 Thanks so much for coming out tonight. This is our 2016 Lieutenant Governor debate. And for those who may not know us, VT Digger is a statewide non-profit investigative news site. And events like this are part of our attempt to encourage the public discourse on matters of politics and public policy. So thank you so much for coming out tonight. And thanks to everyone who's watching on our live stream. I'm on the VT Digger website. And thanks to Orca Media, which is producing the live stream tonight. And thank you to the candidates. David Zeperman and Randy Bragg, for taking time out of your very busy campaign schedule to join us tonight. And then pass this off to Mark Johnson. Thank you very much, Ann. I want to thank also the candidates for joining us tonight. Let me just give you a little background here on what we're going to do with the format. The candidates are going to be given 90 seconds to answer a question. Theresa Murray-Classen, who is with vtdigger.org, is going to be our timer tonight. She is going to signal our candidates when they have 30 seconds left and also when their entire 90 seconds are up. Depending on how we do a time error, our plan is to go an hour. And we may get to some of your questions out here in the audience as well, depending on how quickly we're going. We're going to begin tonight. My first question, I want to ask the candidates to reflect a little bit. We hear a lot in this campaign talk about the economic struggles that many reminders are having, particularly out in the rural communities. And I'd like the candidates to reflect and look backward here and give us a sense of why you think, in particular in rural communities, so many reminders are facing a challenge. And we begin with Senator David Zuckerman. Well, thank you, Mark. Well, looking back at this, I think it's actually an issue that's important to reflect on in context. There's actually rural struggles in about 35 or 40 states across the country. So I don't think it's a unique issue to Vermont. I think it's partly a cultural shift as we get exposed to the world through our smartphones and all the various media throughout the world. A lot of folks want to go towards urban areas. At the same time, we also really haven't invested in our rural areas the way that we do invest in some of our more urban centers. We have high-speed internet where we have urban or town centers and not really out into some of the rural areas. I'm very pleased as a farmer to be a part of the rural economy. And in Vermont, I think we're actually doing better than many of the other states that are struggling, but we still have more to do. I'd like to see us do more towards building broadband and better cell service out to our rural areas so that so many of our smart entrepreneurs can start businesses in those rural areas and keep them there rather than having to go to the denser Chittenden County or some of the other spots. So I think it's partly a national cultural shift I think in Vermont we're doing a better job, but we need to do more. And to me, investing in both job training and both opportunities in the states to help small businesses that have two or three employees to grow to being five and 15 employee businesses in our rural areas is probably one of the best things we can do for our economy, because growing small businesses to medium businesses is really where the backbone of our economy and the backbone of our community are tied together rather than trying to draw some large business to a rural area, which would really disrupt some of the character as well. Rainier? Vermont is a hard place to do business. Virtually every study that's been done, every report that's been done, that describes how what Vermont's business climate is compared to the rest of the country puts us very near the bottom in terms of business friendliness and business competitiveness, and that is something that affects both our larger communities and it affects especially our smaller communities. People come to me more than anything else and say how expensive it is to live in Vermont, how difficult it is to make a living in Vermont, how Vermont has become increasingly unaffordable. Addressing affordability across the board is a high priority for me, it should be a high priority for our state, because that's one of the things that creates some of the economic lack of competitiveness that we have. Our structures and the way we do things for a state of 625,000, we do things in many ways that makes the cost of doing business here very, very high. I started a small business here in Vermont many, many years ago and grew that business from a one-person operation to a company that operated in multiple states. I don't know if I can do that again when I look at the cost structure, the tax structure, the regulatory structure that we have in here in Vermont today would make that increasingly difficult. I think one of the things that we must look at in anything else is how to make Vermont affordable, how to reduce the high cost and how to reduce the burden of government on our citizens and particularly on our businesses. I think it's very important that we create an environment that says to Vermont that Vermont is in fact open to business and it says it both to Vermonters, it says to those who are not in business, it says it to people who are in existing businesses today that we do want business, we do want business expansion. I agree that high-speed internet is an absolute essential and indeed that was something that with $200 million in federal funds coming from the American Recovery Act after the beginning of the Great Recession we were promised that that's what we were going to have but we clearly still don't have it and that's one of the things that I would strongly encourage us to do as Lieutenant Governor is to use the kind of probity that I've been noted for in the past to find out why we didn't get what was promised, what wasn't delivered, what contractors didn't give us what they said they were going to. Let me pick up on this broadband question because I was going to ask David this but let me give you a crack at it first. I was asking about rural poverty. What difference is it going to make to bring broadband out to rural communities where people are struggling with basic needs? Well, people are struggling with basic needs but there are entrepreneurs in the rural economy just as there are, believe it or not, in Chittenden County. I went, for example, not too long ago to a small business in Putney and he was located on a back road in the middle of nowhere in Putney and he had a furniture business and we made beautiful handcrafted furniture and I asked him how did he sell his products given how isolated he was and the answer was on the road that he was on he had a high speed internet and as a result the world were his customers and he was able to run a thriving one-man business. We live in an era of technology today with things like 3D printers in which you can produce a product of one. You don't need a factory the way you did 30, 40, 50 or 100 years ago. The promise of technology is with us and that's one of the things that can extend what we want to do into the rural community much more so than we could today. There are also a number of things that we can and ought to do with agriculture to make our agriculture products more available, more usable, and more in keeping with the Vermont brand and that's something that I'm going to be talking about a lot. Well, I'll start by appreciating my honest discussion about agriculture because as part of the agricultural renaissance in Vermont over the last 15 years we've actually seen tremendous job growth in that area. It's one of the fastest growing sectors along with renewable energy and that's partly happened because in Vermont we've invested in agriculture at the Working Lands Enterprise and farm to school that's really reinvigorating our local agricultural economy but rural people are struggling. There's no doubt about it and that's why things like increase in the minimum wage are also important so that people can earn enough to pay their basic wage, pay their basic wage through life whether it's of their housing, their transportation, their food. These are the basic struggles people are facing. Now one thing folks might not realize in Vermont is that in the last six years those who earn more than $100,000 have seen their incomes go up by $3.7 billion over these last four or five years working people have not seen that piece of the pie and that's because of economic policies starting back with the Reaganomics by continuing through the Jim Douglas years where we say if you have money you get to keep it and those who are struggling at the bottom we're not going to raise your wages the way they ought to be raised. I believe in raising minimum wage I believe in increasing funding for affordable, perpetual affordable housing and making sure that people can live and work in our rural areas. I believe in investing in energy efficiency so that we actually reduce people's cost of living in rural areas and it looks like time is up Let's continue this though you, David, you get the first crack of this question you've spoken also that you don't feel wealthy people are paying their fair share when it comes to property taxes tell us what you're talking about proposing or you're talking about making the entire system based on income or something else well a long time ago we talked about making it based on income and one of the dangers of straight up income tax based is that you have increased volatility and that's challenging when you're looking for stable funding for education however with 70% of homeowners paying income adjusted property taxes folks are paying normally about 2.5 to 3% of their income and property taxes for schools however the wealthier third of the monitors paying a much lower percentage of their income for their education system and I think there's two issues around education one is balancing and making the pay structure that we all put into the system fair and equitable which would actually increase based on income for wealthier homeowners and decrease for average homeowners by a few hundred dollars a year but secondly it's also looking at our cost side and I've talked about it for a number of years in the education committee about how to bring our human services budget and our education budget closer together by bringing human services individuals into the schools to address many of the costs that are driving up education classroom disruption, special education other challenges that kids bring into the schools so that we can free our teachers up to be educators and inspiring people that they want to be and we can use folks who are experienced in the social work world and human services world to address the human services needs we right now are duplicating those services so we need to reduce those costs and have better services for our kids as well as adjust the tax system. So do you want to have the entire system based on income? I think it could be adjusted for everybody based on income for some would be up for some would be down but what it is is those who are at the lower end of the spectrum tend to get a rebate because their property tax their property value versus their income is typically much higher and so for those that say let's scrap the system they're talking about a huge tax increase for working homeowners. What I'm talking about is making income based for older monarchs so those that are currently paying 1% or a half percent those that make a million or two million dollars a year also paid to. Thank you. Well the issue of taxation based on income does certainly involve volatility because one of the things the Blue Ribbon Tax Commission study in 2010 indicated is that many of the people who are reported to be millionaires are millionaires for one year because of one time events that happens more than we know. We have a very heavily progressive tax system as it is in which those people who are at the top end of the scale do in fact pay the lion's share of the taxes. There's always a lot of talk about millionaires who escaped the tax who escaped through tax loopholes and otherwise but we have a relatively small number of people at that very high end and one of the things about those people that we've seen is that they are highly mobile. The tax rates to the point of them being even higher and more excessive than they appear to be now will do nothing more than drive people out of state leaving higher tax burdens for those who remain. I believe that we do need to balance it. We have an effective means of balancing right now in what we're doing in which indeed income sensitivity payments represent the single greatest expense in the entire world. I think it's perhaps overweighted in that respect and we will increase higher volatility in our taxes were we to alter it further. I think we do though have great opportunity to make changes on the basis of our spending. I think David's idea of combining some means of human services with education in the school system makes sense at first but then if we move from teachers some of the things that they're doing right now and expect other people to do those same things those are additional people we will continue to have the lowest student teacher ratio in the country and then we will have higher human services costs as a result in addition. I'm very concerned about the structure of what it is he proposes because it won't lower costs it will further increase them in an education system that is already among the highest cost systems per capita in the entire United States. Let's be clear what I was talking about is we have people in the education side doing these services and on human services doing these services and by bringing them together you can actually reduce the staff doing that so let's be clear with how my opponent has portrayed what I'm talking about versus the reality of what I'm talking about. Also with respect to wealthy people net migrations we've raised tax on wealthy individuals and some people leave and some people come the statistics bear that out time and time again and yes it's true some people have one time large earnings but on average one year one has that and another year a different person has that but on average that has been about the same over the last many years and so the numbers do add up it's very clear and again let's remember when my opponent talks about the expense of property tax rebates as something that's a bad thing that is what is actually helping keep many people in their homes by lowering their property taxes otherwise we would be a much much more aggressive system and many many more entrepreneurs would have a very difficult time staying in their home far more difficult than they do today. The idea of the income sensitivity payment when it was originally created was to allow the poor widow who lived in a home on the lake whose value whose taxes had increased because through no fault of her own her prices of the land around her had increased and to protect that person from harm has now evolved into what essentially is a middle class tax entitlement it reflects the fact that our taxing system hasn't really kept pace with modernity it points again to the real need to do comprehensive tax reform across the board it takes a look at all of our major taxes being our income tax, our sales tax and our property tax in a holistic way what we have right now is a patchwork system that has been put in in fact a peace deal now we talk about the ins and outs of taxes of people who have high taxes one year, low taxes another year and that certainly in fact happens quite regularly but at the same time there's a mathematical flaw that fails to be taken into account so often when we look at that and that is the practice in which a person has a high income for example they sell a business as the classic example in one year they may have made a hundred thousand dollars in year one which is a relatively high income in Vermont but they know that they're going to sell that business for two million dollars in year two so what they do in year one is they change the domicile from Vermont to Florida or another state that doesn't have tax liability in year one so if they sell their business in year two the income that they get that high rate of income appears to go to the other state it doesn't appear in the data at all when we compare but what happens in reverse is the person who's moving to Vermont so often a retiree has no business to sell has no major income it appears to be a wash on the surface in each year but in point of fact we have a net loss and it happens over and over again with stock taxes there's a proposal that's been floating out there now for years to expand the sales tax to services while at the same time lowering the rate support the idea the theory of it I think is great because we are moving to a service economy the practice of it though alarms me and the practice of it is what concerns me at the present time you know you've heard that phrase that when the legislature is in session no person is safe and that's very very true because what that means is that no legislature can bind a future legislature as far as its actions are concerned and so the fear is that if we drop the sales tax rate or the sales tax rate because we encompass services as well I think the blue ribbon tax commission said that we could get it as low as 2% if we taxed everything not that that's a very likely thing given the number of lobbyists that inherit the state house but if we were to lower 2% or 3% the next legislature to come in if they're matching very much like the legislatures that we have we'll say things like we need to have just a little bit more money maybe to put some social workers in the school so we don't get a raise oh perhaps a quarter percent or half a percent well that'll go on year after year and pretty soon before you know it we're going to be at a 6% tax rate for goods and services and that's why I think unless we have a means to prevent that from happening we shouldn't do it well I do think in theory it's a good idea it certainly wouldn't go down to 2% because there are certain basic needs services that I think we would exempt from this not because of lobbyist pressure but because it would be the right thing to do for working class for ordinary Vermonters and frankly the last time the sales tax was increased it was under republican governor so I don't think it was actually the interest of the legislature that made it happen it was the tax that you get when you've got someone who looks out for wealthy interests and for me looking out to lower the sales tax which is incredibly regressive for ordinary Vermonters and broadening it out to some of the services that wealthy people use much more so than ordinary working Vermonters I think is the right way to go it has to be done judiciously it has to be done fairly and it has to be done with an eye that we all look out for the overall tax burden my opponent earlier said we have the most progressive taxes in the country because they pay a lot. Progressivity is not whether wealthy people pay a lot or not it's about how much do you pay in overall taxes as a percentage of your income and even though we have one of the most progressive in the country wealthy people still pay a lower percentage of their income into our overall civic government than ordinary working class Vermonters even with income tax adjustments or property taxes but because of sales taxes gas taxes and all the other fees that we have in government working Vermonters pay more into the system as a percentage of their income than the wealthy who again have seen $3.7 billion in economic growth in their pocket books in the last five years if that's you good on ya but for a lot of Vermonters who have been struggling for the last five years and haven't seen an increase that's because our policies push money towards the wealthy and frankly I think it's time to look out for ordinary people and then on this well I'm not sure how our policies push so much money into the pockets of the wealthy when we have policies such as some of our renewable energy policies that provide great incentives proposed by and supported by folks such as Senator Zuckerman that essentially increase the taxes on the poor of the middle class by providing huge subsidies to renewable energy providers who in turn then sell their recs out of state to enrich people elsewhere through these credits which are really licenses to pollute while receiving huge subsidies and Vermonters the poor of the middle class who pay the same rate per kilowatt hour as do these wealthy entrepreneurs suffer and they also typically pay a much larger percentage of their overall income 24% compared to 7% so we have policies that do impoverish people and we don't seem to be paying an awful lot of attention to those policies as well we still have among the highest tax rates in the United States marginal rates for wealthy people based on what they earn and that's a fact you got another chance of EY broken Matt just briefly say with respect to renewable energy you know we have seen over the last I was on the Burlington Electric Commission to understand the energy system pretty well and back then our presidential rates were the highest or second highest in New England and now they're the second lowest in New England and part because of our overall energy policy in Vermont both rates are lower and we've been working to lower individual bills with energy efficiency measures trying to reduce folks heating costs their energy use to be from light bulb exchanges to businesses changing out different kinds of compressors we have been making those investments pocket books but it's also good for the economy of the state as businesses end up with lower bills because we retrofit their business energy use they have lower costs and they can be more competitive there's no doubt that the cost of living is higher in New England that's a reality we have not had federal subsidies like water in the south and all the coal work the chief coal out west when we look at climate change I think it's incredibly important that we move and support renewable energy preferably smaller scale on people's rooms and in their backyards but ultimately we need to change our energy economy we've been doing in a positive way for Vermonters and I'm proud of that let's talk about wind energy you're going to have the first up to this question how would you resolve the conflict between a community that doesn't want wind and a company that wants to bring it well ultimately I think when you're looking at wind energy or any energy it is a discussion around the public good and that we should be bearing our burden sadly just like everyone else in the world that has energy production this is a reality we've exported it for most of our lives and it's hard there's no doubt that it's hard but ultimately we have to be responsible for our energy consumption and you know it's something where I think we should expand the public service board and have more voices on the board to make sure that the broad different public interests are incorporated beyond the size of the board I'm not exactly sure how to do that yet but I'd like to look further into that and I also think we need to make sure folks who are adversely impacted do get compensated in some way whether it's helping them mitigate the effects if that's possible it may not always be possible or helping them move which is not easy that's not what we want to do we don't want to displace folks but when I think about folks out west who are being displaced folks whose mountain tops have been removed in West Virginia and throughout the country production in way larger scale than we are here in Vermont what we need to do is reduce our energy footprint first and foremost so we have to displace as few people or disrupt as few people's lives but we have to take responsibility for our energy it's fair to say you're a supporter of big wind yes I am a supporter of a range of energy including big wind from an efficiency perspective I know some will dispute this but 3-4 turbine systems reduce the energy for 10,000 homes that is very effective does it solve our problems no it is intermittent I recognize that but I do support it where it works from an engineering and economic perspective I don't know I may be crazy but somehow I don't think it's a great idea to build rich top wind towers blowing off the tops of our mountains and damaging wildlife habitat to produce power that power companies don't want and that we don't necessarily need our problem with energy in Vermont doesn't come from the electricity that flows into our homes it comes largely through transportation which is very different now I understand the idea that well we're going to get electric cars someday and I'm sure that we will but we don't need all of the electric energy generation capacity to do that there's a lot of energy that we produce from industrial wind and also from large scale solar but right now it's not renewable energy one of the reasons that some of our energy costs is in fact in theory a little bit lower than elsewhere in New England is because we've sold off these renewable energy credits these pollution permits to other states which theoretically has lowered our costs but it has prohibited us from the practice that we engaged in the past of double dipping of claiming that we have created all this renewable energy and then we've sold the wrecks and we're kicking basically and I say this is a fraud examiner there's something wrong with keeping two sets of books well we got caught at that by Connecticut and we had to stop doing it now at least we have to be honest in our accounting about what in fact we're doing the net effect of it though is even our own experts in the public service department have no impact on global warming because again we are so small and I realize that all of us want to do things that make us feel good and making us feel good I think is important but at the same time if we make people feel good at the expense of our friends and our neighbors of other Vermonters who are drastically and dramatically harmed we can say that well we're creating jobs when we do this I've heard that argument over and over again I remember when there was a point in the second in the nation in terms of our green energy jobs when the Bureau of Labor Statistics actually measured it do you know who was first? the District of Columbia because green energy jobs included lobbyists and included people who worked in the Department of Energy and included lawyers because those were green energy jobs associated with that I've been to the renewable energy the mountaintop wind sites around such as Lowell and Sheffield those are Vermont jobs all you have to do is drive into the parking lot and look at the license plates on the cars and those parking lots that's a concern yes I want to see green energy jobs and yes I believe in climate change and I believe in the need to do things to combat it but I want to do things that actually help real Vermonters and those are things like promoting weatherization promoting conservation and doing things that make sense wind top rich line and my judgment do not for a variety of other reasons including the absolute absence of storage and the fact that they don't produce as much power as it's claimed I want to talk about character Mr. Broglie raised questions about your opponent's character in this race what is the issue that you feel people should know about? well I think unfortunately there are a number of issues David has had to apologize several times during the course of the campaign he apologized just the other day for some comments that he made that were televised and I just saw them for the first time I think yesterday or the day before in which he made comments about the Vermont Air National Guard indicating that they absolutely did nothing effective on 9-11 they simply got up and flew down over the bombed outside that had already been bombed they added no value to national security in the process when in fact the fact was that these folks were the first to arrive on site at a time of extreme concern in which no one knew what was happening and they patrolled the skies indeed under orders from the president to possibly even shoot down another airliner that might be threatening to fly into buildings in New York City that they patrolled the entire east coast in the eastern seaboard from the bases here in Burlington, Vermont for a period of time for David to have made the remarks that he did about the National Guard I think were not just unfortunate but they represented a lack of knowledge for someone who could be a heartbeat away from being the commander-in-chief of the Air National Guard I think it was a really distressful comment and I think it was a comment that represented both ignorance and immaturity and the only apology that he said to me when we had a debate in Tumbridge for example when asked about how and I believe he was asked by Mike Smith how he would be able to financially compare based on my financial background and he mentioned among other things that one of the reasons that he would be financially able to do so was because he had a Jewish father I think that was a very inappropriate remark even if it were meant in jest when we had a debate in which we were talking about marijuana he made the remark that he referred to the illicit marijuana market he said he could refer to it as a black market for obvious reasons well I found that to be a thoroughly insulting and offensive comment we had other issues in which a campaign aide of his retreated a number of extremely vicious and untrue racially oriented comments including one that accused me of tacitly supporting hate and possibly using racism only when it benefited with me he said that that was a person who did so on her own not as part of the campaign but she's a campaign aide that accompanies him to virtually every event and she's here tonight at this event I could go on there are more well I appreciate some thoughts and concerns although frankly these issues that he's raised have often been taking one straw out of a whole hay pile and twisting it in ways that really take a contortionist to understand the only one I would say that has some validity and I have been very clear yesterday in apologizing for it is the issue around the F-35s and I was discussing my concern about the F-35s noise issues actually interestingly enough there's a lot of incidents in Winooski and South Burlington and Burlington and I spoke poorly and I've apologized that and I'll apologize again our servicemen and women put themselves in the line of fire at a moment's notice and I have the utmost respect for them and I did not express that well at all and I will own that that also is a sign of maturity twisting people's words is actually something quite different from that I will own that and I apologize the other ones have really been taken quite out of context I was not joking about my father's heritage nor my mother's heritage which I happen to have also referenced but I was raised in a frugal and efficient household regardless of what the religion was or the background was and I was referencing that because as a farmer I know what it's like every day to make ends meet in difficult circumstances in a large and business and I was referencing that I also grew up in a frugal household I was fortunate my dad was a doctor and yet we were still very frugal and I mentioned that with respect to the illicit market and the underground market I've actually talked about that for about a decade now in terms of the language that we use and the language that we use matters and we have called the underground market society and when I say I think we should not use the term black market that's because I think it's critically important that we look at these words because words matter and we have a disproportionate ratio of people of color who are incarcerated we have implicit bias in our policing and in ourselves and when we use language like black market for drug dealers we are associating the drug market with people of color especially in Vermont and around the country there are many times more white people involved in the drug market and so I think it's critically important that we move our language away from biasing ourselves and our culture and our law enforcement to where we now prosecute people of color at a 12.5 to 1 ratio the second highest in the country here in Vermont and I think it's critically important that we have discussions around race and how we can give another minute on this It was an editorial after some of my comments about David's racial event in which he had a party with music and laughter and a good time and a cash bar to talk about racism in Burlington and I was very concerned and frankly very offended that that was not an appropriate thing to do to hold what was essentially a campaign event using racism as a feature particularly one that was paid for by him, organized by him booked by him and all of the literature associated with it included prominent pictures of him and his campaign sign and it was an event that campaign literature, lawn signs and so on were distributed a grossly inappropriate event and venue to talk about so serious and so important a subject and what St. Alvin's messenger editorial commented was that David appears to be the person who sees a crowd and then rushes to the front of it to take advantage of it and that's what I think he's doing I think it was inappropriate then I think the actions associated with it subsequently were inappropriate and I see this as part of a pattern a pattern of concern that really goes to the issue of character judgment and to ask ourselves is this the kind of person that we want to see a heartbeat away from being our governor and I don't think it is Well, I do find interesting that St. Alvin's messenger has actually done a couple of pieces without ever calling me to understand my perspective or side they pretty much just reiterated my opponent's position so I'd certainly always be happy to talk with anybody about these issues and to make blanket statements that are factually inaccurate it's interesting that I'm stated to be running to the front of the crowd you know, when I started talking about genetic engineering labeling and issues on genetic engineering in 1999 I don't think there was a big crowd that I was getting in front of I was bringing up an issue that was important to farmers and many consumers and continued to work on that for 15 years when I brought up medical cannabis reform and the issue of actually a regulated system I think that actually as a politician then well ahead of the curve of most other politicians with respect to talking about what's actually going on on the ground, out in the public not waiting for the momentum to build and jumping on a bandwagon you know, the issue of the event that was held in Burlington was an issue where I met with some folks in early July they expressed the need to be heard whether or not I win the primary in August as a senator, I think this is a discussion we have to have we need to have a forum where people of color can just simply stake their experiences that they've had with our law enforcement in jobs in housing, wherever they want and the folks I was meeting with were saying the same thing to me and I said organize it the way that you want to have it I won't help make this happen but it's really about you how do you want it to happen so many people will make it both fun and serious and they laid out how to do it and the folks involved had about an hour where they spoke to elected leaders including the state's attorney in Chittenden County many elected legislators and we listened to people's experience which is frankly a very important thing to do as elected leaders who are making policy and I stand behind what I did and will continue to do so because people of color are facing serious consequences here in Burlington we need to address this and what would you recommend be done next year well I introduced the bill a few years ago S95 that would allow for home growth it would allow for cultivating licenses to allow those who are currently in the underground market to become legitimate legal and business people as they are now but not paying their fair share of taxes and it would limit the number of retail establishments so that people who are afraid of them popping up all over would be in a limited number so that it wouldn't sort of take over in sort of the boogeyman way that people are afraid of when you look at Colorado they haven't taken over the sky hasn't fallen drug use amongst teenagers amongst both cannabis and heroin is slightly down I don't attribute that to it being a legal system but clearly the sky has not fallen the way that opponents fear would and I would take the revenues from that and we will debate our difference of opinion I'm sure on what those revenues would be my opponent compares apples to oranges I prefer apples to apples when I talk about numbers but the tax dollars not the gross sales numbers would be used first for implementing the law for prevention and treatment particularly for our opiate addicts but we need to help get off of their addiction and become productive members of society again because that is ripping our communities apart and damaging our economy and money towards implement law and law enforcement for drug recognition officers then money would also be used for higher education trust fund invest in an endowment so that we don't squander the money or create long-term programs because we will probably have a bubble of income that will go away when all the rest of the states do this because this is going to happen all across the country we have votes in November in Massachusetts in Maine they are now going to feed us to it when we would have been earlier in the line had we done it last year Before I give Mr. Brock an opportunity to answer this question why would you want to start implementing programs that in a few years you wouldn't be able to presumably pay for well that's what I was saying is that the initial money which we would continue there will be revenues just as there is from beer today we still make money on beer so the bubble would go away but there would still be income so that's why I want to be judicious with our dollars the ongoing expenses of prevention and treatment and implementing our law will be funds that will continue to come perpetually the bubble of money is what would go to the higher end trust fund and if there was a larger bubble we could put it towards an economic development capital fund again for long term investment but not long term obligation Again the arithmetic simply doesn't work it doesn't work because even if you take the most optimistic estimates such as in the RAND report that was done that RAND report basically says if marijuana is quote taxed aggressively if we suppressed our black market and this is important if consumption increased by 25 to 100% tax revenues from Vermont could be in the range of 20 million to 75 now that's with a significant increase in what is now one of the highest marijuana consumption rates in the nation not as high though as Colorado who has surpassed us for being first in the nation among youth use of marijuana it indicates that we could supply large numbers of out of state users and then there's a caveat unless and until other states in the northeast also legalized marijuana that flow could then reverse if those states impose lower taxes undermining revenues from taxing Vermont's own revenue they added also that the cross border comments commerce might likely engender the response making all projections highly uncertain now if we look at actual facts rather than theory the fact is Colorado Colorado has a 27.5% tax rate between fees excise taxes and sales taxes Vermont proposed a 25% tax if we apply the 25% tax to the if we look at just the actual revenues that Colorado has gotten compared to its total state budget and we apply that to Vermont's total state budget guess what we come up with 20 million dollars that's what we come up with but there's a caveat again that 20 million dollars that we would have gotten using Colorado's method Colorado 24% of its marijuana net revenues come from edibles and we're not including edibles they also have a much wider distribution network of marijuana outlets than we would have under the legislation in Vermont which makes it even less David's comment is that we're going to use this marijuana revenue in order to deal with our opiate addiction problem and that to me strikes me like taking a raging fire and saying we're going to put it out by pouring gasoline on it again I think it makes no sense and the notion that there's going to be revenue over and above that after we deal with the cost of startup after we deal with the cost of the software associated with a new tax regimen and after we also look at what's happening in surrounding states the Massachusetts tax rate that's been proposed for the ballot right now is just 12% one half of the tax rate that we would employ the arithmetic doesn't work let's talk about the opiate problem the problem that people say it hasn't even peaked pouring a ton of money at it what more, what different should we do well we've discussed this before obviously this isn't our first debate in its position and again you get a chance to speak to it is that we know how to deal with the opiate crisis we are simply underfunding what we deal with and that large amounts of inpatient treatment are necessary that we don't have the money nor have we created the will in order to do it I think that may or may not be the case because in my experience in talking with professionals in the field I'm not sure that we are consistently applying any methodology one and two we don't have a consistent measure to tell us whether what we're doing is or is not working I think we need to have that in place so that when we do expand the large amount of money and no question it will take a large amount of money to deal with this problem then we do so in an informed way so that we're spending money where we know we're going to get a result so that we look at whether or not the recovery rates are actually in fact working over time it's clear to me that we are going to have to invest more money and the question of course always becomes when we talk about invest because often to the other side invest means spend and to me it means invest it means making hard decisions about where we place our money whether or not we are able to look for revenue sources that will help us invest in this by lowering expenses that we have elsewhere in government I believe there are tremendous opportunities that we have right now to lower cost of government to look for errors and we'll talk about that separately but I do believe that there are revenue sources that we can have that can help us along but I think the thing that can help us as much as anything else is doing things that make sense doing things at work and also looking at what other people are doing in other states at work and finding the most cost effective solutions my sense is so often we apply a program that we apply a methodology without any real clear understanding as to whether or not it is being successful whether it will be successful and measuring if it has been successful before Mr. Zuckerman answers what do you mean by revenue sources what are you talking about with that I'm talking about revenue sources from a number of areas among them are doing things like re-engineering parts of state government that I believe are very inefficient right now in which I believe that we can save a considerable amount of money I believe revenue sources includes we need to declare a war on air in state government because we do I believe leave significant amounts of money on the table through inefficiency I mean in looking at things like the agency of human services and silos in that that do create some of the situations that David is referring to in our educational establishment in which we are providing duplicate of services by duplicate of services well I appreciate that 15 minutes ago my idea was more and now it's going to save money I'm not really sure which side of that equation I would like it to me and I appreciate that you feel it would save money because I do think it would actually increase outcomes and save money I do want to address the opiate issue which is I think what your question was and you know there are both inpatient and outpatient programs that work and they work well and I trust our medical professionals and I also trust our state government employees who are working very hard every day to do quality work for our citizens of our state so when we talk about huge waste or huge errors you're pointing the fingers at our Vermont state workers and I don't think that's appropriate there are places in the administration I think we can save money clearly health connect has been a boondoggle we did not administer that well but in the grand scheme of things numerous auditors yourself included have found some savings but they add up to a couple million here and a couple million there which is what you need for the energy efficiency that you talked about earlier it doesn't provide the money for the opiate treatment that we need it doesn't provide the money for higher education funding and so I regularly hear my opponent talk about these things we need to do and we're going to save it through nebulous efficiencies because we're going to run government like a business but he's never actually very specific about what those are and typically what that means when we see it in higher republican administrations is cut services to working people increase costs for working poor or we're going to address revenues in a fair progressive manner and you're going to have that difference between us and that's up to voters to decide which way and which lens you want us to look at that from in order to treat opiate challenges we do need money we have underfunded that and as Attorney General candidate T.J. Donovan has talked about it is criminal there is no waiting list in medicine like there is for opiate addicts and we have had people die because they haven't had treatment we have had people sadly commit crimes because they are addicted and they are trying to feed that habit and they have to steal to do it and it is not productive for our society in either of those scenarios to underfund treatment and access to treatment which is why you know as we disagree on cannabis reform there is no doubt that there are consequences from people using cannabis no one's ever said that it's a perfect drug and there's no problems with it currently a huge underground economy my discussion is simply bringing it above ground regulating it so that there is cleaner product and having those folks pay their fair share of taxes just like the rest of us so that we would have money for our opiate treatment and education and prevention for our youth I think that's actually very fitting let me start this room with you why is the opiate crisis as bad as it is why are so many people using these drugs who do you blame well clearly there's a few different reasons one is economic injustice in our society when people can't pay their bills and they can't stay in stable homes and they have to keep moving when people are sort of destitute and not very happy in life because they're not doing the dignity of a well out paying job to pay their basic ways people get into any number of drugs nobody starts out as an opiate addict thinking oh I'm just going to try opium and not become an addict because people are in very tough times in circumstances the other place where it really comes from is pharmaceutical drugs we on the national level started allowing pharmaceutical drug marketing which I think is a terrible thing for our country obviously that's how it's going to deal with at the state level as well as it can nationally we have drug companies that now it has proven new that the opiate painkillers would be addictive and problematic and I really encourage our next attorney general T.J. Dodiman to go after those pharmaceutical companies and make them pay for the cost of their opiates that they hand out like candy that thankfully our administration of the last 6 years started tackling long before others and he got ridiculed for it well in Vermont we face our challenges and we work to solve our challenges and folks are you know I know someone who became an opiate addict because of painkillers a very productive young man and his life is ruined right now and he had to go to Florida for treatment social and economic injustice problem out there but he actually is facing people of all economic stripes which is why I think all of us in this room regardless of right, left, wealthy, poor we all recognize what a huge problem it is and we have to come up with the money to pay for it and help people get off of these patients Mr. Brown the best solution to many of the problems that Vermont faces and certainly a solution to an extent the opiate problem is a better economy our focus on creating an economy that works and creating jobs and opportunity for our people is the best solution to any poverty program that we have we've talked about for example what are some of the specific things that we can do to make that happen and I mentioned this war on error and this war on mistakes and I'll give you the concrete examples that David says I haven't given about health today in which we paid a million dollars of legal expenses to find out what went wrong when CGI our first contractor failed and then we failed to collect virtually a penny of damages based on all the things that they failed to do during that contract we have a second contract now with Optum again a contract that's in the tens and close to a hundred million dollars in which they failed to perform and we failed to collect any money back 41% of our contracts now on a no bid basis and how do we expect that we are getting an efficient government as a result those are some of the kinds of things that I'm talking about about waste and incompetence and what can you do about it well one of the things I did at state auditor for example was take a look at just Medicaid prescription drugs one of a long series of audits that I have designed and thought through we found that we had errors hundreds, thousands of errors in prescriptions being given out over a two year period and I found two million dollars worth of wasted mistakes, wasted errors of prescriptions in which people were prescribed things like fatal doses of drug combinations month after month or people were able to get five or six prescriptions of a 30 day supply of drugs within the same 30 day period and we could go on and on these kinds of issues exist throughout state government they're not necessarily a reflection on the competence of individual state employees but they are a reflection on a system that doesn't work nearly as well as it should and should be subject to a great deal more probity than we have right now and if we did that I know based on what I've seen that we could do better I know also based on what I've done in the private sector in similar situations of re-engineering multi-million dollar operations that there are the ability to go in and make the kinds of changes particularly in a system that's structured the way it is and I've had the experience of looking at most of those systems close in as your state auditor. Thank you for your answer it's now time for our closing statements the fastest hour of your day we begin with Senator Zuckerman well thank you Mark and and Vermont Digger for hosting this event I appreciate the opportunity to speak with you all it's our third debate in three days so we're having fun with this you know I'm a small business owner I run a farm I know what it's like to do human resources market my products find employees pick up the bees at the end of the day when everything wasn't quite finished on time I know it's small business owners based in Vermont running a farm obviously it's a marginal business I know how to find efficiencies in my business and I think it's important as my phone talked about to find efficiencies in government but I also think it's important to recognize that government is not a business it is not a targeted scenario where I just have to meet these people's needs government has to actually fill the gaps wherever there are gaps regardless of the different circumstances but as a small business owner I know how to find those efficiencies I work in our rural environment I want to preserve and expand the jobs in our rural areas I know what that takes I want to leave Vermont better just as I do with my own soil that I'm farming right now I want to leave it healthier for future generations including my daughter who's in our elementary schools and I understand the challenges in our school system through her eyes and ours as parents I've got the endorsement of Senator Lady Senator Sanders and Congressman Peter Welsh I'm pleased to have our entire federal delegation's endorsement I look forward to earning your endorsement and your vote anytime now you can vote tomorrow all the way through November 8th there's only two weeks left and I would urge you to visit my website Zuckermanforvermont.com to learn more information about the various issues we've discussed today facts that matter and I appreciate your support thank you my time as a state senator and as a state auditor I've come to understand deeply how government works in Vermont and also at times how it doesn't work I know that government exists to provide services to the people who live in our state to provide a safety net for those who need it most and provide an environment that fosters growth and development of business and industry the kind of growth necessary to provide jobs that will keep our citizens employed I know that we've got a great deal of work to do we've had six years of economic stagnation we've had a delay we've had uncertainty created by government policies that seem to take us in directions that no one has gone before we suffer from a first in the nation mentality and I'm happy to be first in the nation in preventing slavery but I'm not happy to be first in the nation to make Vermont a guinea pig through which a variety of social ideas are pushed that cause our state to stagnate economically and increase the cost and burden on every taxpayer I believe that we do have a bright future I believe the glass is half full and not half empty and that's why we live here we have a pristine environment we have a low crime rate we have a people who knows how to work hard and what we need is a government that's beside them and not necessarily on their back the way we've been faced with in the past six years we've added taxes and spending increased spending at the rate of $700 million we've increased our spending at the rate of 5% per year on an economy that's growing at 2% per year we have to reign in our spending and we have to prioritize what we do so that we do the things that are really important so that we do the things that provide that safety net for the people who really need it but at the same time live within our means and we haven't been living within our means and that's one of the problems that's created the issue with so many Vermonters who feel that they can't afford to live in the line we have to make Vermont livable we have to reduce costs we have to make Vermont a place in which people can say I really can retire here as opposed to I have to pack up a leave because it's become too expensive a place to live that's what my focus on is Lieutenant Governor I'm a person who believes in keeping an open mind and an open door I know that as a Lieutenant Governor you can only influence things you can't make people do things and there is that old phrase that Vermonters will do almost anything you ask them to do and almost nothing you tell them to do I want to keep that in mind throughout my career I've had a variety of jobs I've been a soldier, I've been a policeman I've been a polygraph examiner dealing with the legislature I've been a business owner and I've been an officer of one of the largest financial services companies in America and I've been a state senator and a state auditor that's a wide range of experience and wide range of perspectives to bring to bear on the issues that we face it's a job that I would love to do that I want to do and I want to do it for my friends and neighbors if you want to know more please look at www.randybrock.com there's a lot more information out there and I ask earnestly for your support and for your vote on November the 8th thank you all for joining us tonight for the Lieutenant Governor's Debate let's thank our candidates for joining us a few words from Ann Galloway and then we hope you can join us thank you all for coming tonight just a reminder we have a cash bar if you want to linger and chat some more and thank you again for coming good night