My Priorities
Public Safety
As a small business owner in South Salem, we recently had to put up a fence just to stop people from breaking into our property, camping, and even defecating at our place of business. I know I’m far from the first to experience this!
We need to incentivize and fund new hires for police. Our state police have been systematically defunded after years of flatlining that budget. We had about 4x more state police per capita in the 70s than we do now.
We must also reverse Measure 110 and actually do the job of the state legislature by passing policies to reduce rampant drug overdoses, homeless encampments, and violent crime.
Every year, politicians propose more bills to release violent criminals early. This is after former Governor Kate Brown did so unilaterally, bringing great harm to our community. We must ensure violent criminals are kept behind bars.
Quality and Safe Schools
Our Salem public schools have become less reliable and unsafe for our kids since I attended and even since my kids graduated. Oregon is ranked 46th out 50 nationwide for education because of poor academic quality and lack of school choice options for parents. We need to return to the basics of improving reading, writing, and arithmetic, and allow kids to grow and thrive securely with parental input.
There are some basic steps we should take:
Reinstate higher graduation standards and support schools to meet them
Pay public school teachers well. My opponent voted against increasing the K-12 public schools budget to allow for greater teacher pay (House Bill 3627). We can do better for our teachers!
Allow parents greater freedom to decide what school their kids attend
Fund and deploy highly trained School Resource Officers in every school to ensure students are safe and provide funding for single-point of entry policies
Put Working Families First
My opponent is perhaps the biggest proponent in the Oregon Legislature of costly and useless government regulations in the name of “climate change”. Oregon’s contribution to emissions has not only dropped in the last twenty years, it makes virtually no difference on the global scale. But what my opponent’s policy proposals are actually doing is hurting Oregonians through higher gas and fuel prices and regulations that close small businesses. Our leaders should focus on the needs of everyday Oregonians, not an out-of-touch elite agenda!
It’s time to put true service to our working families and small businesses back in the State Capitol. As your State Representative, I will start by introducing a bill to prevent local governments like the City of Salem from passing payroll taxes.