 candidate forum. I don't think we've done this in the past. And depending on how it goes down, we may do it again in the future. Not this election. We'd like to introduce Rob McFanton, who's running as overpoking candidate. And Sandy Haas, who's running as the progressive. Tim Collabro, this evening will be moderating the event. If you have not already turned in your questions to him, he will be posing the questions. If you have questions that come up during, just raise your hand. I'll come get your question and bring it up. I do have extra paper and pencils in the back. But I do want to say we've got a lot going on at the library this month. On Thursday evening at seven, we have an author event. She'll be talking and reading from her new book on Commumes in Vermont. And she'll be reading the sections on Rockchester that is cosponsored with Sandy's books and Bakery. And that's Yvonne Daly, for those of you who know her. And then coming up on Saturday evening at seven, we'll be showing the documentary Denial. And Christine Holmwist will be here after the film to lead a discussion of the topics covered in the documentary. So her time running a rural electric and the renewable energy projects that they took on as well as her experiences as the first transgender CEO of a major corporation. So that's Saturday night at seven. So without further ado, Tim, you want to take it away? All right, welcome everyone. Thank you. I'm pleased to see we have a bunch of people and we have lots of questions submitted. And I'm also happy to say that lots of them are already on the docket for my list here. If by some chance we don't get to every single question, which I'm sure will be the case as the night goes on, there'll be some time afterwards to get together with these two and ask them yourself and get a direct answer from them. So just so everyone's in the same the rough format to this tonight is we have a series of looks like 16 questions more or less several from the audience. We're going to try to keep the answers to those questions pretty tight so that we can get the get the candidances on these issues without a lot of lecturing back and forth from this audience or audience to candidates. And that way we can all get home and go to sleep at a reasonable hour or two, which will be nice. Yes. Just a quick question. Tim, those questions that may not get answered, we have access to what they might have been or are. Yeah, sure. We can make that happen, I think. As long as I can read all the handwriting, I think. Thanks. Sure. So why don't we get right into it? We're going to decide to do the at the end. So we're going to do instead of closing statements, opening statements and closing statements, we're going to get right into just a quick introduction from each of these guys. They'll introduce themselves, say who they are, very briefly what their background is, and then we'll save more extensive remarks from the end before we get any questions. So who gets to go first tonight? Do you guys have any questions? I'll go first. All right. Is that okay with you? I've been there for 26 years. Who's there from Ohio? And Ohio is a good place to be from. I'm very happy and pleasant here. Pleased to hear Vermont. It's been a great place to raise my kids. I've raised two kids here. One's away at school with the University of Harvard for a freshman year. I dropped off a few weeks ago, just going back for a first time from college on Friday. Looking forward to that. I have a little nine-year-old boy rushing around in the mountains, swimming in the valleys, and doing what nine-year-old boys do. I've always been in sales. I moved up here with Cooper Tire. I covered the Northeast for them sales. And currently with Timpkin Aerospace, I'm Aerospace Sales Engineer. Working for them and selling bearings into the aerospace and defense industry and precision control robots. Not our nation. That's coming soon. And looking forward to taking this on. Hi, Sandy. And I'm Sandy Haas. I moved to Rochester in 1980. I was a solo practicing lawyer out of my home. And we also had a bed and breakfast in our home. So I practiced law for about 30 years before I decided to run for legislature. I was first elected in 2004. And I've been there since. I am currently the Vice Chair of the House Human Services Committee. And I've had that position for eight years. And I'm looking forward to running for re-election. All right. How is the volume, by the way, everyone in the back here okay? All right. Can't hear. Can't hear? You must speak up. Okay. I'll just speak a little louder. I can't hear. Give me a sign. All right. So here's our first question. And since we're all up first on the first one, this one's for Sandy first. Looking back at the previous section, name a piece of legislation that passed that you support. And name one that you wish had it passed. Well, you always have to start with the budget. So you know, that was, we work, the biggest policy statement that is made in the legislature is where we put our money. So my committee spends weeks looking at the things that affect on human services, that affect services to people in Vermont. And getting a budget passed is very important. What passed that I didn't like? I'm not sure that there was one. I could go back a couple of years since they had 46, which we fought it when it came out the first time and we succeeded. And then it came back again. I think that at 46 was an attempt to take care of school superintendents more than that. But it's the law and we have a fight with it. And I think we're finally, I think in this district, we were finally kind of settled in and people are moving forward. All right. Not the same question. Do you want to repeat it or do you want to repeat it? Okay, I got this. I like that we finally passed the legislation that put making people that are using cannabis criminals. I don't like that it didn't have the rules for commerce laid out. So the state could make some money that we so desperately need right now and create jobs. I'll be happy to talk about that a little bit in a little bit more detail. But so I did like that they put making people that use cannabis criminals. The medical cannabis policies in the state are subpar. So if you're a patient using it and wanted to get what you needed, you're a criminal until this past. So I like that that passed. What I don't like, I didn't like the second amendment modification that passed. Vermont doesn't have a done problem that I've seen. I don't know why our legislature was spending time on that. We have so many other critical issues facing us right now. So I thought that was a waste of time. I think we stirred up a lot of people's emotions and further divided people in the state. And it just didn't seem necessary to me. All those things will come up later. I should mention for people listening to this in the future, there will be a recording of this on the Harold website. So I'm going to keep saying each person's name. I don't think anyone would get confused in the recording, but just in case. All right, question two. And Brock, as I start this one off, what kind of economic development does the state need? And what's the legislature's role in accomplishing that? I'll talk into that first. As the representative of a district, I think you have the responsibility to be in touch with the business owners, working to retain those businesses that are already here doing whatever you can with the state and your connections and legislature to incentivize other businesses to come know what's going on with all the businesses in your district and do what you can to help them and support them and bring them all together and bring in some of the ancillary businesses that will help the industry and the businesses that we have in the district. Your second part is the question. The first part was what kind of economic development does the state need? Well, there's this enormous opportunity sitting out there. We've watched seven other states go in front of us. I have a lot of confidence in the people in Vermont to take but those other seven states that went in front of us and learn from it and apply the right legislation and the right rules of commerce for the cannabis and hemp industries. We're doing okay on the hemp side of things. We went a little bit before this ag build that just went through and we can see how a lot of the businesses here are doing well from it. You look at what Loose Farms doing over there and the number of hemp licenses in the past year quadruple and it's really starting to be a strong industry in this state. We could lead that. We could also lead the cannabis industry and we could do it right and we could do it wisely. We could learn from what the other states have done before and put the rules and the legislation in place to make it work right in this state and we already have a brand. If you can't ignore that there's been a black market here for decades and decades and decades. We have a brand in that market already and it just seems silly that we have left it there and didn't get it through the last legislation but less legislative session and taken advantage of it. This would fund the schools. This would help so many things in all these districts that we're struggling with right now and I'm confident Vermont could do it right but it doesn't seem like everybody else's. All right same question. What kind of economic development does the state need and what's the legislature's role in publishing? Well I believe that the best business for Vermont are our businesses that are homegrown that are that are birthed by people in this state. We have many many many innovators here. We have great colleges turning out people with great ideas and I think that the role of government doesn't create jobs. Government businesses create jobs but government can do is make sure that we have the infrastructure in place that we need the roads and particularly the broadband to to allow commerce to happen all over the state. We have seen a huge growth in our breweries around the state. Now there's also distilleries around the state and interestingly there's a lot of work happening in the creative economy. We have a working group in Central Vermont where people are coming together and they're not only collaborating on what they do but also raising awareness to the rest of their neighbors about how the creative economy feeds and supports the growth of other businesses the restaurants the ends the grocery stores all of those things. With respect to cannabis you know I have voted for commercial for a legalized market every every opportunity I had it's it's it's a complicated question and I think one of the things to keep in mind when we look at what the legislature did this last year is that with all of the issues related to cannabis over the years Vermont has taken small cautious steps. We started in 2004 it was the first medical marijuana bill at that time the the commissioner of public safety was said if you pass this bill the the health angels are going to move into Vermont and it took us a few years to figure out that that wasn't happening so it got we so we loosened it a little bit we added some diseases we made we let you have one more plant and then in 2011 we allowed dispensaries to happen and we so we have gradually done that and I see the bill that passed this year as as the first step and yes I agree with with Rob it's wonderful that our neighbors are no longer criminals all right so there was there are some questions in the middle of year but let me skip right to it since marijuana is on everyone's mind and this might end up being a short question because both of you guys have already talked about this a little bit but last session Vermont legalized possessions are small amounts of marijuana but stopped short of establishing that regulated retail market so what are your views on this so-called tax and regulated system for recreational marijuana and I think Sammy starts this one off very so as I said I have I have supported a tax and regulated system it's it's actually it's kind of complicated there's a role for the department of agriculture there's a role for the department of taxes there's a role for the department of public safety by the way that's that is where our medical program lives we're the only state in the country that has our medical program run by the department of public safety kind of works there's there's a role for the department of health and so all of those pieces need to be ironed out the states that have legalized commercial marijuana have done it by initiative which means that somebody sat down and wrote out a bill and and there were a bunch of billboards that went up and that was what passed and that is not the way that we work in Vermont we do things through a committee process where we get to hear from all of the players and everyone gets to weigh all of the issues and then try to come up with something that works for everybody and that's the way I want to see us do it well all right well Sammy's talking about the government's role in business they're not creating jobs but you know what they are doing and they're putting up barriers that's what government's role in business has been and these slow steps that you're talking about it's exactly what we don't need right now we're missing this giant opportunity every legislative session that passes that opportunity strengths and strengths and strengths we were in a position where we could have led the east coast one and and are every time that passes that opportunity shrinks smaller and smaller and further from reach and right now I'm not confident it's going to get through this next legislative session I've got a youtube video that I put out there an ad about this if you just search on my name on youtube you can find it but it's supposed to be a 50 billion dollar industry by 2025 and CBD is supposed to be a 22 billion dollar industry by 2020 why is not afraid to go and take a leadership position on this it fits into everything we do you know agriculture we're great at that tourism we're great at that craft consumables they think it's what we're known best for it's sitting there but we just don't go government keeps putting these barriers in front of us it would bring so many jobs to the state and we could do it the way from ours do it and if you go right we've seen the mistakes that other states maybe we can learn from it and we do it right and the slow steps thing it's just not the way I work I understand you have to work with government to get things done but hearing somebody say we got to take the slow steps to get this done at what cost you know are we really going to let this opportunity slip and let our kids keep leaving the state and they're not being any jobs around here so we can take these slow steps the pitfalls do not outweigh the opportunity in my eyes it's just another missed opportunity and I want to drive business in the district all right and get things going quickly not wait not slow and we we pay for these reports on the state level uh the rand report and that rand report says move fast you can be the leaders but what do we do with our report we're not moving fast we're slowly slowly slowly prodding along to where we're going to end up with dispensaries every fourth or fifth town like a liquor store and that's all we're going to get out of it when right now we can become leaders when we just post and attract that industry here all right that was a popular audience question as well i bet yeah so what's the move back to the order here and uh robert you're going to start this one off uh so governors gods made it clear that they'll veto budgets that include increases in taxes or fees how long is that a sustainable strategy you support it and if so where might there be room in the budget to find savings we brought this cannabis industry and hemp industry in here we would be able to find the social programs and the schools where our tax dollars are going we could create a new revenue stream to the state in texas that people would come from out of state to get involved in our cannabis and hemp industries but gotta take it slow i guess i i don't know we need this here i there people i know are struggling um and they're working free jobs but if their car breaks down in the middle when it's going to impact their entire family i just we don't need to live like this we need to be more business forward let me play back to the first part of that question here um about the governor vetoing budgets include increases in taxes we can't afford any more taxes if you we just can't um we can't i don't want my property taxes going up anymore i can't i have a good job but i struggle it's just like we're surviving here not living like it's i don't want to see any new taxes all right same question beautiful so it's we have a lot of services that we are providing in vermont that we're not doing the job that we need to do whether it's whether it's um our mental health services um our um child childcare we have we have a crisis in the child care area right now because the subsidies the the subsidy is only available to a small percentage of parents who have to work and the consequence of that is that the kids are are are home with with some neighbor who watches television all day and therefore they're not ready when it's time to go to school this is this is we've had we had a blue ribbon condition look at this there are there are many areas of state government where every year we say oh we can't afford to do that because because we can't we don't have the money we can't afford to do this because we don't have the money and to draw a line in the sand and say we won't even consider trying to figure out how to how to provide better services as far as i'm concerned is not responsible government uh with respect the the issue is particularly interesting because the way that we do fees is that is that these fees are supposed to pay for the program so for instance if we're talking about uh uh the uh inspection of bad practice which i was then then the licensing fee is supposed to pay for the people who come to the door if you get to a point where it's not paying for it where the program is paying for itself then it's not working and we had a program before this governor we had a program where every year we analyze some of those fees and we said okay is it paying is how how what's the balance between the expense and the income and sometimes we reduce the fee because in fact we were getting more in that program than we needed so the idea that we can't even look at those anymore and make adjustments that reflect the cost of the program is is a really good sound bite but it's terrible policy all right so we're getting to another audience question now and this is uh sandi it's the first shot at this one what will you do to ensure that we get better cell service and our internet to be at this right we talk about this every year let's say governor douglas promised that we would get better but that we would have broadband all over the state by i think it was 2006 what i can say what i can say locally is that we've been really lucky to have ec5er it was it was too bad a few years ago when the when the u.s. government decided to give all the money to retail and springfield and not to ec5er here but they they've managed to come up with some funding now so that they aren't back rolling out to all of our towns we all i can tell you is that we talk about this every year we tried that was we tried actually this year to increase the service the universal service fee to put some money into this and that did not get get past the governor i mean one of the things to keep in mind with all of these questions about where we might go is that we have a governor who's saying no so for example the the you know if we wanted to talk about tax and regulate marijuana the governor has said he's not ready for that so if we can we can spend three months on a bill and send him a bill and if he vetoes it that's the end of the story so we without the governor on board we don't we don't have we don't it's not realistic to think that we're going to move forward on this and i i want to be a little bit i think we i think we need to be careful about how we look at the potential revenue from from a tax and regulate marijuana system number one you want to keep the tax low enough that you actually killed the black market if the tax is too high then you're going to have a parallel black market going at the same time the second thing is that there are some expenses that are built into the tax and regulate system there are people that if we're going to have the product inspected by the department of agriculture they need to have they need to have money to do that so some of the some of the revenue that will come in will actually be taken by the program and to be honest the big pressure right now for for any extra money in that in that revenue stream will be to expand our opioid treatment to to to add it into things that relate to drug drug use prevention by children highway safety and treatment for people who are addicted okay i'm not sure what they had to do with expanding cell service in our district um here's the things like the cell service problem consolidated fair point for rising they had to take Vermont as part of the new england deal they don't make any money off of our individual homes that's why when you need service it might take you a month it's cost them money to serve us we're a lost leader for them the only thing that's going to bring that here a good service here is industry if we don't have some businesses here successful business is insisting on it where these companies can make money communication companies can make money it's not going to come we you know as residents here in this world community it cost them to send us service until we have business here and the talents are thriving this is what yeah um fortunately we do have you see fire burn out the group over mars that put it together and put their minds together to solve a problem and you know it's coming but i went for a month without any month of august i had no phone i had no cell phone i had no internet at my house and that's all right when this happened one primary day i said rock you want to be you want to run for the house i had no communication at my home so that's a big thing for me too but we're not going to solve it just by complaining unless there's some industry and businesses here where those companies can make some money it's not coming to the cannabis part of it like standing that's some of the business that would bring the communication services and companies some industry that we just don't have here stony perteran they're closing they're not it's far over tonight so last day at their peak it's 20 jobs and good big jobs there's one of the restaurants that they well they're gone they can't it's not sustainable by the number of people we have here no matter they had to close down they have to completely get a new staff every spring so it's done another business just going away we have to do something to address this or we're going to be left with mousse and squirrels and deer and that's it and pay attention the squirrels are already trying to take over all right this next question is uh was made by Harold Reader and it's uh it's it's a little specific already tried to draw on that a little bit once we get through it so the writer asks employees working for any of ramon's 15 parent child centers are at about 30 less than state employees in comfortable positions um do you support an increase in the uh parent child centers master grant to begin to close this gap i think a broader question is how does that how does pay probably fit into the uh into the state building goal so you mean the existing pay gap right now for state employees so this this reader is particularly interested in um employees of parent child centers who apparently are much much less than similar positions in state so those people are state employees that's what i understand i mean they don't know why we have so many state employees uh it's our biggest employer here in the state can't uh can't the market can't we do that can't that be private businesses like i just don't get it why that's the responsibility of the states if it wasn't there then some businesses could pop up that wouldn't have to worry about disparity then state funded jobs should be a private market doing this when i talked earlier about the pressures on the budget every year the parent child centers are are one of the groups on the list um they are the people who work with children who might go into state custody and end up in foster homes um where the parents are are troubled and need some help um it is an area that i would love to see us put more money and we haven't been able to find it the disparity between our private community contractors and state workers is an old story when i was a board member on the claire martin center 25 or 30 years ago um i sat down with senator edgar may to say that basically the same thing whilst our people don't make as much money as as people who work with state government and and senator may looked at me and said yes that's why we contract with community providers so you know there is there is there is um there is some thought at the state level that it's more economical to um to work with folks at the local level i actually like from a from a community standpoint i like the idea that we have local people who are working with with with their own local problems um and and then we try to find ways to um to to bring in state funds where we can to help them um but i don't think i don't think the pay disparity is ever going to go away um i do hope that we can increase our our allocation to parent child centers all right so we have another question from the audience and uh sandy starts this one off um do you believe that the current property tax structure is regressive and and why and what specific changes in the property tax structure could you propose to make it more fair well i have supported uh trying to to get to get us even more on uh property tax be much more based on one's ability to pay one of the things that we see right now is that with respect to education um the people at the highest end of the income specter spectrum excuse me um pay uh as little as one percent of their income to support the next generation and people middle income people pay three percent and that doesn't feel fair it doesn't feel equitable um and it's not good for our children so i would like to see us move to a system that is more reflective of people's ability to pay uh we had a bill that tried to do that this year that we that we passed out of the house the senate didn't like it and we never saw it again it's i confess that it's a complicated question um but i think it's one that we need to keep working on that all right well let's talk about people's ability to pay so you know that sounds good on the people that don't have the money to pay for its property taxes they would take a large share but that means people that are successful everything they have to pay a much larger share and and i'm not sure that's right um if you look at Colorado right now their schools are overfunded and it's because all that money is coming from the cannabis industry that we should be moving slow on i i just don't get that why should we be moving slow we seven states have gone before us we can do this we can fund our schools that's where the biggest part of our property taxes are going to is defining the schools we can fund the schools through this i don't know why we're hesitant to bring this revenue stream to the state all right this is one of my favorite parts when this is we have a lightning round here we have four questions and and each person is going to answer those questions in just a second or two and we'll speed right through this there's a problem you get to go first on this one there's a proposal to phase in a $15 an hour minimum wage by 2022 do you support such a measure haven't been tough for where to put my flag on that one yet but i would rather see it be market driven i would like to see that this is competing for employees i voted for the bill that we passed last year um i i support moving to a $15 an hour minimum wage i would point out that the bill that was vetoed by the governor would would have taken our minimum wage for $10.50 right now to $11.10 in january i think that's a lot of stimulus all right next question sandy name one policy area that you believe does not receive a potential probably probably figuring out how to do a better job with property taxes all right rob uh the old lawyer shoe that's facing the state we're not doing enough that i think it's other place for for my complete all right rob this one's for you uh do you support implementing a carbon tax this session can anybody here afford a carbon tax right now sandy uh i believe that any i believe the climate change is is a present problem and that we need to address it with a regional solution so no not the no carbon taxes session got it uh sandy this one's for you name a candidate from another contest that you support for election this year uh senator corn no i'd like to say wane town because he's the one that talked me into doing this then because he's here i was gonna say okay so that was that was the uh lightning round so look we're gonna move on to uh next question and rob starts this off um schools are for the most part settling into the mergers and at the same time they're beginning their proficiency based graduation requirements uh what if anything should the legislature focus on next with regards to the education system uh i think the supervisor you mean should consolidate like the schools again it's strictly like too much of the education projects by the supervisor in response to a constituent that i had a long talk with the other day i believe that we need to require civics education as a condition of graduation all right this is another audience question here and sandy gets to go first on this one so uh staying in touch with constituents is vitally important uh how do you keep people informed and make sure you're going to follow up on their concerns uh so i i have um my email i have two email addresses people write to me regularly um i do my email about six o'clock in the morning and i respond to uh everyone who asks for a response not everyone does some people just say i want you to know how i feel about this so this isn't like me this isn't like all right uh so when i first got uh this right in this nomination i started the facebook page and the first thing i did was saying what are the big issues facing this district right now and i got a pretty good response i made 26 responses and that was really right when i started and they listed everything down there and um you know keep keep in touch with their phone number my email there's only four thousand people in this district um and i'll talk to you if you want hopefully not a little yeah not a lot of wants but uh yeah i'm all about keeping in touch with everybody i don't want you know i was you know i guess i'd say i'm fiercely independent um so when i was written in they said would you do this so i had considered my job um and then they said are you gonna be okay with an r next year day so i think about that too um and then i decided i am going to be representing this district i'm not bringing any of my personal policies in you know i'm divorcing myself from those to represent this district so i want input from everybody so i know how you want me to vote when i'm in there as your representative i don't want to vote along party lines i you know that's not the way i want to do things like no you can vote along party lines and it could be idyllic and for the good of the state and for the good of the country that's not what this district needs right now we need some action things right now it goes above and beyond these idyllic party issues and what the state needs we need folks in what this district needs right now this is going to be a fun one and rob you're good to start this one off what improvements are needed for the health insurance system i don't know i don't use it tackle health care yeah let me take care of health care um i don't know i don't use it and this is a i'm not a politician this is my first foray and so i don't know every issue up close uh or personal and that's one of them that i don't know a lot about but i do know that the more the government and the state is involved in an insurance program or any sort of program i think the more messed up it's going to get i you know i'd really think insurance for all is a great idea i have zero confidence in the state or the country leading that successfully you know we we screwed up the government screwed up a gas stop i can't work ass from any of the new gas containers right now without trying to figure it out i if they can't do that right i really can't expect them to do health care right nice any weird poll sure it's all good well i'm happy to report that i am uh uh entitled to medicare at my age um and as i believe many of people in this room might be i've been very happy with that system so when when people talk about what we can do i think gee that's a system that works it has a low it has a relatively low overhead amazingly enough the administrative costs are low the service is good and uh and it and it works in our local hospitals what i what i what i hear from businesses is that they're that that every year their premiums go up with the current system doesn't work it's you know it's we've tried various things with private business and it the notion that you're going to that you're going to have companies competing with each other over what kind of policy you should buy you don't find out that you got the wrong policy until you're lying on the pavement um and you discover that that you can't get the service that you need so having a single a single system that everyone is part of like medicare i believe is the right way to go uh sanding this next question you get to start off with uh for several years the state's been sending a number of inmates out of state to commercial for commercial prisons uh is this an adequate response to credit prisons in vermont and if not how can the state better address that issue so i've been a member of the justice oversight committee for several years now and we talk about this all the time uh one of the things i can record is that we have reduced the total number of people incarcerated in vermont significantly over that time we had a study done by an outside group that showed that we could we could expect the prison population to be increasing and in fact we made it decrease we have i think the number is um 1600 beds for men in the state right now and um and i don't support building anymore because what i want to see us do is actually reduce the number of people we had five we had up to 700 people going out of state at the beginning of the this century um and now we're down to under under 225 and we continue we continue to find strategies to divert people from the system entirely people with mental illness don't belong in prison they need a different system people with addiction don't belong in prison they need to they need to be treated uh people who have served their minimum sentences should should be released people who are awaiting trial unless they're dangerous should be should be at home and working awaiting trial if we do all of those things we can bring that number down if we build new prisons in vermont we will we will fill we will fill the beds it's like field of dreams if you build it they will come so i truly i truly resist adding to our capacity i think the answer is to figure out how we safely reduce that number to a to a population that we can handle i don't like private prisons either um but in fact that that is i see that as the pressure valve that keeps us that keeps us working on reducing the total prison population right rob one of the biggest drivers of my wife's strikeout justice nothing turns my stomach more than that and the thought of a prison for profit just it's just i believe this country would have a prison where they had how many they have a number they're quota of how many people they have to have in there give a contract with state they say okay you have to fill this many beds that the injustice in that is is mind boggling i do not support private prisons in any way for whatever reason and i'm with you on reducing the number of incarcerated the entire country is incarceration crazy i don't know if this is right i read this i didn't completely know is it true that vermont has more people in prison than canada i had not heard that yeah i read that i i didn't vet it but i doubt it's true but canada's big country yeah canada's big but you know we prison so many more than the rest of the world it's uh it's kind of crazy the fact that they're it's a prison profiting off of that and as far as uh thoughts on changing that i guess you mentioned a lower number of incarceration okay all right uh ronnie get to take on this next audience question here this is a gun safety question uh the past legislative session governor scott cited the law the most far-reaching gun safety legislation in vermont history um what are your thoughts on this register on this legislation why you support it or why not and uh what if anything else needs to be done to address gun safety but i'll be quick vermont doesn't have a problem i don't know why we're wasting time on it i supported the uh the bill that was signed by the that well there was actually there were three bills that were signed by the governor uh there was the um the extremist protection order bill and the um and the bill that allows um the police to take guns and very briefly in a domestic violence situation um but the bill that everyone talks about uh s55 had four provisions um all of which i supported banning bump stocks we all know that in um the data if the um if the killer hadn't had had hadn't been using a bump stock that more people would have been able to escape so that would have at a minimum it would have reduced the carnage uh background checks adding requiring background checks for all gun transfers makes a lot of sense to me i don't know how many how many people in this room uh followed the story that paul heins did a couple of years ago where he went online in the morning looking to buy a gun and by the end of the day he was standing at a pizza pizza delivery parking lot um buying an ar-15 from someone and he didn't even have to give his name um so that to me makes some sense uh increasing the age to 21 for the purchase of guns with an exception for people in the military people in in in law enforcement and anyone who takes a hunter safety course that to me is a sensible rule um again with mag with magazine limitations once again you're talking about how do they reduce the carnage so so do mass killings happen yes they do was was there possibly going to be a mass killing in vermont this year we believe so we have we have lots of evidence of that so number one you reduce the possibility the possibility of an event happening in the first place and if an event does happen these provisions reduce the carnage all right uh next question sandy is to start off so a commission is currently evaluating act 250 which is vermont's long-standing land use laws i'm sure everyone knows already um do you feel that that was regulatory role has been generally positive or negative and what changes to act 250 if any would you support i have always supported act 250 um i i think we i think we see it we all see it in in our neighborhoods and and what it's done with in terms of concentrating development in our downtown areas that's that's what's made rochester strong is that we have everything the big businesses are downtown um the it has had an effect all over the state in terms of of how we allocate our resources between business and and open land and keeping our forests strong i'm sorry i lost you lost me what do i do i like it and yeah i do you find my question here do you feel that its role has been largely positive or negative and what changes if any would you say okay so so there one one of the things that's important to know is that that i think it's 90 percent or 95 percent of applications are granted and many of most of there's a huge percentage i think it's about 80 percent are granted without even a hearing so if the the law works um i do we need to tweak it i don't know i will wait to see what their their their report says but in general i think it's not a good job and i want to see it continue i will agree with you we do all see it in our neighborhoods we see our population being reduced by 25 percent since 2000 um we see businesses leaving we see businesses being opened and not being able to be sustained there is a place for it's too restrictive right now and even you know i i put on that tweed river music festival that was over there at the junction of 107 at 250 was troubled the entire way through and this was for a weekend music festival it's too overreaching i agree it's done some good things but still hampshire that much different than vermont a lot of ways yes but is it you know changing the way things look the way people live and they don't have an act 250 like this it's really getting in the way of progress and uh and business and we so desperately need that right now i want my daughter to come back after college if she wants to move here and be able to make a living here and afford a house here if that's what she chooses to do right now four years from now i have zero confidence that she could move back to this district and find a job afford a house or even just a rented and be able to pay back your student loans zero chance of her doing that and uh think at 250 and the restrictions on business are part of that so i think act 250 needs a leash all right this is a reader submitted question and the the question is how do you feel about public funds paying for private schools for students the reader was specifically asking you know school choice i'm okay with it and you know more importantly is everybody here okay with it if i'm going to be representing i'd want to hear from you on that but yeah supporting the private school i'm okay with that as long as it's not too much and uh sums the fees are too much more than what the fees would be for each student for one of the public schools you know i'm there in Stockbridge and that's a big expense a big drain on the town right now but it's you know that's it's necessary there i'm glad it's there and a lot of kids that have come up and been brought through that and part of the pto and i go to all the events it's a good thing but our property taxes are so high if we could just find a way to fund these schools i'm a strong believer in public education i think it's it's the foundation of our of our democracy and i'm very happy that we have public public schools in in at least three of the towns that i represent but i do see a role for the Sharon academy in particular i i had a friend who was when she was about 10 years old was was really a troubled child and frankly i think i'm not sure that she would have i'm not sure sure sure that she would have even made it through school and and she went to Sharon and she became a star and went on to college and is now off in the world being successful so i places like Sharon academy have a role for kids who need something special um this town voted um to to join with Stockbridge we made a choice a year ago to to give up our high school and let our let our children go where they want i've been talking to those kids and they're very happy with the place with the placements that they have so we have we have kids in Sharon we have kids at Woodstock it's the the way the funding structure works the tuition to Sharon actually maybe maybe less than the tuition to Woodstock so in terms of economics for for the for the local taxpayers it's it's not it's not it's not a drain and i think there's a place for both both kinds of schools all right and this is this is our last question for the night before before closing remarks that went fast so there's a sense that progress on the state's goal to have 90 percent of its energy come from renewable sources by 2050 seems to have stagnated a little uh what can the state do to get that back on track and is that a worthwhile goal immediately and it looks like Sandy's starts this one off well given the report that came out yesterday from the UN on the state of the global climate i we have to stay with the the goals that we have in this state we have to figure out how to get everybody on board not just not just with laws because not everything is done with laws but but with public opinion and working together with other people you know we we passed a law a couple years ago about about idling i don't think anybody even knows about it i i walk by and i see people who who have left their vehicles idling for 10 or 15 minutes i don't know i don't know how people can afford to do that for a start but it's it's it's terrible for the environment it's not it's not helpful for the vehicle so there are a lot of things that we can do as individuals to begin to take some steps and i think that the government that that state government through through our state plan needs to keep the pressure on to move forward we global warming is real and we need to address it yeah i'm okay with incentivizing people to make some switch make some changes and go with some cleaner energy sources that are not okay with penalizing people for using what they have and what the proposed carbon tax and that sounds crazy to me punishing somebody for the heating system they have at home right now or their car that doesn't get great mileage you know maybe that's all we can afford right now so yeah if there's incentives to go to breed energy we'll call it great power leads for not being there yet i won't support as far as that being a worthwhile goal to be 90 percent from renewables by 2050 is that a year? uh yeah yeah that's something to work towards um and you know with each five ten years that go by check where you're at and see if it's attainable you might have to move the goal post a little bit something to work towards all right well thank you guys for being with me for all that we have a just it's a full time for you guys to make some closing remarks and bring up any topic areas we may have missed or circle around to something else um and based on our order it looks like well in case you start this one off and then okay um let's let's see everything we touched questions um one of the things i want to announce is i'm kicking off a district business leaders forum and the next wednesday the clear river in and tavern has agreed to host it and between now and then i'm going to contact all of the business owners and the business leaders in this district and invite them there where i want to hear i want to find out what we're doing well what we're struggling with what what is the town what are the towns and the state helping these businesses do where are they getting in the way what are we going to have to do to retain the businesses that are i don't want to see another stony brook tavern that's paying well clothes and there'll be 20 people out of work uh you know what we have to do to retain and support the current business do you imagine if gw plastics left level like from our castings did and like stanley tools didn't fit spiel what happens gw elites level we need to focus on how we retain his businesses and how we attract more and some ancillary businesses that are going to help the current business structure we have here in the district um so i want to go and i want to do everything i can and off support the current businesses bring more here bring the right ones here and i'd like to be prosperous i don't want to see my neighbor's car break down and have this life of that i want to see people have nice gifts under the christmas tree and i know some people take nice vacations i want people to live here not just a survivor and you know i've got the experience to do that i think uh when i got this nomination i said what can i do what can i bring to the district and i had to be something worthwhile in order for me to do it and that's what i can bring and i want to kick that off by having this business forum next wednesday um it's not just for the business leaders it's for anybody that's interested in it i want to get us all together decide how we're going to go forward and also after this uh the folks over at docks tavern or uh nice enough to open up um usually they're closed on tuesdays but i'd like to invite you all over there if you'd like to talk some more and ask some more direct questions of me or just sit down have a beer and listen to music uh hope to see you over there tonight at next one days of wednesdays about the clear and spread the word on that if you would to any of the business owners i'm getting out there as much as i can but uh you know take days away do the best i can but spread the word well let's get there and thanks for coming here and i want to say special thanks to everybody that's been helping me on this campaign since it ended up uh they're here they know who they are thank you everybody all right so first i want to say thank you to the library for having us here tonight i think this is a great great opportunity um and thank you chim for for your hard work as a moderator um i have been honored to spend it's been a great honor for me to serve in the vermont house for the last 14 years and i thank you for the opportunity um i'm asking for your support for my reelection um i want to go back and keep doing the same job i i enjoy i enjoy the work and the issues and i really enjoy representing this community and the three other communities in this district these are all communities that care for each other and create things together as a member of the legislature i've really appreciated the chance to be a collaborative problem solvers i love i love solving problems but but in fact we do it better together and as vice chair of the human services committee i've had a chance to be be very much involved in that when we when we have something before us we look at the issue we analyze what the what the current law is it doesn't work how doesn't it work what can we do to make it better and with 11 people in the room all from different backgrounds different philosophies and political parties we come up with solutions to things and the product is always better than anything that any one of us could have could have done on our own i over the years i've developed good working relationships with members of all parties in the house and the members of the administration i've served on several special committees looking at at different issues from access to hospice and pain management to marijuana legalization and to the to safely reducing the population in our prisons that we talked about and i'm proud to bring your voice to all of those different issues whether you're voting now or on November 6th i hope that you will send me back to you thank you thanks everyone for for coming out tonight if you guys are willing we'll have a few minutes for everyone to mingle around a little bit and ask some more questions thank you thank you