 Let's get started, and we'll get started before we're out of time. You're witnessing a historic event that this is the beginning of about 30th year during these practices. We're missing all of our senators that are immediately in the scrutiny, and they will be with us. Subsequent meetings, but this particular meeting, they were all on the 4th and 10th. One of them said something to me about they had scheduled their appointment in the Scotty before they know about our meeting. I'm going to take them to an accident with the door for 30 years in front of everyone, and I make a point in June to tell everyone the dates of the next meeting. So that didn't fly, but we'll forgive them and welcome them back when they are able to return. This little housekeeping thing, Alice sent me copies of her knit connotes, which I read, didn't fully understand, and I made copies for people myself. I made copies for you, and you can not understand them. It's always nice to have the person here, so they can answer the questions we might have. In any case, let's begin. The typical scenario is that we ask the legislator, the legislator was, to talk to us about what they're doing. And then we open up the questions, and I don't think there's any question that's not a lot of cooperatives, though I'm sure they're not new to us, or they file language. I'll try to keep it under control. I don't really particularly like this job because it prevents me from participating in it. It kind of annoys me because a lot of things I'd like to say to myself, but they don't get a chance of it. So maybe I'll stop doing this and have a chance to get to the other side of the bench. There are chairs in here. There's three places to sit in this room. Four. Good morning, everyone. First, I want to thank David Sandberg for hosting us, and particularly for the homemade goodies this morning, that's really a treat. And to Neil and the American Legion for sponsoring, it really is amazing that this event has been happening in Bethel for 30 years. And we do it every single month during the session, and some kind of wrap up after the session. Neil already told you about our senators, Alice Clarkson, and Dick McCormick all send their regrets. The event in Oskotny is an annual meeting of the hospital board, and as you know, the senators represent the whole county. So they really do have to kind of figure out how to apportion their time, I don't know, the 20-something towns that they represent. So where are we? So first of all, I'm Sandy Haas. I represent the towns of Rochester, Bethel, Stockbridge, and Pittsfield. I've been in the house now for, this is my 14th year. I serve as vice chair of the House Human Services Committee. I've been doing that for several years. I've kind of lost track. And where we are in the legislative process is that this, we are now in the second year of the biennium. Now, the way the process works, we work in, the legislature is elected every two years. So every two years we have arguably a new legislature. And so we have been, and those of us who are there now have been in office since a year ago, January. And all the bills that have been introduced since last January are still on the table, or as we like to say on the wall. And I'll come back to that in a minute. But just for your information, we've had 743 bills introduced in the House as of this week, and 296 bills introduced in the Senate. And just to put that in some perspective, so that's over 1,000. And just to put that in some perspective, last session in 2017, the legislature, the House and the Senate together passed 87 bills. So most of the 1,000 bills will continue to be what I like to call slips of paper in a suggestion box. And I say that, you've heard it before, it's a little boring, I know, but I think it's important because the press often picks up the most outrageous bills they can find to write articles about. Excuse me, Tim, but sometimes news is about getting headlines. And although our local paper would never do that, you will often hear on the news about some wild and crazy idea that somebody has had because it's something to talk about. The reality is that a lot of the stuff that we do is tweaks to the law that make government work better, and I may get to a couple of those, but they're pretty boring. So in the second, so we still have all the bills that we've had since last January. They are still arguably under consideration. But the important piece of this is that in the second year of the biennium, the second session, we have something called a crossover deadline. And this year, that deadline is before town meeting, it's the Friday before town meeting. So right now we have five weeks left before crossover. And what that means is that any bill that hasn't been voted out of committee on the House side will be essentially dead for the whole term. And any bill that hasn't been voted out of the Senate side by that date will be totally dead. The new legislature that comes in next January, any of those slips of paper in the suggestion box will have to be reintroduced and start all over again. And we do that, and that happens a lot. There are a lot of issues that often start as an idea that is introduced and sits on the table for one term, two terms, five terms, and then finally get serious traction. One of those that I would talk about is the end of life bill that I worked really hard on. We worked on that for ten years before we finally got it across the finish line. And on that list is something called carbon pricing. That's got a lot of press. It's one of those really controversial things that gets lots of headlines. That's not going to happen. Maybe there'll be a study. That's not going to happen this year. And maybe there'll be a study of the economic implications, which would be kind of interesting, but I'm not even sure about that. But the bills get introduced as a way of getting both legislators' attention and public attention to issues that people feel are important. So just keep that in mind when you see those headlines. Send me an email and say, is this bill moving? Because I can answer that. You can also find that yourselves. I don't know how many of you have played on the internet with the legislative website, but it's really very, very informative. You can, at brumont.gov, we'll get you to the homepage. You can go to the committees and you can see what's going on in every committee room, including witness testimony, the documents that they present, that they bring us. Often we get presentations that are PowerPoints and those are posted and they can be pretty easy to follow. You can see on the main, on the homepage, you'll see on the one side is the House, on the other side is the Senate, and if you scroll down, you can read the calendar. The calendar is, so if you go there today, you will see the House calendar for tomorrow. Calendar in the rest of the world will be called an agenda. And that tells you what we're doing tomorrow. And there's two sections of that. There's the action section and the notice section. Things that are listed for action are things that we're, in all probability, really going to talk about tomorrow. There always, there always are exceptions to everything I'm saying. I'll come back to that. And the things that are on notice are things that in the usual course would come up for business, for debate on the following legislative day, which in this case would be Wednesday. And the same thing for the Senate. Below that you'll see a reference to something called the journal. Think of journal as minutes. And the journal tells you, if you click on, if you go there today, you will see the journal for last Friday. And it will tell you everything that happened in the House. The House journal will tell you everything that happened in House floor action. And the Senate journal will tell you Senate journal action. In addition to that, if you go to, if you click on committees and you go over to the right side, you'll see a place where it says complete committee schedule, I think is what they call it. And so you can, today, you can go in and you can see what every single committee is doing all week. Now, again, there are changes. That is, that is subject to change. And if there's something that you're really interested in, you should be double-checking that on a daily basis because, because witnesses change, things get bumped. Sometimes we plan an entire afternoon on something and we don't get back to committee because there was a debate on the floor. So things, so that's, that's a little bit more fluid. But, but it is our, but we all have committee assistants who are very good at keeping that information as, as close to up to date as possible. So, so five weeks, there are five weeks left and where are we? Well, we did, so the governor did sign the marijuana bill last week. And to be very, if you read Tim had, I think the governor's statement about that in the paper, which was, which was really good because he told you the things that it does and the things that it doesn't do. What that bill does is it says that as of July 1st, it will no longer be a crime to possess an ounce or less of marijuana. And it will no longer be a crime to have two mature plants and four immature plants. That's about all it says. There's lots of other stuff in there about highway safety, about education, about prevention and, and there's even more coming on highway safety. But that's all. So there's, there's an sale. There's, you can't have more than that. You can't smoke in public. You can't give it, can't give it to children. Certainly can't sell it to children and chokes at, or excuse me, it's not just children. It's anyone under 21. So we're using, we use the same age cut off for marijuana that we have for alcohol, which is not, which is not when you get to vote and not when you get to go die in a war. Okay, so those are not when you get to buy cigarettes. So that's, and with respect to any further action on that topic, the governor has a commission. It is continuing to meet. They have issued a preliminary report that's, that I found with some difficulty. And I can't, oh, I, okay. Yes, they finally found it on. So another thing, so we're back, we're back, we're back to the legislative website across the top. One of the things that it says is reports. And if you click on that, you can see reports that are generated by the legislature reports that come to us. And I did find the preliminary marijuana commission report there. We do, and that's while we're on reports, that's one of the things that we spend a fair amount of time on is actually what I would call government oversight. You know, we, when we pass a law, and we want, let's say, oh well, I'm going to talk about pre-kindergarten education in a minute, so I'll talk about that. So we passed the pre-K bill several years ago, and it's been slowly rolling out. Well, how's it going? How many kids are doing it? Where are they going? What do the economics look like? We get those kinds of reports. And the worst thing that we can do to our hard work and government officials is make them put together a fancy report and then not read it. So we try to devote a fair amount of committee time to listening to those, to hearing those reports. And often the government, the commissioners and deputy commissioners are very good about not just giving us a report that goes on for 50 pages, but giving us a PowerPoint with kind of the highlights, or what we sometimes refer to as the executive summary, so that you can get an idea of what's going on, and then if you really want to drill down further on a particular piece of it, the detailed information is there. So back to marijuana, so there's a preliminary report. The commission will issue a final report in December. They were very clear that their mission is not whether we should have a tax and regulated market by how to get there. That is because Massachusetts is going to have a tax and regulated market. I think as of next summer I'm not clear about my dates on when that happens. And the same in Maine, and as you might have read, Prime Minister Trudeau is talking about doing the same thing in Canada. So we are going to be surrounded by folks who, there are some people who see this as an economic opportunity. That's kind of virtual, I get it. And I feel very strongly that although it would be nice to have the tax revenue, I'm not going to vote for this just to get the money. I think that would be stupid. So we have to have a system that is designed to make sure that the product is safe, that we're basically shutting down the black market. So there's a lot of, and one of the reasons that it's taken so long is that it's actually pretty complicated. Although the Senate passed a bill a couple, three years ago I guess, to do a tax and regulate. It has a job for the Agency of Agriculture. It has a job for the Department of Health. It has a job, right now we have our medical programs actually run through the Department of Public Safety, which also houses the state police. And it works. It's a very, very well regulated system, the best in the country. What happens with banking? So now we're bringing in financial regulation. So there are jobs for lots and lots and lots of government folks who, and those need to be thought out. And that's, you know, one of the reasons that I'm really happy that Vermont does not have an initiative process, like California where I used to live, is that we do have this legislative process. Things go to, you know, let's talk about it. So if those four different agencies were involved in one bill, that means that the bill would go to four different committees on each side in the House and also in the Senate because everything I described about the bills, it all happens twice. It happens once on the House side, if it's a House bill, and then when it gets to the Senate, it starts the process all over again with the same, with the committees of jurisdiction looking at it. And so it's a heavy lift, to be really honest. And with the initiative process, what you end up passing, if it passes, is what I call a rough draft, or what in legislative terms is called bill as introduced. And we almost never pass a bill as introduced unless it's been very, very, very carefully written and probably been through those several years of conversation that I talked about earlier. So shifting gears. The other thing we did last week was we, the House passed a highway safety bill that includes primary enforcement for use of seat belts. You may not even know that we have had in place a seat belt law for many years and I don't remember how many that says that if the state police see you driving without a seat belt, they can't stop you unless you're doing something else wrong. You can have tail light out, you ran a speed line, speed sign, you crossed the center line. They have to have some other traffic reason to stop you. And then once they've stopped you for that, then they can say, oh, I noticed, David, I noticed that you're not wearing your seat belt. And I'm not sure about this, but I think they have to write tickets for both. I think if they don't really ticket you for crossing the center line, they can't ticket you for seat belts. Anyway, the House has talked about this for years. I believe this is the fourth time I have voted for primary enforcement. And we send it to the Senate and there are powerful senators who have not liked it in the past. I believe that the tide is turning. We had several people in the House stand up during debate on Friday, Thursday and Friday, and talk about their own personal conversion to the need to wear a seat belt. And the statistics are that we could cut highway fatalities in half, not a small goal. So we are very hopeful. So we're done. We did our work. We sent it to the Senate and now we'll see what happens over there. And so if you feel strongly about that, you might reach out to our three senators. I believe that all three of them will support, although I haven't spoken to all of them. Okay, Governor's budget address was last Tuesday. You might have read about that in the paper. I can't tell you too much about it because we're just starting to get the real numbers. He talked a lot about new things that he wants to do, but he's doing it within existing appropriation. So what that means is that we're going to lose stuff to make the new stuff happen. And I'm very interested to see what we're going to lose because I think about 50% of our budget is in various human services areas. And so that means cuts to human services. So that's my committee is going to be looking very closely at that. What we do, there are 11 of us on the committee, and Madam Chair assigns us each to the summaries. I worked last year with a member from Manchester on economic services and child protection. Other people will do disability issues. Other people will do elder issues. So our committee does not do straight Medicaid that is handled by the health care committee. That's a huge number. So we're still ready to take a look at that. One of the big issues that I'm concerned about this year that my committee is working on, and we're going to have to, whatever we do, we're going to have to do in the next five weeks, is relates to pre-K education. I don't even remember what year that, what year the law was passed. We did it in stages. The first one was maybe 10 years ago, there was a kind of like voluntary, well let's have a pre-K program and anybody who wants to do it can do it. We didn't want to limit it to public schools because most children that age are actually in some kind of childcare setting. We didn't want to put the childcare providers out of business. What I didn't want is I actually didn't want three-year-olds to be wrestled into their snowsuits, to go for two hours, to be wrestled out, to stay for two hours, to be wrestled back in. It seemed to me that it made sense to bring education to the kids. So I like the idea of the while you can do it in a public school, that's what we do in Rochester. We have our, Lisa knows triple E from forever, so the early essential education program was expanded several years ago to sort of incorporate provision of services for pre-K for everybody if they wanted to come. But we also have, I'll pick an easy place, I think it's the YMCA in Burlington, it has a huge childcare program, I don't know how many hundreds of kids are there. So they're already there, they have a license, they have licensed people, they have trained people who are there taking care of kids for whatever it is, probably 10 hours a day by the time their parents add in, community. So my child is there for 10 hours and for two hours a day there's a licensed teacher who will take the kids aside and do the pre-K program. And it may be somebody who already works with a Y who has a teaching license. So we have licensed centers like the YMCA that can be huge, we also have licensed and registered home care providers. And that actually, that's a good system because I have a neighbor who she had her second child and she said, I can't afford to go to work and pay childcare, why don't I just be a childcare provider? So they get a lot of work on their house and they jump through all the hoops to get a license for her to take kids in. And we have an unlicensed, there's an exception for somebody who takes in children from not more than two other families. So I could have my kid and I could have your kid and I could have your kid or two of each. I don't know what the numerical limit is but it's based on two other families. So that's the landscape of childcare. When they did the expansion to try to get more kids involved in the program, they limited where they would do the reimbursement to places that were licensed and had a certain quality rating. I'm not going to go into that because I don't totally understand it. They call it stars and there's categories of things. You have to have so many points in each category. A five star childcare center is top of the line. And they said that we had to have at least four stars to be able to be reimbursed because these childcare providers who have a teacher and are providing pre-K on-site get I think it's about $3,100 in here. So that helps parents and hopefully helps the childcare center. The problem has been with the rollout that we don't have the participation that we had hoped. It is a voluntary program, parents don't have to send their kids. I can decide that my four-year-old isn't going anywhere and it's not mandatory. But we were really hoping that we would have more children who are kindergarten ready. So we really wanted to get as much buy-in across the state as possible. And it's hampered by the way that we do our childcare subsidy. We have a lot of money from the federal government. It's maybe $40 million. It's a $48 million program right now that we use to subsidize low-income people to afford so they can go to work basically. But childcare is expensive. I mean think about it. I have friends who don't get a subsidy, who have income, who say that their childcare bill is more than their mortgage. So it's a chunk of change to syndicate them to childcare. Some parents decide they're just not going to work. You'll hear that from friends and neighbors if they can't afford to go to work. Other people, A, they have careers and they don't want to fall completely off the track in their careers. B, although playing with three-year-olds is really fun, maybe you don't want to do it 24 hours a day. Maybe you'd like to have a few hours of doing something different. So we have this program. It's means-tested, completely means-tested, that gives parents who can't afford to pay the full rate a subsidy. Problem is that right now our childcare subsidy is based on 2010 market rates. It's a money issue. It's not money. The federal guidelines say that we are supposed to pay the 75th percentile of the market rate. What that means is that if I'm getting a subsidy from the state, I should have access to 75% of the providers in my region. And it's regionally different, by the way. It's a statewide rate. We talked about maybe going to a regional subsidy, but we're not there yet. But I should have access. There shouldn't be more than 25% of the providers that I can't get in if I'm getting a full subsidy. Well, but the problem is that that's based on 2010 market rates. So in fact, right now, I think we're down to about less than 50%. I have access to less than 50% of providers. If I'm getting a full subsidy, and to get a full subsidy, you have to basically put-we're talking poverty-level, people who are poverty. So what that's done is it's meant that fewer needy- fewer economically disadvantaged people are taking advantage of the subsidy. They're just not doing it. They're getting Aunt Hilda to take the kid. And maybe Aunt Hilda just watches TV all day. We don't know. We don't have any information. We certainly don't have any regulatory power. And so we would really like to see-we'd like to see- and if I'm not in a licensed center, then I'm not getting pre-K. So unless Aunt Hilda is driving me to-unless A, she lives in Rochester where we have a program, or Bethel. You have all day here as well, don't you? I'm not sure what the program is here. I'm up in Williamstown. It's all down to Delta. So maybe Aunt Hilda will drive me downtown for my two hours a day, and maybe she won't. So maybe Aunt Hilda doesn't even have a car. So we have a-basically we have an access issue. And the pre-K structure was birthed in the education committees in the House of Senate. And we never really had a whole lot of input on the human services side. And since it relies so heavily on the existing human services structure, my committee is doing a deep dive on that issue. And I'm really hoping that we can have something, a committee bill together before crossover, where we're going to have to scoot to make that happen because we have a bunch of women. Yeah, I think with that I'm going to stop talking and let you ask questions. Just a few questions and no answers, or you can give me an answer if you can. The Medicaid is under the umbrella of DCF. Am I correct? No. No? Under what? Medicaid is handled by a department called Diva Department of Vermont Health Access. Okay. And who is responsible from day-to-day operations of Medicaid? Commissioner of Diva, I should know. Give me a minute and let me come back to me. Okay, give me a gift. That's okay. Sorry. And who oversees the workers that work for Medicaid? Who do they respond to? You mean Diva? Whoever handles Medicaid. People working for Medicaid. Okay, so Medicaid is a program, so you don't work for Medicaid. So there are folks in the hospital who manage it, who handle Medicaid issues, there are folks in government who handle Medicaid issues. So if you could tell me what the question is, I might be able to. Well, I'm dealing with some dips there in Medicaid, in a high situation. And I'll tell you, I live in state police nations, but I'll tell you, these people are acting worse than Nazis, not fair. All right, all right. I will get back to you and we'll work on that together. Okay. So that was all, I was hoping Dick would be here today to give me some answers because he helped me last year. But the question of overseeing the workers, it seems to me that they give them a free hand, whoever is in charge, and apparently nobody knows who is in charge, and they could... A simple question. They are asking, where high do you spend $5,000 in 2013? Okay. Oh, that was with respect to eligibility. I remember this question. All right. Yeah. Why the hell they want to know what the hell to spend the money in 2013? I believe it relates to eligibility, but... I was in relation to it, that's what I'm saying. And the other thing too, she had a stroke three years ago. Now they want proof that she had a stroke. Well, that's... They approved it last year, Medicaid. We'd have to go through the same crap again this year. Proof that she had a stroke. And prior to the stroke, she was in good health. I'm spending hours and hours every day trying to sort these things. Finally, I had to hire a lawyer to answer all these questions if he can. And everybody I've talked in the state, they tell me, well, you know, more or less they are in the dark. That's what I'm saying. Who oversees that diva or daba or whatever you told me? Okay. All right. I would like to promise to get back to you on that. And I'll work with Dick and see what he could do last year. Okay. That's all I wanted to know. Can I comment on this just a little bit? Because I've had a little exposure to the same situation with my in-laws. What I'm seeing is that the people who need the benefit don't know how to approach government. There seems to be a misconnect there someplace. Big. Big misconnect. And there should be somewhere in there navigators of some kind that can kind of help the people who need benefits get through the state system. Well, we do have an ombudsman. An ombudsman. No. An office of the ombudsman. And that might be where the thing is breaking. So that's my fission. What is that? So the ombudsman is a troubleshooter. That's what they do. They work for the state? No. They are housed in legal aid. And who supplies them? Who is responsible for their money and all? We make, there is an appropriation to legal aid for that program, but it's independent of government. I try to use them. And I get a phone, a message on the phone. Due to the extreme law of cases we have, do not expect to hear from us at least three weeks from now. So that's great. How long ago, when did you do that? Last year. Last year, okay. So I gave up on that. I mean, if you can't, you know. Do you hear from them at all? No. Did you leave the message? Yes, I did. All right. That's what I see where the thing is falling down. I'll talk to Fisher about that. That would be a big help. You know, a typical, I don't believe a long person doesn't know how to get through the system. So they could use a little, just a little guidance to blow up. Absolutely. And another thing I was going to tell Dave too and all. If you remember two years ago that a murder happened in Berry from a state worker or a case worker. Right. Oh. Okay. I'm not defending the shooter. I mean, she can write in jail, whatever they said. But they are pushing so hard that people were looking for this information and everything. As a matter of fact, the first time I called about Medicaid, they send you the papers and they send the papers. It takes eight days to come from Waterbury to Bethel. And they won the answer in 10 days. So I call up and I call that person, can you send it a little earlier? You know, I mean, it's ridiculous to do that way. You know, I don't have the time to answer all these questions. The answer of that person was, sir, you throw punches at us. We can throw punches at you too. That was the answer. So I have very high respect for these people who are working there. So that's my case. So as I said, my lawyer is working on that, scores me a lot of money, which I don't really have, but I have to do it for him. And then the state tells me everything's hunky-dory. You know, it's fine. So that's my case. So proceed with the rest. Other questions, comments? People want to make? What's going on with, if there's any, what's going to be any adjustments made to the vehicle inspection law? I understand that, that that may be, what's the word that I want to say, put on hold for a while. That's what I'm hearing. You are not the first person who's raised that. Yeah. I just, I got word on a car that I own that it will not pass the inspection. I know. So yeah, I know. I got to buy, I got to buy a new sensor for my tire for $200. And I'm waiting to have to do the other three. Crazy. Crazy. So what does David do? Buy a car. As I said, there are, so we had, they put some of the things, the whole thing I think was put on hold at one point. There has been an effort to try to distinguish between things that are truly safety related and not. That got a little bit ugly last year because one of the things was really related to air pollution. So it was a little bit misrepresented. But I heard the other day informally that they were thinking about, like going back to the drawing board for three years. But I don't know that for sure. I will, I will. You're not the first person that I've heard this from. I mean, yeah, you live in Vermont. You live on a back road. You don't want to buy a $40,000 car that's going to be destroyed in a year. You know, you buy a car. And you know, yeah, I understand safety issues, but a sensor that's going to cost probably $3,000 just to get to. Just for point, what's your sensor, David? Sorry. I don't remember what it is. It's not a Volvo. So it's, you know, it's... Oh! Oh, you have a Volvo. You have a Volvo. You have a Volvo. Okay. You have a Volvo. You have a Volvo. Yeah. And you know, it's like, oh, man. But anyway, it's very frustrating to have other friends that have the same problem. They're, you know, they're having a hard time making ends meet. And they, all of a sudden, their cars have passed inspection because of something silly. Right. It doesn't have anything to do with safety issues. Right, right. You know, you have a fog light. You may not ever use the fog lights. You know, I have one car I had. They ripped the fog lights out so it would pass inspection. Well... It was going to cost more to have the fog light replaced than it was to have them ripped out. All these regulations are... I don't know who thinks about it and why they're doing it. When I was in business years ago, I had an inspector for the health department come in. The first time I see him, I say, hi, how are you doing? And everything's never seen before. Oh, I just started the job. I'm an inspector. What would you do before? I was an electrician. From an electrician, he became a health inspector. And they only go like... He says, turn right. I turn right and I see a newspaper down on the floor. That's a violation, you know. Why? And the other thing I understand, the health department, they have a terrible time recruiting people because of money. Yeah. Health inspectors, they broke three or four of them from our state. Everything's hunky-dory when they found out how much the state pays. Goodbye. Well, keep in mind, Nick, that you don't want to pay any more taxes. So that's the trade-off. That's not the point of, you know, if you stop spending the money of the state, of the people, the way we're spending right now, you would have enough money to do it. Well, of course, you know, we don't know anything. We have a lot of people. I realize that we disagree on this, but there are trade-offs. And, you know, I've been there now for 13 years, and I have watched them cut this and cut that and cut this and cut that. And I know that's not what you see on your side, but what we see are the things that we lose. For example, we just had testimony a couple of weeks ago about in the in economic services, which is the folks that decide who needs heating assistance, who needs our version of welfare, which is called reach up. They're cutting and food stamps. They're cutting the staff across the state by 12, by nine positions. So those are, they're middle-level managers. It's a good, you know, and we were satisfied that probably that work can be covered, but what it means is it means that the person that you call when you call somebody for help is going to have less supervision. Will there be, will things go wrong? Probably they will. Will they go wrong to the tune of nine salaries and benefits? Maybe not. You know, but those are the kinds of those are the kinds of trade-offs that state government has to make and that we have to make. And in fact, that particular cut didn't require legislative approval. They just told us they're doing it. And, you know, we could say, no, you can't. But they didn't have to come to us for permission. So they, there's a constant effort to try to figure out where do we want to put our dollars? Do we want the dollars to be answering the phone when Nick calls and says I need help, or we'll get back to you in three weeks, or do we want the dollars to go for the person who's looking over that worker's shoulder to make sure that she's checking all the right boxes on the eligibility because, of course, nobody in this room wants us to give money to anybody who doesn't deserve it, right? Nick will agree with that one. I understand that. We can talk the whole day. But I have a stack of papers that high, that contradict what they tell me the first day and then next week. One person tells me one thing. The other one says, no, it's not so. We've got to go. Who do you believe anymore? In other words, the state is broken. The system is broken totally. And we are talking of a lot more new things through safety on the cars that a little red light came on. So we have to take care of that first. Years ago, there was a commercial. I don't know who was doing that. Republicans or Democrats, they will put a lady in a wheelchair. They will hear over to the cliff and they put her right down, you know, throwing down. I don't know what it was about health care or whatever. But it seems to me that the state is doing the same thing at least part of the state. That's it. I'm way less quit. I'm not saying anything. Oh my God. The state. Yes. You can quote me. This is one of the new bill come out on your cars, on your inspection there. And the commission was on or he was on. He said, I want to make sure that when I'm driving down the road that somebody come in the opposite direction with a faulty car doesn't hit and kill me or my family. Now, how many problems you've had because of faulty equipment versus somebody on a cell phone or DUI? What is the percentage of that? That's a good question. And we're beginning to throw down our throat. It's cost. That's a great question. I will look at that. Yeah, faulty equipment. So the cell phone thing is horrible. In the highway safety bill that the house passed last week we did not do anything more on texting. But the chair, when he presented the bill, the transportation chair, said that we really do need to do that. And I understand that the chair of Senate transportation is very interested in that. I'm hearing horrible stories from friends of seeing somebody who's doing this as they're driving down the road. The cost to administer the program from the state on your car inspections because you have a television up there. If you, if I go into the gas station, the garage, and they monitor my car and if it doesn't pass, I can't go to another one. Now, you've got a big brother up there watching you and you can't go to another one. Now, who? What does this cost in another bureaucracy? That's interesting. I'll find it. I was on the phone with Commissioner Ives discussing this matter specifically. And he announced to me on Vermont edition that there's no cost to the taxpayer for the, there will be no cost to the taxpayer for the equipment and the services provided for this overreaching inspection. But it costs, when I go into the garage, you get inspected. It's double what it costs. It costs the inspector, the actual service station about $2,200 to get up for it. He's got to get up somewhere. There's no cost to the state. Now, I said to... Somebody up in Montpay is running this thing. I know. That was the quote from Commissioner Ives, live on the radio. And so we have all the software, the inspection stations have to pay for the equipment. They have to be trained on the equipment to then deny a public person inspection that costs $45 for a blinker of light or an air valve that's out. Now, just with this technology and tires, it's going to cost most people with a new car between $200 and $300 to have air valves properly. Okay. So I said to the commissioner, it's sad that we don't have the people voting on these things and speaking up. And I'm tired of the state house pushing these kinds of ridiculous rules down on people that can't even afford to get to work. I said. So I just want to be clear that the state house had nothing to do with that. That was something that was done by the administration under their administrative authority. And we have been, in fact, trying to push back. We had a bill last year that the compromise was to delay enforcement for another year. So we're just now... So we would have been having this conversation last spring and we're having it now instead. So just be clear that there are things that are just done that the administration has a lot of power. And we have the power, arguably, to do a little time out on something that they're doing. But keep in mind the legislative process. So the house can have a bill and it has to get passed and then it has to get it to the Senate where it goes through three committees and then it goes to the Senate where it goes through three committees. So it's... With rare exception, we don't do that fast. I did... We did do it once... Once I came to this room in, I think, my second year and I told the story of the Medicare Part D fix. You may recall that when the federal government first rolled out Medicare Part D, which is the drug benefit that they... I'm being taped so I shouldn't say they screwed it up, but I will anyway. It was a mess. It was a disaster. And what happened was that people on, like, January 3rd couldn't get their prescriptions filled because of the glitches. In that particular case, we heard about it. We drafted a bill. Somebody stayed late one night. The day we heard about it, he stayed late and drafted a bill. We passed it on the house at 9 o'clock in the morning. They passed it in the Senate at 1 o'clock in the afternoon and the governor signed it the following morning. For the most part, that's not the way you want laws made, folks. It sounds really cool, but in fact, going back to what I said earlier about the initiative process, one of the reasons... The legislative process is a good thing. First of all, you all get a chance to see what's going on and write me a letter or say I want to testify. Sometimes there are certain issues for which we have public hearings where everybody can come and talk for their two or three minutes. They're going to have one tomorrow night. The Senate is having one on various gun bills that are in the Senate. That will be well attended, I promise you. They did one on minimum wage last week. So the public hearings tend to happen in the evening. Oh, back to the website. I'll keep going back to the website. So when you go to vermont.gov, on the right-hand side, you sort of have greatest hits on the right and that will have things like the next public hearing. What are the public hearings on deck? They try to have sort of the most topical issues right there in a newspaper. The lead story is always on the right-hand column. So that's where the lead stories are on the webpage and that includes the public hearings. So there are issues where we really want to hear from people. This car inspection thing has been a nightmare. One of the problems with the bill that we had last year, I believe that the proposed fix was a little bit misrepresented. We had someone who was really pushing it who said that we should all sign on to his bill to fix because it was not safety related. It was air quality related. And so to the extent that we care about the environment, we should have at least know what we were signing. And I felt like that kind of got glossed over. So what that did was it made people mad because they felt like they weren't being told the whole truth. You hear a lot about the lobbyists in our building and especially in Washington. Well, we have them too. I don't think they're quite as bad as what I hear about Washington. But one of the things that the folks at the State House have learned is that they damn well better tell us the truth. So when a lobbyist comes to me and says, you know, we really want, I don't know, I'm not going to come up with a good example right now, but we care about this. You know, the question is, well, who hates it? And who's going to push back on this? So that you have an idea of what the conversation is. And if you have, if somebody in that situation doesn't tell me the truth, I'm not talking to that person again. It's just not going to bother because we don't need to do that. It's not, we don't play games. I know it's going to be hard for some of you to go by, but we really don't. And in committee, we all work together of whatever political strike. Once things come to the floor, there are a few bills and only a few where things can get rather polarized. But in committee, for the most part, we cooperate, and my chair pointed out that we didn't have a, our committee did not have a single bill last year that passed on a party-line vote. There were dissents. We didn't pass everything unanimously, but the people who didn't like it were of all flavors. So, you know, we are, all of my colleagues of whatever strike are always working to do what we think is the best thing for this day. We don't always get it right, but we try. So, more questions? David. Human services. How often do somebody review criteria for a person to receive whatever one of these programs might be? And second part is who oversees the people that check out this criteria? Where I'm going is I don't know as of today, but years ago, I know several abuses who were receiving human services that had no business taking money from the state. Okay. Well, first, David, I will send you the, I don't have it written down in front of me, but the phone number, there's a hotline for people who are cheating. The answer to your first question. I hope that's better than what we used to be, because we reported somebody who was doing it very badly, and they said, we don't have time to deal with that. Well, then, David. That was calling statement directly. Okay. So, when that happens, you get back to me and I'll go to the commissioner or the, with the secretary. With respect to oversight, number one, all of the criteria are in rule. So, we have statutes and we have rules, and the rules are done in another fairly deliberative process there. They're drafted by the department and they're reviewed by other government agencies. They're drafted by the department. They go out to public comment. So, there's a period of under, I think it's 60 or 90 days for you and more particularly the advocates, the people who actually, what we like to call the stakeholders to review them and say, number six, this isn't going to work. And they send in written comments. The agency then reviews the written comments and does a revision. When they've done a revision, they send it then to all of the other government agencies. So, government agencies get to say, oh, you're shifting this from your budget to my budget and I don't like that, or we don't have the manpower to do XYZ or whatever. So, how is it going to work within government as a whole? And then once it's gone through that process, it comes to something called the Legislative Committee on Administrative Rules, LCAR. They meet on every Thursday morning at eight o'clock all year. Well, actually, in the off session, I think it's every other week. If there are rules to come up and you will hear, you've heard about them, oh, gosh, with respect to... Oh, well, I'm sorry. I'm not going to remember the specifics, but they are in the news from time to time with respect to what you're doing. So, all of the eligibility workers are supervised. And in fact, just a minute ago, I was talking about the nine-position cuts. So, what they've lost is they've lost some of those supervisors. So, you know, to save money, you know, middle managers will probably rather well paid. I think the rule of thumb is you take a salary and add another third to cover fringe, you know, health care, vacation or sick and time, all of that. So, if so, if they were making $16,000, it means they're costing the state 90. So, taking out 90 of them is a chunk of change to do something else. But that was the supervision. But they are, there are people that I would, if I wanted heating assistance, I would call up and I would do the application maybe online. Somebody would review that. And that person has the supervisor, has someone in-house who's supervised and then central office has people who oversee the whole program. But changes to the actual criteria, you know, does, you know, if Sandy just made, is making $11,000 instead of $10,000, does she qualify? That is done at the level, at the rural level. How often is that review or change? Is it looked at yearly, 10 years? Well, I, is there any number? Do you mean that we should revise them? Because I don't, well, if we were going to revise them, we would probably revise them up. Because right now we are working on, so let's talk, let's talk about our welfare program which is called ReachUp. ReachUp has, right, we just had, we just had so much money on this. I think there are, I think there are about 4,000 families that get ReachUp that may not include, there are some children, there are some, like a child who is living with grandma might get a benefit, but grandma doesn't and we call that a child-only case. I'm not sure, I can't remember whether the 4,000 includes the child-only cases, but it's, it's in the, it's in about the 4,000 range. Thank you for coming, come back, come again. I will. Thank you for being here. Sorry, I lost my train. Oh yeah, okay, so, eligibility for that program, so I am now, I will be the hypothetical of a newly divorced 35-year-old, 35-year-old mother who has two kids and, and let's say I wasn't working. And, you know, first of all, they're going to go after dad to get as much from dad as they can. That's the first piece. But, but they take, they take a need that is, that's pretty close to poverty line, what they call a basic needs budget. And then they, and then they, and then they cut that in half and my benefit is 49% of that number. And we have been at that 49% for as long as I can remember. And, what did I hear the other day that we're actually using, I don't remember what year we're using. We're not even using current poverty guidelines. So, next question. So, I think we're going to revise it. I think we've revised it up as my point. I have a quick question about the, I'm sorry. You've tried several times. Go ahead. No, it's okay. So, most importantly today, I wanted to thank Nick and Neil and David for hosting this. It's a great venue to talk to the legislators and to thank Sandy Haas for being here today. That's all in celebration. But sadly, I have to bring up some minutes from last June's legislative breakfast meeting. There was an attendee from Rochester that made a comment. I went to speak and she interrupted my talking and said, Robert, I don't think the governor is interested in what you have to say. So, in all my years of education, sports, religion, I've never been more motivated by someone interrupting a 30 year tradition by insisting that I am not welcomed to be listened by the governor. So, the three things I wanted to talk about when I was interrupted were political leadership, political etiquette, and political transparency. And those three things that I wanted to speak about, that I was disallowed to speak about through that attendee, dovetailed into exactly what the governor spoke about for an hour and 15 minutes. So, today is the first meeting of the legislative breakfasts and I hope more people will join us. So, I had numbers of questions for Mr. our senator, Mr. McCormick, but since Sandy's here, I guess we're just going to focus them to Sandy. This was a question for anyone that attended today. Do you consider your seat, in this case, as state rep, a leadership position? So, I've heard you talk about this before. Yes or no, question? No, it's not. I'm sorry. It depends upon the context and I know that one of your concerns has been trying to tell the select board what to do and I don't believe it's my job to tell the select board what to do. And I guess within the state house I am considered a leader because I'm a vice chair. I actually consider that kind of a minor position. I was caucus leader for one term, a progressive caucus leader. I didn't like that, actually. And so, I think there are, I think I get things in the mail that call me an opinion leader. I prefer to think that I listen to my constituents and to the state. I mean, let's get real. Vermont is a little state. I grew up in San Francisco. San Francisco has 650,000 people. Vermont has less. The entire state has fewer people than the city and county of San Francisco. So I consider that I work for the whole state I certainly try to be sensitive, more sensitive to local issues. I know I have colleagues who say, oh, I only vote my district. Well, sometimes voting the district means doing something that isn't actually good for the whole state. And like for example, if we were citing a new facility and the town absolutely did, not in my backyard, I don't consider, that representative would probably vote no, but I don't know that that I would consider that in the interest of the whole state. So the answer to your question, Robert, is it depends upon the context. In my committee, I am definitely a leader on the floor, on issues where I feel like I have better expertise on an issue than others do. I am probably a leader. In our town, I believe that my representative and in the district, I believe that my job is to be a conduit between the community and the state house. So we've talked a lot about issues at the state level and you just mentioned the local issues in our towns. So I find it incredibly challenging, excuse me, to glean any of your opinions, input, advice, perspective, regarding our schools, taxpayers, overwhelming responsibilities, supervisor union decisions, roads, school mergers, the issues up at Bingo happening today, the law of the Taser use in our towns, the need for sat phones in our towns, car inspection rules, downtown development, out of Quiche and land use. There are the local issues, but I guess my question is how do you communicate with the Rutland Windsor voting community? Do you have a website? How do we know what you're doing about the issues up at Bingo? Where do we go? Do we write you a letter? Do we email somebody? Nick talked about how hard it is to get information from the state. Well, there's no quotes in newspapers, there's no, what about, what about all these local issues that I've been paying attention to for over a year now? In school board meetings, select board meetings, I sit in them and see what happens. What is your take on all this? Those are elected officials who are doing their job, and I give them the respect that I think they deserve. So you would rather not comment on any of these issues that are very local, but you're depending on the select boards of each town to communicate that? I'm confused. I'm trusting the select boards to do their job in the same way that I do my job. They have issues that come before them. They listen to the people who are affected. They listen to opinions. My voice is no more important than your voice, Robert, and what the Rochester or the Bethel Select Board does. I am, in Rochester, I am a citizen, and I handle myself as a citizen in the town. If you ask me my opinion, I will tell you if it's something that I need to take up that you think needs action at the state level, I will be happy to look at that. If you need interference, or go between with state agencies, I'm happy to do that. If Nick is really having trouble getting through to whoever is supposed to be giving him help, I can help make those connections. If we have a law that needs to be changed, I'm happy to consider that, to do my little slip of paper in the suggestion box, and push it as much as I can. With five weeks left, I'll tell you that a lot of those ideas aren't going anywhere. I don't know what your concern is. I remember that during Irene, you were mad at me because I didn't do, I don't know what. I was mad at you, I was disappointed. Well, I live in Rochester, and Rochester probably had the best leadership on Irene, possibly any place in the state, and there was no way in the world that I was going to step on their, I'm not going to step on their toes, they're doing their job. You want them to stand up and say, well, I think that Larry Strauss should be doing X, Y, Z. If I think Larry Strauss should be doing something different, I would talk to Larry. Okay, so over the last 14 years, what accomplishments are you most proud of? So it's been 14 years. I'm very proud of the end of life, though. We worked very hard on that. I was the reporter on that. The which bill, Sandy? The, I call it the end of life bill. It's the bill that, and I was the reporter on that in two different cycles. The reporter is the person who actually brings it to the House floor. I'm especially proud of the work that we did on advanced directives before that. We continue to work on that. In fact, I have a bill that I'm trying to get. Sandy, what was that again, advanced? Advanced directives. An advanced directive is the document that you fill out that tells health care providers what kind of care you do and do not want. People tend to think of it as turn off the machines, but in fact, that's really not what it's about. It's really about number one, you appoint an agent. So for instance, for me, David is going to be my number one agent. I haven't done mine, by the way. I'm saying that for the cameras. I've been thinking about this for 10 years and I still haven't done it, because frankly it's hard. How many people in this room? No, no, no. Not the first one yet. Good for you, David. But David will be my agent. Passed French in Randolph has agreed to be my backup. I have filled out all the things about what I care about. What I find most interesting about the process is gosh, if you guys want, I'll bring a handful of booklets next time. I get the booklets and then immediately they rewrite them in there slightly. They're slightly out of date. The booklets. So there's no particular form that got a little bit more sophisticated with the information that they provide. I think that's a great, I think that's a great bill. That's great accomplishment. So what are the other ones? I'm part of the team. Legislature is 180 people. There are 150 of us in the house. And there are 11 on our committee. I will tell you that I take a very active role in shaping every single bill that comes out of our committee. We pass around the job of reporting bills. I also have worked very hard on the medical marijuana bills. We have done, I lose track of how many times we have tweaked that. One of the things that we do, one of the things that I love actually about the legislative process in Vermont is that we take, we do things in chewable bites. So when the idea, I talked earlier about the initiative process. If you think back 15 or 20 years, you'll recall that medical marijuana was something that was passed by initiative in other states. And you heard about it in the news, because it was controversial. We don't have the initiative process, so in Vermont it had to be a bill. And although the people who wanted it thought that it was a health issue and should be managed by the, I can't see, should be managed by the Department of Health, the public safety, the Commissioner of Public Safety was so unhappy about it. He was, he said that if we did, if we had medical marijuana in Vermont, the Hell's Angels were going to take over. That was in 2004. I still haven't seen a Hell's Angel. But, so what they passed was this very, very, very narrow 2004, before I was there. You had to have cancer or AIDS or something. There were three diseases. And that was it. And you had to grow it or get somebody, one person to grow it for you. That was it, pretty much. And it was going to be run by the Department of Public Safety. A few years later, when I was in the legislature, they said, kind of short list. How about we expand the list a little, not enough plants. I think you were allowed to have one plant. And they said, you know, not all of us have a real green thumb and that one plant doesn't always make it. So how about we get two plants? So I think we gave them two or three. It might even be three for the medical program. For the legalization, it's only two. And then, so that was, I think that was 2007. Then in, I think it was 2011, we had people said, you know, I'm 85 years old and I have cancer. And how do I find a drug dealer? I got the card. I got the card, but I didn't know how to find a drug dealer. You're right. So, we said, you know, this really doesn't make sense because what we're doing is we're actually encouraging people to go to the black market. So, there was a proposal that was happily, that year, was supported by the administration of licensed dispensaries that were licensed by the state. And so, we set up a very, very highly regulated structure that allowed the department, still the Department of Public Safety to license dispensaries. So we have, we have now, we have Burlington, Montpelier, oh, Brandon, and I'll think of the other one in a minute. But not, not statewide coverage. But again, it was a slow roll out and there was, I think it was a cap even on the number of patients that there could be. So, so then a few years later, we took off the cap. My point is that we do this, we try something, we see that the world didn't end, the Hells Angels didn't take over Vermont and we say, okay, I guess we can take another step. And so that's, and I think that's what we're doing frankly with legalization. Where's the end of life film? I'm sorry, I said it again. Where's the end of life film? That was pretty prominent, or are you or two? There's a report, actually. If you go and look at reports, you'll see the report from the Department of Health. Well, talk to me about the public support. What time there was a great deal and then just seeing the wane? Well, my understanding is that there's still public support. It's not something that most people are going to use. So there was a report, it just came out I think in October. My recollection is that there were 29 people who had actually died using the drug in almost in four and a half years, or three and a half years. Of 60, thank you, David. This is my secretary. So I'll talk about the end of life film for a minute. The deal is that if I am dying, if I have a terminal condition, so think cancer because that's what most of it is. Terminal condition, I have two doctors have to say that in their medical judgment I have less than six months to live. So two doctors have to sign on. Prognosis is tough, folks. I don't know who you know, but prognosis is not easy and they have to sign something that says that in their best medical judgment I will not be here six months from today. And with that then, I have the right to say I want medication to speed up my death. I have to ask once. I have to ask again in 15 days. I have to do it in writing. There are some formal things around the writing. And if I do all of that then a doctor who is willing and not all are, so hopefully one of the two who confirmed my condition is willing to make a prescription. Can then write a prescription to me to get this cocktail of drugs. And it's very expensive. I'm sorry. That's the law now. That is the law. And not all pharmacies will fill it. But 60 people have gotten permission and of those 60 in these past two years about half of them have used drugs. And the other half died on there. They were glad to have it in the drawer if they got pain got to be so bad if they wanted to die so badly it was right there and half of them sent to. I didn't propose that. No. But he was asking me. He asked me for the things for my history. So, actually those two bills I think are great. The end of life is great one. Medical marijuana. So that's two accomplishments. So are there any more that you'd like to add? I will take some credit for every bill that I voted for including marriage equality and for every bill that's come out of my committee including our very robust program for addressing the opioid crisis. Those have come out of our committee. I can't. I'm sorry. I didn't think I was having to write a resume so I don't have a resume. It's not a resume. Oh. I didn't see the camera, man. Yes, I'm Mason Wayne, a resident of Rochester. I was hoping to ask all the legislators this today. But when it comes to state representatives and senators actually holding offices in towns, what is the ethical relationship there? For example, Sandy, you hold a grandeur position. So now with these new marijuana laws if I have five immature plants in the window and you see that, what is your duty to the state? Has a grandeur and a state rep to deal with this? None. Can you explain grandeur and why you hold that position in the town of Rochester? My understanding is that most of you know that there are times when a prosecutor is nervous about just charging somebody without kind of I'm going to say political backup and so they impanel a grand jury. You hear about it mostly at the federal level. I have been on that list for quite a few years. I don't remember when I was first elected. I have never been asked to do anything. I don't know that. I'll take it back. Once the principal called me and said that it was part of the grandeur's duty to deal with truancy. But he never called back and I didn't have to research. No. That was what the principal told me. I do not consider that I have any law enforcement obligations at all and I have never been asked to show up for a grand jury would be like the legislature that only operates as a body. The individuals don't have any power. Until the grand jury is impaneled I would say I have no obligations. Just to follow up real quick the secretary of state's office writes about the grandeur and the grandeur is to inform the state and local authorities on criminal matters. That's the job description that the secretary of state has given on web. Thank you. Other questions? I actually have a quick question. I'm Lisa Campbell. I'm here from Bethel. Also full disclosure I'm reporting for the Herald. But I have a quick question personally about the governor's budget and something I read yesterday concerned me about reducing the number of directors operations in the department of children and families. So is that they're talking about having one director of operations for two offices. So that's what I was talking about earlier with Dave Etting. That is specifically in the economic services division not the child protection division. Thank you. You have a greater interest in. Yes. They had I'm going to call them middle managers. Yep. I can get the numbers. I may not remember this completely. So there are central office people who kind of like they would review the rules. The central office people would be looking regularly at the rules and saying, gee gosh, should we tweak these? Do they work? In addition to that, are they following the rules at the local level? Right. They had a mommy. Right. And number one, as we are coming out of the recession ever so slowly, there are fewer our caseloads have dropped in everything. In food stamps. Food stamps, the state does eligibility but it's all federal money. You still have to satisfy somebody that you're entitled. The program that I talked about earlier that's my smaller number, the LIHEAP program, the BSNIP program to get your not even sure they have that, but to get your for low income people to get their pets fixed. So we have a lot benefit programs that have different rules pretty complicated and they've been working for years to come up with some sort of coordinated eligibility for people to reduce the form from 25 pages to seven. So there's somebody, there's a case worker who gets my application. There's somebody who looks over my shoulder and I think there was somebody looking over her shoulder. So what they decided was that A, because the caseloads were reduced and B, because they are moving out of the 12 the 12 people in the district offices three of those positions are going to move to Central Office. So they'll be more supervision at state level. So what they're going to do is people who are in Central Office then will each be responsible for two districts. For that sort of big oversight. And each district office has a boss. It wasn't a boss in economics, it was a general boss. So there still will be some supervision. This was seen as a way to sort of move some money from managers to services and line staff. Thank you, that helps. The other question I have is there's been some talk with the budget about mandating schools to have staff reductions. Do I have that right? And can you clarify that at all? Or is that one of those things that's sort of up in the air this year with the legislative process? I mean, I will tell you I also have a personal interest there. I will tell you if I'm wrong I have made predictions here before that were wrong. If I'm wrong about this one you can shoot me. That will not pass. That is a that's something that the governor cares about. And I guess the secretary of education as well, there certainly are probably national, I'm not going to call it guidelines because we usually think guidelines is minimum rather than maximums but I think when you compare Vermont schools to schools in other states we are staff heavy. Of course we're staff heavy, we're rural. Yes. You know but staff is where the money is staff is what is the cost of education. 80% of your budget. So cut one position and you can so the governor I think his predecessors I think I've been hearing this the whole time we have too many people in the schools too many run-ups he would like to have us in that ratio I don't personally I don't see that happening ever but it will not have I'm quite positive what happens here. I was really curious about the riffing going on in the schools. The physics teacher gets fired because of budgets and so on but then if you look at the supervisory union there's no riffing that goes on there and I talked to the governor about it and requested all the salaries of the 22 people that support the supervisory union right here over on the dump road so the schools I don't understand why the supervisory union doesn't reduce their forces as they continue to reduce the teachers and the services at the school level. So 80% of the budget the property taxes that we all pay goes to the school 40% of that 80% goes to support the supervisory union this seems to be a total over balanced situation so I would rather see a phys ed teacher keep this job in Rochester or Bethel than a web designer or some communication person at the supervisory level. It just seems to be incredibly balanced. I would like to speak to this. Robert, you and I need to talk sometime. Well, that would be nice. I always enjoy talking with you. Because I have your numbers are I can show you different numbers. Okay. And why? Okay. No. Whatever. As a matter of fact, we are adding a staff member. We have a supervisory union with 22 people. We are like last in the country in our technology we need to get that better so we have a technology director and in the system they cover 10 towns so everything from Stratford and Chelsea to Rochester Stockbridge, Bethel, Royalton they all have to be covered we have a business manager who handles an excess of $40 million in budgets and the one we have which is now back because our return when we hired Donna had to come back. Because people don't understand education. She is right now. She is. She's very well. She was very responsive to me but here's the question. This is a big one. It was great. She gave me all the salaries of all the employees she told me the budget for the facilities that they were housed in is about $54,000 a year. I was actually surprised that the budget was lower than I thought it was but this is a thing that happened last August in a merger meeting in Stockbridge. So there we were on a beautiful August 8th night doing this marriage with Stockbridge and Rochester Mr. Labs is there a consultant named Mr. Dale is there there were probably 25 people there and that meeting started at 7 by 840 there was a big eureka in the room because all the numbers that the supervisory union through the consultant delivering to the school system were all wrong. All the numbers were wrong. The meeting ended in total questions we all wasted a beautiful night and the question I had to Susan and Mr. Labs is how much does Mr. Dale get as a consultant to speak and represent the supervisory union who's making $121,000 a year. Why do they need a consultant to be at select or school board meetings to explain what the supervisory union is doing and then explain it with numbers that are totally incorrect. Save this question and we don't have time for me to answer that to you okay. I have an answer for that so you know what Mr. Dale is saying after you have your negotiation what do you look for what that those of us who are also interested in David can do that. I could prepare something but these folks might stop and we'll come because it's going to take the whole time it's very complicated I understand that's what I'm saying but I can talk some other time but I'll have to answer that question too as a matter of fact I would entertain anyone sending me questions and I can do it all together all at once. I wish I knew about it I can share with the federal board I serve on the supervisory union board I serve on the RTCC board and I'm on the executive committee of the administration of the school board. What's that? July 1 ends my services on three of those committees and I will be on the beffle board until we close out books on beffle school it becomes the regularity union district which is well having done that for a dozen years by solidified I got your mind's dirty well you volunteered to do that yes I did I personally appreciate that a lot but I will say that anyone who wants to be on the school board don't run in there saying you want to fix something right away it takes a while to figure out what's going on who to talk to and how to talk intelligently about it because it is very complicated and actually we find the same thing in the legislature we have some freshmen this year who have brought in bills that they're all excited about and it's like we already do that you know I had a conversation with somebody and they started their dissertation with the comment that what they were going to do I'm going to do this I'm going to do that and you don't do anything as an individual I'm going to suggest that we try to do this but we've gone past our time we've gone way past it but if you've got a quick one go ahead and a governor's speech about limiting social security tax I know that it's a proposal I actually I was going to look at my own tax return today and I didn't get a chance you know there's a certain for me at least 25,000 is already exempt so I'm not some of the things that's people get confused about taxes and I didn't get a chance to oh okay thank you I can earn $25,000 working I can get a jog and poor copy I can find something that pays $25,000 I can find something that pays $25,000 and get my social security tax over $25,000 at a certain age not at 65 at 65 you can earn $14,000 I'm looking at that it's coming up close Dave I'm older that's what I'm talking about so it's more complicated like everything that we do it's more complicated than it looks and I haven't heard what the price tag is it's not a small price tag so again if we do that then what do we cut do we cut the number of state police on the highway I don't think so where do we get the savings but my point is that there's already what I consider a reasonably generous exemption and even for me okay we'll take me again instead of $25 then I bring in some portion of my social security and pay tax on half of that it's not a big number it's a great sound bite but it's not a big number for me I've already paid taxes on this money should I put aside that I'm drawing now seeing it in the federal tax I think it was I think I paid them $5,600 last year for my for the federal part of my social security and we're getting a raise and I think I got a $10 $12 raise but my they went up $10 $2 I bet Medicare so it's the governor has made the proposal it's on the table I don't know where it will go I have the same thing with military I really don't enjoy paying tax on retirement benefits I don't know how they figure it but we have been looking at states that are friendly to retirees and Vermont is not so we don't the number they give in the federal data is Vermont tax about 9% of your income after you retire for that kind of tax where I go to Wyoming and Montana Florida and pay nothing so I just want to be clear that that is one question that's our security but we also found when they did the blue ribbon tax study a few years ago that I don't know if it's most states but a lot of states we use federal taxable income is what we look at other states look at adjusted gross so it pulls out all of those deductions so you need to look together you know like yes maybe they're nice to your social security but are you getting your other deductions and I don't know the answer what is Vermont friendly on whether it's a great question that's a great question community we have and that helps me pay my taxes it helps you have a good life it helps you have a good life my son just bought a new house in Tennessee he paid $350,000 for four bedrooms, three baths, two car garages, two eggs his taxed up $1,300 a year you think you can do that mistake I gave him six acres up behind me and his taxed up $1,500 on that and there's nothing there why do you think they left the state do you think he's coming back no way I just got a postcard in the mail how states take care of their elders and Vermont was in the top quartile and Tennessee was in the bottom quartile so that's the one of the ways yeah but you know what and be with your grandchildren they're trade-offs and we as a state have made a decision that we want to be community friendly to take care of people in need we used to have the poor farm and then we said oh gee gosh let's do that and we don't have county government in other states everything a lot of the stuff I've talked about would be done county by county we do it statewide and there's some disadvantages to that we have a really hard time making sure that everything is equally done around the state and that's one of the things we look at a lot so I'm from Bennington can't do this in Bennington and that's one of the things we're all there and our committees have representation from all over the state so that we can really keep an eye on how we are doing making sure that whatever policy decisions we've made that people are benefitting and paying at the same rate all around the state that it's equal okay Neal I'm ready to lay it out I'm ready to lay it out so let's adjourn obviously there are enough questions there are enough interesting things to comment about so that that should inspire me 30 more years 30 more years Neal are you ready back to the back to the legislative website I could give you my email but it's tedious if you go if you can look put haws in there and then you can click on it it'll be way easier but I make spelling errors so that's Vermont Go Vermont.gov Vermont.gov lots of information there February 26th we'll be right back here again I hope and at least one senator will be I certainly will be and I'm a good representative thank you all you've been a very good group I enjoyed it thank you