John Joseph Picchiotti

Republican

Candidate’s Links:

Office Sought: Representative – District 108
Age: 73
Occupation: Retired
Education: Some college
Family: Married; 3 children, 5 grandchildren
Hometown: Fairfield

Political experience

I am currently seeking my third tern in the Maine House of Representatives for District 108. Along with this I have formerly been elected to the SAD 49 School Board, currently on the Town of Fairfield Council and serving as Vice-Chair, currently a Kennebec Valley Community College Trustee, a Board of Directors member of Spectrum Generation, Corporator of Inland Hospital, and many other local Boards and Committee’s.

Why are you running for office?

I originally ran for office to make a difference and work on the most important issues of our day. Those issues are decided in the political arena – Education, size of Govt., environment, business, health and health insurance, taxes, and spending. My life experiences gives me resources needed to tackle these problems. I care deeply about the people I serve and the well being of our State. It is most important for our children and grand children and what we hand down to them!

• Income Tax: Gov. LePage would like to lower Maine’s income tax rate and eventually eliminate it, by increasing the state’s sales tax and expanding it across a broader range of goods and services. Do you support this proposal?
  • Other

    I support lowering the income tax but I do not support raising the sales tax in order to do it. I By raising and expanding the sales tax in Maine, we would only exacerbate a problem for businesses in competing with New Hampshire. I would like to see the income tax in Maine be cut to 5 percent and my hope is to offset that cut in the income tax through a reduction in the size and expense of state government and putting more people on the working rolls and reduce the size of our welfare.

• Background Checks: Do you support background checks for privately sold firearms in Maine?
  • No

    The way this law is proposed it would ban all private transfers including temporary ones, (with very limited exceptions) unless you go through a gun dealer and pay a fee. This was proposed by out of State money. Most people collecting signatures were being paid and not volunteers. One example would be lend your shotgun to a friend to go bird hunting and you are both criminals unless you go to a gun dealer and get a background check on your friend or even house sitting for a friend who has a gun in the house, if they did not have a background check done on you, you are both criminals. This is not a grassroots Maine effort.

• Minimum Wage: In light of the ballot question facing voters this fall, do you support raising the state’s minimum wage from $7.50 to $12 an hour by 2020?
  • No

    No. When I was in business I never even thought about hiring someone at minimum wage. I looked for experience workers and paid what I had to hire them. Minimum wage jobs are for people to acquire skills they can use in future jobs. By raising minimum wage we are assuring people whose skills are not sufficient to justify the higher wage will become unemployed. We need to raise minimum wage but not to the extent that this ballot question raises it.

• Marijuana: Do you support legalization of marijuana for recreational use?
  • No

    I do not support legalization of marijuana for recreational use. There are many health risks that are not being told and other problems with it not being fully addressed. It could also have an effect and limit access to medical marijuana by pushing small-scale growers out of business.

• Addiction/Overdoses: Do you believe the state is doing enough in response to the rise in heroin/opiate addiction and overdoses? If not, what else should be done?
  • Maine has one of the worst drug problems in the Country right now. We are in the process of doing many good things to stop this epidemic but we have much more to do to protect our citizens. While we are moving in the right direction, we must work with our youth to provide them with accurate information, make more treatment available, especially upon request. Programs such as Day One need to be expanded and we need to see more medications like Vivitrol used to help treat addicts. We have recently added 10 new agents to the Maine Drug Enforcement Agency and allocated more than $2 million in additional funding which is a start! We need to remain vigilant in our fight against this epidemic.

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