Reforming State Government

By Matt Smith

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.