 sponsors that helped this year. Of course, Neil is our moderator from the American Legion Post, but McCullough's Quick Stop, Mills Hardware, myself, the BRI, and I'm getting everybody to do something. McCullough's, BRI, Mills Hardware, yourself, and you. You said that. Anyway, we got together to raise the money to put this thing on. So help those people out that are putting the money in, because we want to keep the tradition going. I want to thank you for growing up with the past and getting some money. That was very good of you. Anybody else? We're looking for money from Bethlehem University, too, so if anybody wants their pony. We're very lucky to have three or four, or sometimes four, or maybe four, legislators here. Other towns, according to Dick, have done this and contributed it because they lack a lot of tenants. And I'd like to see a couple people from the northern area who want to reach out to those folks and try to get one of your legislators. I hope they have, Dick, who I've said a bit, so. But anyway, the format is no change. We'll talk about anything you want to talk about as long as it's long as it's not too hard to deal with. We want to keep this, I mean, similar to the election year, but people have lots of ideas. And they're not always good. So if you don't keep it coming, I'm going to ask you a few questions about what kind of thing it's going to be. What are the things that I would like to draw your attention to? If you haven't noticed in the back of the arrow, every week during the legislative session, they publish a list of proposed bills. And I'm not suggesting we follow this by any means, but if you're having some difficulty with what's happening in the legislature, look at this quickly. Won't do you any harm. You'll find a lot of it. And I think that the legislators will agree with garbage. It'll hold no place but here. But if you see something there that really triples your fancy, it will well bring it up here. Or you can't even talk to somebody about it that knows more about it than before. So where would you like to start? We generally start with the legislators, tell us about what they're doing and what committees they were on. That doesn't allow for a whole lot of guesswork this year. It seems like everybody's gone off through a pretty fast start. So, Dick, if you would take a minute, we should. I think I know everybody, but I'm Dick McCormick, State Senator from Windsor County District, which is all of Windsor County, and the towns of London Dairy, which is a Wyndham County town, and Mount Holly, which is a Rutland County town. And that is for the constitutional requirement that there be within 10% of the ideal that each senator be representing one 30th of the state's population. So Windsor County to qualify for three senators has to pull in 200 towns. And they don't like it. They feel that they've been kidnapped, but there it is. Allison Clarkson and Alice Mitka are the two senators. I serve, in the morning, in the Senate, you're on two committees. My morning committee is Health and Welfare, and the afternoon committee is Appropriations. You may remember from high school that all appropriations have to begin in the House, because the House is closest to the people. There are smaller districts, there are more representatives. They are closer to the people, and so they are the ones who have to initiate any tax and any spending. But we do have two Houses, and so the Senate has to approve it in the end. So we're on the Appropriations Committee. Right now, let me do the appropriations first. We're, we made in the afternoon. We are completing our work on the Budget Adjustment Act. Vermont is on a fiscal year. On July 1 to June 31st. So we've been in fiscal year 2020 since July. And that budget is developed in the previous session. So the budget we're living under was developed about a year ago. And obviously no one can see the future. So the budget is based on the best estimates of where the future is gonna go. And midway, which of course came on January 1st, is midway through that fiscal year. We look at where things gone differently than we expected. And people will sometimes say, well, why don't you get it right the first time? Well, I need to think about it. Pretty much everything gets subject to some kind of adjustment as you go along, you know. And any project that involves anticipating the future. The guesses of where the future is gonna go are not random off the top of the head guesses. There are largely projections based on what had been the trends up until the time the budget was passed. We have budget advisors. The budget actually, we say the constitutionate begins in the house. Really the budget begins in the governor's office. The governor provides a recommended budget. Which people even just, they don't even refer to it because some call it the governor's recommend. But usually it's just called the budget, even though it's not because it hasn't been passed yet. And that's the template from which the house works and then the senate makes its adjustments to the house version. But sometimes something costs more than we thought it would. Sometimes things don't cost what we thought they'd cost. And there's a little extra money. Sometimes revenue falls short. This year we've actually had a good, comparatively good revenue year. And of course then people will say, well if you've got more money coming in than you expected, just do a tax refund, don't? But you don't have to spend it, it's not burning a hole in your pocket. But decisions not to spend money, when we wrote the original budget, the decision not to spend a certain amount of money on a certain expense does not necessarily mean that it wasn't a good idea to tend to that expense. It's just that we didn't have the money, you can't afford it. And when you don't have the money, you tighten your belt. But there are things that probably did need money. We had, for example, we made weatherization contingent on whether or not there was money. And so now if you've got the money, then that means you can do this thing that you thought you couldn't afford to do. So the budget adjustment act is just what the name implies, where it is adjusting the budget. There was no real controversy. I don't think in the house there's any real controversy. There are years where there is some controversy. In this case, it really is a matter of adjustments. Pluses in my little less here, a little more there. Basically it's the budget that was passed last year. The bill has passed out of the Appropriations Committee and is pending the vote in the house. It has passed out. It's on its way to you. Okay, and so it'll come first to the Appropriations Committee and then finally to the full Senate. We are already looking at the 2021, but remember years ago, my brother Kurt said, being in the legislature, you feel like you're aging quickly, but I'm already looking at that next year. The 2021 budget. That is the budget on which the governor gave the speech last week. This is the abridged version. This is the cliff notes on the budget, which was my weekend reading. In health and welfare, someone mentioned the nursing shortage. Vermont is 5,000 nurses short of what we need. My granddaughter Zoe is a nursing student. I said to her, you have, she was gonna be an actress. You have chosen wisely. Make sure you stay with it. We have a labor shortage in general. People talk about the shrinking population. I get a lot of emails that the reason the population is shrinking and it's shrinking slightly. It's not as though there's a flood right here, but people are leaving Vermont and droves. No, they're not, some are leaving. And young people have been leaving Vermont since they opened the Erie Canal, frankly. Because the action is out there. That's the bright lights, or even farmers. As soon as the West opened up, eight feet of top soils, a lot more inviting to farmers than our rock red New England Hills, which are good for poets, but difficult to farm. I actually met a kid from Indiana who wanted to farm in Vermont. Go back to Indiana. But we are experiencing as rural communities throughout the nation, our experience is a loss of population. It is a problem. I see it up close and personal. My stepdaughter and her husband own and operate Village Pizza over on Route 14. And my wife, Cindy, loves babysitting the grandchildren. But it's not just the fun, is it? The business doesn't run without her. Because people, if one person calls in sick, they're short because they're already functioning on a scale of, what's that? You can't find it. You can't find anybody, yeah. So I mean, it is a problem. The general reaction of all of my colleagues is that we need to increase the population of the state. There is some research out at the University of Iowa called Shrinking Smart, which takes it, our equation right now is shrinkage causes problems, therefore we need to do away with shrinkage. What they're saying in Iowa is shrinkage causes problems, therefore figure out a way to deal with the problems. And I don't know if they're right or not. I'm interested. I always like different ideas, so I'm at least looking into it. It does seem that a shrinking population should lower housing costs, for example, just low supply and demand. I don't know if that works or not. Doesn't appear to be working in Vermont. In any case, we are looking at the nursing shortage in health and welfare, specifically the nursing shortage. But in general, the legislature's looking at the population issue in general. The issue that we're dealing with right now in health and welfare is vaping and flavored tobacco products. And when, you know, vaping that we're being told by the supporters of vaping, that it's just, it's a smoking cessation tool. But then you got to wonder why is one of the flavors called unicorn puke. They do seem to be aiming at kids. It seems to be a way to get kids. So when we had testimony last week about the history of the tobacco industry pitching menthol cigarettes specifically to black people. And I can tell you 30 years ago, when I was a blues singer in Greenwich Village, I smoked menthols. It's just seemed cool, you know. I don't think I ever- I said, well, it was longer than that. Actually, you're right, you know, you're right. I've been in the Senate for, I'm so used to saying 30 years, thank you, man. 45, 50, I can always count on you next time. You're right. We wanted to be 30. A friend of mine, Yvonne Daley, has written a book about the hippies in the 70s in Vancouver. And my picture is in the book from about then. It's interesting. Talk about getting good news and bad news in the exact same moment. Many, many people have told me how handsome I look in that picture. That's the good news. They're always, they always sound surprised when I say it. Yeah, you were actually handsome. What happened? So anyway, the vaping, and of course that then raises the issue. Okay, let's say vaping is bad for you, isn't it still an individual choice? And I've got a libertarian streak. I often vote for more government regulation, but never happily. My starting position is, okay, let's go and show me why we have to do this. Often people can show me why they have to do it. In any case, the vaping is a whole new issue. No, there was no vaping 20 years ago, I'm the first time. It's become very widespread only in several years. And there are health problems attached to it. The lungs are supposed to breathe air. They're made to breathe air. They are not made to breathe anything else. And I say that as a once dedicated cigarette smoker. And it's one of the, I know people who say, when since I gave up cigarettes, I can't believe I ever smoked the idea, discuss me. I haven't smoked in years. I don't have a day go by that I don't want a cigarette. So believe me, I'm sympathetic to people who are addicted to tobacco. But it looks like vaping is another way to get more people addicted. So, and this is my colleague, Alison Clark, Carson. Good morning. Sorry. I think Alice is just driving. So I've just finished up mine. Alison, Sandy? Sir, David, I believe that the videographer has absolutely betrayed seats with Alice so that the legislators are more in view. Alice, right, and here comes Alice. I'm gonna let Alice sit here on that. Oh, yeah, all right, all right, all right. The videographer rules. Ha ha ha! She's so sorry. Not for you, of course. For you. No, he's giving you that seat. So you can be on camera. You're not on camera, you didn't have to. Ha ha ha! Good morning, Alice. So, good morning. We're here. So I'm Sandy Haas. I am in the house and I represent four towns, Bethel, Rochester, Stockbridge, and Pittsville, which is officially known as the Windsor-Rutland District, which doesn't really mean anything to anybody. And I serve on, in the house, we serve on one committee all day, and I am on human services where I serve as vice chair. And I wanted to start with something. So Neil talked about the list of bills that Harold reports every week, the new bills that have been introduced. I think it's really important to keep in mind what that means. This time of year, when there's not a whole lot going on, the press loves to talk about the newest bills and particularly the most outrageous bills that have been introduced. To date, and we're in the second year of the biennium, so everything that came in last year is still on the table, and we worked for two years on the same set of issues. As I've tracked this morning, and there are 1,241 bills that have been introduced, and I believe that in a two-year biennium, we've probably passed about 200 bills. So that gives you an idea of how many of those ideas don't really get much attention. Is there garbage in there? Yes, there probably is. I like to describe bills as slips of paper in a suggestion box. We have colleagues who wake up in the middle of the night with wild and crazy ideas, and they call up our lawyers and they say, right, is that for me? And so we get a lot of those. We also get bills that are way more serious, but that probably have a very long time of trajectory. I've worked on issues that took 10 years to pass. So you get the bill in this year with a handful of sponsors, and everybody says, oh, that's interesting, we should think about that. And then it comes in again the next term, two years later, and maybe it gets a couple, an hour of hearing. And then two years after that, maybe it gets serious consideration and makes it out of the committee on one body or the other, but doesn't make it out of committee on the other side because of course everything that we pass in the house has to go to the Senate and start all over again with the committee process and going to the floor. And not everything gets that kind of attention. So just as you read the fascinating articles about some of the bills that have come in this year, just keep in mind that most of them are unlikely to have even an hour of testimony. What you will see if you go on our website, which I've now lost, I was going to show it to you, is if you're looking at what the committees are doing, sometimes you'll see that a committee has 10 bills scheduled for the same half hour. Those are what we call courtesy introductions. Do you guys do this on the Senate side? It depends on the chair. I don't get courtesy. So in my committee, it is our policy that we give every bill sponsored five minutes. Just it's, they are our colleagues, they put in this bill, sometimes often they'll come to us and say, I'm just doing this for a constituent who has this problem and that's his issue, but I felt like I wanted to put it in for him. Sometimes they'll, some of them are really pretty objectionable in one way or another. And we sit quietly, we sit respectfully for five minutes and let the bill sponsor make their pitch. And then after we've looked at all of those, we go around the room and try to figure out whether there are any of those that grab somebody in the room that they want to follow up on. Often what we do in my committee is one of those ideas and they are just ideas. We'll say, oh, I like that part. And we're working on something else that we can fold it into. Last year we did a lot of work on the childcare subsidy program. And I think we had six different bills, there was one from the administration that was requested by the administration. There were some ideas that were requested by providers who felt like the rules were too strenuous. So we had about six bills, we say on the wall we have a wall that has a little index card with the name of the bill and the number. And it's like our checklist of our to-do list. And then we did what we call a committee bill, which is to say that we started with a blank piece of paper in our legislative council. And we said, we want to address this issue, what do we want it to look like? And we went through all those six bills and we said, oh, we need to talk about that. And we married all of those things in. And then interestingly, because the bill had a lot of required new money, it had to go to appropriations. And so they didn't actually pass the bill, they just folded it into the budget. So the budget that you guys got quite fondly had our entire childcare program in it, including the little line about getting a waiver from a regulation if you've been in business for 10 years or something like that. So that's kind of the process. I do want to encourage you to follow the legislature. You can go to vermont.gov and it's a pretty user-friendly website. You can see what's going on on the House and Senate floor. You can get a schedule. You can listen. Oh, yes. Yeah, well, that's BPR. You have to go to the bill. Yeah, but you can do it through the... Oh, through this? Okay, I haven't done that. Thank you. You can also look at the... There's a... If you look, you can see it says full weekly committee schedule. And so you can click on that and it will give you every single committee in the building and what we're doing all week. Now, be clear that those are always subject to change. Sometimes we run over on the floor if we don't get anything done in the afternoon. Sometimes witnesses get sick. So if there's something that you're following closely, you need to double-check that... Like if you were gonna come and watch, you need to double-check that data to make sure it's really helpful. And, okay, so Dick talked about the budget adjustment. So the governor gave his budget address last week and now we start to drill down in our committees on the House side. The appropriations committee is very deferential to the policy committees. So I... In the House. I practiced it with that. Oh, I didn't hear that part. I was just focusing on the word deferential. On the House side, that actually, it's actually better than it was even when you were in the House. It's great. And so the human services issues first come to our committee. I mean, the appropriations has the budget and they're hearing from all of those people. But they let us drill down on things that affect children, you know, the child protection services piece and the elder services piece and public health in the health department. We have all of those within our jurisdiction. So this week, we're gonna be hearing from the commissioners of each of those departments for kind of the overview. We've already heard from the secretary of the AHS. And then we divide, our committee divides into little subgroups and we go and have lunch with people from each of those agencies and really drill down, okay, you know, you're adding, why do you wanna add a position here? You know, why is the payslope lower here and really try to get a feel for it? We also talk to the advocates who often have a different perspective on what the administration is proposing. And just to back up a little bit, Dick was talking about how we get the proposal from the governor. But there's a prior step to that, which is what the agencies and departments do. So all last fall, all of these agencies that I'm talking about were sitting down and they were looking at what they think they need and they put together a proposal that then went to the governor's office and he said, well, you know what, guys, you want $10 million and I only have eight, so we're gonna cut something. And so the final decision on what the proposal is comes from the governor's office. And so sometimes when we have the administration and they will reveal that, although they have to support the governor's budget, they could use a little more. And so we have to deal with that. And of course, we always pass a balanced budget and we do it within the revenue forecast that is agreed by the legislative and administration economists. So there's a number that we can't go over in his committee. And so we're working within that. So if we want, if there's something that my committee really wants, sometimes we have to figure out what we would cut to make that happen. And with that, I will turn it over. I think the senators want to see what's going on. Go ahead, go ahead. Somebody's asking a question, what should I go next? Or do you have any questions? You don't need to flip a coin, do it. Oh, I meant, are you taking questions right now? No, no, we're presenting. Do your thing and then we'll pass the question. Do your thing. Okay. I'm Alice Nidka and I'm in Ludlow along with Dick and Allison. We represent all the towns in Windsor County plus London Dairy in Wyndham County and not Raleigh and Raleigh County. So I'm on appropriations and judiciary. So, well, let's see, appropriations. I'll just give you a little bit of what's going on so far. In appropriations, we've been working on the budget adjustment, which is the true of last year's budget, which goes through June 30th of this year and where they've maybe overspent in some departments and where they haven't spent enough. I mean, they've spent under what they were given to spend and so through the whole thing up, sometimes there's additional money that needs to be put in. Of course, like the year of Irene, everything in the state was totally out of whack. So quite a few things had to be done, but that's, so the house has already passed that and we're probably going to vote on the budget adjustment this week. So we've also started working on the budget. And, Dick, have you already spoken about the budget? I spoke more about the adjustment. Oh, okay. I just mentioned that. Okay. I showed you a clip notes. Yeah, oh, good. So, maybe dilution it, maybe not the proposed spending for next year of general fund money, which is state money, no federal backup or anything, is proposed to be, I think, 1.5 billion and the overall budget for the state, including all the federal money that comes in, it's proposed to be, I think, 8.2 million. And that includes the ED fund, right? That's close. That includes the Education Fund. In other words, the money we get from the federal government toward education, all the transportation money that comes from the federal government, which is for bridges, roads. I mean, there's frequently, on some of the roads, there's a 20% match, like 10 from the town, 10 from the state to the federal match. Depends on what the party is. Money for the National Guard is running through us. Money for the airports is running through us. Human services, of course, that's running through, when I say us, that means the state of Vermont. And that's what we're dealing with, 8.2. And that might not be the final number in the end. I'm just saying that's roughly where it is. So that's how you hear about our budgets. It's like that. It's like, you know, tons of zeros. But so we're starting to take testimony on that. And of course, the house is already doing that. They started working on the budget in December. Your appropriations can be. Well, okay. Yeah, for sure. Oh, yes, right. That's for sure. So that's every single topic imaginable comes through the Appropriations Committee because most of them cost some money. So it all comes through us. And we look at it very, very carefully after we went down to the pennies almost. So it's, for instance, an item that came up last year were the poorest of poor people who are just surviving, say, and supplemental security. It's a division of social security, but it's not straight. It's for people who haven't worked enough quarters to be paid regular social security in their lifetimes. So they are getting, say they moved into a nursing home and they have very little any money that they get on their own. And in the nursing home, generally speaking, you don't have money. You have to have some personal money, which personal needs allowance. And that they were getting, they hadn't had a raise in 10 years. You know, they'd buy, like some people in a nursing home might be buying, you know, cards for somebody in the home's birthday. They might need a new nightgown, many places you have to pay for your own haircuts. So it was very little money that they were living on every month. So we raised that. Do you remember what we gave them for a raise? 25 dollars. That was my bill. At least. So they, you know, their monthly personal needs allowance went up to 25 dollars, which some people still didn't want to do. But it was, you know, when you see the money, when you see the size of this budget and what we're spending on so many different things, it was a desperate need really. And it's good you put that in. If I can just jump in for a minute. That was my bill. And we did it in my committee. And everybody said, oh, we have to do this. And it passed out 11-0. And it went to appropriations. And it sat in appropriations. House appropriations. House appropriations, right? They were very cordial when I went in. And they said, sounds good. And it just did not make the cut in the house. And so I was ecstatic that the Senate figured it out. We put that in thinking, you know, hey, this is really a disgrace that I'm not helping these people with all this money that we're spending. So it's that kind of an analysis of stuff that happens even on all. So anyway, as I said, as someone said here that we're working from the governor's budget that he puts together with his agencies and then we go over that. And of course, certainly some things are changed. And that is because he writes this much earlier in the year and needs and money spent, money not spent, things come up during that interim period from when it gets to us. The other thing, I'm on the judiciary committee and in there the focus right now has been on justice reinvestment. In other words, has been working for quite a long time on trying to square away a lot of our, what some people see as injustice and what other people see as just the nature of some of the persons in the correctional system has changed. The crimes have changed. Some of them are exactly just as horrible as they were before, but it's changed, you know. The drugs problems around things have really changed. So we're working on who needs to be in prison? Can be treated in the community? Which, you know, provided there are programs there for treatment, for keeping very close track of something that might be a problem. So we're looking at that whole thing. We're looking at, we have a much fewer, we have fewer people in prison now than we did, mainly because, first of all, in my opinion, there are fewer crimes, crimes that are going down, except in certain areas. But one of the things is, of course, as we see fewer children in school and have senior numbers declining over the past 20 years at least, there are fewer, and I say young men, because mainly those are the people who are committing some of these crimes. And so there are fewer of them to commit the crimes. So we've been able to have fewer people in our prisons. And hopefully we're doing some stuff with rehabilitation. Well. I said I think it's 30 or 30 of us. Anyway, so that's, you know, it's a very different system. We used to have work camps, the work camp in Windsor, which is closed, the entire Windsor prison is closed now. There are not enough, there aren't enough people in prison who can be part of the work camp work group. There still is the St. John's very prison, but even the numbers there on the work crew are down. Mainly because those people who are able to be on a work crew and going into the community are able now to be supervised in the community more so than they were before. So anyway, it's all, that's what's going on. A lot of other things in judiciary, too. Robo calls, for example. That may have been one of the bills that, if you've read the list in the Harold O'Brandoff, that's one of the bills you saw on there. Trying to do something about Robo calls. Will that be successful? Who knows. So anyway, give answers to questions. Good morning. Thank you for continuing the tradition of the early Monday morning. Breakfast meeting. Morning is not my best time. Alice and I were welcome here to have a conversation at 11 at night in the lab. Burning a candle at both ends is a challenge. Anyway, I'm Alice and Clarkson. I live in Woodstock and happily join these three colleagues working on behalf of Windsor County and two extra towns in the legislature. I serve as vice chair of Senate Economic Development Housing and General Affairs in the morning and in the afternoon and serve on government operations. And we are off to an incredible start. I have never served on two conference committees in January, which, you know, conference committees are House passes bills, the Senate passes bills, and if we don't agree, we true it up and come to compromise, we hope, in conference committees. And they're usually at the end of session in April and May. And this year, because we had not finished our work on minimum wage or paid family leave, I found myself on two conference committees in January, which is very unusual. The issues that, you know, you've read probably a few who are in this room are clearly engaged enough to know what's going on and be reading the Valley News and the Herald. So you probably know the big issues. But in Senate Economic Development, we're dealing with housing, we're going to be doing, we're really trying to crack the knot of helping spur the additional housing needs. We have desperately large housing needs in the state and particularly workforce development housing, not necessarily section eight, which people think of as affordable housing, which isn't. That's seriously super low income housing, but really hardcore, our teachers, our police people, the people who work in our towns, we want to live in our towns and we need to enable housing in more communities and all over. So housing continues to be a big knot we need to crack. Student debt, we're addressing. Recruitment to Vermont, as you know, you've heard, we have a huge demographic challenge. Only 65% of us are working and that number is slated to go down. More people are retiring. People are coming back, but we need to recruit more people. And we're coming up, as you've heard, with all sorts of ideas on how to do that. And of course, our big and constructive challenge and one that's very interesting is working on our workforce development and how can we come up with some additional opportunities, a lot of opportunities for people who don't necessarily want to go on to four-year college when we also see this spiraling student debt, which is such a barrier for so many people. Student debt is the number one reason young professionals don't come back to rural states. It's a common rural state problem all over America because they can earn more in cities to pay down this huge monkey on their back. And so that is, we really want to address that in substantive ways this semester. It is sort of like a semester. Anyway, this session. And there are other things we're working on also in economic development, but those are, I would say, the four key big areas. And in government operations, we're working on unclaimed property, which is a huge issue and is being, we're rewriting that whole chapter and addressing that. Big issue is public records. Access to public records, sort of like elections. It's sort of the cost of government doing business. And it's a big issue because there are barriers to access particularly for the press, but for the public who want to know what's going on. And so we're trying to create, to shine more light on that and figure out how we're going to, what we're going to recommend. We need to, we're working hard on coming up with an emergency medical services, a solution to the loss of our EMS services, the loss of volunteers, how there's particular issues with it as opposed to fire and police. And we're working on that with a big, with a big bill. We have the ethics commission, which we have created, but is sort of toothless. And we're trying to figure out how to make it, give it at least some good molars. And we have the Montpelier Charter Change has prompted a fairly robust conversation in the State House about non-citizen voting. The non-citizens, green card holders, many of them married to all of us who want to have say where they live, many other countries allow this and would like to be able to vote simply in municipal elections. And the state created towns and municipal governments and we control how towns and municipal governments, the rules of towns and municipal governments. And so it has come to us to make a decision about whether we're going to allow municipalities to allow non-citizens to vote simply in those elections on issues that affect the taxes they're paying. So it's a little tax without representation in large measure. This isn't a large number of people, but it's going to be a fairly robust conversation. People feel strongly about it and you learn astonishing things about people's backgrounds and who is married to whom and who came from where and how long they've been here and how strongly they feel about this issue. I just want to say Alice and Sandy touched briefly on vulnerable adults and I have just moved by a 94-year-old mother from Buffalo, New York to Woodstock, Vermont and I have to say that I really am so grateful for the work your committee in particular, Sandy, has done on vulnerable adults in our aging population. You don't think about those issues as much as we ought to until we have to deal with them and the number of scam calls my mother would get. Anyway, I am being very appreciative of that work in particular right now. So, yeah, it's interesting at 64 to find your mother at 94 still fairly active, very active and engaged. I talked to the little women this weekend. She loved it. It was her first film in 1933 that Catherine Hepburn film came out. It was her first, she was eight and she was so excited to see it again. Anyway, so that's it from my end and we're yours. We're open for questions. Can I, sir? Mr. Moderator? Don't fight. Go ahead. I've heard every one of you and everything you said is fine. One thing I didn't hear at all is dealing with those unfortunate illegals or refugees or whatever you want to call it. We are talking about, we have a housing shortage and here we are, many cities and towns are proposing to bring more in. Where are these people going to go? Where are they going to stay? Who's going to support them? Who's going to pay their medical care? How do you see this? Remember one thing, I'm one of them. Okay? I came here with $20 and that was it. But back those years, in order to come in as a legal immigrant, you have to have somebody in this country to guarantee you a job and also a place to stay. So how do you think of that? And then the other thing is about the social security, paying taxes on our social security. When are we going to get out of that? We changed part of that last year. Okay. Incomes $60,000 or less social security and do not pay taxes. Okay. Stay taxed. Stay taxed. That I didn't know and I appreciate that. And there is a proposal by the governor to increase that beyond $60,000. I don't know whether that will pass or not, but the governor has proposed that. But we listen to the people. We just wanted to get people more money and so that passed. Wait, let me just finish this. And the other thing... Before you go there. So what was your first? Do you want me to do that? A legal immigrant. Yes, yes. Well, so here we know what's going on now and churches are frequently sponsoring families that come. There are an abundance of available jobs for people right now. There are too few workers in our state right now. People can't get employees. A couple of places have closed because they couldn't get employees. Especially the entry level. Yeah. Entry level. So there are, I mean, many of the persons who are coming are high level educated people. So, you know, I know one woman, she's working as a manicurist, but she's an engineer. So she's, you know, that's an entry level job that she's in while she gets everything to swear to white her license for, you know, professional engineer and those kinds of things. So, right, the end housing, you mentioned that lots of times churches are arranging that and families that they, you know, I know a woman who's a member of the legislature in Rutland. She's in the Senate. She has helped host two families, got them all started. The church is supporting them. So, that's what's going on there. At what point, you know, they've become a burden to the state? They may in the very entry time, but they are going to work and their health insurance is frequently coming through employment or they're paying it on their own. I mean, a lot of them, they're going to work. I don't think we have a choice. I mean, we are in dire straits here. I mean, Dick touched on it with Village. My business, I've been here for 36 years and my wife and I are contemplating, it's reduced hours. We're running from six to six. We're desperate for what's sweet. You know, we're an agent for the state worker store and I'm like, you know, they're going to have to deal with the no sprims because we can't stop to build it. So, I think we have, I mean, I don't like to take a cynical view. I think those people are coming to what we used to have as a land of opportunity like it was with you, Nett. My son-in-law, they came from the Czech Republic in 86 with 81 bucks and his father made it good in Boston, his wife. And they made it. They're contributing to society, but we can't, we can't shut it. We're, we're what, for my wife's thought of BTC, I mean, worked at BTC 37 years. The Vermont pension fund is four billion dollars in the weird IOUs that we're underfunded. And when we sit here and talk about surplus money, we got a little extra to stay for steal from Peter to pay Paul. That's a significant, we're at an 8.2 billion dollar budget. You've got that big month's about to stand up here and my business, we're done. Shutting the doors. At the same time, I'm seeing, you know, I definitely would dip it, sorry to touch on this, but I met a kid the other day from Norwich, 26 years old, nice kind cut kid at FWM. And my buddy worked there for 20 years and said, I want you to meet this kid. So, for example, he's moving into Wrangler, Colorado. Why? Because the hill that he's asked to climb here in Vermont is like that. The hill he's climbing in Vermont is like Mount Everest. I mean, between paying taxes and living here or whatever. He has a fairly good job and I'm sitting there thinking, we can't lose these kids. Right. These are the ones we can't lose and I see it every day. So, the same thing with my son, Peter. He sold everything he got here in Massachusetts. Everything is better. Now he begins to see that Texas or Arizona, it's a lot better than even Massachusetts. Oh, wait a minute. And he's pushing me to move. And I would do it just like that, except Heidi is in the way. And she's not in my way. But it would be like a death penalty to take care of the house and go somewhere else. But how long can we keep going like this? Toxin ourselves to death. Right. To satisfy 15, 20 people that they really need help. And what about the rest? Yeah? No. Dick. Well, that's what it was in young people. Can I go back to your question, the federal government sadly controls the spigot in terms of sending us people, refugees, asylum seekers and legal immigrants. We want them. Our arms are open. The governor said in his state of the state and in the budget he reinforced we want those workers. We have 10,000 jobs at the moment. It's estimated that we could fill tomorrow. And so it's not for lack of jobs. Housing is a bigger, bigger challenge. We have very low non-occupancy rates. I mean, our housing is full of the challenge we face is improving the quality of our old homes and relaxing some of our permitting and regulations in our downtown areas where we want housing, we want strong community. So we're working on that and you will see big changes this year in some of that. But the spigot in terms of welcoming people, we want people. Our arms are open. If they want to work we want them here. And the refugee resettlement community in Burlington is working hard. They do a great job. And our communities, our arms are all open and some communities particularly bigger cities and towns are organized well to bring people. But it's, sadly we don't control the spigot. I'd like to believe that everything you said right now it's fine and dandy but I'm afraid we'll come to the point that Burlington and the churches their baskets gonna run dry and then what do we do with these people? Let's ask the state. We have very generous people in the state so if you're finished I'm done. You have your band up next. Back to, I'm Scott Putnam working at the local school. Basically we're short-handed because it's six so I gotta get to work but I'd like to address I've been going to school board meetings just the Buffalo South Royal and we should invite Mr. O'Brien being as our schools are so tied and they're our biggest expense. But the school boards are trying to balance to project, get ready, negotiate with teachers and every time I go to a school meeting they say that the state hasn't given us our numbers reimbursement for special ed and food services how are we going to how are we going to make a budget how can we negotiate with our teachers and come up with a reasonable budget and it seems to me that there should be a timeline where the state they don't have whether they don't have enough people the districts aren't sending the correct numbers and it takes a long time to sort it out I don't know what the reasons are but it's impossible to make a budget without having these numbers and as you've read in the paper Bethel, South Royalton are talking about $250,000 down to $250,000 they're up to they're close to a half a million how they've kind of sorted things out I realize a lot of it is local problems of their supervisor union but again they still don't have the numbers from special ed and food I happen to be working in a lunch thing trying to sort out they say we were $100,000 out of black and they can't identify the numbers none of us sit on education so I don't I don't know we immediately know the answer to that but I think we should be following up the AOE agency of education is down a huge number of people and those are both federally funded programs so there may that's part of the problem with the feds I just don't know but at the ground level we're trying to feed kids we're feeding breakfast snack lunch you think they could get from breakfast to lunch without having to fit in between but in any case and dinner all these things are state and federal funded and take a lot of paperwork I get that but somehow this needs to get somebody's going to push that along and they go to the state and well we haven't got to it we're short-handed whatever it is you guys need to pay more whatever you got to do because it's physically impossible yes the senator stated the state address it seemed like the governor had a disconnect between migration into the state the issue of climate change and tourism today you have a mention of climate change climate change you may not be aware of it but people are moving to Vermont because of climate change why aren't you talking about it that is the key we're waiting for you thank you but that's the key to the school problems all our problems relate to the fact that we need to prepare ourselves for a new wave of immigration into our state which will be more than just people coming to our country but people from our country I heard that Texas is a great place to go but after people have been flooded three times in the Houston area they start going well you know that little sweet spot Vermont unfortunately Vermont is a sweet spot in the climate crisis issue and I just don't see our legislators being real today with what we're doing the young people are why aren't we bringing this subject back to the forefront and say come to Vermont and start bumping down and start growing food and start doing what it's going to take because as the rest of the country has agricultural problems I guess there will be more stress on us to start producing food again you're absolutely right there are climate refugees here there are three of us who are members of the climate solutions caucus some of the biggest climate bills are being worked on right now the global warming solutions act is almost ready for primetime in the house it will start in the house then comes to the senate we were some of us are the sponsors of it in both the house and the senate and so we're all we're very aware I think what Vermonters have forgotten in many ways is that four of our most iconic Vermont industries are under total threat with climate change agriculture you mentioned but outdoor recreation our forest products industries and tourism all will evaporate within 50 years if we don't stem if we don't reduce climate change it is the biggest issue which affects us in all our work on resiliency outside the box you talked about the issues around forestry right now after Australia has been burning and the Amazon politically got burned right now the current federal administration has given the go ahead to cut our green mountains and it's underway right now but Vermont isn't paying attention we are paying attention but why don't you push the stop button to say let's hold on for a minute because just maybe capturing CO2 happens to relate to the trees this summer there was a whole study group on exactly that issue on forest sequestration there's a lot of work actually going on on this subject look at some of the bills but young people don't want studies anymore young people don't want the governor for a moment one of the things that went on last year there were a lot of things with regard to climate change that were in different bills not standing out there that people weren't noticing so much an increase in the number of charging stations around there was quite a bit of money put into that an increase in money for electric buses where that's appropriate there are quite a few things more awards I think for energy efficient appliances there are a lot of things kind of spread all over the map to help people it's 40 years late you have to start now I don't know I've been here long enough to know it's 40 years in reality we're in a very rural state where did you get here this morning how did you get here did you ride the subway no you drove a car if you want to go to Montague we haven't gotten those things until energy gets so expensive and I'm not an advocate of it until it gets to be 8 bucks to go to Montpain or say hey going up or riding with you and that will happen when the economic thing dries up but the expense is a hidden expense we are experiencing the hidden expense by going bankrupt right now so several years ago actually we passed an anti idling law it has quite a few exceptions like for school buses and stuff but it doesn't get enforced and people don't know about it you don't ever need to idle your vehicle you don't even have to warm it up modern cars don't need to be warmed up I go by the local the local mini-mart and there's three trucks outside with the motors running and people are inside schmoozing over coffee so part of what we need to do is wake up and educate ourselves and educate our neighbors and we are as you probably have read the governor and our state is very involved with 17 other states in the transportation climate initiative which will be a little like our regional the Reggie bill was for electricity and we are waiting to see that is still being negotiated we've signed on to the draft to you know punt it into the next phase we're hoping that we'll have a TCI agreement by the end of this session which would be great and that you will probably see in 17 states an embedded carbon charge which is of course Governor Scott's challenge but also there's in some way safety numbers with all 17 of us doing it together those when that gets enacted those prices will be that increase in cost will be embedded whether we sign on or not fuel is distributed regionally and that will inevitably affect us it's going to adversely affect the lowest people on the economic chain which is where we're at that's what they're working on you have to recognize with our young people here starting down there North Carolina these people for energy and cost of taxes the numbers are not even comparable and I even found it with real estate in Maine and their taxes for the house are quite different from the rest of ours so it's you're not going to keep a young person here when he gets to the end of the week and he's worked all week and there's nothing left just to finish on the climate thing the two biggest areas we use energy on as we know are our houses and our cars and our vehicles so we're working really hard on the vehicle front the houses we're also looking to expanding efficiency efficiency of Vermont into all fuels and weatherization so we are pushing and investing in doing exactly that anyway finish your talk we've got to get some other I'm curious why most of the Senate haven't put Phil Scott into an electric car because he is a model individual he is inspiring young people at Thunder Road to race across the fuel with our governor in an electric car these are the small steps that I expect you every time to do people need some little bit of entertainment too don't they I gotta tell you every morning I arrive at the state house and there is a big gas guzzling SUV in the governor's parking place and that would be so easy to address I mean it's with the stroke of a pen not even just a phone call the governor could say send me a fuel efficient car I'm tired of driving around the state so Wednesday morning you need to ask him I want to say something I think you're right I think you're right the problem with this is that I can tell you speaking for myself for 30 years and now it is 30 years I have been denounced by colleagues as an alarmist as a green sneakers John McClary referred to me as one of the high priests of the global warming religion and now I'm getting scolded by young climate activists Vermont for example our pension funds are invested in fossil fuels and they should there's a movement now to get us out of that but what I'm getting is letters addressed to me by name you are investing in fossil fuels and as your constituent I demand that you stop it and I've been trying to figure out a polite way to say who do you think you're talking to I think your scolding is misdirected but you're right so part of that is some of that and I'm not saying that the anger needs to calm down young people have every reason to be angry you do want to know who you're talking to okay but the other thing is I think the discussion has shifted the color of the discussion has shifted we have gone from outright I think people who denied were still denying the science on global warming range now it's area 51 stuff it's nutcase stuff the science we know that man made global warming is real we know it's terrible but what we have now is what I call denial light and we all know this we all have a friend who you know is drinking too much it's true I admit it but I'm not an alcoholic I've never missed a day's work I've got a handle on it denial light what we have now is we hear people saying yes it's a problem we've got to address it but you've got to be reasonable well yeah that's what Jimmy Carter said 40 years ago and he was right then and he predicted he said we can start now we can do it painlessly we can do it gradually or we can wait and in 30 years we'll have a crisis well it's 40 years later we'll have a crisis and it's global what's that? it's global oh yeah I agree I mean India and China are alone it's a planet problem no we have control over what we do so Dick let me just go to the pension issue for a moment we are getting all kinds of letters there are all kinds of letters about the same source but one of the things I spoke with Beth Pierce about the pension fund and where they're invested and we have Vermont at that point there are three pension funds with people's money in them I don't call it our money there's the municipal employees pension funds state employees pension funds and the teachers pension funds and at that point when I spoke with her none of them had any investments in fossil fuels with regard to single investments but she did say that of some of the mutual funds what's invested in those change from time to time so there might be some in there periodically and I don't know what the situation is right now but the other thing is of course some of the pension funds have a green pension fund whereby the person who's putting the money into the pension fund can put it into funds that have fossil fuels in them so there are some options for people investors in them what else how about somebody else people look like you had a whole list then I thought a lot of the answer but I don't have time number one on this the climate change bill here on this he'll say you proposed it raise it from five to nine to maybe seventeen cents a gallon on the transportation climate initiative how can people afford this they've got an old car and to go get it inspected it's five hundred a thousand dollars a year because your people made them do it I see now they've changed it you don't have to have a light inside your car now there's a lot of things to change we changed it a lot of it it's just safety issues not the light on your license plate there was a whole big thing and DMV rewrote the but these people can't afford it can't afford the light on the tail no, no they have their cars and they can't afford new cars I absolutely agree with that Larry and I work at the food shelf he and his wife do the lofty go gala shopping and Thursday nights we'll be down in a bag these people can afford you ought to see how many hunting they had last week we had a record we had fifty people come which represented about 125 people in one day two hours at noon and two hours at night four hours at noon in Royalton, South Royalton so what is it going to be a year from now? well this hasn't passed it's also phased in right now our gas prices fluctuate fairly substantially and we absorb it and say nothing when it goes from 220's which it was this summer now to 254 in Woodstock so we already we already experienced it it will not be jack hammered like that it will begin if Vermont joins the transportation climate initiative it will begin at something like four or five cents embedded in and gradually over several years like cancer well he's actually probably paying you know if you've lived in Europe you pay triple that amount and people are far more thoughtful about how they use their fuel we need to be far more thoughtful about how we use our fuel we already know that and one of the sticking points on the TCI is exactly the justice, the social financial justice that they're trying to work out so that it will be fair for all people I mean there's no question it's a bigger challenge on moral poor what will they do with the money it's all going to be reinvested in resilient climate issues is that going to lower the climate change by one degree it will help to lower it in significant ways where will it go to I can't answer that it will all go into energy up and low with the windmills what does that credit go for that it goes to Massachusetts we have to look at them and I'm not going to explain to you that but the credit went to Massachusetts these solar panels they put up in nice fields we were farming they're solar panels now and that's often a community solar in many of those communities where you see that that is helping provide electricity for our downtowns and our communities what does it pay back people are very happy with them I do have the biggest solar display in the state right up the road from me and what happened with our utilities they were supposed to sell you know green mount power is going to be forced to buy it at a rate much higher than what they've been buying power at and they're of course doing those batteries and all the stuff so they filed something with the public utilities for it not be forced to buy it and so in the end the company gave up it's been purchased by two people two big groups since and now it is going directly to Massachusetts our town did get some benefits from it not with regard to energy or anything but there is an awful lot of that going on but what is going on is well because they could get them in Vermont but the other thing is there are many municipalities have put in many have put in their own solar displays and they are paying bills and they're very successful and we're paying more for a kilowatt hour the town budgets went down when the town puts it in itself it gets the benefit they've been able to reduce the cost in town of their energy bills some of them have been going to the school some of them have all the town offices so there is that going on does Bethel have an energy committee? so it must be explored community Bethel does have an energy committee and I'm on it we have credit for our street lights and we pay pretty much nothing for our street lights because of our investment in solar panels so that piece is working there's a fellow over here going back to what Ted Kenyon had to say I used to food shelf a lot here in Bethel if there's nothing for me to eat here in Bethel and nobody wants to go all the way up to Berlin to go to the food shelf to get the food I'm going to go down to Harvard or White River to get what I can get for myself by the time the day is done I'm paying my life for its worker for me the gas money to go in I'm not getting anywhere I've spent more time on gas than I have on food that's just my input we do need better mass transit I mean there's thank you closer with us going back to the transportation part here thanks see sorry I can't say thank you for that thank you for the school going back to the transportation part there are so much opportunity for example the town of Bethel with railroad tracks the state can be contracting with Nissan to have an assembly plant for a special design electric car that works for the launchers the car that has all the bells and whistles I'm talking about the extra car to be able to go down to the grocery store to get a six pack of beer instead of using the truck now this car can be load geared 35 miles an hour electric assembled right here in Bethel what is going on why don't we have an assembly plant that's using components to put together and so that the state of Vermont can offer a low interest loan to the launchers to get started in electric vehicles this is our transportation problem this is it creates jobs what's going on why can't we motivate and think outside the box and solve these problems can you talk to your select one my select one about that issue I'm not in Bethel doesn't matter I think Bethel is the correct town for that particular project because it's a railroad track your town is not particularly anxious for economic development they need to think about climate change in our tourism so you touched something with me because I've been involved in economic development for ten far years and we have one of the biggest industrial buildings sitting down here with 12, 14 workers still working for castings nobody has made any effort to go out even projecting the economic development department in the state or the region to look for a new tenant and I don't do it anymore but I had one lined up an excellent tenant a manufacturer of horse trailers perfectly good I couldn't get the select one to listen to me I couldn't get any one of our last 37 town managers to even think of that as a problem but it's a big problem because you know what happens to those kind of buildings they become vacant and their tax assessment goes from 8 million to 2 million that building needs to be occupied but I don't know if anybody in Bethel is thinking about it have you been in touch with Bob Haynes of the green man economic development department I've been on the board yeah I love you so what's Bob what are they he's pretty busy in Randolph why would they want to come to Vermont it's out of business you've got two issues there and two is act 250 it's already permanent this is a space that's already permanent you've got to change use he went through this and I've been through it tell him that your business hasn't happened don't give me stuff about that well as you know act 250 is being totally rewritten and updated so we will hopefully have a bill that we can discuss in the next couple months in terms of what's being proposed because the house is poised with that bill to have something for us to talk about but I know that we're looking at serious reductions in streamlining in downtown and village centers so that we can be promoting the kind of road that we want and relaxing a lot so those structures that Neil is talking about would fit right into that I understand what you're trying to say but in many cases like in the town of Royalton probably here in Bethel to do things in the town itself in the village there's just no place to do it unless you tear down a bunch of stuff to build new buildings we've got mountains, we've got rivers you're really sometimes you're absolutely right one of the things we're looking at expanding is we have designated downtowns we're looking at expanding that to designated neighborhoods designated areas and that would expand precisely what you're talking about which is it's basically the next ring around that we all think of is downtown even though it's not technically in the little prescribed area I've been on this like a board for 15 years I stepped down this last March but we did expand our village area some to incorporate a few things but it works but I mean we just have the constraints of the village the rivers and stuff so to get it outside of the different areas what you came more to to Vermont Passing's place and some of the other places where they put up your solar panels that don't give much to anybody actually I'd love to I wish any of us were experts on that but actually they are, that isn't I don't think a fair thing to say I think that many of our solar panels are considerably and I think that's a conversation once we have all of those facts I think I don't think you're correct there is some soul there's some advantage to it but the outlaw doesn't get some money from the school the municipalities I don't necessarily see there but I have the facts for this to go to another state but the good news is that our statewide use of electricity because of all of the solar so when you see all of the charts that show what are our numbers on global warming and greenhouse gases on electricity we have turned the corner what's going to change is that now we are using electricity substitute for other fuels for example if you have a heat pump in your house to do shoulder season spring and fall you probably use less oil so now we're talking about instead of having just the electric efficiency, having all fuels so that we look at all of our fuels electric cars the same thing if you have a plug in car then you're taking power from the grid and you're not going to the gas station so it's shifting it so we're going to start using more electricity and less of some of the other things as we're moving forward so in other words use more electricity and pay more for us who use electricity I mean I've noticed my bill the last three months it's gone up of $50 a month more than I mean mine did now why the same two people live in the house and we live in the same way do you have winter rates I don't give a damn what is the rate is the rate but $50 a month $30 a month $40 a month and then they tell you which one do you think three amount of power of course, is there anything else yeah there are a lot of there are lots of there are lots of electric electric cars David had a question I need several minutes because this whole electric thing you guys are not even talking about the problem with electricity how do you make solar panels use fossil fuels how do you make windmills how do you generate oh my god I just put in a charger for a guy down in Hampshire his electric bill went from $50 a month to over $400 a month to be able to drive his electric car savings there none electric solar panels the people who install them the developers there is where all your money is going because they put them in there and they refuse to acknowledge there is toxic materials in those panels you get a 25 year warranty they are no good in 25 years okay they give them to you they are yours so you have to dispose of them you have to replace them solar panels are not the end all why are we not on the river why are we not doing John Derpy's thing more often we have these places is it for a fish I really really think that people are missing the boat electricity I agree with electricity but what we are not talking about is how we get this electricity I think it is really confusing for people to think that advocates of cleaner energy are ignorant or even more than ignorant hiding the environmental downside of these technologies that is absolutely part of the equation there are always trade-offs for any environmental effort that it is not a 100% it is a 100% game minus whatever is the environmental loss everyone knows there are toxins involved in solar panels so that we have something to talk about that maybe we don't want to do this this way I have been holding my hand up for 10 minutes and Neil Fox refuses to call on me everybody is interrupting everybody else I just wanted to say that one of the and rarely mentioned benefits of solar panels and windmills is the distributed generation of electricity that results in more resilience in the entire system and the less dependence on the grid when it goes down and nobody ever mentions that that alone even with higher costs and more toxins and everything should attract us to a source of energy which is more local I would agree with you until we start talking about the grid going down the tree fell on the line back here at this last storm we were out power for 4 days I can almost see solar panel fields from my house there was a few trees cut I could I still had no electricity because it still has to be distributed I don't care if it being it's right over there if the power line from there to here is down that solar field is of no use I'm sorry, I'm going to get too off the track I don't think you have your power so anyone have a last question when do people drive home at night in the legislature I want you to think what did I do to improve the quality so that old people can live in Vermont am I lowering it so they can afford to live here are we going to put more expenses on so they got to move my son has moved to Tennessee with his wife now they have daughters down there with a husband another one of my granddaughters with her husband and two kids and they're not coming back not coming back dad I can't afford to live in Vermont I'm thinking of that too and I know a couple of other people are thinking the same way my answer to that is reduce them taxes that you're putting on every time real estate taxes electricity taxes taxes for this taxes for the shoes, taxes for the table can you live without taxes I mean how can we live with all that stuff well I just would remind us we're a small state with a small number of people with a big heart actually the minute we touch anybody, any program that people benefit from they are up in arms so I think actually all of us feel pretty good that we're trying to and every legislator in the state house no matter what your party is all feel they're doing their best to try to improve the lives of Vermonters it's in innumerable ways I mean as I began working on the minimum wage and paid family leave we have 40,000 Vermonters who are going to benefit and whose lives are going to improve because they're going to earn more money and contribute more to state coffers as a result and you know so I felt great driving home Friday night because we had settled those two conference committees I think all of us in our own small ways feel like we're contributing to improving the quality of life in Vermont is it perfect? No but I have two sons, one's in New York, one's here one's your deputy state attorney he's thrilled with helping try and solve the problems he sees every day in court so you know he's thrilled to be in Vermont and we he's making good money he can afford to live here about the poor guy down there making a minimum wage that's the drive to work that is where workforce development comes in and that is how we have to have people raising and improving their skills earning more money there's no question you're absolutely right about them and working all those things $350,000 house is taxed $1300 a year a year, not a month a whole year a house is a year old now we've been talking for so many years I won't even begin to describe the tax any results any about developing a workforce anything to report that hey this is what happened since last year security people next time we have a lot to report on that workforce I have a different question right now for representative pause from the constituent point of view one of our one of your town's pit fields which these senators don't represent it's going through a bit of a crisis for the last three months with their local government can you speak on that that is a government issue but your constituents have you touched base with them because just about in my opinion I really miss you for them no I have read about it in the paper I guess there are people who assume that those of us who are in the state are responsible for every local issue and I actually have respect for people who are elected at the local level and I believe that they should do their jobs without having us show up and tell them that we know where they're they do you're worried about vaping you're worried about vaping and then you condone marijuana I don't understand that I don't think anyone is condoning marijuana I don't know we passed it so you can do it well no we passed it because the laws against it were doing more harm than the problem in real life what's going to happen in 10 years and now we have to start having that problem I don't even smoke anything so I'm worried these are funny things you're right bill 751 regards fire safety and outdoor grills does anybody know anything about that I'm asking you I'm asking you I have not memorized the text I have a grill I don't know in the paper it says bill 751 I'm not playing them what is it except the next chance I need the number again 751 how how about 569 how can you that's on prostitution prostitution the answer to your question is that it was referred to committee that was in the paper too so that's what's happening with it it's sitting in a committee in a stack of probably 60 bills exactly exactly what did you say in it how much lower are we going to go in this state is it saying legalizing prostitution I think if I remember I think it's just not charging are they going to be thousands teaching them how to tax them first of all first of all you have a very challenging you think we're proposing this what a challenging I'm not going to defend that it's something I'll consider if it comes to you and I'll weigh the pros and cons there are some people who are suggesting that I think what they're suggesting why are you so angry is to not charge the prostitution it's moral money on it the point of wanting to let the bill I do is to cause the prostitution not to be charged but rather there's like young girls teenagers from Rottland who have been sucked into a prostitution so the idea I think it's not in the senate is to not charge a young woman who is the prostitution rather than the people around her who sold her into prostitution there is a prostitution going on in this state more surprisingly there's a lot of free stuff and then there's the guy that owns the Patriots about 80-some-years-old who the hell cares it's his business God bless him it's another state