Scott Wagner, Republican gubernatorial candidate, hosts a town hall Thursday night in Zelienople. About 100 people came to hear him speak about his plans for tax and education reform and provide him with questions, comments and grievances regarding what they see in their communities.

ZELIENOPLE — Scott Wagner, 2018 Republican gubernatorial nominee, expanded on his public education proposal while speaking Thursday evening at a town hall meeting in Zelienople to a welcoming crowd of about 100 people.

Wagner campaigns as a down-to-earth candidate bent on tax and education reform. His focus Thursday was explaining his recently proposed plans for education, which include adding $1 billion to public education without relying on additional taxation.

“People think I'm anti-education,” Wagner said. “I am not anti-education.”

His initiative includes awarding “bonuses” to schools with the creation of the RISE Block Grant. The grant would be “modeled after the federal Race to the Top program” and would award cash incentives to schools to implement STEM based-programs, cooperative learning curricula and technical or vocational opportunities.

Wagner, who received one year of technical training beyond high school, said he proudly supports school choice, vouchers and charter schools, for which the crowd vehemently applauded.

At the same time, Wagner wants to eliminate school property taxes, but he did not elaborate on how the two plans would work together.

“We're going to get Pennsylvania's taxes in order,” he said. “We're not going to play with taxes this year.”

In addition to working on taxes and education, Wagner said Pennsylvania is facing a few crises, primarily in labor and retirement.

“We are in a pension crisis,” he said. “We have got to solve this pension crisis.”

Wagner would put all new hires in state government on a 401(k) system rather than a pension.

Wagner said the state should switch to a 401(k) system to cut back on the expenses of the state providing for retirement.

“The funding needs to be used correctly,” Wagner said. “I'm not a career politician, and I don't want to be. I'm a business guy who ran, and I'm doing this because I care.”

One of the concerns Wagner addressed was regarding high gas taxes, which he said were OK with him “as long as we don't have as many potholes.”

“We have some of the lowest (car) registration fees in the country,” Wagner said. “So there's a balance.”

When posing the question “Are you going repeal the gas tax?” to himself, he answered with, “I don't have a plan to do that.”

“I can tell you that we need to fix these roads and we have a lot of decaying bridges.”

Most concerns voiced were regarding taxes, but a few other matters of clarification were asked by the mostly conservative crowd, including Wagner's views on abortion and proposed bathroom bills. Wagner gave true-to-party answers to both, saying he is “100 percent pro-life” and people should use the bathroom that represents the genitalia with which they were born.