Local state representatives and senators were in Harmony this morning for the annual State of the Commonwealth Breakfast.
State Senators Scott Hutchinson and Elder Vogel attended, along with State Representatives Tim Bonner, Marci Mustello and Stephenie Scialabba. The event is sponsored by the Butler County Chamber of Commerce and saw legislators weighed in on a variety of topics.
All opposed the legalization of recreational use of marijuana.
“If you legalized marijuana and had a couple of truck drivers smoke joints on their break and come back to work high, is that safe,” State Senator Elder Vogel said. “There’s no way to tell if you’re high or not. If you’re drunk, it’s .08 percent BAC. What is it if you’re high?”
“It’s not responsible to base a proposed budget on taxes or revenue streams that are not finalized,” State Representative Marci Mustello said.
Energy was another highly discussed topic, with State Senator Scott Hutchinson saying energy costs are rising because Pennsylvania isn’t taking full advantage of its energy resources.
“Your electric rates are going up. It’s unfortunate, and actually mindboggling, when you think about how much energy we have here in Pennsylvania and we’re not taking advantage of,” Hutchinson said. “Over the last several years, we have been moving to much reliance on intermittent energy sources like solar and wind.”
Hutchinson called to end subsidies for energies like wind and solar.
State Representative Stephenie Scialabba says artificial intelligence is going to play an integral role in Butler County and Pennsylvania’s future.
“If you look on the spectrum, it was a very slow adoption by the public with artificial intelligence. And then all of a sudden it went from needing an advanced coding degree to access AI to Chat GPT coming out and now everybody is using it,” Scialabba said.
“Now the activity across the public is spiking and it’s become extremely condensed very, very quickly,” Scialabba added. “I think that’s where the future is going to lie like it or not. We need to learn how we can incorporate this responsibly, and what benefit can we draw in Butler County and Southwestern Pennsylvania.”
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