{"id":14361,"date":"2016-07-28T09:38:15","date_gmt":"2016-07-28T13:38:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/?p=14361"},"modified":"2016-07-28T09:38:16","modified_gmt":"2016-07-28T13:38:16","slug":"letter-rep-lewis-touts-his-record","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/?p=14361","title":{"rendered":"Letter: Rep. Lewis touts his record"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"p1\"><strong><span class=\"s1\">To the Editor, <\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-1339\" src=\"http:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/Letters1-3.jpg\" alt=\"Letters1\" width=\"200\" height=\"140\" \/>As the state representative for the 74<\/span><span class=\"s2\"><sup>th<\/sup><\/span><span class=\"s1\"> district, it has been my honor to fight in Harrisburg for taxpayers.\u00a0 For the second year in a row, I joined a bipartisan coalition in Harrisburg against excessive income and sales tax hikes that would have penalized hard-working Pennsylvanians.\u00a0 Democrats and Republicans voted together to hold the line on taxes, while funding our schools at historic levels!\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">As a teacher, coach and principal at Coatesville Area High School for over 40 years, I know first-hand the fiscal challenges facing our schools.\u00a0 In Harrisburg, I have fought relentlessly for stronger and sustainable investments into our children\u2019s education.\u00a0 \u00a0The new state budget includes $ 11.7 billion for pre-kindergarten through high school education \u2013 the highest investment in Pennsylvania history!\u00a0 That\u2019s $200 million more for basic education, $25 million more for Pre-K, $11 million more for special education, $49 million more for Head Start and $25 million more in Education Improvement Tax Credits.\u00a0 This continues our forward momentum, but I will not stop fighting for stronger investment and more resources for our teachers and students year after year.<\/span><!--more--><\/p>\n<p class=\"p2\"><span class=\"s1\">Recently, Governor Wolf visited us in Coatesville to discuss the very troubling crisis of opioid addition.\u00a0 I have consoled too many parents and heard too many stories of our kids dying from heroin running rampant in the streets, so I pledged to work with the Governor to fight it!\u00a0 In the new state budget, we allocated $15 million to combat heroin and opioid addiction, and to fund emergency treatment and behavioral health services.\u00a0 This crisis hits home for too many families in our district.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">While the state budget process is challenging, complex and long, the citizens of the 74<\/span><span class=\"s2\"><sup>th<\/sup><\/span><span class=\"s1\"> District sent me to Harrisburg to make the tough decisions. While this new budget is not perfect, it is a fair, taxpayer-friendly compromise that provides record high education funding.\u00a0 A repeat of last year\u2019s budget impasse would have been unacceptable. No one wants schools, senior centers or crisis centers to close because we were unable to reach a middle ground. \u00a0\u00a0Working together with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, I made sure that did not happen again this year!<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\" style=\"text-align: right;\"><strong><span class=\"s1\">Harry Lewis, Jr.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\" style=\"text-align: right;\"><strong>State Representative<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\" style=\"text-align: right;\"><strong>74th District<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>To the Editor, As the state representative for the 74th district, it has been my honor to fight in Harrisburg for taxpayers.\u00a0 For the second year in a row, I joined a bipartisan coalition in Harrisburg against excessive income and sales tax hikes that would have penalized hard-working Pennsylvanians.\u00a0 Democrats and Republicans voted together to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14363,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[5391,655,2051,195],"class_list":["post-14361","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion","tag-74th-state-house-district","tag-harry-lewis","tag-jr","tag-state-budget"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14361","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14361"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14361\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14362,"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14361\/revisions\/14362"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}