The Honorable Erin C. Molchany (D)

PENNSYLVANIA HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES BIPARTISAN MANAGEMENT COMMITTEE

ORAL HISTORY PROJECT

INTERVIEW WITH:

22nd District

Allegheny County

2013 – 2014

INTERVIEW CONDUCTED BY: Raymond J. Whittaker, III October 14, 2014

Transcribed by: Jessica Zook

The Honorable Erin Molchany (EM): Good Morning.

RW: Today we have the opportunity and the pleasure to speak with the Honorable

Representative Erin Molchany who is representing the 22nd District which includes parts of

Allegheny County for the term 2013 through 2014. Representative, thank you for joining us today.

EM: Thank you. Thank you for having me.

RW: I want to start off and ask you to talk about your early life growing up and your move from the eastern part of the state to the western part of the state.

EM: Sure. Well, I grew up in Allentown, Pennsylvania right near kind of Dorney Park and

Wildwater Kingdom area in the Lehigh Valley and I went to school out that way. You know, a typical childhood; [I] was active in high school with pretty much everything I can be active with.

[I] played tennis in high school and, you know, just really loved growing up there. My parents and my sister and I, we were a very close family – we are a very close family – and when I graduated from Parkland High School in 1995, I went to Duquesne University in Pittsburgh and I never left Pittsburgh. So, I’ve been a Pittsburgher for about nineteen years.

RW: What was the draw to stay there? Was it just for job opportunities, economic opportunities?

EM: I think part of it was that I grew up in a more suburban area and I was living in a city and I really was enjoying kind of having an urban life and I had a lot of friends who I call my urban family; they’re very supportive of my political endeavors and everything I’ve ever done. You know, I love my family dearly back in Allentown, I really just – irreplaceable – but, I found

Pittsburgh a place where I could connect to my neighbors, kind of build a life and really figure out kind of who I wanted to be, and the citizen I wanted to be, and get really involved.

Pittsburgh is a great city if you want to get active in public service because everybody is very accessible: the mayor, the council members, the county executive. All levels of government in the city of Pittsburgh and Allegheny County are very accessible, so, if you ever want to get involved, it’s a very active place to be with a lot of opportunities. So, that’s why I stayed.

RW: What experiences did you have prior to running for office?

EM: Well, my first job out of college was at Planned Parenthood of Western Pennsylvania. I get a lot of questions about how I ended up at Planned Parenthood of Western Pennsylvania. It’s really kind of interesting because when I graduated college – my degree is in journalism and I have a minor in business administration – I graduated in [19]99 and at the time, I wanted to work in advertising and I was doing an internship with a large advertising firm and they didn’t have a place for me professionally, in terms of a job after college and so, I sent out seventy-seven resumes, I got six interviews, and Planned Parenthood of Western Pennsylvania hired me to

3 work in marketing and development for the organization. That was really where I got my start professionally. I think that that’s really where I started to better understand how government has a very personal and profound impact on people’s everyday life. You know, I’d always voted but

I never got involved on campaigns before, I never volunteered for candidates that held my values, I never really kind of got out there. So, working in women’s healthcare definitely kind of opened my eyes and kind of inspired me to get more active and involved.

RW: And you worked for other nonprofit organizations, correct, at one time?

EM: I did, I did. Twelve years I spent in the sector. I was at Planned Parenthood of Western

Pennsylvania for, I believe, four and a half years. Then, I moved on to the Coro Center for Civic

Leadership, where I ran the part-time leadership development training programs; there was a women in leadership program, there was an emerging leaders in public affairs program – which essentially was how to run for public office – there was a leaders in IT program, a leaders in the life sciences program. So, it was really about kind of cultivating the next generation of public servants and creating ethical and effective leaders in government and that’s what I did for a few years. While I at the Coro Center for Civic Leadership, I actually took a leave of absence to run for Pittsburgh City Council when there was an opening. I didn’t win, but there were five candidates; I came in fourth out of the five candidates. I think that you either walk away from your first campaign thinking, “I’ll never do this again; this is the worst. Everybody got exactly what they deserve here,” or you walk away and say, “This is just too important; this is just too important to not do again. I’m all in,” and that’s kind of the tack I took, so I just kind of looked for another opportunity to run. Following Coro, I served as Executive Director of a non-profit

4 called PUMP, the Pittsburgh Urban Magnet Project. Our mission was to attract and retain young professionals through civic engagement opportunities, social networking opportunities, and professional development opportunities. So, whatever it took to kind of attract and retain the elusive twenty and thirty-something’s that were leaving Pittsburgh in droves, we did that.

Whatever it took to connect them to government, give them a voice in issues they cared about like transportation or help them find and build social networks, we did that, we facilitated that. I really enjoyed working there. I loved leading that organization and had so many opportunities to really work with government and say, “This is what young professionals in the Pittsburgh region want. This is what’s going to create a vibrant city that they want to live in.” So, that was also kind of another stepping stone, I guess, to how I kind of came around to running for State

Rep[resentative].

RW: Well, that’s a problem, in general, where we have young people not being involved in the political process. What types of steps outside of introducing them to sort of the government process did you do to get them more involved? Because we see that all across the state: they’re not voting, they’re typically not on the high end of voting turnout. Like you said, they’re coming here to get educated but then leaving. What type of steps did you do that you found successful in getting them in the process?

EM: So, through my work at PUMP, we did a lot of issues-based advocacy. Young people cared deeply about transit; they wanted to live in a city that had a reliable and affordable transit system for them to get around. So, I think that engaging people around issues that they really care about that impact their everyday lives is a good way to kind of drag them into understanding

government a little bit better. We did advocacy around the state-wide smoking ban legislation

while I was executive director. We had several bar and restaurant sponsors of our largest social

networking program, the Pittsburgh Sports League; we had about seventeen-thousand people

playing co-ed organized sports annually to help build their social networks and create a sense of

community. We went to our bar and restaurant sponsors and said, “We really feel strongly that

there should be a state-wide smoking ban and we, the young people who visit your

establishment, would greatly appreciate it if you would go smoke-free voluntarily before the

ban.” And, actually, all of the bar restaurants we worked with went smoke-free. So, I think it’s just about making sure that young people have an opportunity to advocate on things they really care about, or things that impact their lives directly, and I think that was one way that we really kind of dragged them in to the fold. Outside of that, my personal life, I was also at that point getting more involved in my own political committee, my Democratic Committee structure in

Allegheny County. I had run for Democratic Committeewoman, I think, in 2006 and I had won the seat and I won with thirty-two votes to my opponent’s twenty-nine. That was another way that it was easy to engage young people in the party because if you say to somebody, “Look, you can be more engaged and active in your own political party back home if you run for committee person. There are a lot of opportunities and all you have to do is ask your neighbors to vote for you.” So, that’s another thing that I did. I definitely worked hard to encourage young people to consider running for Democratic Committeewoman and Committeeman positions just to kind of get them more involved and active.

RW: Then personally, how do you make that jump from running for Committeewoman, running for city council, to running for a statewide race?

EM: Well, part of running for office is about timing and it’s about opportunity. At the time, the seat for the district that I lived in – the 22nd Legislative District seat – was open. My predecessor, Representative Chelsa Wagner [State Representative, Allegheny County, 2007-

2012] had run for County Controller and won, so I saw a vacancy and an opportunity and so I said, “I think I’m going to make a run at this,” and I actively started to pursue it and have conversations with people and – we’ll get to what happened in a minute because of redistricting

– but, that’s where I saw an opportunity and kind of seized it. I think the one thing I tell people when they want to run for office is there’s never a good time; there’s never going to be a good time personally. There’s always going to be an opportunity to attend grad[uate] school or law school; there’s always going to be an opportunity to get married and start a family. There’s always going to be those opportunities, those big opportunities in life that on some level you can’t control and running for public office is never going to fit perfectly into those things. So, you have to just seize the opportunity when it presents itself.

RW: What things did you learn from those smaller races that you sort of adapted to run a much larger race?

EM: You have to knock on a lot of doors; you have to put in the work. Nothing is a guarantee, nothing is given to you; you have to start raising money early – earlier rather than later – to run for public office. When I ran for State Representative in 2012, I had started fundraising in, I think, 2011. I knew that I wanted to have enough money in my PAC to be a viable candidate, to be the most viable candidate out of the gate January 1 of the following year, which was the

election year. I knew that that was important, that hopefully, people would take me seriously about the run, I would be the best positioned to be the candidate to run. You always want to be

organized and prepared. I think that’s the best way to kick off a campaign and that’s kind of the

way I look at things. It’s about building your coalition of support, making sure you have the

funds in the bank to run the kind of campaign you need to run to win, and making sure that

you’re working as hard as you possibly can, if not harder than you ever thought possible, to win.

RW: When you go up and knock on people’s doors, people are going to want to know where

you stand on issues; what type of issues did you talk with constituents about? What were most

important to them in the 22nd District?

EM: So, the most important issues to people in my district were issues of public safety. A lot of

people are very concerned about being safe and feeling safe in their neighborhoods and their

communities and transportation was a really big issue. I’m not sure if you’re aware, the condition of the roads in Pittsburgh is pretty dire and I think that stems from a long history of not investing in the infrastructure, funneling money away from capital projects like road repair and potholes for other things; I think it’s kind of a long decade of just neglect of things that people see every day and have to drive over. So, potholes, infrastructure, transportation, transit was a big one. The 22nd Legislative District is on Pittsburgh’s T-Line, which is the subway line, and I

believe forty-two percent of the fixed light rail guide way stops are in the 22nd District. When

people questioned me about my position on the transportation bill, I thought it was important to

remind them that a large number of the constituents in this district utilize the transit system and

can’t get to and from work without it. So, that was really important to a lot of my constituents

and that’s what I focused my platform on was improving our infrastructure, our transportation,

and a sustainable funding source for transit.

RW: On the whole, describe the 22nd District; being a part of the city of Pittsburgh, what types

of geography, demographics, [and] businesses make up that district?

EM: The 22nd District has a lot of small businesses. I’d say it’s predominantly blue collar

Pittsburgh community’s kind of make up the district. The topography is pretty brutal; it’s kind of a lot of hills. I had to laugh; I went to a bike-ped meeting recently and we spent probably about the first forty-five minutes trying to figure out how bikers and pedestrians could avoid the hills of the South Hills and I said “This is just doesn’t make sense. We have to figure out a way to encourage them to brave the hills.” But, it’s a really amazing community. You have Mt.

Washington, where I live, that is kind of more transient; we have a lot of renters, but population density is high in the district, it’s kind of an up-and-coming neighborhood, I think. It’s pretty safe. We have the best view in the country; we get about five hundred thousand visitors annually to see the view, so obviously, I’m pretty committed to making sure my neighborhood is clean and safe and visitor-friendly, has good transportation options and those types of things. The housing stock throughout the district is really affordable. You can get a really nice house in

Beechview and Brookline and Mt. Washington for around a hundred thousand dollars, so it’s a really great place, I think, if you want to start a family or purchase a home or live in a walkable neighborhood. We just finished a multi-million dollar renovation of Brookline Boulevard in my district, which is where my district office sits, and it’s beautiful; the boulevard is beautiful and the business owners have been working really hard together to improve the façades and working

with the city to get façade grants, so there’s a lot going on in the communities of the 22nd

Legislative District. Then you have communities like Whitehall and Castle Shannon, which are

two of the boroughs that are in the district and they’re very much connected by the transit

system; the T runs through Castle Shannon, which has one of the largest park and rides in the

county. There are just a lot of really cool little areas and places of the district and everybody

who I’ve come across in the 22nd Legislative District has just been really active, really engaged,

really involved which I appreciate because it always inspired me to work harder for them and to

make sure I was getting everything done I could with the resources that I had available.

RW: Now the 22nd District that you ran and served on is no longer the 22nd District.

EM: Yes, through the miracle of redistricting and reapportionment, the district was moved to

Allentown, Pennsylvania as part of the redistricting. Southwestern Pennsylvania lost population,

Eastern Pennsylvania gained population; therefore, we were destined to lose one of our districts

to the East.

RW: You had to run a second campaign against an incumbent.

EM: Yeah, two other campaigns against an incumbent.

RW: Talk about that experience and how different that was than just running for an open seat.

EM: So, I think I have a very unique perspective here because I’ve actually been drawn into

technically three different districts during my tenure from beginning to run for office to holding

office. When the first wave of maps came out back in 2011, I believe the maps came out on a

Wednesday and I had declared the following Monday that I was going to run in the newly drawn

27th District, which is where my house was drawn into. Fifty-five hours later on that

Wednesday, those maps were called unconstitutional and tossed by the courts, so for fifty-five

hours I was running against a Democratic incumbent in the 27th District. On that Wednesday, I

was back in the vacant 22nd Legislative District, where I now sit and held for the last term.

When the new maps came out, the second round of maps came out through reapportionment, I

was drawn into the 36th Legislative District; my home now resided in the 36th District. It’s really

interesting when you look at the map, you can almost see where my house is, so I’m not sure

what kind of creative cartography we’re talking about here, but the 36th District is where I had to

run against another incumbent – a twenty-year incumbent – and when they redrew the district,

the new 36th District was about twenty percent of my district combined with seventy percent of his district, and ten percent which was new to both of us. So, it was a pretty big uphill battle, but it was worth fighting for. I am the only woman serving in the Allegheny County Delegation. I had an awful lot of folks who were counting on me to continue serving in public office, so it was definitely a battle. But I did also manage to testify twice against the maps; I felt that they were horribly gerrymandered. The 19th Ward, which is kind of the hub of the 22nd Legislative District,

went from having one representative to three. The 19th Ward of the city of Pittsburgh is the

second largest city ward; only second to, I believe, 14th, which lies exclusively in Representative

Frankel’s [Daniel; State Representative, Allegheny County, 1999-present] district. So, I felt that the 19th Ward was unnecessarily gerrymandered, splitting up political and communities of

11 interest and those kinds of subdivisions is not constitutional, so that was kind of the argument I made when I testified against the maps. I did everything I could possibly do to make sure that it was done fairly and that I spoke up and said something.

RW: How do you try to get your name recognized in those areas where you weren’t quite familiar or that were completely new to you in that new district?

EM: Well, I was [a] pretty aggressive fundraiser, politically, and I did not have franking privileges through the caucus and the House, so I couldn’t mail newsletters to anybody in the new district, I couldn’t do anything like that, so I did what I could; got on the doors pretty early, was aggressive on the doors. Every waking moment I had that had daylight, I was on the doors.

I recruited a pretty nice team of volunteers with a lot of support to hit the doors and we did as many mailings as we could. I was up on TV, so I did what I could to introduce voters to who I was; I did a commercial with my dad which was very well received. I came back to Pittsburgh and everyone said, “How’s the big guy?” – the big guy is my dad – and I thought it was really interesting, because where I was door-knocking in places that were new to me in the new district,

I would knock on the door and introduce myself and people would say, “I know who you are; how’s the big guy doing?,” which was really funny, so I jokingly told my dad all the time that he was regionally famous in Pittsburgh’s southern neighborhoods. So, that’s the best way I knew to get my name out there, increase my visibility. I had been pretty actively attending block-watch meetings, community forums, any kind of community meeting I could get to. The boroughs of the new district had council meetings, I went to those. Anything I could attend that helped me

better understand the communities that were in the new district, I attended. It was definitely a lot

of work but it was worth it.

RW: So, you’re newly elected in 2012, starting serving in 2013, you come to Harrisburg; what

was your first impression of the House on that first Swearing-In day and then, ultimately, how the business was conducted thereafter, being that it was relatively new to you?

EM: Yeah, well, the first day, the Swearing-In day was New Year’s Day, so that was a little bit interesting, but the first day I spent in the House I could have not been happier to be here. It was totally overwhelming to stand in that Chamber and realize I work here. I don’t know that people have that same opinion day in and day out, but there was never one day that went by that I didn’t realize how lucky I was and how amazing this place was. It’s beautiful, it’s historic; Benjamin

Franklin was the Speaker of this House. So few people had this opportunity, so I did whatever I could to take advantage of every moment that I was here in Harrisburg. I think that a lot of folks have said to me over the years, “Aren’t you frustrated with the process?” or, “Isn’t’ it frustrating?

Nothing gets done.” I managed my expectations very well, I think, coming to the House; I recognized that I wasn’t going to come in here and light the world on fire and change everything in the first term, but I realized that being a part of this and working here and working with all my colleagues that I could at least move the ball down the field a little bit, I could at least move the needle for someone. The better the relationships I built here in the House with my colleagues from all across the state, the better chance down the road the things that I care about and the things that my constituents care about will advance, so that’s what I focused on.

RW: Early on, did you have a mentor or someone that was within the delegation or within the

House that you sort of looked to to learn the process?

EM: I didn’t have a specific mentor within the House; I do have mentors in my life. I have several mentors back home who always encouraged me and always gave me a little bit of

guidance on things, so I take to heart what they say and they really helped me become a leader

and understand leadership differently and better than I ever thought possible. Coming to the

House, there are a lot of my colleagues that I respect and so whenever I had questions or I

needed anything, I kind of went to those colleagues and they weren’t necessarily in my

delegation; they were sometimes in another delegation, sometimes it was a chairman, sometimes

it was a member of the other caucus, frankly. So, I just kind of kept my options open when it

came to who my mentors were and who helped me with the process and understanding the

process and I just made sure that I always had an open dialogue with all of those folks so I could

go to them and feel comfortable asking questions. I think the women of the caucus have very

much become kind of family to me; there’s so few of us, so you tend to work closely with the

women of the caucus, so I’m definitely going to miss that.

RW: Eighteen percent. That’s the number.

EM: Yeah, it’s eighteen percent and now that I’m gone, we lost one; we’re down at least

another one.

RW: Why do you think it’s so low and what do you think that we can do to increase female

representation, but also involvement in the process?

EM: So, I think it’s low for a couple reasons. I think that, until this cycle, I think that we have

not as Democrats, I can say, actively recruited large numbers of women to run. I think you have

to increase the number of women candidates to get the number of women representatives, right?

It’s a numbers game. I was actually really proud of the House Democrats because we managed

to recruit a record number of women candidates this cycle. I believe there are twenty-nine women running which is great, out of fifty-some candidates we have in the field, so I think that that’s step one. That makes me much more interested in investing in my party when they are actively recruiting women to run for office. Something I’ve noticed in the last few months is that

whenever there is a vacancy or an opportunity, we can do better at succession planning. So, if I

had the opportunity to leave the House kind of on my own terms and retire, I would look really

hard for a woman to replace me and to run for the seat. It’s about finding the best candidate,

right? It’s not finding any woman; it’s finding somebody who understands the district, shares the

values of the district, shares kind of what’s going on, understand the lay of the land in the

district. And I think that oftentimes when my colleagues walk away, they don’t think about

succession planning in terms of making their legacy finding a qualified woman to run for their

seat and I think that that can be better facilitated by our party. I know that, for instance,

Representative Mundy [Phyllis; State Representative, Luzerne County, 1991-2014] is retiring

and she worked very hard to mentor and recruit a woman and I just really am glad that she did

that. I’m so glad to see that she recognized the importance and the significance of having

women in the Chamber and diverse perspectives presented. So, I think those are a couple

15 reasons why women don’t run. They say typically women have to be asked to run, so I think it’s making sure that they are being asked to run. During my tenure in the House, outside of my legislative duties, I did everything I could to support initiatives that encouraged women to run for public office or help them fundraise or help them navigate the process. I wish I had more dollars leftover to give them, unfortunately I don’t, but that’s something that I was committed to; as a

Member of this House I realized that there’s a huge responsibility for the women members to not only come through the door but also to hold it open for the next woman. So, I think that that’s also really important.

RW: Sort of in that perspective, we hear often that there’s two jobs while you’re a State

Representative; you have your work here in Harrisburg and you have your work back in the district. You talked a lot about the district end of it, talk a little bit more about the Harrisburg and what your duties are here, working within the committee, drafting legislation, and how that vastly differs sometimes from what’s done in the district.

EM: I have to say I loved all my committee assignments that I was able to serve. I served on the Education Committee, the Human Services Committee, and the Consumer Affairs

Committee. I really found all of them educational, interesting; it’s always amazing to me when I think about the legislation that comes through the committees and how it impacts my constituency as opposed to maybe a more rural district or another urban district, so I really found it interesting. I think that we as Members, or as legislators, sometimes shy away from solving the really big problems because they’re just too big and hairy and awful and seemingly impossible and I think we need to get back to spending more time maybe in committee hashing

out the details of things that address the really big problems instead of kind of fighting over the

minutiae problems. So, that’s something I think we can be a little bit more diligent about. I mean, I’d prefer to take maybe three straight Education Committee meetings on fair funding formula and really get into it and get something on the back end that is a compromise where we’ve built consensus and fixed something than passing something that’s maybe only applicable to a small percentage of the population or that kind of thing. So, I think we can do a little bit better on that and have a little bit more courage when it comes to really deliberating over the big things. Some of the things that I’ve introduced during my time here, probably the biggest thing

I’ve put out there is my equal pay for equal work legislation, House Bill 1890, which I’m incredibly proud of. I had over fifty cosponsors; it was bipartisan. Basically, it says that a wage

gap exists and we need to address it and here’s one way of doing that by clarifying what bona fide qualifications would warrant paying someone different for the same work; that being education, training, and experience. Also, making sure there was kind of that Lilly Ledbetter

component in the legislation that said that employees will be protected for disclosing wages;

there will be no retaliation from the employer on an employee who discloses what they make.

So, that’s something I’m really proud of and something that really, I think, resonates throughout

the Commonwealth, not just in my district. It was really interesting to learn that places like

Organized Labor, for instance, Government and Organized Labor have it right; women and men

are paid equally across those areas, at least at the legislative level. My colleagues and I get paid

the same for the same legislating, for the same job. In organized labor, it’s tiered according to

the type of job you have; a woman and a man welder will get paid the same. So, I think we have

to acknowledge the importance and significance of how organized labor has really managed to

level the playing field for men and women who work in the trades, for instance. So, it’s been

17 really amazing to see how that legislation’s progressed and I was really excited when the Labor and Industry Committee offered to do a public hearing on the bill, mostly because I knew there were people that were going to testify on different sides of it, but absolutely nobody that testified indicated that there wasn’t a problem. Everybody admitted there was a wage gap; the most conservative testifiers and the most kind of liberal, progressive testifiers said we have a problem here. So, the fact that there were no deniers in the crowd was, I think, a really important step and the fact that it was a public hearing of a standing committee of the House, I’m really proud that in my first year, in my first term, I was able to get that done.

RW: Is not yet signed into law?

EM: No.

RW: What’s it going to take, do you think, to make it through the House through the Senate and get the Governor’s signature? What roadblocks does it have to get through?

EM: Well, I think that it’s not a priority of the current Administration; it’s not a priority of the majority party. I think that it’s going to have to become a priority of somebody, whether that be the next governor, whether that be the majority party; somebody has to recognize that this isn’t just about the wages that I earn as opposed to what you earn for the same job, but it also is my retirement is going to be less than yours and my ability to provide for my family as head of household is going to be less than yours. We can’t continue to tell people that well you get the job because you’re head of household and you have a family, but you don’t because you’re

18 single and you don’t have a family to provide for; that has to stop. I think it’s going to take more conversations about the issue, it’s going to take sitting down with all the stakeholders that testified from the business community to the legal community to everybody that this impacts and say okay, we need to get something here on the books that creates a more level playing field for all of our workers and that has to be done as an initiative, I think, of the majority party or the

Administration.

RW: As a highlight to this, you were asked to come to Washington D.C.

EM: I was. I was invited to the White House to meet with President Obama. I was invited to the White House on the day the President signed the executive order saying that all federal contractors must pay equally for equal work and it was a huge, huge honor. I was one of twelve women who got to talk with the President, got to chat with the President in the Blue Room of the

White House right before, minutes before, he walked into the East Room which was filled with reporters and stakeholders and the women of Congress and the women of the Senate where he signed into law the Executive Order. One of the women in the room, when I got to meet the

President, was Lilly Ledbetter. So, I had the opportunity to really talk to her about what she went through personally and what equal pay for equal work means to her. I told her about what

I’m trying to do legislatively in Pennsylvania and it just was probably the biggest most overwhelming thing to have the President of the United States thank me for introducing pay equity legislation into Pennsylvania and being part of that conversation and part of the fight for equal pay for women. That’s something that I would have probably – that’s an opportunity I may not have ever had had I not been a Member of the House of Representatives.

RW: What other issues were you involved with during your term here and what are some of the

hardest issues that you find having to put up a vote for?

EM: I was very involved in the transportation and transit discussions given, as I mentioned, that

my current district had so much of the light rail transit stops in it, and then the district that I ran

in, the 36th Legislative District, has within it, the bus route that has the highest ridership in the

entire Port Authority System outside of the dedicated bus way. So, outside of the east bus way,

the 51 through Carrick has the highest ridership in the entire system, so that was something I was

definitely committed to from day one. I knew that I wanted to come to the House and I knew

that I wanted to vote on a transportation bill that provided for sustainable, reliable funding for

transportation infrastructure and transit, specifically transit; I knew that was important back

home. So, I was definitely a huge advocate of that. Other legislative pieces that I’ve been really

involved in, I didn’t introduce this bill, but I was in the process of drafting the co-sponsorship

legislation for something called the Physician Separation Act. Basically, it said that if your

doctor leaves a practice, that practice must notify the patient that their doctor has left and how

they get their records. This really stemmed from something that happened back home, an

incident where our largest health system, our largest hospital system had five of its physicians

who worked in a gynecological practice come to them and say, “We’re going to be leaving at the end of the year to start our own practice,” and they said, “You can leave tomorrow.” So, those

five physicians were essentially fired and their patients were not notified that they had left the

practice and the only way their patients could get information about where their doctor has gone

or how to get their records or who their new doctor could or would be in the practice, they had to

call a one-eight-hundred number that was listed in the newspaper. I just feel like out of courtesy

and respect for the doctor-patient relationship, it was really important to make sure that these

practices and these health systems were doing everything possible to notify a patient and say,

“Your doctor is no longer here. Please call this number if you’d like to find out more,” or,

“Here’s how you get your records.” I learned about this from a doctor who said that similar legislation was passed in the state of Ohio and so I looked up who had kind of crafted the legislation in Ohio, what the impetus for the legislation was and I reached out to the state representative from Ohio who got the bill passed. It happened to be a Republican woman who was serving in Ohio’s state General Assembly and I had a really interesting conversation with

her about kind of this doctor-patient relationship and this is really about respecting patient’s

rights and that’s what the impetus for her passing the bill was. So, I’d worked with her and my

staff we had really taken that legislation and kind of modeled the Pennsylvania legislation after

that. So, that’s something I worked on kind of early on during my tenure here. Then most

recently, I’ve been working alongside Senator Fontana [Wayne; State Senator, Allegheny

County, 2005-present] and other members of the House to make sure that ridesharing and

transportation networking companies will be properly regulated in the state of Pennsylvania. We

have a serious service issue in Pittsburgh when it comes to cab service; we essentially don’t have any cab service. If you’re not going from a hotel to the airport, to the airport to the hotel, there’s really nothing for people that are just trying to get around safely, home at the end of the night from bars and restaurants, or to a destination, one way. So, I actually introduced a House

Resolution asking the PUC [Public Utilities Commission] to do a needs assessment of

transportation options in the City of Pittsburgh and Allegheny County and to issue emergency or

experimental licenses to transportation network companies like Lyft and Uber in the City of

Pittsburgh and Allegheny County, so they can operate temporarily while we hashed out the

regulation. Actually, both of those things were done by the PUC, so that’s something that I feel

really good about accomplishing for my communities and my city, something that has the

support of the mayor, the support of the county executive. We have a 21st Century city that has

young people moving to it in droves and we’ve kind of turned the tide of brain drain and now we

have brain gain with companies like Google expanding in the City of Pittsburgh, Amazon, and all these tech companies kind of spinning out of Carnegie Melon University and the University of Pittsburgh. We are now attracting the population that I fought so hard to retain years ago.

Changing the transportation options in the city, having alternatives that work in conjunction with our public transit system is something we need. It’s embarrassing for a major metro in this day and age to not have these innovative transportation networking company options for people to get around safely. So, that’s something that I’ve really been advocating pretty heavily for as a member of the Consumer Affairs Committee and also as a Member of the General Assembly,

educating people about the technology, how it works, all of these things are just really, really

important.

RW: Talk about the importance of technology; how has technology, whether it’s through

working on the computer through email, through social media, how has that impacted –

positively or negatively – your job as a State Representative?

EM: Well, I’ve embraced it, so I think it’s really had a positive impact on how I do this job. My

staff and I have been very committed since day one to communicating with constituents through

every kind of medium possible whether it’s Facebook, whether it’s Twitter, newsletters,

22 robocalls, web clip tapings – whatever I could do, I embraced all of it so that I can make sure that my constituents in Allegheny County and in the City of Pittsburgh understood how the votes that

I was taking here in Harrisburg impacted them. That was something that, from day one, I realized was going to be at the forefront of everything I did, because I always feel like sometimes people back home don’t understand how these votes matter to them or how they impact our communities directly, so I thought it was really important to use every medium possible to get the word out about how my votes were impacting their everyday lives since that was the impetus for me running.

RW: You talked about the legislative process a little bit. Post-2005 and the pay raise, we’ve had a lot of turnover in the House. There was reform agenda, some reforms got passed. Have those reforms to the process gone far enough, do you believe? Is there anything else that can be done to make the process a little easier to navigate or more transparent?

EM: I support transparency on a lot of – pretty much everything. This is a public job; I’m a public servant, so my job is public. Whatever I vote on, whatever I say – transparency is really important. I’m not sure what some of the reforms were prior to me getting here, but I can tell you that having this job, I definitely feel a greater responsibility to the things that I do and say and spend money on in my district because it’s taxpayer money that I’m working with, so I’m very sensitive to that. I know that the Bonusgate happened and I frankly got here so much after that that I’m not sure what it was like at that time, to be honest. I’m very aware and I’m very careful and I’m very cognizant of the fact that everything I do that costs money is taxpayer money, so I’m the best steward possible of that money.

RW: What aspect of your job as a State Representative have you enjoyed the most?

EM: I’ve really enjoyed standing up for people that don’t always have a voice. I’ve enjoyed being an advocate for people. I’m not afraid to advocate for people and to stand up for things; I think it’s important, so I’ve really enjoyed that aspect of this job. I really loved serving the communities that I do because I just really built strong relationships with the community leaders in the South Hills of Pittsburgh and I’ve really enjoyed working with my colleagues in the Senate and city council and the mayor and the county executive, so that’s been really great. I’ve also really enjoyed serving in the House of Representatives because the state has become so much smaller since I got here and I love that about it. I love that I have colleagues who I work with legislation on from Philadelphia, from Erie, from the center of the state, from Dauphin County –

I just really enjoyed getting to know my colleagues and understanding what their districts are like and how that compares to what my district is like and how the priorities could be different, but we can still kind of problem-solve together to make things okay for people and make sure everybody’s taken care of. So, I’ve really enjoyed working with colleagues from across the state, representing their districts as fervently as I represent my district. I tell people all the time that I have a newfound respect for some of my colleagues who advocate for energy and the growing energy industry because that’s something in my district, living in an urban district, that we really don’t have a lot of and I always come back to the fact that there are counties in the

Commonwealth of Pennsylvania that have four percent unemployment rates because of these industries and when my colleagues make decisions and try to pass legislation that supports those industries in their home districts, I would never stand up and say that’s not okay, because if I had four percent unemployment in my district I’d feel pretty good about that and I’d want to fight for

24 that too. It’s really helped me develop greater empathy and understanding of what goes on in the state and how really diverse the state is.

RW: I won’t ask you what you like least about the job, but what are the most trying parts of the job that you find?

EM: Some of the most trying parts are really sometimes people don’t like the decisions you make, which is okay; it’s part of the job, so that becomes hard sometimes. Some of the trying parts have been things like internal procedural stuff; like, it’s really hard sometimes to communicate with members of the majority party via email, for instance. At one point, I remember trying to email nine members of the Republican caucus who had signed onto a health bill and I was introducing a similar bill and I wanted to gauge their interests and send personal emails to them and I couldn’t find their email addresses and I had to go out into the internet and pull them down and it was really frustrating that it took me an hour to email nine members. I, of course, went over to them when we got to the Chamber and shoulder tapped them and talked to them it, but at the same time, it shouldn’t be that hard to communicate. So, that’s been a little bit frustrating. There needs to be greater communication between, I think, the caucuses and opening up the lines of communication a little bit better, more opportunities for us to get to know each other and kind of break down those partisan walls. I found it very frustrating being in the minority party – and I guess this kind of happens with both parties – but I always like to be prepared and so it’s been a little bit hard to get acclimated to a system where I don’t always have the agenda and the schedule and the bills and the information until I set foot on the House Floor and that’s been a little bit difficult as well. But these are things I think can definitely can be

addressed and fixed. I don’t think it’s hard to open up lines of communication, I don’t think it’s hard to provide opportunities for Republicans and Democrats to come together, maybe, socially

as well as professionally to get to know each other so we can figure out how we can work better

together.

RW: Why do you think, in your opinion, has those partisan walls – why are they in place? Why

has it been so tough for the caucuses to work together? Is it media-driven, is it legislative-

driven, is it politics? What is it?

EM: I’m not really sure, I can only speculate. I feel like – so, when I walked into this, I felt like

every member of this House is my colleague, every member of this Senate is my colleague, and the Governor is my colleague, right? We all work in government together. I just think that what

happens here is there’s this culture that says, “We don’t need your votes because we can take care of everything,” and it may have been that way when the Democrats were in the majority as

well, I have no idea. But, to me that’s not the best way to get things done for the people of

Pennsylvania. That’s not the best way to find the best solution. Why that is? I’m not sure. I see

bipartisanship as I’m a Democrat, you’re a Republican, we come to the Legislature because we

both want to solve problems and help people; we both have good intentions, we both want to

represent our districts. And at that point, my Democratic values and your Republican values

should be kind of a lens from which we look through to legislate and to find those solutions, so it

shouldn’t be the absolute that precludes us from working together, it should be the lens that we

look through to get to where we need to be for the people we represent. I think that that’s lost a

little bit. There’ve been some ideological lines that have been drawn in the sand; that means

we’ll never get to where we need to be for the people that need help and that needs to stop.

RW: Do you have any regrets or disappointments that you’re leaving behind?

EM: No. I mean, I regret that I wasn’t here long enough to continue working on pay equity

legislation. I regret that I wasn’t here to continue to advance regulatory framework for

ridesharing companies. I don’t have any regrets leaving the House; I feel like I took every

opportunity I possibly could to do this job for the people that I represent and to do this job at a

high level. Hopefully, we raised the bar a little bit. So, I don’t have any regrets. I regret not

being around long enough to recruit more women. I regret not being around to continue to

encourage women to run for public office. I think that when you look at a body and you don’t see anybody that looks like you or sounds like you, you’re probably less likely to participate and

I think that me being there, there were so many people that are now part of what’s going on in government that said, “Oh, there is somebody like me who’s serving. There is somebody who sounds like me and shares my values and is willing to talk about them and is willing to participate at this level.” So, my regret – one of the things on election night that I felt, I felt very responsible to the women; I felt like I let a lot of young women down, not holding the seat, but I quickly kind of came around and realized I didn’t let anybody down and it was very much kind of circumstantial and it was just too big of a hill to climb. That’s really it; I don’t have any regrets. I feel really good about the relationships I built, I feel really good about how I served my district and hopefully someday I’ll have that opportunity again.

RW: That was going to be my next question; it’s so hard to predict the future, but what do you think your future will hold? Is running for elected office another possibility in the future?

EM: I will definitely run for elected office at some point in the future. I don’t know when that will be, again, it’s about timing, it’s about opportunity. I really love serving. I think that I love the job, I love the work, I love working with my constituents, I love helping people. I really feel strongly that public service is a calling and I don’t want to lose sight of that in whatever I do.

So, whatever I do next, whatever my next professional endeavor is, until that opportunity presents itself again, I just will stay active and engaged and visible and continue to work hard for people to make sure that I’m helping and make sure they’re okay so that’s kind of what I’m looking at. But, I don’t ever close any doors as it comes to serving in public office.

RW: What lesson will you take with you from serving as a State Representative?

EM: What lessons? Well, the state is very diverse and that serving in this House means you respect the diversity of every Member and every issue and every priority that’s held by them.

I’ve learned that this state can be smaller than we think. I’ve learned that there’s not enough people that participate; voting is so, so critically important and going through an election where we had twenty-two percent turnout is really shameful and I think it’s worth fighting to open up voting to more people. I think that it’s important to encourage people to vote, to do whatever we can to make it accessible, to do whatever we can to gauge people in it is really, really, really important to get the kind of representation we all deserve. At this point, I feel like twenty-two percent of the electorate electing one hundred percent of the membership is not a great way to

find that. I’ve learned that these opportunities can be fleeting. It’s a huge honor to serve in this

House and it can go away in one cycle, it can go away in ten cycles, and the only thing that you

can do that’s certain is work hard for the people who elected you to represent them. The only

thing you can do is to work hard and work like every day could be your last day here in this role.

So, taking advantage of every opportunity that’s afforded to you to stand up and speak out about

things that are important to you and your constituents, making sure you’re fighting every time

every second you’re here to serve them well is the only way to do this job.

RW: You sort of answered my next question which was going to be what advice would you

give to people who are interested [in] either running for office or just getting involved in the

whole process?

EM: Well, I think I mentioned earlier there’s never a good time, so you can never plan enough,

you can never time it right. It’s about seizing the opportunity to run, it’s seizing the opportunity to serve, it’s seizing the opportunity to take a chance. It’s a leap of faith, it’s a total leap of faith

and my advice would be that if people are thinking of running that they look at things critically

in terms of what does the district look like? Can I win this? How can I win this? How would I go about it? Can I raise the money I need? But then if you check all those boxes, you have to just jump right in, there’s just no other, there’s no other way to do it.

RW: My last question would be how would you like your term as a State Representative to be remembered?

EM: How would I like my term to be remembered? I hope people remember me as an

advocate, as a fighter, as somebody who wasn’t afraid to stand up for things. I hope people

remember not only the legislation that we passed, but how I, as a legislator, took the opportunity

to bring people together to fight for transportation, to fight for equality, to fight for women, to

fight for all these things. I just hope people walk away and say she did a good job; she stood up for me.

RW: I want to thank you for taking the time to talk with us…

EM: Sure.

RW: …about your experiences and I wish you all the luck in your future endeavors.

EM: Thank you, thanks.