November 22, 2021
I’m hosting a town hall at the Throop Community Civic Center on December 5th at 6pm where we’ll be joined by representatives from Pennie, the state’s official destination for quality health insurance.
Experts from Pennie will be on hand to discuss all things healthcare and answer questions from our audience. We’ll also have healthcare navigators available for one-on-one conversations about what options are available to you and your family.
Open enrollment ends January 15th, so now is a good time to get covered before the holiday season! Register to attend the town hall at www.senatorflynn.com/aca.
For more information on Pennie and how to sign up for health insurance, visit their website here: Welcome To Pennie & Open Enrollment 2021.
November 19, 2021
November 19, 2021 – Senator Marty Flynn secured a total of $2,547,418 in grants that were awarded to eleven projects across the 22nd District of Pennsylvania through the Multimodal Transportation Fund and the Act 13 Program. Both programs are administered through Pennsylvania’s Department of Community & Economic Development; Senator Flynn serves on the Senate Community, Economic, & Recreational Development Committee.
“This grant money will be used to improve the day-to-day lives of the people of Northeast Pennsylvania,” Senator Flynn said. “Better roads, better flood control, better parks for our children – I’m proud that these funds will go towards projects that set out to make NEPA a better place to live.”
The Multimodal Transportation Fund provides grants to encourage economic development and ensure that a safe and reliable system of transportation is available to residents of Pennsylvania. The five district projects that received grants through this fund are:
- West Scranton Streetscape Project (Scranton) – $779,483
- Dickson City Main Avenue Streetscape Phase 2 – Jackson St. to Dundaff St. (Dickson City) – $700,000
- Lackawanna River Heritage Trail – Hull Creek Bridge (Lackawanna Heritage Valley Authority) – $71,998
- Chapel Road & Ridge Road Roadway Infrastructure Enhancement Project (Pittston Township) – $150,000
- Aston Mt. Road Paving Project Phase 3 (Spring Brook Township) – $500,000
The total amount awarded to District 22 through the Multimodal Transportation Fund is $2,201,481.
The Act 13 Program assists statewide initiatives that seek to improve abandoned mine drainage abatement, abandoned well plugging, sewage treatment, greenways, trails and recreation, baseline water quality data, watershed restoration, and flood control. The six projects that were awarded funding through this program are:
- Blakely Borough Watershed Flood Control & Protection Project (Blakely) – $75,500
- Archbald Borough Flood Mitigation Project (Archbald) – $62,500
- S. Webster Avenue Flood Mitigation Project (Scranton) – $71,825
- Hillside Park – AAJRB Pole Building Construction (Abington Area Joint Recreation Board) – $55,000
- Jefferson Street Park – Park Enhancement (Fell Township) – $40,890
- Urban Greenpeace Development (The Garden of Cedar, Scranton) – $40,222
The total amount granted to District 22 through the Act 13 Program is $345,937. Both the Multimodal Transportation Fund and the Act 13 grants are a product of the Commonwealth Financing Authority, an independent agency of the Department of Community and Economic Development established in 2004.
November 5, 2021
Lackawanna County − November 5, 2021 − Senator Marty Flynn was joined by local state representatives today outside of the Lackawanna County Courthouse to discuss the ongoing strike of the Scranton Federation of Teachers. Flanked by a raucous crowd of Scranton School District teachers, paraprofessionals, faculty, and their supporters, Senator Flynn, Rep. Kyle Mullins, Rep. Elect Thom Welby, Rep. Bridget Kosierowski, and Rep. Mike Carroll fittingly stood in front of the John Mitchell Statue to show their support for the Scranton Federation of Teachers in their labor dispute with the school district’s administration.
“I’m proud to stand here today, not just as your State Senator, but as an AFSCME (American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees) brother,” Senator Flynn began. “I’m proud to have my colleagues here with me. We’re all on the same page here; we all agree that our teachers are not the problem.”
Senator Flynn went on to admonish the administration’s attempts to solve their issues by cutting successful, popular programs in the district. “The administration made class sizes larger, which placed an even greater burden on the teachers,” Senator Flynn said. “They cut art. They cut music. They cut preschool. They cut counselors for students in elementary school. You can’t cut your way to prosperity. You can’t cut your way to recovery.”
Rep. Elect Thom Welby used his own personal experience as a student in the Scranton School District to highlight the negative impact the program cuts could have on the city’s children, highlighting his experience in the now-cut theatre program and crediting it for “helping so many children become fine, upstanding adults.”
“I got involved with the theatre group and with some of the arts groups, and my exposure to the arts literally changed me as a person, that brought me out of my shell,” Rep. Elect Welby said. “It’s so important to our students. We need exposure to the arts from Pre-K all the way through high school.”
Rep. Welby was followed by Rep. Kyle Mullins, who noted that the lack of proper funding for the school district has led to its current situation. “Decades of insufficient funding from the state to school districts like Scranton has set teachers and district management on a collision course,” said Rep. Mullins. “While I’m committed to ending this disparity, this unfairness, we need students back in the classroom with teachers who were put on this earth to care and to teach, teachers who deserve health care and pay comparable to other school districts.”
Rep. Bridget Kosierowski commented on the administration’s decision to suspend teachers’ and paraprofessionals’ health insurance during the strike. “When I say I believe health care is a right and not a privilege, I don’t just mean it as a campaign slogan every two years; I actually believe it,” Kosierowski said. “As a registered nurse of more than 25 years, I saw firsthand the cracks in a broken healthcare system, but never did I think I would see the day that restricting healthcare access would be used as negotiating tactic and a bargaining tool. It is not only cruel, but it is simply immoral.”
Finally, Rep. Mike Carroll laid out a plan to get the district out their current state of crisis and into a position of greater financial stability. “There are three things we need to do: Reinstate health insurance, negotiate a contract for the teachers that is aligned with other Lackawanna County school districts without offsetting healthcare savings, and reduce property taxes by 1%,” Rep. Carroll said. “We know this is in conflict with the recovery plan, but no recovery plan can substitute for the more than $30 million annual shortfall from the state.”
October 29, 2021
Nacero Inc. announced plans today to build a $6 billion manufacturing facility in Luzerne County, making it the single biggest economic investment in the county’s history.
The production plant will be used to take natural gas and renewable natural gas and convert it into gasoline. The massive facility is to be located in Newport Township and Nanticoke on the site of a former coal mine, and will bring thousands of jobs to the area. Upon completion, the plant will produce tens of thousands of barrels of low- and zero-lifecycle carbon footprint gasoline every day.
Based in Houston, Texas, Nacero Inc. specializes in taking natural and renewable natural gas and converting it to new gasoline, eschewing the use of crude oil, which has been used in the past and which produces more harm to the environment than the method that will be used in Luzerne County.
Of the plans to build the facility, Senator Marty Flynn (D-Lackawanna/Luzerne/Monroe) said:
“This is exactly the kind of economic boost Northeast Pennsylvania needs. A plant like this just makes sense in our area, given our storied history of industry, energy, and production. It’s appropriate that it will be located on the site of an old coal mine – that’s where this area gained its hard-working, blue-collar reputation, and it’s what made us a prosperous city in the past. I’m happy that we can do all of this – providing jobs for thousands of people, giving a nice economic boost for our local businesses – while looking to the future, too, as this new method of producing gasoline is much better for the environment than how it was done in the past.”
October 27, 2021
The Scranton Federation of Teachers announced yesterday that it will strike beginning November 3, after failing to come to an agreement with the Scranton School Board regarding health care provisions in their new contract.
“This strike is the result of years of systematic underfunding of the Scranton School District by the state, and now the school board is left with zero good options,” Senator Marty Flynn said of the pending strike. “All the board is doing now is cutting resources, but they can’t cut their way to prosperity, it’s not possible.”
The strike comes after more than four years of teachers working on an expired contract, and more than five years without a pay increase. Tensions reached a boiling point this week over what the Scranton Federation of Teachers feel is inadequate health care coverage in the board’s proposed plan.
Regarding the state of the Scranton School District, Senator Flynn said, “108 teachers wouldn’t have left if it was a great place to work, if things were running smoothly, if the district was doing a good job.”
Pennsylvania’s Public School Code authorizes the Secretary of the Department of Education to initiate injunctive proceedings when the length of a strike would prohibit a school district from completing 180 days of instruction by June 15.
October 26, 2021
Harrisburg, October 26, 2021 − The Pennsylvania Senate passed Officer John Wilding’s Law (Senate Bill 814) today, which creates a new offense of “evading arrest or detention on foot.”
Introduced by Senator Marty Flynn (D-Lackawanna/Luzerne/Monroe) and Senator John Yudichak (I-Luzerne/Carbon/Monroe), the bill was drafted in response to the tragic death of Officer John Wilding of the Scranton Police Department. In 2015, Officer Wilding lost his life from injuries sustained while chasing three armed robbery suspects in a West Scranton neighborhood.
“Every day, our police officers put their lives on the line for us. What’s at stake for them every time they go to work – we can’t imagine,” Senator Flynn said. “So it’s our job as lawmakers to look out for those who serve and uphold the law. We have to protect those who protect us.”
In a bipartisan vote of 36-14, the Senate voted affirmatively on the bill which makes evading arrest or detention on foot an offense if a person knowingly and intentionally flees on foot from a public servant attempting to lawfully arrest or detain that person.
“Officer Wilding gave his life in service to the citizens of Scranton and our great Commonwealth,” said Senator Yudichak. “Senate Bill 814 ensures that his life will forever be honored by protecting the men and women of law enforcement with the addition of a new offense, evading arrest on foot, as a felony offense in the crimes code.”
Existing statute currently prohibits fleeing from an officer in a vehicle and struggling with an officer attempting to place an individual under lawful arrest, however the statute is silent with respect to fleeing from an officer on foot and placing the officers or innocent bystanders at risk of injury.
In addition to establishing the offense, the bill sets the new offense grades as follows:
- A third-degree felony if a person flees or attempts to evade arrest or detention for an underlying offense that constitutes a felony or misdemeanor and another person suffers serious bodily injury as a result
- A second-degree felony if a person flees or attempts to evade arrest or detention for an underlying offense that constitutes a felony or misdemeanor and another person dies as a result
- A second-degree misdemeanor if a person flees or attempts to evade arrest or detention for an underlying offense that constitutes a felony or misdemeanor
The bill also creates a new offense of “harming a police animal while evading arrest or detention.”
“Unfortunately, we cannot change what happened to Officer Wilding,” said Senator Flynn. “But hopefully this law will provide a bit of peace for the Wilding family and will prevent something like this from happening again in the future.”
Senate Bill 814 will now be sent to the House of Representatives for its concurrence.
