>> My name is Tiffany A. Wilson, and I am the Director of Constituent Services
for State Senator Vincent Hughes.
Well, the job is exactly how the title is.
I am the Senator's Representative For Constituent Services.
So when his constituents which are the people in his specific district have questions,
have concerns about any state-related issues, I am the person that they call.
Sometimes I disperse out some of the calls or the emails or the letters that come in,
but we are the people that are responsible for making sure that he has a connection
with the people within his district.
So in Pennsylvania we have a host of state-related issues and topics.
And sometimes we have to be the resource for city, state, and federal kinds of questions
because a lot of times folks do not know who their elected officials are
and what each of the branches do.
But state-related stuff can be driver licensing.
It can be any state-related law such as the --
recently in Philadelphia the cigarette tax was a big thing.
Anything related to unemployment compensation, anything related to PENN DOT
with the transportation, anything related to articles of incorporation,
those types things are state-related issues.
So we have folks who call him and they have questions.
They have concerns.
They have ideas about legislation.
Then we have some folks who need some local services, so we try to connect them
with nonprofit -- nonprofit city council members or other types of resources.
One of the things that we are -- we constantly find ourselves trying
to help people with is housing.
And that's not necessarily a state-related issue, but we know that state funds trickle
down into the cities could really help and be a resource for some of our shelters
and some of our housing programs.
We know that laws and systems are not fixed and created overnight.
So something may happen in the news, and we may need to find a resource that is a Band-Aid
to the real solution until our elected officials can actually sit down and figure
out all the nuts and bolts of it.