What are your top three legislative priorities in 2026?
My top 3 legislative priorities are public safety, education, and community building. I am focused on making our neighborhoods safer, giving every student a path to a successful future, and investing in the places and organizations that bring our communities together.
What are the important issues
facing your district?
My legislative priorities reflect what I hear every day from people across Northeast Philadelphia: public safety, quality of life, and education. I’m focused on rolling up my sleeves and tackling the quality-of-life issues that impact our neighborhoods. At the end of the day, my job is to listen to the people I represent and do whatever I can to make our district a better place to live, work, and raise a family.
What is your favorite vacation destination?
I love experiencing the beauty of America and visiting National and State Parks. But like most people in Northeast Philly, nothing beats a weekend down the shore.
How can state government better support local retailers in overcoming today’s challenges and thrive?
I think we need to make it easier for local retailers to do business and harder for people to take advantage of them. That means tougher penalties for repeat shoplifters and cracking down on the resale of stolen goods. We also need to reduce the tax burden, simplify the regulatory environment, and create stronger incentives to keep revenue here in Philadelphia while attracting new businesses and investment. Supporting the businesses already here and recruiting new enterprises to our city are both critical to growing our economy and creating more opportunities for our neighbors.
What are your biggest challenges and successes as a legislator?
In my time as Senator so far, we’ve been able to turn some of our priorities into real results:
20-year tax abatement
We were able to secure a 20-year tax abatement for blighted properties through the Local Economic Revitalization Tax Assistance (LERTA), creating a stronger incentive to redevelop vacant and deteriorating properties. The plan temporarily reduces taxes on the value of newly added or improved property, making it more affordable to build new housing or convert existing buildings into homes, and helping reduce the housing shortage crisis.
COLA
We also delivered a long-overdue cost-of-living-adjustment to our retired police officers, firefighters, teachers, and state employees in this year’s state budget. Specifically, Pennsylvania’s retired municipal police officers and firefighters have not received a state-authorized pension COLA since 2002, and members of the State Employees Retirement System and the Public-School Employees’ Retirement System who retired before Act 9 have gone more than two decades without an adjustment.
This adjustment helps ensure that the public servants who spent their careers serving our communities and Commonwealth can better keep up with the rising cost of living.
Challenge
One of the biggest challenges has been navigating the bureaucracy of government. Government can move slowly, and it can be frustrating when you know there’s a problem and the solution seem straightforward. Learning that process has been one of the biggest adjustments.
What is your favorite food or meal to cook?
Definitely a cheesesteak.
What do you like to do for fun?
I like getting outside when I can. Other than that, I’m a Philly sports fan, so depending on the season I’m usually watching one of our teams.
What is your greatest success as a legislator over the past few years?
It really is hard to narrow it down to just one, but I would say that my greatest success as a legislator has been the VICTIM Act, my legislation that was included in this year’s state budget.
The Violent Incident Clearance and Technological Investigative Methods (VICTIM) Act gives law enforcement more tools to solve violent crimes and will help bring answers to victims and their families.
In Pennsylvania, more than a quarter of homicides remain unsolved, and many law enforcement agencies face shortages of personnel and access to modern investigative resources.
The legislation, also known as Senate Bill 911, creates a grant program through the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency (PCCD) that will provide local law enforcement agencies with resources to hire and retain detectives and investigators, modernize investigative technology, and strengthen violent crime investigations.