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State officials visit LHU, talk jobs, internet, transportation

Interim Secretary of State Robert Torres, Secretary of Transportation Leslie Richards, Secretary of Agriculture Russell Redding, Acting Secretary of Labor and Industry Jerry Oleksiak and Secretary of the Department of Community and Economic Development Dennis Davin, from left to right, take part in the "Cabinet in Your Community" event at Lock Haven University on Wednesday afternoon. KAREN VIBERT-KENNEDY/Sun-Gazette

LOCK HAVEN — For residents of Clinton and Centre counties, transportation, internet and jobs were the biggest issues raised at Gov. Tom Wolf’s Cabinet in Your Community event Wednesday at Lock Haven University.

State secretaries Dennis M. Davin, Department of Community and Economic Development; Jerry Oleksiak, Department of Labor and Industry; Russell Redding, Department of Agriculture; Robert Torres, Department of State; C. Daniel Hassell, Department of Revenue; and Leslie S. Richards; Department of Transportation, answered questions to an audience of over 200 from across north central Pennsylvania.

Members of the state police and representatives for state Reps. Glenn Thompson, R-Howard, Mike Hanna, D-Lock Haven, and state Sen. Joe Scarnati, R-Brockway, also were present.

Julie Slomski, director of the

governor’s Northwest Regional Office in Erie, said that through panels like this, the office aims to be accessible to its constituents.

The secretaries emphasized working across agencies and working in constituents’ best interests.

“There’s not much that we do that doesn’t intersect with local government,” Redding said. “Our work is also leveraged by each other.”

“We’re helping businesses small, medium (and) large have the opportunity to grow and expand here,” said Dennis Davin, secretary of the Department of Community and Economic Development. “We’re trying very hard to connect with the people.”

Hassell, whose revenue department collects lottery revenue to fund state programs for senior citizens, said he wants to expand tax credits and the property tax rebate for seniors.

“We want to make the tax system and the lottery better for the people of Pennsylvania,” he said.

Oleksiak said he wanted to focus his department’s efforts on workforce development and apprenticeship training, especially for previously unemployed people.

Richards, who was once a township supervisor and county commissioner, laid out two of her department’s initiatives — PennDOT Connects, to gather community input on transportation needs and projects; and Road Maintenance and Preservation, which will use recycled asphalt to pave roads more sustainably and save money.

Torres also emphasized the importance of businesses and start-ups in Pennsylvania. He said his department has worked hard to get the processing time of business, corporation and charity licenses down to one day, in some cases.

He told Clinton County Commissioner Pete Smeltz that discussions about securing funding for counties to update their voting machines were happening and that he recognized it was a big issue for county governments.

Transportation

Several attendees brought up issues of funding for and access to transportation.

Lisa Davis, director of the Pennsylvania Office of Rural Health at Penn State, said transportation to and from medical appointments for people, especially the elderly, in rural areas is a big concern. She said her office is working closely with the state Department of Health and wanted to know if PennDOT was working on these issues.

“Non-emergency transport in rural areas is a huge problem,” Richards said.

Through PennDOT Connects, Richards said her agency is tracking where the closest medical facilities to rural areas are, where the most common routes are requested, where gaps in community transportation are and how to incorporate rideshare company input. She added that PennDOT is working with the Department of Health and looking at applying to grants to fund better rural access to transportation.

Clinton County Commissioner Jeff Snyder asked Richards what could be done to facilitate the legalization of All Terrain Vehicle (ATV) driving on highways throughout Pennsylvania, both for fun and for necessity.

Richards gave a cautious answer, due, in part, she said, to a string of fatal accidents related to underage children driving ATVs.

“Many ATV drivers do not have licenses,” she said. “These are serious discussions.”

She said PennDOT is not anti-ATV in any way and is in favor of people driving ATVs on state park lands and designated driving trails.

But she said there also are environmental issues associated with increased ATV use on non-designated trails and permits would have to be involved to allow them to drive on highways.

“We know ATVs, they’re a lot of fun,” she said. “But safety must come first.”

She also discussed issues surrounding railroad transport, saying PennDOT’s relationship with the Rail Bureau is one of the most “complex and complicated partnerships we have.”

“You may have noticed there’s more cars … stopped at a rail crossing,” she said. “It takes longer because we are adding more (rail) cars” to transport more materials.

Work on the Interstate 99 to Interstate 80 interchange is moving along, she said.

“It’s basically a high-speed to high-speed connection,” said Karen Michael, the District 2 executive for PennDOT.

The department will scrap connections from local roads to interstates, including the lefthand turns from Jacksonville Road onto Interstate 80 and from Interstate 80 onto Route 26/Jacksonville Road and replace those with high-speed connections. It also will add a local-to-local connection from Shay Lane to Route 26 in Marion Township.

“We want to prevent that stop and go traffic” from the lefthand turns, said Richards, because it leads to more accidents. “This is the best way we can improve safety.”

PennDOT is applying for federal funds through the Infrastructure For Rebuilding America grant to finance the project.

Internet Access

Issues of transportation also led to questions surrounding more reliable broadband internet access.

“Broadband connectivity is critical in our rural regions,” said Bill Seigel, executive director of SEDA-Council of Governments.

He told the story of a man who regularly loaded his work documents onto a hard drive, drove miles to the nearest printing shop to print them and drove back to work. Then, he asked if PennDOT planned to lay conduit for broadband internet while working on existing road projects.

Richards said she is involved in an effort with regional Government Affairs and Outreach Director Mark Smith to install broadband access on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. With the advent of smart and self-driving vehicles, she said, broadband access on roadways will be critical. She added that hundreds of traffic signals are connected to wireless internet as are many bus systems — a technology that increases reliability and subsequently ridership. Announcements on these efforts will be made after a meeting on Monday, she said.

Davin also mentioned that when Wolf visited the Northern Tier of Pennsylvania to tour natural gas drilling and compression sites, he was unable to get broadband access. The lack of internet connectivity made him realize broadband access for rural parts of Pennsylvania is “definitely a priority,” Davin said.

Jobs and Industry

As for jobs and industry expansion in the state, many attendees were looking at ways to make Pennsylvania marketable.

One man, who did not identify himself, cited the outmigration of Pennsylvania citizens and the exiting of revenue producers as an obstacle to industry resurgence in the state. He asked Davin if institutions like Lock Haven University and Penn State could be built upon and out-of-state industries could be enticed to come to Pennsylvania due to lower tax rates.

Davin said he wanted to focus on developing industries and small businesses within the state that have the opportunity to grow.

“I’m a strong believer in economic development,” Davin said. “We have an opportunity to market Pennsylvania. … We have a tremendous story to tell.”

He emphasized that in 2016 Wolf’s administration helped get rid of “an onerous business tax,” the Capital Stock Tax, which was in place since 1840.

“We need to show the world, the nation, Pennsylvania, that Pennsylvania is a great place to do business,” he said.

In response to a question on corporate tax rates, Hassell said Wolf has looked at decreasing those rates to encourage more businesses to come to Pennsylvania.

“It has to come down,” Davin said of the corporate tax rate. “I think the governor has been passionate about that.”

On that vein, Centre County Commissioner Mark Higgins said the state needs to create more agricultural processing plants and jobs. He said he wants to see a couple more strategic cheese-producing plants.

Redding said agricultural production is a long-term, viable industry. He said his department has put a lot of effort into the dairy processing industry.

“We’ve done a phenomenal job producing,” he said, but added that Pennsylvania needs to do a better job processing dairy.

He said in order to implement more agricultural processing plants, his department wants to look at what the business structure of those plants would be.

Don Kiel, senior principal program analyst for SEDA-COG, mentioned the importance of filling gaps in natural gas development, geographically and in funding.

He said he would like to see funding to support virtual pipelines for regions where natural gas delivery is not feasible through physical pipelines.

Redding said the agriculture department would need to look into how virtual pipelines fit into the current infrastructure, or if completely new infrastructure will be required.

Lyn Garling, a farmer from Rebersburg, asked how Pennsylvania is going to be more welcoming to people wanting to work in agriculture, particularly migrant and seasonal workers.

“You need a skilled workforce to support (agricultural work),” Redding said.

He said the state needs to continue supporting kindergarten through 12th grade and land-grant university agricultural programs. On the topic of temporary workers, he said his department would like to help producers access the H-2A Guestworker Program and look at reforming it.

Oleksiak said workforce development should be just as important as economic development, and he stressed that apprenticeship programs in agriculture would help that issue.

Oleksiak also discussed the unemployment compensation bill the state Senate just passed, which Wolf is expected to sign, which provides $115 million over the next four years to fund the cost of operating the system and modernize the technology.

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