State Rep.-elect Gary Day (R-Lehigh) (Pa. House photo)
Lehigh County’s Gary Day will return to the Pennsylvania House of Representatives for an eighth term next year after a two-year hiatus.
Day served in the 187th Legislative District seat from 2009 until 2022, when he lost it to a Republican colleague in a redistricting-driven primary battle. When state Rep. Ryan Mackenzie announced his run for Congress this year, it opened the door for Day to recapture his old seat.
Since leaving office, Day has worked as director of district operations and policy for state Sen. Jarrett Coleman (R-Lehigh). Day said he was encouraged by his former constituents and members of the legislature to return as a lawmaker.
“I thought, yeah, I’m glad I didn’t go do something else … I’m glad I worked with the senator, I have the ability to continue to serve the people in the 187th district,” Day told the Capital-Star.
The district has somewhat changed from when Day last held office. Although it still includes a broad swath of rural northern Lehigh County, it now includes more of the fast-growing western suburbs of Allentown in the third largest metropolitan area of the commonwealth.
Day spoke with the Capital-Star in November about the district, the issues it faces and what he plans to focus on when he takes office in 2025.
Capital-Star: What do you have in your district that no one else has?
Day: The economic engine of western Lehigh County and the farming history of the northern tier. So those two things are both in the district. Western Lehigh County is home to a lot of businesses that cause a lot of economic activity in Pennsylvania.
That whole area there is economically successful. It’s growing and more people are moving in. Businesses look to locate there.
C-S: What’s the most pressing issue in your district?
Day: When you’re in a growth stage, a lot of times, people will just start spending the money as quick as it comes in. And I think you have to be really smart about what we’re spending the money on, and make sure that if our area has economic growth, that the dollars and assets stay here to help with infrastructure like transportation, so that the burdens of the growth are handled.
I served six and a half years on the Appropriations Committee, and you make a choice: are you going to be involved and understand what’s how we’re spending money? And I did.
COVID caused inflation. Higher dollar amounts coming in, budget increases, and I don’t know that we had time to really think about what we’re spending the money on. That leads to more inflation and wasted taxpayer assets.
You need about 20 budget hawks, and you need about 20 people making suggestions on new ways to deliver services and things like that. Where we’ve gone since COVID is we don’t have as many of those people, and what’s happening is we’re spending more.
C-S: Is there any legislation that you plan to introduce when you’re sworn in?
When a big electricity user signs an agreement to purchase power from an energy producer, that can help pay to restart energy generation, [in the case of the deal between Microsoft and Constellation Energy,] from nuclear power. I think that’s good, but our supply and our demand becomes beholden to that agreement.
Is there a way that when we can say, when you’re doing a deal like this, you also have to include other people in the power purchase agreement, so you end up with more than one purchaser of that expansion of energy generation.
I want to let other people in on the benefit of generating more energy so that we diversify the energy users on the commonwealth’s production grid. The main thing it’ll do is ensure that there is not a roller coaster on pricing, if one user decides to cut back 50% on usage, boom, we have all that capacity not being paid for.