 Hello and welcome to Channel 17's Town Meeting Television and another live candidate forum. I'm Matt Kelly, your host. Thank you to all our viewers enjoying our live stream at ch17.tv. Joining us this afternoon for a live conversation is Martin Lalonde. He is running unopposed for Chittenden County State Representative District 7-1. This is the district that serves South Burlington. Martin, it's a pleasure having you on the show today. Thank you for coming in. We have plenty of time for a wide-ranging conversation here as you are running unopposed. So we'll ask you for an opening statement and then we'll get right into our conversation. Excellent. Thank you very much. Yes, so I'm represented Chittenden District 7-1 for the last four years, so two terms. I'm running for my third term. It is unopposed. My background is that I am a lawyer by training and I practice law in Washington, DC for 13 years before we moved up to South Burlington, Vermont about 11 years ago. And I became the primary stay-at-home parent. I became very involved in the kids' schools and then ended up getting on the school board where I've served for eight and a half years. My term is up in March and I'm probably going to be running it again. So I've looked at doing public service and being on various boards. I was on the Vermont Suzuki Violin Board for a while, the Vermont School Board Association Board. I'm currently on the Vermont Watercolor Society Board. So I've been involved in that respect, but about four and a half years ago, the representative who had been the representative for South Burlington, one of the four representatives, reached out to me to see if I would run and it sounded like a great opportunity to use my legal background and to get even more involved in issues. So that's why I initially ran. I've been on the Judiciary Committee for the last four years. I've found it very engaging. I think we've been doing very important work and the primary reason I'm running is to continue that work. I hope to be back on the Judiciary Committee, but there are other issues that are very important to me as well. Environmental issues, that's in fact the area that I was working at the Department of Justice was in the Environment Division and education issues certainly. And there are several others. The concern for making sure Vermont is a viable place is have revenue growth at the same time that we're watching the interests of our working families. So in any event, that's why I'm running again to continue that work and continue to really work on the issues important to South Burlington and the rest of Vermont as well. Very good. Lots in there and I'm excited because we're going to be able to talk about a number of judiciary issues, which covers equity, it covers education, criminal justice reform. It actually even includes the legalization of marijuana and the commuting of sentences and things like that and what that might entail. But before we get to that, I want to ask you, you are running again unopposed for Chittenden 7-1. Now, I had asked some earlier state representatives who are also running unopposed this year. And the question is, is this a situation where voters are quite satisfied with your tenancy, if you will, as a state representative? Or is it more a case of candidate apathy or candidate intimidation or combination of all that? I don't think it's, I don't think I'm very intimidating, so I don't think that's the issue. I do believe, despite the fact that I've run unopposed, this is my third time running for legislature unopposed, I do go out and knock on doors and talk to constituents. Whenever I'm in town on Saturday, I have meetings at a local restaurant, either Panera or the starving artist on Shelburne Road, which are in my district, and I advertise that on front porch form. During the session, South Burlington Reps have a monthly get-together open to the public in the library. My point being that despite not being opposed, I'm out there trying to make sure I, you know, the constituents know who is representing them and who they can go to if they have issues, and also talking to them about what the issues are. And they're certainly our concerns, but I think what I represent and what I am pushing in the legislature is what my constituents want me to be doing. For instance, the environmental issues, for instance, the gun safety issues, some of the stuff I'm doing on the judiciary committee. I think I'm pretty well aligned with the large majority of the individuals in my district. So that's one aspect. So I think there is some satisfaction. At least I like to hope so. And because I'm so available, I don't have an overwhelming number of people yelling at me that things are going terribly. And I guess, you know, the question is more, is it a question of candidate apathy? I mean, we're seeing a lot of Democrats running unopposed this year. Yeah, that's true. And I think knowing a lot of those candidates, I think the Democrats do have a lot of very quality candidates running as well. But it is difficult to run. It is difficult to have this as a job. That's another problem. It's a citizen legislature. It is five to six months, hopefully usually five, four to five, but just seems lately we've been running a little later. The pay is not very good. There are no benefits. There's no staff. It's a difficult job. I'm not complaining because I very much enjoy it. I think it's very important work. But there's only so many people who can actually do it. You have to have a spouse who is the main breadwinner, which I am fortunate enough, or you have to have a job that's very flexible, or many people are retired or are on there. It's really tough to hold a regular job and also do this, but it's also really tough to just do this and feel you can make a living. Right, because here in the state of Vermont, we're not looking to hire professional legislators here. We're a part-time citizen legislature. Exactly, exactly. And it's closer to full time for at least five months. So it's that combination. And I think that I think that Vermont is lucky that we're able to get the number of people running for these seats that we are. I wish we could, because I think in a democracy, the idea is that you want to have people running for the seats. You want to have choices for individuals. But I don't take for granted that I don't have opposition, and that means I can just coast. I feel that I'm representing these individuals. They're putting their trust in me, and so I have to make sure that I'm talking to them. Let's move on to some of the questions here. And it particularly relates to criminal justice, criminal justice reform, equity being one of them. What is the state of Vermont and what are you doing to dismantle the systemic and institutional racism that really just persists here in the state of Vermont? It's so hidden and yet deep. Right, yes. So we certainly have played a big role in that in the Judiciary Committee. And one of our leaders in really pushing those issues and helping us with those issues was Representative Kaya Morris out of Bennington, who has, for various reasons, including the nasty internet trolling that's been done and such towards her. I understand. I'm glad that you brought that up, because I wanted to ask you about that statement about Vermont. What does that say about Vermont? It says that we're not different than other states, that there's even outright racism, or if not that, there's systemic racism. People may not have an intent that there's outcomes that are adverse or different, depending on one's race. There may not be the intent there, but there may be either not having sufficient knowledge that these things happen. And there could be a lack of acceptance of diversity. And that is coming, I think, from some of the atmosphere that we see at the national level. And people feel that it's okay to be biased, I guess. So I think that because of those issues, we have to recognize that Vermont is not different. We're not a state that doesn't have these issues. So what are we doing? What are we doing? And what are you doing? Sure. There are things being done, but you have to look at it. You can't, I think, necessarily change an individual's view point. Well, in a sense, we were sort of talking earlier, in a sense, you're involved in a lot of projects or initiatives, let's say, on the Judiciary Committee that, in a sense, actually literally come back to that issue, whether it's criminal justice reform, whether it's commuting sentences for marijuana growers or people convicted for those misdemeanor offenses and things like that. Can you tie that all in together as to what is happening here at the State of Vermont to bring about equity? Sure. So I'll talk a little bit about criminal justice reform, but before I do, just on the other issue of dealing with diversity and racism and such, we passed a law in the Special Session Act 9, it's called, and that creates a position in the executive branch in the administration to look at issues such as systemic bias, systemic racism in State government. We can do that in State government. We can look at that and we can address that. We can come up with ways to address those kind of things going on there. We also, there was a bill that, I believe it made it through the House and didn't quite get through past this finish line, that would have had the Agency of Education working on updating certain curriculum to bring in more diversity, that there's parts of our history that are not being taught and that they need to be taught. So there's an education piece in there as well. And on my school board role, we've been looking very closely. We've had issues in South Burlington. We changed our moniker from the rebel's name because it caused discomfort for a lot of students. And it's background, where that name came from. We changed that moniker. And we're also not just doing that. We're offering more educational programming and diversity training for our staff and teachers and such. So education helps as well. That's another place to do it. So in the justice, in the criminal justice area, we're really, we are dealing with a couple things there. It's not, it's, it's not just racial bias. I mean, there's certainly part of that. And we have fair impartial policing training that we passed a couple years ago to make sure that, you know, the law enforcement interactions are not colored by the color of somebody's skin. And if we can just even just expand on that a little bit in the criminal justice area, we're in the 21st century, there is absolutely no reason that any individual should die at the hands of law enforcement today. There's no reason. There are restraint methods that can subdue an attacker without deadly force. Right, right. And that, that is part of the training, that is critically, it's the training. It's the training that police, that law enforcement is getting that has steered towards where, where individuals are being shot. I mean, it's, it's the training where we have more and more de-escalation type training. That's part of it. So that, that you don't have to get to that point. Are we making, are we making money available for body cameras? For, yeah, there's, yeah, there, there is an increase in, in the use of body cameras is my understanding. That part's a little, it's dealt a little bit more in a different committee that I don't get into those details quite as much. It's government operations, but, but on the, on the criminal justice reform, it's not just about that kind, kind of equity. It really goes into also our issues with addiction right now, with the opiate epidemic. And what we're doing, it goes, it is, it is definitely, definitely. It goes back to education too. Right, right. So, so really I look at the whole spectrum of what we can do and we are working on these things. There's, there's trying to have individuals not be arrested as often, not have to, or not committing crimes. And that goes exactly to making sure our mental health system is, is fixed because it is broken right now. It is treating addiction as a, as a health issue, not, not as a criminal justice issue. It's trying to find, making sure there's treatment available for individuals. You know, ultimately poverty and other societal things lead to individuals committing crimes. That's a bigger task to try to deal with that. But, but those are all things to try to reduce crime to begin with. Once there's a crime, that that's kind of the next step is, is we'd like to find ways where there's an alternative route than incarceration. Incarcerating nonviolent criminals is not constructive. It costs us $50,000 to $60,000 a year to keep somebody in prison. And they're perhaps only learning to be a better criminal unless we're doing the right things in prison, which is another thing. So, so we need to do stuff like having treatment courts. So that individual, this is, it's a court that is, is much more involved on a day-to-day basis with a, with an individual who has an addiction problem that led to the, to the criminal activity or perhaps it's even, you know, the possession of drugs that is the criminal activity. But instead of trying to incarcerate the person, you try to treat the person and you have a lot of restrictions in court supervision, probation officer supervision, to make sure the individual is addressing the underlying problem, which is addiction. So, so that's the kind of the next step. We also have restorative justice practices that we were increasingly trying to find ways other than incarceration. So the next step is, all right, we have people that are incarcerated. There we need to provide medication assisted treatment. And that was a law we passed this year, but it's not quite going into effect as, as effectively as we'd like to see. Seven days has been doing a great job of initially reporting that story and, and following up. But, but we need to make sure that that's working. And we need to try where we can to give individuals who are incarcerated some skills that they don't recidivate, be it high school equivalent education. There's also UVM separate from the state is offering some liberal arts courses, college level courses. Yeah. And trades should be, should be another thing which we don't have right now. But, but these are things that we need to do. And then finally, the person, I don't think, I think a lot of our sentences are too long. I think even for the violent criminal, one has to really look at the situation of what occurred the age of the individual because those kind of violent crimes disproportionately are committed and victims are disproportionately of the younger age. And, and the brain development leads to individuals being out of that largely, not entirely, but, but having a reduction in how long we're keeping people in prisons and other thing. And once they get out of prison, helping that transition back into society, that means we have to do better with housing, which is a problem. And we have to try to do things to eliminate the collateral consequences. And that's, we've done a lot of work on expungement, which allows an individual to get rid of the record after a certain amount of time of essentially good behavior. So I know it's a lot, but, but, but I mean, that, that's a big part of what I've been doing the last few years and it will intend to do in the couple, in the next couple years. That's not the only thing. And also thank you for your service. It takes tremendous courage and strength to actually put your name on a ballot to face your constituents, form your opinions, and then draw consensus in Montpelier. And we thank you for your time and your dedication. A reminder that you can visit our website at ch17.tv for a complete list of upcoming candidate forums here at Channel 17, Town Meeting Television. We invite you to visit that. Thank you for joining us. I'm Matt Kelly for all of us at Channel 17. Thank you for watching.