Shannon Jackson
DemocraticQ1 PFAS chemicals are widely used in consumer products but have raised health concerns due to their persistence in the environment and humans, and some Pennsylvanian legislators are considering restrictions on its use, such as in House Bill 2145. Should Pennsylvania restrict PFAS in consumer products? What scientific evidence would you use to inform your decision?
I believe that public safety in Pennsylvania requires significant restrictions on the use of PFAS. I would support HB2145 and I would also like to see HB2145 amended with the addition of product families identified in the New Jersey “Protecting Against Forever Chemicals Act” including carpets, apparel, fabric treatments, and food packaging with paper and cardboard. Remediation and filtering of pre- and polyfluoroalkyl (PFAS) in water supplies, though possible, is excessively expensive prompting the effort to instead significantly reduce or eliminate the use and consumption of the sources of PFAS substances. Conclusions from studies such as the DuPont chemical spill class-action suit settlement “C8 Health Project” study, the “National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey” by the CDC, and the ATSDR Multi-Site PFAS Health Studies by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) have shown significantly probable links of PFAS chemicals to a large variety of dangerous human and mammalian ailments.
KEYWORDS: PFAS, polyfluoroalkyl, prefluoroalkyl
Q2 Measles vaccination rates in Pennsylvania have declined in recent years, from 95.5% in 2020 to 92.5% in 2025. At the same time, measles outbreaks have emerged across the state, with 62 confirmed cases in PA in 2026. As a policymaker, how do you approach engaging with communities that have concerns that center on infectious disease outbreaks and vaccine safety, and what policies, if any, would you support related to these issues?
Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States in the spring of 2020, vaccinations have become highly politicized by people susceptible to unsubstantiated thoroughly debunked conspiracy theories. Before the onset of politization there are communities with strong philosophical and religious objections to vaccines. These beliefs are extremely difficult, if not impossible, to overcome. As a legislator, I would support a dual approach to the problem. The first evidence-based effort would be to adequately fund public health nurses and administrators. Talking to public health nurses, significant under funding of public health education remains a serious problem in Pennsylvania. The second approach comes from observing the effectiveness of Trump and MAGA messaging through advertising, as outlandishly childish as the messaging was. “Flooding the zone” with creative engaging advertising of the safety and effectiveness of vaccines could be an effective tool to push the vaccination needle upward.
KEYWORDS: vaccination, public health
Q3 There have been avian influenza outbreaks in Pennsylvania, with potential impacts on poultry and dairy operations, both industries that provide billions of dollars of economic value to the state. What policies, if any, do you support to strengthen the state’s preparedness and outbreak response? Are there specific strategies you would prioritize to protect farm workers, agricultural communities, and the broader public?
Corporate agriculture deregulation has proven, over the last couple of years, to have disastrous consequences for the consuming public from a parade of food-born illnesses sparking recalls to explosive diarrhea from uninspected produce. Just last month (September) there were avian flu outbreaks in Minnesota, North and South Dakota, Indiana, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Montana with disastrous effects to poultry farms in those states. The most important policy, of a dual approach, is to continue adequately funding the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture (PDA) supporting surveillance protocols established to monitor commercial and “backyard” poultry flocks as well as dairy cattle herds for the disease. The PDA surveillance mission is also supported by the Pennsylvania Game Commission and the Penn State Extension program. With these agencies adequately funded I believe Pennsylvania can respond effectively to quell a serious avian flu outbreak. The second approach is to enact preventative regulations, as advised by the PDA in consultation with the poultry and dairy farming community, to prevent a serious financially disastrous outbreak of avian flu or any other diseases that could potentially devastate poultry flocks and dairy cattle herds.
KEYWORDS: avian flu, surveillance protocols
Q4 Pennsylvania is the nation’s second-largest producer of natural gas and nuclear energy, as well as the third-largest producer of coal, per the Energy Information Administration. In contrast, PA currently ranks 45th in the country in terms of wind, solar, and hydropower energy production. How do you think these energy sources should be distributed across PA’s energy production portfolio, and what policies, if any, would you support to facilitate this?
I would not want to significantly change Pennsylvania state fossil-fuel and nuclear energy production portfolio seeking to minimize financial impacts on Pennsylvania energy rate payers. In most cases, I would oppose state investment and tax credit sweetheart deals for expansion of fossil-fuel and nuclear power plants in Pennsylvania. At the same time, I would support investment in academic studies and experiments in advanced safe self-fueling fission and fusion nuclear power systems in the hope that in the future they could replace all fossil-fuel power generation in Pennsylvania. Where I would strongly support the use of state assistance and tax credit incentives is for energy production is in wind, solar, and, to a limited degree, hydropower. While wind and hydropower have some maintenance cost associated with them, solar arrays, once they are installed, require minimal maintenance. While prohibiting installation of solar arrays on agricultural land or in recreational areas, I particularly want to incentivize installations on the vast roofs of warehouses or other buildings with expansive roofs, over parking lots, and, perhaps, even over Interstate and state highways. I believe dramatically expanding solar energy inputs into the power grid could significantly reduce the cost of electrical power for Pennsylvania rate payers. One other energy policy I would like to pursue is incentivizing the replacement of huge ugly overhead high-voltage power lines and rights-of-way seized from property owners and farmers with lines running underground along roadways. The state already owns the rights of way along roadways avoiding the need to implement eminent domain seizers on any luckless property owners in the powerline path.
KEYWORDS: renewable energy advantage
Q5 Pennsylvania has proposed more reporting, utility oversight, and zoning guidance for large data centers, along with shifting some generation, capacity, and reliability costs onto data center developers rather than ordinary ratepayers. How should the costs and benefits of large data center development be divided between developers and the public, and what requirements, if any, would you support on power, water, and public reporting before a project moves forward?
In their current technological development, I believe hyperscale data centers supporting AI and internet cloud computing represent an unmanageable environmental and financial threat to residents living within miles of these facilities. The environmental threat comes from the insatiable need of fresh water for cooling and sound and air pollution from the generation of electrical power over and above what the electrical network can deliver to the many acres of server racks. Similar to being too near to a nuclear power plant, the financial threat comes from a dramatic drop in real estate values anywhere near a hyperscale data center. For these and other numerous threats to the environment and real estate values my primary focus will be to support a 3-to-5-year moratorium on any further construction in Pennsylvania. It is my contention that technology is advancing so fast that the existing hyperscale data centers in Pennsylvania will be obsolete and abandoned within that time period leaving behind huge empty structures, unusable polluted land, and ruined real estate values where they now exist. Short of a moratorium, these structures need to be placed on sites that are not usable for any other purpose and well away from homes, agricultural land, and built-up areas. Equally important, the entire expense of constructing and operating a hyperscale data center, including all state and local taxes required of any other business, must be borne solely by the developer and operator and never the Pennsylvania taxpayer. One other note is that the state needs to stand ready to legally defend the zoning laws of county and township governments to prevent the use of predatory “lawfare” by developers and operators with deep financial pockets.
KEYWORDS: AI, moratorium, hyperscale data center