 Welcome to Vermont this week. It is Friday, March 18th, and we are going to be talking about GMO legislation. We are going to be talking about an initiative to help people with criminal backgrounds find employment, and we will be talking about the budget. Joining me right now is Andrea Stanner. Hi Josh, nice to see you. She is the executive director of the rural Vermont and also a member of the Vermont Right to Know Coalition. And so first of all, what is the coalition exactly? The coalition is a group of organizations that formed up in late 2012 to tackle the issue of providing consumers the right to know what's in their food around genetically engineered food. And the coalition is comprised of rural Vermont, Vermont Public Interest Research Group, NOFA Vermont, and Cedar Circle Farm, which is an organic farm and educational center down in Thetford. And plus hundreds of other businesses and organizations joined the coalition as we moved forward with the legislation. So we were the grassroots group that drove forward Vermont's GMO labeling law that was passed in 2014. Excellent, and so what's the gist of that law? When does it kick in? What's it going to entail? Well it is scheduled to go into effect this July, July 1st, 2016, that was prescribed in the legislation. And it's very simple. It basically says if a food sold in Vermont contains genetically engineered ingredients, that information needs to be disclosed on the label of the package. So it's pretty simple. And so just to play the devil's advocate, why do you think people have the right to know that? Well because it's a, food is a really fundamental thing. We all eat every day if we're lucky. And I think we've gone through a period of time where we've learned a lot more about our food and there's a lot of aspects of our food that we've learned is important. This is another piece of important information that people want to know. People want to know it for health reasons, for religious reasons, for environmental reasons. So it is a crucial piece of information at least as important as all the other things that are currently disclosed on food labels. So we know that it was certainly a long process to create this bill. It took, I understand, three years, went through six different legislative committees. And but since it's been signed into law, it hasn't been exactly smooth sailing. It's been the subject of litigation. In fact, there was an effort this week in Washington, D.C. to try and pass legislation that would nullify Vermont's law. Can you tell us about what happened this week? Sure, this week we were very lucky in that there was a vote held in the U.S. Senate on a bill that would have basically preempted Vermont's law and that vote failed. They had to get 60 votes to move that bill forward. They didn't get 60, they only got 48, I think. Yeah, 49 to 48. And so we're pleased about that, but as Governor Shumlin said in his press conference, we won the battle, not the war. We fully expect that when the Senate comes back after their Easter recess, they will be taking up this bill again. So we're continuing to have these conversations with senators, their conversations continuing across the country. I mean, there are over 30 states that are considering legislation similar to Vermont's. And it's become, it's an interesting issue because particularly during this presidential cycle where there's so much division and so much divisiveness in terms of opinions and so on, this is an issue that over 90% of Americans agree on. Over 90, consistently all the polls say over 90% of Americans would like this information on their food packages. And so in the face of that, it's really surprising that the food industry is fighting it as hard as they are. The dark act as it's known was defeated, never actually got to the floor for debate. In the Senate. In the Senate, correct. Because it didn't get the cloture vote needed. There are some Democratic senators and others who are working to craft a different bill. One that would set a national standard for GMO labeling rather than allowing the federal government to undermine state efforts. Right. Where does the coalition stand in terms of a national standard? Well, from the beginning the coalition said what we need is a national standard. Congress hasn't been able to deliver that. So that is why the states have stepped up to respond to the demands of consumers. And there's lots of examples of this in the past. I mean, there've been many other laws that became federal standards that started out as state laws. And there's been a lot of talk about, oh, we have a patch, we're gonna end up with a patchwork of laws. Well, that's not really true because all the laws that have been passed and there are three so far. Vermont's is the only one that is scheduled to go into effect. But Maine and Connecticut have passed laws as well. These 30 other states are considering legislation. And Vermont's law has been used as a model for all those other pieces of state legislation. So there isn't going to be a patchwork. It's going to be very, very consistent across the country. But we would all prefer to see a good strong mandatory standard that would be no weaker than what Vermont requires. And we know that Vermont's law, it was upheld at the federal district court level. It's now at the appeals court. Well, what happened is the litigation began in the district court. And the first moves that were made by the lawyers was the attorney general of Vermont moved to dismiss this lawsuit. And then the grocery manufacturers association filed a motion to get an injunction against Vermont's law. The district court said, no, you're not in imminent harm, you don't get an injunction. So they chose to appeal that ruling up to the federal appeals court. And we're currently waiting for that decision from the appeals court. There's certain speculation that part of the reason this huge effort is being made to pass legislation that would undermine the state laws is because they're not at all sure that they're going to win the court case. Now, should Vermont's law pass all of the legal tests, all the legal challenges, presumably other states will then feel more emboldened to act and pass the wrong laws. At which case do you think Congress would be more inclined to come up with a national standard rather than face a patchwork? We can only hope, but again, there's not going to be a patchwork. These laws are going to be virtually the same. But yeah, we can only hope that once we demonstrate that this can be done, and there's a lot of fear tactics being used in the face of Vermont's law going into effect, there's talk about, oh, food prices are going to go through the roof and Vermont's food shelves are going to be empty, and it's just not going to happen. It didn't happen in Europe. There are 64 other countries that have required the labeling of genetically engineered food, and none of these things, these scary things have come to pass. There's no reason that that will come to pass. Now, companies change their labels all the time. I mean, who hasn't had the frustration of going into the store, looking for a product that you're familiar with, and not being able to find it only because they totally changed the label? And they do that all the time, and it's not expensive. It's a cost of doing business. All we're asking for is four simple words, produced with genetic engineering. It's not a warning label. It doesn't imply anything other than information. It's like, contains salt, contains peanuts. We should note that Campbell's soup agreed to do this voluntarily. Yeah, they chose to, they said we're gonna pay attention to our consumers, and many, many other companies have chosen to go even further in that they've decided to remove genetically engineered ingredients from their food. I mean, I think I saw this morning, the non-GMO verified project, which is the third party entity that's been labeling things that don't contain genetically engineered ingredients. They now have their label on something like 87,000 products. I don't know how many there are altogether, probably millions, but. So yeah, so I think this is being driven by a very simple, but fundamental fact, which is people have the right to know what's in their food, particularly if they're choosing food for their families and their kids, and it's pretty simple. Excellent, Andrea, thank you so much for being here to talk to us about this. You're welcome, appreciate it, and we'll keep you updated as the story goes on. Hey, when we come back, my colleague Neil Goswami will be discussing the budget. So coming up now, we're gonna discuss the budget. My colleague Neil Goswami has been following that, and there's been action, well I guess there's been action probably since January, but there was a vote this week. So tell us what's going on with the budget? The House Ways and Means Committee on Wednesday night voted on a tax bill, and it includes about $14 million in new, higher taxes. Now, critics of the process and critics of the budget will complain that the tax bill is just a fraction of the fees and taxes that are being raised this year. In total, if you look at the fee bill, the transportation bill, the general fund, in the tax bill, it's all going to amount to about $48 million as it's seen in the House. Now that still has to go through the Senate and changes will be made, but there are a lot of people griping about that total $48 million bottom line, and so they really get there in a number of ways. If you'll recall, Governor Shumlin proposed in his budget address to raise a mutual fund filing fee that financial institutions pay to basically sell mutual funds in the state. It's currently at $600, and the governor proposed raising it to $1,200. The House Ways and Means Committee actually opted to raise it to $1,500 for the annual registration fee, and then they boosted a one-time initial registration fee to $2,000. All in all, that's gonna raise $20.8 million, which is the biggest chunk, the biggest single chunk of the new revenue package. So how does our registration fee right now compare with others in our region? So that's a good question. Right now in Vermont, as I said, it's $600. The only other state I know off the top of my head is Massachusetts, and theirs is, I believe, I wanna say around $1,500 to $2,000 somewhere in that range. So we are significantly lower than our neighboring states. Now you also have to realize that mutual funds are probably much more lucrative in Massachusetts where they have millions of people as opposed to the 630 million, or 1,000 folks in Vermont. So it's not exactly apples to apples, but the bottom line was law makers looked at it and decided yeah, these financial institutions can probably foot the bill for a little bit more. And there are thousands and thousands of mutual funds that Vermonters can participate in here in Vermont. So that will raise, as I said, $20.8 million. Couple of other big things. In the transportation bill fees are being raised, DMV related fees by about $10 million. The employer assessment, this is one that's somewhat controversial. They have made changes to the employer assessment which will raise about $6 million. And the employer assessment is for employers who do not provide health insurance coverage to their workers. Now they might provide them for full-time workers, but any worker part-time or otherwise that works for them, they'll take those hours worked and come up with a full-time equivalent. So if you have four workers who work 10 hours a week, that equals 40 hours and that's one full-time equivalent. So each quarter an employer will have to pay currently $151 for each full-time equivalent that doesn't have health insurance. Under the changes in the tax bill, employers with between one and 19 workers will remain at the $151 assessment, quarterly assessment. And between 20 and 99 employers, it'll jump to $210 and 100 employers and above will be $249. You add that all together and project it out over the Vermont's workforce and they expect about $6 million in higher new revenue. Couple of other things in there, Airbnb and other companies that provide a platform for people to rent their houses or available rooms, they are going to try some compliance and get them to actually pay the state's room's tax. And that's going to raise about another million dollars, they believe. That's certainly going to require some level of enforcement, I think. Correct, that'll be essentially be the tax department enforcing existing law. These folks are supposed to be paying the tab now and they're just not and there hasn't been an effort to collect it. So they expect to net a million dollars out of that. The gross fuel receipts tax is currently at 0.5% and that's for things, dealers pay it on things like kerosene, propane, diesel, heating fuel, natural gas. And that's at 0.5%, they're going to bump that to 0.75%. And all in all between the general fund and a special fund that's going to raise more than $3 million. So you start to add up all these things and you get to that $48 million bottom line and that's a significant amount of money. And critics of the plan will say, well, we raised 30 million last year. Now we're looking at 48 million this year. It might be excessive. And as I said, it's going to go to the house floor. Potential changes there. It'll then go to the Senate. They'll work on it. Senate Finance Committee will work on that and more than likely make some changes. So we don't know what the end result will be but we do know that we're looking at a starting point of about 48 million in higher taxes and fees. Time table-wise, are we about where we usually are during this time? Yeah, I would think so. If anything, maybe a week and a half ahead of schedule, they're eyeing a early dismissal from ending the session. So it would be something, I think we're probably on track for early May, first week of May, which isn't all that early but you never know, they could kick it into a higher gear and once the budget and the tax bills are ironed out, they'll pull the plug on this biennium and we'll move full steam into election season. Right on. Yeah. Excellent. There was a ban the box bill that you covered this week which passed overwhelmingly and I saw one release from National Federation of Independent Businesses this morning that is against it but all in all it seemed to have pretty broad support. Yeah, absolutely. I think the final version, the vote yesterday, Thursday, which was the second reading. So it's still subject to a final vote today. The second reading vote was 138 to five. So pretty much as almost as unanimous as you're going to see anything coming out of the house. And so what this bill does is it prohibits an employer with some exceptions, it prohibits an employer from putting that box on a job application form that says, have you been convicted of a crime? Yes or no? And so the thought among advocates, especially those who are involved in criminal justice reform, they say that, hey, this is just making employers, they just look at that and they're just going to go ahead and toss it and not even going to invite the person in for an interview. And so the idea is that don't ask on the application form and interview the person based upon his or her merits and then during the job interview, ask them, hey, do you have a criminal record? Now the house did amend the bill yesterday for some exceptions. And so for example, there are some jobs for which you are disqualified based on federal or state law if you have convictions. I would assume banking. For example, yes, if you have an embezzlement conviction, then you are prohibited from going into the banking sector. So in this case, an employer could specifically ask, do you have a conviction for embezzlement? So they couldn't put the box back, say, hey, do you have a convicted of a crime? But you can ask about specific crimes. So you're going to find, again, somebody who perhaps works with the elderly, somebody who has a conviction for elder abuse would be disqualified from that as well. And so they receive a lot of support. In fact, people with criminal convictions in the house stood up to go ahead and say, yeah, I definitely support this thing. There was definitely some folks who opposed it, Ron Huber. And what are the arguments that they're making? The argument is, hey, why are we hemming in employers? They're the ones who drive the economy. They should be allowed to do whatever they want, more or less. An argument we see for most regulations that the legislature conjures up, essentially. Absolutely. So Mr. Huber, who owns a market up in Milton, he said on the floor yesterday that he employs nine people. Two of them have criminal convictions. And on his job application forms, he does not have the so-called box. However, he says he doesn't want to be told what to do. He said you shouldn't be legislating stuff for people who are doing the right thing. But I don't think he's going to pick up a significant number of no votes today. Yeah, looks like a pretty sure bet. All right. Tuesday was a fun day for political reporters. We got the first financial disclosure form since last July, last summer. And there were some interesting things in there. Who are the big money winners? It's hard to say anyone's a loser, essentially. They've all raised more than $400,000. Democrats, Sue Minter and Matt Dunn did very well. Sue Minter launched her campaign in September. And if you'll recall, she was the agency of secretary of the agency of transportation. And she couldn't begin campaigning or fundraising until she left her position. So between September and March 15th, she raised more money, actually, than Matt Dunn. The other Democratic candidate, former Windsor County Senator, did between July and March. So she did very well. They both have a lot of money cash on hand. I think for Matt Dunn, it's around $430,000. For Sue Minter, it was around $340,000 or so. And Dunn recently returned some money. He did. Yeah, he made put his foot down and said, I'm not going to take corporate or business contributions. Turns out, it didn't really hurt him all that much. It was only $16,000 in money that he raised from corporations or businesses. But he did send it back. None of the other candidates have agreed to do that. He put out the call for them to follow his lead. And they said, no, thanks. Most of them say if a Vermont business wants to donate to our campaign, we're going to allow it. And that's what they've done. On the Republican side, Phil Scott, the lieutenant governor, he raised more than $400,000. A good chunk of it, over something $1,000, actually came from businesses for Bruce. Although he had the highest percentage of money from folks living in Vermont. Bruce Lisman, the former Wall Street executive, he posted a number of more than $600,000, the most of any candidate. But $453,000 came from his own pocket. He loaned his own campaign $275,000. He kicked in another $160,000 or so in cash, I think. And then he had various income contributions from himself, totaling about $17,000. So they've all got plenty of money to spend. For some, like Bruce Lisman, he's got a deep pocket that he can reach into to keep this campaign going. He's the only candidate that's up on the air with commercials right now, television commercials. But I suspect with the amount of money that they've got available to them, the others will soon consider, at least, radio and television ads. So everyone's got a lot of money. In the lieutenant governor's race, Keisha Rahm, representative from Burlington, Democrat, she raised over $100,000. Chipman County Senator Dave Zuckerman, a progressive ad Democrat, was running as a Democrat for the lieutenant governor, raised about $63,000, $64,000. Yeah, so he hasn't been doing a lot of fundraising. Well, so he was trying to qualify for public financing. Yet he launched his campaign and began the effort before the statute says you can't. And he challenged that in court, hoping that the judge would see it his way and he wouldn't be able to continue on. To qualify for public financing, you have to raise $17,000 in $50 donations or less from every county in Vermont. And you can't start until February 15th. Well, he started sooner and he was seeking contributions of $50 or less. So that might have hindered his initial fundraising effort. I fully expect now that he's been sort of cut loose from the public financing law and he will go out and raise significantly more money. And in some will be higher amounts, more than the $50 that he was limited to. So when the next financial report is filed in July, July 15th, I believe, I expect to see him catching up with Representative Rahm a little bit more. And so to be clear, we don't have any candidates who are currently in the race who are using public financing. Not this year, not this year. Last year, two years ago, we had Dean Coren, a progressive qualify for public financing as a, in the lieutenant governor's race. But this year, nobody is, to my knowledge, is actively pursuing it. Very good. Excellent. Well, thank you for the update. Yeah, my pleasure. And so that's our show here this week here at the Statehouse. Joining me, thank you, Neil, as always. We really appreciate it. So our show here at Capital Beat is a joint production between the Vermont Press Bureau, that's us, and Orca Media. You can find our show online at vermontpressbure.com or orcomedia.net. Thank you so much for watching and we'll see you next week.