 Okay everybody take a big sigh of relief we're all set to go I'm not going to say too much except to say thank you very much for coming out on this horrible day and please turn off your cell phones and this gentleman there in the aisle is from channel 17 so that if the other people who didn't come who weren't strong enough to get out here in the snow they can watch it on channel 17 so without further ado Beth would you introduce our speaker well first of all I want to thank you and I want to thank Neil for driving all the way here in this awful weather from Montpelier to be here today so we welcome him Neil began his career the first 12 years of his career as a print journalist starting at the Bennington Banner and then moving on to the Vermont Press Bureau in Montpelier where he served as their bureau chief in November he joined the staff at WCAX TV channel three and he is their capital bureau chief covering the legislature and for politics and he's here today to bring us up to date on all of the goings-on or non goings-on in Montpelier thank you very much for having me it's a pleasure to be here so a little iffy on the drive up but we all made it and so I won't waste too much time she got you going here we'll start with where I just came from in the Senate chamber the big issue this week and last week was firearms laws I know you're all aware of what transpired two weeks ago in Florida you're probably all aware of what happened down in Fairhaven with the teenager arrested for plotting an attack on Fairhaven Union high school in quick succession it really changed a lot of minds in Montpelier particularly the governor who called us into his ceremonial office for a press conference in which he just he tried to describe that feeling he had that change of mind he had as he read through this affidavit of written by police about the young man in Fairhaven and I think many of us were were surprised this isn't the first tragedy that you know Florida was not the first tragedy but this was the closest Vermont has come in Fairhaven to really having a tragedy here in our own state and that seemed to have had a profound impact on the governor on the speaker on a number of people in in the legislature particularly the Senate where universal background checks other firearms laws have been bottled up for a long time and so really everything has changed in the last two weeks so let's talk about some of the the bills now that are being considered in really are are moving there's a bill called S-221 and it lays out a process for how law enforcement could seize a weapon from somebody who might be a risk to themselves or others the Senate has passed this bill and they can now if it clears the house which they're working on a little bit more slowly but if somebody if the law enforcement thinks that somebody is a danger they can call up a judge and they can get a court order to take those weapons away for up to 14 days and then within those 14 days there will be a hearing in which whoever had their guns taken away can present their own evidence to prove that they're not a danger to themselves or others and if the judge says they are a danger 60 days the seizure can be extended up to 60 days and then it could be extended again and again after that with more hearings each time so that is a bill that senator Dick Sears the chairman of the Judiciary Committee said when he introduced it that he had he did not think this bill was going to even get to the floor let alone pass and so two weeks ago things changed and this bill has been moving very rapidly it's one of the bills that the governor told us he wanted lawmakers to pass immediately and have on his desk before town meeting day now it doesn't look like that's going to happen the house that that would have been a very condensed process it would have required both chambers to suspend their rules and move this thing through much quicker the house was unable to do that they had some differences of opinion about what the bill should say and I don't want to I don't know how far into the weeds everyone wants to get but the Senate said that to seize a weapon there had to be a preponderance of evidence which is a standard in a court of law that somebody was a danger the house wanted it to be a lower consideration known as probable cause and so there's some there's some differences there and they weren't able to get together on the same page this week but they will come back after the town meeting break and hash out those differences so this this bill does appear to be one that will get to the governor's desk within probably 10 to 15 days from now so that is that is one major change in the last two weeks that would not have happened but for these the incident in Florida in the incident in Fairhaven part of the reason the house doesn't want didn't want to fast-track to 21 is because they also favor H 4 2 2 which is a bill that would allow law enforcement to take weapons away from somebody accused of domestic violence or domestic assault the problem with this bill according to its detractors is that it does not include a court process and they believe there might be some constitutional issues with the search or seizure of a weapon without a court order Vermont Vermont's constitution goes a little bit further than many other states in protecting people from illegal searches or illegal seizures of property and so there there may very well be some constitutional questions with H 4 22 but that is one bill that the house and the governor has said now after Florida and after Fairhaven let's get this signed into law so there there are a few more legal questions about H 4 22 it's unclear whether there are enough senators to make to pass that bill but it's one that the house is very keen on and one that the governor has now called for and may very well pass in the next couple of weeks. Another bill in the house H 6 75 that would right now many judges issue conditions of release for a defendant who who they're not going to hold in detention basically until their trial and some judges issue a condition that says you cannot have or possess a weapon. It's actually not codified in law anywhere that that is an official condition of release. It's just one that some certain judges use from time to time in their purview of being a judge and having some leeway in what conditions they said. This bill would codify that into law so that judges could point to it and say you know this is this is in state statute now we can prevent you as a defendant on your condition of release that you you can no longer possess a weapon. That's another one the governor has called for and I believe that one will also pass the town the town meeting break next week kind of it puts a pause on what has been a very rapid evolution of this discussion in Montpelier and I think some people are worried that this pause might hurt momentum. But it's built into the calendar and there's nothing anyone can do about that. So many people are hoping that these 3 bills will continue their momentum after this week long break and I and I do think it will given the sentiments of the House speaker the pro tem and even the governor and how passionate they've spoken about this issue over the last couple of weeks. It appears that all 3 of these will will make it into law at some point this session. So there's some other new possibilities here. I am not a huge firearms person. I don't really know what a bump stock does other than it allows you to convert a weapon to be an automatic weapon. The governor has called for a ban on those the president has also said he would like to ban those ban that addition to a firearm. So I do believe either at the state or federal level in the next few weeks that probably will be banned raising the age to 21 to purchase firearms. I was in the Senate till about 105 today and then getting very nervous about getting here on time because they were debating that very issue today and by a vote of 21 to 9 they approved that and added it to the bill that they passed or at least gave initial passage to yesterday to expand the background check system. So the Senate is now on record as having voted in favor of raising the purchase age for a firearm to 21 and expanding background checks to private sales. Some of you are probably firearms owners and you know that if you go to a licensed a federally licensed firearms dealer and purchase a firearm you have to go through a background check. But if you want to sell a firearm to your buddy you can just pull it out of your trunk handed to them and accept some cash and it's perfectly legal. There is no requirement for a background check to do a private sale of a firearm. This would the bill that they approved yesterday and we're giving final passage to today expands the background check system to private sales. There are some exceptions. You're exempt if you want to transfer a firearm to an immediate family member or if you're transferring a firearm to a law enforcement officer or a member active member of the military. Those are exemptions to the rule but other than that the bill says that you must go through a background check. I think many people think that makes a lot of sense others argue that it won't really do much good. The alleged shooter in Florida acquired his weapon by passing a background check. The teenager in Fairhaven acquired the weapon he was in possession of through a shotgun I believe it was. He acquired that by passing a background check. So many people think that it's probably not the end of the story. It's one potential step to prevent some future incidents but probably not all in that they spent a lot of time debating the merits of whether expanding universal background checks made a lot of sense. And ultimately the Senate decided that it did and they passed it. The House says they have the votes to pass the expanded background check bill and and they will do that when they come back from the week long town meeting break. Not sure what the count is but they seem very confident that the bills that the votes are there to pass this bill. The governor says he is looking into it and he's considering it. It's something he's open to depending on what the final version the final language says. But his staff has indicated that he's he's receptive to this idea and likely he said he would probably sign it. So that is a major change in the last two weeks. All of these things are major changes and would have been unheard of three weeks ago. And I think what's really interesting is that Democrats controlled the House the Senate and the governor's office for six years and none of these things could make it through. We now have a Republican governor and we are seeing incredible movement on background checks and raising the age of purchasing firearms and all these other things that you know under Democratic rule and most people would think in their minds OK Democrats would be more favorable to this. Well they didn't get it done and now we have this incident. These incidents have changed everything. And a lot of people have been talking about why is that. What is it about this time. I don't know that I have the answer to it. But I can tell you we have seen dozens maybe hundreds of high school students inside the state House in the last couple of weeks advocating very strongly and very passionately for their for their own safety. Many of them have spoken about the fear they have going to school the fear that they have that something like what happened in Florida will happen here. And that seems to be the impetus for these major changes. I don't nobody can think of another reason why everything is moving so rapidly at this point. Other than there's a whole lot of high school kids that are about to be voting age and they seem very motivated. So perhaps that is one of the one of the drivers here. Either way it's it'd be difficult to overstate how drastic of a change this is in the dialogue in Montpelier about this issue. And it should be noted there are people very passionate people who are still adamantly opposed to all of these things and they have been in the state House trying to make their case as well. But for years many of the groups the gun owners of Vermont the Vermont Federation of Sportsman's Clubs the National Rifle Association their message has carried the day for a very long time. And I think they're still also trying to grapple with what exactly is happening how the conversation shifted so quickly and what it means for the future of gun laws in Vermont. I think everyone understands we have a very long tradition of gun ownership and hunting and sportsmen in Vermont just like many other rural states around the country. So this conversation I think is just getting started and probably will continue for a very long time. And we may see additional measures come forward this year next year the year after we shall see. So what does it all mean. Governor Scott certainly feeling the heat from those groups I mentioned Vermont Federation of Sportsman's Clubs National Rifle Association. If you if you ever go on Facebook and you read the comments on any story of any news article about these changes in the last couple of weeks you will see people that are very very disappointed and angry with the governor for his shifting positions. You know it's hard it's hard to say I don't think most people would blame the governor he's got an incredible responsibility to consider the safety of all of us. And the one thing he tried to impress upon us is that sense of responsibility that he felt as he read the affidavit regarding the young man in Fairhaven and how that changed him and how he wanted to make sure that he was doing everything he can to prevent something like that from happening. And essentially he says that with what we have on the books now I don't think that I could promise it wouldn't happen and he wanted to try and prevent it from happening. So he will take some political heat for that he might lose some votes for that. He says he doesn't care about that. I'm guessing somebody in his office does and they're trying to understand what it all means. We saw some interesting votes in the Senate this week. I put differing districts on there. Senator Jane Kitchell from Caledonia County is a Democrat. She cast a vote against universal background checks I believe she was one of the ones that did that. And then we had some Republicans vote for these things. So we're seeing how where you live in Vermont might impact how you might vote on these things. There are senators Democratic senators who come from fairly conservative districts and there are Republican senators that come from fairly liberal districts. So they are it's a great lesson in looking at your constituents and trying to respond to what they want and not maybe not taking your own personal feelings into account or somehow trying to balance it all out. These are not easy votes for them and you know they're all going to hear from somebody that's very angry and disappointed with them. So if you are angry or disappointed with them remember that they have a lot of pressure on them and they're and they're trying to come out on the best side for their all of their constituents. I think the one thing folks in the governor's office might be worried about is that a libertarian candidate or somebody else you know a Republican of some persuasion steps forward as an independent or as I said a libertarian in the general election and runs on these issues alone on Second Amendment rights. That could be who knows what might happen but that could be a problem for the governor. And then there are many other people that believe that however many votes the governor might lose on the right he'll gain in the middle which really brought him to office anyway. I think it's too soon we don't we don't do a lot of polling in this state nobody knows really what what it looks like. There are a number of possibilities and I think we'll get a better sense of that over the next couple of months and as we move into the election season and we figure out who all the who all the candidates will be. All right. So that's really what has consumed all of the oxygen in the state house for the last couple of weeks. Let's talk about some of the other issues the economic issues. The Senate started this year with a discussion about the minimum wage. I'm sure you've all heard about the fight for 15 is one of the groups pushing for this fifteen dollars per hour seems to be the wage that many people are pushing for their you know thirteen dollars has come up 1250 has come up. The question really is then how much and how fast and how do you balance that between very big and wealthy businesses and some of the smaller small businesses that might have a handful of employees and not a whole lot of revenue to divvy out. That's what they were grappling with. Well the Senate passed a bill earlier this year and what it does is raise the wage to fifteen dollars an hour by 2024 in incremental steps. For those who might work at a restaurant and receive tips the wage would be at fifty percent of the the regular minimum wage. And so then the question has become in the state house what is the impact on employers. Well if you're Walmart maybe not much right. You have a lot of revenue you're a giant corporation. Yes you answer to shareholders who may not be happy about less profit but you can probably afford to do this. There were a number of smaller employers that have testified and I guess I should give you a brief disclosure. Now's a good time for that. My fiance is the president of the Vermont Retail and Grocers Association so she advocates for many of the small employers in the in the state. So if you think I'm biased you can tell me after but hopefully I'll be shooting down the middle. And so the question really was what is the impact on employers. There were a number of small businesses that did come forward and say you know I own a store I have three employees I pay them what I can and at the end of the day I don't even pay myself fifteen dollars an hour because we don't have the revenue to do that. And so they're really trying I think the Senate did try to balance out what the appropriate level wage should be and when they should get there. It's 2018 so over the next six years it rises to fifteen dollars an hour. Under current law it would come out to about twelve dollars and somewhere between twelve thirty and twelve forty under current law with natural inflation. And so it's maybe two fifty more per hour by 2024 than it otherwise would be. Nobody knows what the impact is going to be. We have some evidence from around the country. You can look at Seattle they raised the wage to fifteen dollars an hour. You can find a study that says it's been a great thing and you can find a study that says it's been a terrible thing. Ottawa in Canada raised the wage significantly to a level like this. And again you can find people that say it's been a wonderful thing and people say that it's been a terrible thing. The joint fiscal office which does all of the sort of economic gaming out of bills for lawmakers. They're independent supposed to be nonpartisan. They estimate that this the state will lose probably a couple thousand jobs a year because of this wage and driving small businesses to cut back on employment. Again these are sort of gamed out theories nobody knows what the impact will be yet. So we'll find out. But that is what the Senate has done so far. Another issue paid family leave. This is a big one for a lot of families who particularly young folks young couples young families they have children. You know when you have a child often times you'd like to stay home and spend the first few months with with your new child. And this is what the House passed last year in trying to help people help families get a good start on life when they have a baby. So their plan provides six weeks of paid leave. It requires employees to contribute as you can see there about you know less than point two percent of their pay. Which seems like a small amount. It is a small amount. I mean pennies on the dollar really. And they would be able to take time off for a newborn or adopted child or to care for a sick relative. And for contributing point one four one percent of their pay into this pool of money. They would get eighty percent of their pay when they take this available time off. Which seems like a pretty good deal. You know it's a small amount of money. Right now we don't have a lot of young people and they're not having a lot of babies. Everyone's probably familiar with our demographic problem. So pretty good deal right. Unless perhaps we start getting an influx of young people who are having a lot of babies and then and then you wonder whether that pool can sustain this. But for now it looks pretty good. And it would cost one point two million dollars in administrative costs. So these are the the different ways that the House and Senate have tried to help low middle income Vermonters and young families find it find Vermont to be a more affordable place to live. Now the Senate thinks their fifteen dollar per hour minimum wage plan is really awesome. And the House thinks their plan for paid family leave is really awesome. And they want the other one to act on their bills. So we now have this situation where you know the Senate really likes their idea. The House really likes their idea. The governor hates both of them. And we'll probably veto them. And so the question is you know where does it all end up. It's sort of it's sort of a game of it's a standoff right now. Where the Senate is waiting for the House to take up its bill and the House is waiting for the Senate to take up its bill. If I had to wager a guess I would say they agree to pass each other's bills and let the governor veto them and take those ideas to the fall campaign and hash it out with the voters. It's almost a certainty that the governor will veto these things. You know I think everyone knows that the governor has pledged not to raise taxes or fees. And part of that is you know raising expenses for employers. So he's not a huge fan of the minimum wage bill. And then it is a new tax on anyone earning income in Vermont would have to pay into this system for a paid family leave which would in his view I think count as a tax increase. So almost certainly not likely to be supported. So my guess is this becomes a major theme for the fall campaign for lawmakers and whoever the final candidates for governor are. The governor's base is likely to be very excited that he protected the business community from significant impacts and whoever the Democratic candidates are are likely to be rallying their base saying look at what we try to do for people and the governor said no and you know we'll see in November who wins that idea. Paying for education that is a big question every year and nobody has the answer. So earlier this year the governor put out a few ideas his he wants cost containment. He wants to bring the cost of public education down in Vermont. One of his idea he put out a number of ideas. I'm just going to run through quickly a few of them that he discussed. He talks a lot about the staff to student ratio and how we're at about four to one right now four staff and that could be a teacher. It could be a bus driver. It could be a custodial staff. It could any adult employed in the school is considered staff and right now the ratio is four of those folks to one student. And according to the governor's office if we brought that to five to one we would save one hundred million dollars per year in the public education system. Now it's not as simple as just saying okay we're going to cut X number of staff and get to five to one because every school every district is independent they have different needs. You know you might a small school might need two people in the cafeteria staff and three custodial staff in a bigger school would need more. And those decisions the districts argue are best made at the local level and they shouldn't be tinkered with from Montpelier. So finding a way to reduce or I guess to to improve that student or that staff to student ratio is not as easy as it sounds or maybe not as easy as the governor's office portrays it to be. You probably could figure it out over time but it's not a quick fix and it would have to be done through most likely through attrition and more consolidation of district resources and that sort of thing. So and it's clearly not favored by the Vermont NEA which is the teacher largest teachers union in the state because they believe it will it will have a negative impact on on how kids are educated here in Vermont. Another idea the governor had was to cap the per pupil cost. Last year I think the per pupil spending was about 15 between 15 and 16,000 per student in Vermont which is a lot of money. If you were thinking about paying tuition for your child and you were looking at a 15 or 16 thousand dollar bill you might say that's pretty expensive. But that's what we pay all of us combined for public education right now. And so the governor thought well maybe let's just cap per pupil costs. Again difficult decision. Different districts have different needs. Very difficult to say that a school in Caledonia County in a very rural area should have the same per pupil cost as a school in the heart of Burlington because they're very different places with unique needs. And it's just a difficult conversation to have to to figure out what that spending cap might look like. This is one of the interesting ones. School Consolidation Commission. He proposed creating this commission to look at small schools and consider whether they're viable. Now who knows what that means? What does it mean to be a viable school? Is it based on costs? Is it based on educational outcomes? There could be a number of ways you measure this. But it would be a commission to look at which small schools should be closed to help the state consolidate and save money. Again, if you're a rural community with a small school, you're probably not a big fan of this idea because it might mean that the school you went to and your kids now go to and you hope their kids kids might go to would be on the chopping block. It would no longer exist. Local choice is big in Vermont. We want decisions made at the local level and all of these ideas coming from the governor would sort of be a step back from that. They know that. People know that. Education is expensive. Local control is a rallying cry every year. But I think people, more people every year realize that the more decisions made at the local level, the more difficult it is to find savings because there are unique needs in every district. It's difficult to, unless you do things on a statewide basis, it's hard to find those savings. The hard part about this job is everything changes. When I made this earlier in the week, this was the plan in the House Ways and Means Committee. I quickly put another slide together, but let me just run what they were talking about for most of the session. So they were looking at a reform plan for the Ed financing system. It would have incorporated a tiered school income tax on all wage earners, business owners and people with investment income. The first $47,000 would be exempt. And then you can see how it would the breakdown of salary ranges and what you would be taxed at. And this money coming from an income tax would have been used to offset property tax rates so that it spread the burden out beyond more than just those folks who own property. Somebody like myself who rents, you know, I don't directly pay into the education system because I don't pay property taxes. I'm sure some element of my rent, my landlord has factored as part of his bill. But this would have unfortunately captured me. So this would have been a tax increase on me. This plan went away earlier this week, actually Wednesday up in the wind. And they came out with something else. They came out with a new single tax bill that includes changes to the income tax that the governor wanted in response to the federal tax bill that passed as well as changes to the education finance system. So the bill now that the house will debate when they get back after this week long break would reduce the base property tax rate by about 10 percent, maybe a little bit more. And then everyone would see a surcharge on their income tax. If you earn income in Vermont, you will pay a surcharge on it. And it's small, particularly at the lower end. If you don't make a lot of money in your tax at the lowest bracket that Vermont has, you would pay 0.1 percent surcharge into the education system. And it goes up from there. This would raise about 60 million dollars in new money, which would then be used to lower property taxes. Now, the 60 million is a lot less than the initial proposal. The initial proposal that I showed you that has since vanished, that would have raised almost 400 million dollars in income taxes. So that's why this plan, the first plan would have brought property tax rates down by about 50 percent. This is why this only drops by somewhere between 10 to 15 percent. And in the original plan, the income sensitivity program was eliminated, which helps low income and middle income Vermonters pay their property tax as a percentage of their income. There's a lot of questions in Montpelier about whether that's an effective system, whether it's a fair system. In the original plan, they got rid of it. In this plan, it's back. Income sensitivity would live on to fight another day. And then on the income tax side, this idea came from the governor. So as you know, in December, Congress passed and the president signed into law the federal tax cuts and jobs act. But because of because of the way it's structured in the way Vermont's income tax is relates to the federal tax system, it would have been a 30 million dollar increase on what essentially our middle income Vermonters. And so the governor said, well, that's not really what I think people had in mind. They didn't really want to raise taxes on people. They wanted to try and lower taxes. So he came out with this plan that would return the money to Vermonters rather than go into the state's coffers. And for the most part, it the house tinkered with it a little bit, a little bit with the governor changed a little bit what the governor wanted. But for the most part kept it. So what it does, it creates a standard deduction at the state level. You might know, at the federal level, there's a standard deduction for an individual right now, 6,000, it will double to 12,000 next year as part of the federal changes. For couples, I think it's 12,000 now and doubles to 24,000. So the state creates its own deductions, $9,000 for head of household, 6,000 for single filers and 12,000 for joint filers. And it creates a new personal exemption in the state income tax system. So if you have a child, you get a credit, you get to lop off $4,150 for it, for all your dependents. And then each Vermont income tax bracket would be dropped by 0.2%. And that is how they would return that $30 million to Vermont taxpayers. That will be debated by the house when they come back after the break. I have no idea what's going to happen with it. The governor likes the income tax side, because it's largely what he proposed. He really does not like what they did to the education finance system. It is all one bill right now. There's a good chance that at one point or another it'll be separated back again so they can consider them separately. But for now, that is where things stand in the House Ways and Means Committee. The Senate has not had a chance to even dive into this yet. I'm sure they'll have their own brilliant idea of what they think needs to happen. And they will hash it out together. Also in this tax bill, some of you might be receiving Social Security. So retirees with adjusted gross income below 45,000, well, congratulations. It'll no longer be taxed. So that's great for anyone under 45,000. Now between 45,000 and 55,000, the tax rate will be dropped slightly. So you'll pay less of that. And again, for couples jointly earning $65,000. Overall, this is a four and a half million dollar reduction in state revenue. But it's one that everyone seems to agree is probably a good idea. I think Vermont is either one of 13 or 14 states that taxes Social Security. AARP has been seeking this change for a very long time. My father asks me every year if they've done it yet. And I tell him, no, bad, not yet. But they might do it this year. So that is another change included in that tax bill that is very likely to pass because it does have very strong support. So that is where I ran out of time this week, putting a presentation together. I would love to answer any questions you have if I can about what else is happening. Yeah, fire away. So we got a couple in the back here. I gave some thought to some of the gun. Yes, I'm sorry. I gave some thought to some of the gun legislation. And just for the record, I'm pro regulation, pro safety. And then the thought occurred to me that confiscating a weapon from somebody's home is violates the search and seizure. What? Amendments to the Constitution. Yeah. And I was hearing a discussion on this on VPR not long ago. And so the thought occurred to me, okay, let's not confiscate it from somebody's home. How about if we have strong boxes that the police can carry around in their car and essentially a lockbox and it's got to be vandal proof because some people, you know, want to get into that box so badly. But the weapon then stays in the person's home. It's locked up as it should be anyway. And I guess my question is if there were a lawyer here in the room, they might be able to address it. I don't consider that to be confiscation because when the gun is not used, it should be locked up. And so the weapon stays in the home of whoever else is in that home whose life might be endangered by that weapon being there. At least that weapon won't be used. And I'd like to get somebody's thoughts about that. I am not a lawyer and I have not even played one on TV. But I can tell you these are the these are the types of questions that they have really struggled with and why many of these bills have been stuck in the Senate Judiciary Committee for years. As I noted, the Vermont Constitution goes further than many others in protecting people from illegal searches and seizures by by authorities. Now, I think even if if you locked up a gun in a case that the owner did not have access to that would still be considered a seizure and without a court order, it probably it may but violate the state constitution. And so this is why there was a lot of debate going on right now between what the House wants to do and what the Senate wants to do. The Senate plan does have a court process where a judge has to weigh in and issue a ruling. The House Bill 422 that would allow police to take weapons from those accused of domestic violence does not include a court process. And that's why people fear there are constitutional questions. So I think even locking somebody's weapon in a box in their own home that they can no longer access is probably would be litigated and I would, you know, based on what state law in the Constitution says would probably be considered an illegal seizure. More questions? There must be questions. Got one over here. Did I hear some mention that the governor was considering a substantial amount of money to schools to in regard to school safety. Yeah. And that's I probably should have mentioned this. So one of the governor's proposals, it's not just gun laws. The governor has said while we talk about gun laws, it can't be the only thing we talk about. We need to focus on school safety as well. He's he's asking for five million dollars and security audits of every school to essentially figure out where the weak points might be and what needs to be done to improve safety and make sure that people can access the school who shouldn't be accessing the school. And those that five million dollars would be available in school districts as grants to beef up their security and hopefully prevent something like this from happening. It's an important topic, but it does seem odd that the governor is trying to limit and reduce school costs and then five million dollars comes from where. Yeah. Well, that's that is the question. Where's that? Now, he has not identified where he has said his administration has identified but has not said yet where it will come from. So that is forthcoming. I think it's probably most people would agree that an audit of safety audit of schools is warranted. We should figure out what we do well, what we don't do well is five million dollars enough. I don't know. I don't know that anyone knows. We'll find out maybe when when the audits occur. And then the question is, where does that money come from? We know public education is expensive. Property taxes are going up every year. Is this a general fund expenditure? Is it an education fund expenditure? Those are all questions that have not been answered yet. Thank you. Sure. Just wondered if you could comment on the cleanup of the lake. The treasure had come up with the proposal that didn't seem to fly with folks. Just wondered. Yeah. So the the lake, right? Good luck with that. So the treasure identified a sort of bridge plan using capital fund expenditures, which is essentially borrowed money for two years as a bridge plan while lawmakers in the administration are supposed to come up with a long term financing plan. At the beginning of the session, both the house and Senate were gung-ho and they were going to identify the long term source of funding. And as the days and weeks have gone by, the sentiment behind that has sort of petered out and they are not really identifying the long term solution. What they are doing, at least the latest iteration of the bill in the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee calls for is, and they've called for this number of times, remember, asking the administration to once again come up with a plan for long term financing and then also tasking themselves with writing a plan for long term financing. So essentially what they're doing is borrowing themselves time another year to come back in 2019 and come up with this long term plan. They do have until excuse me, until I think 2019 or 2020 figured out. And it's that after that they need to really have an idea of where this money is coming from. Part of the reason the Senate and the House have backed away from a financing plan is the governor said, even if it doesn't raise money this year, if you pass something that raises money in the future, I consider that a tax hike. So even though it's out in the future, he has been strongly discouraging them from doing so, arguing that let's use the capital fund for now. The Treasurer has given us, bought us this time essentially. The EPA sees it differently. The state was supposed to have a plan in place by the end of 2017. I don't know what the repercussions might be, if there will be any, but we are certainly behind schedule according to the EPA. On the paid family leave, yeah, your screen there suggested that this is all being paid by employees and not nothing from the employer. Is that right? That is correct. So they last year, the House passed this last year in the first year of the biennium, they considered a number of different things. One of the ways they thought this maybe would get more buy-in from folks who might be resistant to it was by not putting it on the employer, but only putting it on the employee. They talked about making it an optional program that you could opt into. If you wanted to have this time available to you, turns out that was kind of a sketchy idea because you probably wouldn't create enough in the pool to provide for everyone. So they did consider a number of different things. It did initially include a payroll tax for employees and employers, but that the employer side was taken away. That was when they had it at 12 weeks of pay for 100 percent of your pay, and then they realized they had to sort of scale things down to make it palatable. And that's what they did. They got rid of the employer side. I have a question about the Lake Champlain in water. The federal government came off through their EPA efforts with the Clean Water Act. Yeah. The Clean Water Act. That's a federal act. Right. I landed here and there was a lot of reorganization with the Inertia Resources organization here to administer the Clean Water Act. And I'm wondering now, given the fact that the federal NRA, and not the NRA, but the federal EPA. EPA has dived under the rug. Right. I'm wondering if that's going to affect what the Clean Water Act is going to be able to help states implement. I think you're you're probably right about that with the current EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt and the current Trump administration. There are a lot of questions about how much they will try and crack down on states like Vermont, who may be falling behind on on their obligations under current law, which is, I think I may have said it's unclear what the repercussions will be for Vermont. There may not be any because the Trump administration under Administrator Pruitt may not may not try to do anything. They have a very different view of the EPA than the previous. Well, really, any previous administration, but certainly the last administration. So there may not be there may not be any repercussions. The state is under a TMDL, a total maximum daily load for phosphorus in Vermont. We are supposed to be reducing our phosphorus. We are supposed to have funded a way to get that accomplished. And we have we have not done that. So who knows? We I don't know. You can only guess and it doesn't seem like what we know about this administration that they will do a whole lot to crack down on Vermont. Question in the front. Just a quick question. Yeah, it's, I think you probably know Rick steves was here recently. I didn't attend the skinny pancake, the freebie to listen to his remarks. But I did see him on it was either a seven days video. And it's a very interesting position he's taken, which I wonder if you comment on including being able to tax the proceeds from marijuana sales. And the fact that banks in general are interested in getting into this picture a lot more than we realized. Yeah, so particularly credit unions in state credit unions are very interested in sort of taking up the legalized marijuana business. So Rick steves was here. He was quite a show in the legislature. I mean we there are people there are famous people that come into the legislature. I've never seen quite the reaction that Rick steves got. I mean, so many selfies. It was he was a he was a big deal. People people love his travel programs. But so the question is, you know, where does Vermont go with marijuana legalization? The bill that they've passed kicks in July first. And as I'm sure most of you know, you can possess marijuana legally in Vermont, but you won't be able to buy it or sell it. I would imagine when the final report comes out in December, I think December 15th from the governor's commission, there will be some recommendation for moving to the next step, which is a legalized market. Again, the Trump administration has a very different view of states legal legalization of marijuana than the Obama administration did. And they may they may seek to crack down more than than the previous administration. So what that means for Vermont? I don't know. I do know that there are problems with the banking system for states that have legalized marijuana markets because federal law does not allow it. So so going through a traditional banking system is is not an option for these folks. And a lot of them sometimes they can't even use credit card terminals because MasterCard visa American Express, all these companies are worried about repercussions for them through the federal government. So from what I've read, we don't have any real experience here in Vermont yet, but credit unions seem to be very eager to take up this business. But it's crazy. It's a cash business. So I mean, there's a lot of cash flowing around with all of this. So that might be our future. Who knows? Yeah, with the governor pledging no new taxes, no new fees and a six million dollar loss of revenue with the Social Security no tax. Has there been a discussion of how they would address that deficit? Well, the governor has proposed a number of cuts. And most of the money in state government is in health care, medic, Medicaid and the Agency of Human Services, you know, the social safety net that we provide. So there have been some some cutbacks there. We are they're hoping for some bump in revenue and the state economists for the legislature and the governor both indicate that we will see a little bit of bump in revenue. So there is some wiggle room there. But by and large, no, there's no talk of new revenue. What they're hoping to do is offset the revenue that they're getting rid of with gains and new revenue that falls within what the governor considers regular growth 2.3% or so. Yeah. Thank you very much. No more questions? Oh, all right. Thank you all for having me. It was a pleasure. And if any, I have a couple more minutes. So if anyone has a question, you can come up and ask me. Thank you.