 elected and I would be grateful to return to the Senate. Very good. Tamash, thank you very much. We move on to our next opening statement from Debbie Ingram from Williston. Thank you, Matt. And thanks very much to Channel 17 for sponsoring this forum. I'm running for reelection because I want to work hard to try to improve the lives of my constituents and all Vermonters. I feel that I've made a great contribution in my first term to the Senate's work in doing just that. And I very much appreciate the voters giving me the opportunity to do that again for the next two years. Along with being a senator, I am also the lead organizer for a faith-based community organizing project and have been doing that for the last 11 years. And that gives me the opportunity to use grassroots methodology to talk to everyday Vermonters about the issues that are affecting them and their families. And through that, I've been able to not only understand what those issues are but do research on how to change them and how to affect systemic change, which I think is extremely important for a legislator to understand. And those issues have been around affordable housing and homelessness, around economic dignity, health care reform, criminal justice reform, education, and transportation. And I bring all of that experience and knowledge to my role in the Senate. And I have been very privileged to be on the Help Them Welfare Committee and the Education Committee this past biennium and have introduced legislation in both those arenas, but also been part of the Democratic team that has passed the legislation that Tim referred to that has really been a progressive agenda and has really moved things forward for everyday Vermonters. Very good. Debbie, thank you. Joining us is Finney and Abby, first-time candidate from Jericho. We're excited to hear about your opening statement and what has prompted you to run for Chenning County State Senator. Well, my name is Finney and Abby. I am a junior now at Mount Mansfield High School. I'm running to show people, especially young people, that what goes on in their town, what goes on in their county, what goes on in their state is accessible to them in a way that they might not have thought it was. We have, on presidential elections, 50% turnout on average. And on off-year elections like this one, much lower than that. And I think that's because people feel very separated from the system. And I think that by running and by talking to people I know, 18-year-olds to 30-year-olds, young people, we can build voters who are engaged and who feel that they can take what happens in their community into their own hands. And I want to show people, especially by running, people who might already be more involved, people who do vote, that you can take it a step further. You don't need to be a career politician to gather some signatures and to get up on a forum like this. And talk about the issues that matter to you. I want to expand the number of voices that people hear. And I'm just very proud to be one of those voices. Very good. Finnean Abbey from Jericho. Thank you very much. We'll move now into a question and answer period here with our candidates. We have a list of questions that we formulated. However, we do invite you, the viewer, to dial on in and ask questions directly of these candidates. The number, again, is 862-3966. Tim, we'll begin with you. As a president pro tem of the Senate, you've had what you term a very successful biennium. Looking ahead, what are your priorities for the upcoming biennium? Well, I think it's always hard when you're someone who's a generalist and have so many interests to limit the numbers. But I think the first order of business, in my opinion, is to raise the minimum wage. This past year, we proposed and passed through the legislature a minimum wage increase of $4.50 over six years. It would have improved the economic well-being of tens of thousands of Vermonters who were doing everything society asked of them going to work. Unfortunately, our governor is philosophically opposed to that increase and effectively has made life less affordable for those tens of thousands of people. We have great strides still to make on fighting climate change. I think we've put a lot of emphasis on renewable energies in the past, and we need to continue to do that. And now we really need to shift focus to the transportation sector, where roughly half of our emission contributions are happening. And I don't think we've spent enough time and energy focused on that. And then one last piece, and this might seem a little strange to describe as a priority. This is a personal priority in the sense that I believe we should have four-year terms for the Vermont governor. I believe that when we have governors who have a two-year term, by the time they've got their first year under their belt, they're already campaigning for the second year. And witnessing Governor Phil Scott and his proposals, many of them really had the hallmark of someone who already had to go into campaign mode to start thinking about a reelection. If someone has four years, they can propose bold solutions to whatever the problem is. And then it gives them enough time to ride out the early bumps and then see if the policies make sense to the people of Vermont. When you have only two-year terms, you get very incremental approaches. And it's bipartisan. This is not a to pick just on Governor Scott. Governors of both major political parties have suffered, I believe, by two-year terms. And I think in some way, a four-year term for governor might be the single most important policy we can do to affect all the other policies that people care so much about. Four-year term for Governor Debbie, renewable energy, and minimum wage. Tim has said those are his priorities. What about yours? Well, my top priority would also be raising the minimum wage. I agree that that is the single most important thing that we can do to make Vermont more affordable. The governor claims that he wants to, that's his top issue. But the best way to do that is to try to give some relief to so many of our Vermont families who have to work two or three jobs just to make ends meet. And our economy has been growing, but they are not really sharing in that growth. And also, even for our businesses, I know there's a lot of concern about our small businesses. But for one thing, the increase in the wage would be gradual over time. So it would give businesses time to adjust. They would also create new consumers for those businesses. If people have enough money to be able to buy Vermont goods and services, then it's also good for the businesses. And our joint fiscal office estimated that $240 million would be infused into the Vermont economy if we raise the wage. So I agree with that as a priority. My interest is also in healthcare. And I particularly am interested in making sure that we continue to move towards a universal primary care system, which we pass legislation that would study that and try to get the parties together to come up with ideas about how we can move that forward. And also the importation of prescription drugs, which actually Senator Ash led on as well. I think we need to make sure that that moves forward because that would lower our prescription drug costs greatly. Great. We'll come back and ask you that question in our next set of round robin tear. Finney and we'll go to you. You've heard some of the main priorities of the sitting Chittenden County senators. Where do your priorities lie? And do they dubtail with what you've heard here this evening? Yeah, I'd like to start by commending a lot of what they talked about. The raise of the minimum wage, I think, is a huge step forward in working towards importing those drugs and making it so everyone is health care is incredibly important. If I could bring attention to probably the first piece of legislation I would like to see worked on. I think people all over the country are looking for electoral reform. And that comes with removing money from politics. But I think people are frustrated in general with a perceived lack of listening that goes on in the two parties we have. And the solution that I would propose to that is switching from a voting system of first pass the post to an instant runoff voting system like they're pursuing in Maine right now. And what that will do is that will allow more local candidates, candidates perhaps without as much name recognition, to get onto the ballot really to offer their ideas. For those not familiar with instant runoff voting, you look at your slate of candidates. You rank them in order of how much you like them. And then all the votes are tallied. The candidate with the lowest number of votes is eliminated and all of the votes they got go to their voter second choices. And that way you're not worried about voting for. I like this person more, but this person has more of a chance of winning. And I don't want this other person to win. Vote for who you like. Try to eliminate strategic voting. And I think that will alleviate a lot of what people think is an undue amount of control that parties have. That's my wedge issue, of course. OK. I'm going to actually just throw it to these two sitting senators. What are your thoughts on an instant runoff voting? Well, I've supported instant runoff voting historically. And in Burlington, we actually had the experience of instant runoff voting in two mayors races. And the first one went very smoothly. And I think people enjoyed the fact that they eliminated the strategic voting that Finn describes. And they felt they could vote for the person they wanted to win the most. And rather than thinking about which candidate's going to spoil the outcome of events and maybe elect the person I like the least. The second time around with instant runoff voting, there was some dissatisfaction in Burlington. And as a result, Burlington voters decided to do away with it. And so in some ways, it was a setback for instant runoff voting in Vermont. But I think, as Finn points out, in the state of Maine, where it has now been put in place, I think if we see Maine voters enjoy instant runoff voting after several cycles, I think that it will re-raise the issue here in Vermont so that we can increase the diversity of candidates without fear of choosing the least worst candidate, which has been a problem in the past. Debbie, your thoughts on instant runoff voting? Yes, I agree that it's a good idea. I also remember when it was tried out here in Burlington. And as Tim said, once it went well, and then the second time the loser cried foul. And so it got the kibosh. But I think it definitely has advantages also in just making it kind of a fairer process if you have a runoff at all. Because what often happens is a lot of people come out for the first vote. And then the second time around, if there is a runoff, if runoff is necessary, you might have a whole different set of people. So I think it motivates everyone to try to come out the first time. And I think it would help increase voter participation as well. Great issue, Finnean. Thanks for bringing it up. Debbie, you had talked about health care as being one of your main priorities here. And I want to kind of come back to that. You're very much in favor of all payer. How do we move forward as a state trying to contain costs with an elderly population? I imagine it's not an easy fix in your grappling how to solve it across all economic spectrums. Talk about your commitment to this. Yes, you're right. It is difficult to lower costs. I mean, the health care sector of our society has been inflating annually at a much higher rate than other good services. I think one of the key things, though, the reason I brought up primary care is that if we could invest more, there's been evidence in other states and other countries that if you can increase the percentage of health care spending from right now in Vermont, it's about 6% or 7% on primary care. If you can increase the percentage of the pie to about 20%, you can actually save costs over the long term. And then, of course, also the idea is for us to pool our resources and to provide primary care through an assessment or a kind of tax or fee that can be leveled more equitably than having people pay premiums through a variety of different ways. It's especially a burden on our businesses that they try to provide health insurance for their employees. And so I think it would be a great incentive for businesses to come to the state if we could help to figure this out and remove that burden from them. So increasing spending on primary care has a lot of advantages. And I think it's also a step towards universal care in general. The Bernie Sanders idea of Medicare for All is really where we should be heading, whether one state can do that by itself is still out on that. I would like to see that at the national level. But I do think that Vermont can lead the way, and we can continue to move in that direction. Does it have to happen on such a small state first in order for it to be rolled out on a national level? I mean, we often hear that when it works in a small microcosm, then a federal program can come from that. As an example, Romney Care for the state of Massachusetts and how that was rolled out as Obamacare. Is that what has to happen here? Well, I think that it's a fertile ground. When we've seen that historically, that works well. In Canada, for instance, they started in Saskatchewan, which has a smaller population than many of the other provinces. And then it spread from there. We have a good relationship with our physicians. And we also have the advantage in a small place like Vermont of being able to bring all the players to the table. As I said on the Health and Welfare Committee, we routinely had people from both insurance companies, from our administration of Medicaid and Medicare, from advocates, the ombudsman, from lots of different quarters, the accountable care organizations that were starting. Everyone was at the table. And so we can all talk together and work things out. And we don't have the polarization that they do in larger places. Finney, and you're at the younger end of the insurance spectrum, health care spectrum, if you were, just entering into the marketplace, so to speak. What are your thoughts about the challenges that are facing lawmakers to try to address affordable health care for all Vermonters? I mean, I think there are plenty of challenges that are faced in terms of just uncertainty or just trying to think of what solution works the best. Personally, I'm most partial to a single payer system. I'm of the philosophy that if you're working with companies at some point along the line, you're paying somebody to make a profit. And I don't think there needs to be for-profit business in the process of trying to keep people healthy. I think Vermon absolutely can be a leader to try to bring this to the national level. But I also think that in that there's the question of do we want to wait? Do we want to keep having all the problems that we see from people not having access to health care being afraid to get health care? And that's not what I want for our state. I want, as soon as possible, people, when they have health issues, to be able to go to their doctor and to try to resolve those. And to make our state healthier. I think if we spend proactively and make sure that people are healthy beforehand and we're not dealing with them once they're sick, then we can save a lot of money on that as well. By handling health care as a proactive measure, rather than a reactive measure. Okay, very good. Tim will come to you. President Pro Tem of the Senate, obviously all payer model was a big push for your party. Do you personally feel that unshackling business from providing health care to its employees is the solution in a sense? Well, it's proven to be the solution in every other major nation on earth. The US is an outlier amongst sophisticated countries and that it does not provide a public universal health care program of some type. There are many different shades and gradations of a universal health care platform from country to country. I think many businesses would love to get out of the health care business. Most people don't go into manufacturing or into some type of service so that they can also spend a quarter of their time working on health care benefits. And each year negotiating with health insurers trying to get the best deal when it's more like a casino situation where the house always wins and you're always forking over more money. And just to put it in perspective, from the early 2000s to today, total health care spending in Vermont went up from $2 billion to $6 billion. So we're talking a huge growth in health care spending that it dwarfs the amount of growth in spending on general government. The University of Vermont Medical Center's total budget and this includes some federal funds, so I should be clear about that, is about $1.3 billion. The state's entire general fund is $1.6 billion. So we're starting to get on the place where health care spending is literally consuming everything in its path. The earlier attempt at single payer and Governor Shumlin deserves a lot of credit for pushing as far as he could to see if that could work in a small state like Vermont with the challenges we would face has now been replaced by the so-called all payer model. And the all payer model, I'm guessing if I pulled 100 normal people, like maybe one would know what that means, but basically it's trying to get all the people who administer health insurance in the state of Vermont, public and private payers, meaning Medicaid, Medicare, Blue Cross, MVP, to pay for outcomes rather than a fee for service so that it removes the incentive to keep treating people over and over and over again and keep billing one by one. Instead, they would get a block payment and be told to manage the health of that population. If this effort is successful, that really could slow the growth in health care spending that we've seen. The jury is still out. These are new models. They have not been tested before. We're not the only state pursuing such an initiative. So we will be able to borrow ideas from others, but it really is the budgetary challenge of our time from a public sector point of view because when people worry about how much we've had to cut from schools, the affordability of higher education, cleaning up the environment, you name the area that people feel we do not have enough resources being committed. Health care is the reason. I call it the blob. It's consuming everything in its path, so we have to do better. Very good. Pithinian, we'll move on to questions from you. You're very involved in trying to motivate a certain population to get out and be involved. Can you speak a little bit more about that and the challenge that you face and sort of the, it just seems it just continues. I mean, it's something that when I was in high school at your age, I was facing the same issue, apathy among voters. Yeah, apathy among voters is a big thing. A lot of people see it as, they see all of the fighting that goes on and the litigation that goes on and they think it's so much easier to be someone who is neutral on this, someone who doesn't take a position, someone who's apolitical. And what I want to show people is that being apolitical is a position. It's saying that you agree with the status quo and that it doesn't need changing. And what I want to show people is that if you look at the problems that you see in your community and society, it's all politics. Everything is politics. Politics is a business of solving problems. And if you do your research and you pay attention and you talk to people, you can be part of solving those problems. And that's what I want people to be. I want people to be problem solvers and I want people to get out and vote and to be involved. I'm gonna just follow up on this a little bit with you. Do you see that your school is actively engaged in helping you find that voice and of also your constituents at this time in life? On a personal level? Yeah, just in general, as an example. To your school or the school system in the state of Vermont, do you feel that they are actively supporting young people to find a voice to be engaged in politics and what's going on around them? I absolutely do. I'm incredibly proud of the school that I go to. When I first decided to run, I was in the middle of Latin too and I brought it up with my teacher, Mr. Knox. Just a shout out if he's watching. And he didn't say, oh, that's dumb or whatever. He actually said, look it up, maybe you could. And then when I did, he was the first signature on my petition of candidacy. And I've had that encouragement from him. I've had that encouragement from other staff members. We have a group at my school called Clash. We meet during lunch and we really hash out issues and we talk about it. There are so many, at least at MMU, there are so many opportunities to be engaged and there's so much encouragement from the school to be engaged and to really think of yourself as an actor within your community. Wonderful. And I just am so proud of my school for that. Very good, very good. Tim, I want to bring that to you and kind of turn it into education. Talk about the state of education currently and what you see the challenges are facing the state and students Finian's age. Well, I think Fin said, highlights something that is often overlooked, which is that we have fantastic public schools. There is frequently the frustration people feel with the way we pay for schools, property tax based largely. They mistake that for disfavoring the public education that's actually being delivered and the great teachers we have and the engaged students. So it's very heartening to hear the positivity that's being expressed about MMU and I know that's also true of many of the schools, not only around Chittenden County, but around the state. But one of the things that we often hear about there's this emphasis on the way schools are paid for, but not what's driving the costs in our schools. And I think if we were to step back into the late 90s, early 2000s, when the way we pay for our schools was first developed, we'd see that virtually all the spending was on teachers, books, computers, lab equipment, things that you consider direct instructional costs. Now fast forward to 2018 and many superintendents of supervisory unions will say that their instructional spending has actually been going down even though their budget's going up and you say, okay, what explains that? Well, what explains it is that school districts are being forced to meet the human needs, the human services needs of so many kids coming from very challenged households and that costs money. So the growth of psychologists, social workers, behavioral interventionists, these positions which may have been in the schools in the old days, but not in the numbers they are today. And so that human service spending has been on the backs of property taxpayers and our public school system. And so one of the things I'm determined to do is really make clear to the public that when they send in that education payment, they're really paying for two things. They're paying for the direct education of the K through 12 system and they're paying for all of these human service needs, the opiate challenge, all these problems that are in communities that the student brings into the schools and the districts rightfully know that if they don't try and meet the kids' needs right where they are, they're not gonna be able to learn anything while they're there. So that to me is the next frontier is really getting a handle on how we meet these human service needs so it's not all falling on the back of property taxpayers. So to that Debbie, I'm gonna kind of extrapolate a little bit further on this. How does immigration impact the cost of education here in the state? Burlington is in a sanctuary city bringing in immigrants trying to seek a better life. How does that directly impact, then, the bottom line when Tim has said here we're having to provide all these human services outside of just a general K through 12 book learning education? Well, it is true that our immigrants have contributed to the wealth of languages that are spoken at the Burlington schools and my other job outside of the Senate, we do actually have an education initiative, so myself and some of the other organizers have had the opportunity to work very directly with a lot of the folks from different refugee communities who've come in over the last decades, actually. So there are new positions like homeschool liaisons that liaise to people who don't speak English as their first language and there are some additional costs but I think that it's important to remember that our immigrants pay their taxes like everybody else does and so they're paying also for the services that they get and their presence and their culture and their work ethic add so much and enrich our schools and really add a lot to all the kids of all different backgrounds. So funding for education seems to be the sticking point, as you said, with property taxes being on the hook for so much of it, nobody's gonna be happy. It doesn't seem like anyone's happy with any solutions. Can you sort of give us an overview of what you'd like to see change in the funding of education and what you've proposed and perhaps how you've been standing? Well, I think the best way to make as many people happy as possible is to manage the expenses more effectively and we have passed several bills and Debbie's been instrumental in the most recent one which is reforming the way our special education services are paid for. That is a fast growing line item in many school district budgets. We passed Act 46 which has been somewhat controversial throughout the state but is bringing school districts together in larger organizations so they can better manage their facilities and personnel. And if you can continue to deliver a high quality public education but you're able to spend in a more efficient manner, it means that everyone receives the tax relief and tax benefit that comes with it. So that's, in my opinion, the most important thing. In terms of how the funding system works, I think there are really two things. One is that, as I like to say sometimes, the more you screw with something, the more screwed up it gets. We have an education funding system which every year some legislators prevail at the end of the legislative session and make slight tweaks. Each time you do a slight tweak on a $1.6 billion endeavor, it causes lots of problems downstream and we've got so many patches to our funding system now that each time you do one, it sort of disrupts the whole system. So I think in the future, if we can find a way to move to another source of revenue more towards income versus property would be one path and we've made some progress in that front. And we hope, in fact, that some of the recent legislation, I'm amazed to say this, that the Supreme Court, one that has not been issuing rulings I'm very happy with, in one regard has done something positive with online sales allowing states to collect the sales tax that would be due but most people don't pay. That money flows right into our education fund and therefore would reduce the pressure on other sources of revenue. Death by a thousand cuts Debbie. Right, right, right. Well, one of the things I have learned in serving on the Education Committee is that previous legislatures have done a good job, I think in just what Tim was talking about, trying to make delivery more efficient and encouraging our local school districts to consolidate and that's what Act 46 did and we made some changes to it since I served this last biennium as well. We went around actually and visited different school districts and listened to school board members and administrators and made some tweaks based on what they told us to be as responsive as possible. But I think over time that we've already seen that there has been savings of dollars, we've gone from over 250 school districts down to around a hundred now. So we've already definitely made a lot of consolidation and that will over time contribute to even more savings. But also it preserves something I think is very important and that's local control. And we need to keep that in mind as well. With people, I understand I pay property taxes too, we all do, it can be frustrating sometimes when you see your taxes go up, but we also want to be able to have that control locally we want to be able to go to our town meetings and hear from our administrators and our school boards and then make decisions based on our kids. And that's something that the legislature is really committed to which we are not seeing from the governor and we've been continuing to be at loggerheads about that. But if all you were interested in was just cutting the bottom line and not worrying about who makes the decisions or really necessarily maybe the quality of the education for the kids, we could just have four school districts or one school district or something like that just cut it from top down. But the legislature is trying really hard not to do that. Finney, and your thoughts on how education in the state of Vermont is funded? Okay, so. I'm particularly interested you're right in the middle of it. Yeah, I am currently being educated. I think what's important to start off conversations about school funding and trying to make sure that we save money is that I don't believe that we should cut costs at the student level. The money that we spend on, like Tim said, the individual resources, the teachers, the computers, that's an investment and we reap the benefits of that as a society once students finish going through that. I think that consolidating counties and trying to eliminate some of the administrative costs that we have associated with smaller school districts is a good step that we could take. I think it's important to retain local control, but I don't think that should come at the expense of red tape and of costs related to that. But I think the most important, I think what we have to reimagine what school means. School should be the center of communities. It should be more than just a place that you send your kids to. It could be a facility that you're able to use, a place that feeds people who are not able to be fed, especially kids, making sure that we're viewing it as something as part of a larger system to make sure that kids stay supported. And as long as I think we're transparent about how we spend that money and we view it as an investment rather than something that we just have to get it out of the way, then we can be honest with how we're doing it. Great. If I could just jump in as well. I mean, Debbie spoke a little bit to the loggerheads with the governor and Finn's talking about the on the ground experience and the richness that comes with having teachers who are happy to be working there and invested in their students. And we've faced proposals this year which are, we're kind of shocking, proposals to do mandatory teacher and staff cuts at every school in the state virtually. The governor floated that for about two days and it was very unpopular. He walked that back, but then he still said we're gonna magically save the same amount of money but it wouldn't be mandatory anymore. So he never really backed off of a mandatory headcount cut at every school. The problem is at MMU, that might mean that for no good reason, it's a social studies teacher who everyone really likes. That's the first one to go. At another school, it might be the science teacher that everyone thinks is the best teacher in the school. It might be a support staff person who's really a tremendous added value to the student experience. And on issue after issue, what we found was there was a lot of red meat throwing about property taxes and we all get the frustration about property taxes. But what we started to really pick up on was really that the goal was really, it wasn't really a discussion about property taxes at a certain point. It appeared to be a strategy to cut deeply into our public schools for reasons best explained by those who were making the proposals. But one of the things, the legislature, you often come back at the end of the session and say, what did we achieve this year? And you think about positive things, things that passed that didn't exist before, new policies. Well, this year, one of the most important things we did was stopped many of the governor's anti-public education proposals from passing. We're gonna just do one more question before we wrap up with final closing statements. And I wanna ask each of you if you think the citizens of the state of Vermont are well-served by its government. Is the state meeting the needs of its constituents? Tim? Well, that's a small question. You know, I think it's a hard question to answer because every Vermont is experienced something unique to him or herself. And I think that there are things that Vermont government does well. It educates our kids very well. We're one of the top ranked public school systems in America and hopefully we keep it that way. We have provided health insurance coverage to greater percentage of our population than virtually any other state in America, barring maybe Massachusetts and one or two others. That doesn't mean it's affordable to all those people who have coverage, but we've done a good job having at least basic coverage for about 96 or so percent of Vermonters, which I think is a big accomplishment. We have attempted to address childhood poverty in a whole variety of ways, which I think are very commendable. Are we doing enough to deal with issues of poverty? The answer is no. And I think that's why we both spoke highly of increase in the minimum wage and other economic strategies. On the opiate front, where we've seen just a devastating crisis throughout the state, a crisis throughout America. And as much as we wish we had done even more faster and had more tools on the table to meet more people's needs, what's remarkable and sad is that other states consider us one of the two or three shining examples nationally for comprehensive strategies to fight the opiate crisis. So I don't think any of us should be satisfied at any point that we're meeting the needs of Vermonters because it's essentially a never ending journey to keep doing a better job meeting people's needs. I am most worried at this time about young people from poor families, young people who have no job connections, they're not learning some of the skills that they'll need either in education or the workforce, they're not learning it at home and they don't have the resources to get it from other people. Their families are afflicted sometimes by substance or mental health crises. And that population is the future of Vermont. And so to me, that's one of the read something to reemphasize when we go back in Montpelier, those of us who are lucky enough to get elected is we need to really revisit that population and make sure we're doing right by them. But the short story is we do a lot of great things in Vermont through the public sector, working with the private and nonprofit sectors. But of course, there's just so much more to do. Are we meeting the needs of Vermonters? Well, in the materials they actually sent us beforehand, Public Assets Institute was mentioned and examining the state budget numbers and making that whole process more transparent. And actually the organization that I direct, we partnered with Public Assets Institute about this. It's a kind of wonky thing called the current services budget, which the legislature has been trying to encourage the administration to really present those numbers that would be the numbers that would represent if we fully met all of the commitments that we have made in statute to certain programs, what would those numbers be? Not just the numbers that the administration sort of passes along to us during budget season. So we're still trying to get a little better information about where there are gaps in some of our programs, our social service programs, especially. So the answer to that is there's always more to be done. We're not meeting the needs completely. But I do wanna say that I think other states look to Vermont as a leader in so many areas. And we're very frequently named as one of the best places to live. And that's not for no reason. And I also think it's important for us to really face who actually lives here and not wish that other people lived here. I get a little frustrated with the political rhetoric, always wanting to bring in different kinds of people and not governing the people who actually live here and being satisfied with the Vermonters that we have. I love the Vermonters that we have. And I think that we need to keep working to meet their needs and listening to them on the ground, but not have this kind of pie in the sky thing about being some of their state. We're running short on time, so I'll ask you to keep your response brief before we do closing comments. But your thoughts on are we meeting the needs of Vermonters, Finneum? Well, I am on a personal level, I'm constantly struck by how proud I am to live in Vermont and to be in Vermont to go to school here. And I think education-wise, we are in so many ways a leader on how we handle that. And I think we're a leader on how we handle so many issues, but I never want to be content being a leader on an issue that I don't think is solved yet. So I think Vermont does a very good job of serving the people who live here, but we always need to strive to serve them better. We need to handle the opioid epidemic better, even if we're leading on that, we can continue to lead better on it. We need to solve healthcare, we need to solve poverty. I'm listing off a laundry list of items, but we never can rest on what we've accomplished. We always have to push forward, and I think we're doing a good job of that. Very good, Finneum, thank you so much. At this time, we'll ask for closing statements. We are running short on time, so if we could ask for a 30 to 45 second closing statement from each of the candidates, that would be fine. Tim, we'll start with you. Well, thank you again for having us, and thank you for viewing this at home. I'm running for reelection to the state senate largely because on issue after issue, there is so much more progress to make, whether it's bringing down healthcare costs, delivering a great public education, meeting the challenge of the opioid crisis throughout the state, making college more affordable, protecting the environment, fighting climate change. Just on issue after issue, there's so much more work to be done. I'm someone who does not find it acceptable for people to just trash the government. The government is here to work with the private and nonprofit sectors, and I believe in Vermont, we do that well. And as the leader of the senate, I feel especially proud. We've passed budgets that grew very reasonably within our means, made major investments in workforce development, cleaning up the environment, meeting human needs, and so many other things. So I would be particularly grateful to return to the senate and keep making progress on all those areas. Thank you. Debbie, and you're a closing statement. I'd like to ask folks to vote for me actually in the primary on August 14th. You can go to the polls now. I have felt it a great honor and privilege to serve my first term, and I would ask that you would give me the opportunity to continue to work on the issues that Vermonters care about and that I care about very deeply. I am a people person, and I have a heart for justice and have worked on that for many years now, and I would love to be able to go back to the state house and continue to work for my constituents. Very good. And Finnean, your closing comments and closing statement. Well, of course, I'm gonna ask people to vote for me because that's why I'm up here. But more than that, I wanna ask people to vote in general, vote in this election, vote next election, vote in every single election. If I've encouraged people to think more deeply about the issues, to maybe think about running, and to vote, then if one person has done that, then I think I've succeeded in what I set out to do. And I just wanna say thank you so much for the opportunity and look out for me. I'm always gonna be trying to make change. Very good. Finnean, it's a pleasure sharing the stage with you. Thank you so much. And thank you to both our candidates as well running for reelection. We wish them all best of luck. A reminder that the primary is Tuesday, August 14th. General election is less than a month away or four months away, rather. Tuesday, November 6th is our date of election. So a reminder, if you have not registered to vote in the state of Vermont, you can register all the way up to including election day. I'm Matt Kelly for all of us here at Channel 17. We thank you for watching. Good night.