Jump to any issue below, or scroll straight through — Cynthia's full plan for District 148.
Your Power Bill Is Too High, And That's Not an Accident
I have lived in this district my entire life. I know what it means to open a Georgia Power bill and feel your stomach drop. I know what it means to watch your neighbors choose between keeping the lights on and keeping food on the table. And I know that what is happening to our utility bills is not the result of bad luck or rising costs. It is the result of decisions made by regulators who are not held accountable, in processes that most of us never get to see.
That changes when I represent you in Atlanta.
Georgia's Public Service Commission, the PSC, is the five-member body that regulates Georgia Power and sets the rates you pay every month. Over the last three years, the PSC has approved six rate increases requested by Georgia Power, resulting in higher residential bills averaging more than $500 per year. Georgia Power now earns more profit per customer than any other utility company in the United States, over a billion dollars in excess profit between 2022 and 2024. The second-highest utility earns 30% less per customer than Georgia Power.
And yet Georgia Power disconnects 10% of its customer base every single year, ten times the national average. Georgia is one of only ten states in the country with no state or utility-funded bill assistance program. We are leaving our most vulnerable residents completely exposed while the company that serves them posts record profits.
How did this happen? In part, because the people making these decisions have no energy expertise, not a single current PSC commissioner has a background in energy. And in part, because the PSC operates with almost no public transparency, while all five current commissioners have received campaign funding from Georgia Power and its lawyers. They are not independent regulators. They are, in practice, Georgia Power's allies.
The Plant Vogtle nuclear expansion is the most vivid example of what unchecked regulatory failure looks like. Georgia Power promised ratepayers a 2 to 3% rate increase. The final bill came in at approximately $36 billion, $15 billion over budget, and produced the largest single rate increase in Georgia history at 23.7%. For roughly 10% of what Vogtle ultimately cost, the same amount of electricity could have been generated another way. Ratepayers absorbed every dollar of the overrun.
Right now, a hyperscale data center is going into construction in our district. This is one of the largest data center projects in the country, and our community found out about it with almost no notice, no completed environmental review, and no public input that meant anything.
To attract data center business, Georgia Power requested, and received, PSC approval to double the size of Georgia's grid capacity, the largest grid expansion in the nation. The cost of that expansion falls on residential customers. The data centers pay a deeply discounted rate, often as low as 3 to 6 cents per kilowatt hour, while you pay 12 to 15 cents. Their rates can be locked in for 10 to 20 years through special negotiated agreements, meaning that when generation costs rise, as they have, you absorb the increase and they pay the same discounted price they negotiated in a backroom years ago.
To power this expanded grid, Georgia Power simultaneously pushed through approval to expand fossil fuels faster than any other state in the country. Solar is only 7% of Georgia's energy mix. We rank 43rd in the nation in rooftop solar, despite living in one of the sunniest states in America.
The company behind this project, Red Wolf DCD Properties LLC, was formed in 2025 and has disclosed almost nothing about its ownership structure, its capital partners, or who the end users of this facility will be. Under Georgia's Open Records Act exemptions for "trade secrets," the full incentive agreement can be shielded from public view. You may be hosting one of the largest data facilities in America and not have the legal right to see the deal that was made in your name.
This facility is projected to use 25 million gallons of water per day. Many residents in our area rely on wells and small water systems. The toxic wastewater from data center cooling operations has to go somewhere, and without a completed environmental study, no one has answered the question of where. Heat discharged into streams and lakes at this scale is documented to alter local weather patterns and kill aquatic life. The noise from cooling towers, generators, and facility vibrations has been measured from miles away in other communities that host similar facilities.
Emergency services are another real concern. Data center fires, particularly lithium-ion battery fires, require specialized equipment and training that most rural volunteer fire departments simply do not have. The cost of equipping and training our first responders for these risks falls on taxpayers, almost never on the developer.
And the jobs? The data center industry ranks among the lowest job-creation sectors per dollar of public incentive. Once construction is complete, the projected permanent local employment from this facility is approximately 20 jobs, and half the construction jobs will come from out of state.
In the Legislature.
I will introduce or co-sponsor legislation requiring Community Benefit Agreements as a legal condition of receiving state tax credits above a defined threshold. No company, data center, film studio, manufacturer, or anyone else, gets millions in Georgia tax credits without signing a binding agreement that includes:
I will push for mandatory Environmental Impact Assessments with a public comment period before any large industrial project breaks ground, not after the first phase is already complete, which is too late to mean anything.
For the data center already approved in our district, I will lead a strong public oversight effort pressing for sustainable building materials, energy-efficient design, modern cooling systems that minimize water withdrawal, protection of nearby streams and wetlands, and site plans that reduce noise, light pollution, and traffic impacts on neighborhoods, schools, and churches.
I will advocate for rural counties to have data center-specific zoning categories, with explicit standards for setbacks, noise, lighting, water, and utility impact, because without them, counties are left negotiating on weak legal ground.
On Utility Bills.
I will support reform of the PSC oversight process to increase transparency and end the practice of utility companies funding the campaigns of the regulators who approve their rates. I will push for residential rate structures to be decoupled from the preferential industrial rates negotiated for mega-power users, so that families in our district are not subsidizing the electricity bills of some of the wealthiest technology corporations in the world.
Our residents deserve to participate in the digital economy, not just host it. If our district is providing the land, the water, the grid capacity, and the community infrastructure that makes these facilities possible, the people who live here deserve real jobs, real protections, and a real say in how it all happens.
Nobody Should Have to Choose Between a Prescription and the Rent
My mother is 83 years old. She has worked her entire life, raised a family, and given back to this community in ways too numerous to count. And like too many seniors in HD-148, she still has to weigh what she can afford to treat against what she simply has to live with. That is a moral failure, not a budgetary inevitability. And it is one I intend to name loudly from the floor of the State House.
Healthcare in our district is not just inadequate. It is in crisis, and the decisions being made right now in Atlanta and Washington are making it worse.
Georgia's rural healthcare system is suffering from a structural policy failure that has been allowed to compound for fifteen years. Our rural hospitals are not failing because they are poorly managed. They are failing because they are providing care to patients who cannot pay, and those patients cannot pay because they have no insurance.
Here is the mechanism: Georgia has a coverage gap that leaves 175,000 working Georgians, people who earn too much for Medicaid but not enough for marketplace insurance, with no coverage option at all. When those 175,000 people get sick, they end up in the emergency room. The hospital absorbs that cost with no reimbursement. Multiply that across thousands of visits per year at a facility like Crisp Regional, and you have the mechanism by which a viable community hospital becomes a financially endangered one.
Georgia has had the federal funding available to close that gap since 2010. For over a decade, our state legislature has chosen to leave hundreds of millions of dollars in available federal healthcare money unclaimed rather than extend coverage to working families. That is not fiscal conservatism. That is a policy choice, and our community has been paying for it ever since.
There are 30 rural hospitals in Georgia. Eighteen are at financial risk of closure.
The reconciliation law signed on July 4, 2025, known as the "Big Beautiful Bill," is projected to cost Georgia $5.4 billion in Medicaid funding over the next decade. Researchers have already identified Flint River Community Hospital in Montezuma, just miles from our district, as one of four Georgia rural hospitals at specific risk of closure under those cuts.
When a rural hospital closes, everything around it changes. Ambulances drive longer. Specialists don't come. Employers won't relocate to a community with no hospital. Families age in place without access to the care they need. A rural hospital is not just a medical facility, it is the healthcare infrastructure that holds a community together.
I will be a consistent and vocal opponent of those federal Medicaid cuts and will push Georgia's congressional delegation to fight for rural hospital protections in every future budget negotiation.
The structural solution to our coverage gap already exists. In 2025, State Senator Carden Summers, a Republican from right here in Cordele, introduced Senate Bill 50, the PeachCare Plus Act, with bipartisan support. SB 50 uses a private insurance marketplace model to cover adults earning below 138% of the federal poverty level. It is not a government takeover of healthcare. It is the same approach that Republican-led states like Arkansas have used successfully for years, drawing on federal Medicaid matching funds that Georgia has been leaving on the table since 2010.
I will be Senator Summers' partner in the House from day one. Closing the coverage gap is the single largest cost-of-living intervention the state can make for working families in this district. An uninsured family hit with a hospitalization is not facing a healthcare cost problem, they are facing a financial catastrophe. SB 50 is the fix, and I support it fully.
The Georgia HEART Rural Hospital Tax Credit works. It allows businesses and individuals to make 100% tax-credited donations to qualifying rural hospitals. It is capped at $100 million per year and is already nearly exhausted. I will advocate to raise that cap and ensure that qualifying facilities in Crisp, Pulaski, and Wilcox counties are actively and fully supported through it.
It is easy to fold senior healthcare into the general access conversation and miss the distinct severity of what seniors in this district face. A resident of Abbeville or Rochelle on a fixed income who needs a cardiologist or oncologist may be looking at a sixty-mile round trip, no reliable transportation, and a specialist copay that competes directly with their prescription costs.
Our rural counties have documented shortages of geriatric specialists that are severe and far less discussed than the general provider shortage. I will:
You cannot have a complete healthcare conversation in HD-148 without acknowledging that air and water quality directly affect health outcomes. Agricultural chemical runoff into groundwater is a documented health risk in South Georgia farming communities. Extreme heat mortality is rising in rural Georgia. A data center drawing on regional water resources without a completed environmental review is not just a property rights issue, it is a public health issue. I will insist that environmental health be part of the healthcare conversation at the state level, not treated as a separate and lesser concern.
Healthcare is not a partisan issue. It is a life-and-death issue. And the people of HD-148 deserve a representative who will say that plainly, and fight for it every day.
Strong Schools Are the Backbone of Every Community, and Georgia Has Been Breaking Its Promise
I am a retired Master Teacher. I spent my career in Georgia's public schools, in the classroom, in leadership, and in the communities those schools serve. I know what it looks like when students have everything they need to succeed. And I know what it looks like when they don't.
Education is personal for me. It is also practical. A district that cannot retain good teachers, cannot fund its schools adequately, and cannot connect its young people to real career pathways is a district that loses its future one family at a time. I am running to stop that from happening in HD-148.
Georgia has a school funding formula called the Quality Basic Education formula, the QBE. It is the legal mechanism by which the state is obligated to fund public schools based on enrollment and student need. For most of the last twenty years, the Georgia General Assembly has funded QBE below its own formula, undercutting it by hundreds of millions of dollars in lean years and never fully making up the difference in good ones.
Here is the part that should make every Georgia family angry: the state is currently sitting on a $16 billion budget surplus. The answer to how we fund education in Georgia is not to invent a new program or find new money. It is to fully fund the obligation Georgia already made to its children and has been quietly breaking for two decades. That is where I start.
Georgia teachers have received $9,500 in cumulative raises since 2020. Inflation has consumed nearly every dollar of it. A teacher earning the base salary today has less real buying power than a teacher in 2007. Georgia ranks 39th in the nation for starting teacher pay. In a district like HD-148, that ranking is not a statistic, it is the reason experienced teachers leave for higher-paying districts and new graduates never arrive in the first place.
I will co-sponsor HB 333, which requires the state teacher salary schedule to adjust automatically for inflation every year. This is not a raise, it is a floor that prevents salaries from losing value while legislators negotiate. No more one-time bonuses. No more starting from zero every budget cycle. I will also advocate for the Georgia Department of Education's stated goal of a $10,000 cumulative base salary increase to help Georgia compete for the educators our students deserve.
I will fight to extend the teacher salary step-increase schedule beyond its current 21-year cutoff, right now the state stops rewarding experience at year 21, which means the teachers who have given the most to a district get the least incentive to stay. That policy is exactly backwards.
What teachers also need:
As a retired educator, I believe the state must maintain its standard of hiring highly qualified teachers who have graduated from accredited colleges and universities. I understand the nationwide teacher shortage has led to relaxed hiring practices in some places, but compromising that standard puts students at a disadvantage on state-mandated exams like the Georgia Milestones and widens the educational gap we are trying to close.
Retention is equally important. Georgia should offer continuous professional development, meaningful advancement opportunities, and real respect for the profession. Teachers who stay are teachers who build relationships, and relationships are what move students.
In Wilcox and Pulaski counties, Pre-K waitlists are real. Families who want to give their children an early start are being turned away not because the program doesn't exist, but because there are not enough seats or trained providers to meet the need. I will push for expanded Pre-K funding and provider capacity in both counties, because the achievement gap is far easier to prevent than to close, and it begins before a child ever steps into a kindergarten classroom.
HB 538 established a universal literacy screening program for K-3 students. That is the right foundation. But identifying a child who is struggling to read and providing no intervention is just delivering bad news without delivering help. I will push to require that intervention funding travel with the screener program, not as a separate budget ask but as a legislative mandate, so that every child identified gets the support they need, not just the diagnosis.
School safety is a moral imperative, not a political one. I will support legislation requiring:
For rural schools in HD-148, the safety calculus includes something urban districts don't face: law enforcement response times measured in minutes, not seconds. I will advocate for enhanced safety grants for rural schools that account for the greater distance and time involved in emergency response.
And I will champion common-sense gun legislation, universal background checks, red flag laws, and raising the purchase age for semi-automatic rifles, because the most effective school safety measure is preventing dangerous weapons from being accessible in the first place.
Education does not end at graduation, and for many adults in our district, formal education was interrupted before it should have been. SB 193, passed in 2025, authorizes the Technical College System of Georgia to establish a workforce diploma program for adults aged 21 to 40. This is a critical tool for a district with significant numbers of adults who need a new start.
I will push for South Georgia Technical College to actively recruit in Cordele, Hawkinsville, and Abbeville, and to build a direct training pipeline connected to data center construction, operations, and maintenance jobs. If our community is hosting one of the largest data center projects in the country, local residents should be first in line for every job it creates.
I will also advocate for registered apprenticeship programs tied to the construction trades and to agricultural technology, because Crisp and Wilcox counties are farming communities, and agritech is an emerging sector our workforce is currently being left out of.
SB 233, Georgia's private school voucher law, is projected to divert up to $150 million annually from public school funding. In a district where the nearest private school may be thirty miles away, that diversion does not create educational choice for most families, it creates a budget cut for the public schools that serve them, with no corresponding benefit to the children those schools educate.
I oppose any expansion of that program and I will make the rural-specific argument for why it is uniquely damaging to communities like ours. Public education funding belongs in public schools, fully, and without diversion.
Every student can learn if they are given the tools to do so. A robust, equitable, and fully funded public education system is the bedrock of a thriving community and a prosperous state. I have seen what is possible when we invest not just in classrooms, but in the support systems around them. That is what I am committed to building, for every child in HD-148.
Our Communities Deserve Investment, Not Just Extraction
For too long, HD-148 has been treated as a resource to take from rather than a community to invest in. Land is cleared, water is drawn, incentives are paid out, and the wealth generated flows elsewhere. I have watched it happen for 45 years. As your State House Representative, I will change the terms of that equation.
Economic development that leaves our families behind is not development. It is a subsidy with no return.
Families in our district are earning $42,000 to $48,000 a year in a state where the median income is $77,000. That gap does not close through inspiration. It closes through specific policy changes that either put money directly back in people's pockets or remove the barriers that keep housing costs artificially high.
Rural Workforce Housing Grants.
Georgia's Department of Community Affairs administers a Rural Workforce Housing Initiative with approximately $34 million in competitive grant funding for affordable housing development in rural counties. The problem is that the smallest counties, the ones that need it most, consistently lose those competitions to better-resourced applicants. I will advocate for a dedicated funding set-aside within that program reserved for counties under 15,000 in population, so that Wilcox and Pulaski are no longer competing against suburban counties for the same dollars.
I will also support HB 1153 and HB 1177, currently before the General Assembly, which expand the Low Income Housing Tax Credit to single-family homes and give local development authorities broader financing capacity for affordable housing projects.
Revitalizing What We Already Have.
Low-income families in our rural communities are locked out of homeownership not just because of income, but because of deteriorating housing stock and aging infrastructure. I will direct state resources toward revitalizing existing housing in communities that have been historically left behind, and fight for investment in the roads, water systems, and public infrastructure that make neighborhoods livable and communities sustainable.
Local First: A Fair Deal for Every Employer.
Georgia's tax incentive system hands out substantial benefits to a wide range of large employers: data centers, film production companies, manufacturing facilities, distribution hubs, and private detention operators. In most cases these deals come with no local hiring requirement, no environmental review, and no legal obligation to contribute to the infrastructure costs the development imposes on local government. A company can receive millions in state tax credits and leave the county responsible for the roads, water, and utilities its operation demands. That is not economic development. That is a subsidy.
In my first session, I will introduce or co-sponsor legislation requiring Community Benefit Agreements as a legal condition of receiving state tax credits above a defined threshold. Those agreements must include verified local hiring targets, a workforce training pipeline, documented water and land protections, and a defined infrastructure contribution. Signed before the first shovel hits the ground.
Rural Zone Tax Credits.
Georgia's Rural Zone tax credit program offers $2,000 per new full-time job for up to five years in designated historic downtown areas. Cordele and Hawkinsville need to be in that program, and I will push to ensure they are. This is the kind of state investment that rewards small business growth and downtown revitalization, and our communities qualify.
Broadband: The Foundation of a Rural Economy.
No economic development strategy for a rural district is credible without broadband. Federal BEAD Program funding is available right now to expand broadband infrastructure in underserved rural communities. I will make it my business to ensure HD-148 counties are at the front of that line, because without reliable connectivity, remote work is not possible, telehealth is not possible, and small business growth is severely constrained.
Here is the irony we need to name plainly: if our district is being asked to host the infrastructure of the digital economy, data centers that serve the entire internet, our residents deserve to participate in it. That means broadband access, good-paying local jobs, and a say in how that development is structured.
A hyperscale data center is going into construction in our district, one of the largest in the country. I cannot undo that approval. What I can do is lead a strong, sustained public oversight effort to ensure it is built right and operates responsibly.
That means pressing for:
The company behind this project was formed in 2025 and has disclosed almost nothing about its ownership structure or end users. Under Georgia's Open Records Act exemptions for "trade secrets," the incentive agreement has been shielded from full public view. I will push for greater transparency and accountability at every stage of this project, because our community deserves to know who they're hosting and what standards they're being held to.
Clean water, healthy farmland, and good air quality are not abstract values, they are the foundation of our local economy. Our farmers, our families, and our future depend on them.
I will fight for:
Georgia is 43rd in the nation in rooftop solar despite being one of the sunniest states in America. That is not a resource problem. That is a policy problem, and I intend to change it.
I believe that responsible environmental stewardship and a strong rural economy belong together. You don't have to choose between protecting your land and growing your community. In HD-148, we can do both, if we demand it.
Safety Is About More Than Enforcement. It's About What We Build Together
Public safety requires both enforcement and investment. You cannot arrest your way out of addiction. You cannot incarcerate your way out of mental illness. And you cannot police your way into economic stability. Every approach that treats those challenges as separate, unrelated problems has failed, and rural communities have paid the highest price for that failure, because they have the fewest resources to absorb it.
That is not a partisan statement. It is an honest one. And the people of HD-148 deserve honest answers.
The fentanyl crisis has touched every community in this district. I support SB 79, the Fentanyl Eradication and Removal Act, signed into law in 2025. Stiffer mandatory minimum sentences for trafficking are the right response to the people profiting from addiction in our neighborhoods. I want to be absolutely clear about that.
But I am equally clear about what SB 79 does not do: it does not create a single treatment bed, fund a single recovery program, or open a single crisis center in Crisp, Pulaski, or Wilcox County. There is effectively no state-funded addiction treatment infrastructure in this district. The closest mental health crisis facility to Cordele may be forty or more miles away.
A person in the grip of addiction who wants help and cannot find it does not become a statistic we prevented. They become a statistic we failed.
I will push for a Federally Qualified Community Health Center designation for this district, which would bring federal funding for integrated primary care and behavioral health services, including addiction treatment and recovery support, to communities that currently have neither. Enforcement without treatment is not a public safety strategy. It is a revolving door.
Our sheriffs and deputies are being asked to respond to psychiatric crises with no clinical training and no referral pathway. That is not fair to the officers, it is not safe for the person in crisis, and it is not effective as a public safety strategy.
Atlanta's co-responder model, a trained mental health professional paired with law enforcement on mental health calls, has demonstrated real results in reducing hospitalizations, reducing arrests, and keeping both officers and individuals in crisis safer.
I will advocate for a rural co-responder pilot program in HD-148, funded through state behavioral health appropriations. Because when our deputies are the only option at 2 a.m., we owe them the backup of someone trained to help.
Every person released from incarceration in Crisp County with no housing, no employment support, and no services is a high-probability return to the same county jail within months. That cycle costs local government real money. It wastes human potential. And it leaves families in limbo.
I will:
The safety of students and teachers is a moral imperative, not a political question. I will support legislation requiring:
For rural schools in HD-148, the safety challenge includes response times that urban districts do not face. I will advocate for enhanced safety grants that reflect the greater distance and time involved in rural emergency response.
I will also champion common-sense gun laws, universal background checks, red flag laws, and raising the purchasing age for semi-automatic rifles, because protecting our schools starts before any alarm is ever triggered.
Safe communities are not built through policing alone. They are built through the presence of institutions, services, and relationships that give people a reason to invest in where they live.
That means investing in the places young people gather, after-school programs, enrichment opportunities, mentorship, and summer programs including STEM exposure that opens doors to careers. It means supporting parents and families so that the home is a resource rather than a pressure point. And it means ensuring that the economic development coming into our district actually strengthens the community fabric rather than straining it.
I have spent my career, as a teacher, an administrator, a court clerk, a community servant, building exactly those kinds of connections. I know that safety and opportunity are not separate issues. They are the same issue, approached from different angles. And I will fight for both.
You Deserve a Representative Who Works in the Light
I have watched this district be represented by people who show up at election time and disappear afterward. Who make decisions in back rooms. Who vote in ways that seem to serve everyone except the families who sent them to Atlanta. Who let developers, utilities, and well-funded interests set the agenda while constituents wait for a call that never comes.
That ends with me. Accountability is not a campaign promise for me, it is the reason I am running.
In our own district, a hyperscale data center, one of the largest in the country, was approved by the county commission with almost no public process that meant anything. Residents found out after the decisions were made. There were no completed environmental impact studies. The company behind the project was formed in 2025 and has disclosed almost nothing about its ownership structure, its capital partners, or who the end users of its facility will be. Georgia's Open Records Act allows "trade secret" exemptions that can shield incentive agreements from public view entirely.
This is not how government is supposed to work. When public dollars, in the form of tax exemptions, infrastructure commitments, and utility rate structures, flow to a private corporation, the people whose taxes and bills are funding that deal have a right to see it. All of it.
I cannot undo what was approved. What I can do is lead a public oversight effort that demands transparency at every stage going forward, and go to Atlanta and change the rules so this never happens to another community the same way.
Stronger Transparency Requirements for Major Developments.
I will push for legislation requiring robust public hearings, documented environmental and health impact disclosures, and genuine community input before state tax credits or other public benefits are extended to major industrial projects. The hearings must be real, not pro forma check-the-box processes held after the deal is already signed.
I will advocate for stronger conflict-of-interest rules for public officials involved in development approval processes, and for fair enforcement of open records requirements so that "trade secret" exemptions cannot be used as a blanket shield against public accountability.
Community Benefit Agreements: Accountability Written Into Law.
I will introduce or co-sponsor legislation requiring Community Benefit Agreements as a legal condition of receiving state tax credits above a defined threshold, for any employer, whether it is a data center, a film company, a manufacturer, or a private detention operator. Those agreements must include verified local hiring targets, workforce training commitments, water and land protections, and a defined infrastructure contribution. Signed. Before the first shovel hits the ground.
Reform of Utility Oversight.
Georgia Power and the Public Service Commission have operated for too long in a system that benefits the utility and its shareholders at the expense of ratepayers. All five current PSC commissioners have received campaign funding from Georgia Power and its lawyers. Not one of them uses Georgia Power to power their own homes, they use EMC cooperatives with rates 20 to 40% lower. They are not experiencing the consequences of their own decisions.
I will support reform of the PSC oversight process to end utility campaign contributions to regulators, increase transparency in rate-setting proceedings, and ensure that the preferential rates negotiated for mega-power users like data centers do not shift hidden costs onto residential customers.
Voting Rights and Election Access.
As a lifelong voter who has participated faithfully in every election, I believe voting is both a sacred right and a serious responsibility. I will oppose any effort to make voting harder and will support policies that expand fair, accessible elections: robust early voting, secure absentee voting with clear ballot-curing processes, accessible drop boxes, and well-resourced polling places in both urban and rural communities.
The recent changes to Georgia's election laws, combined with polling place closures and consolidations, have made it harder for many people to vote, with the sharpest impact on low-income rural residents, Black, Latino, and Asian voters, and people with disabilities. I will advocate for fair redistricting and oppose maps drawn purely for partisan advantage.
This is not a talking point for me. This is the reason I am running.
The people of HD-148 have too often been treated as spectators in decisions made about their own community. Development happens to them, not with them. Rates go up, hospitals struggle, schools are underfunded, and the explanations arrive, if they arrive at all, after the decisions are already locked in.
"I am running to change that relationship. Completely. Permanently. Starting on day one."
You will always know what is happening, because I will make sure of it.