 First of all, how delightful this is to have this many people. I think we had, what, two or three people last time, and Senator White sends her greetings and Senator Clarkson sends her greetings. I'll be here for your Senate delegation on account of I Live in Bethel. And to get started, I think I got some criticism for an earlier meeting that the legislators talked too much and that people came, they wanted to speak as well as to listen. And so we're going to leave. I've always been suspicious when a politician says, well, I came to listen, not to speak. I think, gee, I guess he didn't prepare. But in this case, I should continue my usual presentation, so thank you. In any case, let's talk about the big issues right now. Before the Senate, and of course we have two separate houses. And we really are more separate than the public realizes. We do not talk to each other a lot. And that's on purpose. That's by design. The Senate is supposed to make its decisions, the House makes its decisions, so that you have two discrete bodies thinking independently. Was Allison here? Oh, great. I thought you, great. Senator Clarkson is here. It's only 740. Yes. Why did we put the calls? I got behind a very long. I know. I know. Look, this is great. Yeah, this is great. As long as we had four of us for a time. So I just, I was just starting, Allison, good morning everybody. And I got the big soft chair, Allison. That's okay. I won't say anything. Good morning. Good morning. The big issues that we have chosen to focus on, of course, every bill that's introduced gets some consideration in committee. At least the question, do we want to take this up? Sometimes the answer is no, and it stays on the board. But every bill gets at least looked at. We are a citizen legislature. We do not have the time or the people to give thorough examination to every proposal. So a lot of, often the decision is that's going to have to wait for another year. We've got other things to do this year. But we are focused on right now, and then the bills go to committees. And the committees tend to focus on their own work at this point in the legislative session. At a certain point, the committees are done with their work and voted bill out, or not. Often does not vote it out with recommended amendments. And then it comes to the floor. And then every senator looks at every issue that's voted to the floor. Right now, or in committees, I serve on natural resources and energy in the morning, and finance in the afternoon, which touches on pretty much everything, because it's about the revenues of the state. So it's the tax committee, but also any bill that's going to require state funding. The Appropriations Committee decides whether or not how much money to give it, but the money's got to come from somewhere, and the Finance Committee looks at that. We also have jurisdictional utilities and overfinancial regulations, so it's a very busy committee. Natural resources and energy, as the title indicates, deals with natural resources and energy. And this year, the issue being global warming and cleaner fuel, the energy is a natural resources issue. And we're dealing in particular, the low number of the bill says something, S5, which is the work of the chair of the committee, Senator Bray, with several co-sponsors of which I am one. And that is a bill to establish a program for shifting off of fossil fuels, which are global warming fuels. I think what was a scientific debate about global warming 30 years ago really has been resolved. And at this point when people say they have doubts about global warming, they've really left the discussion at that point. The discussion now is, what are we going to do about it? And this is a program that distributes basically wholesalers of fossil fuels, global warming fuels, developed with the Public Utilities Commission will actually structure it, will participate in a program in which they can earn credits for efforts for activities to shift their customers off of fossil fuels because of increased weatherization, increased conservation. And that comes first in a pecking order, conservation and weatherization remains number one. But then also, we have to use some kind of fuel to heat our houses. And the S5 is entitled the affordable heat bill. It is a way to get people off at very expensive fossil fuels. It's amazing to me, I get emails sometimes say, well, how are we going to afford this? And of course my answer is, how are we going to afford your plan? And a person says, well, I don't have a plan. I say, yes, you do. No plan is a plan. If you have no plan, then your plan is continuing things as they are. And we can't afford that. And it's made people tell me how much their petroleum costs. And you're going to make it more expensive. Well, you don't need me to do that. It's volatile, petroleum prices, fossil fuel prices are extremely unpredictable and always high and always higher than the clean heat, always much higher. Clean energy is the least expensive to operate. It's expensive to get into. And that's what S5 is aiming at, is making it easier for people to get into the less destructive energy. Pretty much anything we do has some problems. And I was just emailing my son early this morning who's very indignant about what is essentially slave labor in Africa to get cobalt for the batteries. And this is no small thing. But I do not go with the logic that says, you have a problem. You have a solution. There's a problem with the solution. Well, therefore, there's no problem. I don't buy that. I think we have a problem. It's global warming. We have a solution. There are problems with the solutions. That's what we've got to continue to work on. OK, I don't want to talk too much. I'll hand it off. Why don't we let the other senator go? No, no, you're not. It's so deferential. You're next in your local. OK, all right. Fine. So I've gotten into that. For the record, Kirk White. It is a record. Yes, there is the record. Because in all the committees, when the testimony, there's a big sign on the desk that says, state your name. So for the record. So I am in the House, in case for those who don't know. And the House operates differently than the Senate. And we only have one committee that we're appointed to. And I'm on the committee for commerce and economic development, which was the committee I was on my first session last time. And I like to say that there are some committees that can be pretty contentious, different views. But you know, my committee does either really boring things like regulating insurance, or we do things like let's get more money to your town, so it can be more prosperous. And so to a certain extent, no one usually has anything to complain about that. Oh, gee, we gave our town some more money. I hate that. So it's a good committee. And we have a good mix of people. You may know there was a big turnover in the legislature this time. And so our committee of 11 has six new members. And so there's a learning curve training up the new folks. The House as a whole, if somebody comes up with a bill, bill proposal, and the speaker of the House upsides it to the committee of jurisdiction. They send it to the committee that's going to work on it. And it does what they call it, goes on the wall. And it literally is a cork board. And they print out little copies of the name and the number. And it goes on the wall. And then what they'll say is whether or not it's taken off the wall, and that's whether or not you're actually taking the work on it. And I don't know. You said that the committee as a whole decides on your bills, which ones get worked on? Theoretically, it's the chair's choice. But certainly whenever I've chaired a committee, I have made sure that I was in-lead with my committee. In the House, because we have more people. I mean, one committee is, my committee of 11 is a third of the size of the Senate, right? All the decisions are basically the chair, maybe the chair, the vice chair. So they just pick it, and if you're not the chair, then you work on the chair as part of the result. And so you're stepping on your glasses. Oh, thank you. So the House as a whole has really been, so then your background still. So then your committee works on the bill. And if they can come up with an agreement on it, and often the bills change quite a lot in that process. And if they can come to something they agree, then they pass that. And then that gets sent to the floor as a whole. And then it gets presented there, and people will interrogate, and ask questions, and clarify. And then it either gets voted down or prevails, one or the other. So in this case, it's passed by our body, and then it gets passed over to the Senate. And just to remind people, there is a thing that's called crossover. And it's like the 17th of March this year. 18th, something like that. For non-hunting reasons. Yeah, but it has to, yeah. And so all the, from one body, you have to have passed the bills you're going to pass. By then, so that they can go over to the other body for them to work on. If you've missed that crossover deadline, you're basically, you've got those done for that year. There are occasional times, I think, when there's a piece of something where a committee can say, well, I know that we didn't take that up. Sometimes I think it's strategic. They're like, we didn't take that up because we're going to stick it in later. So that kind of works out that way. So anyway, the House as a whole has really, we spent the first couple weeks, we spent the first, well, we spent until February 3rd, working on the Budget Adjustment Act. And that's every two years, every year, you set a budget. And then halfway through the year, you look at the budget and say, how is that, how is what we predicted compared to what's actually happening? And so maybe this project isn't costing as much as we thought, but that one's costing more so it can shift some of that over and make that work. So the Budget Adjustment. And that has been the biggest focus of pretty much all the committees for the month of January. Some of them have been working on a few other things, but that was really a big one. The other, the rest of the bills have come out of the House for the most part, with one exception, which we'll get to, has been things like the process to which burning permits are submitted. Trying to more standardize that, that when the state fire warden sort of lets the local fire wardens know whether or not it's a good time to issue fire permits and stuff like that, burning permits. And then things like the Colchester Fire District doesn't want to exist anymore, so that the way the laws written, they have to be created or uncreated by the legislature, things like that. But the big one is House Bill 89, which we just passed last week. And that's... The Shield Bill. The Shield Bill. And so that's the bill that basically, with the tearing down of Roe v. Wade, now everyone is subject to each other's interstate laws, the Texas laws that made the law that someone in Texas can sue you in Vermont if you help someone get an abortion or whatever. And so it's created kind of this legal... Really, who knows, right? It's a wild west. Everybody can sue each other for whatever, backing across state lines and stuff. So the Shield Bill basically is there to protect Vermonters, Vermont Health Care providers and others in basically saying that if they sue a Vermonter, that Vermonters can't participate in it. We're not going to extradite people from Vermont to Texas to do those kind of things. And it even has some provisions in there that allow Vermonters to, if someone in Texas sues you for $10,000 because your niece from Texas came to Vermont and she got an abortion when she was here, but she stayed at your house, so therefore you're an accessory. And so someone in Texas wants to sue you for $10,000. There's a provision in there that says that Vermont gives you the right to sue the person who sued you for the $10,000 plus expenses. So there's pieces like that in there, but that was one of the big pieces that came out of the legislature as a whole so far. There are some other ones, including a bill that there are people who, they get a divorce or they were a couple and they break up or something like that. And one partner just basically makes the others hell because they've got enough money that they can afford to just keep suing them for everything. And so it's abusive litigation. Doesn't matter, they just sue you for this and then, they say, you get that written off, they sue you for that, and you just keep it going. And so we've also passed the bill to make that not okay. So that's the house as a whole. My committee has been working on a- Sorry, just on the shield bill. My understanding is the shield bill also protects, if we're concerned about protecting our own providers, but we're also concerned about protecting people who come here for care, whether it's a man getting a vasectomy or whether it's a woman getting an abortion, but my understanding is it's designed to protect those coming here as well. Yes. My own committee has been working on a few different things. We have been, and remember, this is commerce and economic development, so some of it is wicked exciting. It's all exciting. But one thing we're working on is what's called earned wage access services. And until a few months ago, I had never heard of this. And now I've had the chair of my committee, actually. And what it is, is there are companies out there that have been providing the service for 10 years, unregulated, and basically they contract with either you or your employer. And let's say you get paid every two weeks, but you have bills that are due that you want to pay in those in between. So you can, actually, they will give you, based on the money you've already earned, the hours you've earned, they will give you, they'll give you that money. And then after you get paid, it comes back out of either your account or your employer goes that way. And so it's not quite like a payday loan. And the earned wage access companies are, they do that, they have that basic service for free. They have all sorts of other people. Like, if you do it the free one, you'll get the money in two to three days. If you want the money today, it's gonna cost you 3%. They also, there's a bunch of little details in that around how that works. And like I said, there's some that do it directly out of your account. There's some that contract with your employer. And there are a number of big employers that actually do this now. But there's also one you can just download the app on your phone and hook it up to your bank account. And where we have real questions there is, so this company now has access to every transaction you ever did. And they have your entire financial history of what you bought through, because it ties right into your bank. So we're trying to create, what kind of guardrails? That was one of those phrases when I became a legislator. I was like, oh, it was talking about guardrails. I'm like, well, what is this? But guardrails and restrictions around that. And the industry themselves want to be regulated because I think they're afraid of their own, that some, right now it's a small number of companies and they've worked hard to put together processes and be respectful and distinguish themselves from payday lenders. And so really trying to establish themselves as legit. And I think they're afraid that somebody's gonna show up one day with an app and make it look bad. And so they want to be regulated and so we're just trying to figure out the best way to do that. We will probably vote that bill out this week. We'll finally have completed that. Another thing we've been working on is there's a organization, the Vermont Employment Growth Incentive Program, VEGY, they call it. And basically it's a program that, it's as it's called, it's Growth Incentive Program. And so what happens is you've got a company and you want to grow and be able to hire new employees. But you don't feel like you can do a sustained enough growth over x period time that the money you're gonna make, right? You're kind of in this bind. If I get, I hire some new employees but then there's gonna be, you know, and I'll have them for a year. But then I don't know if the work that they're gonna give me is gonna make it compensate enough that I can then afford to get more employees and grow the way I want it. Or also I don't know if I can make the capital investments in my property in order to, I need to expand my facilities, like Lawson's Beers, the hit place where they just didn't have enough room and they needed to invest in expanding. And they were pretty certain that if they could expand then they would be able to go from the three employees that had to 50 or more. So you can go to the veggie program and you can go to an exhaustive amount of applications or we've looked at them. And if you're approved, basically what they do is they give you a, at the end of every year, they, you set goals, you say, okay, by the end of, I'm gonna do this for four years. By the end of the first year I will have hired seven new people at the end of the next year I will have hired 10 more people. I didn't have to pick them up, right? And if you hit that goal, and they can tell through the tax department who you're paying taxes on, if you hit that goal, then you actually get some of the money that you paid in back. So you're sort of compensated for growing your business and getting more people working. It's a really, and then- The best example, luckily, is GW Plastics. GW Plastics has taken advantage of this. And, but, so it's due to sunset at the end of this year. And so we're reworking it, we're looking at it. There are some issues that people on my committee have with it in that, in a way, it's a black box. There's a, it's over, you know, it's got a director. Actually, Abby Sherman, a former assistant town manager, is the director of it. And then it is, there's a board that sort of makes the decisions. A pointed board that makes the decisions on those through and with her. And the way they've got it set up, because they're afraid that if they tell people that these companies are giving you their financial information, and that they share too much back that these companies won't want to do it, because proprietary information. But some of us have been making the argument, if I'm going to give you $5 million, I need you to tell me a thing or two about, like what you did other than you, like maybe who you paid all that money to, and how that worked. But right now, it's a black box. You get no information that they don't tell you, it's not public knowledge. How many people have done, we're hot, we know how many people hire, tax department says, but you don't, but they don't tell you who gets paid what, what wages. They're supposed to guarantee that these are wages that are 140% higher than the minimum wage, at the least. And then there's a number of other kinds of things, but basically they share no information. So part of what we're trying to do is to say, we need some accountability. Also the program is because it's a black box, they don't let the auditor, the state auditor, or the house economists look at their books. And that just all sounds really bad to me. And so, I feel like you're handing out millions of dollars, there needs to be some kind of accountability. How do we know it's really a good use of our tax money? And so we've been both listening, oh and the other piece of it is, there are some pieces of it that for certain industries get a little extra money, like green industries and other certain things that they identify we need more of right now. In areas where we need it. In areas where we need it. And then there's also, and there's always the question of do we need to create more jobs at the moment? So the bill we've got that we're working through, one of them, the pieces is to say, when you are at a place like we are right now, where we have many more jobs and we have people to fill them, do we need to pay a company to create more jobs? And are they actually gonna be bringing those in from outside or are we just shuffling the pieces on the board? We're just paying one company to fill for someone else's employees. And so there's that question that's being raised. The other question is that whole accountability piece. And so we're trying to put through, at least the chair is, part of his vision is to allow the auditor and the economist in the Joint Fiscal Office to be able to see the books, to really see the books. They're already sworn to confidentiality because they look at everybody's books. So to allow some more accountability there and to actually ask these companies to allow certain pieces of information to become more public. We heard testimony this last week from Beta Technologies, the Electric Plane Company. We heard from Lawson's Finest Liquids or whatever, something like that, Beer Company. We heard from, so I remember who else? We heard from four different companies and we had heard testimony from the state who said, no, you cannot share the information. These companies will hate that. And then all these companies came and said, well, we don't have a problem with that. Yeah, you're giving us money. We should be able to tell you this stuff. And so we'll see where this goes. There's also a piece of it that right now, the program is officially, it's the veggie board that has, but it's, and officially it's highly partnered with the Agency of Commerce and Community Development. And really, actually, if you listen to testimony, they come in, they give all testimony. Abby gives almost no testimony. They come in, they give all testimony. They're the ones who are promoting it. They're the ones who, for a while, their attorney was the person who was doing it. So again, it's this closed box and no one could see it. So part of what we're talking about is breaking some of that out so that they are, maybe they're under the Department of Planning and Regulations, so that the Agency of Commerce and Community Development can promote the thing, but not then also be the person who runs the thing and is accountable to the thing. If you're your own best cheerleader, there's a temptation to not want to tell people when things aren't going as well as you wished it was. So there's a whole piece around that that our committee is working on. Can I bring up something that you're supposedly since you're on the floor right now? Yeah. This is... Sorry, what is your name? Ellie Griffin, I've met you also. Ellie Griffin, here. Yeah, she's Ellie Griffin. She does? Yes. Well, in the paper, it says the House is working on issues of domestic violence. They are? Yes. And right here in Bethel, we have a domestic violence case. You probably have several. Yeah, don't think about one. I think that we have several. And I know it's hard for people involved in the domestic violence case, especially if you're the victim. Deb here is the victim. And I feel that with Bethel for all, that it should be brought out for people in Bethel to know and to have the story or information from the victim's side. I know it's hard for Deb as a victim. I can't relate. I've never been abused. And I just feel that Bethel is not listening and not willing to listen to the situation and to what the, and I know it's really hard for Deb to be here as a victim because no one in Bethel, except for her neighbors, are listening and supporting Deb. Everybody else is sleeping it under the table. And I'm sorry to say, I know that the other member of this case is here too. The other member of the case is running for select board. So, Ellie, that is a legal, I mean, we are not allowed, I'm Allison Clarkson, one of your senators. I mean, it's a challenge because that is probably a legal case and we aren't able to step into that. That is, we are working on issues of domestic violence. We should not speak personally here, I don't think. And on issues of domestic violence, one of our top, I mean, we address this. We're looking at this with firearm safety with in, there's a healthcare committee in the house is taking up suicide prevention and domestic violence in their healthcare bill that is the firearm safety bill that's coming through the house that will be taking up safe storage because we know that 50% of our homicides by firearm are done in domestic violence cases. So we have lots of domestic violence concerns and you may remember the terrible tragedy in South Royalton with a man who got out of prison in a domestic violence case and killed his wife. I think in these kind of forms, we can't speak personally and you should know that domestic violence is a top priority in the legislature and has been for several years. We figure out different ways. We hope we can be helping it, but we're very aware. Yeah, because I'm greater than I and I just want to make sure that it's about, I ran a childcare center in South Royalton from 1978 to 1992 and I had three domestic violence cases that I had to deal with, but they involved children. So I know, you know, I- And you were in that case a mandatory reporter too. Yes, so. Right. So, you know, but you should know that it's a priority and something we're absolutely continuing to work on. I just wanted to- Thank you. And make sure that we're all on the same page. Yeah. Thank you. Is there something you wanted to say before you- Yeah, what? Oh, no. And so those are the main things. There's a few other exciting things we've got. So we've talked about unemployment insurance. We always talk about unemployment insurance and the status of the trust fund and, you know, so, but those are the big things why committees don't work on. I don't want to take up all the time. I'm just, you know, I'm still a baby legislator, so I'm so excited when I can tell you about what we're doing. I'll pass it on to Allison. She can move on to the next piece here. Hi, everybody. And people in the corner, Allison Clarkson and your other- one of the three state senators, lucky enough to represent Windsor County District and Bethel. And Becca, did you already say that Becca is special day off? And so, I mean, this is one of our challenges and one of the challenges is the day we- it's either offered on and it's generally on. It's generally working in our communities. I serve as the majority leader in the Senate. I also serve as vice chair of Senate Economic Development, Housing and General Affairs, and as-on government operations. And we are in the Senate as Dick has noted. We're working on our top priorities. Our housing, workforce development, so we serve on complementary committees. And so, housing is one of our top priorities. I'll get to that in a sec. Family care, reproductive- further protecting reproductive liberty, which Kirk has already mentioned, but also paid family and even childcare, other big priorities of this session. And, of course, healthcare in a variety of ways. In the- I think we've talked a lot. We've already- we're already- I don't know whether we go to 8.30 or 9. But I think we should open it up. I'm working in economic development, really working on a huge housing bill that is, if you look at it in a big picture, is really designed at breaking down the barriers to development. We've poured money into housing, into new housing, and low-hanging fruit of taking vacant and blighted properties and bringing them back online and developing ADUs. So we've poured a lot of money in the last two years, over $400 million. We've never had that much money to put into housing. But we've been under-building new housing in Vermont since the 80s. And we're not going to fix this overnight. It's been exacerbated by COVID and by a number of refugees moving here and by the development of Airbnb, which have taken away a ton of our long-term housing. Anyway, the point is we're working on this big bill to address some by-right opportunities. We have AD- accessory dwelling units by-right. We're looking at zoning. We're looking at maybe doing duplexes by-right. We're looking at some speeding up or permitting. So we're looking at zoning, permitting, reducing the number of appeals in downtowns and village centers and places served by water and sewer. So we're really trying to develop and promote our housing in our village centers, especially if they're served by water and sewer. And to do smart growth and to further protect our back country and really incent housing in our downtown and village centers. That's the primary push that's going on in economic development in the Senate. We have a lot of other bills. The House is going to start the work on the workforce bill, which I'm working on with your vice chair. And we're working hard on that. In the Senate govops, we're working on trying to get dispatch. Dispatch is a mess and is a real patchwork. And we're trying to get dispatch better organized. We're looking at the sheriff there at some work on qualifications of sheriffs in law enforcement. And we're also looking at the rank choice voting and whether we might consider as a state moving at least one of our elections, maybe the presidential primary to rank choice voting, which is, in many ways, the next step in making our elections a little more democratic with a look. So those are some of the things, but we've been talking, it would be great to hear your questions. I mean, Ellie had a question and I know there are other questions. So we're happy to, I think we're all happy to answer questions and talk about process. My job as majority leader is to really help develop a community in my caucus, in the Senate Democratic Caucus. So I do a lot of that work. And I don't know. Any questions you have for us, we'd love to answer. Not really. Dick, on your left. You mentioned rank choice voting. There is another option that I think is much simpler. And it's multiple choice voting, where you simply take a list, you look at all the candidates, you vote for those that you would support. At the end of the day, the person with the most votes wins. You don't change the ballots, except to say you can vote for all the people that you want. That's sort of rank choice voting. No, it's not rank choice voting. It's not a preference. It's not a preference. You're not ranking people. You're simply saying, there are seven people running for this office. I would vote for the three of you. You each get a vote. And at the end of the day, the person with the most votes wins. It changes one thing on the ballot. And that is vote for the number of people, vote for people that you would support. So if you are in a minority party, you don't have to play games about trying to figure out who you're going to take the vote from, or in the rank choice. You simply vote for your favorite and any other people that you would use. Who could be? It's much simpler, easier to understand. It doesn't change anything when I go into the booth. Okay, thanks. Jane, that's to me a new idea. And I'll reserve judgment. I'll think about it. A sense of information. People who don't know what rank choice voting is. In rank choice voting, you list your number one preference, your number two preference, your number three preference. If somebody gets the majority, if somebody gets the majority of number one preferences, that person won a majority and has been elected. If nobody has a majority, you then start looking at the number two choices. And there are various ways of doing it. In some models, the person who came in last drops out. And just look at that person's number two. I can tell you, having run in many elections, and having voted in 1968, I was angry at Lyndon Johnson and his vice president, Hubert Humphrey, over the war in Vietnam. And I refused to vote for Hubert Humphrey. So I voted for Benjamin Spock. Which means I kept my conscience clear, but I was totally useless and I helped elect Richard Nixon. Okay, so this gives you the, if it was a right choice, I would have had Benjamin Spock number two choice Hubert Humphrey. You see, and when Benjamin Spock got all the 15 votes or something, then they would have taken up his number two choices and that would have gone down. Well, and in a presidential primary, this is important for a number of reasons. Vermonters have embraced early voting, so enthusiastically. The challenge is, as we all know, you could vote by mail six weeks before the election in early March. And you, we all know that between January and early March, a number of people pull out. So you may have put all your eggs in that basket. However, if you have a first, second, third, fourth, and fifth choice, your vote isn't lost and it would be tallied for the people who are remaining. So it's a way of really having your voice heard in a way that just simply voting for one person doesn't. Especially if that person drops out. Also, the other big plus of right choice voting, whether, however, you do it because there are actually several models of how to do it, is that it reduces ranker in elections. And I think this is one of the things that resonates for all of us as we look at the ugliness that has evolved that's cropped up in the last several years in elections. And because no one can afford to be super nasty because you want to be their second choice or their third choice. You want, still, you still want people choosing you and that you may not be their first choice but you might be their second or third choice. So, no one can afford to be to alienate people. You really want to be heard and you want to have people understand what you stand for and you really want to be listed as their first, second, and third choice. So I think those are some of the reasons that people are enthusiastic about rank choice voting. What it does is it lets people vote their conscience without wasting the vote. That's really what it is. Great point. I'd like everybody up in Montpellier to vote their conscience and not worry about the fact that there are other senators. I don't like you to vote for gun control. I want to vote for it. That's my conscience. I'm going to do it. If I don't get elected next time, so be it. I voted the way I feel. So, but I've got a lot more questions. Go for it, Dave. S5. Read S5 and S6 pretty carefully several times and I'm concerned about both of them. S5, which is the affordable that's what it's called but has nothing to do with affordability. Because what I consider you've done is what you're trying to do is have the horse in front of the cart. There's electric this, electric that, electric all these electric things you're going to do but what I say to my electric people that want me to believe in electricity because I'm an electrician. I want everybody to have electric car. I want everybody to have electric pump. I want because you know what's going to happen? This state will shut down almost instantly. We do not have the infrastructure to give everybody electric car. Everybody have electric heat pump, electric water heater, electric heaters. We do not have the infrastructure for that. So let's instead of putting out a million dollars for new people to run this it was eight hundred dollars for two people and another two hundred million for another two people two hundred thousand. So it's a million dollars that you guys are planning on in this bill in additional money that we got to come up with to run this affordable heat act. We're not putting any money into utilities to increase our capability to provide this service to everyone. Big deal as far as I'm concerned. It's a huge deal. The other thing that I got in there was the advanced wood heating is part of the thing that the suppliers can do they're only ten or twelve things that they're asked to do. There's no definition in the bill anywhere. What is advanced wood heating? There's nothing in there. I've read it several times. There's nothing about what. Is that not in the definition? No, it probably should be. It is a definition. It's not in S5. We know what we're discussing there. I'll take that up tomorrow because it should be in the definition. Then we talk about credits in this bill. You talk about credits for the suppliers or the wholesalers or I don't know what level that's going to work at but there's no there's nothing no way you talk about penalties. Well these credits if not met we create a penalty to use the knees in here because we can't afford to put up solar power or whatever it takes to get into clean heat. So the penalty will be, okay I have to keep buying oil. Now my supplier because he doesn't he's got to have oil for me and a lot of other folks he doesn't have the credits. So that means there's a penalty clause which will drive up the cost of fuel and I understand the theory okay we get the cost so it's prohibitive then you will buy electric. But I'm not sure that's a really I don't think you should do that to everybody is to say we're going to drive you through your wallet to electric. We don't have to do that. They're being driven through their wallet by the petroleum industry by the fossil fuels industry. The the expense of dirty energy is something that people can't afford. And this is not coercive. The bill is intended to help people make the transition. And as far as your comment about the infrastructure being ready much to the frustration of global warming activists the target date here we have several well it's not targeted because it's already now it's law it's not goals it's legal requirements 2030 is where certain things have to have but the thing and then the real goal is 2050 and I've said well I can make all sorts of promises about that because I'm not going to be here unless I live to 103 but well some people do they're usually not heavy we have testimony that the infrastructure the electrical infrastructure will be there when it's needed but what was here you made another point you made about the definitions and I think that oh yeah the biofuels we are getting a lot of pressure from environmentalists not to include biofuels because it's not a good source of energy it's not as horrible source of energy less bad but we're also getting testimony yeah we're getting testimony but it really can't be done without biofuels that if you're looking at just electricity and conservation the fact is in Vermont even if we use heat pumps for example people say to me well heat pumps won't work in Vermont they do work in fact they do yeah they work but they don't work adequately when it's 40 below to want some kind of backup and the argument then is made because there are really three positions here the people who are saying we shouldn't be doing this at all stick with the dirty fuels and then there are people who are saying well don't use any biofuels the argument is made by I think what's emerging as the prevailing argument is the only thing that will actually work includes biofuels and you know the old adage never let the perfect be the enemy of the good in this case don't let the perfect be the enemy of the not quite so horrible but the thing is that the program would not be focused on biofuels 20 years ago we pledged as a state to limit ourselves to renewables and we counted Hydro-Quebec as a renewable as an environmentally problematic source and you know don't you think it's fair to say there is no energy source that doesn't have a problem yeah I mean cobalt mining with what appears to be child slave labor in the Republic of Congo that's no small thing just the amount of fires during this last hole-sat in the country batteries in electric cars I would hope that would scare somebody because those fires are not a little campfire those are serious fires I mean they had they the airline industry had they do have provision now so you can take your little lithium batteries with you on the plane right in a protective carrier and whatnot but they had previously banned all lithium ion batteries on airplanes because of fires so and lithium you don't go with an electric prod and right on the ground you go get this huge diesel or whatever powered loader to move it out of the ground and process it on a big diesel truck to a big diesel processing place to get the lithium so you can put it in your electric battery I mean I'd like people to talk about those things we talked about electric well how did you get that electric how did you get that electric I don't think anyone is ignoring that and batteries are a storage unit they're not electricity batteries are only a storage unit that's right it's got to be generated someway in the first place no I those discussions are in fact happening the really underlying issue is there are too many people on the planet and we have very high standards of comfort you and you well not no but limiting how many more kids we have and that's an area that people don't want to get into so what we're looking at is what do we do with the world as we find it and that's for many people certainly for me getting into politics having once been the young man voted for Dr. Spock for president if I'm going to do anything useful here I'm going to get involved politically automatically you make a change you're saying I'm going to deal with the world as I find it and you need a taste for very imperfect legislation and this is highly imperfect it is but it is addressing a crisis that we face and we face it with our economy the global warming is going to decimate Vermont's economy as it is at the moment our forest industries are going to be affected our mapling, our agriculture our tourism it's already having a huge impact as we know on our ski industry and on the invasive bugs that are able to come here and thrive we people have ignored for too long the impacts of our burning fossil fuels need to reign it in and it's going to be a costly transition there's no question but we've had a hundred years of living and burning fossil fuels in a sort of completely thoughtless way and for many of those years our major corporations and scientists have known the impact that was coming our way and some of them did nothing about it and some of them, as Bill McKibbin has been our own Vermont's Bill McKibbin has been a prophet crying in the wilderness and finally we're beginning to see the effects and finally we're beginning to people are beginning to be really worried and you're right Dave, this is the best we can do at the moment to transition in a thoughtful, affordable way I would argue with you, this is designed to make it more affordable for Vermonters long term I just got the $930 fuel bill I mean, for a bill that would normally be about $500 it's Vermonters cannot afford the fuel they're using now and I live in a Hummer, I live in a 19th century house that has never been weatherized and there's lots of help and we're designing lots of help this is the best and most thoughtful way we are working on now to transition Vermonters to a cleaner heat standard and that's what we're doing and it's going to need tinkering along the way just like everything we do, we're only there for four and a half months that's why we have the Vermont Climate Council that's there full time this is their recommendation we've worked on it, we've improved it it's coming so I think this is the best work at the moment that we can do to help thoughtfully and affordably transition Vermonters off a fuel source that's killing us so I think that's where we are and I think we're trying to do the best job we can do there are huge trade-offs in the equation of trying to actually reduce global warming not just in Vermont but the whole world because you have to look at the equation of how much greenhouse gases are released in the extraction of natural resources to make the batteries or making biofuels or making palm oil plantations somewhere else in the world so we can do things that make us feel good because we can look around us and say yes now we're using less fossil fuels here in Vermont but what's the trade-off somewhere else in the country or in the world or even somewhere else in the state so I'm not saying I have the answers but I can understand what he's saying and what people at 350 Vermont are saying too we could be making things a lot harder for people on another continent and it's fine because it's out of sight we don't see it but it's still affecting them as we do our transition so that has to be taken into account to some degree of course coming down on a final decision that is not exactly what everyone wants does not mean we didn't take it into account the proposition is being made to me and I'm not sure I'd buy it that we cannot get off petroleum without reliance on some biofuels take that out and you don't have an alternative take the biofuels out of the equation and the right wing guys are saying well everyone's going to freeze in the dark what actually happened that is everybody freezing in the dark they need some kind of energy I agree with you because I have a wood stove and I'm making the transition I've got a heat pump or whatever but there's no way in hell I'm going to be able to get my house without some wood but I've reduced my wood but the presence of your wood stove and several cords in the shed expedites the use of the pump of the heat pump is coming up we're hoping to we're doing markup actually start changing the words getting the final version and then voting on it the chair of natural resources wants to vote it out this week wants us to complete markup this week so when I say I'm articulating the argument that's been made and I say I'm not convinced I'm going to have to make a decision this week as to whether I vote for this bill or not you were talking about Allison was talking about the force the industry is going to be hurt if we don't do something it's just one of the industries impacted by global warming I own 30 acres of land I heat my house's wood wood comes off my property I'm in current use I had a forester come look at my property when we started he came for his 10 year inspection he says oh my god you've improved this land so much what have you done I've taken the wood out to keep myself warm I've taken the proper wood out so I've improved my forest land with heating my home so if it was done well obviously my forester thinks I've done a good job maybe we can we can improve the forestry industry the trouble is that the global warming also has brought in various invasive species that undermine forest health insect species plant species as well and there are certain species of trees that are suited to particular environments and as the environment changes they find themselves essentially exiled you notice you just drive north in Vermont and you see fewer hardwoods the further north you get and more conifers now as the warm weather moves up it might get a little warm for some of those conifers it takes a long time it's not as though maybe critters can do that I never saw an opossum in Vermont and now you have them all the time so they can just say well it's getting kind of warm here let's move up to Vermont trees don't do that that takes decades I've been on this property for decades and we've logged several times and that's my forester telling that's kind of natural progression you log maple chances are maple is not going to come back you might come back with a peach or a birch or something like that then you might have hemlock and spruce come in and as you log that the maple might come back so there is a rotation say it for over a longer period of time which I'm 68 years old I've been on this property for 63 so I've seen this happen so people tell me that I'm not saying you're wrong what I'm trying to say is there's another idea of what's happening no, no forests do evolve they do mature and they go through to the next chapter but all I'm saying is that whatever the bio arrangement is it's specific to the climate it's in and as the climate is changing it means that the environment is less suitable towards there and we really are seeing that I mean that's there's new stressors who knows what the future will bring I mean I think the moose the destination of the moose with the ticks it's because the winters are shorter and that's good for the ticks so you got more healthy and strong aggressive ticks also you know there's all kinds of issues now with global warming and forest management that we never even thought about 50 years ago because now we in the northeast have this huge carbon sink it's called the Northeast Deciduous Forest and we have to start now looking at that as a resource not just for sustainable harvesting of wood for fire we got to have those forest products we can't do without them but at the same time we need to be using those forest blocks to get rid of the carbon that's in the air it's the best resource we have the cheapest, absolute cheapest way a whole new appreciation for how our forests work for us I'm not sure what I've done and I'm going to use that crappy old pine that we took out but I've got deciduous trees coming back well managed forests are incredibly important to this state and to the future of this world there's no question and that's why I think we can't begin to look at prohibiting biofuels because too many people lots of people heat by wood and we can make wood cleaner, we can make better filters we can do all sorts of things to improve the way we burn wood and we have in the last 20 years but it is an essential part of heating our homes particularly here in the northeast Dick knows where I stand as a member of 350 Vermont but I want to defend S5 on one thing and that is that the use of those biofuels involves a serious look at not just the amount of carbon that is produced when that fuel is burned but on the production transportation all of the inputs that go into it Dave so you were talking about that diesel that diesel all of those things are factored in to the the amount of credit that a particular biofuel will receive and so I that particular piece I don't think it is complete because there are other things that it doesn't include but I think I want to give credit to thinking about all of the pieces that go into calculating the quote value of a particular biofuel that's important my concern and Dick knows this is that it does not allow for consideration of the people who live in or near the production of that fuel and whether or not they are being the child labor there's an equity piece that some have argued for example that's outside of Vermont we don't have any jurisdiction we can't do anything my argument is oh yes we can we can decide how much the value of that carbon of that unit of fuel is for Vermonters and we can apply a reasonable standard that says no this is coming off of indigenous land et cetera et cetera but that has those are all things that are under consideration and I'm okay with that I understand that I don't ever hear anybody talking about the you're going to replace that diesel skitter with this humongous diesel loader who's digging up the earth well that diesel skitter is going out and retrieving and using renewable sources that lithium I seriously doubt you're ever going to see any new lithium or cobalt once we deplete that it's gone I agree with the fact about the oil thing but when you start getting into biofuels managed correctly which I'm for biofuels managed correctly yet that is an endless supply of course the thing is the biofuels do contribute carbon to the to the atmosphere some of them less but they do contribute carbon we have ocean plants that create electricity yeah my pillar is very dependent no one has said we're trying to manage a very very imperfect situation no one has said this bill is perfect I guess I'd like to see you know I could see that bill being 150 pages not that I want to maybe by the time it makes it through the legislation there's so many things that I'm talking about that I didn't see talked about in the bill that's part of this picture they're often they're in there implicitly in that much of this has to do with process for developing the program further it locks being handed off to the public utilities commission Scott wanted to in relation rather than argue about the details of stuff I'd like to talk about education if we educate our young people then they're the ones that are going to actually have to implement what we're all here talking about and I disagree with with Dick about too many people I don't think we have too many old people and we need to put our time and effort into the young people I don't think schools are the place to do it and I'd like to learn more about our school system our school system seems to be a catch-all for feeding kids mental health all of those sort of things and we don't seem to be be funding that and the funding ends up in the small towns I did see an article about helping changing the CLA so that schools that have a higher poverty level will get a little bit more I'd like to talk about that's the weighting study we passed last year those type of things I think education is the key to answering all of these questions sooner or later and I think we aren't putting as much effort into that and again we seem to be now in charge of mental health the whole nine yards we throw that in there and then we don't fund that but we need to educate our people whether it's about money whether it's about civics all of these sort of things we're fighting about things that whatever we need to be working on educating our young people so they're the ones that are going to be affected by what we do absolutely and none of us serve on education but I would say that there are many education issues that are top priorities in the legislature this year as you mentioned universal meals, mental health this is where kids spend the vast majority of their time and teachers so remember it's a school community it's not just the kids and for a host of reasons mental health is a huge issue that our teachers and our students are all suffering from real challenges to their mental health and how we fund that is a question mark it's not being well funded at the moment universal meals is something that we're looking at and figuring out how to fund it is a big question but there is no question the data shows that if kids eat better all kids, no matter what their income if kids eat better they perform better they pay better attention and they do better work reducing the stigma in the lunch line about who pays and who doesn't pay that's a piece of it and I bet we're bright we can figure that out the biggest issue I think that we're going to face this year is actually directly related to the Supreme Court decision this summer about Maine, the Macon decision and that is going to call into question and the equity issue between towns the tuition and towns that don't and how we're going to protect our public schools quite frankly because right now the Macon decision says that all our public dollars could go to religious parochial schools and how the legislature deals with that is I think going to be one thing you really want to look at yes we're going to look at the CLA and try to figure out the impact of all these houses at much too high prices and we'll figure that out but I think the Macon decision is going to be the thorniest thing we deal with this year and it actually may be in the next two years because it is an equity issue it is a public a public resource and a public priority and a huge public value the foundation of our democracy in many ways is based on access to education and providing an equitable and hopefully terrific education for our 20 as you say for our next generation so I think this is going to be actually one of the thorniest things we deal with this year is what we do about public dollars and whether it stays in public schools or whether it continues to go out into tuition all over the place so I think that's Dick and Kurt may have some thoughts on this but I think this is going to be our biggest challenge this year question the reason I'm here is probably you know when you saw me coming in yeah first of all I want to thank Dick for the advices and help to provide me over the last eight years and you what's your name Kurt Kurt about nursing Heidi is in the nursing home for the last eight months wonderful place but I see it every day that I go there new faces shortage on help so I did my own little research talk to about 12 LNA's and nurses down there you know what my number one answer to them was when I asked them I showed them the thing you sent me Kurt most people ought to know more they should come and see how we spend our days in the year working and they meant and they don't cut any effort from their work to take care of the patients or residents down there but they all emphasize do they come and see what it takes to take care of a person no I have to screw that I know that the health care committee went and visited care facilities last year as they were doing the workforce bill as they were doing their part of the workforce bill they actually did they obviously didn't visit all of them they did visit the point they were trying to make is there's a lot more than visit a place and look around all these nurses extra hair hanging out of their head see what they are doing 24-7 you know and they are all professional they do not want to deny any care to the people there and I see that the care Heidi is receiving where she is how is the care knit fantastic where is she Cedar Hill and they are very short of health they have a couple of Congolese nurses and they are the happiest to work in there because they keep on telling me my goodness are you giving all these things to the people here back in our country you know so that's one and the other thing when you send me the paper Kirk we also gave nursing schools and programs money to expand their programs to feed more students and I asked many of them there I said do you know anything about these things they had no freaking clue what's going on how do you make people know okay we passed this rule or whatever this opportunity how do they know about those opportunities that's the word there is outreach and you hear the word outreach a lot not on this but on a lot of different issues my wife Cindy is very active in the food shelf and they started doing outreach just with the suspicion the seat of the pants suspicion that there were people with food problems in Bethel who they didn't know about and who did not know about the food shelf and just outreach and I'm not happy that there are so many more people going to the food shelf but those people probably needed it when they weren't gone and it's just that kind of same thing with nursing home staff pretty much anything we make a limit on the use of force by the police I'm not sure that we do a good enough job of making sure the police know now you can't do that anymore well this is helpful because we're revisiting we're doing workforce this year one of our top priorities and we need to find out of the opportunities we've passed how do people know about them who's taking advantage of them we have expanded the opportunity for tuition reimbursement for scholarship money for more career and technical education opportunities so for 10th, 11th and 12th graders to get into LNA nursing so we have provided a lot of opportunities how are we doing on that you're a good reminder to us as we go into this and how are kids knowing about it hopefully kids who are interested are being encouraged at high school and in their middle school to start thinking about these career opportunities and and hopefully the schools that are I know that the Vermont technical college VTC and CCV are doing quite a bit of outreach into the community about these opportunities so but it's a good reminder for us to check and say okay we passed these great opportunities and we put a ton of money into them what are the numbers like who's taking advantage of them where is the money gone and what are the results yes and we will be asking those questions as we take up the workforce bill so thank you another thing that they said I kept on saying that 50 years ago to myself what if you end up in a nursing home what if you do the same thing what would you expect to receive when you're down there think of that make a visit to any nursing home don't make any announcement I'm coming in you know play the band and everything playing a band for us to lunch it so they said a lot more housing you want to bring more nurses here where are you going to put them well UVM as you may or may not know is building a whole new piece of housing DHMC is building more housing Mount of Scotney is thinking about it UDM could be another state but DHMC is definitely their housing goodbye good to see you it is a huge problem yep and they all are interrelated and whatever we discuss here this morning there's absolutely nothing wrong to my opinion but housing nursing and you hear on TV the nurses are the front line nurses and doctors exactly and we need housing for them because we have too many come and then they can't find housing so they don't take the jobs and then on the other hand you need so many permits to build and you've got to do this and you've got to do that we're working on that how much longer hopefully you'll see something by crossover on what at least the senate is proposing on that early March that would be a huge improvement in the problems we are we've done this already just to plot for this area though we do the RGCC in Randolph which our South Royalton kids South Royalton Bethel kids go to I think it was about five or six years ago have instituted and they actually have a fairly good L&A program they have a terrific L&A program which is tied to the BTC program which can leave the high school environment go to the technical center and then if they like it they can just go up the road six miles and there they go and there the moment helps them feel comfortable at the college we have, we're talking about education we have a great place for nursing opportunity one of the barriers have been people who taught nurses because we didn't have enough nurse educators it wasn't financially rewarding enough for them to leave nursing profession and actually come and teach and so we've also addressed that and spent more money helping finance the teachers taking a break from nursing and coming to teach nursing we're addressing that, we're clear on those barriers and we just need to keep helping finance this until we can get a more stable workforce so that Heidi can be taken care of and Dave I want it, it's very gratifying to kind of imagine over there there's no question but give them a little help we're working, we're trying it's just like you guys being up there in Montpellier and you stay there 24 hours a day no breaks and do the best you can we are how long do you last up there oh I'm about 32 years no no no 24 7 24 7, no breaks oh you're comparing it to nursing that's right see how you feel I'm not saying you personally Dave I want to say it's gratifying to hear you speak well of dual enrollment that was the work of the education committee when I chaired it and it's nice to get a little feedback about something when that was really coming around it's like why not that was the thing why not the other thing is the importance of the trades I'm one of three brothers and one sister and four of us one of my brothers and my sister and I are all college graduates one brother just was not a student he was bright but he was not a student and he became interestingly an electrician and at one time or another each of my brother's college educated siblings has gone to him for a loan and he's well read because he always said education is not just for the purpose of earning a lot of money it's supposedly you become an educated person my brother is a very educated person he's self-taught has occasionally a surprising gap in his knowledge because no one was guiding but he is well read well traveled and a sophisticated intellect and basically dropped out of 8th grade one more thing about Kirk I really like what you did report that's what we're doing that your views known to your talents and everything that means a lot I'm sure it means a lot to me I don't know how many others are like that but and whatever I said about you you would still stay here I'll be sticking to that at least what Kirk is doing is me a choice to do I want to know what he's doing I know where I can go and find out I don't have time to go to Montpelier I'm trying to get retired I might have later but through my career I didn't have time to go to Montpelier and listen you got a one o'clock testimony time well I'm kind of busy making money so I can I can read the letters and the info and I've gone to this for a lot of what's going on up there that's why I have I've only got half of what I was going to talk to you about but at least I was surprised at some of the things I read I mean unfortunately I'm looking for failures because I want to stop that I mean just quickly some of the things that there's in S4 they want to pass a bill it's already in law why are you wasting ink what it's illegal to buy a gun for a felon you want to put that in a bill that's already a law well it's in a draft but why is it even there it is a law and you don't have to make another law right and that will come out in the committee process that's what you will get testimony I mean the draft is we're a citizen legislature we hire lawyers to actually do the drafting although I have written a couple of my own bills over the years you see a bill introduced by Senator McCormick I wrote the bill in the vernacular and gave it to the drafts person and said you know write me up a bill and the drafts person with a ton of drafting requests well have made a mistake that's why we have a committee process it's in there like six places well or maybe there's maybe there's some difference between the present law and what's being achieved there I'm not from I haven't dealt with that bill I'm not on the committee of jurisdiction so I can't speak to the particulars but in general the process is one of refining and looking for things that probably shouldn't be there and then we take them out I have a thing about I have recently decided that I dislike I was gonna say hate but no I dislike all politicians because because all politicians are supposed to be my representative yeah and maybe not you two may fall outside that but there's an awful lot of politicians out there who are self-serving you can agree or disagree and my wife said don't say that but I said it anyway well I'll tell you we had several people who's not to run for reelection in this last election because they just said I can't afford to keep being in the legislature there's better money to be made pretty much in any place else you know this is I find the work I get suspicious anytime anyone says something that even hints at altruism but I really do want to serve I want to make a better world also for my selfish reasons I find the work interesting it's very very interesting and selfishly I like to be engaged in something that really bites my mind I do not do this for the money self-serving has nothing to do with money it has to do in my opinion it has to do with I'm very powerful person I can do things and make things happen you can't well again Vermont with its 660,000 people and its little legislature I don't I think anyone in the Vermont legislature who thinks they're powerful is fooling themselves it's a very small level of power okay it really is shut my mouth if I don't speak my mind but also you know if you talk about that we're representatives and someone will say if you if I disagree with something you're doing then you're not representing me and doesn't work that way I represent the people of Windsor County and they speak with many different voices they speak with contradictory voices okay that was part of what I had problem that's four of us the fact that there was some about protecting children I'm sorry to keep going on I'm just kind of retired so I got a few extra minutes well I'm not quite there yet you know electronically we're well connected in S4 you're talking about protection of children and stuff like that a lot and then you throw in some firearm stuff and I'm thinking about children let's not put something else in there and maybe there's a couple things in there I'll go with children but the fact that you're not going to allow anyone to sell any gun that has a threaded barrel so they can put on a suppressor I mean that's and then you talk specifically about suppressors and silencers tell me the difference do you know the difference between a suppressor and a silencer me I don't think anybody that wrote that had any idea because there's pretty much that much difference between a suppressor and a silencer because there's no such thing as a silencer it is a suppressor it reduces the sound it creates but doesn't silence okay I mean those are the kinds of insets that would come out in the legislative process anyway we make the news a legislator makes the news when it gets up in the chamber and wax is eloquent that's not usually what happens when I say most of our time I mean 95% of our time is spent in committee rooms you know going over the texts of bills or taking testimony mainly what we do is listen to people to give testimony and what you just said is the kind of testimony that bill will likely get from someone I think this thing goes till when it went it went and we talked about how much, how prosperous being a legislator is which is why I have to go to my day job now so but but if Dick wants to talk to you I'm going to wrap another cup of coffee I want to say one thing I'm very sorry I had no idea LA was going to speak I figured that and I felt for you well I'm sorry my daughter is overworked at a place that cannot find people because they cannot find childcare that's also an issue I'm just going to say that that's another one of those impediments to growing the work has Allison left Allison is the Vice Chair of the Economic Development Committee which has and she serves on the Government Operations Committee and those are the two committees that are doing child care we have a child care bill but I just want to throw that to the pile of insolvable problems that are facing one of the saving graces for Gifford that they have a good child education down the ladder which could be double edged sword now we have three and four year olds in our education system so they now no longer we need childcare for those three and four year olds it's going to undermine the private child care center the issue has come up that's part of the discussion I have a grandson ten years old he and I were talking about shit that I didn't see until I was a junior high school so something's going right I mean he goes to school and Randolph and he's like whoa where does that come in from? there's an intellectual sophistication just kind of on that subject of child care and Friday was an early release so the teachers could do their thing it was probably I don't know the number but there was an awful lot of kids missing because where are the kids going to do what the half day they've got it scheduled so when the kids are in school they can work and do all that and work their schedule but in the half day now they've either got to take the whole day off from school work or they're using school time because of a half day school our system was of course created when you always had one parent usually the mother was home and so you have a half day the kids had some place to go and our society is no longer that we're dealing with the unions and I realize that teachers need more training I understand all of that that sort of stuff but bottom line focus on our schools that's the answer a lot of child care is going on to the schools we've got third grade or three year olds in school now that's another whole level expense a whole lot more people with more education and it gets full not in the local towns and especially poor towns it's tough going over to school and these free meals are not free say nothing about where the money comes from the state the amount of time it takes to get the paperwork to the state to get reimbursed for the money it's a mind boggling conundrum I think that actually I don't want to make that I have to go part is because a lot of that is federal money but I'm not I understand that's federal money but just paperwork to separate what's federal money what states money and people aren't applying for free and reduced because they're all getting free anyway so just use the numbers of which ones qualify I mean the school in order to get reduced internet you have to go to school if you're free and reduced meals you can get reduced internet for for your students again it's another thing that the school secretary has got to keep track of all this stuff so somebody wants easy fiber they've got to go to the school and find out if they qualify for the free and reduced meals to see if they qualify for again government is notoriously bureaucratic it drives you crazy the one excuse is to say it's not the government's money it's the people's money and they're entitled to an accounting and it gets crazy and frustrating we need less old vehicle and more young people that's what I say