 Everyone, my name is Akon Agwet and I'm the moderator for Bremen Senate Seat Primary for Chinatown County. Here in the studio or virtually are the candidates, the Democratic Party primary candidates for the Chinatown County Senate. So I will be moderating this forum. The questions have already been preferred ahead of time and it will be my choosing which question to ask in what order is up to me to do that. And we may go through all the questions or maybe some of the question depending on how long the candidates spend their time answering the questions. We have about 45 minutes or so for this conversation or one hour and 15 minutes. I don't know exactly how long it will go but for that matter I will begin. Here in the studio are Senator Thomas Chinanan right there. Senator Ginny Lyons right there. Steve May right there. And Luis Merge right there. And Senator Kecha Ramins-Daw. The rules of the games are very simple. 1.5 minutes or less to answer questions and 30 seconds to revert a question ask of you. And so without further ado I will go with the first question which is the opening statement. It goes like this. What will be different for the people of your district or the state as a whole because you have been elected to this position and what qualifies you to make those changes to happen. For the in common they will answer it based on their experience for the challenges. They will answer it based on what they will bring to the table. So I will go by the lease. Senator Chinanan you have the floor 1.5 minutes. Thank you very much and thank you CCTV for putting this on. It's great to be here and I think it's important for the voters to have these opportunities to hear from us. I have some prepared remarks for this opening statement but I will try not to be too scripted. So I am running for reelection to answer this question because I see more work to do in the state house to make Vermont safer, more affordable and more socially just. I am running for reelection because I want to serve the state I grew up in and the community I love with transparency, commitment, optimism, stability and determination. I have always been a volunteer. In high school I was the president of a key club. In college I was a resident assistant. After college I worked on political campaigns like Howard Dean's presidential run. I was a volunteer firefighter in Williston and more recently I am finishing my last year on my third term on the South Burlington City Council. I was raised to be engaged in my community and to offer service in any way that fits. The state senate called my attention two years ago because I see ways we could get more done in better ways through regional approaches and I ran because I didn't hear enough of our elected leaders advocating for Vermont to grow. I want to see the state house adopt policies that allow current and future Vermonters more opportunities to stay here, live here, work here and thrive here. If the voters give me another term they can count on me to advance policies that do just that making our state more welcoming to people opportunity and investment. Thank you Senator Kinnan and Senator Lyons. Thank you O'Call and thank you very much Channel 17. This is always an opportunity for us and we greatly appreciate sharing our information with our constituents and others. This is a very difficult time in our state and in particular it's a difficult time around democracy but if you look at the Senate one third of the Senate is not going to return. One third of the senators have decided to leave which means that there will be some very large changes in the Senate not simply in individuals and where they're from but also in the leadership that is in the Senate. So I am very interested in continuing my work in health and welfare and climate change and economic, social and environmental justice. We each bring our own individual backgrounds. I am a scientist, I have taught biology, I have done interesting research in areas of human development, in areas of understanding climate change and in understanding basic information about underrepresented folks in our society. So I'm very interested in continuing my work with that background and I think I'm the only scientist right now. I know I'm the only scientist in the Senate. I could be the only scientist in the legislature itself but there's a great deal of work that we have done in childcare and mental health. There's a great deal of work that we have done in workforce development, in our economy, in building an affordable and accessible place for Vermonters and I truly look forward to continue my public service to build my commitment to people as I have in the past. I have been a select board chair, I continue to work on our board of civil authority and I'm very interested in bringing our local government into the state house yet again. So thanks a lot and I look forward to your vote. Thank you. Thank you, Senator Lyons. Steve May, you have the floor. Thank you, Nicole and thank you channel 17 for this opportunity. So I want to piggyback for a second on Senator Lyons comment there that we all are the sum of our past experiences. I'm a clinical social worker and my experience has been overwhelmingly an addiction work. I've worked almost 20 years in addiction in one way or another and that work has been informed by going to many, many funerals. I've seen too many of my clients die as a result of a broken system that doesn't get them the care they need, when they need it, if they need it, when they need it for whatever reason they need it. I'd like to think that my service would be focused around that health care delivery system that would prescribe a prescription delivery system that gets Vermont residents the prescription medicine they need in a way that is affordable and on time. I'd like to think that we can take the best parts of the Portugal model of addiction care and bring them to Vermont. I'd like to think that we can bring the best parts of a single payer system to Vermont. I'd like to think that's my legacy. There's a lot more I care about privacy, for example, certainly in the form of reproductive health care. But I believe that privacy is going to be the civil rights issue of our time and we need to focus on it as a state. And so by the time I'm done, I can look back and see that as my legacy. I would be very happy. Thank you, Steve. And Luis Mudge, you have the floor. Thanks, Nicole. And thank you to CCTV. It's a real pleasure and honor to be here. My name is Luis Mudge. I'm speaking to you from Charlotte. I am by trade. I'm a human rights activist. I've worked all over parts of Central Africa documenting human rights abuses and war crimes. I'm a father of three small boys ages five, seven, and eight, all in the public school system. And I really have a record of service that started after I graduated from college and joined the Peace Corps that extends today to my time on the select board here in Charlotte. I'm running, frankly, because of the redistricting, offers towns like Charlotte a real opportunity to have a representation in Montpelier and not only be seen through the lens of Burlington. I think for too long, the towns in Chittenden County were only represented through that lens. And so I'm running because I see this county as a great place to live, as a great place to raise children. It's beautiful. It's safe. We value education and community service. And I really want to get more people in Montpelier who have an eye towards the future and an eye towards what state we can become. I really want to stress that one of my key points is going to be a priority on climate issues. And that, you know, as we I'm sure we're going to talk about the housing crisis this evening. But really, as we talk about this crisis, we also have to prioritize protecting our open spaces. That's a real priority for me. Finally, a major priority and why I wanted to get in this is because I had three children in childcare at the same time here in Vermont. It is flat out simply unaffordable. I know that firsthand. We need to give early child care providers the respect, dignity and pay they deserve. And we need to take more steps to give these kids this vital service. That's who I am in a nutshell. I look forward to this evening. Thanks for having me. Thank you, Lewis. And Senator Keisha Ram Hinsdale, you have the floor. Thank you, Nicole. And so nice to be with all of you. I'm Senator Keisha Ram Hinsdale. I'm running for reelection as the first woman of color to ever serve in the state Senate after serving also eight years in the House. So I'm going into my past a decade into my sixth year in the legislature, if the people will have me. And I've always worked at the intersection of labor, climate and justice. I serve as the co-chair of the social equity caucus. I've been endorsed by a number of labor organizations, the Vermont League of Conservation Voters, and just a whole host of organizations that we work with in Montpelier. I plan parenthood being one of them as well. I just want to talk about two of the major bills I introduced and helped author and see to passage this past year, because they're very indicative of the kinds of issues I bring to the table. I was the lead sponsor of our landmark housing bill and an environmental justice bill that I worked on for 16 years. The environmental justice bill does put us in the category, finally, of one of the last rural states that did not have an environmental justice policy in place to make sure that we're understanding the intersection of pollution, poverty, and power, and ensuring that people in mobile home communities, which we have here in Chittenden County, or in communities where English is not a proficient language or there's lead poisoning, also have a healthy and clean environment to live in. The housing bill is somewhat related to that. Not everyone can afford to live in a safe and healthy neighborhood. We want to make sure that we build greater housing stock, make sure first-generation homebuyers can afford to buy a house and stay in Vermont, and that bill contains some of the first investments in mobile home repair and accessibility in decades. So those are the kinds of issues that I care about, and I strive to make sure that no one is left behind. It's a privilege to serve in the Senate with my colleagues, and I hope to be returned. Thank you, Senator Kecha, Rams, and I will go straight to question number seven. Burma has passed some racial equity legislation in the past few years. Are you satisfied that the Burma legislature is doing enough to dismantle systemic and institutional racism in the state? Do you support reparations and apologizing for Burma's role in its slavery and systemic racism? Let me begin again with the other order with you, Senator Kecha, Rams, and still. Thanks, Nicole. I have a feeling you might do that. One point five minutes. You are muted. I'm muted? Yeah, you're good now. Oh, okay, great. So I'll try to be brief. I will try. Am I satisfied? Absolutely not. It's part of the reason I hope we continue to recruit more people of color to run for office. Really, we can't have anything about us without us, and so often it's the case that our lived experience is left out of the conversation. We can see that in many statistics. We have the largest gap in homeownership between black and white people in this state that one of the largest gaps in the country. When we look at policing and incarceration, we have an epidemic of incarceration of black Vermonters. We have the criminalization of black teenagers, for example, in Chittenden County, young black men make up two and a half percent of the youth population, but 25 percent of those charged as youthful offenders. I share that statistic a lot because it keeps me up at night. It represents a lot of potential that we're wasting. A lot of young people that want to be part of our future in our state and are in so many ways denied that opportunity. I have fought tirelessly to try and turn that around. As I talked about people running for office, it means a lot to me that my colleagues join me in helping our committee pass two charter changes for Winooski and Montpelier that allow new residents and all residents, essentially new citizens, sorry, non-citizens to vote in local elections. If you look at a place like Winooski, that meant 45 percent of kids in schools, their parents could finally vote for school matters. These things make a huge difference. As well, I'm not satisfied until we start to put real money and resources toward repairing harm, as you said, toward reparations, toward land access and home ownership access. The governor is even committed to resources and dollars specifically for BIPOC home ownership and BIPOC land access, and I commend him for that and how far we've come in addressing these issues. It cannot come soon enough and we have much work to do, but I'm glad we're on that path. Very quickly, Apology, are you apologizing for the past role of Brahman in his celebrity? Yes, we worked on reparation, sorry, eugenics, and I also am a big believer in not just apologizing but trying to repair harm. Thank you. Luis March, you have the floor. I'm going the opposite direction. That's fine, Nicole. Thank you. Thank you very much. This is a very relevant question and I really appreciate it. Short answer, no, I don't think Vermont, institutional and systemic racism is going to be so difficult to actually solve and so, no, Vermont, nor this country has done enough and so it is not a satisfactory place in that regard. I agree with many things that Senator Ron Hinsdale said. I would add on to that list the inequalities in healthcare and how that can be broken down on racial lines and how those racial inequalities are so accentuated by looking at our healthcare statistics. I have a long history of working as a very privileged, straight white guy. I have a long history in my organization of working towards addressing systemic racism, of trying to tackle it. I've been very energetic in the town of Charlotte and in my organization on improving diversity, equity and inclusion efforts and making them real and not just sort of icing and icing on the cake and almost sort of performative. I really want them to actually have real teeth. I worked in the private sector. I'm a capitalist. I believe in reparations because I think it's a good thing that capitalists should push for. There's a debt owed and that debt should be paid. The modalities and the mechanisms of how we pay that debt, that's something that we're going to have to iron out but that is where I stand as a first step. I absolutely believe that reparations are something we should move forward on. Keisha Rom-Hinsdale brought up zoning and housing and how we can encourage that amongst our BIPOC community. I wholeheartedly agree with those sentiments. That is something I would get behind 100%. I would love to see more BIPOC for modders own equity in their homes. With regards to final aspects because I think you're going to push me on apologies. Look, absolutely. Reparation will absolutely imply an apology but it has to be more than just a superficial one. It has to come with something behind it. I think an apology with reparations, with real and meaningful reparations would do so. If I was to be elected in Montpelier, I think you'd find I would have a very sober voice on this issue and that I would absolutely look at it from all angles. There's my time. But I would absolutely try to move the ball forward in this regard. Thank you. Thank you so much. I think you covered the question as a whole. Steve May, you are the next. You know, Cole, I think it's really important that we take a holistic view of reparations and I think it's really important that we try and make all of our modders whole. It's critical that this be a welcoming place for everybody regardless of whether you're a Vermont or by choice or you came here under the sword of the sword of oppression. I think that includes thinking about our Avernac brothers and sisters and their history here in this place. I think it extends to the eugenics projects that were held at the Week School. I think it's an all-encompassing story that we have to be prepared to attack in a way that tells the best version of the Vermont story. Thank you, Senator Lyon. Thank you. We certainly have not done enough. I'd like to talk a little bit about some of the things that we have done and then where the gaps lay. First of all, we need to begin with ourselves. As we know, when you look at bias, implicit bias needs to be a matter of changing it. It needs to matter of self-awareness. We each need to understand who we are. That work has actually started in the legislature where we have had some implicit bias training. There's also been some implicit bias training within our Department of Public Safety, but that's insufficient. It's totally insufficient. Last year, we passed a resolution that declared racism as a public health emergency. That opens the door to the data collection that some of you were talking about earlier. Certainly, during the COVID period, I passed legislation that asked for data to be collected by the Department of Health that would evaluate the effect of COVID on racially different racial groups. We're beginning, but our current racial equity director is working with her group to build a healthcare report and to look at racial disparities within the healthcare system itself and to make recommendations. That report was actually due in the winter, but Susanna Davis asked for an extension into January, then March, and the report is still not complete because it's a big deal and it's a lot of work. Do we have enough? Have we done enough? No. We haven't done enough in healthcare. We haven't done enough in public safety. We haven't done enough in a number of areas, including understanding our own biases. Finally, you talk about reparations and, you know, we can't stop with any single racial or ethnic group. I think that our abnaki heritage needs attention for reparative damages. We need to repair those damages that we've done. I think we need to have a very much broader discussion about how we can improve the lives of people in our individual towns and across the state. Finally, I was going to just add one last thing, and that is very quickly. When Proposition 5 and Prop 2 were introduced, I also introduced a proposal for an integrated proposal of amendment for, I'll talk about it later. Thank you. You have the floor. Thank you. There's so much more work to do on this topic, and dismantling systemic racism is not going to happen overnight. Yes, I support reparations because our government at the municipal, state, and federal level have disadvantaged previous generations of our citizens because of the color of their skin. The financial benefits afforded to previous generations of Vermonters have compounded. It's compounded through the decades to today, so as those family supports and resources were bequeathed to subsequent generations of now subsequently advantaged individuals. Here in South Burlington, we have one of the first plan unit development neighborhoods, Mayfair Park. In their bylaws, they had racist restrictions on who could buy a home there. That was 70, 80 years ago. That has ramifications throughout the generations to today that the Mayfair board that oversees their fire district and some of the decisions over that unit has apologized, and they rightfully should. So similarly, the state of Vermont, I support the state of Vermont and any organization that in the past have disadvantaged individuals based on the color of people's skin to apologize for that behavior. And I also support reparations. To me, the real question on reparations is not if, but how. I don't support cutting checks to anybody just based on the color of their skin, but I absolutely support affirmative action through governmental policy that prioritizes BIPOC communities in small business grants, in housing grants, in community supports, and funding formulas. Thank you. Thank you. It looked like you have generally you have some general agreement or reparation, but the default is in the details, and we will have that conversation at another time. Let's me move to, I don't want, I want to come to the budget. We cannot, in this forum, without talking about the money, but there are also time-sensitive issues that have happened nationally that warrant your voices, and that is gun rights. And the orbit of Ruby Wade as we look at proposition two and proposition five. So if we can bundle this question together, especially on the gun rights, what is your position on, given what is happening around the country, and what can Bremen do to make sure that there is gun safety, and also following that, I would have you fall in your position on what had just happened with Ruby Wade being overturned, and what does that mean for U.S. legislators in Bremen to make sure that that right for women to choose remain protected here in the estate. So two questions folded into one. I will split right in the middle with Steve May, you have the floor. 1.5 minutes. So the first thing that I would say is there's absolutely no reason that an 18-year-old needs to have an AK or a similar weapon. There just isn't. And I certainly have a healthy respect for people who want to use a hunting rifle and pass that down as part of a tradition in their family. I know that there are many Vermonters who do, but as somebody who understands a little something about the human brain, I know that it's not fully formed until you get to your mid-20s. And I think it's certainly reasonable to put limits on who's able to purchase a high capacity rifle or a large capacity magazine. And there's no reason to be making available the kind of armor that folks have been using in some of these attacks. As to Prop 5, I support it. I support it not just because I believe in a woman's right to choose, but because I believe that it's a cornerstone to a rights regime that includes privacy. And it also speaks to gay marriage and whether or not whether or not, I'm sorry, I slipped for a second. Whether or not people are going to have a basic right to privacy in their home and in the health and well-being decisions that they make in their lives. Most folks have some familiarity with HIPAA, but we don't really think about the way that we have a privacy regime in this country. Privacy is siloed, meaning that you get a grant of authority with regard to a specific condition, but you don't get an expressed right to privacy. And one of the things that I care most critically about is making sure that every Vermonter has an expressed right to privacy going forward. Thank you. Thank you, Luis, Marcio. My computer's about to die and I wasn't going to be able to be on much longer. Do you mind if I go and then I'm going to have to... Please, please, please go. Thank you all for indulging me. So I just want to first of all say they're interrelated issues. The idea in this country that a young man who isn't fully developed mentally yet can access an AR-15 or a weapon of war and a young woman who's not fully physically developed yet has to bring a child to term as a child herself is really the true decline of our society and something we need to fight against with every tool we have available to us. We are not an island in Vermont. We are obviously doing a lot of things to protect Vermonters from these assaults, from a radical Supreme Court on our population. But we have abortion providers in the state I was talking to today who help perform abortions in Alabama. We have people who are talking to folks in other states who are going to need abortion care. And we have to make sure that we provide sanctuary, that we're a safe place to get help, that we create data privacy that extends beyond our borders and advocate for Washington to do the same. So we're going to have to be a part of a lot of these solutions around accessing abortion. We're a gun owning household. You know, there are a lot of Vermonters who are very responsible gun owners, but we also have to remember we're not immune from gun violence. We have one of the highest teen suicide rates per capita and just suicide rates per capita by gun in the country. And we're very deeply impacted by access to guns, not only in that regard, but in terms of trafficking between guns, drugs and people. You know, we're near a lot of urban areas and we have to remember that our part is often easy access to guns. And that feeds our opioid crisis. So, you know, advocating for any solutions we can, I think we have a lot of ideas around abortion access and gun safety in the state. We have to look at how close gun gun stores are to schools. We have to look at the availability of high capacity magazines, the age at which people can buy certain weapons, and fully closing the Charleston loophole, which we didn't have the opportunity to do this session because of the governor's veto. Thanks so much for having me and thank you all. Thank you. Thank you, Senator Ramm. Installed and thank you, Luis, for yielding. You have the floor now. Great. Thanks. Look, I think movement on guns is going to have to come from Democrats very much like myself. I'm speaking to you from my basement office. I have a gun cabinet right here. I hunt every year. I own several firearms. I grew up hunting in the upper valley with my granddad. And I take a deer almost every season. I find our gun culture to be very bizarre and obsessed with sort of tactical patriotism. And we need to have open conversations about that. And I've had those conversations. And those conversations are usually better started with someone who is in the gun culture, who actually owns guns and hunts. I also have an intimate relationship with automatic weapons and what they can do in Central Africa. War crimes are almost exclusively perpetrated by small arms. And I spent 10 years documenting these types of crimes. I know exactly what these weapons are designed to do and what they're capable of doing. And having three small children seeing these school shootings that week after week as it seems is just terrifying. We need to do some things. We need to do them concretely. Redlining does work. Weight periods are acceptable and are normal. And most gun owners want it. The fact is most responsible gun owners such as myself do want there to be some movement on this issue. We just need to get to the place where we can have those right conversations so we can try to limit these high-capacity clips, these high-capacity weapons getting into the wrong hands. With regards to Prop 5, look, I wrote an opinion piece in The Citizen two months ago stating that this mattered more now, more than ever. Senator Lyons, I wish to sort of tip my hat to you for all the work you've done on this. I don't want to raise my children in a country in which reproductive rights are not recognized. I was at both the March for Our Lives rally in Montpelier. I was also at the rally in Burlington which Keisha spoke at when Roe v. Wade was overturned. We need to protect abortion providers in Vermont. We need to make sure that people can come to this state and access this service. And all of this is going to start with passing Prop 5 and not being ashamed of it, saying outrightly, as I've done on the record, that this matters now more than ever. Thank you, Luis. Senator Kinanen, you have the floor. Great. So similar to Luis, I am a proud gun owner, but I'm not proud of our country's gun laws. I'm actually ashamed of them. I think we need to start looking at guns in a different way in these discussions. And the corollary I always like offering is automobiles. Automobiles are dangerous. Automobiles are weapons. If war came to our shore, automobiles would be used as a critical component of any sustained defense or rebellion, just like guns would be. But for the wrong reasons, we have not applied the same sensible regulations over gun ownership that we have to our automobiles. We regulate who is allowed to drive on our roads, who has to register our vehicles and how to safely operate them on public roadways. All of these steps have proven over the last 50 to 60 years to reduce unnecessary carnage on our roadways. We need to apply the same regulatory lens on firearms to align our public safety values with our gun laws. I'm not saying we need to take any guns away. I'm saying we need sensible rules over who can access them, buy them, sell them, transport them, register them. If you want to own an assault rifle, you should have to evidence of competency and safety awareness the same way that we require people who drive big, big trucks to get a commercial driver's license. And guns need to be more expensive and so that they are harder to get and that owners would be more motivated to keep them locked up. I think, and I'd love to hear Senator Lyons, who I hold in very high regard's opinion on this, it's time we start taxing guns, the way we tax cigarettes and automobiles to start recouping some of the costs that are put on society by the use and misuse of them. And it also would make them more expensive, thus hopefully driving individuals to want to store them more safely, more securely, which is another initiative. As for Prop 5, I would echo everything Lewis, Steve, and Senator Ron Hinsdale have said, I support Prop 5 because I believe in personal autonomy and self-determination. The woman's right to choose is her right and nobody else's. Thank you, Senator Kinan and Senator Lyons. You are the better left with the, you have the floor. Thank you very much, Nicole. You know, the gun culture in our state is an important one for hunting purposes. But I do think that we have each seen terrible things that remind us about the need for regulations. So closing the Charleston loophole, ensuring there are background checks, and red flag laws are critically important. At a very close colleague who had a mental health problem, her family was very much aware that she should never have access to a handgun. And yet she got one, and that was the end of her life. And so I think that being aware of those things allows us to understand that some of the problems we see associated with gun ownership truly resulting in suicide. It's a huge public health problem. So, and then all of the other things that are related to substance use disorder and on and on. So we have a long road to go, but I do think that we have started the process in the legislature, and I look forward to gun legislation that's going to be proposed during the next session. As far as Prop 5 goes, I decided to put a proposition in an amendment in in the, I think it was the winter and spring of 2018 prior to the 2019 session, because it does take two legislative sessions to get a constitutional amendment put on the ballot. And now it is on the ballot for November 2nd. I'm very excited about that. This is a critically important issue for all of us. It will ensure women's and men's reproductive autonomy going forward, whether it's for contraception or whether it's any other reproductive choice, including abortion. Everyone now is talking about how can we help others? How can I excuse the telephone? I can't control it. How can we help folks who are in states that don't allow for abortion? And I am putting legislation in. I'm sure I'll be working with others to ensure that we can welcome people into our state who can take advantage of our constitutional amendment. And just, I would like to say one other thing about constitutional amendments. The same year that I introduced Prop 5, I also introduced an inclusive equal rights amendment that would have given protection to any individual regardless of race, ethnic background, or other considerations. That proposal was not picked up. And now we are seeing the results of that in multiple attempts at legislation to ensure racial equity. So, but to answer your question, Prop 5 is so critical. It's a beacon for the rest of the country. And we need to vote for it. I'm in November. So, thank you. Thank you so much. I think that as we are going towards time being limited as we as we're running out of time, we should tackle the budget, the money. And we know that given possibly unpresented revenue and expense challenges, Burma faces over the next few years, the key question is how will you propose approaching the budget? And the second leg of that question is, is balancing budget important? And how would you do that? Especially when there are competing priorities, but with limited money? I will begin now with Luis, were you the first person? Have you taken the first shot before? No. Yes. You have the floor. Yep. Sure. Great. Listen, very important question. With regards to the budget now, the general education budgets are projected to be pretty good this year. But as I alluded to before, I do have, I have some experience in the private sector. It was in banking. There's even if we're not heading into a recession, we're certainly heading into a decline. I'll answer the second part of your question. First, is it important to balance the budget? Yes, it's important to balance the budget. It's important to balance the budget on a state level for our bond ratings. But it's important to balance the budget because honestly, legislators should be doing that. I'm sitting on the select board here in Charlotte. Every year we have to set the budget. We have to explain to our townspeople why we decided to make these decisions, make the cuts and ask them to approve that budget. It's a fantastic exercise at a micro level of how budgeting can be done and should be done in Vermont. And that's very much the same ethos that I would take to Montpelier. The fact is, is that we're going to have to do some belt tightening. A lot of the money that we have right now, as everyone knows, is coming from the Fed. It is one of the reasons why we do have higher inflation. It's one of the reasons why it's so expensive here in Vermont in the rising prices. So the next legislative session is going to be, in my opinion, very different from the last one with regards to the economic outlook and regards to what type of decisions we have to make and with regards to the fact that we're not going to have all this money coming in from the federal government. I like the way that this money is being spent. I like that it's being spent on infrastructure, but we are going to have to make some tough decisions. One thing that I would advocate for, if we do have to make cuts and where they come from, is that we work towards getting those explained better to our people. And let me just, I know my time's almost up a call, but let me just give you an anecdote. We do have an education bill that's going to be enacted in 2024. That is actually going to lead to a 16% tax increase for the CVST, Champlain Valley School District, with regards to our education spending. This was never really explained on the town level to us here in Charlotte, folks in Shelbur. This is going to be a huge increase. This is going to, you know, either it's going to affect our ability to run our school the way we want because we might have to make those cuts at the school level or it's going to affect the taxpayer. So what I want to do is I want to have conversations with people across Chittenden County Southeast with regards to the budget, with regards to the decisions that I'm trying to make and explain how that's going to impact their life so they can help inform my decisions. Thank you. Thank you so much. Steve, you have the floor. So, Akul, in general, I'm a Kenzian, which means that in good economic times, I think you should be prudent in bad economic times. I think it's appropriate to act with a sense of emergency. Unless there's a law that requires us to balance the budget, I don't feel like there's a necessity to balance the budget. I do know that we can't keep balancing the budget on the backs of taxpayers and the property tax. We need to come up with new sources of income. That's why I support a universal basic income. We need to come up with new sources of income to source a new revenue stream for the operation of state government. I know that sounds complicated, but basically what it means is that we can't keep using the property tax to fund the way that government works and whether we use a GST like our Canadian friends do that's a goods and services tax or some other mechanism, we can't keep doing the same thing over and over again and expect different results. Thank you. I think Steve and Luis, you have a different here on balancing the budgets. And we may come to that. I want Senator Lyons and Senator Kinnanen to answer these questions, but we may come back to that whether or not balancing the budget is important. Senator Lyons, you have the floor. Thank you, Nicole. So first, I think it's important that we understand that the education funding is separate from the general dollars and funding of state government and funding of our community services. So they're totally separate. And I will just make one comment about education funding that I'm hoping that within the next two years, we will be able to identify an income based budget taxation process so that we are not fully dependent on property taxes. So that's another that's a whole separate discussion as is the waiting issue that was brought up earlier. In terms of the budget, I will say that healthcare represents a significant amount of the budget. I spend a good deal of my time in my committee looking at bills that are introduced that have high expenditures. And then I also have to work with the Appropriations Committee to look and to determine what are the baseline expenditures that we have for our Medicaid or for our child care. And then if we are going to change child care, as we did last session, if we're going to increase the opportunities for people 150% or lower for poverty for the CCFAP or the Child Care Financial Assistance Program for families, when we did that, we had to ensure that we weren't going to cause this huge imbalance in the budget. It doesn't mean that we can't have increases. That means that we need to take care so that we aren't robbing Peter to pay Paul. The other piece of this is that when we talk about the budget, we frequently think about funding the programs that we currently have. That's important. There are also new programs that we may want to consider that could supplant or replace some of the older programs that aren't doing what they should do. So we have kept our eye on making sure that we aren't willy-nilly adding new programs without evaluating some of the programs that might need some retrofit or to be discarded. And toward that end, we're looking at mental health issues. We're looking at substance use disorders. And by the way, we have a significant amount of money, about $84 million coming into the state over the next 10 to 15 years solely for substance use disorder support and work. That is a huge lift off of our shoulders in the healthcare world. We've also been looking at other ways. And I'm going to stop. I know I'm getting the hook. But so I'll stop there. But there are other things that we've been doing. So thank you. I think you just waved to me. I think I'm last to go. So I'll just take the floor. To balance the budget, there are three options. One, you can cut spending, which Senator Lyons just spoke to. Always a challenge because these programs have been proven to be important to fund. But it's certainly a place to start to always get sharpened pencils and to look at where you can cut. The second way is to raise revenues, fees and taxes. Always a challenge because every dollar has a constituency. But important to know, and this is not my campaign platform, I swear. But I just want the public to know that for the entire Governor Scott administration, they have not adjusted or increased state fees. Prior to Governor Scott, which he's done a lot of great things. This is nothing against him. It's just an administration policy that they have had now for four years. Really four years. Is he in his fourth year, fifth year, sixth year, six years, right? Six years. Okay. So he has not raised fees. Prior to him, there was always a fee bill where we would gradually, incrementally increase based on inflation and cost of services and living, a variety of fees that the state charges. And those are rational assessments. When you want to drive a boat in Lake Champlain, you should register your boat. And that fee should increase. So I am not running to raise fees. Okay. But I will say one thing that we need to do and consider is rationally keeping fees in check, especially in these inflationary times. The third way, and I hope I haven't gotten the hook yet, which is important to really realize is to balance the budget is to foster and encourage economic activities that grow our grand list and taxable activity. Permit reform that welcomes investment like the new on-logic computer manufacturing facility, right by the Whales Tales in South Burlington or Beta Technologies, they increase our property grand list while that helps our municipal tax basis and our education fund. The monies from the commercial basis do go into the Ed Fund. It also brings higher paying jobs in the green tax sector to Vermont, which is increasing our income tax revenues. So smart growth can reduce per taxpayer burden through economies of scales and virtuous cycles of economic activity, especially in the green technology sector. Since I haven't gotten the hook yet, the other thing I'd say is I'm a big fan of rational assessment. So one thing that I'd like to see is using economic incentives and tax policy to tax what we don't like and subsidize what we do. I, for one, support having a sugary beverage tax in order to fund universal meals, healthy foods in our schools. I think a two liter bottle of Coke should cost as much as a gallon of milk, and I think we can get there, and that taxation can be used to foster healthier foods for our kids and balance our budget. So I'm all about rational assessment where you can connect a fee to a government benefit. I think I should get the hook now. So I'll stop talking. Thank you. Thank you so much, Senator Chinanan. I will go to question 11, and we still have a little bit of time. We might get to education and healthcare, but let me go to question 11, and that is we in Vermont, we have a citizen legislature. So you are literally volunteers, if you will. You have to have another job to live. And so this is a part-time job, and not only that, you are paid less than minimum wage. So with all of the things that you have just listed here, is this really doable by part-time people who are working part-time? How do you, could you do this? Or could we have a full-time legislature, which is a career? Let me give you the floor, Senator Lyons, you are the first this time. Thank you. This is a great question, and I think we think about this a lot. For those of us who are in the legislature, we understand that it's a low-paying job. And for me, as someone who has been a college professor and has been able to have a flexible schedule for most of my Senate career, it hasn't been a problem. But there are people we would like to see in the legislature who can't be there. So number one, I think we need to consider how to increase the pay for legislators. It doesn't have to start when I'm there, or when Senator Chittenden or Senator Ram is there, but it should start going forward. It is difficult to be, we are full-time legislators. There is just no doubt. We work every single day of the year. We get paid from January to May, but we work with our constituents. We work with our committees. We send letters. We're involved in committee work outside of our time in Montpelier. So this is an ongoing debate. I think one thing that might help with this is to have four-year terms, at least for the Senate. And that might allow for an expansion of the number of people who are engaged in this process. And then at the same time, I think we really do need to consider how to increase the pay for legislators. There's no healthcare benefit. There are no other benefits. It's simply a weekly pay and expenses. So I don't know if I answered your question. You did. I think you did. Unless you actually go and check, you would assume that the legislators get paid, but literally it's nothing to be honest with you. Steve, may you have the floor? So one of my jobs was to be the National Director of State Affairs for the Hemophilia Federation of America. And what that meant was that I worked with chapter organizations around the country in legislatures to lobby. And so I got to see full-time legislatures. I got to see part-time legislatures. I won't speak to pay, but I will speak to the idea of having a full-time legislature. I think that we would all be best served by having a full-time legislature. The work would just, the quality would be better. Having staff, the quality would be better. With that said, I'd like to see some reforms that go along with it. Some proportional representation, implementation of IRV, some real meaningful democratic reforms to make the body the democratic beacon that I would hope that it could and should be. But there's really no reason that we shouldn't have a full-time body that allows folks to do the people's work. Thank you. Thank you. Senator Kinenen, you have the floor. So I always joke about city councils. A lot of work for no pay and people are always mad at you. So it's a hard sell public service, but the absence, the alternative, is not attractive either. So we need community members to find the time and we need to find ways to support volunteers. So we do get paid something in the legislature, but you're absolutely right. It's $700 a week, which can really hold you back professionally because it's a full-time role for five months out of the year. So I definitely support what Senator Lyon said, is looking at a way to have that calibrate and keep in touch with some or keep track with cost of living, but do it for six years out. So it doesn't benefit any current senators or house reps and it just triggers sometime in the future so that there won't be the politics of us trying to give ourselves raises. But if we want to have more people around the table, we certainly need to look at pay. I do think a part-time legislature in Montpelier can do the job. So right now I could be convinced otherwise, but I don't think we need to go full time. I think we could certainly do it better. I'm a strong believer in continuous improvements, so everything could be done better. I would love to keep looking to Senator Lyons because I hold her experience and seniority in such high regard. About one notion I'd like to see is extending committee testimony, work to the off-session, and hybrid Zoom formats, I think have really made that so that we possibly support that in a much more efficient manner. I'm also intrigued by what I think I heard, I went to a CSG event last summer with other legislatures and they do these mini-sessions outside of the regular session for the regular items. So the items that are just really important for us like the fee bill that we used to do before Governor Scott, those things would be very important. You take testimony, you make it happen, and that way you aren't trying to jam things through near the end of this. So I'm wondering if there's a way to take out some of the things from the hectic nature of this session and to put it into mini-sessions in thoughtful ways to spread it out so that we can be more thoughtful and deliberate in our approach. So there's no perfect way to run a legislature, but I actually am attending another event this coming August, and it actually is focused on one of my intriguing areas is I want to see how other state governments do it. I understand Texas meets for two months every two years, and I don't want to, I'm not saying we should do Texas, but I'm intrigued to compare how we do it to others, and for that I'll stop. Thank you. Thank you, Senator Kennedy. Luis, you have the floor. Just, Tommy, you're saying we should be like Texas? I'm joking, I'm joking, and hearing, Jenny, Senator Lyons, hearing you say no health care, no benefits, low pay, I'm kind of thinking like how do I get myself off the ballot here, and that's a joke as well, that's a joke. Look, to Steve's point, I don't think we're going to get to a full-time legislature in Vermont. I don't see that on the horizon. I just don't see, when I go around and talk with folks, I don't see an appetite for that much money to be spent on a full-time legislature. I think we're kind of stuck with what we got, and what we got is not ideal. I'm running now, one of the also principle reasons I'm running is because I can kind of afford to run now. I'm in that point in my professional career where I still have my day job, but much like Senator Lyons, I'm able to sort of play around with my schedule a little bit. I get up very early, and I'm able to, you know, if I was to be elected, I would be able to serve in the Senate. You need, you know, this is not an equitable system for people with small children. This is not a system for people who have maybe are on the front end of their mortgage, and who really need to sort of, you know, feel like they're getting everything out of it. These folks, I talk to them all the time, and they say like, we don't feel we're represented. I mean, this is one of the reasons I'm trying to get into this thing. At the end of the day, I really tip my hat to Senators Chittin and Lyons and Ron Hinsdale, because this is, in many ways, this is an absolute service that they're doing, and I think we have to recognize that going into it with our eyes wide open. It's why folks like us also serve on the select board. The select board in Charlotte pays $125 a month. So it's, you know, you're not doing it for the money. You're doing it because you love your municipality. You're doing it because you want to be in the debate. You actually genuinely enjoy having conversations like the one we're having now. You want to have an impact. But most importantly, you're doing it because you want to bring your voice to the table and sacrifice. So to the Senator still on the call, I do appreciate your sacrifice. I am trying to edge one of you out to be in there to sacrifice myself. Thank you. Thank you. I think we have a few minutes to tackle education. If I might have heard you earlier on, there might have been a little bit of debate between Luis Merge and Jeannie Lyons. That was a kind of disagreement, if you will, on education finance. And this is an area I have actually written about. And so right now, the legislature, you know, this is the legislature can make impacts on how education is funded statewide. And we know that it is funded partly through property tax, but also partly through, you know, through taxes, you know, through business properties as well. So it is not exclusively on property taxes. Now, do you see the need for changes to how we fund education which Senator Lyons alluded to earlier? And how would you use your office to more changes forward? And I think that the bill that was passed recently, we raise taxes as Luis Merge said earlier on. So how do you see education being funded? We know that it is more expensive to educate, you know, non-native English speakers. It is more expensive to educate young people. It is more expensive to educate kids who are in rural areas. So those need to be factored into the way we know all of that. But what is the best way to actually fund education? And is the bill that was recently part sufficient? Or is there another way that might be considered, as Senator Lyons said earlier on? So I will just stick to one minute. So back to you, Senator Kinanen. You have the floor. This is a very important topic. And I'm actually proud of what we did do in the legislature this year. I believe the pupil waiting formula adjustments were long overdue. And Aaron Brady, who serves as the Wilson Rappand on the CVSU school board, was very adamantly supportive of this change. I think it does a lot to make it more our formula, which is extremely complex, even fair. So I think it moves us in the right direction. And what's also great and important to the concern I think I heard Lewis raise earlier, our tax formula also currently income sensitizes property taxes. So up to 60 or 70%, depending on how you measure it, of Vermont property owners are already sensitized based on how much they make for their homesteads. So we do have a very fair formula for collecting property taxes on education. And I believe the changes we made have made it fair. But is it perfect? Absolutely not. My biggest criticism and Senator Alliance, I really hope I don't offend the discussions on this, but my biggest criticism of what we did and what I think we need to address in the coming session is we didn't look at how to control or reduce costs by really addressing the formula. We have not focused enough attention on how to ensure that schools are not overspending or not spending it on resources that don't necessarily translate to results. And so that's where I think the state and the education department could do more to look at costs within our schools, because I don't know about I serve on a city council, I hear a lot about property taxes and Vermont is the second highest in the country with regards to property tax rates. So there's things to address there. The other part of this question has to do with the tax formula and converting it to possibly an income based. We have passed a study. So the study over the summer is going to be looking at this to take what was already done a very important study of financing our proper our educations with income taxes as opposed to property taxes. But that's not an easy switch because there are commercial properties and second homes. And so property is one of the property taxes are one of the few ways that we can collect or tax wealth. We tax income, but wealth that actually that sitting asset wealth uses our roads are emergency services. So it's important to recognize that they also benefit from schools and good and healthy schools. So I'm all for income tax on homesteaders. So individuals that claim it as their primary home, how we already defined it in our tax code. I think we need to shift to an entire we're almost there already with our income sensitization. The point is we have a very complex formula. More energy needs to go into it. I got to stop talking. I'm getting the hook. Thank you. Thank you, Senator. Senator Lyons, we go back to the original order. You have the floor. Thank you. Okay. Very quickly. I do think they study on income based education taxation is an important study that will help to help us understand what we can do and what we can't do. Having income sensitivity already is in the formula, but it may not be sufficient to cover what we're seeing from some people who are very land poor and or land. They have a lot of land and they have very little money. And so it's very difficult for them to survive. And they have to sell their land off. And then that has other repercussions for environmental issues. So I look forward to that report. In terms of the waiting study that we did, that was absolutely critical. The weights that we had were older than the hills. Well, I think they were like 30 years old. That does not make sense. And when you're trying to educate children from another culture who speak a different language or different languages, you absolutely need to provide the resources to schools so that they can work with the kids, with the families and with others to integrate them fully into the school and into the new culture that they're in. So I'm a strong supporter of the work that we did on the weights. I know it was a heavy lift for some school districts, which is why we added some funding in to cover folks who schools may not have the threshold for racial and ethnic children. So I look forward to the income-based report. I'm a strong proponent for income-based taxation, for education, with some help from General Fund. So that's it. Thank you, Senator Lyons. Steve, may you have the floor. I also want to thank you, Senator Lyons, for your work on this. I know you worked with Senator Polina and Senator Pearson to come up with good legislation and especially around special education. You did Jolman's work, so thank you. I also want to point out that higher education has been really kind of missing from this conversation. And we need to make sure that we keep Vermont kids here. You know, there's been a long conversation about brain drain and Vermont kids leaving Vermont because they can't make a living in Vermont. And we've got to figure out a way to make it possible for a Vermont, a Vermonter getting an education in Vermont to be able to stay in Vermont. If you get a Vermont education, we should be able to find a way for somebody to work here for five years and pay off their student loan in some small measure and be able to make a life here. It really should be that simple. You know, New York and New Mexico have moved towards totally repaying or wiping out student debt, all student debt. And we should be able to make that same guarantee to every Vermonter. It's shameful that we haven't. And it's a cornerstone of my campaign that we do that within the next five years. Thank you, thank you. Luis, you have the floor. Thanks, thanks. So I brought up, I brought up, as 287, not to be critical of it. I was actually trying to bring it up more in the context and clear that into a good job. More in the context of really on these big bills trying to get more inputs from folks in the district. You know, I, I get it, I get the waiting, I get that that's necessary, and I get that this money has to come in and I support it. Okay, that's that's that's full stop. But to Senator Lyons' point here in Charlotte, we do have a lot of folks who are land poor. The income income sensitivities aside, we do have a lot of folks where this is going to be a fight in which they're saying to me, we might get priced out of this town. We might have to leave and they've been in this town for a long time. I'm hearing the same thing in Heinsberg. I'm hearing the same thing in, you know, other rural towns. So I think we need to look at other options to try to help with education. I think Senator Chittin and Lyons are right on in terms of looking at taxing income itself and not solely relying or mostly relying on property taxes. But look, you're talking to someone with the youngest kid going into kindergarten, I mean, we're fully invested in the public school system. We moved to Charlotte because it's got a fantastic elementary school. That's a sentiment I'd love to hear from Montersay all across the state, let alone Chittin and County. We moved to this community because of its schools, because fundamentally at the end of the day, the health of a community, in my opinion, comes from its schools. It basically represents the investment that that community feels they want to put back into their community. So, you know, you're looking at a candidate who would recognize the need for these difficult conversations around weighted systems and enabling some of the other communities, especially those with our BIPOC communities or non-English native speakers to come in, but also someone who isn't going to be afraid to maybe also lend a hand on addressing taxing income to help make up for that. Thank you. So, we actually have under a five minute left. So, this will conclude our conversation for tonight, but I will give you one point five minute each to kind of make the closing statement. So, very briefly, so that's the town TV even disappointed with me. So, let me begin with Steve May, closing a statement. Friends, thank you for the opportunity to share my thoughts this evening. I'm running for the State Senate because I believe that fundamentally Montpelier is broken. And I've entered this race because I'm deeply concerned about where and how our legislature works and doesn't work. I think that we can do better, we shall do better, and we really must do better. The nature of what happens requires that we engage in a long conversation with our neighbors about how we go about the work of public engagement. And I promise to be an ear to each and every one of you. Thank you. Thank you. We are running out of time. I want every single one of you to say where Luis, go ahead. Thanks, Nicole. Thanks to SCCTV. I don't think Montpelier is broken. I think Montpelier is doing, it can always do better. But I really tip my hat to the folks who do sacrifice to serve him on Peelier. I want to join them. I want to join them because I've lived all over the world. I've looked at some pretty horrible places, and I can tell you this state and this county are some of the best places to be on this whole earth. That's my humble opinion. You're looking at someone who is eternally going to be an optimist. So, why do I want to get in? I want to help lend a voice to those folks who maybe have those kids in childcare. I'm going to be the person who feels that pain because I was just there. The folks who want to buy the house and on the front end of those mortgages, I'm going to be the person who's going to be feeling that pain, understand what it's like to be on year four of a mortgage. We need people with an eye towards the future in Montpelier. Nicole, are you telling me that's 90 seconds already? Sorry. I'm joking. I was just into my speech, but it's fine. Thank you very much for having me. Thank you. Thank you for your understanding. Senator Chittenden, go ahead. I'll be really short. You can find out more about me on thomaschittenden.com, and I welcome emails, thomas.chittenden.com. My phone number is very Googleable too. I won't suffer you through by listing it now. Similar to Steve, one of the best things I like about service is hearing from people. I really do like long conversations. When you have an issue, please reach out, or even if you don't have an issue, and you just want to talk. I welcome and drink a lot of coffee, so I am always happy to connect and sit down with anybody that wants to talk to their representatives. Thank you, Senator Chittenden. Senator Lyons, you are the better last. Last but not least, I hope and thank you, Nicole. It's been a great being here this evening. I totally look forward to going back to Montpelier. We have significant challenges ahead of us in the way of climate change, mental health improvements, and child care. We're working on each one of those. We've made some great strides that will be realized very soon as the money and the policies are expended through our communities. I would like to say thank you to the folks who are in Chittenden Southeast. You have supported me in the past. You know that I will work for you. I will focus on the towns that I represent, and it's been truly a pleasure to be in the Senate representing all of you, and I look forward to joining the Senate again for the next session. So thank you all. Thank you so much, Brumantes, for watching us tonight. This is the end of the forum, and we look forward to having another conversation with the candidates either here or on the campaign trail. I will close it for tonight and have a good evening. Thank you. Bye.