 So welcome to the economy for all Town Hall. Thank you so much for coming out tonight for this event which is hosted by the Rights and Democracy Education Fund as part of series of Town Halls moderated by Vermont Lieutenant Governor David Zuckerman. And tonight's events are also sponsored by Rights and Democracy Project, Vermont NEA, Planned Parenthood, Vermont Action Fund, and Public Assets Institute. So my name is Ginger Knight. I'm a junior here at U32 and I live in Eastmont Pillar. I'm a current student rep on Rad's leadership committee and recently my friend Mia and I made a student survey to collect information about teenagers who currently have jobs at U32. One of the questions was do you have do you make less than $13 per hour? And 43% said yes they make less than $13 per hour. This is just under 50% of students who make less than $13 per hour. I'm part of this event because this issue is crucial to our lives. So tonight we're gonna talk about a lot of the struggles that are facing many of the families around Vermont and we the important steps that we can take towards making an economy that really works for all of us. I'm Mia. I also live in Eastmont Pillar and I'm also a junior and I'm here because I think it's my duty as an engaged citizen to stand up for issues that I think are so important. Yeah so at Rights and Democracy we believe that we can and we must do better to ensure that public policies are in place and to ensure that every single person in our community has the ability to lead lives in dignity where we can all have a chance to be happy, healthy, and thrive. There are a lot of great things about our communities in our country but if we take a step back and look at our economy we see how we are in the wealthiest country in the history of the world and experiencing incredible technological growth. But then we see the extreme levels of inequality with millions of people working full-time and even two to three jobs but still living in poverty. We see that despite spending more than twice as much per person on healthcare, millions of people are going without healthcare. We see life expectancy of men in the country declining, our communities facing an opioid and drug overdose crisis. We see our communities in crisis and people pitted against each other by race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, ability, and age and historically marginalized communities facing systems of oppression which still need to be dismantled. And ultimately we also see and hear scientists detailing how our economy and energy systems are destroying the very life support systems of our beautiful planet. We believe that we can have an economy that works for all of us and that is in harmony with the planet and all of the other living things who live here with us. We know that here in Vermont we can lead the way so our state is one of the first states to head down the path in the direction that our country really needs to go with advancing human rights and building a real democracy where we have a universal health care system and invest in the health of our communities. Where we advance a green mountain new deal to invest in renewable energy, clean water and public transit systems, creating jobs and making sure all workers get paid a livable wage and we support strong local economies. It's not going to be easy but with all of us playing our part we can definitely make it happen. So thank you again for coming out tonight and please give a warm welcome to our moderator Lieutenant Governor David Suckerman. Well thank you both. I just want to say to the ginger and Maya or Mia, Mia I'm sorry that I'm so excited for the organizing you're doing. I'm excited for your engagement in democracy and the process. I want to let you know that sometimes more people show up to events and sometimes fewer having been involved in Vermont politics now for as a candidate 23, 24 years as an elected person for 21 years. I have driven three hours to events with two people. I have driven three hours to events with 30 people. I have driven three hours to events with 400 people. The work that we do to make an economy for all to improve our communities sometimes has big meetings and sometimes it has small. But what is exciting for me is to see folks at your age engaging and being part of that building of that movement because all the success that we've had while we have farther to go on many topics, the various successes that have happened over time are because of the hard work that people put in of all ages organizing meetings that sometimes five people show up to sometimes 15 and sometimes 500. So thank you for your organizing. You're doing that survey and for the courage that it takes to stand in front of a group of people with a microphone which after you do a little bit more you get really comfortable and you make mistakes and you laugh at your mistakes and so forth. But at first you feel like, oh my God, I said something not quite right and it's really okay. We are all human in this room and we have a range of perspectives of people in this room. I want to say we've been having these town meetings throughout the state. Again, we've had some with 30, 40, 50 people and we've had some that are fewer. But it's been really interesting to take away of the conversations with respect to recognizing where our society has gotten to with respect to our economy, with respect to disparities in wealth and income, our society's disparities in health outcomes, especially with respect to what we pay relative to what many people in different countries around the world pay, which is often half and yet they have better health outcomes in terms of child mortality, life longevity. You'd think with the United States and in Vermont as well, us paying through the roof for our healthcare that we would have the number one outcomes of the world. But we are far from that. We're often 10th, 15th, 25th in different rankings and metrics. So the question that we have to ask and that is asked by this town meeting series around the state is if we're the wealthiest country in the world and we're the most advanced country in the world, why have we not achieved what I would say should be a goal for all of us, which is an economy that works for everybody, where actually if folks are earning a wage that they can actually work a reasonable number of hours, but then actually also have time for family, which for those listed around in the 80s and 90s, family values was the big talking point in politics. Well, family values means having a wage that allows you to be home with your family. So you can enrich your children with decent ethics around work ethic, decent ethics around neighbors and community, decent values around helping those in the community who may not be able to help themselves because of the roulette of genetics or circumstances they're born into or any of the other things that start us out on different bases around the pat, the baseball diamond. And to me, if we don't have basic wages that allow for folks to be home with their families or to contribute in their communities, cleaning the side of the road or volunteering to help someone build a ramp on their house so they can get in or out if they're mobility challenged, then what are we and who are we as a society? And these are the kinds of questions that some of this conversation is about for universal health care for individual rights and freedoms with respect to women and their bodies and the ability to make the choices that women need to make for their health and choice and their autonomy for their economic circumstances. And for each of our economic circumstances, we should all be afforded good public education so that no matter what your background is or where you come from, you have the opportunity to learn the opportunity to then climb the ladder and you'll pull yourself up by the bootstraps argument that sometimes is made in the economy that we're in and in political circles. And so, this conversation and the presentations we're going to have are about some of these different aspects of our society, what the conversation could be in a developed, civilized, economically bountiful for some and not for others society, but how do we through our democracy and through a vibrant democracy and through changing laws, but it's not all about laws. It's also through changing our own mindsets and our community mindsets make it so that we don't have folks living on the street. We don't have folks not going in for primary care because they don't have the access to health care or health care opportunities that they should have, which then costs us all more money. Sometimes this conversation is actually also about penny-wise pound foolish and there's times when an investment upfront actually saves you a lot of money down the line. Whereas if you don't get that care when you should, it costs a lot more money to go to the emergency room with an infected cut than it would have been to go in earlier to get a cut cleaned out and a couple of stitches. So thankfully in Vermont, we've mostly gotten over that hurdle, but we're a long way from getting over that hurdle. And we also look at the fact that we spend about as much on health care in our state as the whole state budget. Something's wrong with that picture and there are decent arguments that there are different ways to solve that, but generally when you look at the systems of the world that actually truly save money and create better outcomes, it's not just through the race to the bottom free market system, it's through a combination of universal systems that make sure everybody's in, everybody's covered, everybody contributes and you end up with better outcomes that way with far less money going towards the administrative rigmarole of who's paying and where are they paying from and denials and then battling to get it paid and all that cost in the system that could actually be about health care. So there are a number of conversations that we'll have today. I didn't even touch on climate and certainly when we're talking about our youth, my 13 year old daughter, it's really a deeply personal issue when I first got elected statewide three years ago, that night, I went to bed pretty sad and I would have traded my election, I would still trade being in this office today for someone in the Oval Office who actually recognized science with respect to many things, but in particular with respect to climate change and the fact that we're already past many of the tipping points, but we have an opportunity if we actually tackle climate change with a green new deal or a green mountain new deal, as you stated, that actually builds jobs and works towards a climate that is livable out there for our children, our future grandchildren and so forth. I will tell you as a farmer, no single weather event, of course, can be directly pinned to climate change, but two years ago was one of the wettest years and this last year, depending where you were in Vermont, you either had an incredibly wet year or even 100 miles to the north, you had one of the driest years that's ever happened. I will tell you that on our farm over these last two years, we've lost thousands just this last year in the fall, we were down about 35,000 pounds of food between cabbages that didn't size up because of lack of water, carrots that didn't size up because of lack of water, because we ran our ponds empty and we had no more water. And on the one hand, that's just an economic loss for an individual business. And on the other hand, it's a bit of a canary in the coal mine about what's really changing with our systems. And today at the State House, there are folks who were involved in the ski industry, and you want to talk about jobs and the economy, and what could happen to Vermont as climate change continues to progress. If we lose the ski industry or a significant portion of the ski season, just think about what that means for our economy. If our maple season, as it continues to move earlier, also gets truncated by sort of too cold for a while, and then quickly too warm, what does that do for our economy? So anybody who doesn't link climate change to our economy, I think is really not seeing the dots that are pretty clearly on the map in front of us. So I want to recognize a number of legislators who are here. And I want to thank folks who are here from the legislature, again, from a range of perspectives, because I think it's really, we're very lucky in Vermont, that regardless of what party people run from or for or under whatever banner it is, once elected, it's about getting out and listening to conversations from all perspectives. And I really think we have something special here in Vermont in that regard. And so we have legislators, I think of every party here, we've got Senator Cummings and Senator Purchlick, Senator Cummings of acts, Senator Purchlick in the front, Senator Plina had planned to be here, but I don't think he's going to be able to make it. Senator Cummings serves on the health and welfare committee and the finance committee as chair. Senator Purchlick serves on transportation committee and the education committee. And then we also have representatives Leclerc and Gosland here, I think right here near the front. Representative Leclerc serves on the government operations committee and representative Gosland on judiciary committee. So you actually have a wide range of views, not only politically, but also representation from different committees that are impacted and can impact our economy, our education, our climate, transportation, judiciary in terms of an economy that works for all is also about equal employment opportunities. And I believe representative Donny, who may be coming a little bit late, but she had another meeting and she also she serves on healthcare. So you have another committee that's covered with those opening remarks and democracy, of course, I'm going to invite up you gave me the copy that doesn't have a page is going to come up to speak on behalf of Planned Parenthood, who's a co-sponsor of this event and some other of these town meetings to speak a little bit about the legislation that's happening and how to stay involved and the importance of it. Here we go. Thank you. Hi, everyone. Thank you so much. And yeah, my name is Paige Fiezer. I'm the Vermont Public Affairs organizer with Planned Parenthood of Northern New England and Planned Parenthood for my Action Fund. And I'm very excited to talk to folks about reproductive rights, especially from an economic context, because I think that's definitely a perspective that doesn't always get thought about when we're talking on on the issue of human rights. And certainly, the ability to decide when and whether to have a child is one of the most important factor in a childbearing person's economic well being over the course of their lifetime. And having that control allows people to increase their own education, make better investments in their early working career choices, and create better outcomes for their children. And on a societal context, access to birth control, including abortion, is tied to increase labor force participation, higher earnings, more advanced careers, and better financial conditions for children as well as families. And just to give you context from from a women's perspective, women make up nearly half the workforce and play a vital role in our economy's success. And when women do have access to the full range of reproductive health care, it helps them control their lives, their health and their future, and we're all better off. So certainly, since 2011, we've seen some really disastrous abortion restriction laws happening in states all over the country. Since 2011, over 400 abortion restrictions have been passed. This year alone, over 250 have been at least introduced in over 30 states around the country. Unfortunately, restricting abortion access threatens economic security for childbearing people and denial of abortion leads to economic hardship. And many of those seeking an abortion already experienced economic hardships have had incomes below the federal poverty level and three quarters reported not having enough money to pay for basic living expenses. And instead of being able to access a wanted abortion and giving birth, it resulted in almost a four fold increase in odds that a woman's household income was below the federal poverty level, and a greater likelihood of reporting not to be able to cover basic living needs. So people who are denied abortion all across the country are more likely to be enrolled in public safety programs, like the temporary assistance for needy families, food assistance programs, and the WIC program compared to women who did have access to abortion care. So certainly Planned Parenthood Vermont Action Fund is very concerned on what's happening on a national level. And certainly at the end of last year with the confirmation of Supreme Court Judge Brett Kavanaugh, we were certainly very concerned about what the future of abortion access and reproductive rights are here in Vermont. We are just so very proud of our legislature for introducing two important pieces of legislation. Number one being the abortion rights bill age 57, which seeks to codify the abortion access that Vermonters have had for the past 46 years. And then secondly, a reproductive liberty amendment, Prop 5, which seeks to amend the Constitution to include reproductive autonomy and including it as an important part of a person being able to maintain their dignity and their ability to make their own choices. So with that, in thinking about how to support these two important pieces of legislation, the Prop 5, especially being historic and no other country, no, I'm sorry, and no other state in our country has tried to put forward such an important constitutional amendment to a state constitution. So certainly we definitely do need public support and pushing forward these pieces of legislation. Certainly one thing I do have to mention is that the House of Representatives, the Human Services Committee on Wednesday is hosting a public hearing on Prop 5 from five to seven p.m. in the well of the state house or in the House chamber. And we're trying to encourage if reproductive rights is important to you, certainly make an appearance there. Our representatives need to see and also hear from people who support reproductive rights. I'm happy to talk with anyone after this presentation about that opportunity and how you can get involved. Certainly in also staying educated about these two pieces of legislation is certainly important as well. I have a signed up sheet here and I'm happy to get you signed up on there. We do really good updates on the fabulous work that our legislators are doing around the state. So thank you so much. Thank you, Paige. And next we have Mia Smith, who was up already, but we'll give a little more information I think on raising minimum wage and paid family leave, right? And, you know, again, I want to thank the range of folks who come and I hope we will have a robust conversation. So thank you. Here's Mia. Hi again. I'm here on behalf of Rad to talk about raise the wage and pay family medical leave, which are two issues that are really important to a number of Vermonters and our legislators have been working hard to ensure that Vermonters right to a little wage is protected and that we don't have to worry about losing our jobs just because we need to look after ourselves or after a loved one. After Governor Scott vetoed both an increase to the minimum wage and a paid family and medical leave program last year. We now have the potential for a veto proof majority in both the House and the Senate to pass the bill this session raising the minimum wage in five steps to $15 an hour by 2024 will give as many as 50,000 Vermonters a raise over the next five years, especially to women and people of color who are more likely to be working in low wage jobs per month. It will ensure that our lowest wage full time workers are earning enough for basics needs budget and will save these folks every year from applying and reapplying for multiple economic safety net programs. The five year pass will also give Vermont small businesses time to adjust and every year will inject hundreds of millions of dollars into our economy, our local economy. A paid family and medical leave insurance program will benefit every employed Vermonter with only a tiny deduction from your paycheck. Everyone at some point needs to take time off from work to care for a new or a sick family left or loved one or to even take care of yourself. We know that the voluntary program proposed by the governor this year doesn't work. So we need to keep working to ensure that strong support for a publicly administered mandatory paid family medical leave insurance program can be passed this year. These two policies together are really big steps forward for the most vulnerable working Vermonters and their families and will also help to bolster the middle class in Vermont. Because we have so many new legislators, which is awesome, we need to keep organizing and connecting working Vermonters with their representatives. Help us reach out to low wage workers in your community with our raise up Vermont storyteller form so that we can reach as many of the 50,000 low wage workers in our state as possible and ensure that Vermonters right to a livable wage and paid family and medical leave is respected and upheld. Next we have Sarah Lyons from the Public Assets Institute and just by way of introduction, the Public Assets Institute is a non-profit that works here in Montpelier really doing a lot of economic analysis around our economic system and the different how it affects different folks at different points in the system. I also am remiss in my opening. I forgot to mention and he'll understand that I do this every time, but I've been two years ago. It happened for about a month or two and then it became less interesting for them. But apparently it's interesting again for the Republican Governors Association to film me at public events so I am being filmed today as are anybody else who speaks and the questions that you ask. I hope folks will still feel comfortable asking any questions you want. I certainly feel comfortable with any answer that I'm going to give just to give you a little bit of a fun time. I think you've got a Montreal Canadiens jacket on. Now what's the symbol on the side there? Okay great. In that case I was going to make a little fun of the fact that it was Montreal because I was like come on Canada's got universal health care system. You can't do that while you're filming for the RGA, but it's not so that's a joke I would have made. In any case, Sarah Lyons from the Public Assets Institute please come on up and talk to us a little bit about some of the wage issues and some of the work you've been doing. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Hi everybody. It's great to be here. I'm Sarah Lyons from Public Assets. And I just wanted to tell you a little bit about our work. Public Assets mission is to improve the well-being of Vermonters specifically low and moderate income Vermonters. We do state tax, budget, economic research and analysis to understand how Vermonters are doing. We communicate it clearly and we make policy recommendations that best serve Vermonters. Our goal is to provide important context in public debates. We sift through the data. We identify trends in information that aren't part of the conversation and we make people aware of it. A couple of quick examples. We have a new minimum wage report. I was hoping to have that tonight. Didn't quite get it done, but probably early next week. The goal of this report is to really question the timing of minimum wage. Is it the right time to raise minimum wage? All the concerns that we hear about why not to raise minimum wage. Those concerns are going to be there whenever we raise minimum wage. So the question that we're asking is how are the folks doing who are making minimum wage? And if they're worse off, then it's the right time to raise minimum wage. So that's what we focused on in this report and look for that next week. Another example, a quick example about our work is migration. A lot of what drives the conversation in the state house is that we can't tax high-income Vermonters or they'll leave the state. We know from work and research across the country that that's just not true. But we wanted to look at what's happening in Vermont. I did bring one of these reports if anybody wants one and it's available on our website. But we looked at the top 10 states that Vermonters moved to when they leave the state. And we looked at the top 10 states that people come from when they move to Vermont. And guess what we found? They're pretty much the same states. Vermonters do move to New Hampshire and Florida where there's no income tax, but roughly the same amount of people move to Vermont from those same states. So what we find is that most Vermonters stay put. A small percentage of people move in and out of the state every year. We might all know someone who threatens to leave the state because taxes are high, but that doesn't mean that it's really affecting Vermont. It doesn't mean it should drive our policy. So that's two examples of what public assets does to push back on persistent myths that can sometimes drive policy decisions. We love to share our work with you. We hope you find it useful. We're on Facebook, we are on Twitter, and I sent a clipboard around. People can join our email list. I don't send a lot, so if anyone can attest to that, there's not a ton. So I will not fill your inbox, but I'll let you know when we have new material. Thank you. Thank you, Sarah. And we have two senators here today who we will offer the chance to speak for a moment, and then we'll end up with a panel up front, and actually if either two representatives want to speak, we'll give you a couple minutes as well, and then we'll be up here to answer questions from you all. So last time I had Senator Cummings go first and she said, no! So this time I'll have Senator Perchlet go first, and then we'll alternate it around for equality purposes. Senator Perchlet, you want to offer a few words? Here. Thank you, the Governor. I'm going to be pretty quick because I'd much rather hear from you all and have more of a discussion, but just for my, I'm a new senator, just got elected this last time, and I'm really focused on the committees and the committee work that I'm doing. I'm transportation and education, and as far as the issues that we're talking about today, definitely climate action has been something that the Transportation Committee has been talking a lot about. The chair of that committee has been on the committee for 34 years, and he's telling me like for 35 or 33 of those 34 years, mostly been about potholes and paving and paving potholes, which is important, and especially after this winter, we're definitely focused on that as well, but this year we spent more time than any other issues about electrification of our transportation sector, and how do we think about our whole public transit system in a different way, and how are we going to hold the for equity and give people the work as we found what I found interesting in the committee that we learned is most people take public transit are taking it to get to work, and we want to have folks have a way to keep their jobs, and we have programs like Reach Up to Require you to have a job, that we got to also make sure there's an equitable way for people to get to work, and we continue the support of our public transportation, and we're thinking about new ways like passenger trains, but we're also really focusing on the basic transportation that we have of buses throughout the state, and hopefully that we can do more in rural areas, but as I said, we're really focusing in what I'm excited about in the committee is electric vehicles, but electrification of our transportation sector in general, happy to talk more about that, and on education where I've been happy to to learn about on that is that there's a real interest on how we address Vermont's problem that we have a very high school graduation rate, but a very low rate of high school graduates finishing college or going to college, and part of it is our college education in Vermont is too expensive, and we've had a lot of students come in there and talk about they went to Vermont colleges, so you know this is like Castleton and Northern University and come out with a hundred thousand dollars of debt, and how do we address that, and it's not something we're going to pass the bill this year and have free college next year, but we're going to start the conversation of how we can support our institutes of higher education in the state and support those Vermonters that want to go on for secondary degrees, whether it be a technical degree at BTC or a four-year degree at one of the colleges, we really need to think about that and how we're going to work on that, so it's exciting to work on that, and also some early education work that we've been doing about making sure we really nurture our youngest Vermonters, because those are going to be the Vermonters are tomorrow, so we need to make sure we're the care and nurturing of our children should be the top priority, so that's been exciting work as well. So I'll end there and turn it over to Senator Cummings, chair of finance. Thank you, and thank you for coming out today. It's good to see young people here. When I was your age, young people were very involved. We were picketing in the streets and parading around state houses and sitting in in various offices, and then young people went away. We seem to get out of the political system, and it's good to see you be back. It's good to get the energy and the enthusiasm, and it encourages us, and it I think says to those of us that have been at this for a while, that it's worthwhile, that there's a future. I serve on the Health and Welfare Committee. We are authored and brought to the Senate Proposition 5 two weeks ago. That's now gone to the House, and it will eventually go out to a public vote, so you will be seeing that come out in the next. We have to vote a second task. It goes through two bienniums, so it'll be two years from now, 2022 for it goes out. It's a long process, but it will put the right to reproductive autonomy into our constitution. We did that not tied to the right to privacy, which other states have done, and that was the basis for Roe v. Wade, because we were concerned that Roe v. Wade and that connection to privacy or whether or not privacy is guaranteed in the federal constitution could be turned over that we want. So ours is tied to the basic right liberty of the individual in Vermont to determine their own life course, and that's out. We have, we're talking about trying to create a more livable society and how that's connected to the economy and the rest of the world. We have a fantastic child care bill in Senate Health and Welfare. It will over the next three years, if it passes, and if they can get the money for the computer system, set child care costs and a percentage of your income, and that's what you pay. Nope, if you have one, two, three, or five kids in child care, that's what you pay. We've had some very, we had most of the committee in tears and in the room, and the room was back. Listening to one mother talk about how her child care closed, she had an infant, she could not find other child care, and this was in, she worked for the state, this was in the Montpelier area, because she couldn't find child care. She eventually had to leave her job, she lost her home, she lost herself esteem, she was in tears, she felt like she'd failed herself, she'd failed her children, she ended up working in a grocery store and living in a friend's back bedroom. Finally, has found, found some child care, but this was after like two years, found some child care, is back working with the state, but only 30 hours an attempt, which means she gets no benefits. So she has just gone way back. I've had all kinds of people call and say, they have given up work because they can't find child care, they are, they end up back on state systems, or they're determining how many children they're going to have because of the cost of child care. They can't afford a second child then. We need second children in our schools. We need to grow our population in, we're aging. Those decisions should not be, have to be made on the availability of child care. I served on the minimum wage study committee several years ago, and I have always supported raising the minimum wage to a livable wage. I put my first family leave bill in 11 years ago. I know this because my grandson just turned 11. They, they lived in Canada and I got to watch my daughter-in-law be allowed to take up to a year in Quebec off with partial pay, but pay, so that she could bond with her child. At the same time I was watching the young lawyers that worked for us try to get out and get down to child care so they could nurse their baby, so they could get back, so they could work and just said this isn't good. This is an important time for mothers to bond with their children, for parents to bond with their children. That bill was there. Then we get to the other side of it, which is finance and how do we pay for all of this. We have some great new programs out there, but we essentially have a safety net in this state that is in shreds. We have not come up with the money in 10 years since the recession to increase our mental health agencies to, we haven't increased the allowance that somebody a Medicaid in a hospital gets to buy toothbrush, toothpaste, and a new nightgown in 10 years. And so the stress is coming in the, in the legislature. I think about where do we spend the money? Do we spend it on mending that safety net before we do new programs? Do we spend it on new programs? Do we spend it on child care? Do we spend it on family leave? Or can we in fact afford everything? And that's the discussion you're going to hear. But it will be a civil and it will be a Vermont style discussion. So I want to make sure, either of the two you want to speak, I just have to call out Representative Leclerc for a second because he's usually one of the top one, two, or three March Madness pool guessers at the State House. We have about 75 people participate. And the reason I say guessers is because people like him actually know what they're doing and he ends up doing pretty well. And then I take about 10 minutes and fill out my bracket and usually end up somewhere in the top 10 with complete guesswork and randomly enough this year without even picking the winning team, I won the bracket. So I have to rub it in a little bit because I really shouldn't win the bracket based on that little knowledge I have of the tournaments. But so Representative Leclerc or Representative Gosselin, do you want to speak or a little crush? And then we'll invite our other speakers up and we'll do some Q and A. Thank you, Lieutenant Governor. Now of course a lot of what we're going to talk about here tonight is a bit about perspective. It seems how he brought up the NCAA double basketball brackets. It's a little bit a matter of perspective in that yes he did win it because one of the teams he picked actually won it. But another perspective to look at is who picked the most number of teams that won? I picked 47. So I picked more than one than he did by one by one. So it is a matter of perspective but congratulations for your excellent job. Appreciate it. My name is Robert Clare. I'm one of the two state representatives out of Berrytown. I am also the house minority leader, assistant house minority leader for the Republican caucus. For those of you who don't know this there are Republicans in Vermont and I have one of them. Again it's a matter of perspective. What you're going to see probably tonight is that there is more agreement than not about what the issues are. Where the disagreement comes quite often is to what the solutions are. As Republicans believe healthcare we believe clean air, clean water. We want a lot of the same things that everybody else does. Where the question is is who's going to pay and how much. I'm very excited that you two young ladies are as involved as you are. It's great to have people involved. It's one thing to stand there and point out what the issues are. Now you got to stay involved and help come up with what those solutions are. That's where it really comes. Minimum wage you know let's talk about that. We want everybody to be able to live with dignity and have access to good quality healthcare and all the other things that go along with that. But there is another part of that too in that say the minimum wage. I'm a small business owner. I've been a small business owner for many years. I also work for a large corporation for many many years. Sometimes it depends again on perspective as to whether you've ever signed in front of a paycheck or you've always signed the back of one. Small business in Vermont is the backbone of the state. About 80% of our businesses in Vermont have 20 employees or under. I know many many small business owners who don't take a paycheck home every week. I'm not worried about the Walmart's. I don't care about McDonald's. They can take care of themselves. It's their choice whether they stay in Vermont or not. I care about the businesses that are on Main Street and State Street, Montpelier, Main Street, Waterbury, South Main Street, North Main Street and Berry. Those are the businesses that I care about. And it's a tough climate to do business in this state. We have a lot of different challenges ahead of us. You know I've heard pay family leave. We're actually are for that. We really are. We just disagree that it should be a mandate and we do think that the governor's version has got a lot of merit in it. So there's a lot more commonality here than not. It's just a matter of how we get there. But one thing I will say and I think Senator Cummings said that we do do it the Vermont way. We will have good role of us discussions but it's always respectful. And one of the things that we really do try to do is we listen to each other. But we can quite often agree to disagree. But thank you. Do you want to speak briefly as well? Yeah. A couple of minutes real quick and then we'll have all of our guests come up to do the Q&A. Yeah, sure, come in. So, hi. And I really appreciate what what you're doing and your knowledge and all this stuff and the most important thing is being involved. So I come from the same side as where Rob comes from. I happen to be a small business owner. I set it off making minimum wage. Actually I made less than minimum wage because I was a farmer. So but my first job out I think it was minimum wage or maybe it was ten cents over. And I think it was two dollars and 35 cents. Don't age yourself. It's a good point. So a lot of times I think this is my first year in the legislature. I'm from Northfield and Berlin. That's the territory that I represent. So we all, like Rob said, we all want to do what the right thing is. And we all believe strongly in what it is. And it's just how do we get from point A to point B. Remember when minimum wage goes up you're going to be paying more for other stuff because everything's going to cost more. It's just the way it is. The pay family leave is kind of the same way. I was lucky when my important wife and I, we had two kids. We were lucky we had great child care. All right, that is a big issue. Again, we're all trying to work on it and it is from getting from point A to point B. But for one, it is unique to me because we do we do do things differently. And I think there's a lot of potential. We just, I think we're on a great path to get to do a lot of great things that you kids are already involved in. And it takes a lot of courage to get a step out and get to do what you're doing. And that's it. I'm going to make it really quick and we'll answer questions or put everyone. Thank you. And we'll open it up to to any questions. And if it's brief, we'll wrap up and you'll enjoy the outdoors for a few minutes of light and warmth. Although Saturday is really the day to get out because as a farmer I tend to look three to seven days out for planning purposes. But any questions from folks out there? Yes, please. Sure. So I moved to Berry Town just a couple of years ago and I tell people that posted up to the town line that they still let me be a Democratic president. But I'm really interested in the fact that my town votes both for Bernie Sanders and for Bill Scott. And I think that has something to do with economics and how people think about the economy and think about what government should do for them. And leads them to vote for those two people. But I don't understand. And so I'm wondering whether people on the panel could explain my name or something. I'm happy to give it a shot, but honestly, everybody else has a political analysis given that we've all engaged in the political system for a while. Here you go. When I was camping in Berry, I had that experience. But I mean, I think it really is just coming to popularity or the celebrity status of those people on the top of the ticket. A lot of people vote for who they know. They just feel comfortable with Bernie and they feel comfortable with Bill Scott. And they might not know who else is down there. I'd like to think that they're thinking a lot about the economics of the two candidates. That would be the optimistic thinking. That's a really good question. I personally, I think it's Vermont are still look at who the candidates and what the issues are. You know, Bill Scott, our governor won, I think, like a full 14 counts. Bernie's been very, very popular for years. I have to say years ago I voted for him once. You know, represented some change, but I think Vermont are still the type that we look at who the candidate is and where they stand on the issues. I don't think we're all just about the party. I had the same experience. The first year I counted votes locally who were counting absentee ballots and I kept getting these ballots for Bernie and Richard Snelling. You know, Republicans is this government. This was second run for governor, second time. And I kept saying, well, Vermont are either very independent or skits a friend. I have decided that Vermont are very independent. We really do vote for the person, for the person you feel you can trust to look after your interests. You know, we've got pretty much veto-proof Senate House and we seem to get a Republican governor to balance that out. And I think people look at that. They look at balance. They look at the people that they're electing. They don't elect by party. People get really frustrated with party primaries because they can't vote for who they want. They can only vote for one party. We're very independent and we make our decision very quickly. I'm going to add one little piece that Senator Purchlick said the word popular. I would actually say familiar. I think there's a lot to be said for voters feeling like they're familiar with who the candidate is. You know, folks asked me that very question numerous times both after 2016 and after 2018 because of course Governor Scott won and I won. They said how did that happen? And I said frankly people are more familiar with Governor Scott than the Democratic opponent and people were a little more familiar and have face to face with with me than my opponent in 2016 even though he had held statewide office because I've been all over the state talking to people in meetings of three people meetings and 20 people meetings of 60 people over the course of almost 18 years of public service prior to running for Lieutenant Governor. So a lot of it is familiarity. Sometimes I think it's a little bit of formality is doing the balance the two equations. I think there's opportunities in the future where that might shift because of the polarization of politics in Washington depending on the turnout for instance in 2020 if folks come out to vote we don't often vote regularly and think in these more complex ways they may say with President Trump on the ballot I think a lot of those those presidential year voters may well vote 70 30 I won't vote Republican because of Trump. I don't know whether that's a good thing or a bad thing for democracy but I think that may impact the 2020 election of 30,000 more people vote that are party-based votes more than familiarity-based votes or they may have options that they're equally familiar with in which case they're gonna have to decide on something else but I don't think it's as much the the fundamentals of the economic issues because again we had folks I would argue there's a number of role-working people who voted for me and Phil Scott probably about 30,000 to 35,000 three years ago I haven't really quite looked at the numbers more recently where each had the base and then this 30,000 people that voted for both of us and I would argue it's a group of folks who are role-working class a bit libertarian-esque supported Phil Scott because of a little bit of a smaller government perspective supported me because of cannabis and being a farmer and you know it's an interesting mix because you know three issues become top issues and folks then pick on those two or three issues and it doesn't always delineate down by party that's about the best answer I can give you and I don't know between us we gave you some answers that you think are plausible but that's our read on it we'll come back I suspect we'll get a chance to revisit given the size of the crowd you know what we hear is there's there's never enough money and that's there's not enough money to meet the challenges of climate change with Christ we can't have a green new deal because we can't pay for it we can't do anything significant we can't actually meet the basic needs of moms with kids on reach up we can't we really can't have universal health care because who's going to pay for it again and again this question and yet this is the wealthiest country in the world has ever seen has the greatest levels of inequality that we've seen in this country since the 1920s and yet there's no money and the people who aren't organized are been taking in the chin really for the last 40 years it's been getting worse and worse the minimum wage is less than it was in 1968 never mind the levels of inequality so what I want to hear is people what do you think we need to do to change this in my view it's a question who's organized and who isn't organized it's a question not of justice but it's a question of power and I say that as someone who's been involved with the labor movement it's a third the size of what it was when I got involved with that was the largest organized group of people who actually had some power to do something about this either I'll take a stab before I adjust some of that you go first public assets you want to talk a bit about wealth gaps and things sure okay I just want to say it's a great question and I'm asking that question too public assets we have two reports that we published I brought the executive summaries up there on the page one is an indicator report that takes a look at where providers are and how we're doing the second one is the solutions report and we propose a variety of things that we really need to work on in order to reverse some of those negative indicators that we keep seeing year after year after year so we do send that solutions report around to all the candidates before before our statewide elections and we would love to see some organizing around those solutions and we'd love to hear what you think about what we came up with for solutions but I think you're right it is about building power and and that's what we have to figure out how to do well I'm going to argue a number of things and the my film crew here is going to like this one for the future but you know Senator Sanders has talked about wealthier individuals paying a higher percentage on that marginal tax rate for quite some time and he is the most popular U.S. senator in the country in his own state I have advocated for a long time for more progressive income tax structure where resources are out there if you actually look at graphs of for instance you talked about climate change you look at carbon dioxide emissions in our state and in the country as a whole they have really ballooned from the 40s and it's been a J curve up well the they're going to like that one because I did this and that's like a rising signal so that's good footage for you guys but the other graph that does the same thing is income inequality and the wealth gap that's happening if you look at gross domestic product from 1980 to today the overall gross domestic product has gone up on a steady slight increase 90 percent of us are at that line and below as far as our incomes going up 10 percent are at that line and above of which about 9 percent are pretty close to it and it's that 1 percent that are way up high when it comes to what their wealth and incomes are now and the premise of Reaganomics was trickle down somehow if wealthy people had more money every day working people would end up with more 40 years later with continued cuts to the marginal income tax rates to now the lowest that they've been in any kind of recent US history if not ever has not succeeded trickle down was a theory it was developed at the time but it has actually proven itself not to be true I actually kind of want to use the president's words against himself make America great again well oftentimes if we picture the time that I think he's trying to harken to which is probably around the fifties when white people had the benefit of the GAI bill while black and brown people did not to buy homes and build wealth you actually had a marginal income tax rate up in the 70 and 80 percent range and you had money to electrify the country and you had money to invest in the highway system which built the economy you actually had people with money recognizing that at some point when you have more money you're not going to put in a third pool or a fifth deck on your house it all just goes to wall street now instead when people who are working class have more money they do those things they go to the local hardware store and buy that wood and add to deck you know they expand an extra room on their house because they can afford to have another kid they can pay a carpenter to do that we talked about higher education earlier and the metric relation rate well warnings I want to talk about is not only more accessible higher education and free tuition eventually for higher education but also making sure there's no shame in going to a technical high school and getting proficient in electrical work and plumbing work and all the other you know technical jobs that right now we don't have enough people doing that work and yet they're you know you can make a good middle class living last time you paid an electrician or a plumber you would know that and you think it's a high rate but they also got to pay for their truck and they got to pay for their supplies there's expenses in those 40 and 50 dollar an hour jobs and there's odd hours and there's some struggles but you can be that person who doesn't get a college education and it can actually sometimes make more than some of the folks getting college degrees so all of these things are incorporated into this conversation but fundamentally if we want an economy for all then wealthier folks who have seen their economy their economics balloon not necessarily the small business owners as representable Claire was talking about and I'll talk about that as a small business owner I write the front of that check and it's going to be a challenge and it would be a challenge for me if minimum wage went to $15 an hour next year but that's not what we're talking about we're talking about a steady and predictable increase for those of us who are employers and an increase that is above the rate of inflation so working people who have been falling farther and farther behind year by year over the last 50 years since that 1968 day when the minimum wage was higher than it is today but if we can raise it at a rate higher than inflation so people can start to dig back out from the hole that we've created for the one the Reaganomics trickle down hold minimum wage flat which was supposed to create this economic panacea which is not then we can get somewhere and we can actually reduce some of those government services and expenses that Senator Cummings was talking about because we are subsidizing folks who we have underpaid for their productivity productivity has gone up two, three, four, five times over those periods of time not more so and yet the workers aren't getting the benefit of that you know if folks didn't have to work 50 or 60 hours a week and we're working 40 hours a week and we're home for dinner with their family how many of those families how many of those kids would have with that stability and that guidance by their parents maybe circumstances that wouldn't lead them into circumstances that then down the line cost us as a society more money because they they need more effort to help in the schools because they haven't had a parent reading from a book at night because one parent is gone to the second shift or third shift to work and the other parents who's working 60 hours a week is too darn exhausted or they're trying to deal the home issues that need to be dealt with and no one's reading to the kid well when you're home to read to that kid at night or do that math homework with that child they're better or not even homework when they're two, three, four years old it's not homework but just being with them playing with the toys that end up teaching them math skills and social skills and so forth and they get to school unprepared to learn at five and six years old that costs us more so we're being penny wise and pound foolish not to have an economic system where those folks can be home with their kids so it's a long and varied answer to your question but I think it really describes how our economy has completely fallen apart for working people under the guise of trickle down economics and if we aren't willing to confront that reality and say you've made a ton of money on the system particularly those who are in that 300, 600 a million dollar a year income time to contribute back to making it so that everybody benefits from this incredible opportunity that we have then who are we what are our moral values what are our family values because this economic system does not represent good morals and does not represent good family values in the way that I would describe those words yes in the back so everything you're saying I so agree with that and same thing it just seems though that the only the only way to do things is to have more revenue but that's right raise more revenue is generalism some kind of tax that's absolutely right and then it seems like it's political suicide but anybody talks about raising taxes right how do we get past that that's my question is how do we understand that if you can take care of a child that is so much cheaper than paying for them when they're in the correctional system but we can't seem to get there I think of some countries where they have you know of childcare and elder care and all that stuff and they're paying 60 percent 70 percent of their salaries are going to taxes but then it's done and where it always is how do we get past that how do we get to a time when we all feel like people share and the happiness index in many of those countries is actually quite a bit higher than our own but Representative Leclerc wanted to answer and I again have thoughts but I want to make sure anybody else who has thoughts is right well thank you I'm not going to speak to the national that will stop because why do you think that just is not what you'd like to be to be able to do quite honestly I'm not going to have any impact on that I will talk a little bit about affordability in Vermont this year we're on track we're going to need the increase in fuel tax and some other stuff that's down there we're going to have a hundred million hundred ten nine dollars and we're not done yet tax increases on the water it happens every year now part of this is about priorities let's talk about clean water you know they're saying that we're not spending enough money on clean water this year Vermont were going to spend forty seven point eighty million dollars on clean water we'll spend that for many many years you go through and take a look at what we spent on working on cleaning up the lake and other bodies of water we've spent hundreds of millions of dollars this year our general fund budget which is about one point seven billion which is basically the money that we have to wrap control over Vermont earlier about two hundred fifty million dollars of that is going to go to pay for pensions it's either to catch us up where we should have been or to pay us for our current obligations it's going to take the money out of that remember we had single-payer health care made for showman administration and we got the health connect well you know we started out a path with that and built the whole infrastructure around that thing we've spent hundreds of millions of dollars on that I've run into many many people who say I need a premium but I still can't get health care I can't afford my co-pays I can't afford my deductibles and God forbid if I have anything happen the amount of insurance that I have to pay left over would still put me under so it's about a part again it's always about money but if I could just say they are all part of it let's let yeah let's let them fit it right we'll get back let's let them finish I'm just a little sure if you're answering my question but we'll get there but let it finish I can respect it it's your priority but someone else is going to commit and they got a priority we've got a major opioid crisis that's a priority child care is a priority my daughter and son-in-law paid $2,000 a month to put their two kids and child here don't you think that doesn't cause a talk around dinner table at night we're all in this together do you want to offer anything before I so I I think representative Claire touched on something pretty important which is the word affordability and I'll get back to taxes as well public assets institute put out a report earlier this year that I put in my newsletter which I want to point out if you don't get my electronic newsletter you're welcome to sign up it's a one-page two-sided document but it's electronic delete works if you don't like the topic comes out every couple weeks with some different issues and the issue of affordability came up because public assets to the report that showed that aren't average and these are averages everybody's individual circumstances absolutely going to be unique um the cost of living in Vermont is about 1.8 percent higher than the national average okay a lot of this country is also in the northern climate and you have higher road costs and winter living costs and so forth I want to point out road costs back to Senator Perks like being on transportation every year we keep saying the roads seem worse and worse and worse what's going on where it used to be that we froze and there was always a season of freezing and thawing but we kind of froze and went through that season in the fall and then it stayed frozen and then it thawed in the spring and they had a few weeks of freezing and thawing and the roads got crumbled during those couple of three to four week windows well now that three to four window is a three to four month window and that freezing and thawing and freezing and thawing all winter long is what's destroying our roads so yeah they're in worse and worse shape we're pouring tons of money into maintenance of our roads and bridges and highways but it's an uphill battle when we're fighting climate change so again we don't tackle climate change we have these costs that come upon us so I varied off our expenses are 1.6 percent above the national average our incomes are 18 percent below the national average and so this goes back to the failed trickle down thought process that somehow incomes will rise because wealthy people have more money that hasn't happened we also have some unique statistics for Vermont that are neither a left nor right nor blue nor red factor rural America across this country is hemorrhaging people and hemorrhaging jobs what you don't see when you compare state to state however is that most of other world most other rural states still have one big city that actually is often half their state's population when you include the smurman area we have one big county that would be far fetched to be called a city even though most of rural Vermont you know most of Vermont looks up at Burlington area and says that's like Vermont it's not part of Vermont it's still not really a big city compared to most places and as strong as the economy is up there and as much as it is sending money throughout the state even though people think it gets more it's just like the northern states and the southern states it's a sending area for the overall economy of the state it is not proportionally big enough to carry the state the way that many of these other rural states are so we really do have a demographic challenge but it's not about blue and red policies it's about rural and urban and we just don't have urban you look at northern New Hampshire they're facing the exact same problems we are now New Hampshire doesn't have that big city within its borders but it does have that big city within distance for the economy which is Boston so some of these things we deal with are unique to Vermont but we need to make sure we don't start using the word affordability or the economic circumstances demographics of youth and rural areas as a blue-red issue it's just a demographic reality issue regardless of the blueness of the reds you go to rural Nebraska it's hollowing out rural Montana it's hollowing out they just happen to have a city or areas that also help drive the economy or they have oil you know or coal but I do want to get back to the original point which is taxes and revenues and having enough to pay for it and the bottom line is every time you hear no new taxes what ends up happening most of the time and I'll give Governor Scott credit he found a way to hold the line although I think it hurt the state in not not only not raising taxes but not raising fees but typically when we don't raise taxes we do raise fees and when I say we it's the political world and it's that courage issue it's a lot easier to say well your fishing license is going to go up by three dollars which might be 10% or your hunting license or your car registration or all these other ways that we nickel and dime the working class people to death because when you raise a fishing license by three dollars when you're making $200,000 a year that doesn't bother you but when you're making $30,000 a year that three dollars matters a lot more as a percentage of your income and your ability to pay your heating bill or buy one gift at Christmas or Hanukkah for your kid or their birthday and so when we continue to hold the line on broad-based taxes that are based on ability to pay and instead nickel and dime the population of death yeah they have every right to be mad and so some of those voters that maybe vote for Phil Scott and vote for me they hear me talk about that and they go there's a lefty that gets that those fees hurt and just last week there was a vote in the house relating to heating fuel to weatherized homes now I encourage some folks to offer an amendment to say let's do that on a marginal income tax rate not on a heating fuel rate and it got voted down overwhelmingly that idea because the political wind said this is the way to do it some some power people said that's the way to do it we we can't have wealthy people pay a few more bucks they'll leave well those statistics were just completely debunked and now you have one caucus saying look it's a really aggressive tax we're all voting against it because it's a regressive tax well they had the opportunity to vote for a progressive tax and they also voted no so it's important to ask politicians who make a big deal out of the regressivity of a tax to say well you really aren't for a weatherization if you're also going to vote against it when it's not a regressive tax be honest about you voted no no matter what on the tax side so then if it's about finding money tell us what you're going to cut in order to pay for it now I agree we're spending 48 50 million dollars year on water quality and in some respects we're throwing good money after bad so why not take 250,000 of that and look into creating potentially a research maybe it'll be right maybe it won't come up with a result is there a marketplace for valuing the product of our dairy farms for more than just the product that it is but other products that it could be like wood people in Boston paid 50 cents more a gallon I don't know but would they if they knew that the farms that were getting paid for that milk actually were sequestering carbon called ecosystem services or that those farms were had more animals out on pasture I don't know what the thing is that wealthier folks and middle income folks in Connecticut and Boston, New York would pay for what is the thing they'd pay more for if they knew they were paying more for a product that meant more than just milk in a bottle maybe it's that for months somatic cell count is lower so it could be marketed as healthier milk who knows but if we don't spend 250,000 dollars doing that to find out of a way to maybe bring millions more dollars into farmers' pockets which would then be way more than we're spending as a state on practices to mitigate agricultural impacts on our water or transportation impacts that impact our water then why aren't we looking at some of these other ways to spend our money better I think sometimes the language is right that we've been throwing money out what is it doing what are we getting for our dollar I know on climate change there was a study that showed where to spend the dollar to get the most carbon reduction to have the biggest impact and a lot of it is weatherization but if we're going to be proud as a political body to go from 800 houses a year to 1300 houses a year when to reach the goal we set a number of years ago of 80,000 weatherized homes by 2020 and so far we've weatherized 25,000 which means the next two years we have to weatherize 55,000 pretty sure we're not going to get there we're definitely not going to get there at 1,300 homes a year which is only 2,600 over these next two years if we don't take climate change seriously very, very seriously and aren't willing to yes raise some taxes on the wealthiest to put money into the things that will have the greatest impact to take to tackle climate change our sugaring season is going to get shorter and less productive our ski industry is going to get shorter and shorter and less productive and we're going to have to rewrite our whole economy why aren't we taxing to put money into broadband so people don't have to drive as much on these roads and could have good economic opportunities in their homes I mean back in those great fifties when America was great again or was great for some we decided as a society it was worth taking public resources and electrifying our country broadband is that next economy are we going to decide we have the money to do that or are we going to continue to put it down into Wall Street so handfuls will own more wealth than the majority of the country combined Bernie's got those statistics like nobody's business so I agree with you and I'm more than happy to have the debate with anybody out there including my friends with the Republican Governor's Association that wealthy people can't afford to pay more and frankly if they don't start wishing to do so which actually many wealthy Romaners are willing to do then they're going to see the result as a completely collapsing economy because working people are struggling they're working 60 hours 70 hours there's a breaking point and we're there the population is angry it's angrier in some other parts of the country but it's angry here it's just that we're often too nice to express it but people are struggling affordability is real but anyway I've gone on here in the front there are two issues on climate change that I'm interested in talking about the first one is how do we incentivize landlords to weatherize their places when the tenants they pay incentives for getting more people to buy electric 80,000 cars to electric so I'll take the second one first that's where there is agreement like the Governor Scott didn't agree to the Paris climate the core goals one way to get there is 90,000 so it doesn't mean 90,000 electric cars it doesn't have to be 90,000 but you do a whole bunch of different things one of those things should be 90,000 electric cars there's another agreement is the Governor put 1.5 million dollars into the budget this year for electric vehicles so there will be an incentive program some of us are trying to get more money for the electric cable program because there wasn't is it the Governor's Climate Commission recommended at all for the 4.5 million dollars some was left over from the VFU money going to that but it got used for all the funds because other uses of the general fund so it's going to be a fight to get that but there will be incentives it's going to be targeted to low and moderate income for monitors we're also looking at other programs in the transportation committee to help the low income just buy very efficient cars so it could be like a used creates hybrid it could get 45 miles per gallon it could buy one for $6,000 for some people that just have no vehicle and that would be I think a gain for low income folks but also a gain for the environment and for our particles because they'll be a much more efficient car so those are going to I'm very confident that will pass and we will have incentives for electric vehicles but that's going to be after it passes they get time by the Governor so later in the summer hopefully when the first comes out and they're interested definitely in the committee and from PDRAM that's from the folks in the Governor's administration that we're going to have to keep doing this but the question will end up being with like everything else we're talking about where is the money going to come from so we're talking about that now that we know this 1.5 will only go so far what's going to be the next thing we don't want to just do that in the end because we we do want to get to really transforming all of our transportation off of fossil fuels into electricity the split incentive of the Land Gorge is a tough one to do and there are programs the Fish and Superman programs they market the landlords and try to explain why it's good for them if their tenants have just more comfortable a healthier home and pay less for heating than they have more money to pay rent if that's an issue but also there's been some innovative programs where they just go out and give money to the landlords to say like at least let us do it on it and let us investigate your building and what it would take to weatherize it and can we work with you to get it done because you're right they don't have a need in incentive to get it done so there's a thinking about that when we're doing some experimental programs to see what works that's been an economic incentive for landlords there is a tax there's a there's a grant program I'll tell you about I can touch on that I'm one of those mean old landlords who were planted by the law I happen to be the type that I pay with my utilities for my tenants but most landlords that I know in fact all landlords are we care about our tenants and but Vermont has a lot of really bold housing stock and most of our common property is really quite old and in some cases you know we can't compete with the public the public sector there's a project down in Mahler where they did 18 apartments over all the shine hardware they did 18 apartments to do a 6.1 million dollars it's $340,000 apartment and those are all subsidized housing you know talk about priorities I mean we could probably put and those are one bedroom apartment so the most you're in the house is two people I am and as a private one I can't compete with that nor should I have you but we're really talking about housing and getting people home then we need to take a look at the three prioritized that's one of the issues that the patented government brought up we were talking about no new fees and no new taxes that's true we didn't have it for two years but what we didn't do was no prior programs got cut but I remember right I think last year our budget still we still spent more to the tune of almost 90 million dollars with no new fees and no new taxes than we did a year before so it's not like that we're running around there and cutting programs that people need it's just that the money came in by a different way with no fees and no new taxes and I'll tell you with all the campaigning I've done I have not had one person tell me Rob my property taxes are too low the cost of living in Vermont is too low please go them off here and do something about that I appreciate that we also had a government hold up for 33 million dollars could have gone to pay those teacher retirement and funds down which would have saved the state a hundred million over the long run and worked towards lowering taxes in the long run so these are the debates we have is spend money now or spend more money later or don't spend money now and spend a lot more later and so and I too am an evil landlord but I've invested in weatherization in my properties but I think some of it is also what is the market like I think you know if you're a landlord in the Burlington area or in areas where there's a greater demand for housing than there's housing there's also a higher rate of income for the landlords and an easier ability to do that in some of the rural parts of the state I talked to some landlords who have a hard time renting their apartments or their houses that they have and so sometimes one size fits all is not always the answer but the state does have grant programs for landlords and the required landlord is to keep rent level for one year in order to get the grant so it's a pretty generous package ultimately because if you often weatherize or improve your home that property you've also increased the value of that property more than what that differential would have been in rent for one year so these are the healthy debates that we have and the gentleman there had to follow up I think you had your hand up earlier I don't know if you still remembered what it was then you do have some firsts sorry I didn't realize yes yeah I think so you think so well I mean if you go there are people out there that say it's not true but the stuff that I look at it is pretty clear that it is especially in Vermont where we have a clean electricity grid and we're moving cleaner and cleaner every year with our renewable energy standard so it's a function of high power plus nuclear power that's not even new anymore we have a little bit of new from CEPA oh yeah we don't have a lot of new people in around but that's that helps Vermont they compared if you're in Ohio where if you're a lot of coal and then you take the life cycle of the car that does breathe down the life cycle in that situation there I have seen studies and they show you in like maps if you live here you know electricity is you know electric cars are going to be more carbon neutral than you live here or so there there have been that analysis that I've seen but it's it's clear that in Vermont with our electric grid or even in New England that we're going to have very if we have no coal so oh where are we do get the coal pollution coming from our state but we don't have to be coal generation the last coal generation plants closed in Massachusetts did you ever end up and then we're going back to this so I was thinking about our young people and not people leaving the state and if they are you know what can we do to change that and what are the opportunities for you to either stay in the state or come back and make it for college public access I think yeah I can answer a little bit yes young people are leaving Vermont and young people from other states are coming to Vermont it's about even you can see this migration data that we have we break it down by income we break it down by age it's amazing how symmetrical it is it's really pretty cool so so do check that out I don't know how to answer the question where would they check that out what website public assets stopper thank you you're welcome um I don't know how to answer the part about you know how do you know how do we make this a better place there are so many ways we can do that and I think it gets to the other question it's frustrating to not be able to do all these things that we want to do and you talk about needing to raise revenues I tend to think we need to have a vision before we're going to figure out how we're going to get there free college is part of that vision right if we want kids to be able to get education and not be burdened for most of their adult lives with that debt so there's a lot of ideas about how we do these things I'd like to see it all together a big vision of the economy that works for all we'll get there in a second or just to let the panel answer we aren't thinking about it we're working on it I think the lieutenant governor said rural America is leading their young people I have a representative from a national bank come and talk to me today just because he's supposed to be finance chairs in his district but he was saying they have a research facility in Jersey City and the young people are flocking to Jersey City now that's just not a place I think they're flocking to but young people now are going there we have a crisis in workers in this state we cannot get workers in any of the health related fields part of that is that ongoing need and tension is we have not raised our Medicaid rates which places like the mental health agencies depend on that's their income if we don't raise it you can't ask somebody for a master's level social work position with all that college debt to work for $35,000 a year and not much anticipation of a raise you can't do it we're trying to get the money to raise that but I agree we need the vision I have voted to raise the income tax at least twice since the recession and prevailed I think there's some elasticity at the top end but we are not you know our richest people we actually had a chart today the top 1% in Vermont is right there with Missouri and Iowa and you know Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York they're way over there their wealth is 1% our wealth ours are wealthy but not that wealthy and there aren't that many of them so I think there's some elasticity there I think we've spent that elasticity at least 10 times over we've got to decide what do we want to do what's most important and I think people will you know if we're clear not where we're taking it because you've got it we want it but this is our need and this is what we need to spend it on then we'll do it our kids will come back this is a good place to raise kids I've got four children three of them are here have come back to Vermont the fourth is in Montreal and we can't compete with the Canadian system or Montreal that's the way it is we can't win them all but we are a good place to raise kids we need to market ourselves that way what are two points on that and I want to take one last question from the back who hasn't asked but a couple of things I think we no question but I'd like to answer first well you can answer as in a conversation with her is a little bit of a panel situation we're just going to run out but we could talk about how our rural schools are actually better performing than equal demographic rural schools all over the country we are getting more for what we pay so we could talk about our good schools we could talk more about our safe communities because compared to a lot of places in the Boston, Connecticut, New York areas we are safer so you want to track people we could invest in broadband so that folks who are in that newer economy could live and work in Vermont and maybe travel to clients in Southern New England once a month to visit with them for two days or three days and two nights but could live and work in Vermont we could follow what the governor talked about which was an engineering company in the Northeast Kingdom that advertised jobs in a mountain biking magazine and got more applicants than they needed versus the engineering company in Virginia that's still looking for employees we need to market what we are not try to change to be what everybody else is what we are actually is pretty darn attractive to a lot of folks but we don't do a good job of marketing it out there safer brother than the family I would also say just to touch on our Planned Parenthood folks that are here I think a lot of young people are looking for states that welcome family planning and conversations and safety in their communities and access to reproductive freedom and choice now maybe not every young person wants that but it's the vast majority when you survey young people about women's autonomy they're going to go places where women's autonomy is valued so we should tout that and say women are welcome here women are welcome to do family planning and think about when they want to have families and explore their careers and plan when they're going to have a child not too bad made a mistake right so I think there's things that we can tout that will attract people to the state but there's also just raw demographics the young people want to go to cities but then they might want to move back when they're a little older in the back I think is the last question I actually have two points one I just wanted to find out about the context I'm new here two of them on I was here a year ago with my wife and I would just like to say that one of the things I can continue to hear about minimum wage or about weatherizing houses that I know like is that people take on these responsibilities but they don't want to be an agent out of the landowner I'm a business owner it costs money it's expensive we took on that responsibility so if you have to weatherize your house I just put out $21,000 for a new roof on our house I think that's going to be the territory we took on that responsibility we can't put that responsibility in it's an American business law but I just want to say in a general sense there's a lot of things you can't put you can't quantify a hard I grew up in Los Angeles I'm about 11 in California it's hard to express this on funny but it's like when you come out here the sun goes down and it's actually night I mean I don't really I mean there's little tiny things like that the great fact that we're all going to leave here and in our cars we're going to drive five minutes we'll be home or even if those of us are going to drive an hour you're not going to be in traffic those little tiny things that you can't quantify they're miraculous and I'm just saying I'm saying that as an outsider I've been here a year I'm absolutely loving here but there's a lot of things that you don't have to think about getting paid that is extraordinary and I just thought maybe I'd like to provide some context I think that's a great note to wrap up and by the way I'm at the State House every single day all day long yeah at least you guys talk all day long and you still might from us that's good and it's like the fish who's in water and we are in there you don't recognize it right until you're not in it amazing place and that's back to that idea of marketing what we have and you've touched on some of those intangibles that are less statistically describable than some of the things I mentioned but I do really appreciate that I want to say thank you everyone else I want to mention I represent Ann Donhue from Northfield joined us partway through and heard a lot of the conversation I want to thank the representatives and senators and our guest leaders from different organizations talking about some of these issues rights and democracy and everybody else who sponsored this town hall that we're actually hosting all across the state I think we're in Bennington on Sunday is the next one we've really been to many quarters of the state and had great conversations and I just in closing before I introduce Dan to come up and close us out he's going to say when you see those videos about me in campaign ads if you happen to have context you can offer people versus the snippet they take of my arm going like this please feel free to do so because truth and transparency is important in any case Dan please if you want to speak to this of the closing of the event thank you thank you Governor yeah right to democracy is really happy to be the main sponsor of these town halls we are in Bennington on Sunday if you have any friends and family in Bennington and our last one is in White River Junction on 22nd so friends and family in White River Junction we'd love to see you guys out there we've been all over the state we've heard a lot from people and a lot of different elected officials I mean I think there's an agreement that we need an economy that works for all of us I think there's an agreement that there's actually a moment right now where we can actually get things done and real important legislation is being discussed in Montpelier right there's real important raise the wage and family leave it does like legislation that can be passed this year and so it's really crucial that you call if they're not sitting in the room right now and some of them are you call your representative you call your senator you push for them to pass these bills you push for them to do as much as they can this year and they won't be able to do everything and then we'll come back in January and we'll push for them to do as much as they can again so we can have a real difference if folks are interested in economy work in climate work in healthcare work rights and democracy at radbt.org we're happy to have you guys as a part of the team and I definitely want to make sure we give one last hand to the organizers of this event while rad is the organization that organized it was really Mia and Ginger who did a lot of the organization so thank you much thank you so much