Jesse L. Barlow

State College

During the eight years I served on State College Borough Council, I found no better advocate for infrastructure or the needs of state, county and municipal governments than Senator Robert Casey, Jr. Senator Casey understood the state of Pennsylvania’s infrastructure and the need for rural broadband. I also found his office to be staffed with well-informed and enthusiastic people.

My first visits to his office were during the frustrating Trump-Pence years when all we got was the all-talk-no-action PR campaign called “Infrastructure Week.”

Fortunately, with the Biden-Harris administration, with Senator Casey’s enthusiastic support and, sometimes, with Vice President Harris’s tie breaking vote, we got the American Rescue Plan, the Infrastructure Act, the Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPs and Science Act.

Space does not permit me to describe everything that has resulted from these acts, but I will give some that impact Central Pennsylvania: (1) the replacement of the dangerous interchange between I-80 and I-99; (2) State College Borough’s Calder Way Project, a modern pedestrian mall; (3) the $65 billion provided by the Infrastructure Act for rural broadband nationwide. None of this would have been possible without advocates like Senator Casey. Moreover, it was Senator Casey’s office that informed me of his efforts to get funding from the CHIPs and Science Act to Pennsylvania Universities such as Penn State.

Local governments will always need federal infrastructure funding. That is one of many reasons that Pennsylvania needs to re-elect Senator Casey and to make Vice President Kamala Harris our next president.