 I think it might be time to get started, because we have a very packed schedule for this forum today. Welcome everyone to the Washington Five Candidates Forum, Washington Five Vermont House District Candidates Forum. My name is Elise Thorson. I'm one of the organizers of the forum. And I really appreciate you all coming out today to be part of a fairly exciting election for our two towns, Eastmont Pealier and Middlesex. On August 9th, or by early voting before, we can make the choice among three candidates on the Democratic primary ballot, Zach Sullivan, Theo Kennedy, and Ella Chapin. At this, and I think at this juncture, it's really quite important to make an informed decision about these three very exciting candidates. And I think at this point, it's time to just start moving on with the forum itself, and I'm happy to introduce our moderator and a co-organizer of this forum. Susan Clark, the town moderator of Middlesex to introduce how this is going to work. Thank you all very much for coming. Thank you. Thanks Elise. Thanks very much to Kellogg Hubbard Library for hosting us, and thanks to Orca Media for streaming this event, and Orca will also make the recording available online. So if you know somebody who missed this, tell them. And we also wanna thank the League of Women Voters. The League is a nonpartisan organization, and as such is not a co-host of this event, but we're really grateful to have been able to tap their expertise on the event format. A few quick notes on the process. We're gonna start by having each candidate introduce themselves, and then we'll move on to topical questions. And each of the candidates will have up to two minutes to respond to each question, and we'll rotate who goes first. We have solicited questions from voters, via our porch forum, and incorporated those into the questions we'll be asking tonight. And for those of you in the room, if you want to suggest a question to our pretty packed agenda, feel free to use those index cards that are in the back, and you can pop those up to me, just pass them forward, and we only have one hour. So I can't guarantee we will get to them all, but we will at least try. So welcome to our candidates, let's get started. The first question, you have all actively contributed to the health and well-being of our local community, so please tell us a little about yourselves, and why you think the Vermont House is the right place for you to continue that service. So let's start with Zach. First of all, yeah, thank you, Susan. I'd like to thank Susan and Elise for organizing for the Kellogg Library for hosting, and for ORCA to getting this out to the folks who couldn't attend in person. So I'm Zach Sullivan, I've lived in Eastmont Pailers since 2014 with my wife, Helen, and now their son, Eric, and daughter, Vera, who are five and three, and so have not been with us the whole time. I've been involved with the town since fairly early on in my tenure, first trying to decide what to do with a piece of land, the town to purchase, and now as the chair of the planning commission. I work in healthcare, I moved to Vermont, actually to work on single payer and now work for the UVM Health Network, and I have a background in public policy, which I think gives me some good rounding in terms of figuring out how to deal with complex questions, particularly in a legislature that doesn't have a lot of staff, and where the legislators themselves need to really serve as their own policy experts. One of the reasons I wanted to run was looking at the issues that were coming before the planning commission, and in healthcare, I was just running into blocks of what there was only so much we could do at the town level. We've worked to make affordable housing more viable through our zoning. You can remove barriers, you can't actually create the housing. We're now working on our energy plan, and you can encourage people to buy electric vehicles, but if they can't afford it, you can't actually get them over that hump, and so those are the sorts of issues that I think are much better dealt with at the state level. As I look at the types of policies I want to enact, I, you know, fairness in the work is really, really key. You know, you go out and talk to voters, and you have talked to people who were just over a benefit cliff, where if they'd made a little less money, they would have been eligible for benefits, and now they're not, and so that's really hard. We talk, you know, we look at really significant racial discrepancies in healthcare, and housing, and a lot of other things that, those are the sorts of things that I think we need to really, you know, try to solve. Thank you. Well, thank you very much. I appreciate the Vermont legal women voters, even if you're not officially a sponsor, and the East Democratic, the East Montpelio Democratic Committee for hosting this, and the library, to all you folks here, and folks that are visiting via Zoom, and to the ORCA group. You know, in thinking why it's a good fit for Theo Kennedy and the House, there are kind of four large areas. One is, and we won't have time in two minutes for everything, so I'll just lay them out, but experience and education, kind of vision to action, familiarity over 20 years in the legislative body, both on behalf of government, and behalf of different private groups, and then also a real deep commitment to constituent service, compassion constituent service. And I'm gonna try to weave those into some of my other answers, but I also just wanna introduce myself a little more fully. I'm married, my 25th anniversary is tomorrow. I have four children. I went to school in Middlebury College, and then got a law degree at Boston University, and a master's in public health, and a concentration of environmental health at Boston University. I came in January of 1999 to work for the State of Vermont in the Consumer Affairs and Public Information Division of the Department of Public Service, where I did my clerkship. And then I went over to what was then BISCA, but we now think of as DFR, and I was director of health rates and forms there for about two and a half years. And then I moved over to the Department of Children and Families to be director of planning policy and regulation, which I did for about seven and a half years. If there's anything that rings true to me is my deep commitment to service and to other people and to helping others in need. I'm gonna emphasize constituent services. I close out, because I'll weave in some of the experience and education and familiarity later. Right now as a lawyer in private practice, a general civil practice, litigation practice, I spent a lot of time in Washington County low-income assistant project folks who really just need an orientation to what's possible out there. I'm Ella Chapin. I live in East Montpelier with my spouse, Simeon, who's here, and my 11 and 15-year-old kids. I grew up in Calis. I went 232 as did my spouse, Simeon, and we were living in different parts of the country and moved back in 2001, knowing that when we reconnected at 25 that we were gonna settle down and have kids, and where would we do that? We would do that here. So we are, I am pretty much a lifelong Vermonter, save a few years out west, and just I'm really dedicated to this town and this place. My early background and career, I did my undergraduate work in environmental science and ecology and spent 10 years working in outdoor education and leadership education as an instructor with Outer Bound and running various environmental and education programs. And then I received a master's in planning and policy and started working here in Vermont and have worked in the same place the last 15 years until last year at the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board, which is a quasi-public entity that does permanently affordable housing investments and permanently conserved lands. And my role there was to run a program for the state that's set up in statute by the legislature in 2003 called the Farm and Forest Viability Program. So I spent the last 15 years managing a state program, being a key leader here in the agricultural sector and in rural economic development for our state. And I worked on more than just that one program for the state. I ended up helping with a number of programs that the legislature's created, the Working Lands Enterprise Board, where I sat on the board for eight years, the first eight years, and the Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund's Farm to Plate initiative, a lot of different initiatives that came out of the legislature helping design and implement those. So I have a lot of experience reporting to the legislature and different committees about that work. I'm an effective hardworking leader. I'm known for getting things done. I'm known as a good listener and a really good problem solver. And I tend to lead with integrity and empathy. And I'm running because I love Vermont. I feel like I have a deep connection at the state level and really want to better connect what's happening locally with policy work at the state level. And I'll stop there. Thank you. Thanks, Ellen. Elise, I wonder if you want to grab a couple of chairs and just put them up here. There's a few more people are trickling in and we're not going to have enough chairs. Yay! That's a good problem. Yes. All right. So folks who don't have a seat and would like one, we're gonna have a couple of extra seats up here. Thank you. We'll move on to question number two, which is housing. Housing has emerged as a central problem in an overall affordability crisis in Vermont. So what steps would you take to address housing issues? And we'll start with Theo. Okay. Well, all these questions were excellent and each area is so important. In my professional life, I've been doing real property law and whether it's on lender side or helping someone purchase a home in government, dealing with homeless issues. I think that right now, due to the pandemic, we've seen an influx in our state of monies like we've never seen before. And there has been a lot of money put towards refurbing existing housing stock, helping landlords and contractors, dealing with middle income homeowners, creating new shelter space, giving dollars towards mortgage assistance and utility assistance. So there's a lot of money in the pipeline right now. When I think back to best practice, which is something you might hear me say a few times during today, I'm thinking back when another flood of money came into the state of human services during the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act when we had our recession. And then secretary or acting secretary Patrick Flood said, Theo, let's come up with a program that really harnesses the continuum of care of housing. Let's get bidders for these grants that can work together in ways that they haven't before. And let's put a scoring criteria that values those creative endeavors, whether you're a brick and mortar contractor, you're a transitional housing, supportive housing, a landlord, a client, across the spectrum of needs. And I'd really like to see some of the monies that have been allocated and not spent to have that kind of competitive grant making process. I'd also say in housing, there are like my view of solutions is it tends to be the aggregate of discrete initiatives that actually get things done and listening to experts on things and trying to figure out how to fit the pieces together. I mean, I think we really need to look carefully at accessory unit housing. We need to look at housing first, which is very successful for folks suffering with mental illness to give them some stability and perspective and more after the red. Yeah. She's a taskmaster over here. Ella? Thanks. Well, I see housing as one of the most urgent, one of the most urgent issues in this moment. And then certainly hearing that from folks as I go around and talk with constituents, housing is deeply interrelated with a lot of other issues, health, transportation, equity. We have historic patterns of discrimination in housing, whether you're looking for a lease or a loan. So it's an essential need. I'm hearing very distinctly that housing is actually one of the leading causes of our workforce issues right now that employers are actually finding people to take jobs and offering them jobs and then they go look for housing and they can't find it. So I heard that from Cabot Creamery. I heard that from Center Vermont Medical Center. I heard that about a number of different places in our region. I spent 15 years working at Vermont Housing and Conservation Board, not in housing, but alongside our amazing housing team that brings state and federal funds together to get out for affordable housing. And I just, I'm very keenly aware of what it takes to finance and make affordable housing projects work and the need that's out there and also an amount of money that's been invested over the last five years unlike we've ever done before. So we had, even pre-pandemic, we had some bond funds, a lot more funding at the state level going towards affordable housing and that's been a need, but it takes time for those investments to come to fruition. So we're hoping to see that over the next number of years. I strongly support state investments in affordable and workforce housing and we're gonna need to keep that up. I wanna mention that that really needs to take place as new construction, as rehabbing vacant units and making investments in energy efficiency around those to support the costs and affordability of those spaces for renters and tenants and owners. And just wanna mention sort of, generally I'm really supportive of smart growth, a strategy here in Vermont and there's a lot we can do but I'm running out of time, so I'll stop there. I just wanna say we're making strong investments, we're gonna need to do more. You know, we've been really generous with these two minute questions, a lot of people only do a minute and a half. You guys are doing great, thank you, Zach. So I think the issue with housing really is supply and even as we have people coming into the state is that we don't have the supply to meet that need. I think as we look at how do we create more, we need to look at encouraging denser housing in village centers or in town centers. This would do three things. One, it lets us build on smaller lots, it lets us build smaller units, it lets us build multifamily dwellings. I think this is probably what Ella was starting to talk about a little bit there at the end. All of those things make the housing stock more affordable and so when you start to talk about the people who need housing that is, say, affordable for a teacher, but who doesn't actually fall into the technical definition of affordable housing, there is something there for them in addition to state investments in affordable housing. This also prevents sprawl and it helps create vibrant communities that can support businesses in town that people can walk to so that we're a little less car dependent. What do we need to do to get here? A lot of our towns are really held back by infrastructure. In East Montpelier, we've looked at this and the thing that always stops us is wastewater and so I think we need, we may need state investment in wastewater, we may also need some potential use incentives to really put that on the table to developers to say, oh, you could build a shared septic system that would allow more development with the septic system over here and the housing, six or eight units over there. I think those are the sorts of creative solutions that could get us to the denser housing. We may want to look at the zoning. The state put in requirements to make towns allow accessory dwelling units and it actually made us encourage us to go forward. So we may want to look at other ways of using preempting zoning. I'm thinking specifically Massachusetts has rules where if a town doesn't have enough affordable housing, some of the zoning can be preempted to force that through. Thanks. Okay, well, this next question is about healthcare. Of course, COVID has stressed our healthcare system from rural hospitals to drug prices to mental health. Another element of healthcare is senior care and East Montpelier resident wrote in that she has been a full time caregiver since 2016 for her husband with dementia. He can't be left at home but a nursing home would cost $20,000 a month. She wrote, Vermont is aging and headed for a senior care crisis. Is this on your radar? So please tell us about your healthcare priorities and we'll start with Ella. Was gonna list them all, but it was so long and I'm getting all these red signals over here so I'm not gonna do that. And I also wanna just say condolences to everyone who lost someone during the pandemic. I'm gonna start talking about myself in that I'm really data driven and that that's been really important during the pandemic also. I'm trained as a scientist. I look for evidence based solutions wherever possible and I'm really, really concerned right now about the state of our healthcare system as I think a lot of us are. I will definitely advocate for one that is accessible, affordable and high quality. We know that there's a lot that needs to happen at the national level and we only have control in what we're talking about today more at the state level. But there are a lot of things I think we can do at the state level. I think we can work on universal primary care which is a step towards, potentially a step towards single payer also. We can work on integrating nutrition and mental health fully into primary care. I'd like to see and I think a lot of us are thinking a lot about mental healthcare right now. We really need to expand access. Telehealth is a little golden nugget that came out of the pandemic that we wanna hold on to and expand and make it available. We need to support our community health centers and our regional hospitals. Really I really have a laundry list. I think I might not go through the whole thing but to get and so maybe to highlight some things that in particular affect the senior part of our Vermont demographic which is a significant part of our state. Drug prices is an ongoing issue and with times of inflation like this like we've never seen in our lifetimes and so many of our seniors on fixed incomes and that's something I don't know how to attain it but we've gotta keep working on that. And I also heard from a constituent who was talking about issues around caregivers access to seniors living in different facilities during the pandemic and there's already legislation proposed for that. So that's another thing that I would be interested in working on. So yes, there is a lot to cover in healthcare. The things I just wanna focus on, first mental health. We didn't have enough mental health capacity in the system and we're not funding the outpatient system well enough before the pandemic. It's gotten significantly worse. Last summer we were having adolescents in our emergency rooms for two, three, four weeks. What advocates will describe as prison light conditions because that's how you keep them from killing themselves. We desperately need to invest in adolescent mental health care. We're seeing really sharp increases proposed for commercial insurance rates right now. And part of that is that we have seen really significant inflation in healthcare costs over the past year. Part of that is that healthcare was just too expensive to begin with. But part of that is also that Medicaid is not pulling its weight. And that we have a system where there are sort of secret taxes on some people. People have commercial insurance that are picking up what we are not paying through actual taxes in Medicaid. We have what's called a global commitment waiver from the federal government that gives us some flexibility in how we use our Medicaid money. We do have the ability to increase Medicaid funding. And I think we absolutely need to do that. And then particularly in the hospital sector because we can then use the hospital budget process through the Green Mountain Care Board to make sure that we are actually buying the commercial rate down with that money and not having it just be a windfall. And then finally, I think we need to look at how we transform rural care. Right now, surgery is the profit center. And so everyone is trying to do surgery because it brings in money. We need to, and people aren't doing enough volume to be high quality. We need to try to pay providers in rural areas for the care that we really need and try to move some of the higher end care into centers of excellence but also use our regulatory structure to make sure that the places that get those centers don't just aren't able to run off with all the money from the profitable services. So healthcare, someone worked with me called it Labyrinthine. It is so many different pieces to this. I do think that having worked as a director of planning policy regulation at DCF when we oversaw Medicaid eligibility and covered services and also at the Department of Financial Regulation over rates that were submitted, I got a chance to look at the whole system and I have a couple of solutions in mind. I think also in light of what Ella said, I'm sure Zach feels, what a sobering time to go through that pandemic with the death and illness that we experience. And yet we had our own Dr. Fauci with Dr. Levine leading the way with facts and science, helping us try to understand what we're understanding in real time, enough to make informed decisions. And I think that's a really important part of policy, generally. I have a couple of specific solutions in mind. One is I'd like to revisit the public option. I have a way of funding the public option by levelizing the way in which the self-insured book of business or a lot of the good rest gets assessed equal with the fully insured book that would allow us basically to use Medicaid. We already are a single public Medicaid MCO, we're the only one in the country to allow that aperture to broaden widely over time but keeps premium stable for that time. You know, I've represented also in pharmacy. I've represented pharmacy interests for many years both in government when I led the Part D implementation but also on behalf of independent pharmacies and pharmacists. And I think we should look at kind of a liquor control board like approach to pharmaceuticals, put us in control of supply and distribution which is a real issue during the pandemic and take a lot of the middlemen where profit centers are out of the equation. We have about a 6.2 billion, the numbers are changing but about 20% is attributable to pharmacy. I also, you know, I mean there's such a list which happens to all of us around the opioid epidemic. I'm on the board in another way, having peer support as a way to help psychiatric survivors, dealing with suicide prevention. You know, really trying to make sure that we... And the last thing, oh goodness, I guess I'll come back to the topic of seniors which Ginny so kindly brought up at the tail end, okay? Next question is about education and we have a bunch of interest in this. As you know, our towns of Middlesex and East Montpelier were part of a force merger under Act 46. We did not go willingly. A member of the audience asked, since the architect of Act 46 has now stated he was hoodwinked, what is your position on forced school consolidation? And let's force merge this question with the question, what do you see as the best tools to keep our local schools strong? So let's see, we start with Zach on this one. Okay, forced consolidation is a tough one. I do think that with Act 46, there was some... I think there was sort of a little bit being quiet about what the purpose really was and I think there was an attempt to force some really tough decisions from the state level to the local level that I think really wasn't fair and I think that people weren't really aware that forced consolidation was part of the package they were getting. I do think that when we have a system that is funded at the state level, it does make some sense to have the state have some control if there is state level funding. In terms of what it takes to support the schools more generally, there are two big things. One is just the schools are dealing with a lot of workforce challenges and there are a lot of additional burdens. We have some of the workforce issues are the things that are happening everywhere, housing and childcare, but they're also real quality of life concerns for people, particularly as the schools have not been able to hire subs and as teachers are required to sub, administrators are required to sub. Teachers are saying this is the hardest, 20 year teachers are saying this is the hardest year they've ever had. I think that in terms of dealing with additional burdens, because I do want to get to some solutions, a big one is to listen to educators. We've all been to school and so we all think we know how to run a school and this is the perennial problem for schools and so I think we do need to do some getting out of the way. There's also an element where we need to look at all of the burdens that are being placed on school and see it maybe co-locate some services, but say run mental health through the mental healthcare system, don't have that be all on the school and that would help to take some of that burden to let the schools really focus on teaching. Yeah, so I mean when I looked at this question, first of all is thank you teachers. What a couple of years and things changed so much and there may be golden nuggets in there of maybe some hybrid learning opportunities. I looked at the average wage and that's where I'd like to start for teachers. I think it's 1662 an hour in Vermont. That's just above the federal poverty level. It's about 138% of federal poverty level. That's not okay. I mean these are the people that we're charging to help our children learn. So I think wage is a really important thing. Obviously workforce development. I don't, I mean the word forced never really appeals to me. Forced to anything really. So I don't really can't speak to what the person was saying when they felt hoodwinked or not and hoodwinked isn't a good thing either. But I do really respect local control. I think it's really important that decisions get made at the local level, at the school board level, where people and citizens who are engaging in their community have a chance to have input and be heard. So I think that's a characteristic of Vermont government generally and it's one of the places where I think we really have to respect the decisions in that context. I mean there is a whole list and I'm gonna take a stab at a few to the dual enrollment programs and continue to expand those early college programs, work-based learning so that we can really connect skills to needs in the workplace. I think involving the private sector is terribly important. Involving the licensed professions through the office professional regulations. So it can really make sure that there are pathways to employment. You know, in addition to the thanks, I think part of the economic engine that I envision connects all these pieces together. They're not, we're talking about separate areas and answering our questions but they're really interdependent. So I think in order for teachers to, in addition to a wage, you need a paid family medical leave, you need affordable childcare. So again, a system is only as strong as weakest links and we have to really strengthen the links. Thank you. Thanks. So I'll just start by saying, I think schools are the cornerstones of our rural communities and they are essential for giving our children their start in life and building the next generation. They're also key to attracting young professionals and families to our communities. We need to support our schools and I know that they're dealing with major workforce issues. We just, Zach already touched on that and I'm definitely hearing about that. Positions that used to attract hundreds of, you know, a hundred great resumes are now being filled with people who aren't licensed teaching professionals and it's shocking. I was already shocked and the stories I'm hearing are even more shocking. And I think some of that comes from decades of the teaching position and educators in schools getting broader and broader and doing things that used to be done in other ways in our families and our communities around social and emotional development. We need to think about fair compensation for the role of what a teacher provides and we need to honor our pension promises. I think that free meals for K through 12 is something we have to keep looking at how to fund. If it's not done at the federal level, can we do it here ongoing at the state level? It's critically important for learners to have access to the food they need and without stigma of being, you know, those who get school meals. Data demonstrates unequivocal belief that improvements, that results in improvements in students' health and learning outcomes. We also need to be making investments in 21st century learning in infrastructure and the programmatic and curriculum like Theo was talking about. We really need to think about our career centers, our tech schools and think about some of the chemical issues that we're having in schools. PFAS is starting to be found in schools and now EPA just drastically lowered the sort of permissible amount of PFAS in drinking water. We're gonna have infrastructure costs and I wanna see some of our state aid infrastructure funding programs come back that have not been funded for a long time. Thank you. It's a complex, complex topic. You guys are doing great. I'm telling you, lots, lots coming at us and this next one is no easier. We're gonna talk about climate change. An urgent problem, what are your plans for pursuing climate solutions? And Theo, we're gonna start with you. Another small topic. Right. You know, I think, you know, the Climate Action Plan which followed the Global Warming Solutions Act that gives us a target of zero net emissions 2050. That's a high thing to climb. And again, I'm gonna emphasize the local. I'm on our planning commission. I'm part of a team. I think governance is good team building. You know, we were able to pass our enhanced energy plan and I'm really glad Zach's working on it in East Montpelier. In fact, this is also a regional issue but I think it helps and that energy plan highlights different things but it's consistent with the Global Warming Solutions Act around transportation, around energy efficiency, around renewable energy generation, around transportation infrastructure around. So many of the themes are similar but the important thing I think that through the Central Monterey Regional Planning Commission that it affords our towns and other towns in the region about the state is an opportunity to join at the local level and kind of figure out what works in your community to kind of listen, not kind of, listen to those who have a passion for it, those with expertise, those with interests, an inclusive process that can really yield results that are actually gonna be sustainable. So I mean, I think renewable generation is very important but we already have a utility in WEC that is 100% renewable so we don't wanna leave stranded assets out there so maybe we're looking at the Green Mountain Power portfolio but we have to be able to think about moving climate change forward. Fighting climate change and taking it very seriously. Obviously there are equity issues. I just want to see whether there's another piece. I think there are a lot of different pieces. I mean, I think payment for ecosystem services has a lot of promise. When you look whether it's phosphorus runoff or you look at trying to deal with greenhouse gases, incentivizing certain changes in behavior. I think we also need to look at this regionally. Obviously this is a priority in our world and we can't and everything comes tumbling down if we continue to disregard it but I think as far as market forces like the regional greenhouse gas initiative look at somehow that works. There are again many pieces to the solution. So my focus on this will be on implementing the climate action plan. We are required to meet our carbon emission reduction goals by law and if we don't it's gonna become a different problem for the state. The climate action plan outlines numerous pathways to get there. They all need individual consideration and thinking about how to do them equitably in a way that they don't particularly impact certain groups of people in our state. And the climate action plan was put together through a diverse group of stakeholders and a public process and there's a lot of information there to start working on. Implementing that plan will help us equitably transition away from fossil fuels, create a clean energy economy and really transition. It will be extremely costly for Vermont not to do it. Our legislative joint fiscal office just released a report recently that analyzed the climate action plan and found that it will save $6 billion over 30 years for Vermonters, primarily in avoided costs. We can't afford not to develop resilience and adapt to climate change. So I'd be focused on advancing a clean heat standard, electric vehicle infrastructure, public transportation and weatherization at a greater scale, all of which will help create a new kind of economy for Vermont in our region. And as we move to electric heating and transportation we're gonna need to look at modernizing our grid system. Our climate crisis is a global issue. We are not gonna solve it in Vermont alone. We need national solutions and funding, but Vermont has a moral obligation to do what we can and we believe it will be advantageous for us economically to do so. Our state investments were really strong this past year in this regard. We're gonna need to do more, seek out the federal funding, work with our federal delegation and just keep working at it. Thanks. Zach? So the thing I would like to really focus on as we talk about how do we move forward to meet our target is electrification. We have a lot of really great new technologies coming on or really becoming mature now that can both are fantastic environmentally but also can save people a lot of money, I think as Ella was mentioning. They also have some really high upfront costs and I think we need to figure out how to deal with that and to help people deal with that. You take sort of a mid-level electric car, forget the Teslas, but like a Hyundai or a VW, you're looking at something where once you subtract out all the maintenance savings, the fuel savings, the tax credits, you're getting to something that suddenly a lot more people could afford if that was their upfront costs, but of course it's not. You have to pay for all of that on day one. And so I'd like to see us explore how we can help people to solve that problem. I think we also, as we're doing that, we also need to look at some of the infrastructure problems. There are certain things are regional. The state is going to need to work with the rest of New England on some of the larger scale transmission pieces, but there's also local stuff. Who pays for things like upgrading transformers? That can get to be very piecemeal in terms of who gets stuck with the bill. And I think we need to work on that. These are the sorts of things where the state budget is very sensitive to the stock market. And so we have really good years and really bad years and we're not gonna use that up and down to fund the school system, but it does give us opportunities to look at where can we use some one-time money to invest in things like infrastructure that will give us, if we use infrastructure money for the grid, will give us really long-term benefits in terms of electrification. Okay, great. We have lots of interesting questions from our audience here. So we will, I'm gonna combine a couple of them. One of them would like to know, what kind of Democrat are you? Meaning, blue dog Democrat, progressive, we're kind. And I'll combine that with this question. What committees are you interested in serving on? So essentially, what are your priorities as you serve the legislature? So we will start with Ella. Well, being a first-time running for elected office and first-time in this kind of a policymaking, I am still learning about what kind of Democrat exactly I would be. I am pretty sure that I fall pretty strongly in a progressive Democrat camp, but maybe fiscally sensitive and to what it takes to fund things that we wanna do. So yeah, I think that I really, really care about people and individuals, and I'm also passionate about things like climate change and balancing those needs is really important and can't just think about what we wanna accomplish at a big level without thinking about the impact to people in our communities on the ground. Committees you might be interested in. And committees, sure. On the committee front, I can imagine serving on committees that are very much related to what I've been doing for the last 15 years here in Vermont around agriculture, natural resources, economic development, or I could imagine doing something really different. I care a lot about our judicial system. I am really not sure yet, but I will be taking more time to explore that and we get to choose several committees that we're interested in and then get assigned. So yeah, I think that I have a variety of committees where I'd feel very comfortable and be excited to work. I think that sort of in, and in a similar vein to L, I think I share a lot of values with progressives. I see progressives sort of giving people a lot to believe in. And I think one of my early political heroes was Harvey Milk. I don't know if any of you have read the mayor of Castro Street, which goes much more into him as a politician than the movie does. But he talks about the need to give people hope. And I really see that from the progressive side. And so when I came to work on single payer, there was a big piece of that. I think we saw a place cases where a single payer didn't work, wasn't going to work practically. And sort of in over time, you could really see the staff of the Green Mountain Care Board shift from having a lot of people who are very gung-ho about single payer specifically to really trying to figure out what other ways could we use to get everyone covered. The other really form of experience I had on the Green Mountain Care Board, I was there when Vermont Health Connect launched and sort of crashed and then had to be rebuilt. And it wasn't in the context of the policy issues around single payer, Vermont Health Connect was a pretty small deal. But in terms of people's trust in government, it was absolutely enormous. How were we ever gonna tell people we're gonna take over the entire healthcare system when we can't launch a website? That went through a lot of people's minds. And so I have this very strong feeling of if you are a person who believes in using government to do big things, government has to work. And I think that informs a lot of how I approach policy and how I approach programs to try to make sure is this going to work. In terms of committees, I could easily see leadership putting me on healthcare. I would also be interested in human services. Looking out long-term because they never put a first term member on it, possibly appropriations because I think a lot of these things have to, where the money goes is really important to how your priorities are met. I think it's a great question. I mean, I think I'm an inclusive Democrat. I think I'm a Democrat Democrat. I mean, I grew up, I don't wanna date myself here, but I remember my father bringing me to protest the Vietnam War. I, you know, we saw big things like the Civil Rights Act and the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and many of the things that seem to underpin Title IX that underpin our progressive values today have been in my life my whole life. And what I really want us to do, if you look at the platforms between the progressive and the Democrat, and I'm vice chair of the Washington County Democrats, by the way, it's my second go round at that, you know, you look at the platform differences and I think it's only around PAC funding that there's a difference. So I think, you know, I wanna bring people together and I actually matters to me less as much as I'm a Democrat, exactly what your party affiliation is, but how much interest and passion and smarts you bring to solving problems in sustainable ways. As far as committees, I'm very respectful of process. So, and I believe in process. So there's a leadership and you know, I certainly have an interest in natural resources and energy and in healthcare, but frankly, I'm as a lawyer, a general practice lawyer, I'm kinda interested in all things, that lifelong learning is I think a reality that we all live with and so my goal will be to serve leadership where they think it would be useful. Having said that, I think I have a lot to offer in healthcare and because of my environmental health background in natural resources and energy, so yeah, that would be how I'd answer that. Great. Thank you. That was a question they weren't prepared to answer. All right, this next question is about Prop 5, reproductive rights. What is your stand? What do you have to say about it? Zach, we start with you. Okay, so I support Prop 5, I plan to vote for it. I fully expect it to pass. I sincerely hope that the issue is moved by the time any of us take office. The more interesting question for me is what comes after? We're in an environment now where red states are trying to reach beyond their borders to enforce their laws and we're looking at situations where we may be providing a lot of abortion care to out-of-staters. We don't know how much that will be yet. To get to Vermont from most red states, you have to either drive through New York by Air Connect through Chicago or New York or DC. And I don't know if we will have a ton of people because of that, but I think we should be prepared for it. This is an area where a lot of other states are looking at a lot of interesting things. Connecticut in particular has done some very interesting work where they've basically taken the Texas law, which puts a bounty on anyone having an abortion, and reversed it. So if you go to Connecticut to have an abortion, and someone in Texas sues you, you can counter sue them in a Connecticut court. You can take back the $10,000, you can take back the attorney's fees, you can take back all your attorney's fees, both in Texas and in Connecticut. One voter asked me, isn't that kind of a lot of money for the lawyers? But the purpose of the Texas law was never to raise money, it was to prevent abortions from happening, and so the Connecticut law would keep people from enforcing it because of what they would face in Connecticut. That's something that we can do. Connecticut is also looking at what happens if people try to enforce criminal laws here, and so saying the state can't enforce subpoenas related to this. They can't extradite people for this. We really protect both the people coming for care, but also to protect our providers. The one potential risk point would be if Missouri, for example, were to start trying to prosecute Vermont doctors, and so I think we would try to copy some of those elements that are being considered. Dear? Well, almost my wife, I wouldn't cry today, but I gotta tell you, I was, this is, I'm still reeling from the decision over term rows, not, it's not, well that's the first thing. It's something we really have to think about in a fundamental way. Obviously, our personal autonomy, our most private decisions who we'd love, who we choose to marry, whether we use contraception, whether we carry a baby to term, whether we marry across gender or across race, these are immensely private decisions, and the Blackman decision for me was formative as a law student. I thought this was the platform through which a whole part of our civil rights could be strengthened, and this is really going back in time in a very, very serious way. I'm President-elect of the Vermont Public Health Association. I was just at a meeting in DC where this figured largely in our conversations. How do we as red states, blue states rather, help red states who are up against funding streams that are blocking the ability to provide health care? It's just unacceptable. Yeah, so I can't think of a more serious problem to try to rectify. So proud of Vermont. Again, we're leading the way. We have the forethought to pass this privacy provision in two consecutive biennial, which was the requirement in order to get a constitutional amendment, and I think it's gonna pass it in this state. And again, the brave little stay, right, is gonna help lead the way. That's not the solution all for so many women and other folks who can bear children or for all these other issues. So I think it's something that we're gonna stay vigilant on, and if I'm in the State House, we're gonna speak loud and clear to try to figure out ways without getting into the weeds. And some of the things you were talking about, particularly, I think we need to work with our Attorney General's Office. We need to work with our leadership to figure out how can Vermont provide a safe haven? How can Vermont look at its criminal laws or the guards to mail order contraception? And there's the red card. Thank you. So I've been an advocate all my life for women's rights and reproductive liberty. We need to keep fighting at the national level. There is no question. I agree about sort of looking what we can do here, but this is a national fight we've had to keep on. Reproductive rights are basic human rights. US is going in the opposite direction from many countries around the world, bucking all the international trends. 61% of US adults believe that abortion should be legal all or most of the time. And one in four pregnancies end in abortion, just pregnancies end in abortion. Laws that prohibit abortion do not statistically reduce abortion rates at all, anywhere. They only make them unsafe and taboo. So I will join the rest of the folks here. I am so grateful to our Vermont leadership for having the foresight to work over multiple legislative bienniums to get to where we are now, that we have the opportunity to pass Proposition Five in November. Vermont is gonna be a safe haven for at least some folks and maybe a lot. We need to think about how we further support women's health here in Vermont and think about those traveling here for abortions because they're gonna come. States that are interested in protecting reproductive rights are passing laws that look at insurance companies that will cover abortion costs no matter what, providing compensation for folks who travel, expanding which kinds of professionals can do abortions and ensuring states that their state won't extradite individuals or disclose out-of-state medical records. So in addition to what my colleagues have mentioned, there are things that Vermont can do to continue to protect people here and that come here. So I'm interested in exploring that and seeing what else Vermont can do. And working with our delegation and other kinds of nonprofit leaders around the country to keep fighting this at the national level and what's to come because this is not the first right that the Supreme Court is gonna take away. Thank you. We have time for one more question. Only one, the hour has come fast. So you can use this final question as a closing statement. You are also, these guys' websites, these guys' and gals' websites are really inspiring. They show an inspiring number of other interests that we haven't dealt with tonight. So feel free to take this opportunity to address an issue that we haven't yet raised that you would most like to highlight to voters. And we will start with you. Oh my goodness. Well, so two substantive areas that we didn't touch on that I wanna just briefly touch on that are really important to me. And they're on either ends of the temporal spectrum, seniors and youth. I really believe in gendering leadership pathways for youth, involving young people in government, listening to young people, helping them. And I'm young at heart, mind you. So that of four kids. So I think I have some substantive ideas around that but one really inspiring moment was when we had the colleges and the high schools a couple of years ago and the well of the house for global warming issues. The place was packed. I think we had every college or close to every college and every high school represented and just to be in touch with that kind of energy. On the senior side, you know, this is a complicated demographic that we are aging and we shouldn't, I oversaw long-term care and Medicaid eligibility a little bit. Well, I should say Mary Beth McCaffrey did, but we had to, you know, it was really recognized that you know, we're impoverishing our elders when we make them spend down, right? So I went down to impoverishment level. So I really think we began to do ways to be able to exempt certain assets for seniors so that they could gain eligibility like architectural access permission or contracts for care. And I'd like to broaden that to family members. I deal a lot in the courts with guardianship issues and elderly and it's really hard. I think there are other smaller pieces like senior tax deferrals, broadening the senior exemption, you know, intergenerational housing and learning. So like many of these multi-tentacle things there's no simple solution against the aggregate of discrete solutions, building on best practices. Kind of from a closing remark perspective, you know, I think kindness and compassion matters. I think caring about each other and I think exemplified by this great group of candidates. I mean, if democracy isn't anything, it's the conversation that we have to have with one another about what's really going on. And I think unlike any other time in my lifetime anyway, this is serious. We got a Supreme Court that's run amok, you know, we have states that are trying to regulate what we say, what we teach. Just, you know, I think we have a lot of room to lead and demonstrate a level of civility in governments and content-based decision-making driven by outcomes that really exemplify Vermont at its best as a place to live and a place to stay, a place to come back to. So I hope you vote for me. And I certainly appreciate it being here today. And I really, the caliber of the questions and the way you set this up and the kindness of the questions, thank you so much. Thank you, thanks. Oh, and go to my website or talk to me or phone me or pull me aside. Thanks very much. Right, well, the topic, there's a couple topics that I'm gonna really, briefly touch on, childcare. I think childcare is the other, one of the other most pressing issues of this moment. It is crazy, the waiting lists that are several years out, the estimate that we need almost, we need 2,500 additional early childhood educators in our state. And the fact that compensation for early childhood educators ranks and the bottom 2% of all occupations in our country. We're in a crisis with childcare and it's affecting our workforce and our economy and our families. So there's lots of things we can do to keep working on that at the state level. I also wanna address equity and inclusion and just say that I really have a vision of Vermont being an inclusive, welcoming and more diverse place. I'm deeply committed to racial and social and economic justice and this is something that I'd be working on. You know, after the racial justice uprising or during the racial justice uprising after George Floyd was murdered, I heard stories from BIPOC Vermonters that opened my eyes to the amount of hate and harassment and bias that our fellow Vermonters are experiencing in schools and in their communities, including here in Central Vermont. And we have a lot of work to do on that. We have an office of racial equity, a racial equity task force, a human rights commission and a lot of other groups that are really gathering data, looking at institutionalized racism in our state and we have other groups that need our attention. LGBTQIA Vermonters are subject to some of the highest, bias motivated crimes in the country and we have students with disabilities and non-binary students that really need support and we have a lot of work to do there. So those are things that I would be really interested in working on. I would come to this with a lot of experience and leadership and strong communication skills. I build crusting relationships and I have a statewide network already within state agencies and the legislature and I would be honored to be representing our two towns and trying to maintain good connection between what's happening at our local level and our state level and please reach out if you want more information. I'm really enjoying talking to folks all around our two towns. Thank you so much and thanks to Susan and everyone and Elise for organizing. So I was actually also going to talk about childcare for the last piece. I think we need people, we need to be able to tell the story of what's really happening. The childcare center that my kids go to just put out their annual report and information for next year. It is so hard for them to hire staff that they're cutting infant, they had had 14 infant slots, they're covering that to seven. Before the pandemic, they were open 10 and a half hours a day, now it's seven and a half. One of those infant slots costs $18,000 a year and there's a 50-person wait list. I don't know how we bring more people into this state if we say, well, don't know if you gotta have kids if you come. That's pretty scary. And when this breaks down, I mean clearly there are a lot of different people who could take care of the kids, but let's be honest, in a straight couples it's usually the mom. And so we've got a lot of women either cutting their hours or dropping out of the workforce because childcare isn't working. We need to create more slots, we need to make it easier to open home daycares. I mean there is a ton of regulation on home daycares which for a reason, I have a friend who's working on opening their own home daycare and one of the things they said was, if you look at any given regulation, it makes sense, but taken as a whole the burden is just crushing. And so I think one of, actually I've heard this from housing, but I think it applies, one idea for dealing with that regulation is it really needs to be more in the form of technical assistance. It really needs to be in the form of helping people to figure out how to open new childcare rather than handing them a book and say, hope you can read the thing that we understand having dealt with this all our lives. And the reality is it just needs more money. You know, this $18,000 year slot, they're paying a regular teacher 17, 50 an hour, a sub 14, 50 an hour, McDonald's on the Barry Montpelier Road is offering 14. I think in closing I just wanna say thank you to Al and Thea, the fact that I've had to compete with you has made me a much better candidate and it made me go talk to a lot more people which have been good for me. I will certainly be disappointed if I lose, but I won't feel like my values aren't being represented and I think that's important. I think there are a lot of things nationally that feel, not just feel, I think are existential and I don't think this is one of them. I think we can have arguments about who would do the job better but not on values. I certainly promise to keep an open mind and I promise to be humble and acknowledge what I don't know. Thank you. Thank you, candidates, for these fair comments. Thank you. Our candidates are serving our communities just by running for office and thank you everyone for attending and folks at home as well and for becoming more informed voters and for caring about our democracy. Thanks again. Thank you too. Thank you.