 Hello and thanks for joining us for this forum, speaking to the Washington County candidates for State Senate. To my left I've got, we've got Anne Cummings, Anthony Polina, Theo Kennedy, Andrew Perchlich, Andrew Brewer and Ashley Hill. Now we, it's a lot of folks to talk to and not a lot of time, so we're trying to, going to try to give as much room as possible for the candidates to really give you a sense of themselves and what they stand for. I do have a cheat sheet, so pardon me for not looking at the audience here. I've structured it this way. We're going to skip opening statements and save all that for closing statements. There will be two round robin questions with so many issues we could discuss. I've made a couple of them, they're both broad so you have a lot of room to make them their own, but to start I'm going to give each of you a chance to answer an individual question. And this is based on, I believe, hassling you over email for your three priorities. And as all of you said, how do you pick three priorities when there's, when there's so much to be done and so much that needs to be accomplished. But you all did a great job. So I looked at each of your three priorities and from each of them there's a, I would like to ask you a question about one particular issue. I tried to issue that you mentioned. I tried to keep them different so you're not all answering the same question. And so that you're not consciously or unconsciously affected or influenced by what the other folks are saying. This is a chance to avoid that round robin dynamic and hear what you have to say. So we'll start with Ashley. Ashley, you had indicated that your priorities were education, K-12 and higher ed, criminal legal system reform and energy independence. And I wonder if you might take a few moments to tell us about your priorities for education for K-12 and higher ed. Yeah, so I have been a professor at CCB in Norwich for several years now. And I actually got my own start at community college. And education is critical to our continued success here in Vermont. I see our public schools struggling across the state. I think with the creation of Act 46, while it was well intentioned, I think there were some significant unanticipated consequences, particularly for our rural areas here in Washington County. And we're sort of at this critical point where we're talking about forced mergers. And I have some concerns about that one. I think our small local community schools are really integral to our continued rural development here. Additionally, I understand that there were grants available to those schools who would self-select basically who voted to merge and they would qualify that those funds would then transfer over to the merged district. It's my understanding of the current legislation with Act 46 that those grants actually don't, they don't exist anymore for schools that are forced to merge. And so I think that that's one thing that the legislature critically needs to address. And it's something that I would work on in the Senate to ensure that for those districts that do ultimately end up if there is a forced merger, that those districts continue to get those funds. Those funds in rural areas are critical to ensure the continued success of our public schools. I also struggle with the voucher system that we have here in Vermont. I went to public school myself and our public schools are critical to everything that we do later in life. And for me, making sure that those public schools continue to be vibrant and supported is of the utmost importance. And making sure that our higher education systems are accessible for anyone who chooses to go. We have great partnerships with our area schools so that high school students can attend classes at the community college, which is amazing. And they can do so and earn college credit and earn high school credit, which is a fantastic opportunity. But I really want to make sure that every Vermonter knows that they have the option to access a quality higher education at our Vermont State College system. And I would propose that, one, we can lower tuition by creating a tax and regulatory structure for marijuana, THC, and cannabinoid derivatives. And we can address the budget trends that Vermont State Colleges have been experiencing over the years by doing that. Additionally, I'd like the state to start exploring ways that we could create a civil service path for Vermont State College graduates, such that potentially some of their loans could either be reduced and or forgiven or they may not have to borrow them up front to attend college. All right, thank you very much. If you'd pass the microphone on. Now, Andrew Brewer, it is your lucky day. You have won the double jeopardy here because even though I wrote down there at the end, your three priorities and had one start, I apparently did not save the document. So I can talk about whatever I want. So why don't you name us the three that you sent me that I don't remember? And you can pick one. Okay, I sent you my three priorities, where the environment, housing, and the economy. I wanted to ask you about housing. All right, double jeopardy is gone. Now you're talking about housing. It wasn't that simple. All right, well, I'm going to answer it the way I want to answer it anyway. It's because I think of all three of those things as being interconnected. I'll start with housing. We have very low vacancy rates here in central Vermont. I am a landlord myself, and I'm very aware. Every time I have an apartment available, I've never advertised for private people. You hear from word of mouth, and they're clamoring for good quality, affordable, and affordable is the key word, housing in central Vermont. I look at it as an economic development issue. I think it's a social justice issue, and people have to have a place to live. But I also look at it. Onion River Sports only ever needed one thing, and that was customers. And those customers needed a place to live. Customers and people are what make up our communities and make our communities vibrant. My employees always needed some place to live. Without that, we have a real gap. And so I am very, very supportive of us, and we have several projects going on in Montpelio right now, such as that down street housing is working on. Those are amazing projects, and they're going to add tremendously to our vitality in downtown Montpelio. We need to be looking for more public private partnerships just like that. I think that if there's things we can do in terms of permitting, my take on that is developers do not mind stringent even codes to follow. But what they want is predictability. And I think all too often, they get far down into the game and then the rules change of all of a sudden. And when we hear about being difficult to develop in Montpelio, I think that's what they're talking about. It's very frustrating. I don't think from the get go, they say, oh, we're never going there. But I think once you get in a game sometimes, it's very, very difficult. So I think when you talk about housing and when I talk about housing as an economic issue, that's what I mean. I really think that if we're going to grow, which I think we need to be able to, we're going to have a thriving economy without that kind of housing market that's affordable, we're never going to get there. But it also has to be on all ends of the spectrum. There's, I know many, many people. I know there's groups that are meeting at the library right now frequently. I think they're called the downsizers. And they're getting 60 and 70 people showing up for this meeting. And what they want is to downsize. And I know several people who live in these beautiful homes in Montpelier and they would like to stay in Montpelier and move somewhere. But there's no stock for them. Now, there aren't many nonprofits who are advocating for higher end condos. I don't think you're going to find those kind of organizations. But the truth is, if they don't move out of those houses, there's no cycle. That house needs to turn over to the next young family who wants to move up, maybe their first home or their second home. So we're missing some key components to our housing market. Andrew Perchlich, you indicated your priorities as support of families and children, strategic economic development aligned with our goals and values, and clean energy in the climate economy. I wonder if you might speak about your view of how we approach supporting families and children. Yeah, great. Well, I feel like there's several things that we could do about either family or children. But as a whole, we definitely need to be supporting the family structure. For the families in general, the family leave bill that Governor vetoed, it was definitely supportive of that and thought that was something that we should be working on in the next legislative session and I think was stronger support in the legislature or something that we can get through the veto. On supporting our children, there's a few programs that we have that just need to be expanded. For example, the child care financial assistance program hasn't been updated since like 2015. The money that it provides is just really not adequate. A lot of families are spending 40% of their income on child care and I don't feel like any Vermonters should have to quit a job because they can't, the job that they like that they can't find affordable and quality child care. And if we're not supporting families, it's kind of like what Andrew said about housing is an economic development issue. I think supporting families and children is an economic development issue. If we want young families to move to Vermont and have children, we're going to need to support them and say that this is a society and community that supports families having children and that we will support them with the child care that's necessary. There's something like 80% of children under six have parents, both parents. If they have two parents, all their parents are in the workforce. So they need child care. But we definitely have a dearth of child care across the whole state, but it's also an issue, a critical issue here in Washington County. I'm on the board of the Vermont Community Loan Fund and we do a lot of child care lending. And it's difficult for these small businesses. And there's things that we could do on economic development to help people get into the field of child care and to support families with the cost of child care. Thank you. Theo Kennedy, you indicated that your top three were at least the moment I happened to ask, were the environment, school funding, and access to justice and sentencing reform. I would ask you to comment on that last one. Well, thank you, John, for having us here. And I'm glad to be here with the candidates. My top three were actually health care, housing, and jobs. But that was my second tier. Fascinating. So who's did I copy? Well, I don't know what I really like about the question. I copied somebody else's. I guess so. So I could address all of them. Maybe I'll start with the health care one unless I'm not allowed to do that, which was my top priority. By all means, address health care. Well, I think it's helpful for me to address that first, because as one of the candidates before you, I spent about seven years in a role that oversaw the Medicaid program, both health care eligibility, and health care covered services. And I spent about three and a half years overseeing our health private market. So I think that I bring a vantage point that is focused on pragmatic solutions and things that we need. I think one of the struggles that we have right now, because Vermont is the only statewide public MCO in the country. We have a blueprint for health, and now an enhanced blueprint for health that really focuses on the primary care physician at the hub of a series of spokes. But the affordability part, if people think about the three-legged school of access, quality, and cost, I think the cost thing is a real issue. What was often referred to was under insurance. People may have insurance. And I was glad we had the individual mandate after I was repealed at the federal level. But we want this to be affordable. We want people to know that they can get preventive care for free. So I have a couple of specific revenue ideas. One specific one would, and I like getting into the weeds, because details always matter. And that's part of what you would expect of your senators to learn and understand the details, and listen carefully, and then try to put into motion things that actually can be achieved. So two areas quickly in health care so I can pass the mic. One is I think that we can change the way we acquire prescription drugs by putting the state of Vermont in the shoe of the wholesaler. It takes out the pharmaceutical benefit manager. It takes out the pharmaceutical services administrative organization. So it takes money out of the equation. And some Medicaid data we've analyzed looks at about 20 million a year potential savings if we just did that. Another area that I really want people to look at is trying to even out the assessment on the books of business. We have the self-insured ERISA book of business, which is governed by federal law under the DOL. But there's a way to assess the lives that are insured through their stop loss carrier. If you ran that commensurate, and again, this is a little bit in the weeds, to the 2% premium insurance, you could probably get between 20 and 40 million a year, which might be able to stabilize premiums in the non-group and small-group market over many years. So for me, it's almost always about the money. At the same time, it's about people having access to care. We need to be able to look at loan forgiveness programs for graduates from our medical school, expand our loan forgiveness for graduates from the nursing school. And honestly, healthcare is a deep and wide subject that matters to everybody. Without the federal government's dollar, we can't do this alone. So I don't think I support trying to do this alone again. And I think I'd probably use up a good deal of time. So thank you for the opportunity to be here. Now, Anthony Polina, now you found a way to beat the system here because you just gave me one. So that means you get to talk about the one moving away from property towards income to fund education. So take it away. Nice job. I could have come up with more if I were you. Oh, I have no doubt. I thought that was brilliant. It is really, really important one. We all, I think, would agree that public education is probably our most important investment that we make just in our communities and in our kids. And I think that we all understand how important our public schools are to our communities. But we also find that the public schools come under a lot of criticism. And in large part, I think not because of what they do, but because of how they're funded. It sort of irritates people a lot that not only their property taxes go up or their education funding bills go up, but also they don't understand how the system works. So I think it's really about time that we start taking a serious look at a way to make the system of funding education more fair, more simple, and move away from income, move away from property towards income to fund the school system itself. As it is right now, about two thirds of our monitors actually pay for schools based on their income through the income sensitivity program. But the irony is that those people mostly of moderate and lower incomes actually pay a larger percentage of their income to fund schools than wealthier people do. And that's just not fair. I mean, if a moderate income person is paying 3% of their income to fund their local schools, why is a wealthier person paying 1.5% or 1% of their income to fund local schools? I think you have to find a way to make that more fair. What we could do is, and I've introduced legislation to do this, is to have a system where everybody pays based on their income. They're just not to get into the weeds too much, but basically, if you're a lower income person, you would pay based on your property or your income, whichever is lower. But if you're a wealthier person, you would pay based on your property or your income, whichever is higher. So if I'm a millionaire living in a half a million dollar house, I'd pay based on my million dollars of income. If next year my income dropped to measly $100,000 a year, it would pay based on the property values that the $500,000 house that I live in. So it takes away some of the volatility of an income-based system. One of the problems with income-based systems is income tax revenues go up and down much more than property tax revenues do because they're more stable. But we can develop a system that allows us to move towards income without the volatility that the income tax would normally have. And I think that would be a really important thing to take a look at. I think it's really important that we understand how important it is that we make this kind of change because we also need to be able to not just make the system more fair and more simple so that people understand it. And if they understand that it's based on my income and if I vote for a higher school budget, I'm gonna see my income tax go up a little bit. That's a lot more easy for people to understand than the convoluted system we have now. I think that even as a senator, and I think I would say this with a certain amount of confidence, that I would be asked that most people in the legislature would do no better job explaining how this education funding system works now than you would or anybody else would. It's just convoluted and we've been sort of stapling it together over time. So it's time to have something that's more simple, more fair and based more on income. And I think we would all be better off if we did that. And the proposal that I have would not only make it simple, fair and based on income, but actually raise additional new revenue that we could use to lower the properties or lower education funding for bills for lower moderate income people. Or we could put that additional revenue into making our colleges more affordable, which I think is really important. Or we can invest in an early education as well. So we would have additional revenue for a system that would be more simple, more fair and based more on income. We can come as much better register of wealth than property is these days. And now see, now I'm doubting my whole list here. But, and comings, I believe you're three were innovative economic development, cleaning up our waters and climate change and energy. So I wonder if you might spend some time talking about cleaning up our waters. I was hoping you were gonna ask me about economic development. I'm trying to move out of people's comfort zones a little here, but everybody's impressing me, so. No, I think we definitely have an issue with Lake Champlain, with Lake Carmay, with a lot of our smaller water and our whole drinking water, septic, we've been all over the news tonight. The reason I wanted to talk about economic development is because all of these things that we've heard about tonight, good things, housing, childcare, property, reducing property taxes all come down to the amount of money that's available. And we all know we need to clean up Lake Champlain. We all know we need to clean up Lake Carmay. But we also all know that it's going to cost money to do that, and in order to do that, we have to find a funding source to say we're going to clean it with growth in revenue in the state. While the state's been pretty flat, our revenue growth for the last 10 years is about kept pace with the increase in our expenses. That's not new programs, that's just the inflationary increase. If, and we might now, as the economy hooks up, start to see a little extra income, if we use all of that to clean up Lake Champlain, in the other waters, then we don't have any of that to do all the other good things that we want to do. So I think we all share in the benefits of that lake, it is a major economic driver. It fuels tourism, it fuels a lot, and I think that we need to find a fair way to make sure that we have the dollars that we need to clean it up. Thank you all very much. I gotta say, this is a very impressive group. So now obviously I've been revealed to be very poorly prepared, but I'm gonna have a couple round robin questions now. So for this round, I would ask the folks try to keep it to two to three minutes if you can. And the first one, and we'll start with Anne Cummings, since the microphone's on this end and we can move right around. The two big vetoes besides the budget were minimum wage increase and paid family leave. Would you support their reintroduction? And if so, would you want to see the approach or content changed in some way? Or as is. Okay, I put my first paid family leave bill in a decade ago when my first grandson was born in Quebec and his mother got a year's paid leave to stay home and bond with her child. And I think that that is vitally important. There's details in that that you can always work on. This one has been being worked on for several years. I think I'd like to see one that might have some employer input, but I think that's something I would definitely support reintroducing. I was on the minimum wage study committee last year. I've supported it. I support it as a gradual increase because we found out that 90% of our businesses have 20 or fewer employees. And I think it's like 70 or 80 have 10 or fewer. We have some very small businesses, especially in our downtowns. And in some of those, I find a wage or the employers may not be making $15 an hour. So I think we have to find a way to move it in so that we minimize the disruption. There will be some. There will be some job loss. And I think our job is to make sure it's minimal, but also to move workers towards a wage that allows them to afford housing and food and clothing, and to be able to take care of their families. Okay. I support, I supported both of those bills. I would say two things about each of them. One is that when it comes to minimum wage, we did the bill that we passed phased in the higher minimum wage over a period of years to give people time to adapt. And I think that's important. I think it's particularly important for some service-based industries to have time to adapt. I also think that we have to keep in mind that raising wages is one of the best ways to raise people out of poverty. And it's also one of the best ways to stimulate our local economy. As was mentioned before by Andrew Brewer when he talked about his business years ago, that what they needed more than anything else is customers. That's what businesses need. They don't need loans. They don't need tax credits. They don't need all kinds of development help. What they need is people with money in their pockets who come into their stores to buy their goods or services. So by increasing minimum wage or not only helping individual families giving them money in their pockets so they can go downtown to spend that money, pay their bills, maybe take their family out to dinner, but also save a little bit of money which seems more and more difficult these days. So I think phasing it over time is important and realizing that it's an anti-poverty program essentially is important as well. In terms of the paid family leave, what was interesting to me is that the governor of vetoed that bill because I'm still not exactly sure why because the governor's thing was that he was not gonna allow for anything that raised taxes or fees. And the bill that passed the legislature actually was completely funded by the employees, the workers themselves. There was no burden or no taxes coming out of the pockets of the employers at all. So if anything you could argue that that bill was weak from that point of view that there should have been some contribution from the work from the employers as well as from the employees. But the bill that was passed was completely self-funded by employees. It was a way for them to sort of pay into a pool to be able to help themselves when they needed that help to stay at home with the family member. So I find that both of those bills being vetoed was kind of, I don't know whether ironic is the right word but I don't think they were quite in step with this idea that we're gonna veto bills that raised taxes or fees because neither of them did that. So I think it's important that we reintroduce those bills and have that debate again. Particularly look at the whether or not there's ways to modify the paid family leave bill to make it an even better and stronger bill. The O'Kennedy, reintroduce, change. Yeah, well thank you for bringing up this question. I mean, part of it for me, first of all, I support both bills. I think that the comments that were just made, I espouse, I would say on the minimum, first of all, I've worked several jobs my entire life. I'd like to look forward to, where is the camera? The society we wanna be, you know, ask ourselves what kind of society can we be and do we wanna be? And to have to work two and three jobs to get home, to be dog tired and not have a chance with your kids, questionable goal, all right? So things have changed over time. The minimum wage that we're talking about is probably, reasonable minds can argue on many things and process and details always matter and I wanna robust conversation. But $15 over, was it six years? Seemed like a reasonable phase in. And I support that, I actually didn't support it. I wasn't in there, but I hoped to be in there and I would support it. I think the idea of putting money back into the economy is an important one. And when you look at family and paid medical leave, you could be talking about averting someone going to a nursing home, because they're being cared for. You could be talking about the opportunity for a parent to have a time with their child that they might not otherwise have that could be meaningful for their entire lives. So I like to think about things that were the return on investment, not always a pecuniary measure, but at least a pecuniary measure, but also kind of a wellbeing of our society. Ask ourselves what would we want for ourselves and then begin to think about what we want for others. And the last thing on the minimum wage, I would say one of my proposals that people look at my website and look at some of the specific issues, and we've been talking about this benefit cliffs thing for a while, is clearly a minimum wage can lift out of poverty, but it's also the case that unless you taper the benefits that people get so that when they're off benefits, they can sustain themselves, there's an inherent disincentive to work. And I think that we really need to look at all the public benefits through that lens. So I support both bills. I think it's important to balance that with the needs of employers, a small business owner myself. I would definitely need that time to adjust and to plan. But thank you for those questions. I think they're really important. Andrew Perchley. Yeah, I definitely support both bills and look forward if I was elected to be a co-sponsor of both bills and work hard to get them passed again, which seems like getting the pass wasn't the issue, it was working with the administration. And as Senator Polina said, we weren't really even sure why the governor vetoed the family lead bill. And I really liked that bill and that it wasn't just a maternity and paternity lead bill. I think that's really important to that, that parents have that time with their newborns. I think I've read, I think I have this statistic correct is that the average mother goes to work 10 days after the childbirth, which I think is just ridiculous, but they kind of have to. And often they're really struggling with the childcare, which I talked about. So the family lead bill I like is it's not just maternity and paternity lead, but it is these other things that Theo is talking about, about being with elders and the other issues that families have. And that's important. So I definitely don't see any changes there unless like Senator Polina, how can we make it stronger? If the governor's gonna veto these bills, then we should bring it back stronger. Because my understanding, they both passed with healthy majorities, right? So I would continue to work with those that opposed them to see how we could, to make them better. But if there is an issue that the governor has specifically with them. And on the minimum wage, I agree with the comments that were said that I like the slow ramp up. I think there was some exemptions in there for teenagers, was that in there? And I think if there's other things like that that can make sense, or how do we help the restaurant industry with the tips and things like that? Is there, there's opportunities to make it work for the small businesses. I'm definitely supportive of that. And your brewer, take another swing, protect the plate, some other baseball analogy. Nothing like that. We'll be going on this. So, you know, we all of us up here have our particular field of expertise. We're not expertise in everything, but this one's certainly right up my, right through my lens as I'm looking, because this is exactly the type of thing that I've tried to do for decades at any rate of sports. I don't know that I would have voted exactly for the bills that were proposed, but I supported them generally and I support the idea. But I do so knowing full well what the impact would be, whenever time I hear about any kind of legislation that might affect business, I think I'm doing the math immediately. I want to know how it's going to affect the business, how it's going to affect my employees. And on this one, at Any River, we never paid anybody only minimum wage, not even the high school kid, teenager working on Friday night made more than minimum wage. And I was proud of that and I also believed in it. The previous minimum wages were shameful to what we were offering people in this country. And, but I'm also very conscious that there are lots and lots of expenses upon business owners. It's not just the $15 an hour. It's the payroll tax that's on top of that. It's workers' comp insurance. It's unemployment insurance. It's a catamount health assessment. There's a whole long list of expenses and employee-related expenses that employers have to figure out how to cover. And it's absolutely right. I know personally of many business owners in downtown Montpelier who are maybe not making $15 an hour. But having said all that, I'm in favor of ramping it up. I want to do it slowly. I wouldn't mind when we get there to having an index to some kind of inflation increase, something along those lines, was currently proposed. So we would go to foreign, it would take four and a half cents over six years. It's about 6% a year increase in payroll. Most businesses are not increasing 6% a year in sales. That's a tough ask. So generally I am in favor of looking at something like this. I would look at it through my own personal lens of having dealt with these issues for a long time. Paid family leave. I also was stymied over that one, why that one was vetoed. The governor did say no new taxes on anybody. And I guess he meant on the employees as well. I certainly like that idea. I think it would make a big impact. I would quiz my own employees, should I say former employees, about the impact and they all thought it would have. I heard so many stories of well last year when someone, when my kid was sick, I could have done this or when my mother was out of the hospital, I could have done this. I don't think they're really aware of it. I think a lot of them were unaware that legislation was even happening. When I explained it to them, they said, you know what, that would have been a great thing. And I've always looked at the package that I was able to offer my employees kind of from a holistic perspective. And for them to be able to kind of pick and choose and have some things like that. I think that would have made a big difference. So I would be cautious if legislation was introduced and employers were asked to kick in as well. I thought when I explained to my employees quizzing them, I said, you know, you guys are paying for this, not me. And they said, that's fine. We're totally fine with that. When I explained it, the rate might be $50 a year come out of their paycheck. They understood it and they were fine with it. Ashley Hill, you get to close us out here on this question. Equal pay for equal work. I could not fathom introducing a bill that would pay teenagers less than their counterparts doing the work. I started working when I was 14 years old because I had to, we didn't have enough money. And I think I was making five, 25 an hour back then. And it was hard. It was physical labor. It was the service industry. So a lot of folks weren't very nice to us. And I understand that people would be interested in looking to undercut the work of teens because they still reside with their parents most likely. But I moved out and I was 17 living on my own working two minimum wage jobs to pay my rent. And I realized that that's not every teenager's story. But I think that if we are willing to discount the work that 18 is doing, it seems like an arbitrary line to me. If they are able to do the work, they should be paid the same. That said, we need as a legislature to ramp up our commitment to paying a $15 an hour minimum wage with the recent US Supreme Court ruling that has significantly undermined the ability of labor unions to collectively bargain and represent everyone you can now opt out of being a member of your union. The legislature needs to protect workers. I view that as a critical role of a senator and that is something that I would commit to doing in the Senate. I also struggle with the taking of six years. I understand that these things take time. But as someone who just four years ago, I believe it was that I was working for minimum wage. I was working a second job for minimum wage up at an outlet in Essex. And I had coworkers who were trying to support their children on minimum wage. And I could not look at them and say, I'm sorry, you're gonna have to wait six more years doing this work and you're gonna have to figure out between now and then how you support yourselves. And I agree with you about the benefits, Cliff. I think this is a critical piece of how we can work to not only raise the wage, but work to become a society that I think we're all proud of. I don't think that saying, oh, you make $1 too much to qualify for food stamps, which I have also had to live on in my life and in my not so distant past, less than six years ago, I qualified for $50 a week in food stamps, which was critical to my own success and existence at that time. And I realized I was a single person then. But these benefits, Cliff, create untenable situations where families are forced to choose between working, which they want to do. And then having childcare, having housing assistance, or having none of those things and having a job. And I think it's really troubling that we have over the years sort of taken this position of, well, we have to have a hard line somewhere. Nothing that we do that has gotten us here has been a hardly productive way to, sorry, bright line rules don't work in this kind of situation is really what I'm getting at. And to say that you make $1 or $10 or $20 too much to qualify for a daycare voucher is absurd because daycare costs thousands of dollars a year. And making 20 or 50 or 100 or even $500 a year over what the cutoff is is not enough to pay for daycare. And with regard to family leave, I recently had to take some time off my grandfather who raised me passed away a couple months ago. And without having leave that I can use for anything, I would have missed that critical time. And anyone who's experienced the death of a loved one knows that it's almost as life changing as the birth of a loved one. And having that time for families to come together and to address the issues that need to be addressed, whether it's legal or healthcare decisions, having time to process those things together is critical. I also feel as though one of the things that we could either fold into family leave or find some way to address in terms of family assistance and dynamics work that the legislature can do is to talk about and revive the paid leave for survivors of domestic, sexual and intimate partner violence. I think that is one thing where we fall far short. When folks are involved in these relationships and these situations and a major life event happens, all of a sudden people are scrambling to find childcare or to find a place to live or to work out where a child may be if they're not able to be in the home at this point. And if we as a legislature don't commit to making sure that those families are supported in that transition, whether it is a very short term or a very long term transition, we are derelecting our duties as legislators. All right, thanks for everyone. Now for the next round, Robin questioned, oh, this is the big question. This is the one you can do whatever you want with because we, economic development has become such a catch-all term. And I think that's a good thing because there's so many pieces of it. So I wanna ask each of you what economic development means and looks like to you. All right, so to me, economic development is, it's everything that we've talked about. And it really is, it's raising the wage. It's making sure that our workers are in environments where they are safe and they are protected by laws and legal processes that function. It means taking care of our children and our families. It also means building infrastructure, which in Vermont is critical. My work on the city council here in Montpelier has focused far more on infrastructure than I ever imagined that it would because without infrastructure, we can't support any of these things. You know, we can raise our wage, but if we don't create housing that is going to be safe and suitable for parents and families and grandparents and single folks like I was when I moved here, we're not doing anything. I think in terms of development, in terms of housing development and other kinds of people-centric development, we also need to focus on how we are planning that. We are experiencing some sprawl in areas, which I know happens, but I think by focusing on intentionally planned development, which is one of our council goals here in Montpelier, we can work together with both private and public entities to create services and structures and development projects that are really in places where they should be. We can make sure that we address stormwater runoff, mitigation plans, and all of those significant pieces without really changing all that much what we love about where we live. I feel strongly to you that part of economic development is finding ways to become energy independent. Montpelier is slated to be in net zero city by 2030. I believe the state school is by 2050 and by finding ways to create state tax incentives to weatherize housing, whether it is rental housing or personal individual structures, single family homes, duplexes, things like that. We can also increase our reliance statewide on locally generated power. I know we still derive a lot of our energy from coal, which is burned out of state and I think it's a little disingenuous for us to sit here in beautiful view, call it Vermont and say, well, we're not burning coal here and we're focusing on all of these great things, but yet we're still relying on coal being burned in other places to support our lifestyle. Also, my last real push would be for public transportation. I moved here from a place that had a large public transit system. I understand we're a much smaller state, but as someone who lives in Montpelier and works in Barrie, I opted to drive because I'm incredibly privileged in life to be able to do that, but the bus and transportation infrastructure here is quite lacking and I think we need to explore rail development, bus development, car sharing, ride sharing and I know the state does some of that for state employees, but I'd love for the state to explore those options on a much larger scale. Andrew Brewer. Well, all of these things we're talking about are economic development. If you're talking about education, I think education is the answer. I think the answer to everything. It may take a while, it may take a long time, but having access, we have a social compact we decided every child is gonna have a good quality public education and we have to make sure that happens. That ultimately will be the answer for us. I think early child education is very important, catching kids who are at risk, who are in trouble early on and giving them a great education. In the end, that benefits all of us. That will turn into economic development. Healthcare is the same thing. I think we should have the same kind of social compact where everybody has access to quality and affordable, at least a basic level of healthcare. That will lead to economic development and it prevents real medical problems, becoming a big problem later on down the road. So we can go on and on about all these things we're talking about, but I want to talk about the environment for a second. I think we appear to be in this pause of renewable energy and there is no taking a break with this in my opinion. I think pausing and taking a break is going backwards. I think it's costing us jobs right now that we aren't moving forward with a lot of our renewable, more renewables. In my own business, there have been times when there was some sector misery, it took a pause for a while and when you pick it back up, you realize, uh-oh, I'm behind now and it's a catch-up game and I think that's what we're experiencing right now. Environment is huge for me. I spend my entire career involved in the outdoor recreation market. As just an example, I think that's one great thing we could be doing more in Vermont. We have a couple of examples of organizations the Vermont Ski Area Association and the Vermont Area Snowbill Travelers which are very organized. They do a wonderful job. They work well with landowners and they are a massive driver of our economy. We also have this thing called VOREC from outdoor recreation and it's new and it's really looking at bicycling, it's looking at backcountry skiing, it's looking at water sports, it's looking at those other sports that we all do and we all know about but they don't really have a voice and they aren't represented well. And the idea is that if we can bring some more attention to those sports, it's already a billion and a half dollar your industry and it's one of the great reasons people come to Vermont. Our environment and our clean water and our clean air is why we all come back to Vermont if we left, it's why other people want to move here. We're not the hub of any big manufacturing. We have one thing in my business, quality of life here, it's why we all live here. So we can talk about economic development at many, many different levels but that's kind of where I want my focus to be. And your perchlich, what's this biggest and broadest of topics imaginable mean to you? Yeah, it's a good question because you're not gonna run into a candidate for public office that says they're against economic development. And so it's a good question for voters to think about, what does that mean? I mean, the way I think about it is it's prosperity. Something that Senator Cumming says, like we have all these things we want to do and we can all tie them to economic development but if we don't have the prosperity and the money it's gonna be more and more difficult and we're gonna be fighting over these things. So the role of the government is, or one of the roles is to support this kind of drive to prosperity and growth so that we can have the funds to do all these programs, childcare, housing, healthcare, all these things. So what I talk about is economic development that's aligned with our community's goals and values. And what I mean by that is we have economic development that we're doing. I thought Auditor Hoffer's report that came out last week was a good report and that people should think about is where he said, yeah, we're doing this economic development. I think the number was $40 million. But there's not a lot of metrics. We don't really know if these are jobs would have been created without it. And we're not targeting it. We're saying, if you're an employer you can come get the money, we'll help you train workers. What I'd like to see is like, well, what are our goals? We have goals in renewable energy. Why don't we switch back to when we were supporting schools to switch to biomass to wood chips? That supports our whole forest products industry and all the whole value chain that that entails. That money could be better spent in something like incentive for schools to switch to wood chips. That's an economic development that supports the forest products industry in the state that isn't normally considered economic development. So some of our economic development money can be switched so they're aligned with our goals that we can't find money for. On the childcare front, folks that want to get into the childcare profession, they might go to a community college. Community college program, certificate program is $18,000 a year or $18,000 for the program but the wage of a childcare worker is like $24,000. So a way to support that industry if you want to call it an industry of that sector of economy is to have debt forgiveness for those folks that go to Vermont Community College to get that degree. We want them to do that. We want to support them. That's an economic development issue that I think we could do. Yeah. Thank you. So I was a history major back when and looking at my understanding of history, the most successful civilizations were the ones that survived through grown mercantilism. There was a great mercantilism, whether it's Pericles and Ascends or the Dutch Renaissance or the Italian Renaissance. You look back in time when most people had a chance for that future story, that chance to enjoy the arts, that chance to enjoy their family is because there were jobs and people were making money. And I think that for me, I see myself as a pragmatist and not that anyone else here is not. I'm just saying my view is that I don't see any silver bullet. I really see change of this sort of this importance, economic development, the idea that everyone can be successful, the most vulnerable up to the most wealthy, how can we continue to be prosperous? It has to be made up of the discrete things that we do. So for example, it's kind of cradle to grave. So you want to support childcare. At the end of life, you want seniors who can't afford their taxes to perhaps be able to, I think the model of doing a senior tax property deferral like the Commonwealth of Massachusetts happens up to 50% of the equity in the home can be a significant way to save money. I want to make sure that we're looking at things proactively. I'm a public health professional from a return on investment. So for example, we have a program, it's the TANF program, the temporary census for needy families and children is called REACHUP, where we subsidize employment. Well, I'd like to be a more clear quid pro quo with the employer that if a subsidized employee has finished their period of subsidy and they're otherwise qualified, that they should be retained. Sometimes they are retained, but I think the government's gonna step up and subsidize somebody. Then that should be that sort of thing. I also want to make sure that we're listening to everybody. Whole macro themes like no new taxes don't really work. What you want to do in my view is to talk about what you're trying to do, how can we do it and how can we bring everyone who's impacted, the employer, the employee into the conversation so that even if we're not able to do exactly what it is that everybody wants, we're able to articulate why we went the direction that we did. So for example, vocational and technical education, it shouldn't sound bad. These are some of the leading professions and we need to promote that and tie that to what employers actually need, whether it's in the high tech industry, whether it's in the service industry, whether it's in the construction industry. I don't want to keep going. I do want to say though that I do agree with education being the key. I think it came up in the very one. I think that, and I'm not talking about just book learning, I'm talking about any kind of learning where you can acquire a trade, where you can be productive, because when people are productive, they're able to sustain themselves better, they're happier, they become more productive. It's kind of like a rolling stone uphill, you're getting stronger and stronger. So I think economic development is the core issue. We have to continue to succeed in Vermont, we're a state of small businesses, we have to be mindful the need of small businesses. There are some large employers granted, but everyone needs to be in on the discussion. Anthony. I think that, excuse me, I think that good economic development is economic development that strengthens our local economy. And I think in order to do that, we have to keep an eye on making sure that it actually spreads the wealth around. It's interesting in this country and in the state, we often talk about how the economy is growing, and we know that the economy continues to grow in Vermont as well as around the country. But what we've also find is that there are too many people who struggle to make ends meet. They can't afford to put food on the table, they can't afford a home, they can't afford to pay for their healthcare, because the way the economy is developing in recent years, it's leaving a lot of people behind. I think we have to make sure that we find policies that we develop policies that make sure that everybody gets to share the wealth. You know, I often ask people, it's sort of a rhetorical question, but I'd say how is it that our grandparents and parents' generation were able to build the roads and bridges and the dams and sent the whole generation to college? And we can't seem to be able to afford to fix the potholes in downtown Montpelier or anywhere else around the state. And it's not because there's less money in Vermont than it was 20 years ago or 50 years ago or 75 years ago, there's more money than ever before. It's just that the money's not being circulated the way it should be, it's leaving a lot of people behind. And I think when we do that, we're gonna weaken our economy because not only can those people not afford to pay their taxes and pay their fair share, but they can't afford to support local businesses and they can't afford to make sure that they have money to save. So I think that we need to recognize that we're living in a time with some of the greatest income inequality that we've had since the Great Depression. And if we continue to develop the way we are, we're gonna continue to leave those people behind. We're never gonna have a strong economy if the majority of folks can't afford to pay their bills or can't don't have decent jobs to pay decent wages. So I would like to see us make sure that we not only focus on the various sectors of the economy and some of them have mentioned, we have to make healthcare affordable, of course. We have to make housing affordable, of course. We have to make sure that people can afford to go to college. I think we're talking about economic development. We're living in a state with the most expensive state colleges in the country. People say we have a high graduation rate from high school, but then why don't people go on to college in the state of Vermont? Well, one reason is it's really, really expensive. And if you want to have economic development that keeps young people in the state of Vermont and connects those young people to a growing economy, one of the best ways to do that, we all know is to have them attend the college in the state of Vermont. So we need to make colleges affordable as well and make that part of our economic development strategy. So it's not just a question of giving money to certain businesses to help them grow. It's a question of having sort of a strategic idea of where we want to go and how we're going to get there, but also making sure that we don't leave people behind and we make sure that working families in the state can afford to be a part of economic development and share in the wealth that we do develop. And you already waded into this term a bit. I did. And go a little further. One of the advantages to being last is I can say, I can pick from what everybody says and kind of summarize. I think if we want to do all of the things that we want to do as a state to make us a place that has a clean environment and clean energy and good affordable housing, the first thing we need to do is make sure that we pick up all of those folks that have been left behind by this economy. We have a significant number of Vermonters whose incomes have been flat for at least a decade, even though all their costs have been going up. We need to find a way to provide them with prosperity. And the best way to do that is to provide them with a job that pays not just a minimum wage, but a job that may start you at minimum, but gives you the opportunity to move up, that gives you hope, that gives you, you know, I may be struggling now, but as our parents felt, if I work hard and I do my best, I will do better and my kids can do better than I can. We've lost that sense of hope, I think in large segments of our economy. And it's not just Vermont. It is rural America is suffering. And you've heard, you know, all about the Ohio River Valley where the, my husband's from Pittsburgh, you know, the steel mills are gone and a whole generation of men aren't working and the women aren't working either. We meet, there's several models that are coming to four, some coming out of the Ohio River Valley. Boston has a very interesting economic development model where rather than just say, okay, if you do this, you get this kind of tax. And we aren't, I mean, it's like a religious belief. You either believe these things are causing the jobs or you believe they aren't and they would have happened anyway. And no matter what anyone says, you're not changing your belief. I think we need to be more tailored. I think we need to, the Boston model went after small innovative companies and they said, okay, what would it take to get you to set up in our city? Their thought and they chose an area that they knew they had a lot to support which was medical technology. We need, very interesting conversation representative Ansel and I coming home from that conference trying to figure out what is Vermont's cluster? What does Vermont have to offer? What should we be going after that would provide those good jobs and then tailor make? And I think that's a road I would like to work. I think we need to get groups of people together and you need, as they are in Lancaster, Pennsylvania was the example that was in the press, leave your political things outside. Cause you get in there and it's partisan and it's either you gotta pay more money to your workers or you gotta cut taxes and that's it. Let's say this is the problem. Park your politics outside. How do we solve it? Then we'll worry about the politics but I think we need, we're small enough so we can do that kind of problem solving and I think that's where we need to go. All right, well before folks the opportunity to make a brief final statement I wanna thank you all for being here and I appreciate, I think Anthony and Anne will remember the general election forum a couple of years ago had a lot more particularized question in my finger on the two minute button. I think, or I'd like to think that a more, fewer questions, broader questions enabled you all to sort of relax into them a bit more. Maybe viewers get a sense of who you are in a way they otherwise wouldn't have in. And again, I think the quality of discourse here is just extraordinary. So final statements, Anne? You have the mic. I don't get to summarize what everyone else said. Okay, I'm Anne Cummings. The incumbent, I'm still working. Now that Senator Doyle is not in the Senate that I am the senior senator from Washington County that's been challenging for my self perception. I would like to go back to Montpelier because I like the work. I like making government work for people. I like working with people. I like problem solving. I'm a pragmatist. I think politics is the art of the possible. And I think it's in working together to find common ground that we move all of us forward. I think we all have common goals. We all would like to make this a state where families are comfortable, where everybody feels supported and everybody feels hopeful and everybody would like to live here. I think we can do that but I think to do it, we need to work together. We need to solve the problems and I would like the chance to go back to continue working to do that. Well, first, I wanna thank you for bringing us together in this forum. I think it's really important that people have the opportunity to listen to what we say and that we have the opportunity to listen to each other as well. I've served in the Senate for a couple of terms now and I would appreciate your vote to allow me to go back and continue doing the work that I'm doing. I would mention that I spent most of my adult working life as an organizer and educator and not only what that means is that I've been able to help other people have their voices be heard in policy making process. I was the founder and director of Royal Vermont, a statewide farm advocacy organization. I was at one point the executive director of Vermont Public Interest Research Group, the state's largest environmental and consumer organization. I was a senior policy advisor to Congressman Bernie Sanders. So I spent a lot of time working with various kinds of people around the state of Vermont, not making sure that my voice is heard but making sure that their voices are heard. And I think that's the most important thing I can do as a legislator. I'm really kind of pleased and, well, I will say that I'm honored in sense. I've been honored by a variety of organizations because of my work in the state house. I was chosen as legislator of the year by Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility a couple of years ago. I was twice chosen ally of the year by Green Mountain Self-Advocates, a group that advocates for people with developmental disabilities. This year I was chosen by the Vermont NEA as their friend of public education. And last year I was given an award by the Vermont State Employees Association called the Anthony Polina Labor Hero Award. Now that's kind of strange, I know, but they not only gave me the award for standing up for working people, but they actually named the award after me. And I say that not to puff myself up, but to make it clear that the reason why I've been able to do those kinds of things and receive that kind of honor is because I've been willing and able to work with other folks to make sure their voices are heard. I don't think it's most important that what I say is what's heard in the state house. I think it's really important that other people's voices are heard as much as possible. And I think as a legislator, that's the most important thing that I could do. So I look forward to going back to Montpelier and being able to be a voice for folks around the state. Thank you. Well, it really is an honor to be here and I enjoyed being with the candidates in this format, at least for me other than wearing a suit and sweating. It was really good. It got us closer to the content of issues. And at the end of the day, content is really what matters. This idea that there's such things as alternative facts, no, okay, that there's such thing as fake news. Well, if it's fake, then it's not news, okay? That's entertainment. And I think we need to rise up and speak more honestly and kindly. I think Vermont does a good job at modeling. We can continue to be a leader in many areas, but it's not as if there aren't a lot of things that need to be done. I think I bring a unique array of experiences, both in the workforce and as a father and as a business owner that recently is a lobbyist, which of course would give up if I were honored to be elected, that give me some vantage point on how the system works. But kind of along the line that Anthony said, my, what I'm asking you to look at, if you look at my record, if you wanna vote by my shining personality, please do that, I will take your vote on that. But if you wanna look at the content of my background and see that what I'm best at is facilitating the success of others, really listening to people. I understand complexity, I'm a good problem solver. I'm not running for the O Canada to be in neon lights, I'm running for our community, I care about our community, I care about getting things done. And I'd be honored to serve you. And again, I'm really pleased to be in this great group of candidates vying for the Senate seat. So I ask for vote for Kennedy on the 14th or sooner. Thank you very much. Great, yeah, I also want to thank Orca Media for doing this and John for putting this on because it definitely is a community service. I hear a lot of, from a lot of voters that say, how do I find out about all these candidates? It's great that we have so many candidates. And I do thank everybody for standing for our election. I think it's a real great community service just to be a candidate. So I appreciate it of that. I am Andrew Perchlick and I am asking for your vote in this Democratic primary because I am driven for community development. We talked a lot about economic development. But really when I think about what I want to work on is community development. How do we make our community stronger? And like Ashley and Senator Cummings, I've been, my involvement in the community has been at the local level where it's nonpartisan. I live in Montpelier now, but I spent 20 years in Marshfield and I was on the select board there and a chair of the select board. And when you're in that kind of environment, you're not worrying about Democrats and Republicans, you're really just trying to solve the problems of the community. And how can we work together to build community? And I really enjoyed that and I really look forward to the opportunity of doing that for all 18 towns in the two cities that we have across the county. And I pledge to really do that, to work with all the towns that we have. I think sometimes out in the outer edges of the county, they get kind of forgotten about and spending all that time in Marshfield, I feel that. I do wanna work with Northfield and Cabot and Woodbury in these towns of Washington County, you might not get as much attention. So again, appreciate the opportunity to be here and thank you. Thank you. So I'm Andrew Brewer. I grew up here in Central Vermont. I went to Berlin Elementary School and U32 and University of Vermont. I'm homegrown the whole way. Both of my kids went to U32 high school. I currently live in Montpelier with my partner, Sarah Jarvis. Most people, I hope most of your listeners know me as the long-time owner of Onion River Sports. And I know people are familiar with the goods and services that Onion River used to sell and now does again. I'm sorry if that was a shameless word. It was unintentional. We have no shame here. Sorry. And but I'll tell you that for me, the takeaway is not gonna be the dollars and cents of the business. It's gonna take, the takeaway for me is going to be what, you know, my role at Onion River afforded me, which is a chance to be involved in this wonderful community and a chance to be involved in building a terrific community. I was able to serve on many boards and commissions, including Montpelier Alive and the Montpelier Business Association, Community Capital of Vermont, which was one of my favorites years ago because that was a real organization putting real money into the pockets of startup businesses. I really enjoyed that one very much. And I always understood and embraced the importance of giving back. And not just money. Again, I was very proud of Onion River being able to support all the, so many local organizations and nonprofits who do the good work of supporting the rest of us. But also have your time and your energy. And this is quite a group up here and every single one of us, in the little time I've gotten to know you to pass over, man, there's a lot to offer here. There's an awful lot of knowledge and experience to offer here. For me, Onion River really became to symbolize so much of what is good about where we live, whether people were gathering at one of the many events we put on, some of them really became institutions in Montpelier, whether you were joining as a customer appreciation, or whether people came down on their hands and knees to help us with a flood. I often said there's no better place to have any kind of a natural disaster than right here. We had so many people coming to help us many times that we had to turn people away. It was amazing the support that we got. So all of those are celebrations. All those things I just mentioned are celebrations of community. But creating that takes a lot of hard work and takes a lot of money. I always wanted more for Onion River and for my employees and to get more to the community. But it takes money and you have to make decisions. I said earlier that each of us up here has our set of experiences and expertise. I look at it when you elect a legislator. You're not electing an expert. You're electing a leader. How you approach a problem really matters. For decades I've been doing that. I've recognized problems when they come up. I'm good at recognizing a good idea when it comes up and I'm good at advancing a solution to that. I've done that by surrounding my, I had a great joy surrounding myself with fantastic employees who really looked at the job they had. They looked at Onion River. They took care of it like it was their own. And anybody who's, I think Theo probably has some of those employees and I think anybody who's worked in a place like that, it's a joy to work with a group of people like that and it makes a big difference. The decisions I had to make recently about Onion River were very difficult professionally and personally but I am smarter and wiser and stronger for it. And I wanna make sure that the extraordinary set of circumstances that I faced doesn't happen to the next generation. And I am very proud that Onion River has been reborn and I'm very glad to have been able to help them get going again. So I am asking for one of your votes in the August 14th primary and to consider that I too, even a pragmatist, I consider my practical approach to issues, my compassionate way that I look at solving problems and the fact that I get things done. And I'll close with something I just thought of which is somebody asked me this question just today and they said if for some strange reason I am not one of the top three, I can't imagine that would happen. But they said, would you vote for the other three? And I said, absolutely, absolutely without question. I would vote for any three of us up here. My name is Ashley Hill and I am running to represent every single one of us here in Washington County in the Senate. I never thought that I would be so privileged and humbled to sit among this cast of candidates. It's truly an honor and a privilege to sit here with all of you. And as someone who grew up in circumstances that could have made my life really different, I think about that often as one of the reasons that I am running for Senate again. And growing up, I never thought that government was for people like me. And I think that that is still a very pervasive narrative in a lot of communities in our state and in our community here in Montpelier and in our communities across the state and definitely in our communities across the country. And I believe that when government works it is because there are people there who represent the majority of us. And that is not what I believe that government has always done. I think that we have much work to do to protect our labor unions, to protect our nurses here in Vermont who are working for a fair contract. Our teachers across this state, our CCV faculty, we organized recently and we are now represented by AFL-CIO, our prosecutors across the state who are working to organize right now. The power of the people is incredible. And to watch people every single day get up and serve others is humbling to me every day when I get up to go and serve others. My grandparents were firm believers that when you serve others you are doing the most important work. And neither of them are here anymore but I would like to think that they know that they imparted the most significant lesson of all which is the work in service of others is the most important work that any of us can do in government. And I'm confident that whomever you vote for of all of your candidates up here they will work for you in government. But I believe that I bring a unique skill set to the table here. I serve our community as a prosecutor. I serve as a college professor here and I watch my students day and then day out work themselves up out of situations that remind me a lot of myself. And I think that that is the most important work that any of us can do is to pay it forward and see those that we have influenced over the years to be able to rise up and improve their lives and watch them improve the lives of others. So I would encourage you to give them Hill at the ballot box on August 14th or sooner. And I look forward to meeting all of you who are watching. Please feel free to reach out. You can check my website out at ahillforvtsenate.com and I look forward to hearing from all of you. Thank you for taking your time to watch and thank you to Orca and to John for donating his time to all of us. Well, thanks for watching. Please don't forget or neglect to vote because your vote does count and it does matter. So until we're back here for the general election, thanks for watching.