Listening in to state Rep. Dowling
Yours truly poked his ear into a “telephone town hall” the other evening featuring Uniontown’s representative in the Pennsylvania House, Matthew Dowling, a Republican.
Dowling, who was in a serious vehicle accident in October 2021, sounded in fine voice. How he felt he didn’t say. Even when a caller opened the door to a discussion of his health, he kept the matter under wraps. By doing so, he demonstrated admirable restraint and respect for his own privacy.
On the other hand, maybe he figured that talking about his physical well-being was pointless or politically fraught, though given his district, the whole thing seems immaterial.
Absent a political tsunami, Republicans are going to be in charge of local politics for years to come.
Democrats, get used to it, and get used to young Mr. Dowling.
It would be nice to report that Dowling came clean about the 2020 presidential election; that he admitted that Joe Biden is the legitimately elected president of the United States. I can’t so report because it didn’t happen.
You might know Dowling signed on to the proposition that Biden’s Pennsylvania victory was tainted and that the vote of the people for president warranted scrutiny.
In a letter to the state’s congressional delegation, Dowling (along with state Rep. Ryan Warner and state Sen. Patrick Stefano and dozens of other GOP members of the General Assembly) urged their Washington, D.C., counterparts not to recognize Biden’s 80,000-vote majority in the state, pending further investigation.
The letter’s great ask was to come to fruition on the day Congress counted the Electoral College votes for president – Jan. 6, 2021.
Nothing more needs to be said about that. At least for the moment.
From a purely news angle, the big thing coming out of the telephone town hall was what Dowling didn’t say. He didn’t say he would support Donald Trump running for president again.
He was given the opportunity by a caller, who, at the end of a complaint about Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and congressional pay, said that she couldn’t “wait for Trump” to take on Joe Biden in 2024.
The woman caller – she said she was 81 – commented, “I don’t like what’s going on in our government.”
Dowling response was mild enough and a bit of a non sequitur, “We’ve been hit hard during the pandemic,” he said.
It’s not easy being a state representative, at least judging by the questions Dowling fielded. Several times, callers veered off into the thicket of federal government policies and programs, instead of sticking to state government.
A fella by the name of Don, who apparently served in both the Korean and Vietnam wars, called in a complaint about the absence of “veteran bonuses.”
Another veteran was more on target. He complained that seniors like himself are required to pay school property taxes at a time in life when they have no children of their own in school.
Actually, Dowling took several questions about property taxes. “Many of our seniors are struggling” because of them, he said at one point.
He pointed to mistakes made decades ago, when the state government skipped out on its obligation to fund teachers’ retirement accounts, as the heart of the school funding problem.
Dowling more or less conceded the problem is intractable. He took note of proposals to substitute property tax revenues with an expanded state sales tax. The problem, he said, is that the statewide sales tax would have to be in the 14% range to generate the same amount of revenue collected by school district property taxes.
Instead of excoriating teachers, which has become fashionable among some Republicans, Dowling said, “We’d be no place without our teachers.”
Instead of excoriating public education, another GOP talking point in some locales, Dowling defended it. Without placing too great an emphasis on the point, he told the veteran who complained about paying property taxes even though he has no school-age children in his household, that like previous generations (the generation that paid for his education, for instance), he was going to have to grin and bear it.
Of course, that’s a paraphrase.
Dowling ended the evening call with an unsolicited comment on the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution – that one about “bearing arms.” He’s for it.
The comment seemed unnecessary, almost as if were trying to make up for something. Perhaps he wanted to remind Republicans on the call why they were Republicans. Dowling’s Second Amendment comment sounded like a political safety net, Republican-style.
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown. He can be reached at dick.l.robbins@gmail.com.