 And I want to thank you for coming to our first Tuesday morning legislative series. Today, we're so thankful and grateful for Missy Jackson for joining us, along with Ann Galloway and Sandra Linden who will be having a conversation about what legislative priorities may be. So in a few minutes, let's welcome Missy and Ann and Dander. Thank you. Thank you for being here. Thank you for coming. And I will try to speak as loudly as we can, project here. So the first question is, you know, we saw our governor in his inaugural address last week. We've talked a lot about reversing the demographic, trans, diversity in the population, and workforce. And also really urged collaboration with the legislature. And I guess, you know, wondering how do we sort of, first of all, just responding to that speech? You know, what did you take away from it? And where do you see the biggest areas for potential collaboration between the House and the Sky Administration session? So I was really pleased to hear all of the signals of olive branches being offered after the last two end of sessions that we've had. And I think there's a lot of room for working together where things like workforce development, broadband, and I think some of the mental health issues that we face, although he didn't say those specifically, I know we started some behind-the-scenes conversations last year about some of the trouble we have with capacity in mental health facilities. So I think those are the low-hanging fruit in terms of places that we can begin to work together. I think the Appropriations Committee right now is, probably like as we speak, working on budget adjustment. And I think there's some good opportunity for that budget adjustment for the Appropriations Committee and the administration to sort of get back on track. So I think we've got a lot of opportunities moving forward. Thank you. Well, on that note, we had a question this morning about how things ended up with the last legislative session. The first time in years we had a special session that lasted until the end of June. And one reader wanted to know why you allowed Tim Asch to move ahead with the deal with the governor and then claim credit during the campaign for the use of long-time funds to pay down taxes. So Tim Asch didn't have any conversations with the governor. That was part of, you know, so I'm not sure where the reader is getting that information. But the House was trying to come up with some possible solutions. The whole end of session was based on about $57 million of surplus money that we thought we might get but weren't completely sure yet. We knew some of it had come in but we didn't know where we were going to wind up. It was not money that we were counting on in the budget. It was extra and it was mostly federal corporate tax money that was coming in because of some changes and companies moving back to the United States from being offshore. And so the crux over, I mean, when you really got down to sorting out where do we agree where do we disagree between the legislature and the administration, that disagreement was over probably a total of $30 million, $35 million of money that came from out of state that we weren't counting on, that we wanted to, that all sides wanted to figure out how to use to help from entrepreneurs. And one concern was that if we used it to buy down tax rates, then tax rates would just pop back up this year and everybody would be pretty ticked off about that. And if we used it to pay down some of our pension liabilities, it then saves money going forward in terms of the interest rates that we need to pay and the catch-up that we need to do but there's no short-term benefit to that. It's not helping the monitors right now. It's helping the monitors in the future. So ultimately, we split the difference and handed that, I mean, the legislature a couple of times passed budgets that said, okay, we'll give some of it to tax rates and we want some of it to go to our pension liabilities. And the governor said, no. And so we said, okay, fine. We'll give more to tax rates and a little less to pension liabilities. And the governor still said no. Ultimately, the signals we were getting back were just like, look, it's all or nothing. And so we passed what I think was a very good compromise that went more than halfway towards his position and he still signaled that it wasn't good enough and he didn't sign it. So in terms of taking the credit, the legislature didn't pass the budget and did do all those things and the governor never signed the bill so he can't take much credit for it because it's not something that he allowed it to go into law but didn't. And so I think, I think that's the tension and the frustration that we're really trying to get over to have a good productive working together session this year. And so I think the early conversations that the appropriations committee is having amongst themselves and with the administration during the budget adjustment process with one-time money because there's still some of that one-time money coming in. I think is it, I think Boat's Web, I think it's really resetting the conversation and it's, we're in a much more productive place. Well thank you. I want to phrase the question, part of the question very well and so if you'll bear with me. The first part of the question was why did you let Tim stop your deal with the governor last year? You had a deal with the governor and then you all pulled back on the floor of the house and then wondering why? So I wouldn't say that Tim stopped that deal at all. We did that. And in terms of, I had a draft plan with the governor and we said, yeah we're going to try to get this through, but you can't have a deal if one of the bodies that has to pass the budget, namely the Senate, isn't involved. You can't. And the issue in trying to, I was just, I think I told you before this started that I'm off for experiments, right? This is an experiment. And those conversations with the governor were an experiment. Like, okay let's try to break this log jam. Let's try to do something to move this forward for Vermonters because I think that's what Vermonters want us to do. And I think what I had underestimated was the very deep frustration, not from one person in the Senate, but from the entire Senate. When you think about it, the Republicans in the Senate voted for the legislature's bill and against the governor. I mean that's profound, really, to have the governor's own party in the Senate. One of them say, no governor, we think you're off track here. And push it back. And conversations in the House were tense and people were very frustrated. And so when I re-evaluated, when I saw that the whole Senate was against the governor and not with him, across party lines. And you look at how to pass a budget. My goal is get the budget through, put a budget in place for July 1st, to create continuity and stability for Vermonters. And the House and the governor together cannot pass a budget. You only pass a budget with either the House, Senate and the governor or the House and Senate and make it palpable enough that it doesn't get beat too much. And so ultimately that's what it was supposed to do because it was a bipartisan group of senators saying, nope, we're done. This is not working. We've given the governor enough. And we need to take responsibility for some attention in my abilities. Great, thank you. So if you're working with a larger majority than you were last year, you have more Democratic members of the House, how do you think that changes the game this year, the session? And now that we, the Republicans lost 10 members and they can no longer sort of automatically support the governor's details, how does that change things for you in terms of policy? I think it's a bigger signal that Vermonters want us to be working together. They gave us divided government and rebalanced the legislative power in that. Because what we saw, having spent a lot of time talking about the special session, what we saw last year was the legislature passing a number of bills, a number of potential compromises, putting a number of things on the table and the governor not coming to the table with anything. And I think, and when we did hold a veto override vote, it wasn't just Democrats that wanted to override the veto. We had progressives, Democrats, and we had six out of seven independents, some of whom are very moderate to conservative. And that really tells me that we were on the right track, that it was a budget that really did meet the needs of Vermonters across the political spectrum. And so if we're able to craft a budget that does that, and keep in mind the budgets that got vetoed last year, came out of the committee on unanimous votes and passed the floor of the House with just a few notes. A lot of Republicans had voted for essentially the same budget. So I think having that ability to balance the power of the legislature with the power of the executive just brings the governor to the table a little bit more. I can't tell you how many times I've heard in meetings with governor and staff when I say, what do you think of the education finance bill being built? What do you think of this bill, the foreign bill? And I hear, well, we'll see when it gets here. Except by the time the bill is passed to the legislature and Vermonters have weighed in and it's been through all of those negotiations, it's a little too late to weigh in at that point. The only option we have is the veto append, whereas if the administration would come to the table like every other administration Democrat and Republican had done before, come to the table earlier and say, you know, I don't like this where this is headed. Can we do this instead? Great, that's what sort of debate and crafting this is about. I think the larger majority helps the process work the way it was intended to work. Do you think you'll be able to override what I'm telling you to? I hope that the larger majority gets us to a place where we're having the conversations earlier so we don't have to. And I think that depends on the quality of the legislation, right? You've got to get 100 legislators to agree on anything, it's not easy. And so it's been done before. And I want to make sure that people are really listening to each other and understanding the parameters of whatever piece of legislation is being developed so that they understand the effect on Vermonters and they have a good sense about how far they're willing to go to support it. But ultimately, my goal is to try to get the parties and the House and Senate and the two branches of government actually working together so that we don't have to use that. This is a question from Eric Neely of Waterbury Center. He asked, why do you think Vermonters can afford ever increasing taxes? Paid family leave is a good example. The cost of living is high compared to wages. They can continually advocate for more tax inspected. So I think it's a popular line to say Democrats are the tax inspenders. But the budgets that have come out of our Democratic majority-controlled chambers for the last few years have not had taxes and fees. We've agreed to do that. We have in the last, under my leadership in the Appropriations Committee when I was there, we, a number of years in a row, cut budget growth in half year after year. And so we brought budget growth down to over the period. We started that before Scott was in the governor's office. We brought that budget growth down to under our economic growth levels, under revenue growth levels. And so I think we've done a really good job of managing money and doing things to curb spending. We have also tackled some education spending issues as controversial as it is in a few places. Act 46 in places where communities have chosen to merge has shown some savings. We have recently, last year, passed a special education bill, and that's been the place that's been identified over and over by various education consultants to say that Vermont spends quite a lot of money there and doesn't necessarily spend it in the best ways. So the new special education law that was passed last year is designed to curb spending there and help bring property taxes well under control. And I think other things like affordable housing, part of the reason housing is so expensive is that we have such low vacancy rates. And so the affordable housing bond that the legislature and the governor work together on is really increasing the number of housing units available in Vermont to help with some of that. So I think there's been some really good work done on trying to make sure that the economy works for everybody. So what about paid leave? What about tax taxes? Paid leave would carry an expense that is very, very minimal. And I would say for anybody who, when you talk about affordability, it's not the taxes you pay, it's the delta of your ability to pay your bills and what's left in your pocket at the end of all your bill paid. And what we're seeing right now are people who are really needing to make very difficult decisions with getting to work and taking care of a dying parent, having a new baby or welcoming a new baby and then struggling with child care, infant child care is brutally expensive and very hard to find. And then going back to work within a couple of weeks. And so I believe that the paid family leave actually helps with the affordability crisis. When you think about the people who are in those positions and their ability to balance their families' needs and their economic needs. The Senate is fast-dragging a bill to create a legal market for cannabis. You expressed reservations about tax and regulate from marijuana. Can you explain those reservations and is there any scenario in which you would support a tax and regulate bill this session? So I haven't ruled it out entirely. We have and the Senate has it a number of times. So every chance they got. And so our committees will be taking it up probably after crossover. We want to use the first half of the session to get everybody up to speed and educated all of the new members we have. My concerns about tax and regulate are normalizing usage in a way that increases particularly youth usage. So some of this prevention issues and road to safety. Those are two big concerns. Now I'm aware that even in the years of complete prohibition, we're still worried about those things. And they were still concerned. So it's not that total prohibition answers those questions either. So our committees do support a civil advertisement. I do. And I know that part of the issue with it though is that the house has passed a live testing last year. There are issues there with because of the way that THC is metabolized in your body. There isn't a test for impairment. There isn't a blood or saliva test for impairment. In the same way there isn't alcohol. With alcohol because of the way it was metabolized, you can draw good correlations between levels and impairment. And the tests aren't there yet with THC and there's not a clear line. So it's a little harder. So how do you address that? Part of the way you address it is making use of the significant number of drug recognition experts that we have within the state police or DREs who go through special training to be able to test somebody's impairment because there are a lot of different ways you can be impaired on the road. And some of which are absolutely legal methods. So it sounds like you basically agree with the challenge of decision-making. Would you agree with the tax commission's report that 26% is the right way to go in terms of a tax level that would be appropriate to fund law enforcement in education? Or what do you think of Dick Sears' proposal for a 10% tax? I think I'm going to set up our committees to be able to really look at that issue. You know, you tax it too high and everything's still in the underground market. You tax it too low and you don't pay for the costs that it generates. So trying to find that balance is really critical. I do think that moving to a tax and regulation specifically for the revenue is a bad idea. You shouldn't make a decision like this based on the revenue. And the other thing I'm talking about because my background here is budgeting, people would spend that money 17 different ways. So you have to push the pause button on all of those five dreams and come up with something that is a little more realistic. I think a helpful thing here is that we're not in the first state. This has been done in Canada and Canada. We're up to what, 7 to 10 places to look at. And the part that I come back to frequently is that every other place that it's done, it's been this two step process where the people have said, we want it legalized through a referendum. Vermont's not a referendum state, but it was able to move forward in other places because it was. Then when the legislature sat down to decide how should it be legalized, they all eventually decided to tax and regulate. So we also have to sort out why that is. How do members of the caucus support a tax and regulate bill? I don't know yet. I don't know yet. The landscapes shifted a little bit because there were people that voted in favor of legalization that wanted it legalized. That were only in favor of legalizing it in what we call the Vermont way. That basically codifies existing practice of fine, if you have a small amount, if you have a couple of lands, we're not going to bother you. But it's still illegal to purchase or sell it. So there were some people that just wanted to legalize the Vermont way and are opposed to tax and regulate. And there are some people that voted against legalization, but they're now saying, okay, we lost that as long as it's legal, we need to move to tax and regulate. So people are flip flopping in terms of their sort of standard, which side of the yes or no line do they call on. Great. Thank you for that. This is a long question from a reader, Rita Burton from Springfield. She said as two employees, Mike McCarthy and Becca White, of a deeper nonprofit solar spin-off that feeds on renewable energy subsidies, and plus the wife of the company's president, Carrie Dublin, now serve in the Vermont House. The company's son, Calvin, of about 100 employees now has more representation in the Vermont House than any single district in the state. Within the legislature, in a particular regard to the issue of a possible carbon tax, how widely known is this conflict of interest? And what are you going to do to ensure lack of bias and honest discussion? If the issue of carbon tax comes up for debate and follow-up are your favor of a carbon tax in any form or increasing taxes in general, again, this is from Rita Burton and Springfield. So we have, having a citizen legislature means that most legislators either are retired or have another job. I mean, so we have farmers on the ag committee, we have teachers who are retired, teachers on the education committee, we have small business owners on the commerce committee, and I think it's part of what helps conversations around those tables stay real because you've got people there who have walked the walk. And it also means that we need to be careful that there isn't undue influence somewhere. I don't think that any of those three people that are mentioned are in a position to unduly influence the solar industry that some common is a part of. So none of them are on the energy and technology, specifically, which is where renewable energy and energy policy gets discussed. Even if they were, having one person there with some immediate knowledge, I don't think is a bad thing. And for the most part, I have found people that serve the state in the legislature very able to separate some of their work life and their legislative life. And we do have, for cases where there is some very specific potential benefit, we have something called Rule 75, where normally a stating from a vote is not allowed, but you can claim Rule 75 when a vote is being taken just to say, look, I'm here, I'm not skipping this vote, but it's not appropriate for me to be voting on it. Because Masons' Rules, which are the parliamentary procedures that we go by, so heavily weight somebody's job to represent the people, the use of that rule is very, very limited. And it has to be something that is a very direct, very personal, and very individual benefit. Otherwise, none of us would ever be able to vote on something like property taxes, because we all have, or budget. Could the House do a better job, though, of publishing conflict and interest information? And I ask this question because we're finishing up the legislative guide, and we want to include the conflict and interest information, but it's submitted and handwritten, and it's only available by PDF. And I'm wondering if there could be some kind of commitment to creating a form that people could fill out online so that that information could be tight and readable. Is that something you consider? Yeah, we can certainly look at that. We also have to make sure that legislators fill it out, and so compliance has been, I think, the most important piece of the conversation, and I've found that the best way to get that to happen is to put a piece of paper on somebody's desk and say, fill it out and hand it to him by the end of the day. And there, that's my point. It's illegible, so that's a problem. Okay, do you want to ask a question? So the debate over how to fund clean water, federally mandated clean water efforts is obviously going to be continued this session, and it seems to be a constant debate, but have you or are you aware of any promising funding mechanisms, proposals? Is there anything at this point that you are willing to throw your way behind it, or if not, how do you see lawmakers getting there for this seminar? So the National Resources Committee and the Ways and Means Committee are going to be having this debate and figuring this out. We have been nibbling for a number of years, so the gap is closing, and there are two parts to the conversation. One is how to create that, and I think there's still a little bit of debate left about exactly how much that final gap is. I would like to put a little bit more into that, given the needs of the lake, given the district I represent, and given what clean water across the state means to our economy, our infrastructure, and one of the reasons people move here and come here and stay here. So the short answer is, no, I don't have this old bullet answer to that. Yeah? No per-person feeding. No estate tax. The question was, is there a specific proposal that I'm going to put my way behind right now? Yeah. So, no. We will be coming out of this biennium having funded water quality. I am committed to that. So there are going to be next year's year or so. Well, I've been trying to get this done for a while, but so I think making sure that it gets done within the biennium, it could be this year as well. But part of the hurdle here is that 40, I mean, yeah, we have 40 new members that haven't been through a bunch of this discussion that don't know the background to the ins and outs, and that's a lot of getting people up to speed that we're working on. The other, in addition to the funding, people love to ask you about the funding. The other question that you guys need to focus on a lot more is, I realize I'm making my job a little harder than I'm telling you this, but this is a really, really critical piece. Is the mechanism to how to get that money from the state coffers to the projects that are going to make a difference for water quality? Because we don't have a great mechanism for doing that yet. It's not enough to just create the funding source. Right now, the multiple funding sources are the capital bill, which we've funded water quality in the capital bill for as long as I've been here, and that will continue. So, we have a vast chunk. And that's for what, particularly? Is this treatment plans? That can be, yes, that can be for municipal wastewater treatment, and it's for a lot of farm activities as well. Things that help with required or recommended agricultural practices to help reduce barnyard runoff, keeping livestock out of waterways, dealing with rainwater and runoff around a barn or pasture area. We've funded that for the capital bill for a long time, and we will continue doing so. That's one piece of it. The property transfer tax, the surcharge, that goes for about 10 years. That's another piece of it. The sheets, which is the unclaimed nickels, which is another couple of million a year. That's another piece of it. So, it's great that we've got these big chunks of money already available, and more will be added. But the process for, you know, I went on a tour a couple of years ago of Franklin County with a water quality group up there that's been doing really excellent work, and they toured us around a number of projects saying, okay, we've actually gone through and done an inventory of things in the area that we can do. This company that has a lot of buses, and we can grade their parking lot better and create a little kind of step-down holding area for storm water so that things settle out and the sediment doesn't run to the lake. But then how does that small local project tap into money that's available for the state? And so that's the other really big piece of this conversation. To make the money effective, you have to have a really good way of getting it out the door to say, okay, here are the first projects so that we can start by the most cost-efficient projects, which is not necessarily the cheapest project. But I want to know that we have a mechanism so that the first dollars going out the door are getting the most pounds of phosphorus out of our water system per dollar that we can. Great. Alan Bullett from Stowe wants to know if the legislature will be doing anything regarding the Act 46 forced mergers early in the session. He says it's pretty clear from the public record that the State Board of Education failed to properly evaluate the section nine proposals before making their decisions. It is also not clear if the legislature can delegate authority to dissolve school boards to the State Board of Education. Can the legislature act quickly to make the lawsuits relevant? I would much rather see my tax money go to educating kids than being converted into legal fees. That's Alan Bullett from Stowe. So he's one of the communities in the lawsuit and the legislature, I mean the judicial branch has now put a stay on those. So this community is not going to be forced into a merger until the lawsuit is resolved and then that will help answer some of those questions. The legislature does not make it a practice to get involved with active lawsuits. That's just bad form, really. And so there is a pause button now and the education committee which has a number of new members on it is getting up to speed with where we started. This conversation didn't start with Act 46. It started with some of the regional education districts and things a long time ago. And it started when Rebecca Holcomb was running around looking at some of the educational opportunities the governor had highlighted a couple in his speech last week which were the exact same list that Rebecca was talking about the former Secretary of Education exactly what she was talking about two years ago with the opportunities that kids in town A versus town B have in their schools. So the goal is still to try to figure out how to make sure that the kids can have the best possible education throughout the state. It's 847, so I want to respect it at this time. But thank you very much for coming. Thank you for the same question. Yeah, I appreciate it. Nice fun experiment.