(C) Pennsylvania Capital-Star
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State Rep.-elect Brenda Pugh says her focus will be on lowering taxes and fighting addiction • Pennsylvania Capital-Star [1]
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Date: 2024-12-09 11:00:36+00:00
Brenda Pugh says she’s always valued and enjoyed helping people, whether it was on a friend’s farm as a kid or helping to navigate the process of opening a business as the chamber of commerce president.
That’s what inspired Pugh to run for office in the 120th Legislative District in Luzerne County, Pugh said, where she was elected state representative last month. Pugh, a Republican, will take over the seat from former Rep. Aaron Kaufer (R-Luzerne), who did not run for reelection.
“I have been involved in the community my entire adult life, probably back to when I was a kid. It was instilled in us as children, and I took that into adulthood and raised my children with it, advocating in one way or another, from being a softball coach for a little league major girls to, most recently, the president of the Back Mountain Chamber,” Pugh said.
The 120th District lies on the northwest side of the Susquehanna River opposite Wilkes-Barre and includes the boroughs of Kingston, Forty Fort, Swoyersville and several other Luzerne County municipalities.
As former CEO of AMP Global Strategies, her family’s business that provides systems for law enforcement and schools to detect when a firearm is fired, Pugh said she was able to give back to neighbors as a volunteer by helping new business owners get through the fraught period after making their initial investment to generating revenue. Pugh said she transferred ownership of AMP Global, which is a Pennsylvania state government vendor, to a family member this month.
“I really took a lot of pride in helping companies get open and making some phone calls to help that happen,” Pugh told the Capital-Star in an interview where she discussed her district, the issues facing it, and her plan after she’s sworn in next month.
Capital-Star: What’s unique about your district?
Pugh: I like to call it the valley with a heart. I like to think that despite anything that can happen, negative-wise, when we need to come together, we always come together and get the job done.
I’ll use the hurricane in North Carolina as an example. In this political environment that we just came up out of where everybody was so argumentative and you couldn’t talk about anything, you know, even with family members, in some cases, when that flooding went through North Carolina. I stood up a cause with another local business here, and we filled five tractor trailer loads of food and supplies.
C-S: What are the most pressing issues for the state government in your district?
Pugh: Knocking doors and talking with all of the residents and hearing their stories, the taxes are overbearing right now on so many families and seniors. One story was from a gentleman who was going to lose his house during this whole transition.
We have to get the spending under a responsible level, and stop putting the burden on the residents of Pennsylvania. Our families are struggling. Our seniors are seriously struggling. Their social security rates aren’t going up. COLAs [cost of living adjustments] are going up on that as fast as these school taxes are going up, or the local taxes are going up, because everything else in life has gone up.
There are four school districts and two of them did significant tax increases this year, even with the fair funding act that just came down. One school district in my district got next to nothing. One did very well, but the other two, it was nowhere near enough to cover what needs to be done inside the schools.
I live by a budget. My company has been living on a budget for 34 years. It’s time to say that Pennsylvania also needs to live within a budget. There’s a lot of things that the state can do in order to get things tightened up.
C-S: Is there a piece of legislation that you plan to introduce on day one?
Pugh: One thing that is really taking over this valley right now is our overdoses and mental health and suicides.
One mother, her daughter, was eight weeks from graduating from nursing school and got caught up into drugs. She’s a grown adult at this stage, she’s over 18. There’s nothing that mother can do to force her into rehab unless she gets arrested and then forced in that way or through the jail system.
I know other states have something out there called Casey’s Law that allows family members to petition the court to get help for their parents or their uncle or grandma. I’m not trying to take anybody’s freedoms away, but can’t we do something to get them clean and then let them make the choice? Because you can’t think clearly when you’re under the influence of drugs. You just can’t.
I have been on the board of child advocacy centers here locally, and I see what those centers actually have to do.
If a child is raped or physically abused, it’s the advocacy center that does the forensic rape kits, that does the forensic interviews and works directly with the DA’s office in order to prosecute the predator. They function strictly off of grants. There’s no line item to fund organizations like this, and I believe there’s only 52 of them across the entire state of Pennsylvania. So I’d love to get in there and see what we can do to protect our kids.
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