buying public, but not at the expense of the state’s tax base and its employees’ security.

What should the state do about the rising cost to municipalities of water and sewage treatment?

 

This year’s budget makes a good start with its $650 million line item; the $400 million bond referendum on the ballot is another promising move toward bringing our sewage and water treatment systems into the 21st century. However, what is required is an acknowledgment that water is a vital and limited resource, especially with the additional stresses that are going to be placed on our watersheds by the gas drillers’ need for massive quantities of water. We should be at a place in history where we realize that dumping raw sewage, animal or human, into our watersheds is a bad idea. Then we need the political will to act on this knowledge and the creativity to seek opportunities to kill several birds with one stone.

Answers submitted by Independent Senate candidate Michael Dincher will be published in Saturday's edition.