 Hello and welcome to Under the Dome from Town Meeting TV. My name's Bobby Lucia and I'll be your program host for today's show. Under the Dome is Town Meeting TV's coverage of the Vermont Legislature. In this series, we speak with legislators and advocates about the bills moving through the legislature this year and what they might mean for you and your neighbors. On this program, we're joined by three legislators from Essex. We're joined by Ray Garafano, Representative Leonora Dodge, and Senator Tanya Vihovsky. Thank you all so much for joining us today. Great, so we'll start with you Tanya. So this is your first term as a Senator after moving over from the House. So can you just speak a little bit about how your experience is compared, as a Senator, compared to what you experienced in the House? Yeah, absolutely. I mean the Senate is obviously a much smaller body, so a lot of the work I have found is very relational and there's a lot of capacity to sort of shift conversations in a way that I didn't experience as much in the House, because I recognized my time in the House was really colored by COVID and the fact that I started out online and the vast majority of my time was on Zoom, so I think that that was an impact as well. So I don't know if I actually have a fair perspective of what it's like to be in the House when it's fully in person as it is now, but I certainly have found, you know, serving on two committees is a big difference between the House and the Senate and so I certainly have found, like, I go home and my brain is tired in a way that it wasn't in the House. Yeah, definitely. And Leonora, this is your first term as a House rep. Can you share a little bit about what you've learned about the legislative process and what your work actually looks like? I would say that it is very relational. Maybe that is a result of there no longer being, you know, the COVID restrictions and we are in the space. I have loved my committee experience and, you know, I feel very fortunate that we kind of have a whole crew of folks from Essex and, you know, we all have really great working relationships and can pull from each other's specific perspectives of committee experience to, you know, to deal with constituent work and, you know, and to approach, you know, complex issues. Yeah. And so, Ray, you're working on the Human Services Committee, which I know is a lot of attention on it right now. So can you share a bit about what you've been up to in that committee and what you've been up to this session? Sure. Thanks so much for inviting us today, Bobby. Yes, I returned to the Human Services Committee, and I'm so grateful for it because I love that group of people. And we've done some larger bills this year. So the first half of the session, we primarily worked on a bill that had to do with protections for vulnerable adults. It was legislation that had not been updated in 50 years. So we took a lot of deliberate testimony from and heard from various stakeholders. So that took a big part of the first half before crossover. And then we also passed out an opioid overdose reduction bill. That was an omnibus bill that we're really excited about. This was something that we've been working on in committee since last year. A bill that we had last year was vetoed, and we weren't successful in overriding that veto. So we're really hopeful that we have a stronger bill this time, and that's working its way in the Senate right now. And the last four weeks have been all about childcare, so I know we'll get to that later. But that's another big piece of legislation that's before us, and that legislation started in the Senate. It came over to us about four weeks ago, and we have been very, again, deliberate in hearing from various stakeholders and thinking about how to stabilize the system and also how to increase access for families. Yeah, I want to jump into that childcare, Bill. I want to just go back and ask a quick question about, you said a bill to protect vulnerable adults. What do you mean by that? So folks who have disabilities or are older remonters that may not have agency to fully take care of themselves. So this bill, there's the Department of Aging and Independent Living kind of oversees nursing homes, home providers that help assist and support those vulnerable adults, and there's laws to make sure that they're protected and not being abused or take advantage of financially. Okay, that makes sense. So yeah, let's jump into some of those big investments that are on the table. Childcare is one of them, paid family and medical leaves and other affordable housing is a big one. Can you each speak a little bit to the impact, these big bills, these big investments that might move through the legislature this year? What impact might they have on your constituents and both in terms of the services and resources that they will provide to the folks that you represent as well as the tax impact that they'll see? Maybe we'll start with you, Tanya. Yeah, absolutely. So the way I look at it, childcare and affordable housing are sort of the two critical economic issues that are facing our state. We can't have or develop a workforce if people don't have a place to live and send their kids to high quality and affordable childcare. And so while the sticker price on a lot of those is pretty high and the long run, that is an investment in the growth of our economy and in the growth of Vermont. So I think it's really critically important. You know, I think about, I mean, I'm a renter because I can't afford to buy here, so the affordable housing pieces is really personal to me and it's been pretty sad over the last few years as I sort of watched the dream of owning a home in the state I grew up in just fade away. And so I really recognize that so many young Vermonters and older Vermonters are really struggling with this. You know, my grandparents, my mom pays their property tax or they wouldn't be able to afford to live in the home that they have raised their family in. And so I know that it's just, it's facing all of us and it's really critically impacting so many things. And so the, you know, the housing bill is really meant to prioritize building affordable homes in already existing town centers to really maximize population density so that it isn't, it isn't encouraging sprawl. So we are able to maintain the Vermont that we all know and love while also making investments in building that people can afford because we've underbuilt for 50 years and we have an aging housing stock. And so I think it's one step, but I think there's a lot more that we really have to do before people are going to start feeling relief. You know, building takes a long time. We know we have a high rate of second homes in Airbnb and so I think there's a lot more that we're going to need to do before people are going to immediately feel the relief, but I think it's a really good first step. And the child care bill as well, I mean, it's a huge investment in the future of Vermont. You know, I worked as a school social worker for quite a while and I knew within the first 30 minutes that kindergarteners were in the building who had access to high quality early education and who didn't. And those, that lack of foundational support and education carries with that student throughout their educational career incurring additional cost through special ed services and through behavior support. So it's really, again, it's a big sticker price, but it's an investment in less cost over time. The one thing that I was actually really kind of disappointed about in that bill is how we decided to fund it by removing the child tax credit that we just set up last year, because I really feel like the families that are going to lose access to that child tax credit while they'll gain access to child care really need both of those things because these are some of our most vulnerable families. Thank you, Tanya. Leonora, some of those big investments. What do you think the impact will be on your constituents for some of those bigger bills? I think that with, you know, Tanya touched on housing and on child care, I can speak a little bit to the paid family and medical leave, which, you know, in our discussions and, you know, I think that we also have this kind of, you know, like the tax credit or not, you know, we're always balancing like what can we afford. And I think that with paid family medical leave there has been this very, very careful and I feel very astute approach of investing state funds and then having a universal system where everybody pays a little bit so that if and when any kind of employee needs to take time off that it doesn't affect them. It doesn't affect the time off if needed, regardless. But let's not make it sink them into financial ruin on top of ill health or tragedy in their families. And so I think that it will also, as a woman who chose to stay home for a while because I didn't have access to any kind of leave or affordable child care, I am really, really in strong support of both of those policies and I have lived in societies where they are both available and they help rather than hinder economic progress, gender equity, and family welfare. Yeah. And you mentioned that there's always that balancing act of how do you raise the revenue in an equitable way. You mentioned the sort of universal approach to making sure everybody chips in a little bit. How do you make sure that that is not sort of a regressive, doesn't have a sort of regressive effect on taxpayers and make sure that people are paying their fair share? So my sense is that it is going to be somewhat in line with salary, I believe, with certain caps. And if everybody is doing a little bit of their share, then by that very nature, folks who can afford to will be, you know, and employers won't be saddled with the entire cost of having to, if they really want to retain or they really, truly value this specific employee that they won't feel, you know, that it's all on the employer's pocketbook. And for people who are self-employed, they can also, you know, they'll also be eligible for this benefit. So let's maybe move on to the child care bill and talk a little bit about what that bill actually might do for families in Vermont. Sure. So as Tanya said, we got the bill from the Senate and we are hoping to pass it out this week, actually, on Wednesday, which is why I have committed later this afternoon, which is very unusual. So the structure of the bill is two-fold and it has to focus our two-fold. To increase subsidies for families. So more families in Vermont can get, receive federal help to pay for high-quality child care and to increase wages and benefits for the workforce. As Tanya mentioned, you know, there are certain areas of state government that have severely been underfunded for years and years, decades. Housing is one. Child care is another. Supports for older remonters is another, which is a topic you didn't ask about, but that was included in the budget and the big bill and it's something that is really important to me and it's a priority. But related to the child care bill, I think if we make it more affordable for families and then pay the workforce more, it'll stabilize the system. What we're hearing is that many of the child care centers that are operating have the space, but can't get the staffing. Thus, they have these really long wait lists, especially around infant and toddler care, so they can't open up classrooms that they have. Classrooms are sitting, going empty when they have like a 200-person child wait list. So if we can increase the wages so that people in the field feel like they're being compensated for their education and, you know, our licensing regulations in this state require a certain level of credentials and education and it's only fair that we pay those professionals commiserate to those experiences. So I think the economic impact in Vermont and in the future of our children is just gonna pay in abundance in the future. So child care, paid family medical leave, affordable housings with a big ticket item. Is there any other big investments that we haven't touched on yet that you've been working on? I want to get into some of the smaller bills that I know don't get quite as much attention, but before we move on to those, is there anything big picture that you all have been working on that you want to highlight? I do think one of the investments that is being made, we're using the opioid settlement funds to make some really strong investments in harm reduction. I think when all is said and done, we're gonna spend about $8.2 million of that fund to try to save people's lives and that feels really important to me. It's not quite as big a ticket as some of these other programs, but I do think it is really a critical investment and it's been really great to get to behind the scenes. I'm not on the committee of jurisdiction. Be a part of making sure that that's really grounded in harm reduction and not simply prevention. A lot of the focus in the past has been prevention, prevention, prevention. And while prevention is important, we know that for the third year in a row, we saw a record number of Vermonters die of fatal overdoses, so we have to do more than simply prevention. We have to also invest in harm reduction and that money is really being moved in that way and I think that that's really important. And I'll also add, if I may, I mentioned the budget bill earlier, but I think we were very intentional in putting some significant investments in areas that have been underfunded for many years. Supportive services for homelessness has been one. Supportive services for folks with disabilities. Housing for folks with disabilities, so those are all areas that there were significant investments made in the budget bill that will have a huge impact in the next year. Thanks, Ryan. I'll just add that in transportation, there was like an $860 million bill, one massive one, that there was significant investment in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and so I'm really proud of the work that our committee did in taking testimony from everybody from car dealers to environmental groups and the administration and the agency for transportation and how to best focus the funds that we do have so that we are truly targeting the vast majority of our funds towards helping the most needy Vermonters access green technology, whether it's an electric vehicle or getting charging. And I think that Vermont is, we can be proud to say that we have the highest per capita charging stations, but yet that still probably feels like not enough and so I'm really glad to see that we're moving further in that direction, always taking into account the rural nature of our state, our dependence on vehicles. We also pushed for investments in public transit. The House, our House Transportation Committee wanted to put an extra million dollars into Green Mountain Transit so that they can extend the current zero fare policy beyond it was supposed to end this July and we extended it so that it would, or we proposed, they used this million dollars to extend it until January so that in that time they could truly work towards kind of a tiered fare system so that people who really need free transportation can still benefit from it and then those who can pay will pay. Thank you, Leonora. You've each mentioned a bit of your priorities and some of the things that are moving forward. Are there any priorities that each of you have that you haven't been able to move forward on or make progress on, any bills that didn't make it through crossover or that you would have liked to see move forward that maybe you have an eye on for next year or that you would have liked to see move a little bit more than it has this session. Tonya Mingle, we'll start with you. Yeah, absolutely. So in the Judiciary Committee, one of the conversations I'm really hoping to have a much deeper conversation around next year is looking at some of the decriminalization bills and really taking public health and public safety issues out of our criminal justice system and grounding them firmly in the healthcare system. So we have a bill on the wall that would decriminalize consensual adult sex work, really opening up an avenue of safety in that and are much more likely to not be able to seek help if they're being abused or trafficked by decriminalizing it opens up an avenue for people to be able to report that. And we're also looking at a bill that would decriminalize personal use amounts of drugs and again really recognizing that our criminal justice system is absolutely the worst place to be dealing with trauma, mental health and substance use and those are healthcare issues and by decriminalizing giving people access to the healthcare that they need to tackle those issues. So I'm hoping that in the next session we are able to pick up some of those conversations and really think about how we transform the way in which we respond to those. And then in my other committee government operations I'm hoping in the next session and the latter part of this session to dive into police oversight and really looking at police training, police qualifications and oversight so that we can really build a system of policing that's grounded in community and public safety and that has transparency and trust. We've certainly seen many, many issues whether it's with sheriffs or I feel like every day I'm reading a new article about a place where community and police trust has broken down and I really want to work to rebuild a system that actually centers the needs of every community. Thank you, Tonya. Leonora? Yeah, I'm thinking I feel like I'm still in the eye of the hurricane and that we are still working very actively on dealing with as many bills as we can. Our committee spent the first two months of session just dealing with the one massive transportation bill and then even though there are other bills submitted into the committee because that's such a massive priority. Certainly there were some of the really interesting ones for instance one of our committee members proposed has this great idea of all along the Connecticut River all of Route 15 having a bike trail kind of like the Lemuel Valley rail trail system that connects the north east to west having something that goes north south and I think some of those amazing exciting obviously would never happen overnight so I'm excited for some of those you know just the the very start of the spark of an idea that then you know who knows you might be able to enjoy something years down the road that you were having conversations about. Yeah, so I help run and lead the social equity caucus for the House and the Senate and we have last biennium the caucus develop the bill tracker that tracks all the bills that have an equity lens so my priority and I hope to spend some time over the summer working with the caucus leadership on that is really identifying a few of those bills some of them Tanya already mentioned but there's others that really bring an equity lens and think about systems that have been built that are very inequitable for certain populations and how do we identify a couple of those for the next session and then maybe have like a long-term plan of you know we all kind of experience this at the beginning of biennium or the beginning of the session you know a lot of bills get introduced and there's a lot of stuff that goes on the wall and you know I like to think about things systemically and it's like specifically related to the social equity caucus how can we identify some things that have you know maximum impact may be feasible in the amount of time that we have for the next session so I would really love to spend some time prioritizing several bills that we can maybe lobby the committees of jurisdiction to take up for next year that have already been introduced that's so interesting thank you is that available publicly? it is yeah we meet every Thursday at 4.30 and there's a website I'm happy to forward it to you yeah welcome welcome to join and listen in thanks so much I want to shift for a second to a more local focus you're all coming from Essex and in 2021 Essex Junction voters opted to become a separate municipality from the town of Essex and that separation took effect last summer so have you found that this split on a municipal level has any impact on your work in the state house and the priorities of your constituents and the way that you bring them into your work and maybe if either you want to join maybe I'll start with you Lenora sure so we actually our district now includes about a fifth of our or a quarter of our constituents are from the city of Essex Junction which has been really interesting to try to stay on top of what's going on in the two municipalities I would say that having to rewrite the Essex Town Charter has been kind of one of the things just when you get an email from a constituent and the address is Essex Junction we always have to look up and really be careful of what's going on which has allowed this team effort of working to respond and to help out with issues like unemployment insurance and stuff like that I would say that there's a great sense of relief to some degree that now we can just get on with the whether it's housing committees or energy committee or economic development committees that it just took all the oxygen in the room the merger separation issue for so many years and so I think that we're regardless of how I feel about whether we're together or not together I feel like I get that issue less and less people are less concerned about that and I'll share that because the district lines don't really follow municipal lines we have various sections of the different town cities different municipalities as a group we made an intentional decision early on to kind of keep the school district delegation together that was kind of our formula because there is a lot of crossover and overlap so the six of us really strong amazing women from Westford, Essex and the city of Essex Junction working very closely together and that kind of mirrors the school district so we can partner in things that are related to the school district which is very large and we all have different committee assignments except for one of our delegation is on health care so it really lends itself to really great partnership and working together and then I'll just say I'll echo what Rep Dodd said that I'm really grateful that we can now move forward each municipality has this opportunity to kind of make their town and city what they want with their residents so it's the sense of let's you know put the past behind us and move forward with our new municipalities so I think we'll move on to our last question here which is so you know we're sort of a month away from the end of the schedule the end of the legislative session how can your constituents get involved in the legislative process at this point if at all and how can they reach you and how do you kind of approach the process of bringing their priorities to your work at this point and maybe Tanya can start with you? Yeah absolutely I mean I'm always happy to engage with constituents it's really some of my favorite part of this work is really hearing the various different things that are happening in communities and generally the easiest way to reach me is by my email or calling the Surgeon at Arms office and they can relay messages to me and you know at this point in the session kind of what's moving is moving and so I think that the well I always want to hear from people about priorities whether it's moving or not in the back of my mind but in this moment I think the best way to get involved is to sort of look at what is made crossover and what's moving and weigh in on how it might be made stronger how it might impact that individual person as we sort of finalize and craft what's going to ultimately become law this session and I know that there's also almost every day there's well no every day there's some sort of advocacy happening within the state house whether that's a group in rallies or a group in the card room having an advocacy day and so connecting to groups that are fighting for the issues that are important to you is another really great way to get to the state house and talk to your legislators I mean that's I think one of the beautiful things about our Vermont legislators how accessible it is like I remember the first time I went in as a much younger person and I was like oh these people like they're right here like I can just walk and talk to the governor who's sitting in his office like having a coffee hour and so I think that that's really important and I as a social worker really value the creating space for people to tell their own stories and really share with us how whatever is happening or not happening is impacting them and so I really advocate and actually just last Friday had a constituent come and testify on a bill in judiciary that would have prevented just incredible harm that had happened within the judicial system to her family and that's because she had reached out to me in the summer and told me her story and kept it in the back of my mind so when this bill came up I was able to be like do you want to come testify on this and tell us the real human impact that this had and so I'm always advocating that we don't just hear from the same commissioners and secretaries of agencies but that we're actually hearing from the real people on the ground that are being impacted by the work that we're doing. Thanks Tanya Leonora how can your constituents get in touch with you and how do you move their priorities forward? Yeah so aside from the usual emails or phone calls we've been holding monthly community conversations and weekly legislative updates on front porch forum and through Facebook Instagram so I feel like I've had a lot of constituents communicate with me and at our last community conversation I kind of brought up the fact that I think in terms of effectiveness the best thing is to really give as Tanya said when you give a personal story and how something will impact you or is impacting you it goes further than just saying vote now on this or I want you to vote yes on this and so when we get we want to hear from the constituent not from the lobbyist that's behind the constituent that's the whole point we don't just want to hear the lobbyist and so those are the and I've had our long conversations and I've printed out bills and driven them over to constituents who think that some bill is going to do one thing when in fact it's not at all it's going to do something else entirely and then once we read the language it kind of helps to make sense of what's really going on I think there's a lot of information and I've really enjoyed the chance to speak directly with people and be able to walk through a bill or walk through a policy together and I've really learned a lot from my constituents about what it is that they're afraid of or hoping for yeah I'll say same and also add their issue caucuses for many different issues and those are open to the public so if you're passionate about climate or social equity or rural Vermont and different women's caucus those are great opportunities because there's many legislators that go to those so you kind of have an audience with legislators and similarly I think reach out to us but reach out to us and let us know how does this impact you specifically I love meeting with constituents I'll also say get involved in your local town and municipal government because that kind of bubbles up and I know a lot of those structures have a lot of vacancies right now across the state because people don't have a lot of time so that's another great way of just getting involved and learning more about how government works and how to have impact in your local municipal government or state government I do want to quickly add that we also do some monthly-ish constituent meetings and our next one with the three Chittenden Central Senators is actually this Saturday at the Fletcher Free Library at 10.30 so if people want to come talk to us they can meet us there. Great thank you so much Senator Vihovsky Representative Daj, Representative Grafano thank you so much for joining us today and thank you for tuning in under the dome we'll continue through the end of this legislative session connecting you with the legislators that are making decisions in Montpelier so you can find this program and others on our website at ch17.tv or on our Town Meeting TV YouTube channel thank you so much for watching and sharing under the dome from Town Meeting TV have a great day