PR&LA Winter 2018

18  • PENNSYLVANIA RESTAURANT & LODGING matters • Winter 2018 legislator spotlight Senator Anthony H. Williams (D-Philadelphia/ Delaware) WHAT MADE YOU WANT TO RUN FOR OFFICE? I was in the private sector and did a lot of traveling on business. When I came home to the community where I grew up, I saw a lot of circumstances that I was shocked to see happening in my neighborhood. There was a significant increase in drug dealing, there was the terrible murder of Marcus Yates, a young boy in my neighborhood, and a series of troubling events and changes in my area that motivated me to run. WHAT MAKES PHILADELPHIA UNIQUELY DIFFERENT FROM THE REST OF THE STATE? HOW IS THAT GOOD? HOW IS THAT BAD? Philadelphia’s size makes it uniquely different from the rest of the state. It’s such a large county with such a diverse population. You have very wealthy people and very impoverished people, different ethnic and religious groups, different sexual orientations and family structures. Philadelphia’s diversity is a great thing and a tremendous asset. You can explore different types of values, interact with different people and get a much broader understanding of human beings. One thing that makes it different—not necessarily in a bad way but certainly different from many other parts of Pennsylvania—is that Philadelphia’s experience of the outdoors is captured in its parks. Other parts of the state have a lot of farming and agricultural communities, and that is a big part of what Pennsylvania represents. That is a big difference between Philadelphia and the rest of the state. IT SEEMS THAT THERE IS MORE PARTISANSHIP THAN EVER IN POLITICS—HOW DO YOU WORK THROUGH THAT? As I like to put it, you have to work past your own jersey. If you’re a Democrat or a Republican, yes, you’re elected as such and proud to be such, but you have to talk to other people who aren’t like you if you want to get things done. You need to explain your ideas to members of the other party and get them to understand those ideas in order to move forward. There’s an attitude that sometimes prevails in politics that if you aren’t like me, then you’re bad or your ideas are bad. That’s counterproductive and the opposite of what this nation is about. When we were first formed, we were an agricultural society. Over the years, we became more industrial and now we’re a technological society. We’ve benefited tremendously from immigration and an exchange of ideas among people who are different. It’s troubling that in today’s society, so many people don’t want to look past their own parochial communities as the only great experience. We can learn so much and improve so much by talking to people and working with people from different perspectives. YOU HAVE BEEN VOCAL ABOUT YOUR CONCERNS RELATING TO THE PHILADELPHIA BEVERAGE TAX—WHILE IT MAY NEVER GO AWAY COMPLETELY, WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE TO CHANGE REGARDING THE WAY IT IS BEING IMPLEMENTED AND USED NOW? I think it needs to go away, period. It causes so much economic disruption that no other place in America is going to adopt it, and we shouldn’t stubbornly hold on to it. We need to find different revenue streams that will support the activities that the beverage tax was intended to fund. It’s an aggressive tax, it falls significantly upon poor people and they end up paying for the improved recreation centers and daycare that’s supposed to be free, but it’s not equally distributed. The beverage tax shouldn’t be continued in any form. It needs to be removed and repealed, and we need to move on to a different funding mechanism for these worthwhile programs and services. “We’ve benefited tremendously from immigration and an exchange of ideas among people who are different.”