SCRANTON, LACKAWANNA CO. (WOLF) \u2014 Jeffrey Lake has entered the race for state office, framing his campaign around affordability, mental-health support, and environmental concerns that he says are pressing issues for residents in northeastern Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n
Lake said he was motivated to run by what he described as a need for \u201ctransparency\u201d and \u201caccountability\u201d in local government, arguing that many families are struggling to meet basic needs. His platform centers on expanding affordable housing, preventing evictions, and increasing the availability of permanent supportive housing. He called stable housing \u201ca public health intervention,\u201d adding that no family should be forced to choose between rent and groceries.<\/p>\n
A major pillar of Lake\u2019s campaign is his opposition to large-scale data center development in local neighborhoods. He argues such facilities threaten to strain water supplies, raise utility costs, pollute air quality, and clear forested land while generating relatively few long-term jobs. Instead, he proposes repurposing unused buildings into community spaces in partnership with school districts and local organizations.<\/p>\n
Lake, a mental-health professional, also highlighted youth mental-health services and early education as priorities. He supports placing trained mental-health staff in schools to intervene before crises escalate. To address what he called an \u201cuntenable\u201d cost burden on working families, he has proposed free childcare for all Pennsylvania children until kindergarten, along with wage increases for childcare workers and public-school staff.<\/p>\n
Citing rising living expenses and what he views as unchecked data-center growth, Lake said northeastern Pennsylvania is at a \u201ccrossroads.\u201d If elected, he pledged to push for policies in Harrisburg that would lower household costs, expand access to mental-health care, and \u201crestore opportunity\u201d to the region.<\/p>\n
FOX56 reached out to Sen. Flynn for comment but received no reply.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SCRANTON, LACKAWANNA CO. (WOLF) \u2014 Jeffrey Lake has entered the race for state office, framing his campaign around…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":53756,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[178,180,179],"class_list":{"0":"post-53755","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-scranton","8":"tag-scranton","9":"tag-scranton-headlines","10":"tag-scranton-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53755","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53755"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53755\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53756"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}