State Treasurer's Visit to the Cove

Pennsylvania State Treasurer Stacy Garrity, Retired Secretary of Agriculture Sam Hayes and Executive Vice President of Penn Ag Industries Association Christian Herr visited Renaissance Nutrition in Roaring Spring.

“When I travel around the state because we have 67 counties, of which 48 are rural —I always like to say that we have more cows than people in Bradford County,” Garrity said, who is a Bradford County native.

Because of this, it has allowed her to understand how important agriculture is to the state.

Garrity said that the number one reason that they were visiting the Cove is because agriculture is the number one industry in Pennsylvania.

“I have traveled to all 67 counties every single year — most of them, I go multiple times —agriculture is so important,” she said.

Garrity said she got more involved when there was the Avian Influenza, worked to push out payments, and had been involved in the farm show.

One of the first things she did when she got into officewas to get the PPE out of the Ag building, she said.

“I did this so that we could resume the farm show – a program that brings in so much revenue to the state,” Garrity said.

She said that a couple of things that they do at the Treasury is to make every payment in the state, which is three payments a second.

“When we had the Avian Influenza hit, we pushed the payments out —that right now is about fourteen million dollars,” she said.

Garrity said while traveling around the state, there is a lot of concern if the Avian Flu moves to bovines.

“We have some homework that we are going to do,” she said.

Garrity said that in the treasurer’s office, she divested from Russia and divested from Chinese assets.

“We need to take action and make sure that Pennsylvania farm land stays with Pennsylvania farmers,” she said. “I think that it is just a matter of national security. I also think that we have to be careful that when we give our land to solar farms because that is land that we are not going to get back.”

Herr says Avian Flu is very concerning because it is new and we are coming off two years working very hard in the poultry industry depopulating five million birds in Pennsylvania, working with a lot of families and a lot of disruption.

“So, when it sort of popped out here, literally, weeks ago in the dairy industry, it’s like ‘Oh, No!’,” he said. “It’s like where do we go from here?”

Herr said that there are a lot of unknowns at this point in time.

“So, you’re not depopulating dairy cows,” he said. They may be sick for a little bit, there may be some product issues but the bottom line is there is a lot of concern because we are a big dairy state and transferability from dairy to other species is pretty high.”

Herr said the biosecurity is not as strict as it is in poultry and hogs.

He said it has not reached Pennsylvania, yet. So far, there are nine states that have it.

“So, it gives us a little bit of a leg up to try to get some planning that we need,” he said. “Is there going to be a reduction in eating and drinking dairy products? That is a real concern, also.”

Herr says that this visit has been an eye-opening experience. The catalyst for it was to show the State Treasurer a little more about agriculture.

“I am sure that we are going to hear about the influenza part of it –I think there are a lot of holes in our planning process,” he said. “We need to do a lot more. We have a lot of concern for the dairy farmers and a lot of things that we have to do before we have the Avian Flu.”

Garrity says that she is the first person in her family to go to college. She went to Bloomsburg University and joined ROTC .

She never thought that she would spend thirty years in the Army and never thought that she would deploy three times to Iraq.

The only reason that she is the State Treasurer is because she hit her mandatory retirement date.

Otherwise, she would still be serving because serving was and is the honor of her lifetime.

She also worked in the private sector, spending over 30 years in manufacturing, working her way up to becoming one of two female Vice Presidents.

“If I can do it, being a kid from a small town, you guys can do anything,“ she said to the group of FFA officers in attendance.

Garrity also spoke about the four and a half billion dollars of unclaimed property, sitting in her building, in the largest working vault in the nation.

“This is money that doesn’t belong to the state – it belongs to hard-working Pennsylvanians,” she said, and urged people to check to see if they have any unclaimed property in the vault by going to patreasury.gov/unclaimedproperty. One of ten Pennsylvanians have unclaimed property

Garrity also says that they have looked at changing the inheritance taxes. That is a legislative fix . With Pennsylvania’s aging population, that’s a situation in the work force and other businesses.

She said they must do something about the inheritance tax.

“When I just look at the treasury, I have 330 employees. I think 1/3 of them are eligible for retirement – We have such an aging population,” Garrity said.

She said one of the things they have to do is reduce the CNI and get rid of some regulatory burdens and bring in more business.

Garrity said they should do this so young people will want to stay and take on family businesses.

“Now it’s so tough, especially the dairy industry – it’s hard work,” she said.