As a member of the Human Services Committee, Hogan said he wants to explore more ways to easily connect overwhelmed parents with resources and programs for their children.
He also serves as vice chair on the Consumer Protection, Technology & Utilities Committee and the Gaming Oversight Committee, as well as vice chair of the Children and Youth Committee.
To address affordability concerns, Hogan said he would like to reform Pennsylvania’s regulatory framework.
“[It] is just making things more expensive because it means products or services are slower to delivery, because more lawyers are having to review things, or more engineers are having to review things, and … ultimately, that’s all on the end user,” he said.
Some policies haven’t been updated since before the internet was created, Hogan said.
“Harrisburg doesn’t control monetary policy. We don’t control tariffs or anything like that. But what we do have is a Byzantine regulation system in a lot of spaces, especially early childhood education, that’s just making things more expensive for basically everybody, and that’s something that we can fix tomorrow,” he said.
The goal would be to ensure continued protections for people and the environment, but reform the process to make the state “desirable for businesses, desirable for families, so people stay here, so young people stay here,” he said.
Other key issues for residents that Hogan wants to focus on include cost of living concerns, such as utility prices, child care costs and housing affordability.
Hogan said he works across the aisle to build bipartisan consensus in Harrisburg. Dialogue is key, he said, to understanding political differences, and it starts close to home. His wife is a Democrat, Hogan said, and a range of political identities are represented in his neighborhood.
“Every vote that you take as an elected official, there’s probably a good reason to vote for it, and there’s probably a good reason not to vote for it,” Hogan said. “But … at the end of the day, you have to do what you think … is reflective, representative of the district. I am not an executive. I don’t have executive authority. I was not elected to have executive authority. I was elected to be a representative.”
Hogan said that in a district that is often “50/50” Democratic and Republican, that means regularly speaking with residents to gauge community concerns.
“I communicate a lot with my constituents,” he said. “I think it’s important for me to be reflective of that in my voting record because, again, I talk to a wide variety of people, backgrounds, organizations, and interests … I have to be comfortable with my voting record and the people I represent.”