The Big K Morning Show
An Hour With Rich Fitzgerald
Rich Fitzgerald joins Larry in the studio! Xochitl Torres Small, Deputy Secretary of Agriculture, USDA calls in to talk with Larry and Rich about her visit/announcement to Jeanette later on in the morning Jenna Cramer, President & CEO of Green Building Alliance, calls in to talk with L:arry and Rich about the organization and its “Green Pathways” workforce development program.
- Broadcast on:
- 02 Oct 2024
- Audio Format:
- other
Hey NFL fans, you can start the season with a big return on FanDul, America's number one sports book. So when you get a hunch in the middle of the game, you can check out the latest stats, view live play-by-play, and so much more on the same page where you place your bets. You'll get started with $200 in bonus bets guaranteed when you place your first $5 bet. That's fandul.com/sportsfan. Never waste a hunch and make every moment more with FanDul, an official sports book partner of the NFL. Must be 21-plus and present in Colorado, first online real money weights are only $10 first deposit required. Bonus issue does now withdrawable bonus bets that expire seven days after receipt. Restrictions apply, see terms at sportsbook.fandul.com, gambling problem, call 1-800-522-4700. And welcome, Larry Richard with Rich Fitzgerald, executive director of the Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission, in studio with me every Wednesday at this time, in our seven o'clock hour, good morning, Rich. Good morning, Larry. Good to be with you. I watched the vice presidential debate. We were just talking about it. I personally appreciated some civility in a debate and for over 90 minutes, about an hour and almost 45 minutes. And so pretty much with the overnight polls aligned with whoever people were aligned with in their party. I think that's right. And I think certainly was much different than the one a few weeks ago that we saw in Philadelphia with the presidential candidates. You did not hear certain words that we've been hearing on the trail, things like communist, things like weird, things like felon, things like stupid. So they tried to, certainly they criticized each other's candidates' policies. When President Trump was in office, you didn't do this. When President Biden, you know, Harris was in office, you didn't do that. But for the most part, I thought it was, you know, they try to stay on the issues. And I think you're right. I think no matter who your candidate was, you thought your guy did better. But I think there was also, you've heard on social media, a lot of frustration from both sides. Why didn't they hit him on this? Why didn't they hit him on that? Why didn't they, you know, like they wanted some of their supporters wanted to see more fire? True. But that's it. No more debates, apparently, are at least not unscheduled. We know with certainty that the vice presidents won't debate again. No. Still, any October surprise with maybe another debate, I don't think that's going to happen either. But we've had a lot of surprises leading up to October. This has been a very surprising campaign season from from day one. So you never know what's going to happen in the month of October. Obviously, the Harris team would like one more debate or they've offered one more debate. The Trump folks or Trump himself is right now said no, but circumstances could change. He may want to explain a certain policy once. Who knows? But so we'll see. Well, one thing is certain Pennsylvania and southwestern Pennsylvania is still very key for both candidates. In fact, Donald Trump coming back Saturday to the Butler Farm Show, the same place, July 13th, where that assassination attempt took place. And I would imagine that the Secret Service, everybody involved will be really on their toes for this one. We will continue to see a lot of people. And I think as we talked about, we've talked about this before, we were going to see a lot of money, a lot of government projects coming to western Pennsylvania. You're going to see, we're going to talk about one a little bit later where they're coming to Jeanette to bring money for water and sewer infrastructure. And I think you're going to see a lot of departmental money flow into western Pennsylvania. So we might want to take advantage of that for the next month. And you live in a world now with this new role that you have with the southwestern Pennsylvania Commission of dealing with 10 counties and the city of Pittsburgh and you really have to work, you know, bipartisan work to get things done for the future. That's exactly right. And that's why we went to Washington a little while back a couple weeks ago. And the reason was to go ahead and maximize this time period because western Pennsylvania is so important. They make promises. They're going to make promises around infrastructure. They make promises around jobs. Well, here we are. Let's go get, we need bridges that need fixed. We have roads that need worked on. We need job training, et cetera, et cetera. So we're trying to maximize that leverage. Doesn't matter your party affiliation when you're crossing a bridge, you want the same confidence. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. And coming up, we're going to talk about the agriculture in the region. You've really brought this to light with me. And I'm a native is the fact that a lot of people think the city of Pittsburgh city, but the surrounding counties, very agricultural. Very rural. Very rural. And with the same needs of infrastructure, safe neighborhoods, roads, and a little bit of talked about last night, a little bit of climate change that has affected some of our neighbors to the south. And agricultural communities really suffer from that as much as anybody. Yeah, we got a pretty big guest coming up next here. We do a deputy secretary. And again, we're going to see a lot of love in southwestern Pennsylvania. Probably for the next month or so. Again, and we saw it four years ago when another administration was in office and we got money for our BRT. I remember when President Trump gave us $100 million for the bus rapid transit that's being built right now in Oakland. We got money for our airport. So you take advantage of those that are in office that want to be friendly on the southwestern Pennsylvania. And hopefully they'll whichever side wins keeps their promises to us in southwestern Pennsylvania. But you mentioned that that's happening, right? A lot of people forgot about that. Absolutely. This rapid transit. So this will link the city of Pittsburgh with Oakland, which obviously with the university, Carnegie Mellon, all the ads and meds that are there. This will be done when? Probably sometime late next year or earlier after that. It's coming that soon. It'll be as transformational. Probably is what the North Shore connector was that helped people get from downtown and the South Hills over to the North Shore. So yeah, it'll be it'll take a lot of cars off the road. People will use this because it'll be so reliable and so fast. And just yesterday they did the topping off of the UPMC Presby and almost $2 billion investment right in the heart of Oakland. It was an exciting project. We're with Rich Fitzgerald, more to come and we will talk to the deputy secretary of agriculture next on the big K morning show. And we continue our conversation. Rich Fitzgerald, executive director of the southwestern Pennsylvania Commission. Of course, most of you know, Rich served 12 years as Allegheny County executive challenges. Rich with all these cities and municipalities and counties when it comes to budgets because federal money is drying up that was. Post COVID, correct? It was very helpful for local government and certainly in Allegheny County, we were able to forestel forest, forestall a tax increase because of all the money, the American rescue plan, the cares funding that came in. In many, in many ways, saving many municipalities from having to find the revenues that they had lost during COVID. So, but you're right, that's coming to an end and the challenges are going to be there. We've got the draft coming a year from April. How much of a spotlight is it shine on a city like Pittsburgh and the bottom line is how much revenue can potentially bring in taxes and people's. Spended hotels, restaurants and everything else that goes with it. There will be a significant amount of money that does come in in revenue, hundreds of millions of dollars. Most likely in spending, you know, how much of that will be tax revenue remains to be seen, but yes, hotel, taxes, parking taxes, drink taxes, etc, etc, red tax. There'll be a lot of spending that goes on. And also more importantly, you're going to see the spotlight of the country of certainly the sporting world looking at Pittsburgh. We get a chance to show off the best, you know, put your best foot forward is important, almost like a national convention that could occur with politics or any other type of the Olympics, any type of thing that goes on. And I know that the city, the county, and certainly the Steelers team trying to work hand in hand to have a plan to get there. You just don't flip a switch. There's a game plan between here and there. This has been going on for many years and I was certainly involved in some of the early part of it when, you know, when the Rooney family really and the Steelers decided that they were really going to go forward and really push to get the draft here in Pittsburgh. Other cities have had it. We've seen it in Kansas City and Nashville and just this year in Detroit. Next year is going to be in Green Bay and the economic impact that it has is significant. But also, you know, the Steelers being one of the, you know, great, great franchises in the history of the NFL. Also, as it likes to show off, certainly the things that the great tradition of football here in southwestern Pennsylvania that we all know and are all proud of. Remember this name, Pudge Heffelfinger, the first professional football player. That's probably not the first name people think of when you think of, uh, Unitis and Nameth and Marino and did get names like that. But anyway, and we are honored to have the Deputy Secretary of Agriculture join us. So, chill tourists. Small. Welcome to the world's first radio station, KDKA. Good morning. Good morning. It's a joy to join you this morning. Thanks for having me on. Thanks for being here. Madam Secretary, Rich Fitzgerald and the Madam Secretary is working for a great boss that we all know a guy by the name of Secretary Tom Vilsack, who's a Pittsberger. Um, we're very always proud of, uh, you know, Governor of Iowa and then the longest serving secretary served all eight years, uh, for President Obama's administration and then President Biden had the, the good sense to say, wow, he did a great job in, in, in supporting that, that department and brings him back and we're really excited secretary that you are here today are going to be here over the next couple of days, investing in things that are needed, investing in infrastructure, things like basics, water, uh, electrical electrification of the grid system of some of our older communities and in, in many years may have been forgotten. So thank you and tell us about what, what you're planning to announce today. Well, thanks so much. That was a great choice to bring Secretary Vilsack back to the great boss and a great person. And he knows about the importance of rural communities, recognizes that rural people produce the food that we eat, uh, the fuel that we rely on, and so many of the goods that we rely on. And that's why the Biden Harris administration has been focused on investing in rural people and rural places. So today we're announcing $1.3 billion in rural infrastructure. It's going to result in strong, strong jobs and opportunity for people all across rural America. So you're coming to you're going to be talking about Jeanette. This is a small town, an older industrial town in Westmoreland County, a little bit east of the city of Pittsburgh in rural rural community. Again, a former industrial time where we're glass making and steel making was, was part of it. And under the deindustrialization, again, suffered a lot of a lot of degradation and infrastructure that hasn't been improved. So tell us a little bit about what might be happening in the town of Jeanette. I'm going to be visiting Jeanette today to make an award of $14 million. That's part of this bigger announcement. And it's one of three investments in Pennsylvania that's included here. I'll get the chance to learn about the investment engine at sewer system with representative Lee and hear about how investing in infrastructure like this creates an opportunity for manufacturing to return for people to be able to have access to clean water and safe water waste system and to make sure that communities receive that investment so that kids can choose to stay in the places they love and have great opportunity close to home. Well, we're excited the fact that, again, some of the communities that we call home and we love so much are going to be seeing this this. Hey, NFL fans, you can start the season with a big return on FanDul, America's number one sportsbook. So when you get a hunch in the middle of the game, you can check out the latest stats, view live play-by-play, and so much more on the same page where you place your bets. You'll get started with $200 in bonus bets guaranteed when you place your first $5 bet. That's fanDul.com/sportsfan. Never waste a hunch and make every moment more with FanDul, an official sportsbook partner of the NFL. This B21 plus and present in Colorado, first online real money weights are only $10 first deposit required. Bonus issued is now a throwable bonus bets that expire seven days after receipt. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanDul.com. Gambling problem, call 1-800-522-4700. Investment from the federal government. And again, I know Secretary Vilsack has been very helpful to us over the years with the WIC program. He's never forgotten where he came from in southwestern Pennsylvania. And I know as a former congressperson yourself from the state of New Mexico, you know the importance of taking care of your constituents and taking care of the folks. That, again, sometimes might feel like, well, the federal government doesn't care about us, but the fact that you're coming to Jeanette today into Westbourne County, and I don't want to take away your thunder, but my understanding is over the next couple of days, there may be some more southwestern Pennsylvania communities that we'll be seeing, some of the love and some of the investment that the administration is going to be showing on southwestern Pennsylvania. Absolutely. When it comes to this announcement of $1.3 billion, there's also going to be investments in the Bureau of Bowdoin and Pleasant Township, and it reinforces just the importance of an opportunity economy where when we invest in rural infrastructure or investing in rural jobs, and also helping lower the cost of your monthly bills, whether that's water or wastewater or electric bills. I think that's really important you talk about the jobs because not only is the improvement to the infrastructure going to happen, but in doing so, you're going to be putting local people to work. You're going to be putting our local building trades folks who are going to be doing this work in the community, for their own community, putting their own people to work. Absolutely. And it's part of the Biden-Harris administration's work. Over this administration, the strongest and fastest recovery in history, we added 14.8 million jobs and also 15.5 million new business applications. And it's investments like this that attract that kind of opportunity. And some people might not get all that excited about infrastructure. I want to tell you, we do here in southwestern Pennsylvania. We love investment in roads, bridges, electrical grid. We get excited about that. Well, Rich, it's fundamental to making sure that manufacturing can come back to the United States and that we can continue to thrive. Well, thank you. And thank you for what you're doing. We're going to be paying attention to those details. And I'm sure the folks in Westmoreland County and in Genet are going to be excited today. So thank you for coming here. And we always welcome our secretaries to come in and bring us investment in southwestern Pennsylvania. Thank you. Have a great day. Thank you. Thank you. We appreciate it and enjoy your time in Genet and the Pittsburgh area. Zojol Torres Small, deputy secretary of agriculture on the big K morning show. This is the big K morning show, Larry Richard with executive director of the southwestern Pennsylvania Commission, Rich Fitzgerald in studio every Wednesday on our seven o'clock hour. We always appreciate you coming in, Rich. You've been bringing us a great variety of guests and learning a lot about the region. Well, there's a lot. There's a lot to learn and a lot of, you know, we heard some of this last night. Investments, some of the, obviously the hurricanes and climate change and how do we deal with that and the decarbonization and you actually are both candidates agree that climate change is real. That's something that I think most of us have been talking about and working on for a number of years. And there's an organization in Pittsburgh called the green building Alliance that has been working on this very issue for our buildings in Pittsburgh downtown Pittsburgh, Oakland, some of our big buildings because it comes that 40% of all energy is consumed by our buildings, our homes, our office buildings, our hospitals, our schools, et cetera. So we're glad to welcome Jenna Kramer, who's the executive director of the green building Alliance and has been working on doing this with many, many of our buildings throughout southwestern Pennsylvania. Jenna, welcome to the show and tell us about what you're working on. Thanks so much for having me. It's great to be here this morning. As you mentioned, green building Alliance, we've been working over the last three decades to improve our buildings and our communities and now is a tremendous time to really improve our buildings because of the amount of investment that we have to do that. And so, believe it or not, we spend over 90% of our time inside and in buildings. And so our work at green building Alliance is to make sure that those spaces are as efficient as possible and reduce our utility costs are healthy. So we think about things like indoor air quality and also resilient to things like extreme weather events or, you know, high heat days or even when we have extreme weather like storms or power outages or things like that. So we look at all of those different issues at GBA and we do that in many ways. So we help building owners think about their energy demand and how they could save money and reduce operating costs and utility costs. We also work with those practitioners, whether they're on the design construction or even maintenance and operation side to think about how they can integrate best practices into their buildings and spaces. We provide workforce training, which I think we might talk about in a little bit more detail, but how can we embed green building skills into credentials and trades and professions. And we also think about things like our manufacturing and the type of products we need that go into our buildings and how can we make those processes more efficient, but also create the types of products that we need for our buildings and spaces. I have a quick question. When we hear just an average citizen, this building is lead certified. What does that mean, Jenna? That means that it has been verified. It's a third party certification from the US Green Building Council and lead stands for leadership and energy and environmental design. And some people may or may not realize, but green building lines was the very first green building organization in the entire country. We started before the US Green Building Council, and that is thanks to many leaders, including rich in others and philanthropy and business leaders taking an innovative and thought leadership approach when it comes to our buildings. And because of that, we have some of the very first lead certified buildings in our region. So even our convention center helped put green building alliance and the idea of green buildings on the map. Private sector groups like PNC Bing. There are many different green firsts that we have today. And in Western Pennsylvania, we now have over 300 lead certified buildings. So that's what lead means verifying that it's energy efficient, that you're thinking about things like air quality and other types of qualities that make a building green. And it's such a win-win-win all the way around because number one, you're making the environment better, which obviously we're all in favor of. You make the efficiency of the operation of a building and a business so that they can help their bottom line improve. And then also you're providing jobs. We see the amount of investment, particularly in the IRA, that the federal government is making to, again, put people to work in improving our buildings, making the double pane glass and adding insulation and putting solar panels on and light fixtures that are more energy efficient, et cetera, et cetera. And the other thing, Jen, I think that's important is Pittsburgh, you mentioned we are the lead. The convention center is one of the first ones to do that. I believe our NHL hockey arena was also one of the very first ones to be lead certified. And I believe that there was a statistic that came out a year or two ago that said Pittsburgh had more buildings than any city in the country as far as lead certified. The New York's, the LA's, all these big, are we still up in the top in that category? We are still always a leader when it comes to green buildings. And we look at not just lead certification, but there are many types of certifications, including energy star certification, well-building certification, which many of our, even our private businesses are pursuing, like Oxford Development and others that look at the health of a building. We have many different certifications and we are still a leader. I'm not sure if we have, you know, if we have the most green buildings as far as lead certification because some cities just have more buildings than we do. Okay. And let me just, one other thing I want to go with, like what about outside of the city of downtown Pittsburgh and Oakland, where we have, you know, that concentration? What about places like Green County or Fayette County or Westmoreton or Butler County? What are they doing as far as, what's being done to help those communities when it comes to green, greening up their buildings? Absolutely. So as an organization, we've worked throughout Western Pennsylvania for many different years. And so there are great examples of green buildings, also organizations, schools, municipalities, nonprofits. Many different groups working on these issues of improving their buildings, looking at their communities, and also thinking about the types of education and skills that we need. So one of the efforts that we are launching right now is a green pathways initiative. We know through our organization and work that the types of skills that are required for green building that come across many different professions and traits, even different types of careers are in increasing demand. And so our work right now is to make sure, as you mentioned previously, rich that a lot of this work does mean saving money and it means jobs. And so we want to make sure that we're helping to train the existing workforce, but also encourage new workers to come into these careers. And so through that green pathways initiative, we're going to be working even with youth and high school youth trying to encourage them for these different types of careers and career pathways and providing training, but also working with our many partners across workforce boards, schools, career and tech centers, others to work with existing workers to and see what opportunities and skills they enhance in their career and make sure that they're eligible for the high quality jobs that we know are available. And like a lot of opportunities, we know that the job need, I know I think I saw the number of 2000 that are going to be need to train to be able to do HVAC work electrical work building maintenance work just over the next couple of years so you're right for young people. This is a great opportunity for career career advancement and career placement. Yeah, and we've come a long way. I got to be honest, Jenna, when I first heard a green building, you know, a designation of green building, I thought, well, I'm colorblind. I didn't know it wasn't actually green. So, I know some of our very first, yeah, some of our very first images that we used to show is it doesn't necessarily mean the outside of the building. We come a long way. Well, thanks for your time and your work and good luck. Thanks, Jenna. Keep up the great work. Talk to you soon. See you later. Jenna Kramer, President CEO of the Green Building Alliance in the big came morning show. It's Saturday Night Live. Rich Fitzgerald and I just talking about their 50th season premiere Saturday night with a Pittsburgh connection. There's always a big one. Well, so many people were waiting for this first, you know, Saturday Night Live, you know, obviously with the campaign, who was going to pay Trump, who was going to play Harris. And Maya Rudolph, who played Harris and did a great job as Vice President Harris has a Pittsburgh connection. The Rudolph family is one of the most prominent families, Bill Rudolph and his son Izzy and Jim Rudolph, you know, own McKnight properties and many of our iconic buildings in downtown. The gimbals building, the grant building, the Oliver building is a cousin to the Rudolph. And in Maya Rudolphs, I think it was her great grandfather laid the first stone for the Beth Shalom synagogue in Squirrel Hill. So there is always a Pittsburgh connection to what's going on in the world. That's extraordinary. And how about Dana Carvey coming back? And then Jim Gaffigan is Tim Walsh. If you didn't see it, it's available on YouTube, just the open for that. It's worth doing. There's no question. 34 days to the election. Rich and voting is already underway. It is. I actually got my ballot yesterday and I've heard from others who have gotten their ballot. So I believe it's a hundred and sixty or 170,000 applications in Allegheny County alone. And, you know, people will begin voting. And that's it's it used to be election day, but now with mail-in voting, you almost have election month. So people will be getting their ballots and making decisions and going forward with all of that. But what was the peak during the pandemic of mail-in ballots? In 2020, the first year we did it, we had almost 400,000 applications. So a lot of people did not want to vote in person for obvious reasons. It was the first time. And there are people that like to go to the polls or people that everyone has a different way in which they want to do that. So, but the mail-in voting has certainly changed things. Some of it because of the controversy that former President Trump has put on mail-in voting. And what's your confidence level? My confidence level is I think no matter what happens, the election will be fair. It will be legitimate. And regardless of what both sides might say, these folks who work in these departments, having run it for a number of years as county executive, there's some of the hardest-working civil servants you'll ever want to see. Rich Fitzgerald, appreciate it. Next week, we're going to talk a little bit about something coming to the Burg. We're always about the future in Pittsburgh. And next week, we're going to talk about artificial intelligence, a big, big conference that's coming to Bakery Square on October 14th. We have the governor's going to be in town and many other folks who are leaders in that technology that Pittsburgh's on the forefront in. Executive Director of the Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission, Rich Fitzgerald, Caitlin O'Connor, making sure everything's copistatic. Caitlin keeps us on task. Thank you, Caitlin. Thank you, Caitlin. Thanks, Rich. Thanks. Hey, NFL fans. You can start the season with a big return on FanDul, America's number one sports book. So when you get a hunch in the middle of the game, you can check out the latest stats, view live play-by-play, and so much more on the same page where you place your bets. You'll get started with $200 in bonus bets guaranteed when you place your first $5 bet. That's FanDul.com/sportsfan. Never waste a hunch and make every moment more with FanDul, an official sports book partner of the NFL. Must be 21-plus in present in Colorado. First online real money weights are only $10 first deposit required. Bonus issued is now a throwable bonus bet set expire seven days after receipt. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanDul.com. Gambling problem, call 1-800-522-4700.