Erin McClelland (D) has owned a small business and studied under a former U.S. Treasurer Secretary in her career as an addiction counselor and systems administrator. Her priorities if she gets in office is to update cybersecurity in local government across the state, revamp pension regulations, and avoid foreign investments.

 

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What is a short job description of the office of State Treasurer?

Yeah, it's it to explain it, which is a big part of this race, is actually explaining what the state treasurer does. So I always start with. Well, the coffers of the state hold $163 billion and it is the job of the Treasurer to be the honest broker that manages that money and pays the bills and monitors your contracts.

 

Why do you qualify to step into the role?

Well, yeah, well first of all, I'm the only person in this race who's actually started a small business and run a small business and made a payroll. And I think that's a really important part of it. When you're dealing with taxpayer dollars, I think the taxpayers want to know that you know how it is to make a payroll.

And I don't think there's anything that will test your mettle faster than getting to the 15th of the month and wondering how you're going to pay your workers. So that's a really valuable skill set. I also spent a year training under former US Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill on process improvement and policy work. So that that's actually who taught me a lot about the power of this office.

A lot of what he did when he was there was was follow the numbers. And he ended up spending the end of his career working on medical errors because that was the leading cause of cost growth in Medicare and Medicaid. So when you're following the money, you learn a lot about how government systems work and at times don't work so.

 

What is something about the current administration you would change and/or keep the same?

So, I mean, I have to commend our Treasury, not just this Treasury, but for years on the wonderful administration of the 529 accounts that program is one of only two in the nation that have a gold rating. So it's an extraordinary program. It's wonderful. We need to keep growing it and making it better. But you really got to give a lot of commendation to all of the treasurers that have participated in that, including this one.

On the other hand, yes, there are some things that I disagree on. First of all, I am adamantly against the Keystone Saves program, who both of my opponents on the Democrat and Republican side are supporting. This is a savings program that does not allow an employer to contribute to it. It would be mandated, mandated on every small business in the state who doesn't have a retirement program for their employees and has more than than five workers.

I don't agree with that. Second of all, it is a self-directed IRA, which last year, even the Securities and Exchange Commission said was susceptible to fraud and not a really savory investment product. I don't think that's the kind of thing that we should be pitching to bartenders, baristas, and front line workers. Furthermore, the the program is not regulated by any sort of retirement regulation.

So I find it to be very unstable. There are other programs that are a lot better, other financial products that are more stable. So I'm against that. I am also against, as both of my opponents agree, they they have decided that we should put money into foreign holdings, which would include teachers pensions, you know. 43% of that coffers, the teacher's pension alone.

And there's the state workers pension, the municipal workers pension. I think we have plenty of things to invest in right here in this country. We do not need to be taking that money, which is not even the taxpayers. That's the workers retirement we're talking about and putting it into foreign investments and particularly in foreign wars. I strongly disagreed with the bond purchase of Israeli bonds, mostly because their credit had been downgraded as well as five of their banks.

They're looking at tax increases to fix their budget shortfall on their working class. And they have worker strikes all across the country in protest of judicial reforms. That is not a stable investment. I disagree. Both of my opponents thought it was a good idea all right.

 

What do you have that your other primary candidate does not have?

Well, I think we've been working really hard. I think we actually have a policy platform. I am campaigning on leading the charge for a public bank, engaging Joe Biden's mission driven banking program, which provides capitalization and frameworks for unbanked and under banked communities. I'm talking about an investment strategy. I'm talking about rolling back the deregulation that George Bush did on on pensions just because he deregulated.

And now we can do all of these risky things with pensions doesn't mean that we should. I'm the only one talking about an investment strategy, about expanding outside the office. And most importantly, the National Association of State Treasurers has said that it is incumbent upon the state treasurer to participate in the cybersecurity of all of our local government.

Right now, we are under attack across the state the Washington County infrastructure. Their entire county was paralyzed by a ransom ware attack that cost them $350,000. Chester lost $400,000 in a phishing scheme, and the water authority of Aliquippa in Beaver County was hacked by Iran. So we know this is the very definition of the fierce urgency of now. I am the only person in this race who has put out a preliminary plan on what we need to do for cybersecurity to catch up.

What we do know is IBM put out a report it takes 9 hours for a bad actor to get into our systems and create a lot of havoc. It takes us 96 days to even know what's going to happen. So we are really behind the schedule. This is about time more than anything, and that has to be something our next treasurer dives into on day one.

How is that something that falls under the Treasurer's responsibility?

Well we run their own cybersecurity program in the Treasurer's office that secures your $163 billion. So because you already have that expertize in that office, you already have an operations model to secure that money, it would be really easy to start to formulate a program, an alert system. Anything we do inside the Treasury, we can help our municipality municipalities do within their own coffers and their banking and their infrastructure.

So we need to get the ball rolling. When you look at Aliquippa being hacked because they were using a default password in their software system, that was 1111. You know, we're starting at the bare minimum and somebody's got to really start diving into this. I mean, it's definitely a group effort, everybody in Harrisburg and the local governments. But as treasurer, I think we have a responsibility to lead the charge. And I agree with the National Association of State Treasurers on that 

 

What's the thing that you would want to tell voters as they're heading to the primary?

What do I want to tell the voters as they head into the primary I think in this race, we have a woman that is sitting as the current treasurer. She won that election by just a tiny little bit, running against the incumbent that had already had the office, was a Rhodes Scholar and did an amazing job. We are looking in this primary.

We are running 11 people statewide. Only two of them are women. And I don't think that's a good look for the Democratic Party. I think it also is a bad look whenever you're running against a woman who already beat an incumbent man. I think what we need is another woman on that ticket, one with a policy argument, one with a hard work ethic and one that actually has a history of managing people and a business. So that's what I'm offering and I'm the only one in this race that's offering it. So I would appreciate the voter support.