 What are your top three legislative priorities in 2021? My top priority remains closing Pennsylvania’s digital divide by bringing high-speed broadband internet to every home across the Commonwealth. I’m also focused on protecting our energy jobs in the coal and gas industries and fixing our broken property tax system so we can fairly fund education. What are the important issues facing your district? As highlighted in the most recent Census data, the rural and industrial areas of Pennsylvania are losing population. It’s imperative that we find a solution to grow our tax base and keep people here with good paying, family sustaining jobs. We can do that by investing in our infrastructure, expanding broadband service and running new water and sewer lines to keep the next generation here in older portions of the Commonwealth that once relied heavily on the coal and steel industries. It starts with keeping the coal and steel jobs we still have, and then diversifying our economy to include new business growth. Where do you shop locally for food? My family has shopped at the locally owned Giant Eagle in Dry Tavern, Greene County, for many years. The Throckmorton family owns two Giant Eagle’s in my district, and my family sometimes makes a stop several times a week to pick up what we need. I grew up in the Dry Tavern community and having this grocery store here is a major asset to all of us. What is your favorite vacation destination? The beach! My husband Jack and I love to take our kids and grandkids to the Carolinas in the summer for a family vacation. There is nothing more relaxing than a quiet afternoon listening to the waves and a giggle or two from the grandkids. With the COVID-19 pandemic, we have canceled our vacations, but we are itching to get back to the water next year. I’m proud to say I’m a middle-of-the-road legislator that works with both sides of the aisle on any issue. What are the biggest challenges for grocers in your district? The grocery store owners are quick to tell you that they need employees. Most people know that it has been difficult for many small businesses to find employees to run their stores over the last several months. When the COVID-19 pandemic began, grocery stores were slammed as restaurants closed and people were afraid to dine out. Those essential workers are now facing fatigue and burn-out, and there isn’t a line of workers waiting to relieve them. I’m hopeful, as we continue to conquer the pandemic and the economy recovers, that people will be looking for work and can fill these roles.
What are your biggest challenges and successes as a legislator? I have several achievements of which I’m proud, but I’m particularly proud of my legislation for corrections officers. My district contains two state prisons that employ thousands of corrections officers and staff. On a tour of SCI-Fayette, the corrections officers asked me to get them a pepper spray mechanism to combat violent prisoners. We passed legislation that gave those officers that spray and they say it’s made their jobs safer, protected them, and curbed violence inside the walls. The biggest challenge remains the partisan politics that haunt the Capitol. I’m proud to say I’m a middle-of-the-road legislator that works with both sides of the aisle on any issue. Too often, my colleagues get caught up in talking points, speeches and what plays best on social media for them back home. I wish we could turn the cameras off and just get some work done. That’s what the people who elected us sent us here to do. What is your favorite food or meal to cook? My husband Jack is the cook in our house. The man can whip up just about anything, but his chicken and noodles from scratch are to die for! I’m thankful that with my schedule, he makes sure there is dinner on the table. I love to make my mother’s homemade bun recipe. You can use those buns with just about anything. At Christmas time, the family can’t wait for my peanut butter balls and nut rolls. What do you like to do for fun? We live on my husband’s century-old family farm. Our daughters have built houses on the property and have raised their kids there. We just love having them so close, spending time with them and our grandchildren whether in the barn or in the pool.  What are your three legislative priorities in 2021? Milk dating SB434 will put PA milk/dairy farms on the same playing field as surrounding states; removing PPE from the Farm show building so we can use the building once again for it’s intended use—to showcase our No. 1 industry in Pennsylvania; making sure that agriculture does not get cut in our budget.
What are the important issues facing your district? Workforce shortage, revenue shortage and lack of tourism. Where do you shop locally for food? I have a grocery store around the corner from my house; I use it as a convenience store. I also have a produce stand nearby to get fruits and vegetables. What is your favorite vacation destination? I am very adventurous, so I like going many different places. One of my favorite places is at the bay on my boat, crabbing and fishing. What are the biggest challenges for grocers in your district? Right now, I would say recruiting and retaining employees. What are your biggest challenges and successes as a legislator? The biggest challenge is getting the press to get it right. My biggest success is getting HB 544 signed into law (landowner liability protection act) Act 98. What is your favorite food or meal to cook? I love to make pasta dishes inside, but I equally enjoy flipping steaks on the grill. What do you like to do for fun? I am an aviator. Flying to destinations for golf, fishing, hunting, etc., is definitely one of my favorite pastimes.  What are your top three legislative priorities in 2021? My top three legislative priorities for 2021 are sustainable recovery from the pandemic with a specific focus on job creation, education and agriculture/environmental issues. More specifically, as we come away from the pandemic, I want to be sure to restore our colleges and universities to their full capacities in terms of learning as well as addressing learning loss and education funding from grades K-12. With agriculture issues, we need to focus on food insecurity and improving our food system. I also hope to focus on how we can promote a more sustainable economy and environment. What are the important issues facing your district? The most important issues facing the 11th senate district are our recovery from COVID-19, lingering unemployment issues and education equality issues. Where do you shop locally for food? I visit multiple grocery stores, both large chains as well as some of the regional stores. I go to farmer’s markets and, as soon as produce stands are open, I shop those as well. I’m constantly amazed and gratified by the ample availability of high-quality food products in our markets. Even before the pandemic, I noticed a trend of more families cooking meals at home. ...I’m hopeful this lasts as sharing a meal is good for families, however one defines family. It’s great bonding time. What is your favorite vacation destination, and why? Colorado, as I love the landscape and outdoor activities available, but primarily because my daughter and grandchildren reside there.
What are the biggest challenges for grocers in your district? Recovering from the pandemic, most certainly the biggest challenge was the unpredictability of the food supply and preparing for unimaginable disruptions. Consumer education is also a challenge as prices have gone up. Education to help consumers understand these issues would be useful. Even before the pandemic, I noticed a trend of more families cooking meals at home. It’s likely that trend will continue and many of our markets are responding by having a wider array of fully prepared meals for consumers to take home and reheat. I’m hopeful this lasts as sharing a meal is good for families, however one defines family. It’s great bonding time. But it also presents a new challenge for grocers. How will they respond to these new consumer habits? What are your biggest challenges and successes as a legislator? The greatest challenge of being a legislator is getting your bills considered by the full assembly and working across the aisle to promote legislative initiatives. I consider the recent expansion of the hemp industry as one of my greatest successes, as well as legislation to help individuals returning to the workforce after incarceration obtain occupational licenses. I’m also proud of the work I did to help Pennsylvania voters more easily and conveniently exercise their right to vote. What is your favorite food or meal to cook? Anything with ground turkey. I’m a miracle worker with ground turkey! I love to cook, and I focus a lot on ethnic recipes. I have a bookshelf full of cookbooks and a drawer full of clipped recipes that I cycle through. I have a magnet on my kitchen refrigerator with the message “Cooking is love” and I truly believe that. What do you like to do for fun? Gardening, traveling, reading and, honestly, working as a State Senator. This job is something that I really enjoy doing. It’s an honor to be able to serve my constituents.  What are your top three legislative priorities in 2021? I spent over two decades with the United States Marshals Service, so protecting Pennsylvanians and their communities is my top priority. I have legislation in the works to toughen penalties for those trafficking the lethal drug fentanyl and for those who trespass and vandalize critical infrastructure in the commonwealth. I also continue to be committed to making sure our schools are safe and secure.
What are the important issues facing your district? My district as well as the rest of Pennsylvania has suffered greatly over the last year due to the COVID pandemic and specifically the negative effects caused by the heavy hand of government. I hear from small business owners every day who are struggling, and we are fighting to make a friendlier tax environment for them and provide assistance where we can. Where do you shop locally for food? My family and I shop at several different grocery stores and markets locally: Wegmans, Karns, Weis, but primarily we shop at Giant. What is your favorite vacation destination, and why? My favorite place to vacation is Stone Harbor, New Jersey. I have been going on family vacations to Stone Harbor since I was a kid, and now every summer my wife and I take our children. What are the biggest challenges for grocers in your district? Like many industries, grocers have faced a series of challenges as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, such as worker safety, product inventory, sanitization practices, changing and reducing store hours and now distributing vaccines. What are your biggest challenges and successes as a legislator? The biggest challenge is trying to build a consensus in a state that has such diverse views. The biggest successes I’ve had as a legislator are the passing of Peyton’s Law, the increase and expansion of school safety, welfare reform and the legalization of medical marijuana. What is your favorite food or meal to cook? There is nothing like firing up the grill, throwing on some burgers and having a family meal on a nice summer day. What do you like to do for fun? Spending time with my family and friends is at the top my list. I also enjoy riding my motorcycle and playing the drums.  What are your top three legislative priorities in 2021? I think this year has changed our priorities. I think the priority for right now is the Constitutional Amendment, Senate Bill 1166 that gives the legislature a seat at the table after 21 days of a state of emergency. Of course, we’re going to have a great challenge with our budget, and we just heard DC isn’t going to help us at all, so that will be a huge challenge. And we need to do that because we need to help make sure we can get our businesses back up and going, we’re not increasing taxes on people, all the things that make an economy spiral downward we don’t want to do. So that’s a big challenge. And I think election issues, right off the bat, we have to fix some of the stuff that just happened in this election. I think it’s important that we get to the bottom of this so that we don’t have people who don’t have any confidence in this process at all. We need to find out what happened, where, and we need some questions answered, because that’s been all over the place. What are the important issues facing your district? Recovery from COVID is the biggest issue facing our district, facing our local government and facing our schools, and probably it’s the same in everybody’s districts. What do we do to move ahead and try to make everybody as whole as we can? Where do you shop locally for food? Giant Eagle, Shop N Save, that’s where I shop for food. What is your favorite vacation destination, and why? That’s a tough one, I like every place. I probably enjoy Napa the most. I enjoy wine country. We were in Europe and we went to Alsace in France, to wine country, so I like any vacations that include wine. I like the ambiance around wine. You talk, you listen to music, and I love wine festivals. What are the biggest challenges for grocers in your district? Keeping their shelves stocked with some things and trying to hold the prices down, because the prices have gone up a whole lot. And having people come into the store—they deliver now—most people do delivery. Those are some of the things where they are challenged. Everybody still has to buy food. No matter what happens to the economy, you still have to buy food. What are your biggest challenges and successes as a legislator? The challenge is definitely making sure that the people I serve know what is actually happening. Messaging and communicating with the folks in the district is really important. I’m very active on social media. I think I’m the only one—someone told me that the other day—I actually talk to these people. I put a post up, and it’s like a townhall meeting when I put stuff up. It’s a very good way to communicate and keep things running smoothly, because you’re talking to them and you’re telling them. Even in this last year, (when) I was up for election, even people who didn’t like me, or didn’t support me, I would get messages from them—thanks for talking to us, thanks for communicating, I appreciate that. I don’t agree, but I appreciate the dialogue. Can you describe what it means to you to make history as the first woman elected to be the PA Senate Majority Leader? The day I won, I wasn’t even thinking I was the first woman elected. I was thinking, I’m a Senator, and I’ve been elected. It wasn’t until we left the room there within no time, I started getting all kinds of messages and all kinds of media on it, and I thought, wow, I guess I am. I’m a woman, but I’m a Senator. It’s been kind of nice, because I’ve been getting messages from women from all kinds of states. People I didn’t know who were sending me messages and sending me congratulations, and they were probably somehow tied to politics to know that happened, and that was very, very satisfying. …It really is an honor. And I have folks in Harrisburg... the one person who works with us and is part of our team in the office said, “I want to tell my daughters that I work for the first female majority leader.” It’s really quite an honor. What is your favorite food or meal to cook? I do love to make lasagna, and I’m really good at it. My nice 100% Italian mother and grandmother, I lived with her growing up. I do love to make lasagna. I like to cook. What do you like to do for fun? I like to go sit at a winery, I like to listen to music, and I do that all the time. Every chance I get, I listen to music and go somewhere. I know all of the local singers, they are all of my friends because I do that. ...Usually I go to a concert, maybe two, every month. (This Q&A has been lightly edited for length.)   What are your top three legislative priorities in 2021? First of all, COVID relief is No. 1. This pandemic is getting worse by the day. The Governor in his briefing (December 10) shared a true concern that our hospitals are going to be overwhelmed. So, from our small businesses that have been negatively impacted with the decline of sales, to just regular people who worked and no longer are able to get to work, or are sick from work, we have a ton to do to make sure we get COVID relief to individual families, but also to the small business owners, specifically restaurants, really having a challenging, challenging time. The second thing is our public schools. So many of our children have been learning through distance or virtual learning, and it is very important that in Harrisburg, we are doing everything we possibly can to be able to fairly fund our schools across the state, and to make sure children have access to the tools they need. Whether they are in rural Pennsylvania or urban Pennsylvania, broadband access is still a challenge, getting laptops and Chromebooks is still too difficult, more than it needs to be. So that’s the second priority. Then the third priority is for those who are currently in the workforce, or managing several jobs who are underpaid. I look forward to working across the aisle to give Pennsylvanians a long overdue raise in the minimum wage. There has not been a raise in the minimum wage for 12 years. Come next year, it will be 13. All through law school I waited tables, and I’m very sensitive to the fact that we have people who are on the front line in the pandemic who are still seriously underpaid, and we have got to do better. If you work hard all day long, you should be able to put food on your table and keep a roof over your head. But because of the inequities in the standard minimum wage, people are having a harder time than they should be. I’m incredibly grateful to my colleagues for having the faith and the vision that we collectively share to fight hard for families across Pennsylvania, keeping them at the forefront of our agenda." What are the important issues facing your district? Back home in southwest Philly in lower Delaware County, I am seeing a lot of challenges as it relates to expanded poverty. All my neighbors work hard, but because certain industries are totally shut down, my neighbors who worked in hospitality or who worked in service at hotels, (for example) downtown at the convention center, (have been particularly affected). The poverty in our area is expanding because people are out of work due to this pandemic. Some of the priorities for the caucus overlap back home. We need COVID support here, too, so that people can stay in their homes, in their apartments. ...I’ve got people calling me, emailing me on the weekends saying that they’ve got eviction notices, because, of course, the moratorium is expected to expire (in December). I’m very concerned about poverty. I’m very concerned about one of the symptoms of poverty, which is violence—violence in our community. Much of it is handguns, gun violence, but not exclusively. It’s a top concern of mine, and to me. The way you tackle violence is, first of all, making sure there are more opportunities to combat poverty, and to make sure there is more support and intervention for children, teenagers, and young people who are very susceptible to making bad decisions quickly due to a variety of circumstances that also stem from a poorly underfunded education system. Where do you shop locally for food? Locally, I am often seen in ShopRite. I go to one of Jeff Brown’s (CEO of Brown’s Super Stores) stores a lot. I also like to stop at the Giant, which is nearby. One of the things I hope PFMA will brainstorm on with me is having more access to food in my district. We don’t have a large, major grocery store in my district. Part of it is how my district is drawn. You can go two blocks and go to another district and get to a market, but we still have a bit of food insecurity on this side, so I would love to get PFMA’s feedback on what it takes to do, and brainstorm, even on a multiyear project, to see how we can attract a more major grocer in our area. What is your favorite vacation destination, and why? I’ll say that if I could go anywhere, I would probably go back to Jamaica. I’ve only been there one time, and at this point, it’s getting to be a while ago. It was almost 10 years ago. But, anywhere with blue waters and light sand and great local food. If I could go anywhere once a year, a dream trip for me is to go to the Caribbean. Two to three hours on a plane and, voila, lovely. What are the biggest challenges for grocers in your district? One of the challenges is transportation—making sure that there are lots of options so that people who get to the market can get home, or in this pandemic, that people can order. I have done more online orders than I ever thought. I am one of those, I want to go inside the store, I want to push the cart through every aisle, I want to look at the fruit. I have a very hectic schedule. I have been taking advantage of the online ordering, which is usually either within the ShopRite I’m shopping at in the southwest, or they partner with an outside vendor to do the delivery. What are your biggest challenges and successes as a legislator? The obvious one for me is my entire tenure, my caucus has not been in the majority. My list of demands may be long but, of course, I have to, and I’m proud to work across the aisle with the majority party to make sure that my ideas and my neighbors’ concerns and legislative goals are shared with other colleagues who are not in my area but also see these issues as being important. And this year, I was very happy that Gov. Wolf signed into law my automatic expungement bill that I have been working on for five years. Which sounds like a lot, but in Harrisburg, people have been working on bills for over a decade, so in some regards, it was fast tracked. This bill will make sure that when people are in court, and they are acquitted of all charges, and it’s a non-violent case that they will automatically get their bill of charges expunged from their record within nine months. Can you describe what it means to you to make history as the first Black woman elected to be the House Minority Leader? It’s truly humbling and an honor. I’m incredibly grateful to my colleagues for having the faith and the vision that we collectively share to fight hard for families across Pennsylvania, keeping them at the forefront of our agenda. I look forward to working with them to ensure that all of the issues that are most important to them back home are uplifted, are amplified, and that we strategically make efforts throughout this session to get the small victories that lead to a big one. What is your favorite food or meal to cook? My favorite food is pizza. I have to push back and say, “You don’t need any pizza!” It’s great and delicious, but it’s just not something you should consume often! I do enjoy cooking. At holiday time, I like making staple soul food meals for my family, whose roots are in North Carolina. The standards are way up here! You’ve got to spend hours making everything. But on a regular day-to-day, I enjoy fresh vegetables, I eat a lot of fish. What do you like to do for fun? I enjoy a good Zumba class. Me gusta bailar—I like to dance! (This Q&A has been lightly edited for length.)  |
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