 So far with the budget, the governor has just to go over it again. When we first get into Montpelier in January, when we first get into Montpelier in January, we're in the middle of a fiscal year, we're in the fiscal 2019 right now. And the first thing we do is the budget adjustment act. Last month I explained that that was what the appropriations committee was doing. And the budget adjustment act has the name implied. It's an adjustment, it's a true up. The budget is based on projections, they're not predictions, they're not magic. It's taking the information available and making the best, most reasonable estimates of what revenues are going to be and what expenses are going to be. And then halfway through the fiscal year, you true it up. You try to find money if you haven't taken it, what you thought you'd take. If something was more expensive, then you try to find a way to pay for it. If something was less expensive, then you try to figure out what to do with that money. And we are done with that. The fiscal, the budget adjustment act for this year was actually rather uninteresting in that the estimates were not as far off as in other years. And again, some people say, well, why don't you get it right the first time? It's more or less like when you try to make adjustments. It's responding to things being what they are instead of what we thought they would be. So now we're on the budget. You learned in high school that the legislature legislates and tells the executive what to do. The executive branch then does what the legislature tells them to do. The other wrinkle on that though is that the executive branch tells the legislature what it is they think we should tell them. And it's not binding. We don't have to do it. But that's a template. That's really what we work from. Under the Vermont Constitution, all spending bills, all revenue raising bills have to originate in the people's house, in the house of representatives. But really the budget originates on the fifth floor in the governor's office. Or at least the template. They're recommended. Many of my colleagues mistakenly refer to the governor's recommend as quote, the budget. Which it actually is. The budget is written by the legislature. We don't have a budget yet. But we work from the governor's recommend. This year, Governor Scott has recommended a budget of $6.1 billion with a bid of dollars. Belongers can't believe that the state of Vermont spends that much. But that's what the budget is. It's a small increase over the last year. It is in the house that the bill is being developed in the house appropriations committee. But the senate doesn't just wait for the bill. We take testimony in anticipation of getting the budget. The entire appropriations committee is responsible for the entire budget. But then also we break the budget up into segments. And each individual member of the committee researches those particular parts of the budget. I do a variety of economic promotion. Which is part of it. I do labor. I do the tax department. And it's a lot of people go away during town meeting. Since we're taking, since we're not in Montpelieu on town meeting day. We take the rest of the week off without pay, I might mention, every year. I get angry emails about us giving ourselves a paid vacation. We actually don't. And many of my colleagues, last year I went to Florida for a week. This year I am spending the rest of town meeting week in Montpelieu. Because I really want to catch up on the budget. And the interviewing bureaucrats who think they're rid of us for a week. But they're in the ones who I'm responsible for. They're not rid of me. The other projects that I'm involved in, in the morning I serve on health and welfare. We had a bill to expand healthcare for, we provide healthcare subsidies to poor people. To expand that to dental. It's a new senator who has offered it. I asked her, okay, how do you propose we pay for it? And she kind of scolded me for asking that we should just decide it's the right thing to do and find the money somewhere. I said, well actually, you're the sponsor of the bill. You're supposed to find the money too. We're looking into it. But you know, with so many of these expenses, and it's frustrating, is that probably if you spend the money you'll save money down the road. And probably helping people with their dental will save money down the road. But not this year. You gotta find the money that you spend it now. You gotta find it now. So it's often been said that in terms of the state helping people with healthcare, we ignore everything above the neck. We don't do dental. We don't do eye glasses. We don't do a lot of mental health. We do mental health urgency. People who have to be. We're really in trouble, but just ongoing mental health. We don't do a lot of development with that. I have a bill to require, and I think I talked about this last month, to require the students to get a high school diploma. I have to study civics. Basic stuff. The co-sponsor of the bill is Joe Benning, the Senate Republican leader. So you want to get as many co-sponsors as you can for a bill. Joe was the first one I went to, and when I looked at our two names, I thought, this says it all. I think we'll just do it as McCormick and Benning. And because what I think is that you can disagree with someone and still agree on the ground rules for how you deal with your disagreement. And whatever differences there are between liberals and conservatives, presumably we all agree that we're under the authority of the Constitution, the U.S. Constitution, and then subject to that authority, the Vermont Constitution. Presumably we all understand there are three branches of government. There's a separation of powers. Those powers check each other, checks and balances. Those are basic things that a lot of Americans do not understand now. And it's pretty alarming. I don't know if a republic can survive without citizens who fully understand the Republican lower case or Republican principles of government. Another project I'm on where I think I'm crashing and burning, frankly. I don't think I'm going to get my way. There is an amendment to the Vermont Constitution being proposed to remove, originally it was to remove Vermont's prohibition on slavery. And people would say, well, why would we do that? We're proud of that. Vermont was the first, the Vermont Constitution, 1777, was the first ban on slavery in America. And it's something that Vermonters are very proud of. The reason people wanted to remove it was because they felt that the founders didn't do it. They didn't really do it right. Because a prohibited slavery brandy went over 21. So implicitly, it sort of allowed for the possibility of slavery for people under 20. And my view is nothing in history is perfect. I wish Thomas Jefferson had said all men and women are created equal. But he didn't. He said all men are created equal. It's imperfect. Nevertheless, notion of equality is a good concept. This was a great step forward. So my view is you honor the good stuff in your history. And frankly, you face the uglier stuff. Head on and just live with it. I know over my years as a history teacher, I have been criticized for, you know, running the country down because I would use text to give us signs that might draw my students' attention to some of the darker side of our history. I've also been accused of perpetuating our patriotic myths and sugarcoating our history of racism and so on. And my answer is, you know, in either case, this study of history is not for the purpose of building patriotism or of tearing the country down. The purpose is to try to arrive at the truth. Just tell the truth. And right now, the language in the Vermont Constitution prohibiting slavery is only there as an historical artifact. It's not law because the Federal Constitution prohibiting slavery in 1865 makes the Vermont prohibition moot. It's there as an historical artifact. And my view is it should be left alone. And I think over the long run, I think that view is going to prevail. Because the Vermont Constitution is difficult to amend. After the Senate is done with it, we need a two-thirds vote in the Senate. We'll likely get it. Then it goes to the House and then it sits there. And in the next biennium, it gets taken up again. And if it passes a separate biennium, then it goes to a referendum to up the vote. I can't imagine the people in Vermont agreeing to that. I think this is one of those things where the people are going to be wiser than the quote unquote leaders. But in any case, what is being proposed now is to leave the prohibition on slavery and just do away with the over 21 part, which for me is altering the artifact. It's putting a smile on the face of my history. And I say, leave the good stuff, leave the bad stuff. Take pride in the good stuff, face the bad stuff, head on. I bumped into Neil at the pizza shop the other night. Commented on my long-windedness so long. Ended up too. Here comes Andy now, if you want. So, Dick was talking about the budget process. The budget actually starts in the house and house appropriations is formally considering it right now. What happens on the house side, and I don't know how much you guys do it over there, is that the appropriations committee sends out sections of the budget to the policy committees to say, because ultimately how you spend money is an expression of policy. When we decide to spend X amount of money for child care, we're saying we think that high quality child care is important. And that's a policy decision. So the policy questions are, we get a chance to weigh in now. What's interesting, so every year my committee writes a memo to the house appropriations committee analyzing various pieces of the budget. What we can't do in there is say, gee, we think that you should add 10 million here and 10 million there and 10 million in another place. And they say, thank you very much. And they go back to what they have in front of them, which is always much more modest. So this year, the governor's proposed budget, and as Dick said, that ends up being sort of the rough draft that we start with. And we say, okay, what do we think of the draft? His proposed budget actually adds $2 million to the Department for Children and Families to address issues around the opioid crisis. We've heard a lot about that. We hear about overdoses. We hear about people in hospitals. But the other piece of it is that there are a lot of children that are impacted by that. Because, I'll pick on women, but a woman who is drug seeking is probably not taking very good care of her baby. And so as a consequence, we have had a disproportionate share of the kids coming into custody now are babies. Once upon a time, if you had asked 15 years ago, children in state custody, what's the age bracket? Most of them were adolescents. Because that's when they go out of control and the parent says, oh my God, I'm not in control of this child. And then they come into state custody and go to a foster family. But what we're seeing now is we're seeing a much greater percentage of infants, children who are less than two years old. So infants and toddlers. And so then the question becomes, what do we do? Where do we put our resources to address that? And one of the places that actually addresses that very well is a consortium of groups around the state called Parent Child Centers. They are set up to work with families. One of the more interesting programs that they have is something called Learning Together, which is teen parents and their babies. And they come together and a 16-year-old mother can get her high school diploma and her baby is there with her in the facility and all the babies are together and the young mothers are together. That's one of the things they do, but they do lots of other things. And so the governor's budget would give us two million in new money, but he is proposing that it be directed exclusively to expanding the number of state social workers who deal with families. And one of the problems with that is that when we increase the number of social workers, then the courts say, oh my goodness, we're going to need more judges. And the public defender's office says, oh my goodness, we're going to need more lawyers. And so there's a concern that that's going to put pressures on other parts of the budget where there isn't more money. So one of the things that we're looking at is how we can take that two million in new money and use it most effectively to address the needs of that group. So one idea on the table is instead of new social workers, we would allow them to have more aides. What happens now is that when you have a child in custody, the court says, so child in custody lives with a foster family, but there's quarter of a visitation with one of both natural parents. So how does the kid get there? And does somebody, do we mistrust mom enough that we want that visitation to be supervised? Because that's labor intensive. And so how are we using the social workers? So the concept is maybe we put some more money into the aides and maybe we look more closely at the parent child centers and say, what can we do to increase their capacity so that they can work with families on the ground? I've talked before about what we call our community partners. Claire Martin is the great example of community partners, the mental health agencies across the state. We have many, many places, or even the community hospitals, to be perfectly honest, because that's where the Medicaid program runs through. We have many places where we rely on community nonprofits to accomplish government objectives. And we do it by contract. We do it by fee for service. We have various structures that happen to make that happen. What we don't do is properly fund them. So we set it up and we say, oh, this is great, designated Claire Martin Center. We want you to take care of everybody who presents with a mental health issue. But we're not going to give you any more money this year than we did last year or the year before that or the year before that. And of course, with costs going up, either they lose staff because they can't pay them because people go where they're going to get more money. So one of the things that happens is that we end up with excessive turnover in those places which makes their services less effective. So we always have to be looking at how are we making this effective. So that's one of the pieces that my committee is looking at. The other big thing that I've been working on, I'm sure you've heard in the news that we passed the abortion bill last week. It passed in the House on a vote of 106 to 37. And what that does is it basically codifies what has been Vermont law since actually before Roe versus Wade because before Roe versus Wade, the law that Vermont had was found unconstitutional. So it's been more than 45 years that there has been no restriction on abortion in Vermont. And despite the fact that there is no restriction, most abortion is done within the first nine weeks of pregnancy and it's done with medication and it's done at a clinic. A few cases require a more intrusive procedure. There are no, and I will repeat that, there are no elective abortions in Vermont in the third trimester. There's nobody in Vermont that does that. It's actually kind of a specialized service and if you only did it once every five years you wouldn't be good at it. So it doesn't happen here. The probably the most difficult part of the debate centered around the concern that a woman could be eight and a half months pregnant and wake up one morning and say, gosh, I think I've changed my mind. I don't want to be a mother. I haven't had children, but I just can't imagine how you could be pregnant and live with that for eight months or nine months and fix up the nursery and start collecting things and start looking at names and then change your mind. To be perfectly honest, I find that argument disrespectful to women. It really is. We'll do it in a minute. But even if there was this, I'm going to call her crazy woman that everybody seems to be focused on, she has to find a medical provider. Well, you know what? Medical providers have licenses and they have scope of practice and they have ethics that affect what they do. So how is she going to find a medical provider who would do that and risk his or her license? And the only place that later term abortions happen after 21 weeks, the only place that abortions happen in Vermont is at the University of Vermont Medical Center. And there, at 22 weeks and six days, any medical professional who is proposing an abortion on a patient must present to a panel of ethicists and pediatricians and others who say yes or no. So it's not the notion of the woman can't do it herself and the woman and a doctor can't do it. So it doesn't happen. And it was our feeling that it was really important to keep this option open. I think what was most interesting to me, I'm old enough that I remember back alley abortions. I remember people, I had a friend who had to fly to Mexico. So rich people flew somewhere and poor people found somebody in a dark alley. But what I noticed in talking to some of my younger colleagues is that the number of women now actually all women of child-bearing age grew up with safe and legal abortion. And they can't imagine anything else. So for that reason I was proud to vote for the bill. How in that bill you said that and nowhere in Vermont that healthcare providers are given long-term abortions but was that put in the bill to a shortened term? No, because it doesn't happen. So it can happen, how if doctors decide that they want it? It could have happened for the last 45 years. But by not being in there it makes it more probable to be able to happen. No, I don't believe it does. I don't believe it does. We are exactly where we've been for 45 years. And then in passing such a bill it was my understanding that Vermont had a shortfall of numbers for people that why would we want to get rid of our future generation? And then with such a growing population of gay and lesbian couples in the state of Vermont that I presume are unable to have children that there's a lot more options available. Actually quite a few, quite a few lesbian couples do find a way, if they adopt or they have artificial insemination. Quite a few gay couples are parents. In the legislature. Our majority leader. Back of Allen has two children. We have a senator. I apologize, Barnard was a white-out and very slow. So you never know. We're all different countries. It's like Southern here, quite frankly. I thought I was going to have you folks to myself because it was so nice of you. So I will turn it over. Yes. Well, good morning, sorry. I was late also. Good morning. You know, it's really very nice here, but quite frankly, it's lousy in some other places. But, you know, given what the weather came down, I'd say the Highway Department did a good job. So I'm Alice Knitka. I've met a lot of you. I'm serving on the Appropriations Committee, which Bill... Dick tells me he described that process and I'm also on the Judiciary Committee, which deals with a number of laws, things that have a penalty. It's hard to know exactly what comes in there. I don't know if a lot of stuff does. And I'm also right at this current few months right now. I'm working on judicial retention, which I'm ahead of that committee, which is dealing with the review of our judges in the state. In other words, in Vermont, the majority of judges, all of our, well, I'd say the Supreme Court, the Superior Court judges, what used to be the District Court judges, are all appointed by the Governor. And then every six years, there's a review of their situation. In other words, we don't elect those judges at all as they do in some states. We only elect, in Vermont, probate judges and the side judges or assistant judges, they're called. But all the other judges come through something called judicial retention. So every six years, they file... our committee requests that they file documents with regard to... Well, what we send out are surveys to attorneys that have appeared before them, court personnel and other people that are affiliated with the courts to evaluate how they're doing. And they also submit financial statements and we submit samples of their court decisions. And then we review all of that as to how that judge is doing. In other words, nobody checks on this. They get an oil change of three years or anything. There's no review of how they're doing until six years is up. Now, somebody who's been appointed to fill somebody's retiring term might come up in three years and might come up even in one year. So they go through this process and then they come into a hearing before us. It's an eight member committee, four House members, four Senate members. And then, you know, and respond to what these questionnaires are anonymous. That, you know, if someone wants to write something, they want it to be honest. We want them to be honest rather than, you know, but they might have to appear before a judge in the future so we don't want people saying who they are because that would prejudice the judge when they appear before them. So we're going through that now. We're doing nine judges right now. We did five. Well, we're doing them as, you know, there's several meetings that they have to come to and then we have a public hearing this Wednesday at seven o'clock at the State House so anybody can come in and discuss any of these judges to speak to us about any of these judges that they feel are doing a great job, feel are doing a crappy job, or feel they did whatever. But they're, you know, maybe someone's a terrible alcoholic, appears from the court, whatever, something like that happened. But, you know, there are certainly complaints about judges. And some of them this time were some were, you know, the judges were very biased toward men, biased toward women, kind of descending in court, an absolute jerk, does good legal opinions, you know, isn't well versed in the law, all kinds of things come in. And then after we hear from the public then there's another review of them to go over, you know, what we feel, you know, if there's an area where they need improvement, you know, we're working with the chief judge too and he might recommend, and we might recommend, you know, re-education in some areas, being mentored by another judge, you know, all kinds of different things, getting into some counseling for their medical stuff, for their health if that's an issue, or if they did have an alcohol problem to work on that. We could, and then we present the information that we've obtained before the House and the Senate together and there's a vote as to whether to retain them or not. It's taken a lot of money and effort to educate them, you don't want to just throw them out, and they themselves say it takes about three years to really get good on the bench because some of them are appearing in all kinds of courts, in other words, they're in civil court, there are lawsuits, you know, between neighbors or corporations or whatever, there are some lawyers who haven't practiced in that field when they get appointed, and when they become a judge now, they're circulating around Uncircuit all around the state and dealing with different courts, in other words, they're in criminal, they're in family, they're in civil, they're in treatment courts, treatment courts, domestic violence courts, so it's really, and some of them get in there and, you know, they're just learning, they start hearing cases, you know, like right away, and so they really have to get educated and, you know, they, sometimes they do well, one judge came in who she's new, she's been on the job about a year, and she came in and she had done, she's been a lawyer for like 20 years, but hadn't done anything in civil court, especially with regard to labor, so she had a big case with regard to labor, and she did all kinds of research, tried to get very up to speed with, you know, you can't really just write out of the date, so she put out a thing to other judges and said, you know, if you had a case, anything like this, you know, sent them an email, and so a couple responded, and they said, well, so-and-so just wrote the decision, just like this, so she, in the end, she said, you know, use that lawyer's material, and gave credit in her decision to that lawyer in that case, and everything, anyway, it was appealed to the Supreme Court, and she said, well, guess what? It was overturned, so it was the lawyer she copied from, so, you know, it's kind of an interesting process, but, let's say, generally, they're doing a very good job. It's a very, very hard job, in that you've got to get these decisions in the time you matter, finish them out there, and that's the biggest complaint, is that they don't get their decisions done as timely as they want to even, because they're being moved from court to court. So, anyway, that's what's going on with the judges in case you ever appear before them. What else are we working on? Well, working on the budget, of course. And one thing that's in the budget that you might be interested in for schools is the lead testing on the water in schools. The state did pilot with, I think, 15 or 16 schools, and lead was discovered in those schools, in their water, and it couldn't come from the faucet itself, could have been in the pipes, or whatever. So, the state is going to be testing all the schools. The state will be paying. They aren't going to do the physical test, but they're going to pay for it. It will be done locally, and the state will help like the local school. They might have somebody who can do it. They'll get an outside person. The plan is, and the governor had this in his budget, too, is to test every single school, and then there will be remediation. The state's paying for all the testing. You know, it might just be lead, and solder, and faucet, or something. So, some of it may be minor. In some schools, where it's only in one faucet, you might stop using that drinking faucet and shut that one off, provided you had other water in the school for drinking. There may be a need for bottled water in some schools until it gets all done. And then the remediation, and then there's money for the budget adjustment, which we just did. I think we have 1.3 million in there for doing that. And then the cost of the remediation might, some of it will be simply paid for by the faucet being fixed, but other might be more expensive. It's also for daycare centers, and registered daycare homes. So if you have a private home that's doing childcare, they'll be eligible to have the free testing as well. And some help with the remediation. The idea, and the governor supported this, was his idea. I mean, it was everybody's idea to do the testing. But he once had done it a year. Originally, the department said, well, everybody will get that done a year. But the plan is, get it done in the year, you know, children and children will be drinking water that has lead. I mean, obviously, a lot of homes have some lead in their water, but not children and children in schools. And there will, I think it's down to 0.3 microliters. I mean, I thought that worked for the price. Does May and I are already required, like all agency natural resources, required right now, delis, piece of joints, all these places, private enterprises, to test the water all the time. So, and we all do it. So I don't really see why it would be like a janitor in school to get us submitted and do, you know, through the 48 hour thing. Why that would be such a big deal to them to adhere to those same rules. I think that the, if you're on a municipal water supply and that's tested, that is usually sufficient for public use. But I wouldn't, like addressing what she's talking about, water found was dispensed. You know, we're all in public system here in Bethel. Our school was supported just like everything in the infrastructure here. But your school could have lead and like the faucet. Right, agree. So that's why I'm saying had it being taken, like in our little school, Mr. Hubbell would just acknowledge these 37 years in the building, very confident kind of guy that could do this little kit and get it in 48 hours. Yeah. The answer to those questions. That's maybe how that will occur. Are we taking? Not to have to, you don't have to necessarily hire somebody from the main school there. Right. And they'll pay for it. Yeah, we all have to do so. Yeah. In priority. Yes. But you're right. The town would say, hey, we've got good water and no land, but the fact is it could be a faucet. No, right. That's why I'm saying, you know, they go to the end of the respect that they can. Yes, right. They've got to check every faucet. Yeah. So that's, I mean, I think that's a good thing. I think the sooner we get it done, the better. So that's a couple of things going on. Neil, good morning. Good morning, everybody. Sorry. Just like Alice, it was slow and white out and coming over from Bethel. I'm Alice in Clarkson. I have the honor of serving you in the morning on Senate economic development, housing, and general affairs by Wayne. Good to see you, Bill. And in the afternoon, I serve on government operations. And this is the biennium that we are able to deal with constitutional amendments. So I'll start with the afternoon, because government operations doesn't always get a lot of attention. But this is the year that we can deal with election. Any changes we make in the election law has to be done. This year it has to be enacted by the end of this year so that it can affect the next cycle. So we're looking at a range of election law, you know, modest election law changes. And they range from a very high profile one. Ethan Sonnenberg, you may remember, ran at age 13 for governor. And, you know, is that, I mean, he was pointing out, he ran in part to point out that this was a possibility. And, you know, is that worth taking voter's time and votes away from a candidate who really are able to serve? So while he was able to run, he would not have been able to serve. So we're, you know, we're discussing everything from the age of a candidate for a statewide office to whether you can double dip, whether you can run in a primary as a major party candidate and then turn around and run as something else after the primary. So we're exploring a whole range of, I think we probably have 15 issues that individuals have said to us that the Secretary of State wants to raise, that the clerks have raised, you know, so we're, it's a catch all if you're interested as we go through that discussion, feel free to be in touch with our committee assistant and I can give you that. We're also interestingly looking at a number of the, of the amendments to the Constitution. The most high profile one you may have read about is the slavery reference in Article 1. And we've learned a lot about that where, you know, we're all very proud of the fact that we're the first state in the country to prohibit slavery. But there was a second phrase in that article that people, I would now probably say misinterpreted reside a fair way of putting it. Who's our constitutional scholar in the Senate? To meaning that if you were under 21 you could still be enslaved in this state. And Peter Teacher, we've had great witnesses, Dick being one of them as an adjunct professor and a constitutional scholar. Dick feels very strongly that we should leave it as it is, that it's a historic, that the amendment, the 13th amendment has prohibited slavery federally and that there is really no need to change this and Dick falls down on the side of leaving it for historicity's sake. And on the other hand there are a lot of our constituents all over the state that really want us to address this issue and to clarify the language so that we make it clear that slavery in all forms is prohibited. So that's a very interesting debate and one of the reasons I think it's exciting to be a legislator is that it's just, you never know what you're gonna learn new things about and every bill, every issue we take up is like a little graduate course in that subject and the discussion of how something affects the people of the state and how the state and its people interact. It never ceases to be, it's never at all. And the other constitutional men that is in our committee at the moment, we have two years so that they can be proposed right through and enact and worked on right through the end of next year. It's one of the few powers that the Senate has alone. The Senate has confirmation powers and the Senate has constitutional amendment powers so that we are the only body that actually, and correct me guys if I'm wrong on this, but the Senate alone does testimony and work and proposes, passes a constitutional amendment and then it goes to the House. The House can only vote on it. They are not able to change it. You may have created the Senate. The House created the Senate, but the Senate gets to propose constitutional amendment. So the other one that is in our committee at the moment that we'll be taking up and discussing in the next week or so is the proposal, are the proposals and there are a couple of them to change the governor's term of office to four years as opposed to two and one also includes the Senate. So there are varying feelings about that. I actually feel I'm very strong believer that we need to have three separate and equal branches of state government and at the moment the legislative branch is at the greatest disadvantage serving only four and a half months a year. We already have an executive branch that is full-time and I just think, wow, what a luxury of time to have a whole year full-time paid staff. They can accomplish a huge amount already and to give them an increased advantage to me really can take us to skew the lack of equity between the three branches of the judicial, the legislative and the executive. So we all come to it with our different points of view and that will be a very interesting conversation. I'm vice chair of Senate Economic Development Housing and General Affairs and this year we're dealing doing two big housing bills. One, we are proposing doing another bond on another housing bond. We'll be in a bit of a battle probably with the treasurer on this who is very protective of whatever liability and risk we put the state at and yet we also need so much housing. Our last $35 million housing bond, which we did two years ago, is pretty much all committed at the moment and new projects are happening all over. Some affordable, some market rate, some mixed, a mixed variety of housing. But as those of you who've read the futures project report, which identifies the fact that we have 11,000 unfilled jobs, we also have thousands and thousands of units needed in housing around the state. In rural Vermont, in urban Vermont, all of them. And so we're talking about a new housing bond, we're talking about short term rentals and Airbnb, our compliance efforts to try and get everyone who rents a room or rents an apartment to comply with the room's tax and health and safety. We have big issues, some places are better. So we have an inspection issue and an equitable playing field on rental in the state. We also are looking at, well anyway, so there are two big housing bills, which will also, so I ran the volunteer response to Irene Woodstock and one of our biggest problems was we had no idea where the open units were, where there might be rooms for people to move into as we tried to move them out of homes that were completely devastated. You had the same problem here in Bethel. One of the things we have called on since Irene is a rental registry where every rental unit is registered and people can now find them in particularly cases of emergency, very, very helpful. And also on inspections for safety and health reasons. We also have just passed out the minimum wage bill, which we have done again. So that is past first reading in the second reading in the Senate. It's very similar to last year's minimum wage bill. And this time we called for a study on tip minimum wage. And for many of us wanted to move to one wage for everybody and because there are some real issues around the tip wage that people don't always think about. The federal tip minimum wage and our tip minimum wage in Vermont are tip minimum wages, half what the full minimum wage is. The challenge is that most tip wage workers are women, about 80% of them, 80% of them. And there are, as one might imagine, real power disparities in how they're paid and sexual harassment and just unpleasantness that they endure to get that tip. And many of us would like to liberate tip wage workers from having that experience in their work. And so we are looking, they'll be a study, I hope, looking at tip wage workers and what we might do about it. And sub minimum wage, which we also don't think about, but I met Dave, thinks about it, which is student workers. So at the moment there's a differential between how they're paid during the summer, when they're not in school, they're paid our state minimum wage, but in the fall, during the course of the school year, they are only paid the federal minimum wage, which I'll remind you is only $7.25 an hour. When you're trying to pay for college, which many of these kids are trying to pay for apprenticeship programs, trainings of all varieties, motivated kids are working, and those kids tend to be the kids that are taking advantage of an accredited degree of sub-variety, whether it's college or a year program at VTC, whatever it is. That is so expensive that it struck many of us. And can, sadly, the growth rate in poverty in this state is between 18 and 24-year-olds, and many of our young people in high school are contributing significantly to their family incomes. And so that is another reason that we're wanting to look at that sub-minimum wage. We're just going to add something else. Yeah. Are you at it? So right now, the minimum wage on January 1st went up to 1078. 1078. It was 1050 before, and it's going up based upon cost of living, right? Right. CPI. CPI. That's how it's been set up to go up over here. So by the time this is the $15 minimum wage, and then everybody goes, yikes! The fact is, it wouldn't be until as proposed right now. 2024. 2024. So it gives quite a ways out. And the difference between what would have happened in 2024 under the CPI versus what would happen that moves to 15 then I think is only about $2 and 30 cents. So it's not as great a jump as it sounds when you think of $15. About 15 over five years. Right. The gradual increase as it would have been under the CPI, the difference as it is. Is there any... I'm sorry. What's your name? My name's Dan McCullough. My question is, when you touched on 1078 and then falling back on the federal with employees, and I mean, I can't speak for Dave, but I'm just simply saying the reality in our business right now... What's your business? I have a C store, and I also have an excavation company, but the reality of it is I don't have a person in my business. It's less than 13 bucks an hour. Right. So if I had a great employee at 1078 and they said, well, you're going to school in September, I'm going to cut you to 768, that employee, I will see the back of them as they walk away. So that's, in reality, my question is, how many people in this database in Vermont are actually going back to the mill? That's what they'll find out in the study. I can't believe there's 10 people. I don't think there's 10 people. I don't... I didn't either. It's a possibility though, and that's what they'll find out in the study. When we have only four and a half months to serve, sadly, we didn't have the time to dive into that. As an employer, you just touch them on the $15. I don't have an issue with it. You can't live in Vermont 15 bucks or nothing. You can't live here. Correct. And that's why this community right here has lost, and she touched on it when she said that. We're losing people. We don't want to lose judges for higher pay. We're losing our kids out of the state because you can't live here and pay a $4,000 property tax, a mortgage, car insurance, and the rest. And student debt. One of the biggest challenges we face, particularly, I just wrote about this this week. But you have to have that job for that student debt. We're not chitin' in County. Very hard to build a business in Windsor County here to have a dealer.com or... Well, actually, it's... So, our President and President of the Senate has pushed all the committees to do field trips. So, we did a field trip to Bradford, where we were in a major co-worker space. Terrific, called The Space on Maine. And it... We heard from people all over Vermont about the rural economy. It was set up by Matt Dunn. I mean, he did a great first presentation on rural America and rural Vermont. And one of the biggest challenges we face is we have lost, as we all know, population in rural Vermont. Not so much in more urban Vermont, but that's only... Even that is still considered rural by the rest of American states. I agree, but not Vermont. Right, but not by us. And so, all those issues, we are looking at what can the state do, what can individual businesses do, but creating that... the excitement of what's happening in Bethel, in Springfield, in Bradford. The assets we have, we have huge assets also in rural Vermont. And so, for young people who do have jobs who are here and who could work remotely, we desperately need to get the uniform, high-speed internet. But we have fabulous housing. It needs renovation. It needs weatherization. But we have great housing. Springfield has the highest gigabyte capacity in the state. And it has huge, as we know, gorgeous unused old manufacturing space. So, there are lots of assets. We need to figure out how to leverage all those assets to make ourselves economically competitive to the west side. So, everyone's aware of it. We now need to make it happen. I mean, then it's happening, as we know, in small ways and very exciting ways. To hear Matt talk about his... If you're interested, you should go to his website. Well, he started something called the Center on Rural Innovation in Heartland. He already has 11 employees. That space had no employees for his working hours. I mean, it's exciting. He's creating a center that all of rural America is tapping into because he's created a website, interactive maps. Take a peek at it. It's very interesting work. He's also putting his money where his mouth is, creating this Black River Innovation Campus in Springfield. And they're in the process. He's bought one building. They're in the process of buying the Park Street School. They're going to have a live work campus where people work remotely, where people can work in groups. There'll be a makerspace. There's a huge interactive. The old theater there that is stunning. Both are working. My daughter went to RPI, you know, the campus development incubator space. You're doing great. You're out of here. And here comes a new student in with a new idea or whatever. And they have a whole bunch of them. But I mean, you have exceptional kids there. I think all the kids, even our community of Bethel, as far as being tech savvy, the smartphone savvy, they are there. They're already there. We're reluctant, or I shouldn't say reluctant, we're not addressing it and pushing them out there to challenge us as a student. Well, in the House Springfield, every student next year, beginning next year, every high school student will graduate knowing how to code. And the real digital and internet, real digital economy skills being being well, they're going to be educated with these skills. And they, anyway, it's very exciting. And they, he's raised a huge amount of money already. I'm concerned about GW because it's a major employee in our community here. And they're, you know, in my little convenience store, I really challenged. I mean, I have a 77-year-old employee. I have three employees that have been with me almost 30 years. They're into the 50s and 60s in the C store, that kind of button. It's very difficult to find young people to work. And GW over there with what they're trying to address or whatever, and I'm not a fan of the border and the wall and all this stuff. You know, I think we need to open these things up to get these people in here that want, you know, but I mean, if we lose an employee like GW because of high utilities, all these other things, and then they can't staff the building, which is, I think, kind of a reality. I mean, they're working very closely of course with tech. With schools and stuff, yeah. And if you're going to Vermont Tech, you are just about guaranteed the job that comes out of there that doesn't have been offered jobs. And GW does terrific upscaling work. They train people, as you know, as everybody here knows. They do a terrific job. Well in Vermont, a lot of that is with the Vermont training program through the agency of commerce and community development. We're working very closely with GW and have the state has invested a huge amount of GW in training, in training programs in all sorts of incentives. So I mean, we should be proud of that. Hi. Mason Wade, I'm sorry I'm not. Mason, I'm sorry. I'm wearing a couple of different hats today. As a constituent, Alice, can you, when we're talking about assets over here, if I'm not mistaken, you were on the committee for the regulation of the senate and for a regulation of marijuana, you voted no on that. Can you explain the no vote? Come on. I've been on the judiciary committee for a number of years. Marijuana has been there. It's now this year being called cannabis. I always called it recreational marijuana to distinguish it from medical marijuana, which I fully support. Medical marijuana has been very successful in terms of many people with different kinds of illnesses. It's gotten people off of opioids who were in a car accident as an 11 year old was on opioids. Extreme pain and problems with her body for many, many years was able to transition off to medical marijuana. It's been helping a lot of people. The average age of that is 58. One of the problems is the people at the dispensary become very close to the persons who come in there to get and you can buy there, not just marijuana, you can buy saps, tinctures, edibles, and it's really been, I think, a godsend for many people. Now, and let's see, where we two years ago the senate passed a tax and regulate for recreational marijuana that the governor, that didn't get through the house so that didn't. But what did go through, last year, the year before was a possession of two ounces. Two ounces of marijuana in your possession and the ability to have two adult plants and four immature plants. So that was able to sell it to other persons. So now this year in Senator Judiciary, Senator Sears is the chairman of that committee. He wants a tax and regulated system and he, you know, there's so that you can, he wants people to be able to buy because Massachusetts has passed recreational marijuana that you can purchase in stores and that's happening right in Great Barrington, just south of where Senator Sears lives. So kind of all around down there it's, you can get, you can get recreational marijuana and then this bill, a woman came and she said I can't find that thing anywhere on the internet well, it's called cannabis now. So that's where you need to look. And there wasn't a cross reference to marijuana. So in the committee, we took a lot of testimony, I have to, coming into the committee and knowing this was going to be there this year, I said well, I'm going to really look at that because if we have recreational marijuana you know, and people, and there's some money to be made to address the issue of education about opioids and other things that, you know, I'll take a look at being able to have tax and regulated. So I did consider all the testimony that was in there right until very end. I didn't know how I would vote on it in the end, right before the vote. I said, I'm not going to vote for it because there are some things I wanted. The current dispensaries who do the medical to be able to be the first to roll out recreational because they have the facilities. It's a proven system that works. It's under the Department of Public Safety. This would not be. This would be under a board of commissioners who would play out all the regulations, et cetera. And I thought, well, even so I think you could, if you did it allowing them to roll out first before it was the general instances that you have a smoother rollout, you could see what the flaws are. The new commission could kind of work from there. But that amendment that I tried to do when the committee failed. So I decided in the end, well, I'm not crazy about how this commission is going to work. I think I'm a little bit worried about it. So I decided to vote no. I voted against recreational marijuana previously. I was a social worker all of my life here in Vermont for a zillion years working with children. A lot of them starting at 12 and 13. And quite frankly, I don't want a lot more marijuana. It's available in homes now, but not as many as it would be. Should it be just simply combined on the street. And also, I live in a recreation town, where O'Kima Mountain is, where we have tons of young people. You know, our town is 1,900 people. On the weekend, it's 17,000. And, you know, if you can buy it right on the main street in Ludlow, it'll be a mess unless there's some really tight controls. You know, that's going to happen, I think, at some point anyway, whether I like it or not. But I've thought, well, I'll see what happens. And if there are changes that it will pass the Senate, this bill that's coming up on the floor next week, next week or the week after. And I don't know what will happen in the House. Also, I don't know what the governor will do. Because the governor wants a way to determine if somebody has marijuana. Better than what the system is now for determining if you have marijuana in your system causing you to be impaired when you're driving. So who knows? I think it may well pass, may not, when it gets to the House. The big challenge, it's going to be the House. Right? I mean, although Sam Young says he has the bones for it. He got a lot of cosponses. He did. There's a House member who has a former colleague of mine on Houseways in Maine who has introduced the tax and regulate bill in the House and has got a lot of cosponsors and they may actually be able to pass it. I mean, the reason I actually support the tax and regulate system because I think one of our biggest challenges is that we cannot regulate the consistency and the quality of marijuana and that is terrifying when you think of what can be laced into this drug that our 8th graders are able to get. The plus for me of tax and regulate is that 8th graders it won't be so easy for young people to get the drug. We will have an age limit just like we do with alcohol. We worked in government operations to design the cannabis board that would be over a year putting together the oversight and the management of this sort of like the liquor and lottery board were a control state. It would be similar to that and I have confidence that we could actually improve things which I would really like to see. I don't feel pressured by other states. I feel pressured by our own need to have safety in the drugs that are available to our Vermonters and so I mean that really compels me and I think prohibition has failed us completely. Prohibition failed with alcohol and prohibition has failed with drugs and I would rather have us be honest and have safer drugs that people can buy. I would add to that in addition to making sure that the product is safe. What I would like to do is see us cut the cord with the black mark because the people right now the people on the street who are selling cannabis or whatever we call it are also selling other stuff and if we don't have anybody dealing with those folks then they're not going to have as much of a market for their other wares and they may decide to go away. So I really think we'll never make it disappear but I think we can really make it a black market with a good legalization plan. I don't agree with any of you but holy shit. I agree with you too. The people selling on the black market presently of course don't want to tax and regulate but they want to continue to sell and make profit. So there's a lot to it. Here we are. I appreciate what you said as a soldier worker in the effect that you saw with minors, eighth graders and my concern with an eighth grade that is to make or break as a person in society as a general. Are you going to be a contributor? Are you going to be somebody in the back of them? I appreciate what you're saying with quality and all that stuff but at the same time like I said I'll go back kids are smart. So I mean if you don't I just think we need to I respect you for what you know. Actually I think Alison Parks and you have in Colorado you have every state around Colorado my daughter's in Colorado. RPI one? Yeah she didn't come back. Yeah she's got she's got a five year old and a three year old now and I'm not concerned about her kids they have a good chance they aren't even going to go to public school because of her family and stuff but at the same time Wyoming Utah, New Mexico they all have got serious amount of litigation against Colorado because they're raking in millions of dollars. But these kids that come just like we used to do and that can kind of tell you this we go to New York and we could drink and come back to Vermont with you in Fair Haven and you know like why could we drink to 21 Vermont so that's my concern with this and Dick Sears is probably seeing this and more over the border mask coming home. What are they used to call it before it was a suicide alley? I just want to say I think there is no really if you're involved in government there are times when you just have to have a high tolerance for imperfection for imperfect I don't see anything in this discussion that has ever actually been enthusiastic about it. I think as I've said it before pot makes otherwise interesting people boring it's not necessarily a good thing but it struck me as a matter of proportion that the laws against marijuana did more harm than the marijuana. Exactly, well the fence. It's all cash. The world is full of things that people I wish people overeat, people don't get enough exercise cigarettes, alcohols, all sorts of bad things people do to themselves that we don't have laws against. And then having come that far I took a libertarian view and just said get them out of it but now if we've come this far then tax and regulate it doesn't seem to make sense. If we've come this far we might as well I oppose tax and regulate for the two ounces let the hippie up the road put his pot plants in the sunlight not in the corn patch but now it's like we've come this far tax and regulate makes sense but I don't think anyone has reason to be really happy about any of this it's sort of a reasonable fall back Some of our farmers are quite excited I was at a meeting with the hemp there is a whole proposal, quite exciting one to turn the Windsor's Day prison into a testing and drying facility for hemp and there you can be the hemp industry is just burgeoning and we've only had it legal for two years Take a walk downstairs Yes, exactly Dave's whole operation of CBBO but hemp is legal now in the federal farm bill hemp is legal hemp is legal I was going to ask Dave a question in relation to your caucus on climate issues and someone in Windsor County I have taken note that the federal government released the climate report on the 27th of November two days after Thanksgiving and in that report there's a hundred authors or more or three are volunteers who wrote in that report now we have a state issue a federal issue I'm living within the U.S. Forest Service I know that my ranger approved a project on December 7th without reading the report and has no interest in actually sharing his reasons for not reading it with public and it's like okay where does our state legislators and the federal how do we work with protecting our environment in Vermont are we watching each other Well the relationship between the states and the federal government when it's a federal issue with the federal jurisdiction is we are basically petitioners we can make a comment and we can ask and urge we can make an argument the state does not have authority over federal decisions correct but you're watching and enacting our own laws hopefully hopefully there is the will to in the course of this plan and really take both aspirational I would divide it between aspirational goals I have a carbon pricing bill and even the most conservative economists are supportive of some form of carbon pricing so I'd say that our bills so far that have been introduced are aspirational in nature and then very practical so the practical includes measures for electric vehicles and incentives for more weatherization because we all know that transportation and housing are the two biggest ways for monitors contribute to climate change so we have very practical measures that have been introduced both in the house and the senate and we'll be taking those up and hopefully in our small footprint reduce our garbage Have you read the federal report? No I haven't I've read the executive summary and so just to go back to that we did stuff last year with the Volkswagen settlement which the money we got from that because of the Volkswagen emissions problem or they were defrauding fraudulent testing so we put that money into it was required to go into different things that dealt with emissions so we put that into electric charging stations a certain amount we put it into the state fleet to have more electric vehicles we put it into diesel buses to electric that's a lot of it and we're going to continue because there's more money this year that's also going to be most of the funding for the electric for the EV piece one thing that concerns us from the state of Vermont we have an asset we have an asset which is related to almost the Amazon and as individuals we think about these courageous folks trying to save the lungs of the planet because it's an asset with CO2 emissions we're sitting on an asset and we better pay attention to what's going on because there's been orders given by the federal government to do certain things we see the federal government looking to now go into the porcupine reserve in Alaska to start drilling for more fossil fuels this is a concern of us what are we doing to concern about our assets there's lots of work on carbon forest sequestration as you know and that is continuing I think that the the first step as we all know is educating people enough to appreciate that asset and to understand its value and so I think there's lots of there's lots of work going on with that in the state house both private owners one of the biggest challenges we face in the state on carbon sequestration through our incredible forest as you know it that's percent of Vermont is forest and I can't remember exactly what it is but the big challenge we face is that yes the state owns some of that forest yes the feds own some of it but a huge amount is owned by private both big companies like paper companies and private individuals with private individuals we are really facing a succession challenge which as because all our foresters the major tracks are aging big time and as they die or retire and their land thousands of acres are being passed on to their children or their grandchildren who don't necessarily have the same value who may just want to sell it off but the big challenge is actually that we face is the fragmentation of our forest and so education is a big piece of how do we keep that forest together because it's impact and its value is as a totality it's also primary forestry is primary it's a huge percent of it it's not a annual thing it's long around but it is primary we are around it was and there's also a great thing that's just happening with regard to workers comm which Allison may know this but with regard to the logging industry and what was of course incredibly dangerous so it was just another fellow from Springfield who died this weekend but the workers comm is going down like 40 percent because of an arrangement they've made for that probably going to affect other businesses but we'll also go down so that's good news which is terrific 13 to 14 percent of land mass in Vermont now is owned by trust land trust I don't think that much maybe, I don't know and you know Neil some of that is just the way families put their land legally I mean it may be well Vermont has started in the rough but Vermont has created the land use program which is basically a lot of mature circumstances how do you have access we'll give you a better deal I'm part of that now I did it for 30 years but that puts it into management point which makes it right you know there is a certain amount of I think we have to pay attention to it so of course we're managing it more well the great thing about that is we're working our working lands community and those jobs viable and sustainable which is terrific without that requirement of managing the land we'd be losing more loggers more truckers more foresters at the same time it should accept tax bring to somewhere else it's in the education fund and I you know Vermont would not be what you see today without the current use program and one I'm really proud of because it challenges us to keep our working lands viable at the same time as it manages our forests so it's it's also kept Vermont looking like what people think of as Vermont but it's also kept a working lands industry alive one thing I wanted to say I gotta go real quick but child care I have a daughter who's I'm trying to get to come to work for me you know she came back to Vermont she's had a child 10 months old I'm trying to get her to come into my business and take over but child care for her 10 month old is paramount and you know we I grew up my generation my kids my neighbor down street was fabulous did a great job I didn't have to work about degrees or anything like that and I think you know we need to look at a way maybe with these schools that are underutilized to in these kids that you know kids everybody has to have a sense of worth you know in the old days when you went school if you were a 10th grade or whatever you might be helping a 4th grade do math in a single room school room 100 years of going to Vermont but at the same time if you have the oversight with four people in the room with these toddlers and whatever inside of this building and it might be like they're working downstairs here from 8 to 12 and so for our income it's not a full day but I mean that's where I and I don't have an answer for her I mean I stay home from my job which I could make a lot more money you know you were a 10 month old I do enjoy it I totally love it but at the same time so we are putting more money into childcare and we're putting I forget how much but it's a huge fortune and trying to do something with regard to the education piece that's required for some providers because it's been something that people but it's been required in other words there may be people who are perfectly capable have all the safety training that the state requires but they don't have they're not working toward their degree in early education which there have been some requirements for that which some people don't need to get that their parents themselves do all the safety their home is safe and if they don't want to get a degree in early education and they don't want to get the increased money that comes with that forget it let's just do childcare but the childcare bill is the Sandy's committee there are half a dozen but you are going to be the first movers on this we are actually looking at that this week God I don't even know where to start so the biggest issue right now is slots we just don't have enough places for children to go if we get the places then how do we pay for it how do we pay the staff enough that they won't leave after three months you know it's a mess and the governor has proposed taking so many out of one pot and putting it into that pot to increase the amount the number of people who could be subsidized it's a big question but we're going to start showing on it this week the we heard from the commissioner this area child development division she feels very strongly that having some kind of child development specific training is important for at least the person who's in charge of the facility maybe not all the workers so one of the things is okay fine that's great how do we transition to that what do we do to make sure that the folks who are doing it now don't get shut out and so those are the kinds of questions we're going to Dave or Dave was on school board about this as a question how much utilization in that building over there right now how many rooms are open in that building with this downsizing stuff actually right now none because they've downsized to middle school so they've expanded their programs a year ago there were probably two rooms that could have served well that's what's interesting the room service is in the building you have a nursing staff in the building you have a lot of assets in the building I think you are spot on and I think the local delivery is easy to go to school go back or to work and I agree there's probably if the emphasis was set there they could reconfigure how they use their rooms New Hampshire did an interesting thing they coupled in some cases there were a lot of adult day out programs with a child day care program next door and there would be a certain amount of cross relationship which did probably the elderly more good but I think it worked well on both sides I think it's easier to see the effect it had on the elderly I think you find out what it had to do with the kids 20 years later adult day programs tend to have people who can't be left alone well it's been across I was sort of involved in some of that my ex-wife was a legislator she followed that very closely there's a cross section of a lot of it and I'm just saying I think it's worth it but there are a lot of people who would like to see us get older we're going to call them our mature population more involved it's good for everybody you can't retrofit each place necessarily but I think it's an interesting thought to have it in mind going forward another important thing you want to consider about trying to move into the schools is the schools are being pressured to do a lot more than they did when Danny and I were at school I mean we have a special ed coordinator that has spent years working on what they call a restorative classroom but they don't have enough room for that and what that is to try to bring children that are costing the district 100,000 a year or more bring them back and be able to afford the qualified people to instruct those kids so I know that's what happened over here so with a combination of Royalton and Bethel doing what they did they have found a room and now that it's working they need more because it's working it's so successful how many students have been able to bring back three or four the last I knew but at 100,000 a piece that pays for a couple people and if you get those two people now they can handle more we played out in the legislature in a number of committees you've got the health and welfare committee in the house and in the senate I serve on that senate and we've been taking a lot of testimonials the expense the cash outlay for child care is really prohibited is one of the factors that makes it people say you can't make a living in Vermont people can't make ends meet that's one of the big expenses but the other thing is even if you've got the money you're somehow going to find the money just finding the spaces yeah so it's a problem I can tell you in my own family my wife is doing a lot of child care right now but the action ultimately will be in the appropriations committees and that is because people don't want to be taxed anymore and you can't spend money you don't have it's hard to spend money you don't have especially when you have to tax people in order to get it in the first place but the government's budget that you were talking about at the very beginning does not include the budget does not include things that you're not taxing you're not able to tax for instance you let a corporation come to town you give it a tax abatement that abatement doesn't turn up in the state's budget the state doesn't doesn't write down the amount of money that it's giving away not in checks but in oh we need more nurses so we're going to give nurses free tuition we want the woodlands to be managed properly so we will limit a lower rate if they're managed properly and we get the beautiful woodlands sometimes we get land trusts in addition but we get the beautiful woodlands and there's a certain amount of property tax that's not being collected that number doesn't turn up in the budget what does turn up though in the legislative considerations of the budget they're called tax expenditures but year on year it's not in the budget is the amazon attire yes we're going to 6% from all of us no you're not what do you mean yes or no Amazon is not collecting Amazon is collecting tax now in Vermont I forget exactly what we did but two years ago we were going to impose something on companies like Amazon and Amazon rather than having that imposed on them agreed to pay the tax to Vermont and they do now this happened about two years ago and they don't pass it on to their customers I think Annie I'm not I don't mean to beat up Amazon I think any internet company that is challenging our brick and mortar needs to be played it's the same with the ARMB if I want to put a place in my house for taking people in for the weekend or whatever you know I'm competing with the Harrington or the Greenhurst and or whatever we've got to compete on fairs ARMB as a company yes but I speak but they are collecting the tax but sending it to the state of Vermont thank god but there are other things with regard to the ARMB that's next door to an inn that has to have their water tested fire inspector and the big Victorian next door there is a coming in our bills constantly noodling it there is a loophole in the Amazon tax if I buy something from Amazon the 6% gets put on and I pay it and Amazon turns it over to the state but if Amazon connects me to some third party vendor that piece as I understand it is still open and our tax committee this year on trying to figure out how it's a chunk and apparently it's a growing I understand it's a growing piece of Amazon's business but the cost is we're broking the back on that and all internet sales are now taxed and we just need to fix some of those loopholes but thank god this one is very early years not the things that subject my question is for you on act 250 you're on that board what is the board on with act 250 yes which is up for review act 250 act 50 it's 50 years old is anything active with that right now yeah there's legislation pending before I guess in both houses both with natural resources and energy committees are considering and I'm not on either of those committees so I was very active over that over the summer and autumn I have more or less I thought you were in the act I was he was on commission so we did our work over the spring and summer and fall and at this point now that has gone to the the standing legislative committees in both houses any ideas on what changes are going to be made in there well I think one of the changes is to first of all we have different problems now than we had 50 years ago now where people are talking about how do you attract people to Vermont how do you encourage people to stay in Vermont 50 years ago the state felt it was being invaded it was this influx of people which was not seen necessarily as a bad thing but it certainly created problems because we had a long history of being relatively unregulated and so suddenly you're getting sewage flowing on the surface down hills in southern Vermont bad construction practices and so on so act 250 was a way of getting a grip on the invasion of new people over the years one of the problems has been you know the shopping malls the big box stores so on well the big box stores tend to be empty these days the shopping malls are empty and now we're worried about not having enough people to pay the taxes so the focus there's legislation suggesting that we focus on encouraging development downtown in part by entrusting local communities taking some of the authority that has been enjoyed by act 250 and shifting it to that if those act 250 criteria are dealt with downtown level for downtown that will be at least a rebuttable presumption that the act 250 criteria have been met but they have to be designated an enhanced downtown they have to a very assertive and then once they have the enhanced downtown right they would get a wave on act 250 any development that was downtown would not have to go down to draw people and businesses manufacturing into our city well act 250 has always been always let me finish the point out besides having some deference to town authorities for downtown development there will be extra emphasis on preserving the surrounding green country side and that's sort of a balance it's a trade off the as far as act 250 has always been pro development I'm not sure everybody has understood that it's one of the in the 60's with the invasion happening there were people it's interesting that there were people that in this area yes okay there was a there were people whose conservatism was basically Vermont is fine the way it is leave it alone and then there were people who said nah nah nah bring the development on we want the jobs we want the capital coming in we want the revenue and so that was the the battle Dean Davis and Art Gibb and all those Vermont Republicans to give credit where it's due came up with this brilliant not a compromise as a meeting in the middle a compromise as in recognizing both sides they said bring it on bring in the development but when you do it you gotta do it right okay so I don't think act 250 was ever intended to encourage development although other things do encourage development but it was that if you're gonna have development you gotta do it right that was really the general thrust of it and I think that remains that remains to this day so um I don't know if I answered your question okay here's my answer okay I get a couple things on this date which is already very too late so I don't need your response just listen please electric in my trade is electrician in the records of the small rental issues everything being like and the like and the like whatever we're just playing rental yeah we have a inspection system in this state farm marshals and electrical inspectors that a few of them are love the power love the power their office in this town I know for sure that there's been at least two rentals that said to hell with it we'll leave empty we're not gonna spend thousands and thousand thousand dollars to make you happy we will do all the safety stuff in my opinion some things that have nothing to do with safety done that cause very expensive we're gonna I mean one guy put a red tag on there where it would take all season to assist no more work until you do what I tell you another house does it inspire safety or it wasn't actually this particular one was a fire marshal the one that I'm currently working on is uh yes fire fire marshal electrical whatever other states have accepted the new technology the smoke detectors and carbon dioxide smoke detectors and whatever this state is still living with okay you've got this beautiful house with the moldings and this metal ceiling where I'm gonna make you rip that all apart so that we can put in um electrically connected devices and people are saying go you're not sorry this is not gonna be for rent so think about that most the other thing I want to talk about is when you're talking about the governor's term I disagree with the fact that you want to keep it as it is I disagree with you only have four months I'm sorry you have all year to think about stuff and be prepared when you get there for your four months we're on the wrong way I don't care believe me we work all year round but if you if I listen to I happen to be in the truck driving I listen to a thing on vpr about this and it was I can't remember how far I drove but it was a long ways and they were on the whole time and there was pros and cons now I believe that a four year term is fine but the people who said no is well that person will have more time to get more money well that's your problem then change your campaign finance rules I think there's a huge disparity on people who are able to raise millions and then some people who have a hard time getting a few thousand and maybe this person has got some new ideas and be great to be there but he doesn't have the longevity or been there for 50 years and have the people that will back and they have millions so okay you're running for Senate everybody who runs for Senate applies the state gets $5,000 that's probably a weird number that's come on you get $5,000 he gets $5,000 you mean from the state that's all you can spend that's all you can spend period you can't spend a million dollars and he spends $5,000 can other people spend that's how you regulate we have all kinds of regulations in this state what happens is other groups you don't know who they are then send out something supportive or against or they send out a big blast I mean somebody spent $3,000 on the Washington County Senate race right at the end some people who were supporting the environment they got together and they they didn't even ask the person they just spent it alright but when that happens are they going to feel obligated to when they're asking for something it's up here it's in your mind well it may well be but I mean the person who's candidacy I spent it on I want to give my opinion we actually had campaign spending limits and they were found unconstitutional as a denial of free speech I don't agree with that I like your idea but it didn't work yeah I like your idea but why don't we have a Supreme Court case called Buckley vs. Mulan which the Supreme Court said money is speech you have a right to speak you also have a right to give any money so that I will say you like what I'm saying that's speech that's you speaking according to the Buckley vs. Mulan and it really caught our hand that was we had a campaign finance law that had been ruled unconstitutional and I voted to pass another law that said essentially the same thing for the purpose of creating a test case in other words we knew it would end up back in court and it was inviting the court to change its law they didn't we got shot down and the court says it's unconstitutional unconstitutional but they're the ones who get to say I understand that but that doesn't make it right the other thing I have a concern about is when you go to two year terms of any kind those people that are running are spending too much time running especially talking about a governor who has a year round job if he really wants to be governor again he's already looking at the next campaign where maybe if he was running for four years maybe he would give us two years of undivided attention especially if he didn't have to raise more money than him I can we can argue all day long but I just want I'm saying things I'd like you guys to think about I hate having to run every two years it means every other year I don't get to take a long hike to be an officer but I support a two year term for the Senate and the reason is virtually any controversial legislation people who disagree with my position don't just disagree with my position invariably they accuse me of quote not listening to the people and I want the opportunity to put that accusation to the test okay if we don't listen to the people we'll remember in November and then November comes and those of us who took this controversial position all get re-elected then we may still be wrong but it's not that we didn't listen to the people okay and so I like and if at some point enough legislators don't listen to the people the people ought to have the opportunity to fire but the way it usually works is the opposite it's a vindication and I want that opportunity one more thing that wasn't brought up at all and I'm sure somewhere in some committee you're talking about it as I get older it's becoming more apparent to me that I'm not going to be able to afford healthcare or drugs right now between my wife and I if we didn't have the healthcare that she has maybe over $3,000 a month just for medications and I have heart problems $3,000 a month and we are she's 61, I'm 64 it's not going to get better neither ones are going to get better and when I go on to Social Security my Social Security won't pay for my drugs so you will your Social Security won't but if you get a supplemental plan like a prescription they're not cheap like a prescription drug plan to I've already looked in that it would be half my Social Security check just for healthcare for the whole overall healthcare just for medications and that other $650 a month to pay taxes eating electricity I'm going to go to Minnesota or to to Hampshire where my kids have been forced to go already it's cheaper it's cheaper there Dave I go to Canada I get it for a third less than I would here in the space it's the same drug my wife's drug in 20 years ago was $12 a bottle is now $375 $375 a month so one month while and she has to have two you know that is one place where there's some hope that Congress may have because I believe that President actually cares about medications and I saw that there was just a scandal where a drug that was being given away by its manufacturer was bought by another company and they put a price of $100,000 here on it it had been given away free before we leave I just want to make clear I've never said I was a constitutional scholar I've never claimed no the trouble with it was when people make claims and you're behind then when people find out it's not true they think you're the one who's full of hope we will be back here again on March 25 look at that same place hope to see you all then at 7.30 yeah thanks I never said we shouldn't what would you say we shouldn't you have some homework to do by the way the only value the Harold I think the manager has a weekly summation it's going on really quick it's going on I'm glad someone's reading it it takes forever to put together they could be a little more descriptive though some homework Bill 8 47 is sponsored by Joe Fred and Sam I get the head in there it all says the description of the bill and it turns out many of them are nuanced enough that it takes several paragraphs to describe what they actually do maybe a link right behind it well the link is at the end of the whole thing it says go here type in this bill I actually have to I'll three quarters through it yeah it's tiring it really is I thought the last one was excellent very brief and concise excellent I've been worried I'm going to see the paper here on Thursday what's that tell me about it is that a post office it's a bizarre combination of the papers not getting to the post office as early as they used to and then the post office holding on to them for an entire day before they do anything with it but only in White River Junction because we deliver directly to the Randolph post office Thursday morning and they get it out immediately so it's we still don't and they haven't found our calls for last week so it's we're working on it but it's a big hassle call your your US senator good luck I can't even get tails