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Environment and Green Economic Development
Matt has been a leader in the green building area over his first-term in the Legislature. He sponsored legislation that provided $35 million in tax credits for green building of new structure or retrofitting an existing structure into a green building. The bill passed the House of Representatives unanimously and ultimately was included in the Energy Independence Strategy as a $25 million grant program for green building in the context of small businesses and homeowners. Matt has also sponsored legislation that would provide tax credits for high performance manufacturing and glass technologies. He firmly believes that green sector development can provide a strong base from which our region and state can grow economically and add homegrown jobs.
Government Reform
Our Legislature is too large and should be reduced and reformed. Matt has aggressively promoted measures that make our Legislature more transparent, responsive, and efficient. He believes that Pennsylvania residents should be viewed as customers of our State’s Government and that our Government should be as responsive to a resident as any business is to a customer. To that end, Matt has pushed for the following common-sense governmental reforms:
- Reduce the size of the Legislature by one-half;
- Reduce the General Assembly’s budget by twenty percent;
- Place all savings from reducing the size of the Legislature and give it back to the residents of the Commonwealth in the form of tax relief;
- Eliminate the legislative surplus and return all dollars to the taxpayers;
- Term limits for committee chairs and vice-chairs;
- Institute performance based budgeting to determine whether a program is living up to its spending level.
Matt has led the fight to bring about the following reforms during his first-term in the Legislature:
- Ban legislative business from being conducted between 11:00 p.m and 8:00 a.m. so that there are no more middle of the night activities;
- Require all bills to spend twenty-four on the legislative calendar before being voted;
- Post all votes and expense records online;
- New Open Records Law;
- Eliminate the practice of ghost voting where legislators can vote from remote locations while absent from Harrisburg.
Open Records Reform
Pennsylvania had the worst open records law in the nation prior to 2007. Matt led the fight and supported the effort to revamp Pennsylvania’s open records law. Under the new law, Pennsylvania government will now be one of the most open in the nation.
Business Tax Relief
Matt Smith’s role as a small business employment and human resources attorney for over seven years has given him an understanding that many small businesses need tax relief. Matt supports eliminating the cap on carryover of Net Operating Losses. This will help startup companies that are often not successful early in their formation and companies in sectors that go through periodic downturns. He also supports moving to a single sales factor apportionment for the corporate net income tax so that companies that locate in Pennsylvania and employ Pennsylvania residents are rewarded rather than punished by our tax code. Finally, Matt will also supports lowering Pennsylvania’s Corporate Net Income Tax to levels competitive with comparable states so that we can effectively compete for new business.
Matt has also supported efforts to increase the research and development tax credits available to our burgeoning biotechnology and biomedical industry in Western Pennsylvania. He also led the fight in the House for the Jonas Salk Legacy Fund that would provide much needed capital dollars for additional construction in the biomedical field.
Property Tax Relief
As a homeowner, Matt Smith recognizes that our property taxes must be reduced. We must build upon and expand the recently enacted property tax relief for our Seniors. Matt believes we must go beyond shifting taxes into different categories to lower property taxes and he will work to bring about long-term property tax relief for our Seniors, new homeowners, and potential new homeowners who are considering moving into our region. Matt will focus on the following means to achieve this goal: (1) maximize gaming revenues in the most efficient and effective manner possible; (2) eliminate unfunded state mandates that result in “pass throughs” to our local taxing entities; (3) continue the push in our area for shared services through Councils of Government (COG); (4) drive all savings from his government reform initiatives that could result in savings of almost $1 billion over ten years directly into property tax relief. Matt believes that government must look inward at savings achievable through cutting costs, eliminating waste, and running an efficient operation before it looks to the citizens of the Commonwealth to bear this burden.
Affordable and Accessible Health Care
Matt Smith has worked to make health care more affordable for individuals and small businesses and lower the incidences of hospital acquired infections. As a small business lawyer, Matt has seen the impact of our failed health care system first-hand with small business clients who want to hire additional employee and create jobs, but are reluctant because they are worried about their health care insurance costs from year to year. This is unacceptable. As an initial common sense and practical step, he supports the creation of local health networks which would allow individuals and small businesses the opportunity to pool resources and spread costs to lower their health care insurance burden. Matt also supports the continuing expansion of the PACE and PACENET programs so that more Seniors can benefit.
Education
Investing in education has been a top priority of Matt’s in Harrisburg. Matt has fought to increase funding for full day kindergarten, pre-K initiatives, and overall education funding. He has also pushed to increase our state’s investment in math, science, and engineering at the high school level and to ensure that our local high schools have the resources necessary in these areas to prepare our students to compete in a highly competitive global economy.
Matt introduced legislation that would require all state schools to disclose their four-year tuition and fee schedule to all parents and students so that the cost of a college education is transparent. We have payment schedules for cars and mortgages so it is appropriate for the cost of a college education to be similarly transparent.
If there is an issue of concern to you, please contact us at:
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