 Good evening and welcome. I'm Diane Meyerhoff, host for tonight's candidate forum for state representative in Chittenden County District 4-2 in Hinesburg. Tonight's show is being aired live on Channel 17 and streamed live on the Channel 17 website. We welcome your comments and questions. Please join the conversation at 862-3966. Candidates joining me tonight are the incumbent Bill Lippert, a Democrat, and challenger Sara Toscano, a Republican. Thank you both for coming out tonight. The ground rules for tonight's forum are that the candidates will make opening statements of up to two minutes, and they will answer prepared questions also for two minutes with a possible one-minute rebuttal. We're going to start with opening statements about why the candidates are running and what their priorities are for the two-year term, and we're going to start with Bill. Great. Thank you. Well, I'm pleased to be here and running again for election in Hinesburg, which is really the district that we're looking to represent. We're fortunate that it's one town, except for one tiny little corner of Hinesburg. I'm looking forward to representing the folks of Hinesburg and working for the people of Vermont one more time. My background, which I bring to this race, is my work as a director of a mental health clinic. I worked in Hinesburg as a justice of the peace. I've lived there for 40 years, and so I'm looking forward to bringing my leadership skills to the next two years in the state house. I feel fortunate to have been appointed by four different speakers to leadership positions and currently chair the health care committee. I'm looking forward to continuing my work in building safe and healthy communities, as well as working for civil rights for all Vermonters, as well as continuing to do the work which happens on a regular basis, nonpartisan response to Hinesburg voters and citizens. I've worked for Highway Traffic Safety. I've worked to support suicide prevention. I've worked to strengthen the mental health system. I've worked to end drunken driving on our roads to save lives, to prevent and end domestic and sexual violence. And I believe that these issues are important to the well-being of the safe and healthy communities that we deserve in Vermont. And in the last session, I did support and proudly support the gun safety legislation, which has become an issue and an issue of difference between me and my opponent, and I hope we'll get a chance to talk more about that. I look forward to serving Vermont again and serving the people of Hinesburg. Thank you. Sarah, tell us why you're running. I'm Sarah Toscano. I'm opposing the incumbent, Mr. Lippert. Earlier in the year, during the debate on this proposed gun safety law, I was unable to get a return call from Mr. Lippert. I know he was busy, but made four phone calls during the debate period, and I received no response. In addition, we left further messages with the sergeant of arms, both myself and my husband. We weren't able to get any kind of response, including to an email at the time. So we found that at the time that the representative was not really representing a segment of the population. So I figured I would do my best to fill the gap. So I was able to meet Mr. Lippert on primary day. We talked for a long time. In fact, we talked for five hours. And we got to know each other pretty well. But I think that in some areas, we are definitely going to differ to the point where it's going, you know, we want what is best for Heinsberg, but we may or may not agree on which path to take. That's the only thing. That's all I have to say. Okay. Great. Thank you. We're going to have, we have a series of prepared questions. And I'd like to start off talking about health care. How do we limit health care spending in Vermont, while also remaining one of the healthiest states in the nation? And Sarah, you can start us off. Well, I think the quickest way to limit health care spending is to bring, is to balance out the currently aging population with a, you know, younger families with children, bringing them into Vermont, because of the fact that, pardon me, the elder folks are generating more health costs. So the younger are contributing to the health care pool, you know, and not, and the expenses will balance out. But in addition, there is also that we need to pay full cost of expenses to providers for patients on Medicaid, catamount programs, which will also end the cost shift, which is a major factor in driving up the cost of private insurance. And we need to loosen some regulations that have driven out private insurers. This will make the pool a lot easier to manage and not have the cost of health care go up every single year. Okay. Bill, tell us how do we contain health care costs? Well, Vermont is one of the healthiest states in the nation. We're fortunate in that. We're also rated, we're the second, we have the second lowest rate of uninsured, Vermont is lowest rate of uninsured people in the state. And that's because Vermont has made a commitment to health care reform and health care, to reducing health care costs. One of the, one of the areas that's completely outrageous is the increases in prescription, the cost of prescription drugs. In the last session, our health care committee took several actions to try to address this by increasing the transparency, requiring the prescription drug companies to actually justify the costs of the increases, some of them which are outrageous, some of them increased by 500%. In addition, we passed a bill which was the first in the country which will allow us with the state of Utah to approach the federal government to look at importing prescription drugs from Canada, safe prescription drugs. And we, because Utah is a traditionally red state, we're a blue state, we're approaching the federal government jointly to try to take President Trump up on his campaign promise of reducing the cost of prescription drugs. We are also working very hard at shifting Vermont to a health care system where there is not an incentive to bill for every procedure that takes place. We're moving from fee for service to a quality of care mechanism. And that we believe will actually reduce the cost, will bend the curve. Let's be realistic. I think we're not going to reduce the cost specifically, but we should bend the curve on health care costs. This, in addition, this last, this past session, I'm very pleased to say that we added free ultrasound for breast cancer diagnosis. Every Vermonter is eligible for free breast cancer mammography and screening, but in the past, if you had any kind of unclear diagnosis and you was recommended that you have ultrasound, you were going to have to pay for that yourself. As of this year, every Vermonter should be able to get a diagnosis of mammography screening for free. And this is going to reduce the cost because the costs of actually the kind of interventions, the costly chemotherapy and other interventions, will allow us to offset the costs of paying for the ultrasound as well as the mammograms. Okay. I'm going to stop you there. Sure. And, Sarah, if you'd like another minute, you can have it. I don't think I need it on the topic. Okay. All right. We'll move on. Let's talk about the economy. According to Forbes magazine, Vermont's economic outlook is projected to be the second worst in the U.S. over the next five years, at the same time what income growth is expected to lag behind. Do you agree with this assessment? It is somewhat controversial. What is your plan of action to strengthen Vermont's economic outlook, promote income growth, and generate a sustainable economy? And Bill, you're up first. Okay. Well, first of all, I'm not sure I do. I haven't seen the report, so it's hard to say the specifics. But I would just suggest that many Vermonters are struggling and there's no question about that. But there's also an issue of, is the glass half full or is the glass half empty? And, frankly, I think there's been too much emphasis on the difficulties that Vermont creates barriers that we present in developing our economy. I think that we should be willing to claim the successes that we have and to invest more in both job training as well as, I believe, one of the critical investments we can make to help Vermonters and the economy is to invest in higher education. I have the honor of having been elected by my peers to the Board of Trustees of the Vermont State Colleges System, which actually educates more Vermonters than all the other colleges in Vermont together and, in fact, provides first time for family members going to college. It's estimated that if we have more students graduating from high school than almost any other state in the country, but we have one of the lower rates of students going on to further higher education, this is how we build our economy by giving Vermonters the chance to gain skills, both technical skills as well as professional skills, by being part of the opportunity to go to college, to go to a further technical school, and that is going to actually build our economy, but which requires an investment on the part of us as the legislature and the governor to make that happen. Okay, Sarah, we're talking about the economy. I actually do agree with the report. I read through it pretty extensively. Ethan Allen report I've read in addition show that good paying jobs leaving or reducing their presence in the state from 2013-2014 and continuously since then. It said that the new, in addition, the job openings that were created are not of the same caliber. They're service industry, they're cashiers, they're wait staff, they're housekeepers and hotels, things that are not going to feed families and pay mortgages and things like that. In addition, we are currently the most costly state in the country to manufacture anything, so that's driving manufacturing jobs out. I'm sorry, it's my fire pager. It won't stop. I turned it off, still won't stop. We are at $0.95.9 to manufacture $1 worth of goods. The nationwide average is $83.3, and that has to do with expenses, regulations, therefore expenses incurred in order to comply with regulations, taxes, everything else of that nature just adds up too much to create these good paying jobs, so we need to start holding some of this back in order to strengthen Vermont's economic outlook because every, you know, families are relocating. Currently this last session, the legislature saw fit to pay people $10,000 to move to this state to work from home. That is not the kind of solution that's going to get very far. We need to have the jobs here that draw the families here because currently by 2030, even if Vermonters are willing to devote 18 percent of their adjusted gross income, two-thirds of tax dollars collected will be needed to pay for public education, and all of their major will be required to fund human service programs, and that doesn't require, doesn't count all the other expenses that the state needs to run, and the solution is going to have to be some serious discipline, and that's what I'm here for. Okay, thank you. Let's switch gears yet again. We have a broad topic arrangement here today, lots to talk about. Let's talk about water quality. How do we increase funding to clean up Vermont's lakes and rivers? We certainly heard a lot here about Lake Champlain and algae blooms this summer and it's such. So Sarah, you'll start us off. Okay. Increasing funding to clean up the lakes and rivers was going to be the, what we need to not do is to put all of the burden on farmers. That's where things are going, because the agricultural industry is suffering at the moment and we just can't continue to pile on more regulations that they can't get passed, and so, you know, there's a few solutions like what we need to make some one-time expenditures to improve infrastructure so that the sewage is no longer being backed out into the lake. And there's a few other solutions that I've come up with, including tying some existing farm grants to completion of land stewardship training, especially with new farmers, and actually I've asked a few and they said that wasn't a terrible idea. So in addition, we should, instead of going straight back to taxpayers in our state, is there a whole host of places we can go from the federal government in addition to some competitive funding that, you know, from USDA, Federal Highway Administration, Fish and Wildlife and a list of what they call competitive federal funding to pay for water quality improvements, just depending on mostly has to do with what is being approved. Okay, thank you. Bill, we're talking about water quality, how to improve water quality in lakes and rivers in Vermont. Well, there's no question that Lake Champlain and our rivers are part of what's important in our economy. It's part of what brings tourism to Vermont, and I think we have to be willing to step up and recognize that over time we must be willing to raise some funds to address the issues of water quality. I think that the issue is the numbers I don't have right in front of me at the moment, but it's going to require some many millions of dollars to restore Lake Champlain. And I actually share with Sarah some of the concern that farmers should not be targeted. In fact, I think it's my understanding that much of what we need to do, because there's a lot of work that farmers have done already in terms of meeting the agricultural standards that have been set by the state, setting buffer zones along the waterways on their farms, et cetera. But we also need to recognize that it's the federal government. We are under a directive from the federal government to come up with a solution. And if we do not find a solution of our own, the federal government will step in and direct us to do things. And they are going to direct us to put more money into our municipal sewage plants, which has been determined to, as I understand it, only account for about 4% of the pollution into Lake Champlain and other waterways. So we need to bite the bullet. The legislature has made several different proposals, whether it should be a per parcel cost that is built into the land exchange process when land is purchased or some other mechanism. It's going to cost money. And I think there's agreement that the Treasurer's Office that we needed to put some money aside for this year, we've done that, but there needs to be a longer term commitment. And I'm sorry, but it's not going to just come out of the air. It's going to cost Vermonters some funds to preserve what is a treasure for Vermont, which in fact, if we allow Lake Champlain or other rivers and streams to be degraded as they are with algae blooms, et cetera, it's going to cost us in the long run in terms of our tourist economy. And so this is an investment. This is an investment that we need to make. Okay. Thank you. Sir, do you want to have someone take the pager? Would that be helpful for you? Do you mind? Thank you. So you both mentioned agriculture in this last question about water quality. And what about the dairy farms? We have very few dairy farms left. Is this an important issue for the state? What should be done? And, Bill, you'll start us off. Well, dairy farming has been an essential part of Vermont's both our agriculture, clearly our agricultural success, but dairy farmers are struggling. We need to support, and one of the key issues is that we need to support movement from dairying to other types of farming that allows for a broad range of uses of that land. Keeping the land productive is absolutely essential. Sarah and I were both just recently. We both attended a, I don't know, we call it a workshop, or it was a meeting of local farmers from the area, but it was farmers who are looking at other ways to use the land in a more diversified manner. The future of dairy is controlled in large part. The cost or the reimbursement for dairy is controlled largely at the federal level. So we're not going to be able to intervene in that as directly as we might like in Vermont. But what we can do is to continue to support dairy farmers as they make transition to diversified farming. Right down the road from where I live, the farm used to be a dairy farm. Now it's a pick your own berry farm, and it's just changed hands. It was able to change hands because of the work that the state has done with the Vermont Land Trust and others to allow younger farmers to come into farming without having the opportunity of inheriting it. And so supporting our land trust, supporting diversified farming while advocating for dairy farming as well and not imposing new, unburdened some requirements is part of what we can do to support dairying and to support agriculture generally moving into the future. It's a key part of Vermont. It maintains our landscape again which is part of what is keeping open land in Vermont is a key issue for the state of Vermont. Okay, so talking about agriculture, dairy farming and other kinds of farming. Sarah? Well the dairy industry in Vermont supports 4,000 direct jobs and 12,000 indirect jobs both inside and outside the state. It creates $162 million in wages and $127 million in state tax revenue. This is not something we can really afford to lose and most other crops do not have that type of margin even when the dairy industry is suffering at the moment. And Anson Tebbets has said that it's the longest downturn for quite a while and I regret to see that but I think we need to support anybody who chooses to be a dairy farm and in addition to help them diversify just so they can get through these downturn periods. And in addition I learned a lot of things during that workshop which was quite useful that quite interesting in fact that I think that you know whereas I am for fiscal responsibility and you know cutting where one can I do think that we need to continue to make farms available through VCLT and that we need to help them every chance we can to succeed not just to barely hold on you know dairy farms are part of you know part of the infrastructure here they're also just part of our identity. I can't imagine telling somebody oh yes let's change you over to something completely different and you know the farms that are failing the ones that have less than 200 cows those are the these are the people who care so much about their cattle they cry when they when they lose them so we can't be doing that to people these people are you know treat their of their livestock as family they treat they their family raises their animals you know this is this is a a part of Vermont we cannot lose can I just add that I I mean I think we share a commitment to farming and agriculture in Vermont and in Heinsberg we have the family cow farm which is making raw milk available and so one of the things I helped fight for was to have rational regulations around the sale of raw milk and we needed to encourage the state to allow the sale of raw milk which has a market and that allows them to stay at keep that land in farming we also need to support agritourism which allows Vermonters to share their experience of living and working on a farm with people from out of state who come here there's actually the people people will pay to come and visit farms in Vermont which is a good thing and so I think there's creative ways that that we we've engaged in we need to do more and and I think we will try to do that absolutely in addition I think we do need to loosen some of the the regulations that are simply burdensome and may possibly read possibly just check you know have have people's phosphorus monitored and have you know if it's at a certain level let them be the stewards of their land not necessarily be so super picky that they can't afford to keep up with their new regulations okay thank you both obviously an issue that is close to both of your hearts so I'm glad we had a chance to chat about it let's talk a little bit about opportunity a recent vpr pbs poll found a solid majority of Vermonters support paid family leave and raising the minimum wage both house both passed by both the house and senate and vetoed by the governor this past session they are likely to come back up again how did you or would you vote in the future and sour you're stunning us off this is where we will differ so the the plan that I've read says 0.136 percent of income would fund it on my husband's base pay of 90 000 which would mean he would be paying 122 a year 70 percent of his wages for 12 weeks um becomes 10 500 dollars so I don't really understand exactly how this program could possibly stay solvent for very long at all they're talking about only needing to have contributed for one year the year before which would make him have having contributed less than a tenth of what he'd be taking out um so I don't think I could I could vote for it as it sits because the implication is that the taxpayers are going to be made made to make up the difference you know without having consented to doing so no and you were talking about paid family leave right okay did you also want to address minimum wage absolutely I thought we were doing one separately my fault um well it's nice thought but it also does not work out so well um 15 dollars an hour does not give everyone a raise instead it devalues skilled labor to the point where everyone is then working for minimum wage raising minimum wage also brings out brings people out from under the poverty line which is where they are granted assistance so um it does not mean they're going to be able to afford to pay their rent or feed their children or for daycare but then they're they're made ineligible for subsidy so essentially if they want to work they cannot work if they are um under the line if they were already under the line okay bill we're talking about paid family leave and raising the minimum wage well I voted for both I voted for paid leave family leave and I voted for the minimum wage both of which were vetoed by Governor Scott I do want to also because we're coming short on time I think here to acknowledge that uh Governor Scott also did vote for did pay did sign the gun safety legislation which I think we also have different points of view on and haven't had a chance really to talk about here yet today and so uh in addition to voting for minimum wage and paid family leave I voted for the what I believe are the common sense gun safety laws that Governor Scott signed and that the board of the Champlain Valley Union School District supported as well and I I think our constituents our voters uh should be allowed to understand where we differ on that issue in addition to some of the issues we talked about today so okay sir do you want another minute um on that um sure I'm a second amendment organizer I organized 36 candidates state to run against people who voted for the gun safety laws um the there's absolutely no reason that any of these laws make anybody more safe because the only people who obey laws also do not break them so we are um at a stalemate in that department um so yeah I uh I completely am a pro second amendment and pro article 16 which is actually considering considerably um more lax than the second amendment they um spell spell it out that you know we that a law-abiding citizen is able to own guns period well we are out of time but thank you both I know right when quick I apologize thank you both so much for coming out tonight we appreciate it um and don't forget everyone out there you can vote now at your town or city hall or on election day which is Tuesday November 6th um and of course stay tuned to channel 17 for more election day coverage thanks so much and good night