Mark Proposes Initiatives to Promote District's Needs, Provide Service
By: Mark Campaign On: 12:11PM / Wednesday September 08, 2010
DALTON, Mass. — Paul Mark, Democratic candidate for state representative in the 2nd Berkshire District, has proposed a pair of initiatives aimed at drawing greater attention to Western Mass and providing highly personalized constituent services.
The first is Mark's "Better Know A District" initiative, in which he vows to invite eastern Massachusetts legislators to his district during his first term. Mark contends that, rather than simply exclaiming that eastern Massachusetts forgets about the western part of the state, "I will be proactive about educating my Statehouse colleagues about our way of life."
Mark has indicated several places he wishes to host colleagues to discuss the district's often-forgotten needs, including: farms throughout the district, Crane Paper Company in Dalton, tourist attractions in Shelburne Falls, the Schell Bridge in Northfield and meetings with local school officials to examine regional school concerns.
“For example, when it comes time to reauthorize the Dairy Farm Revitalization Act, I’ll be able to remind my colleagues about the time they visited a dairy farm with me.”
Paul Mark's other proposed program is his "Constituent Canvass" which he will run next summer, if elected. Mark has said he will canvass door-to-door and "bring his office straight to the voters." Given the size of his rural district – the largest in the state – Mark feels that
having one single district office is inadequate to serve constituents. "No matter where a district office might be placed, it would still take other constituents at least an hour to drive there," Mark
contends.
"Holding roving office hours throughout the district makes sense in the winter," said campaign spokesperson Steve Hoeschele, "but in the warmer months, Paul wants to provide superior constituent service at the door, in addition to holding roving office hours. This would help
reach out to people who might be shy or unsure of the process of talking with public officials."
"On campaigns, the candidates are always asking voters for help: asking for votes, to put up lawn signs, to contribute money. But if I'm elected as state rep, I want to show up at constituents' doors and ask them how I can help them." Mark will hire an aide with the
intention of performing such outreach as well.
Mark chalks up his "Constituent Canvass" idea to his dedication to being present in all parts of his district. "I'm very used to putting in long hours and driving, so this large district is absolutely cut out for me," he said. Mark commuted from Hancock on the New York border to Amherst and Boston to earn his college degrees, while working full time.
"I'm not going to rest easy if I get elected," Mark added. "That's when the real work starts."
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Wow, talk about warmed over ideas, the Better Know A District" initiative was started years ago by Peter Larkin, Shaun Kelly and Dan Bosley. They used to host an annual Berkshires weekend for eastern MA reps and Shaun Kelly did a winter snowmobile event as well. How about a new idea Marky Mark.
This is a great idea, especially an elected official coming to the door asking how they can serve the people. That's what I call transparency in government!
Check out Paul Mark's campaign finance report and lo and behold, 42% of his donations are from special interest union PACs. Talk about being bought and paid for. And to pay back his political benefactors, Mark will work to raise the income tax back up from 5.3% to 5.95% where it was in 1999.
I also noticed that he raised more money than any of his opponents from people in the district. That says more than any of the predicatble negativity. Why wouldn't unions support someone who believes in what they believe in, the middle class getting a fair shake?
The choice is clear, 97% of his donations came from OUT of our district!!
Talk about a man with an agenda! It's not in our district's best interest at all, he will go to Boston, and the UNIONS & SPECIAL INTEREST GROUPS will control his every vote. How in the World is this going to help our small business, cultured & desperate district?
Open your eyes people!
I just added up the numbers. Tom Szczepaniak had contributions of $4,400 from individuals inside the district, while Paul Mark only had $2,560. What is even more telling, however, is that the Szczepaniak campaign had expenditures of $8,070 within the district, TEN TIMES more than the Mark campaign, which only spent $804 here. I DO NOT want a representative who is not willing to invest in this district. The facts don't lie people.
Good job, Matt Barron. You've calculated some numbers that nobody else really cares about.
How about if you support a candidate with ideas for just once, rather than simply knocking other candidates' ideas...?
Speaking of finance reports, Tom Szczepaniak loaned his campaign over $20,000. How's that for the so-called "working class candidate?" That's half of what Barron pointed out is the average salary in the Berkshires.
And then Szczepaniak paid Barron $10,000 to sit around and write anonymous negativity on message boards. He should have invested some of that money in some public speaking lessons....
...oh wait, he did drop $750 on public speaking lessons.
Search Tom's name here:
http://www.efs.cpf.state.ma.us/SearchExpenditures.aspx
Tom Szczepaniak did not loan $20,000 to his campaign, he gave it to the campaign. Anything that hasn't been reimbursed after 30 days has to become a loan or you can't get it back, and note he has nothing in liabilities. Nice job genius! I wish I had $20,000 laying around to completely throw away on a losing campaign. What kind of pay off was he expecting as State Rep to make up for such a hefty investment?
And if you take out all the union money from Mark's report he STILL raised more from individual contributions than his 2 democrat opponents COMBINED.
Hard to try to turn Mark into a union pawn when he clearly has the vote of the people as well, and as an 8 year selectman and lifetime resident of the area Szczepaniak couldn't even get more than 15 people to believe in him.
ARE YOU KIDDING ME?
I would rather vote for a man who is spending his own hard earned money for what he believes in than the bought & paid for Union/Special Interest groups that have MARK IN THEIR POCKETS & their OWN agenda!! Now that is some scary stuff!
I highly doubt Matt Barron has the time to be blogging I know for fact that this man is busy working on productive & proactive campaigning. Poor Paul.
The voices will speak for themselves next Tuesday.
from: Wow! The Mark Campaign is STILL slinging mud?
Steve don't you think you should be focusing on the campaign and stop blogging all your false negative opinions? Or wait, maybe the Unions hired you to do this for them? Your dirty politics is what gives our politicians a bad name, Paul Mark isn't any better, he hasn't gotten rid of you yet, what a shame for everyone involved in this race!
Self funding is the reason we are in such a mess. People like Mitt Romney just drop all the money they have in ads to win elections they have no business running in. Public financing is the way to go to give more regular people, and less millionaires, a chance to run for office.
I would rather vote for a man who is spending his own hard earned money for what he believes in than the bought & paid for Union/Special Interest groups that have MARK IN THEIR POCKETS & their OWN agenda!! Now that is some scary stuff!
I highly doubt Matt Barron has the time to be blogging I know for fact that this man is busy working on productive & proactive campaigning. Poor Paul.
The voices will speak for themselves next Tuesday.
Hard working people donate a dollar a week out of their checks to the union election funds. Then we meet and vote on who we want to endorse and send money to. We pool our money so that we can compete with big shots who have $20,000 to throw around. We are proud to endorse candidates that actually care about working families, and we are sick of nurses, firefighters, police officers, telephone workers, teachers, postal employees, and many others being called special interests. Enough of the lies and the smears from the fat cats!
SMEARS that is a flat out LIE and you are smearing them! You have no clue how the process works, your voting system is a joke & the only reason you voted for him is that he agreed to raise taxes so you can get MORE MONEY from the taxpayers!! Talk about having enough of the lies and the smears from the fat cats! Your pay check is FAT enough!
Wait, is it a lie or a joke? First you said he has no clue how the voting system works, then you said they voted because of promises. Which one is it? Are you saying that nurses and teachers and firefighters make too much? I doubt any of them have $20,000 to dump into a losing campaign.
Next time, take a breath first and try to come up with an argument that makes sense.
The Unions asked each and every candidate if they would be willing to fight for raising taxes in all their questionnaires for the mere reason of being able to pay their Union employees more money & accommodate their health-care insurance rates from going up.
Paul Mark had to agree to working hard in Boston to raise taxes in order to get this "out of our district" Big Unions to endorse him.
The Union employee's may well vote, but rest assure they vote on what their Union Leaders recommendation.
Finally these BIG UNIONIZED COMPANIES (you know the ones that rarely exist in our district?) are the ones that make up questions presented to the politicians, the one who says YES to raising taxes is the one they endorse.
Look it up, it's a fact.
So now you're saying that Tom wants more school teachers and more firefighters to lose their jobs? Wasn't laying off his own workers bad enough?
He wants more roads to go unrepaired and more people to suffer? He wants our property taxes to keep going up, just like they have in Dalton under his watch? He supports cutting the sales tax to 3% too. He probably supports bailing out the big banks with taxpayer money!
We need to get rid of incumbents like Tom! People who milk the system for everything its worth. People who make hard working people like teachers into the bad guy while they live fat off the backs of the taxpayers. People who hide the truth and manipulate and bully.
If someone is willing to spend $20,000 of their own money for a $60,000 a year job, they must be expecting a big payoff down the line. Lots of no-bid contracts for Variety to grab maybe?
Boy the Mark supporters have a pretty nostalgic view of unions. Unions today are all about protecting their fat cat leaders at the top. The building trades want casinos here in western MA and they want utility-scale biomass plants as well.
Like a good little puppet, Mark supports casinos and he flip-flopped on the biomass issue and was exposed on this by Dan Valenti and Larry Kratka on the WBRK radio debate.
Unions don't pour more than $9300 into a campaign for "good government" Their Beacon Hill lobbyists will come a calling to collect on their hefty investment in Mark and he will knuckle under to do all of their bidding.
Mr. Szczepaniak was smart enough to use his own resources right out of his own pocket and did not burden the taxpayers to run a clean campaign. He stands up for what he believes in!
He did not agree to raise taxes when he was asked by the Union in order to get their endorsement. He did that for us! I for one commend him for donating his own hard earned money & not agreeing to something he didn't believe would better our district. He is determined to do the right thing by the people & to serve our district the way we deserve to be served!
If you happen to be reading this Mr. Szczepaniak, thank you for fighting for us. Thank you for believing in us and our districts needs and thank you for once again donating your time & own money to a very worthy cause!
Thanks for not burdening us with a clean campaign. What does that even mean? A clean election, one publicly financed, would have been much better. No more going around asking people for money. No more only rich people who don't care about the little guy running for office. A chance for regular people to run, people who know what its like to work hard and never get ahead. It makes me sick that a candidate with no ideas for the future and a horrible past can be considered a serious candidate just because he has a lot of money to blow on some mid-life crisis.
I find it interesting that the "Agree" and "Disagree" voting on this blog favor's Paul Mark & negative posts about Mr. Szczepaniak.
Does this not prove to anyone who is actually paying attention here that it is the Mark campaign doing the majority of the dirty work here?
What I am seeing is the Mark campaign has been hard at work trying to control this forum with their Verizon cell phone internet access.
OR is it a republican or even the independent trying to make the democrats look like fools? Either way you can Agree or disagree all you want, the people's voices will be heard on September 14th. Best of luck to all the candidates.
I find it interesting that the negative comments started against Mark since his campaign finance report had nothing to do with the proposal in the press release. Sounds like a rival campaign, democrat or republican or even independent, went on the attack and the readers didn't like the negativity. Or, there just happen to be more supporters for one campagin and less for the others. Or, the republicans are trying to hurt all the democrats as much as possible so they have a shot at winning.
To me it seems like the republicans since they kept talking about taxes and they will paint whoever the democratic nominee is as a tax and spender in November.
Nobody reads the comments on these blogs anyway and I'm surprised they even have the comment board. They should require people to give their own names and watch how fast the comments clean up. This is just barely a step above topix.
I hope that all 6 campaigns have better things to do than post on this board. They better if they want to win in 5 days.
This doesn't prove anything except that the people reading this forum (specifically this article) like Paul and don't like Tom. Nothing to do with your theory of evil cell phone control.
What dirty work are you talking about. This an article about Mark's proposals.
Then immediately Szczepaniak's supporters come into to bash his ideas while offering none of their own and then start talking about campaign finances which has nothing to with the article. So who is it that is trying to control this forum exactly?
The last response is an example of complete nonsense. Much like Szszerpanik talking about "the animals having a hard time moving around" in the forest, or that there are 52 states in the union as he said in the debates.
Regarding the post about "Millionaire wife beater who spent 18 months in jail...."
I would encourage everybody to keep it clean. There's a difference between mockery and questioning Szczepaniak's ability to do the job. There's a difference between anonymous, hurtful sniping and calling Tom out for being unqualified and less than truthful with voters.
Let's stick to the things that matter: ability to do the job, and what the candidates' political values are.
We all have our differences,why not try and sort those out and establish some sound stances and do what we all want a candidate to do. WORK FOR US! Remember us the voters? Not the big unions,the guys who give the most,the good old boys on Beacon Hill,US! the citizens and voters of the 2nd Berkshire District.
I agree,it is all about the citizens of the 2nd Berkshire District,it's not just Dalton,Shelburne,Northfield,Middlefield but the entire district. Go and vote on Sept 14th!!!!
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