 First off, I want to welcome everyone here to viewing right now. This is the Essex Democrats gubernatorial forum. I want to thank the candidates for being here. Rebecca Holcomb, Pat Windburn, Dave Zuckerman, Lieutenant Governor, and of course Ralph. Sorry Ralph, I'm always probably going to screw up that middle name. So Ralph Carbo also joins us today. So we are going to ask some questions of the candidates. The format of this particular forum is this. Each candidate, the first candidate for each question is going to have two minutes to answer the question. Those candidates that follow up will have a minute to answer the question. And then we will so we have already randomly selected the order for this particular forum starting with Lieutenant Governor Zuckerman, then Pat Windburn, Rebecca Holcomb, and then Ralph Carbo. I want to thank Brian Sheldon for asking me to moderate this particular forum. I want to thank Tony for, sorry Tony, I should have had it right in front of me with Tony all of your efforts to put this event together. So and again, thank everybody who's watching and you know showed up for this important conversation that we need to have as we prepare for that August 11th primary. And I don't think that there's a candidate here that would disagree. Get those, get those ballots and get them mailed in. Okay, so reach out to your town clerk, get it taken care of. So let's start off right off the bat. Dave Zuckerman, you have the first question. Here it is. Candidates, so I'm sorry, whoever is elected governor, we're talking about COVID-19 right now. Whoever becomes governor will be taking on the unique challenge of COVID-19. This is like nothing ever the governor has had to deal with before. In addressing COVID-19, what new policies would you be putting in place to keep Vermonner's healthy? Dave. Sir, thank you, Marcus. Thank you, Brian, and folks in Essex for hosting and public access for putting this out to more folks. Really appreciate it. Well, first and foremost, I do want to compliment the governor on doing a fair amount of this process really quite well. And I give him credit for that. He listened to the scientists. He looked, listened to the medical professionals. And I think Vermont stands out in doing well, not only by listening to science, but also fortunately by being a relatively low density state, which has also been a benefit for Vermonners. But going forward, one area that I think we all agree on on this call is that masks should be mandatory. As we encourage tourists to come to Vermont, we encourage the opening of our economy in different ways. We know the science says masks are critically important when folks are in close proximity to reduce the spread of COVID-19. But let's do that for our economy. Let's do that for our workers in our restaurants, our workers in our stores. Not only should they be wearing masks, but all of us walking into those locations should be doing so. As we reopen, I would also say that we need to make sure we do more incorporating of the professionals on the front lines. If it's businesses, let's bring in those hospitality industry folks and really have a conversation about how best to do it. In our schools and in our early education centers, which are critical to reopening our economy, because it's so hard, of course, working from home with kids. We now value education even more, not only in producing our future citizens and leaders, but also in enabling adults to get to work as the cat rubs against the computer and shakes it, excuse me. And so I would be putting into place efforts with the teachers, with the early educators, with the business sector, and different sectors of business, for that matter, to really reopen in a smarter way than giving three days notice or four days notice. When I had a roundtable conversation with early educators about a month ago, they pointed out that the information they were getting one day they had to put in air conditioners, or couldn't put in air conditioners, they had to be fans. So they went out and bought fans. Then three days later, we're told, no, air conditioners are fine. We need to give consistent, clear discussion with those groups in order to have clear guidelines as they reopen. And so those are some of the issues I would address, but there's more and I'm running out of time. So I'll pass it on. Thank you. Thanks, Dave. Pat. Well, the policies that I think keep voters healthy is having healthcare for all. Healthcare is great and it's our moral responsibility. Senator Sanders and Senator Leahy and Peter Welch are all doing a great job on the federal level for promoting healthcare for all. And I think that the monitors, that's a policy that would keep voters healthy. I also believe that family leave is important. Family leave is a family value and, you know, people have elderly people to take care of or they have sick people, you know, sick relatives or, you know, people that are incapacitated for any reason. They need to have family leave. And basically, right now, people should wear masks when they're not socially distanced. And, you know, they should go home and take care of their families, but it's a difficult thing. Thanks, Pat. Rebecca. Thank you. So I think we all know that it's quite possible, in fact, probable that things are going to get worse, both economically and health before they get better. We've seen how quickly the virus has been spreading across the South. And we also know that some of our federal subsidies are running out and it's not clear what else will be coming in terms of aid. I've put out some recommendations already. The first is we need to make sure that VDH, the Vermont Department of Health, which has outstanding employees, is sufficiently staffed to do the job we are going to need it to do in the fall. We are planning right now for proposing to open up schools, open up child cares all at the same time. They have right now 344 fewer employees than they did in 2008. It's not clear to me that they have the capacity to manage multiple simultaneous outbreaks in many parts of the state. If we can't manage our health care issues and our COVID spread, we actually do not have economic recovery. And so that's one of the things in minutes, almost no time. I feel everyone's pain. I think from a different perspective, a lot of what's being done is counterproductive. They're not looking at the real underlying issue. That's the most important. And that's the environment surrounding the COVID-19. While people like Phil Scott are putting out all these types of protocols, sitting in the House committee on wildlife and fish and natural resources are three bills, I should say four bills, H261, H262, H263, H267, which deal directly with the contamination of the environment through biosolid and sludge. That has been proven. All the bacteria exits the body in the form of feces, the COVID-19 bacteria. Why are these four bills that specifically target this part of tamping down the disease have been sitting in the House committee this entire session is ridiculous. These are bills that solve long-term problems related to COVID-19. All right. Thank you, Ralph. Let's move on to another question, still in relationship to COVID-19. Pat, we'll start with you. In terms of dealing with the economic downturn the state has faced because of dealing with COVID-19, how would you address the loss of income that continues to happen for Vermonters and for Vermont businesses? Well, unemployment is going to dry up at the end of the month. And I don't believe that we can just cut our way out of a recession. Many of the programs that I support require us to increase investments during an economic downturn. And we just simply can't cut our way out of this. So I would support a few ways to generate revenue. Number one, a more progressive income tax. We don't believe that millionaires are going to head for the hills if we raise their taxes. And on the contrary, during the pandemic, the housing market has skyrocketed with people that are anxious to move to Vermont and enjoy our Vermont way of life. Another way that we should support or to generate revenue is to tax and regulate pot. Massachusetts and Canada, Colorado, other states generate revenue by taxing pot. And just like we tax alcohol, we should tax pot. But a percentage or a portion of that tax money ought to be set aside to educate our children about the dangers of drug abuse and the horrible problems that that can create. But we also should cut private contracts. Many of the tens of millions of contracted services paid for with general fund dollars could be done internally at a lower rate. We need to eliminate the private out-of-state corrections contracts. The taxpayers are paying nearly $8 million for. We need more workforce development. And I think that the people in Vermont would benefit by a more progressive but democratic policies by a democratic governor. To do that. Thanks, Pat. Rebecca. Thank you. So in addition to some of the issues that Pat raised, we need to do many things here because we're already looking at a $550 million shortfall. And we know we need to make sure families have the cash in hand they need to pay their bills, pay their rent, feed their families, and know that they're going to be safe. And we are not clear yet what federal support will get. First thing we need to do is to the extent that there are opportunities to reskill people, give them opportunities to get new skills, to move into jobs that will continue to be viable in the context of COVID-19, we need to make that a priority. Statewide, we need to focus the available state revenues on priorities that keep people healthy and safe through what we now know is not just a short-term crisis. It will probably be with us for at least a year until we have a vaccine that keeps people safe. Second, we need to think about how to invest in Vermont. We spend $3 billion out of state every year on energy from other places. If we redirected even a purpose of that to the creation of local renewables, that would create good jobs in Vermont that pay good wages and that keep that money here in the state where it contributes to our economy. And finally, we may have to borrow, but that would be something that we'd have to be extremely strategic about to make sure it was something that would pay for itself like housing. Thank you. Ralph. I'm sorry, one second, Ralph. Go ahead. A couple things could be done just like when Governor Richardson-Selling did a number of decades back during another budget deficit and tough economic times, raise revenue by a slight tax increase primarily on the highest income from models. If you raise the personal income tax rate on the top 5% of Romaners, his income is over $125,000 per year, you could generate approximately $15 million annually. If you would end the capital gains tax exclusion, where most states tax 100% of capital gains from sale of stocks, bonds, or property, you could raise approximately $14 million annually. And if you enact the financial assets tax of one half of 1% on all stocks, bonds, trusts, and other financial instruments, over $2 million, you could raise about $56 million annually in Vermont. Very simple. 10 seconds. All right. Thank you, Ralph. Dave. Well, first of all, I think we have to invest in the economy and invest in the infrastructure and put people back to work making money that will churn in the economy and rebuild our state. And I would do that through something that's already been talked about some, which is a marginal income tax rate, as was talked about with the smelling years, but also the Trump tax cuts yielded hundreds of millions of dollars to the top 5% of Romaners in each of these years. So I would tap into that work to collect about half of that, which would be about $100 million a year, to invest in affordable housing, to invest in weatherizing folks' homes. It was talked about the oil money and other energy that sent out of state until the return on that investment is not immediate. You don't suddenly have a lot of money to do what you want to do just by waiving your wand. But if we invested $15 or $20 million a year immediately into weatherization to save or monitor money, they would then have their resources to spend locally and churn in the economy. The last quick thing I'll say is I would invest and expand, as the state legislature just did, in restaurants making food to deliver meals to people who are hungry, which would be money that would go into the restaurants and immediately back into the economy through their employees, as well as into the economy by buying local food. And then you would have that money spent over and over. And that's the way to rebuild the economy. Thank you. Thanks, Dave. All right. So let's address, if we can, one final issue in relation to COVID-19 is the relationship to the budget. Obviously, with the lack of income coming in for Vermonters and Vermont businesses, there's going to be a lack of income coming into the state. So there is a potential shortfall. We don't know exactly what that shortfall is going to look like. But with that on the horizon, how do you think that you would attempt to adjust the budget to deal with the fact that you're going to have less income to do the things that you want to do? Start with Rebecca. Thank you. First of all, David, thanks for mentioning the restaurant issue. And if people want to see what that looks like, there's some interviews on my website where business owners are talking about how they used some of the COVID relief money to stabilize their revenue so that they could figure out a way to create revenue in the middle of being a shutdown. This is the biggest issue we face. And part of the challenge is because of the delayed receipts, we actually don't have an entirely clear fix on what our fiscal situation is. We do know it's bad. So as others have mentioned, I think we've begun to answer this question already. We need to look at how we capture additional revenues from people who can't afford to pay. We also need to look at how we spend differently to make sure that we're getting the best darn value out of every single dollar we spend. As agency of education secretary, that's what I spent my life doing. I took over an education agency that had had a 40% cut in its state funding and figured out how to rethink our operations in ways that let us punch above our weight. We're just going to have to do that and focus on our priorities. And our priorities are making sure people are safe, people have homes where they can be, and people have enough food and opportunity and access to good education that will help us as we get through. And we're going to have to work across sectors how to do it to leave people with a sense of hope. I've seen incredibly promising cross sector partnerships starting between child cares and schools in some communities and between healthcare providers and schools in some communities. We support a tremendous amount of infrastructure in the state. And maybe that's where we don't want to spend our money because we want to spend it on our people. And when schools partner with child cares, they can bring down the operating cost of the child care by about a third in ways that let them pay more to the workers, but also bring down the cost to parents who are trying to figure out how to hold down their jobs, even if their kids are off and home. That's what we have to do. And I spoke to one parent who said that last year she spent $185 a week on childcare. This year she's only spending $50 a week. That's because when the school pushed in and used its available space, they were able to make this a win for families and a win for people who need to go to work. So those are the kinds of cross sector strategic decisions I'll be looking for. Thank you. Ralph. Well, I'm not going to stand for any cuts. The bottom line is when there's $740 million dollars worth of potential revenues from taxpayer dollars that can come back to the state that's being spent on a defense budget kind of watching DC, not just going to sit back and allow that to happen. Like they used to do in the 60s, they need to put together a coalition of top state leaders and politicians and go to Washington DC and bang on the doors and tell them that this is unacceptable in modern society. They have $740 billion wasted away on endless wars or endless military industrial corporation profits when the states are wanting and lacking all the federal funds we used to be able to get back in the heyday. This is not something to just sit back and accept and go ahead and cut the hell out of our budgets and deny our people the access to services. Thank you. Dave. Well, a number of quick things. One, we learned during COVID that we don't actually have to incarcerate as many people as we have been. So there's savings there that can be put into our state colleges and other investments in our state to keep people working. The governor in the COVID proposal he had put zero money to the Vermont state college system. And maybe that's not as big a deal to some of the folks in Chittenden County where we've got community college and some other opportunities, but it's a huge economic hit for the state which would damage all of our future as far as the budget situation for the state if that were not funded. Legislature put that money in and I would support that kind of measure. We also, I would bond for some of the shortcomings in the school funding from the lack of sales tax. And I know that's unusual to do, but we should not have the next one or two years economy have to carry the burden and Vermonters carry the burden of 10 or 12 cent increases to pay for our schools. That would be incredibly damaging to many middle class and working class Vermonters. So I would bond for that to spread that cost out over time. And lastly, also related to our schools, I would work on issues like what one of the others talked about of really blending in human services and education at the frontline level to help students who are struggling and challenged from birth through school and save money and create better access to services for those families. Thank you. Thank you, Pat. Well, if you go to my website at winburn2020.com, I talk about my proposal to have a great reshuffling. We need a new, new deal. We need, you know, the cards that everybody is dealing with right now were delved out in the 20th century and we need to flip those cards over and look at the 21st century. They, you know, the card need to be looked at. And we need to, you know, review the policies of the past and we need to move into the 21st century. And that's what I'll do as the next governor of Vermont. Thank you, Pat. Talk about racial justice and local policing. In light of national protest and support of Black Lives Matter and to protest recent and historical killings of Black Americans, what do you see is your role as governor to support racial justice in Vermont? Ralph? The first thing to do to start the ball rolling is to contact all the Vermont police departments and agencies and tell them that they are immediately to give back or scrap all military weaponry that was obtained from the Pentagon. This has created the entire of oppression from a militarization of police forces that used to be civilian forces and now have been turned into armies that wage war against the civilians and people of this country. That's the first step. Get rid of the military weaponry that encourages police that are hired into the system to turn into soldiers. That's number one. Ralph, I'm sorry for that particular interruption. I want to give you a few seconds if there was something you need to wrap up. You need a clown in every show. Usually that's me, but anyway, sorry for the interruption. Apologize. Let's move forward. Dave? Well, first, I'm really impressed with the legislature's rapid action on S-119 to look at the use of force and criminal justice training council and shifting to one that's more balanced in terms of how we train our law enforcement officers to the four hours of community development. We need to shift that and we need to shift some funding into mental health services, economic development, and other ways to make it so we have fewer need for law enforcement calls in the first place. We also strongly support the social equity study bill which became law last year act one around the issue of education standards to make sure people really understand the history and how we got where we are. We also need to fully fund and expand the funding of the racial equity office in Vermont and I prioritized this as an issue in my very first movie of my movie series which was called 13th which anybody out there like the people that zoom bombed should go watch really learn our history about half after we got rid of slavery. We basically allowed state sanctioned slave labor through our prisons. Dave thank you and again I want to apologize to everybody for what's going on. We're trying to deal with it as fast as we can as it happens so my apologies. Pat. Well I would appoint people of color to my cabinet and I also would I believe that in citizen oversight committees for each town the person who's zoom bombing does not represent the people of Vermont you know as a white person at my job to amplify those are directly affected by systemic racism and it exists everywhere from criminal justice system to education to health care and every aspect of our lives implicit by training is needed at every level of government in our communities so we can begin acknowledging the program the problem and address it. Vermont prides itself as first state's outlaw slavery but that claim is hollow from the treatment of the Abadakis to the exploitation of migrant workers to driving while black pullovers. Thank you Pat. Rebecca. This I just want to share with you the story I'm not going to share the name of the individual who told me this but this underscores how serious this problem is and I realize that the group of people who are interrupting today are a minority of Vermonters but what we see is that there are a number of people who try to consistently terrorize our neighbors in ways that make them feel unsafe and unable to to achieve their best potential and to contribute to the prosperity of our state and as governor I will make this my unrelenting goal to make sure every Vermonter no matter who they are but particularly our black and brown neighbors who deal with the kind of hostility we've seen here today I feel like they we have their back and we will support them and we will stand up for them because they are as much Vermonters as we are and they have a right to be here and feel like they're free of this harassment. I talked to people who thought about running for office and we're afraid to do so because of this kind of behavior I've talked to young students in school classrooms who tell me that they are afraid in school and tired because they just want to be kids and what they deal with is they need to push back against this kind of racism all the time. One of the most important things that governor can do is to make a very clear unequivocal commitment to the principle of liberty and justice for all and to make sure we plan for it proactively in every single aspect of state government operations and that's what I'll do as governor because this kind of behavior is what is tearing us apart as a nation it's what's tearing us apart at the state and the Vermonters I know will have nothing to do with it and we will show up for our black and brown neighbors because we're not going to tolerate that behavior. Thank you I appreciate it and again I want to apologize for everything that's been going on I do want to ask the candidates right now collectively because of the fact that we are dealing with the situation I do not want to have this evolve into somebody's entertainment versus being a responsible discussion on issues and so I would ask the candidates now how you feel about continuing or whether or not we should take a second I think there's something that we can do right now but it would take us a minute to try to clear the decks so that it's just us having this particular discussion would you be okay with just taking a pause for a second while we clear this out or yeah we don't need to give them any more platform for their racism I agree and I think Gavin has a suggestion yeah I agree all right thank you so if you'll just give us a moment anybody who wants to watch this particular video can do it on channel 17 or on youtube live you know they can participate that way so all right I have I believe everyone who is still on the call is personally known to me I apologize for setting this up poorly all right let's let's leave it at this and that way again people we will let everyone know if they want to watch it they can on channel 17 or again on youtube but my deepest apologies totally not your fault Marcus all right so let's talk about can let's continue the conversation let's talk about racial justice and policing one more time but let's talk about in defining defunding the police what does defunding the police mean to you and how does that relate to Vermont policing in your mind we start with Dave well thank you Marcus and thank you for your patience getting through that racism and hatred that zoom bombed us all and I also want to thank the other candidates who also presented I think what we all have which is a unified position on these issues and some of the ideas of inclusion in our administrations and and so forth that the others all mentioned with respect to defunding the police I very much espouse many of the words that Al Sharpton has talked about defunding the police does not mean the elimination of funding I think there are maybe a few that think that but it means reprioritizing a portion of the funding for law enforcement into other community engagement activities that are far less loaded with law enforcement and far more towards mental health towards economic development in depressed communities and in our BIPOC communities and really shifting our focus away from the war on drugs to be an investment in our future and our kids future all of what defunding the police means is shifting from what we've done for last 20 and 30 years between the issues of the 90s and 2000s where it was fund police throw people in jail and that's how we somehow make our community safer that is not what has made community safer it has been unwise tax and spending that actually could be much more effective in education and mental health and de-escalation in training our law enforcement to use de-escalation techniques and not use of force we need more social workers who could actually go with law enforcement officers which we're seeing successfully in Franklin County and Grand Isle County we need more work towards programs around addiction support services and those with substance abuse disorders and we need to really shift as I said earlier law enforcement training where right now on average in this country it's 60 hours with firearms and four hours in community building and we need to shift this focus and include bias training which obviously some people who just spoke in don't really understand their own internal biases and various other de-escalation tactics and I'm running out of time so I appreciate the opportunity and again thank you Marcus and Brian for bringing us back on track thank you um Pat well I I don't uh I don't think that the you know the state or the police should declare war on the people of Vermont and you know I agree with Ralph I don't I don't believe in the militarization of the police departments I'm uh you know the moderator of old Bennington and a past trustee we have a very small police department but we fund our own police department through our taxes uh the state police are funded by the state but on you know on a local level we you know we should use school resource officers we should use state-funded social workers you know Barry and Montpelier have been very innovative um you know in that regard and you know we should have homeless liaisons and you know and and just not you know not militarized thanks Pat Rebecca sorry I'm just unmuting what well I agree with much of what's been said I think we've been disinvesting for years in people and investing in punitive strategies to control people once they become desperate we know we have people in jail because they can't make bail we know we have people in jail who are struggling with addiction who really need treatment not jail we know we have people in jail with mental health issues that land them up in jail and they need mental health treatment we know that they're people in jail because there is no housing for them to go to even though they've already fulfilled the terms of their incarceration so we have chosen to be punitive in ways that cost us up to seventy thousand dollars a year per person instead of investing in the kinds of social services that keep people safe the one issue I do want to disagree on is the issue of school resources officers because nationwide in the few empirical studies we've seen school resource officers are associated with lower high school graduation less likelihood of attending college for people who are black and as a state until we are in control of our own racism and bias we cannot be policing schools in ways that adversely impact the outcomes of our students we need to be looking at investments that help them be healthy not in being punitive in ways that we know will be disproportionately targeted at black and brown students thank you Ralph so along with what I said before about the law banning any acceptance of military weaponry by Vermont agencies there also must be a statewide ban on torturous devices such as tasers and tear gas both of which in numerous cases have not only caused long lifelong debilities but also deaths these are weapons of torture not to be used for for use against civilians on top of that there must be a what was the other thing I lost train of thought there must be any hiring of people directly out of the military especially from the battlefield cannot be allowed directly into field police activities they must be put into clerical duties for a minimum of three years while they undergo programs that help them to deprogram from the institutionalized program they went through in the military to become unfeeling killing machines that should they should not be hired directly from the battlefield into the police forces out in the public thank you talk about housing what do you see as being the most important housing policy to change in order to change the lives of low income Vermonters going back to Pat well I I believe that you know the housing policy has to change you know it's impossible for young people and millennials to afford rent why I'm you know I would put rent stabilization on the the table you know we can also look at you know people have large homes and historically a lot of Vermont towns have beautiful large old homes and you know I would I would very seriously consider converting and subsidizing cars into multi-use you know portions of those homes I would also consider a one-time incentive for seeing homes you know we have homes that are that you know that are big and plenty there's plenty of room for everybody and you know the other aspect too I talked about this before the you know concept in Scandinavia of tiny house villages you know they can be built quickly it doesn't cram everybody in it doesn't provide it doesn't cause the COVID problems that everybody is very concerned about and rightly so but I think affordable housing is really a key to Vermont's future and bringing in young people which we need in in Vermont we're an aging population and we need to bring in young people as taxpayers and productive citizens of our state thanks Rebecca I forgot to mute just to just to pick up on it in honor of some of the previous comments that were made I just wanted to start by acknowledging that in Vermont we have well documented discrimination in our housing markets and our mortgage markets against black and brown Vermonters that for years prevented them from building assets through home ownership they were we had deeds in our state that prohibited people from selling their homes to people of color we have mortgage markets that discriminate against people in certain neighborhoods that means they didn't have access to the opportunities for savings and tax benefits that come with owning a home in Vermont wealth inequality is even more severe than income inequality and in Vermont 71 percent of white households households are homeowners well only 22 percent of black households are homeowners so one of the things that we need to be careful about in all our policy with related to housing is making sure that we do it with eye to equity in addition and beyond that because we need to make a big change because right now our problem is supplied we do not have affordable housing for families in walkable downtowns sufficient in number for the people who need housing right now and there are many reasons for that but there's no one solution some communities need investments in municipal infrastructure and wastewater others it may be expedited form code as governor i would like to look at how we're using our economic development dollars not to just focus on holding on to businesses that are already here but to invest in the next generation of Vermont entrepreneurs including those who are using carbon friendly materials and carbon friendly designs to create affordable housing for Vermonters thank you um Ralph a couple of programs that the state could implement they could be the direct implementer of the what's known as a rent to own program that they could possibly through funding and again trying to get federal funding from a government that spent seven hundred forty billion dollars of defense hopefully to get some sort of funding to help to institute a rent to own program within the state that's uh you know actually run by the by the state uh by by the state the Vermont State Department instead of through maybe you know like the way it's done through banks uh again like mr windburn mentioned tiny houses is a concept that's been bandied about at times uh by some of the more uh leading progressive thinkers here in the state and also the home share program again dependent on getting more funding could be greatly promoted and increased in certain ways after after study of that thanks Ralph uh Dave well thank you i'm actually going to continue on the home share program that uh mr corbaugh talked about where folks can actually have others live in their home and help share the expenses a lot of seniors are doing this and they're on fixed income often low income we could make sure there's policy that says if you open your home to someone else living in a room in your house that their income doesn't apply towards your income sensitivity payments uh income sensitivity adjustments for property taxes this would help a lot of seniors and fixed income folks stay in their homes longer help supplement their income a little bit to afford to stay in their homes while not penalizing them with higher taxes that would be something that i think would be very important i would also look at either permanently or at least temporarily putting a higher property transfer tax on higher end homes a that are getting bought up right now by out-of-staters but b that higher end folks could afford in any respect which would increase funding for mont housing conservation board which would lead to more funding for affordable housing each year so we need to invest in more housing it would be part of my green mountain new deal program as well to invest between 15 and 20 million dollars a year in affordable efficient energy sound homes in our village and town centers so again people could also live and work in walkable communities all of which would help low income residents uh be able to live in their communities and work in their communities with affordable housing i would like to give each candidate one minute to address uh take this one step further and address the issue of housing from the aspect of first time home buyers in the state of vermont obviously we want to retain people here we want to keep young people here what are your thoughts and again i'm going to give each candidate one minute to answer this question because it's just going in just a step further um on again what would you do specifically for first time home buyers here in the state of vermont um coming back to pat well i don't think there's a cookie cutter you know approach there are federal programs first home buyers you know i believe in mortgages with no interest or low interest mortgages that uh are uh sort of stopped for a period of time um you know and uh you know affordable housing money needs to go to towns that are from the state that are earmarked for this thank you uh rebecca um so you know i think we've already heard a number of ideas expressed by candidates here that would address that um i think one of the issues that we frankly got to talk to about is college debt one of the reasons i'm hearing from many many young people that they can't afford to consider buying a house is because the devil levels of college debt that many young people carry are so high it's prohibitive but that's not enough clearly um you know and i think we've talked about other other ways to do this you know the other way we can address this is by bringing down some of the other costs that young families in particular are often saddled with i mentioned some issues around um uh you know making child care easier to afford by working together in ways that bring down the cost of child care i think also we need to look at potential opportunities for mortgage relief for young first time house buyers we need to understand that if we don't have young people in the state there will not be people staffing our hospitals filling the jobs that need to be filled in order to thank you thank you ralph well i mentioned previously i think the uh the uh one of the initial uh most um conducive things is rent to own especially with uh caps on the on the monthly amount based on uh the person's uh income uh where you are actually investing a rental money on a month-by-month basis that's being applied to eventually purchasing the uh the structure i think that's um that probably would have the most appeal i think to uh to people in this day and age especially like i said if you have uh caps on it to keep the monthly uh rental depending on their uh on their personal income i think that would be the best way to uh to start off with and then other the other concepts of uh home share and tiny houses i think are almost equally as important to uh to us to the latter to uh eventually bring the affordable housing to most of the world thanks ralph dave well first i think there's been a lot of great ideas i do think sometimes folks have to reign in how many different ways they're going to give away money uh where some of the proposals i've heard just continue to add more and more to that i've stayed focused on the green mountain new deal where we would use money from the trump tax cuts to the wealthiest romaners to build perpetually affordable housing in our village centers we could partner with what is already landmark leading in the country organizations like the champlain land trust housing land trust the vermont land trust where affordable housing and perpetually affordable housing is built and then is also then sold when those folks move into their second home at an affordable price to the next person we need to build more perpetually affordable housing to get off the treadmill of housing being purely an investment for returns for everybody when we're in the competitive housing markets with boston and new york folks down there can afford to buy what we have at the drop of a hat for what they can sell their own homes in boston new york connecticut and we need to make sure we build affordable housing for romaners to get into so they can get out from under some of those debts like rebecca talked about with college debt and others and we need to invest as she said in our state colleges so that our our debt coming out of those schools is either very low or zero thank you let's talk about economic development um first off i'd like to ask each one of you um and again we're starting back uh with with the new rotation rebecca you'll go first with two minutes um what is your feelings about the remote worker program has it been successful and what if any changes would you make to that particular program rebecca so i gotta be blunt marcus the biggest barrier i see to remote workers is broadband um my husband's a remote worker and we chose where we lived precisely because he needed to be in a space with good enough internet that he could commute my internet in far too many places in the state don't have sufficient internet capacity or speed to be able to conduct business and you know we i don't belabor the issue because we've talked about it at every debate but we spent far too much money to get far too little and this is something we're just going to have to get done it's why i existed that the state uh schools put um all their assessments online because that drove broadband as far as our school buildings and it's that much closer to everybody's front door but when i've talked specifically about the remote worker program i've talked to a lot of people who did receive some of those benefits and i gotta tell you they're telling me they were going to move here anyway but they were happy to get the help with the moving cost i actually think that money would be better spent on something like the rent-to-own program or preparing or giving young Vermonters who already here and want to go to our state college system get access to a nursing degree so they can fill one of those desperately needed positions in our hospitals or help somebody who wants to be a pediatrician or primary care practitioner in a rural community but can't afford to take that job because if they don't have help with their debt they can't afford to work there and if we don't find a way to help them work there we will have no primary care doctors in some of our rural communities so my point is there are many people who are here who want to be here and with just a little extra help we could give them the skills to get a job that didn't pay the minimum wage but paid them a living wage to make the green energy transition we need to make to build the green housing that we know we need to have and to staff the jobs in our healthcare system that if we can't fill we're dependent on out-of-state nurses out-of-state traveling doctors who come in and get paid two to three times as much and then take what they earn home where they came from and pay income tax someplace else so i'm big on investing in Vermonters and i know that if we invest in our people they will invest in our state with their time and their bright hands and their willing hands and brains thank you Ralph well on the remote remote working depending on what type of business it is there's a business that's connected to working for any type of company entity i believe that company should be involved in either setting up the structure for that person to do the business remotely in terms of paying for a lot of that the whatever devices are needed plus the fact if they wanted to get involved with a helping to implement more fiber optic to create that i don't think that should be that should be put solely on in a sense it comes back to the Vermont rate payers when you have a public utility company that implements that and then the cost of that's on everybody across the across the board i think these companies that are directly got remote workers should have a a stake in a contribute to the putting in the infrastructure to have a remote working as long as it's not involved the like there's fiber optics and not the harmful and intrusive 5g right type of type of word so thank you Ralph Dave well first we have to put some of this in context the remote worker program is about a hundred or two hundred thousand dollars a year and so it's not if we eliminate it not going to suddenly fund all these other great ideas that people are presenting however i do think we should have limited it with either a means testing model or something that effect as one of my contemporary folks here indicated many of these folks would be moving here anyway so if they were already going to move here let's not subsidize something that was already going to happen let's put that money into training programs or education programs at our state colleges so people could become nurses or teachers where we know we're going to have a shortage of workers or put that money into expanding programs for elder care where we know as one of the older states in the country now we we would want more visiting elder care services so people could age in place live healthier happier lives and to really get folks to move here we need to build affordable housing we need to build out broadband we need to help support child care and make more child care options available those are much bigger issues in how to both retain vermont owners and attract people to vermont in order to build our economy in future thank you pat well i'm sure that it was well intentioned but the remote remote worker program is really a bit of a farce we don't need to bribe people to come to vermont you know we need to brand vermont as a place to come we have cultural centers you know vermont is a unique place we have a unique culture and you know we don't need a caretaker governor like governor scott you know who's you know going to support these kind of programs people want to come to vermont because it's such a great place to live thank you so i would like to expand on this just a bit so i'm going to give one minute to each candidate just to expand a little bit more from the aspect of listening to vermont owners what i hear a lot is the expectation that we're going to draw businesses that come here with lots of jobs so what are the industries what are the ways you know quickly that you would end up going after those businesses or industries that could come to vermont and bring us a number of jobs going back and to the beginning starting with rebecca so i'm going to answer that question first and you know when i was secretary of education we spent a lot of time thinking about what were our priority sectors and we looked at a lot of data in the state in the areas where we see high wages and high growth in vermont and lots of opportunity are in the healthcare sector in the green energy green technology or smart grid solutions sector the green construction sector and advanced manufacturing including green manufacturing these are sectors where we can graduate students within industry recognized credentials right out of high school and they can walk into a job that pays them 25 an hour this is where the three to five thousand young people between 18 to 21 if we could get them the right skills could find a way to reconnect with the economy but i want to push back a little bit because vermont can't only be looking at bringing new businesses from other states to hear we have wonderful entrepreneurs and i've been calling them and speaking to them all over the state who actually want to start businesses in vermont that reflect our green sustainable and renewable brand we need to understand that much of what we need is right here at home we just need to organize ourselves to harness the potential of the people here who want to make it work thank you ralph um well i think uh you might um again that was uh previously said you might want to look inward first i mean uh vermont has the potential in terms of agriculture to become the epicenter of organic agriculture possibly on the eastern seaboard maybe even the whole country uh if we could get over the this obsession with um the dying um dairy industry which is a obsolete at this point and come to the conclusion that we have to try to uh transition into uh into a new type of agriculture if you could uh take it a step further and become like i said the uh with the again with the proper funding and uh grants and stuff which uh are going to take some federal funds 10 seconds we could we could become the organic red basket in the sense of the eastern seaboard at the very least by transitioning into uh into into a major organic farming industry here thank you dave well thank you there's a few things here first we have to point out that new york state has more money and tax credits to attract businesses than the whole vermont state budget so i think the premise of the question saying how are we going to land a big employer is really not the vermont way to build our economy it's actually to invest in our small businesses help them grow from two and three and five person businesses to 15 and 20 person businesses my farm when i started had one part time worker now we're up to five year round and six seasonal workers if we can expand jobs in those ways uh whether they'd be farming jobs which are actually going up in wages as well as investing in broadband affordable housing when you talk to business owners they actually their employees want to have a good education system we need to govern that's not going to bash our education system but actually speak to the truth of our education system which is that it's one of the best rural education systems in the country we get a bang for our buck and stop distorting the issues in our education system i would uh as i have for 25 years advocating for reforming our cannabis laws we could have a craft cannabis industry like we do a craft beer industry which would attract tourists and money into the state and create those good paying jobs and i would work on renewable energy jobs which again under this administration we've lost 500 solar installation jobs in the last couple years we need to reverse the incentives and invest in those jobs thank you dave uh pat my wife and i have uh run a small business in vermont for the last 34 years we have a up up practice now we have five employees including myself we paid good benefits for every everybody we have uh you know programs for uh health care for you know pension type 401ks and you know that's what vermont needs we need good businesses to come to vermont and we need to provide incentive you know as a government uh you know to bring businesses that demonstrate that they pay a livable wage otherwise you know it's a cost shift uh to the government you know uh we need uh you know to to help uh the big businesses but you know i agree with rebecca this this is too or really uh end date uh the the sort of the lifeblood of vermont and probably always will be thank you moving on to our next subject is education so let's um kind of going off of something that pat just said and rebecca you touched on everybody's kind of touched on it a bit let's talk about education funding in the state of vermont one of the things that um i hear quite often and i think is discussed quite a bit is either the burden or the complexity so as you think about education funding in the state of vermont how would you improve education funding for better outcomes starting off with ralph you have two minutes well it's a little complicated i've never really looked into that that much i would have to say one of the basic things i think is the property tax which um i don't know if this is the right economic time to do it but i think eventually should be should be geared to um different predations of uh and uh percentage is based on whether you're a senior citizen without any children in school uh whether you're a couple other younger couples with no children in school um at the same time uh maybe high income people with uh a large family of children uh i suppose a re um reshuffling i guess of the uh property tax um form the way it is now and maybe doing some uh things uh to uh change it in along the lines of where i just mentioned all things are going to be thought about i think it's something that you have to sit down anybody's got to sit down with uh non-partisan experts which unfortunately we don't get a lot especially in this current administration that can give you the uh the bottom line tax without uh kind of uh politics involved and we'd have to uh do a complete uh review of it uh hopefully come up with some uh more uh equitable uh ways to well to administer i think especially from the perspective of the property tax being used to fund most informed education thank you jave that's about all i can add to that i appreciate it jave a couple things i've served on the ways and means committee in the house and the education committee in the senate and i'm pleased to say i have the endorsement of the chair of education uh philip beruth and also the endorsement of senator chris pierce from chitlin county who's on the finance committee so if we want to talk about shifting education funding and helping alleviate the burdens having those folks on your team is uh is really helpful now one of the bills that was introduced by senator anthony polina who also has endorsed me is to make the income sensitivity provision go all the way to the top 30 of taxpayers as well if that were done with a million dollar income uh tax cap so it wouldn't be outrageous on those folks it would actually do a 30 million dollar tax reduction on the 70 percent of romaners who do get income tax uh sensitivity on your property tax bill so if you get any adjustment on your bill right now your bill would be uh lowered under that law and i think it's also important to look at the cost of education and where we can blend some of the expenses that have been put on education around social services and blend them with the agency of human services which is happening in some places but not everywhere so if we want to adjust costs we need to look at those ideas at the front lines on the ground level to help with that in education education excuse me that well we do pay a lot for education in vermont but we also have the highest graduation rate in the country and i think a big part of that is because we have excellent teachers in vermont um you know the property tax system overly stresses and really pits taxpayers versus teachers and that really is not the way to go i think income tax should be what supports education and i think it's time for the top five percent uh to you know to pay their share they've gotten the benefits uh from all the tax cuts that trump's given them uh i think it's now time for um you know for for the top five percent to pay their way thank you rebecca thank you um there are three ways that we need to address this challenge and the first is we need to make sure we know what's in the education fund the second is to make sure we change the way we disperse the money that we raise and the third is that we need to change how we raise first thing i learned in business school was that if you're worried about costs you have to focus on what's driving increase costs in whatever budget you're looking at we know that in vermont what's driving increases in our education fund isn't teachers we're actually reducing the number of educators we have it's health care it's pre-kindergarten it's the mental health that we need to provide the supports to kids as our state system has completely failed and it's not because it's not competent people because it isn't adequately funded for its job and it's the cost of tuition vouchers in districts that don't have public schools what all four of these things have in common is that school boards actually can't control them so one of the things that we have to do is make sure that everything in the education fund is actually something that school boards can control or they can't be expected to reasonably bring down those costs second we need to make sure that the way we disperse money adequately accounts for the higher cost of educating kids in rural schools in economically disadvantaged communities and students who are learning english and there's pretty significant evidence right now that we are grossly underfunding those kids relative to their needs and that's something we can address particularly if we address some of the other costs in the education fund and the third is we need to make sure and have hard questions about how we raise this revenue i did an awful lot of modeling i think we need to do comprehensive reform because you can't change the ed fund without changing how we tax on the income side for the general fund but it's very clear one thing we could do is think of housing as something that's essential and doesn't get taxed up to a certain level the same way we don't tax food thank you um i'd like to move on to our last question um this is uh specific for Essex and i think that uh you know i look forward to hearing your your responses to this so in regards to the town of Essex and what we've recently what's recently happened here on town meeting day Essex did approve a charter change by the voters for a three plus three representation on our select board um it was pushed off by the legislature um which did manage to pass other charter changes for other towns so i'm curious for each candidate to uh let let us know what is your feeling about whether or not towns should have local control over their own charter or do you believe the legislature has a role in approving these local mandates um so starting at the beginning uh i believe that's that's Dave so all right uh first of all i do believe very much in local control and the legislature does regularly approve charter changes fairly quickly uh but i've seen over the 20 years i've been in the legislature some that are a little more complicated and this one unfortunately is one of those and i just spoke with the chair of the house government operations committee i'm actually in her house doing this zoom because it's her 50th birthday party and i'm hanging out with her later tonight after this show uh and to ask why didn't this move what happened and she said it was actually getting right onto the agenda when covid struck and admittedly there were some other issues with covid and government operations one being the voting issue and vote by mail which i think marcus you talked about at the very beginning the need for folks to vote and vote by mail that ended up being more contentious than we had thought because the governor got in the way of it for a while uh so they had to take up that legislation they also had to deal with many as government operations uh committee has to do many of the issues around law enforcement and the changes in law enforcement and policies around the black lives matter issue and racial injustice and so when there's a complicated charter change they have to delve into it and they are planning to do so uh and that the issue that i understand and again i'm happy to hear from folks in estix is that it was going to shift from the current five-member board to a six-member board and they were curious and normally they would work this out with the town mothers and fathers who would come testify is how would you make that shift from five to six if the current balance is not three to two and you would just be adding one in the other half of the community as well as uh what would happen in part of the language my understanding is that it would shift to proportional representation from three to three to maybe four to two in the future if the population's shifted dramatically and that wasn't really defined in that change as well so they're ready to move it they believe in local control but they do have to work out those details with the communities and i think in august and september they're going to be looking into that so that they can move this bill forward and allow the charter change to happen it does sound like there's also a vote in november that may also impact these changes so they may end up waiting depending on what that uh what they hear from the town mothers and fathers uh with respect to how those work or don't work together so dave just just a fair clarification question again just very specifically do you believe yes that the legislature needs to be a part of the process for charter changes for local municipalities or should municipalities be able to do it on their own well that's been uh the law as long as i've been there and it's generally worked out quite well and the legislature has sometimes found glitches in some of the changes that have then gone back and been fixed in the local vote so before the change was made and the glitch became a problem it was resolved with the legislature asking for a review so dylan's law which is the the rule that guides this i think is good but it is important that we also affirm those votes of local communities which has happened every time i can remember uh in the legislature thank you pat now i don't think the legislature should be in control and hold up small towns um you know what who want to change their want to have their own charters uh in bennington there's been an effort to have a mayor system of government and there's no reason why the legislature should tell bennington what to do it is local control but you know i the vermont league of cities and towns has a pilot program where they're going to have 10 small towns that um you know that would be you know have a pilot program for the small towns and i i think essix would be a great candidate to be one of those 10 uh towns uh because i think they deserve to to have their own you know chart their own destiny thank you rebecca um i mean in terms of how it stands right now i think other candidates have said that currently the general assembly does have the power to grant charters of incorporation it's a constitutional issue i think the larger issue is does the is their value in having the legislature way changes because of the potential impact of granting a charter one community for the impact in terms of operations in another community and i i think sometimes it does make a difference and the more we fragment or or specialize there are also implications to the state in terms of how it provides services or how it supports communities so sometimes decisions that are entirely internally coherent in an individual community may actually affect another community in ways that no one thought about just because they're focused on their own affairs i'm i agree that uh my suspicion is that this was slowed down because of covet 19 i think there are many other priorities that were slowed down as well but there is real power in deliberation sometimes in helping us understand the broader implications of the individual changes we make that said i agree that a long-term problem of the state has been assuming that one time uh one size fits all policy we've certainly seen it in education and it's raised our costs and it's made sometimes our policies not responsive to local community needs so we do need to hear what the people of Essex are saying thank you Ralph oh well yeah there's not too much i can offer this and we get much of a chance to research it doesn't see the questions too late but um i guess uh i would say in general no but i guess you have to have a review when it comes to a charter change or whatever change of a local government to make sure uh maybe by having a um a lawyer connected to the state and knowing all the legislation to make sure that uh what's been changed in the charter isn't uh in the sense of violation you know of whatever type of laws might be on the books because uh it's going against the state law i guess i don't like i said not really knowing much about this issue that's about all i can add to it with that uh you know existing yeah local should have uh if already make a change like i said i think we'd probably need to be reviewed then to make sure it was in compliance state laws oh thank you Ralph and thank you all the candidates for participating in tonight's forum again my apologies for the earlier yes um but i do appreciate you sticking with it and being here for this discussion it's really important again that the entire electorate get to know you so they can make this very important decision and i would encourage everyone to again reach out to your town clerk get your ballot ahead of time get it filled out and get it nailed back in so again thank you to all of you thank you to Brian Sheldon and to Tony for putting this together uh and thank you for asking me to moderate but again thank you to all of you who participated and watched respectfully now thanks Marcus thank you for inviting thank you that was really great thank you for a really solid issues focused debate we appreciate it thank you so much again take care have a great night everybody thank you for participating