Combat Proven & Ready to Lead

Meet Tim O'Neal

Tim O’Neal was born and raised in southwestern Pennsylvania, steeped in our culture and values, and fed on the American dream. The son of a police officer, Tim always knew he would serve his community. Tim graduated from Indiana University of Pennsylvania, a school he chose because of its ROTC program. He joined the National Guard and then served our nation as an Army Ranger in Afghanistan. In combat, he won the Bronze Star with “V” for Valor and came home ready for the next opportunity to serve. Tim could have settled anywhere after his tour of duty. He chose to come back to southwestern Pennsylvania and received a Master’s Degree in Business Administration. From there, Tim went on to work in the energy industry, and is now an executive at an area construction company. No career politician, Tim plans to term limit himself. He intends to use his business skills to promote local job creation and push for job retraining programs that put people back to work and restore dignity. Tim and his wife, Julia, live in Washington, Pa., with their two children, Lucy, 8, and Daniel, 4.

Issues

Opioid Epidemic

Simply put, the dollars we’re not putting into treating addicts multiply into dollars we spend prosecuting them. A 2014 state white paper estimated that every dollar invested in treatment with the appropriate level of care and length-of- stay, translates into a $7 return to the state treasurer in reduced criminal justice costs. Yet our state’s funding level for opioid and addiction treatment is only 14 percent of what it needs to be. As your state representative, Tim O’Neal will fight to properly fund treatment for people addicted to opioids. And he’ll fight to restore the cabinet-level Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs which Gov. Tom Wolf attempted to gut last year. Tim knows that we need to treat the opioid epidemic as a public health crisis to be handled by professionals, not handed over to a desk at PEMA, an agency designed to deal with floods and snowstorms.

Creating and Protecting Jobs

Tariffs and embargoes only go so far in protecting existing jobs. We need to grow new jobs in our region, and that means a solid program going forward. Right now, Pennsylvania’s 9.9 percent Corporate Net Income Tax is effectively the highest in the nation, sending all the wrong messages to companies considering a Pennsylvania location. Our impulse to tax, coupled with a lack of adequate career training has left us behind the eight ball when it comes to new jobs.

Right now, liberals in Harrisburg are fighting to add new taxes to our growing natural gas industry. Their extremist allies in the so-called environmental movement are pushing to shut down everything from natural gas wells to coal-fired power plants. We need a new direction that is job-friendly and that understands that a good-paying job beats a new tax any day.

Infrastructure

Pennsylvania is currently within a day’s drive of 60 percent of all North American markets, and more than a half-trillion in goods travel our highways annually. We have the highest gas tax in the nation, but our roads are still pockmarked, bridges still crumble, and the dollars designed to repair our roads are being diverted to other purposes. What’s the use in having high road taxes
if they don’t fix our roads? Tim will work to reform transportation funding. We don’t lack money for our roads. We lack the
priorities to get the job done.

Reforming State Government

Reform is an issue bigger than politics. There is no “party” solution to the problem of public
corruption. There is only a bipartisan solution, with everyone working together for all citizens.
We can’t change Harrisburg without changing its culture, and that comes from leading by
example. He’ll never vote for increases in the income and sales taxes. He’ll drive his own car, won’t accept the lavish lifetime pension, and he’ll term limit himself.
Tim understands that the first step toward reforming public service is honoring its name:
service. It’s not supposed to be a career to make someone rich. It’s meant to allow ordinary
citizens to serve their state the way the founders intended.

School Funding

Pennsylvania spends more per pupil that most other states, with sky-high property taxes and unfunded mandates handed down by Harrisburg bureaucrats who don’t understand the districts to which they dictate. Tim knows that the biggest crisis facing our schools is a failure to let local school boards do their jobs. He knows that $70 billion in unfunded public pension debt – most of it for public schools – is a recipe for disaster. And he understands that we won’t get results for our tax dollars until we set the priorities for public education as: Student, Family, Teacher – and in that order.