 Welcome to Under the Dome, returning to town meeting TV as part of our ongoing legislative coverage. We'll be checking in with legislators from around our coverage area in the next several months on Mondays at 12 p.m. You can watch online at youtube.com slash town meeting TV or on Comcast Channel 1087 or on Burlington Telecom Channel 17 and 217. If you have a question for our guests you can call in at 802-862-3966 and we'll get you on the air. So today we're joined by our delegates from South Burlington and let's go down the line and have everyone introduce themselves. John, let's start with you. Sure. John Kalaki, Chittenden 7-3. This is my second term representing South Burlington. And I'm Mita Townsend. I represent Chittenden 7-4. That's the part of South Burlington over toward the airport. And I'm completing my fifth term. Martin Lalone, Chittenden 7-1 which is, oh it's hard to describe, but it's known by the lake. I know that you're one of my constituents as well. And I'm finishing up my fourth term. This is my fourth term. Great. Well thank you for joining us. So let's just dive right in. We want to go over some committee stuff that you guys have been looking at. Let's start with John. Last week your committee was looking at a lot of bills related to housing. I hear housing is big on your list right now. So give us a little update. You know, housing, housing, housing, housing has been big. And you know, COVID has done a lot of damage in our state. But what's been amazing really is the amount of federal dollars that have come in. And we've really been able to use that to redress and really look at our affordable housing issues that are in the state. Last year in federal dollars, we had about 30 million dollars that went to affordable housing. We also had 57 million dollars to help people with their rent. And so they wouldn't be evicted. So that's been incredible. This year we're doing the same thing with federal dollars. And right now this week in play are really two big housing bills. One has about 20 million dollars put aside for it. And that's to really take derelict properties that aren't in the market right now and have landlords get a grant of up to $30,000 to rehab it. And the agreement then is they have to rent it to a low-income household family for five years. And we did that last year and we got 475 new units on the market. So this is a really good program. We really want to work on that. Also in that bill, we have capital renovation grants for mobile homes, which is really needed around the state. And we're looking at, as Burling did no cause evictions, having an amendment to that bill to let's have a moratorium for one year on that. And all that's still in play. The other bill that we have is a proposal from the administration to what they're calling address the missing middle, which is not the other things are really for low-income permanenters. This is for folks looking to get probably their first house and get into the market to really be able to get some assets together. And we are $15 million is the hope that that can happen. And that would help for if a house is going to cost $400,000 to build new, a developer would get money to subsidize that. So you can go on the market for $325,000. And then if people meet, again, an income threshold, and this one's about for a family about $100,000, you can also get mortgage assistance. So it's a way to let people step into housing because we are hearing so much about the housing crisis. So those are the things that are in play. They will go from our committee to the floor. They already came from the Senate, and then they go over to Mata's committee in appropriations. All right. Well, that's a great segue. Mata, you want to jump in on maybe let's talk about the budget first. I'd like to talk about the infrastructure bill, but let's talk about the budget. Well, the budget for fiscal year 23 as passed by the house is currently over in the Senate. And they're doing their work on the ways in which we targeted investments. It is an $8.1 billion budget, the largest budget we've ever seen in Vermont to date, and that's in large part because of the federal support that we've been receiving, as well as the fact that our general fund revenues and our transportation revenues to a point, and our education revenues, the education fund revenues have been very strong, actually surprisingly strong throughout this COVID time. John described quite accurately the fact that the bills he's working on will come to appropriations because they do have dollars attached to them. We in appropriations rely heavily on our policy committees for that component to help us understand what it is as fully as we can, what the dollars that they're asking us to appropriate would support. And then it's our job to figure out if there are any changes that perhaps tweaks that need to be made. Most often it's something as straightforward as, let's say there's a committee, a working group to do whatever if it has too many people in it, if they haven't taken into consideration per diem, stuff like that. But the big picture, we have to, if we support a bill recommended to us by a policy committee and it's rare for us not to want to support a bill, that's why we rely on them to tell us what we should and should not from a policy perspective support, we have to figure out where the money is going to come from. And as an example, John and a colleague had presented to us a bill while we were developing the FY23 budget, a bill to support the creative sector in Vermont. The arts and the cultural sector had not received as much financial support during the COVID time as other kinds of businesses had been receiving. And when we heard John's presentation from a policy perspective, why, of course, who would not want to make these investments, but then it was like, but the price tag was... 17.5 million. But we, as we often need to, got creative. We discovered that some economic development money to support businesses, which we had allocated for FY22, had not been moved. It was just sitting there. So we pulled it back and applied it to these businesses so that it could be redirected in a way that would help that money to actually do what it had been intended to do, which was to support business sector in Vermont. And in this instance, a business sector that had not gotten what many of us would think is its fair share previously. It's an important part of Vermont's culture and Vermont's economy. Absolutely. So that's great. Absolutely. So last week you had a big presentation on the federal infrastructure bill. Yes. Yes. While we're waiting for the Senate to send us back the budget, we often go deep or deeper into issues such as the infrastructure bill. It's the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, I-I-J-A, I-I-J-A. And none of the money for that has started to flow yet. But for Vermont, it touches on two major areas, in particular, transportation and water. And the money to be received is targeted for specific uses. And the impact will be to help us not only be more ready to deal with climate events, but also to deal with the pollution that we have been responsible for and continue to be responsible for injecting into our environment. And I do need to say we haven't been sitting on our hands not addressing these matters, waiting for I-I-J-A. For instance, in the FY23 budget, we've got $131 million from the American Rescue Plan Act, federal dollars, going for weatherization and electrification, EV chargers and incentives for purchasing electric vehicles, things of that nature. We have been making investments all along, but this will be a really big boost. And we need a big boost because in statute now, not as a goal, but as a mandate, just as we look at our greenhouse gas emissions, we need to, by the year 2030, have reduced our Vermont carbon dioxide emissions to 40% lower than they were in 1990. And our track record has been dismal. In 1990, we were at 8.64 million metric tons of carbon emission. And 2018 was our last year that there's hard data for. And we're still at 8.64 million metric tons after having gone up to about 10 back then. And the figure for 2030 is 5.18 metric tons, million metric tons that we're supposed to be aiming for. So we need to be aggressive. In the transportation area, we're going to be receiving from I-I-J-A a minimum of $2.2 billion, but it's targeted for different sectors within transportation. For instance, there's $21 million for electric charging stations. For $21 million, that's going to deliver for us 120 fast chargers. I'm thinking, my God, they're made of gold. But apparently, that's what it costs to produce these things, and we need them. So $21 million for the fast chargers. There's $83 million for public transit. There's $355 million for water infrastructure as it relates to transportation. The list is quite extensive, but it will all give us a boost in that transportation sector. I neglected to say transportation along with building heating are the two biggest challenges in terms of our carbon emission. A problem which we will need to handle and think about and plan for is that all of these dollars in the transportation sector from I-I-J-A, we have to provide up to 20% state match. And you cannot use federal money to match for state, for federal money. It must be state money. So we'll have to do that. In the water area, we won't be having the equivalent of $2.2 billion. But we will, for instance, have over five years, $8 million a year with no match required, $8 million a year to help with Lake Champlain. On top of the annual $6 million we have through the EPA Lake Champlain Basin program. We'll have approximately over five years, $45 million for what they call emerging contaminants in the Vermont situation. It'll be the PFA projects. That's the chemical among many chemicals that won't ever go away. They exist for it. And there's about $45 million targeted to ongoing quote-unquote regular water projects for which we will need to provide a state match, things like stormwater, sewage, that kind of thing. But that's the overall picture. A huge boost for us, again, to help us deal with climate events and our responsibilities to the plant in terms of the pollution that we have created and are today still creating. Yes. Great. Thank you. Martin, how about some of your committees? What are you looking at? Yeah, I'm on my fourth term on the Judiciary Committee and we've had quite a few bills that we've sent over to the Senate and bills that we are working on that we've received from the Senate. But I'd like to just highlight a couple of them. And also, in highlighting a couple of these bills, it shows that sometimes it takes more than a biennium to get an initiative passed. And you have to kind of have some stick-to-itiveness to get these initiatives passed. And one of them has to do with PFA's, or I'm going to try to even pronounce it. I think it's pure floral carbons, if I've got that right, and PFAS. And the bill that we passed has to do with medical monitoring. And that's something that we've passed a similar bill twice before the last few years, both times they were vetoed by the governor. This time, the bill should be arriving at his desk this week and we're pretty sure that he is going to sign it. The concept, though, is that if there's been a release of a toxic substance, and it's not just PFAS, it could be any toxic substance, but really it was what happened in Bennington that prompted this bill. But if PFAS or other toxic substance are released and Vermonters are exposed to that toxic chemical and that exposure increases the risk of getting a disease associated with that exposure, then the individual would have a cause of action, meaning they could go to court under this law and sue the company that has put that substance into the environment for the cost of medical monitoring. And that is having tests to catch any kind of disease that may have been caused as early as possible so that it's... I mean, oftentimes in these kind of situations somebody is suing because they have had an injury. And here they really haven't had an injury yet, but we know that the chances are that an individual or at least has a higher risk of contracting a disease. So this is one of the bills that we've worked on for a while, and this is the third time should be a charm, so that's one of them. Could you say what happened in Bennington for viewers? Yeah, so Bennington, I'm going to forget the name of the company. St. Gobain. Yes, the St. Gobain used this substance, I believe it was for clothing to keep the moisture out and whatever it does. And it was released in the air, is my understanding, but it would fall upon the land and it has contaminated water supplies. And individuals have had to get water from, you know, can't use their wells for water and such. And it has increased the possibility of these individuals having contracting a disease. They took this to court, and my understanding is there has been a settlement and so medical monitoring, I'm pretty sure is being paid. So this bill is really not going to be associated specifically with that situation. It's for other possible, hopefully we don't have to use this bill. That would be the best thing actually. But that's one that the second one I just will highlight, and this is something that has been a concern of mine since I started on the Judiciary Committee. And that is trying to make decisions and policy decisions without the data that we really need to understand really what we should be doing and what the effects of our policies are. We have some idea obviously, but oftentimes it's anecdotal. But it's also associated with the fact that it's become increasingly clear that there are racial disparities in our criminal justice system in Vermont, just like across the country. But after I think four years of really specifically trying, we passed a bill, and I'm pretty sure that my understanding, knock on wood, the Senate is going to pass it as well. But it creates a division of racial justice statistics. And the idea is to have the appropriate staff within the administration under the Director of Racial Equity to get data from law enforcement, to state's attorneys, to courts, to Department of Corrections, to community justice centers, to see how or where there may be disparities in what we might be able to do about that. And it's not even just racial disparities, although that's a huge part of it. It's geographic disparities as well that we see in our state, that individuals can be treated differently for a similar offense if they are caught in one county versus another. So that's really an important other. Equity bill, but really a bill to help us do better in our criminal justice reform. So those are two that I would highlight, as really... although there's quite a few others that we've been working on. And if I could add, the bill which Martin was just speaking of, that was a bill that had to come to appropriations before it could go out to the floor. Appropriations is the last stop for any bill that has any money associated with it. And we appreciate the Appropriations Committee for approving the FTEs that we asked for. And found the money to fund it. Well, in the housing bills, that not only goes to appropriations, but there's land use policy issues about how to make denser downtown development. So that's going to go to natural resources because that's about Act 250. And then there's tax incremental financing that's in there. So that's going to go to ways and means. So some of these bills, they ultimately land there, but they go to these other committees too, and then those committees talk on the floor about it, or some of those sections of the bill may actually be moved to their committee totally. So it's a very fluid moment in the last weeks of a session. All to happen hopefully in the next four weeks is what we're hoping. My chair told me that he wants the two housing bills out by Thursday this week. Because they have to go to these other committees. This will be a busy week in Montpelier for general housing and military affairs. So we've got a little under 10 minutes left. So let's jump into some of our later questions here. So in your view, I mean, these are more general. What issues are important to communities in South Burlington? And let's start with Martin. Yeah, I think we've already hit on some MEDA has, and that's certainly clean water and the environment. And I think the issues that are important in South Burlington are issues that we've phoned to be important statewide as well. And they are and have been priorities of the caucus and of the whole House and the General Assembly, the Senate as well. So there's housing we've talked about. There's the environment. There's workforce. Those are really probably the three top overall priorities that we've been working on. And there's all sorts of other really important stuff like pension reform, which has been huge. And we mentioned some of the climate issues having to do with the environment. There's the clean heat standard as well. So there's some really big important things that we've been working on, this particular biennium, and hopefully see them all across the finish line in the next few weeks. One smaller issue specifically related to South Burlington, smaller in some sense, just as large in other sense, there has been an effort underway in the Senate to add to the transportation bill, which has already been in the House, to add to the transportation bill, language which initially emanated from the House in a bill which the four of us, Representative Pew also, who wasn't able to be here today, the four of us sponsored along with colleagues from Williston and Winooski, pertains to the airport. And the language has been changed as it's gone, as they've worked on it in Senate transportation. But the upshot of it is that there should be a look-see at recommendations that have been made in the past several years as related to governance, governance of the airport, and the pros and the cons. And it's a work group that represents the various stakeholders, including the Regional Planning Commission, the communities immediately around the airport and all. And it's not a new issue. It goes back at least, at least to the administration of Governor Coonan, who asked for such a study through executive order. And there have been various efforts to have the issue looked at as to what is the most appropriate, efficient, productive structure, what kind of construct is the best, particularly as time goes on. Equitable. Yes, equitable. As things stand right now, it's Burlington, which for all intents and purposes unilaterally decides what's happening as it relates to governance of the airport. South Burlington, as an example, has a seat on the airport commission, but it's advisory only, and it's only in the last year that there's been serious attention given to the potential of, even in an advisory capacity, a seat for Williston and Winooski on the commission. It merits attention. And so in any case, as of last week, it looked as if this was going to be incorporated in the transportation bill, and we'll just see how it moves through the rest of the process before we adjourn. Just a shout-out to our Senator Tom Chittenden, who we're lucky to have on the transportation committee, and it's been great to have him there because he's helped push this particular issue for us. And he'll be here soon. He'll be on Under the Dome in the next couple of weeks. You should ask him about it because he's worked very hard. Make sure to stay in his bill. He has worked very hard on. He's done excellent work on this. And our city chair and vice chair, our city council chair and vice chair were in, as was Brian Searles, who had, well, he's had many roles over the years, but many related to the airport, giving testimony and support of this approach. Another thing that we've been working on is in 1931, Vermont signed into law a eugenics bill, which targeted Indigenous people in our state, French Canadians, poor people, people with disabilities, and families were separated, people were institutionalized, people were sterilized against their will, and it was a very dark part of our history. Last year, we had a formal apology from the legislature. So, but realizing we needed to do more than that. The House has passed a Truth and Reconciliation Commission that we're looking at that will deal with sort of the ongoing impact of generations of eugenics, but also look at systemic discrimination on other impacted communities too. So that's been a very moving experience to hear the lived experience from people, and it'll be like a three-year process and it'll be, I think, fascinating because a lot of communities in the United States are now looking at this, how do we redress this and how do we create remedies to change this? So I, you know, I'm hoping that gets, it's over at the Senate now. I hope the Senate supports it, and then if the Senate supports it, I hope the Governor supports it. All right, well thank you everyone for joining us today. We're running low on time, a lot to talk about, so it's good. Yeah, thank you for coming, and thank you for tuning in to Under the Dome. We'll return next week, Monday at 12, with Burlington representatives Tiff Bloomley, Gabrielle Stebbins, and Barbara Rachelson. You can watch this and other local political coverage on our website at cctv.org, our YouTube channel at youtube.com. Or you can watch our channels at Comcast 1087, Burlington Telecom 17, and 217. Thank you, see you next week. Thank you.