 Hey, good evening. Welcome to Montpelier Civic Forum. And tonight we're going to have another in our conversation with the candidates about the issues that are coming up before votes in November. And again, as I always say, watch all of these. They're really good. We'll have our candidates from Washington County State Senate, of which we have one this evening. We'll have Montpelier representatives going, running for the State House. And we have the garage, and we have the sewer bond issue that will be discussed. So by the time you're through watching these, I think you'll have a pretty good background. Tonight, it's my honor to have Chris Bradley in. Thank you. Who is running for State Senate in Washington County? If I didn't look crazy before, I'm removing all doubt now. Oh, no, no, no, no. What, sitting with me? No, running for office is a minority party. How many times have you run for office? Never at the state level. In the municipal level, I became involved with the Northfield Town Government first as a lister. What is a lister? A lister is a tax assessor. Excuse me, a property assessor. We put a value on property. And from that, the grand list gets built. And from the grand list, taxes are derived. So as a lister, you are charged with looking for new construction, looking at existing expansions. I enjoy, I still am a lister. I was elected to the select board for three years. I served as chair of the Northfield Select Board. I'm very proud that during my three-year tenure, we actually managed to merge the village of Northfield with the town of Northfield. What year would that have been? That was, oh my heavens, you're going to call me on this. I won't hold you to it. I'm going to say 2008, that we managed to get that done. And we had failed numerous times before just uncertainties on the part of the village in the town. But we're now one unified Northfield. Very proud that I was part of that effort. There were a lot of people involved. I've served as grand juror for two years. I've served as a water and sewer commissioner for three years and an electric commissioner for two years. So I've had a fairly extensive exposure to elected office at the municipal level. But that's not your principal occupation. Oh no. My principal occupation actually started with the state of Vermont years ago when I got out of the University of Vermont. I was casting about at the time I was an education major and feeling very lost in watching school loans build up. A friend of mine worked at the state information services, CIS in Montelier. And I became a programmer, excuse me, a computer operator trainee working for the state of Vermont. I did that for approximately three years. That gave me enough experience to become a programmer trainee. So I transferred to the Department of Social Welfare. I was a programmer trainee there for again about three years, left as a senior systems analyst, went to Boston as a consultant. So I'm an IT specialist. You have your own company. I became across the time a specialist in a certain type of software. As a computer systems engineer working for that company, I realized that there was a niche, a need for a product. And in my spare time I actually got a waiver from the company that I worked for and developed this in my spare time and marketed it. It's still marketed through companies like IBM. I have a kind of a unique situation. I do development and support and other companies sell my software. So I am in Northfield, Vermont. I used to have to travel extensively all over the world, South Africa, Brazil, Singapore, Germany, France, Canada to basically position my solution. But Networks is that company. It's still paying keeping the lights on. In the meantime, I created a second company called ACK Computing, which does computer repair and consulting both for home and business. So I've been pretty well steeped in programming and systems and systems development for Rogali, something like 30, 35 years. Now, what can the state government, you're running for state senate. How can the state government improve a lot of small business in Vermont? You must know personally on this. Well, I have not personally felt the negative effects of Act 250. But I have some really... Act 250 being... Yes. Act 250 was well-intentioned. It was a solid idea. Somewhere along the line, it became very difficult for a business to adhere to Act 250 requirements in a timely fashion and deliver on a business proposal. I have a situation in Northfield. There's a fuel company in Northfield that wanted to do a simple expansion. It was essentially a large pole barn so they could store their equipment. One corner of this happened to be questionable whether it was in floodplain or not. The zoning administrator at the time said, no, you're fine. No, there's no floodplain. Enter the Act 250 process and suddenly a corner may or may not be in floodplain. And literally, this company has had to wait years. The building's up. It's already been built. But they're still wrapped up in legal costs over permits, which should have just been a snap to do. So, part of the Act 250 needs to be streamlined. There's far too many review steps by far too disparate organizations to achieve a goal. We need something far more streamlined. How do you feel legislatively the legislature can accomplish that? When you've got that intense amount of law, everyone has an interest in Act 250 on both sides? Well, as I said, there's more than two sides. There's plenty of sides. I guess you mentioned lobbying. I have served as a volunteer lobbyist for the past four-something years, both in my capacity as president of the Vermont Federation of Sports and Clubs, as well as past president and current secretary-treasurer of the Vermont State Rifle and Pistol Association. Perhaps by those two organizations, you can probably get the sense that one of my lobbying interests is on fish and wildlife, as well as Article 16 issues. What is Article 16? Article 16 of the Vermont Constitution is the equivalent of the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. It is the article that says you have a right to defend yourself in the state. It's a much cleaner version. In fact, it precedes the U.S. Constitution by a number of years. Interestingly, a little bit of history, Vermont actually borrowed substantial portions of Pennsylvania's Constitution in creating the Vermont Constitution. The Vermont Constitution was created. Subsequent to that, a number of years later, the U.S. Constitution was created. The Article 16 of the Vermont Constitution doesn't have that messy language about malicious. It simply is a very straightforward sentence. You have the right as a citizen to keep arms for the defense of yourself in the state. A contrast. I don't want to spend a lot of time on guns, but a contrast between how fast the gun legislation went through and how glacial the changes in Act 250. Is it because Act 250 has no crisis attached to it? Is that why it's so difficult to corral those cats? I would suggest there's a lot of emotion when it comes to things like Second Amendment Article 16 that just doesn't really translate well into things like Act 250. Act 250... It's like a two-think. Potentially, I guess I'll use that analogy. I tend to look... When you're talking rights, personal rights, and that becomes very personal to people, especially when they're so clearly and eloquently laid out as to what is the law of law. And use a personal right as well at its core and base. Act 250's intention was to curb speculative development of Vermont's resources, to hopefully stop farms in Vermont from being developed because obviously properties is a finite amount and there was a lot of speculation going on. So Act 250 attempted to put brakes on rabid development. And I think in that vein, Act 250 has been quite successful. But it put it on more than that development. Well, it probably went a little too far. But to answer your question, there's just not the emotion in the legislature over something like Act 250 versus say rights. And frankly, if we were to progress through this interview, one of the central portions of my campaign are not guns. I would certainly hope... That's certainly something that got me involved in this. But after what had happened in this last biennium with the passage of S55... S55 being? S55 was the package of gun control bills that was signed by Governor Scott on April 11th on the state house steps. That's now under court challenge. And yes, I'm a plaintiff in that court challenge, as a matter of fact. There are actually two court challenges. One concerning just the magazine ban portion. Which is? The state decided as part of S55 to attempt to control the magazines. The number of bullets. The container which allows the number of bullets that can go into a firearm. They attempted to stop the sale of high capacity. But still allow that to be retained by people who are here? Whatever you owned, you could keep. And then another element of this dealt with the bump stock that would turn a semi-automatic into a version akin to an automatic? Another facet was the bump stock bien. Something that the feds are going to take care of on their own. In theory. No, they will. Department of Justice, our president, Jeff Sessions. In fact, even the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and Explosives, BATFE, has already gone through the initial process of public hearing, which is a precursor to their rules change. You will find at the federal level, things move slowly, granted, but at the federal level, they will consider bump stocks the illegal making of a machine gun. Because it does increase the rate of fire of a firearm beyond. The third element, if I'm correct, and you would know and I don't, the third element deals with background checks, yes? Well, there's actually another element beyond that. Background, universal background checks was a component. And also an age change, an age restriction for 19 and 21, 20 year olds. And an educational requirement. Yes, you could, a 19 or 20 year old could purchase, if at the time they wrote the law, if they went through a hunter safety course, which is a very basic course for basically how you handle a firearm if you're absolutely going to go out hunting. It's not quite the same as a defensive. But really, I would hope that after this last biennium that the legislature is somewhat sated on their drive to more gun control, which is why this is not, it may have been an impetus to get me involved, but it is not a central portion of my platform. This is what we hear from the people on school consolidation, you know, that maybe the legislature is sated in terms of consolidating the schools. What's your feeling on school consolidation? Forced food consolidation. I do see the wisdom, at least in terms of a financial gain. If you take a look at the statistics, and I love researching things like this, Vermont is the fifth highest in the country for what we pay per student. Across the nation, so New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, District of Columbia, we spend something like 18,000 per student. How do we compare to other rural states where you don't have the economy of scale? Frankly, I think the lower ends, which are probably not where we want to be, are much lower to say the $8,000 or $9,000 level. If you look at how we spend our money, a great deal of that money is in the administration of our schools. I heard once that the number of school boards that we had exceeded whatever. You start looking at these numbers. I have to say I've got very mixed feelings about Act 46, the school consolidation. Would you go to Maine and talk about 14 districts? I think we need to solve Vermont's problems before I go to Maine, but if we're to really take a look at this, and I'll give you an example, the town of Roxbury is going to merge. It has merged. Has merged, thank you, with Montpelier. Did anybody look at the transportation involved? Because as you look at that merger, you go through Northfield both ways between Roxbury. I can't imagine transportation being a fairly significant cost of education that we're going to save a lot of money with this. Now, maybe Northfield with Williamstown makes sense. It's just over the hill. I guess one of my concerns is that we're clearly seeing some problems with our youth. How so? What explains things like Columbine? What explains things like Parkland or Newtown? We're both same men. How does anybody come to the idea or the thought process that they're going to go into a building and kill as many people as they can? When I graduated from school in 1976, high school, Northfield High School, when I went to school, it was perfectly allowed to, and here we are talking about guns again, it was perfectly allowed to hunt on the way to school. You could leave your gun in your locker with the school's permission. In fact, the principal would come around and admire what firearms are being stored in lockers. You would go to school. At the end of school, you would hunt on the way home from school. It was normal. There weren't mass shootings. There weren't threatening actions. I can't recall any such things and maybe as my youth. Perhaps now we have a social work infrastructure within our schools that's making our schools more expensive. Well, I would suggest, I think we have a recipe and actually Act 46 may be part of this, where if you put more and more kids together, don't you start to run the risk of losing groups of those kids who no longer feel like they fit in. They're the goth kids. They're the ones with the weird haircut. So whatever you want to phrase them as, I think you start losing people. And if we take a look at what's been going on with some of these school problems, I see issues with kids that have been left behind. And I do wonder- Left behind in what sense? I mean, we test kids to death in Vermont. Are you speaking of left behind- Dylan and Klebold at Columbine. Clearly we're- Well, you and I could speak in the day, but there are always kids who seemingly were marginalized in school. Yes, but they didn't go out and pick up a gun. That is true. And see how many- But what can we as a state, what can we as a state within our own schools, I could see where school boards, local school boards are addressing this, but is there a way that the state legislature can actually address that? No, I don't think the state can. This is, it's a multifaceted problem, and it really begins in the home. And it begins with the fact- Strengthening families. Strengthening families. We have more and more situations now where mom and dad both have to work. And so we have latchkey kids. We have kids that are not being monitored in constructive ways, because mom and dad have to work. And they get home exhausted. Yes, my mom and dad both worked. They were teachers. They knew if I was acting up at school before I acted up at school. And maybe that is part of my educational background, where I did my homework. What about the drugs? What about drugs? The prescription drug problem? Oh, good heavens. Big Pharma's got some problems here. I mean, well, I think pain has been an ongoing, when somebody has a problem with pain, that's I think where the opioid crisis really got its hand on to people, because they hurt their back. And basically, well, here's a pill for this. And that is a problem across broad spectrums of our society. And it will remind me to bring that back to kids, because I don't recall kids having ADHD. If they were acting up in school, you ran them around at recess and ran it out of them. There wasn't a pill for that. And here's another pill for this. And little Johnny is not keeping up. Here's a pill for that. Well, here's a pill for your back pain. And oh, my back still hurts. Well, here's another pill. Oh, don't worry. It's there's plenty of these pills and suddenly you're addicted. And the doctor, if he was aware of the nasty prospect of addiction, which I think early on, they really weren't. But I think Big Pharma knew. So yeah, we have a real huge opioid crisis that is. How would you address it differently? Well, first of all, I think you have to take this right to the families. This is a very personal decision to get involved in drugs there. But for the grace of God, I've never had that urge for dependency or urge to lose myself in a slurry of drugs. But there are certainly people that do. And a lot of it I think is societal based. And a lot of things are expected out of you today. Hey, in my day in high school, boy, if you had a new set of converse All-Star Canvas sneakers, you were probably doing pretty well. And that has now radically changed to cell phones. And I think it's very difficult for I would not want to be a kid today. It would be very difficult. You mentioned pharma. Yep. Pharma took a hit in the last legislative session. And so far as the legislature said that we would be importing drugs if the federal government gave us permission from Canada. What was your feeling on that one? Spot on. I mean, I think this is something where a drug and bought the same drug bought in the United States is literally hundreds of times more expensive than the same drug in Canada. That's coming out of our pockets. And who is actually making the money other than the lobbyists and big pharma here in the United States? That's just wrong. So yes, I would urge our Congress to be a little bit more forceful on this. We should not allow big pharma to make these sort of profits. It's unconscionable. The decriminalization and partial legalization of marijuana in the last legislative session. What was your feeling on that? I have to say I was I think Phil Scott did a good job at delaying it as best you could. However, now we're in a situation where we have all the negative aspects of legalized marijuana. What are those negative aspects? I think if we take a look at Colorado, things like edibles, things like these things showing up at school in ways that you cannot immediately trace them. How do you know the little gummy bears that your child is now munching on are real gummy bears or something different? So one of the things, we're in financial dire straits in Vermont. Before we step into that, because I do want to discuss that, what's the next step on marijuana in your mind? Well, I'm going to say and I hate to be party specific here, but the Democrats and progressives opened a door. There was probably best left closed for a little bit longer. Even though Maine and Massachusetts had taken that door, and now Quebec? Yes, all around us. We are seeing the effects of this. Massachusetts, a border state. And then that was after the previous year where we said no, because we don't want to be a state where we have legal marijuana when the state's around us. And of course, Massachusetts went ahead and did it anyway. Right. And Quebec. And Quebec. I think the time is right to take a look at some sort of tax and regulate system on this. And frankly, I would see this as being, number one, you have to take care of the program itself and the law enforcement that's going to be involved. But I think with revenues that we can perhaps realize out of this, I'd like to see that split perhaps four ways. What would those four be? Education to try to curb drug use in general. Medical approach to medical treatment for addiction and the like. I'd like to see some substantial portion go to decrease our deficit, our debt, and some to law enforcement. I can't tell you as a lobbyist how many times I have seen bills come in before committees. When it's very clear that you are going, the bill is going to put an additional onus on somebody. Yet they never, it's very rare. You think, aha, well, we're putting actual onus on fish and wildlife or extra onus on our law enforcement. This needs to go to appropriations to understand whether we need to increase budgets. And how little that really happens. So that a bill gets passed. You're talking about unfunded mandates. Oh, it just looks good on paper. How do you clean the like? There was a bill that said we're going to clean the like, and there was undetermined funding for it. And they still can't agree. And frankly, I'm going to be hard pressed because guess what? As the fourth highest, and I'm sorry, I got to circle back to this, as the fourth highest taxed state in the nation, if our goal is to be number one, then let's just bite it all off. But we're now at a point, and I hear it almost daily, where Vermonters, the real Vermonters, are reaching a point where it's no longer affordable. I mean, one of the things I did as a selectman is I had the privilege of going out on Meals on Wheels, which is, I'm not sure if you're aware of the program, but it's a program. If you'd explained others. Oh, Meals on Wheels is a program that is basically you can sign up and food can be delivered to your house, and it is a way for shut-ins and people on low income to be able to receive not only some visiting from a caring person, but also a good meal so that they're not going to go to bed hungry. And that happens more than you might imagine in Central Vermont or Vermont in general. When you went out on Meals on Wheels, it was very difficult because your job was to stop in at lunchtime, give somebody this nice bag lunch that had been assembled at the senior center, and then leave. But you rapidly come to understand that these people, you may be the only person that's visiting that day. You can't just walk in and hand them a lunch. And besides which, you get a pit in your stomach because you're realizing that this lunch is not just lunch. This lunch is going to be half eaten for lunch, and the rest is going to be saved for dinner because that's how close to the vest people are. And some of our most vulnerable people are our elderly. And I'll be, it's shameful that they are the most proud. They do not want to seek what they think is charity, even though they're entitled to it. So I really think, especially when we start looking at something like a carbon tax, 25 or 30 cents a gallon on home heating fuel, I believe today in Vermont, whether we choose to understand it or not or see it or not, that there are senior citizens making a decision between the food that they buy and the medication that they need. Education taxes are a major tax, a major state tax. Should that be based on property or income? Income. That has to be. In fact, I would actually take a look at what they did in Michigan in something called Proposal A. What was that? That was, they put it entirely on sales tax. We don't have that luxury here in Vermont. I would imagine that those people who are proximate, those businesses proximate to New Hampshire. As I said, we don't have that luxury to follow that model here in Vermont because we're already getting killed on our Eastern border with New Hampshire because people only have to drive across the border and there is no sales tax. I take a look at a more equitable source of funding for education. The property tax isn't it. I see it as more equitably funded on basically on income. I would like to foresee that. Now if we did that, what would that do to high income Vermonters to see that sort of shift? What would that do to a certain degree of our residents? You mean as far as them pulling up stakes and saying it? Exactly. Keeping the second house in stow or whatever. Well, let's talk about that. I mean, clearly there are those people that see this as a problem because you may recall this last legislative session. They passed S94. What was S94? S94 was a bribe. If you're out of state, I'm going to pay you $10,000 to move to Vermont. As written, as passed, the bill allocated across three years $500,000, half a million dollars to this program. To a demonstration of concept. One presumes, half a million of very are hard earned tax dollars. So let's break this down a little bit. Half a million dollars divided by 10,000. 50. So we are going to bribe 50 people to move to the state of Vermont with this program. And in theory, their tax revenues that they generate will be more than $10,000 in theory. Very questionable in my mind. I guess perhaps that's in theory. I look at this and say, you know what? We have a problem here in Vermont with our economy. We have a problem with building businesses. What is our problem with our economy in Vermont? Or one of the problems. We could spend 30 minutes on the problem in our economy. Yeah, we could spend a great deal of time. Certainly one of the things is there seems to be an exodus of talent leaving Vermont. Our youth are going to school here and they're not seeing the desirability to stay in Vermont for some strange reason. Now against this and against this bribe, I would like to make the point that if you read Forbes magazine, there was a recent article that was done, studied by United Van Lines, that actually looked at the moving trends across the country by this nationwide moving company. I read that article with interest because I expected, I knew Vermont was going to be in the top 10 departure states. It had to be. It had to be. No, it wasn't in the top 10. It wasn't in the top 50. Do you know what the top destination to move to was? Well, Vermont. Vermont. See, I would have thought it wouldn't have been because young people don't have enough to fill a moving van. This is obviously a very interesting study and I think there was only 110,000 moves that were looked at, but I just found it interesting that at least by one nationwide moving company, the trends that they were seeing was Vermont was the number one destination state. And I think we see that in tourism too. We don't really have to bribe people to come to Vermont. The issue, the real question is, how do you get them to stay here? We are in education and some of that is in trades. I think we need to look a little bit more aggressively at trade schools to say what, all right, and I don't mean to only focus on manufacturing, but let's say GW Plastics in Randolph. They have a certain need for a certain skill set. Where in Vermont is that skill set being actually taught? Isn't that near Vermont technical? Vermont, they're both in Randolph. Yes. Is there a supporting program that's actually at the high school level? I mean, because Randolph has a VOTEC program. So I think we need to expand that and look at it a lot more in a specific study of what are the needs of our local businesses here in Vermont? If you're a low income Vermonter, wouldn't it help if four or five years from now the minimum wage were $15 an hour? What's your feeling on that one? That was another one that was debated for a long time in the legislature and there was many different opinions. What's your opinion? I think long term, obviously, if we can raise the amount of money being paid to people, they're going to be better off, but you can't do that. I am a small business owner and I can tell you that in order, the business has to make money to make that payroll to then be able to have that person go home with a higher wage. So that business is highly successful already and if so, they should be treating their employees okay. How does that business meet that payroll if the law just comes down and says, oh, well, there's only one way. They have to increase their costs. This is what the widget I make. It was $10 widget. Now it's got to be a $15 widget because I need to make extra income revenue so that I can then have this additional expense of payroll. What's your feeling on healthcare, on skinny healthcare that's being offered in other states that doesn't cover a whole lot, that doesn't cover pre-existing conditions? They don't allow it in our state right now. Our state has requirements as to what healthcare plans have to carry. Would you allow skinny healthcare? I think it's a step that needs to be considered yes. I'm against forced mandates. I've had to, as a small business owner, nobody's paying my health insurance. I have to pay my health insurance. And it's an annual struggle to make those payments. And at the same time, realize that there are people that are not, one of the things I'd like to talk about at some point is work fare as opposed to just welfare, something that's been done in Maine. I would like to see a process whereby we raise people up, not by gifting them money, but by giving them training so that they want to pull themselves up by themselves. You give somebody a progressive path up a work ladder, workforce, and there's going to be incentive for them to move up that ladder. I really believe that. If you incent the other way, here's... I don't forget, there is a limit on TANF, on temporary aid for needy families. After a certain number of years, you drop off. Then explain to me why, because why do we have what appears to be repetitive within generations of families on welfare? Why are we breaking those trends? Again, those refer to jobs. I do have one question. We've got about five minutes left. Oh, no, no, we've got to cut something. Next to your name is going to be Republican. Yes. And people who are watching this are either Democrats, independents, and there's a handful of Republicans here. What does that mean to you to be a Republican? Fiscal conservatism and small government. Honestly, right now, and I've made it abundantly clear earlier on, fourth highest tax is in the state. We have, I believe, in 2014, it was $3.2 billion of debt. I believe that's now closer to $4 billion of debt. You're in my share of that is $20,000. You didn't sign up for that. I didn't sign up for that. And I don't hear anybody talking about how do we address that. Okay, how do we address that? First of all, we have to live within our means. Just like a business, I cannot... Well, we have a balanced budget every year. No, we do not have a balanced budget, please. We do not. How did we get $3.2 billion or $4.7 billion? In our operating budget. No, our operating budget's fine. It's our pension plan. And by tricks of accounting, you can look at the budget and say, oh, look at this, we're a great budget. And we have been running surpluses because our economy is doing better. And I'm expecting we're going to continue to see surpluses in our budget. How would you address the teachers' pension plan without raising revenues? By cutting. Okay, where would you cut? Interestingly enough, I know this is not going to bode well because I used to be a state employee. I would like someone to explain to me why Vermont, Vermont that you and I both love, has the fourth highest state employees per capita, per 10,000 in the country. Now, the top three, Alaska. Okay, transportation costs. Wisconsin, they have community hospitals. So they have health care. And by the way, that employee number is not teachers. That is just state employees. How is it that New Hampshire has double our population, 1.3 million? We have 600. Yet we have almost the same number of state employees. I just need this explained to me because I'm, is it because of the huge amount of human services we're giving away? And because let's be candid, Vermont is a destination state for many people. If you're looking to ride the dole, and I know people are going to get mad at me with this, Vermont is a good place to go to because we have some great social programs that will help them. So I'm not singling out. Are there specific social programs you'd like to see cut back? I think no. At this point, I'm looking at the per person cost to do what we do today. And I simply ask the question, how can New Hampshire run as a state when they have just about the same amount of state employees within 2,500 as Vermont, yet they have double the population? How, what are they doing differently? What are the other 46 states doing differently that managed to have less state employees than Vermont? And it is not an attack on Vermont employees. I just need an understanding of why do we have this lopsided number? We have to cut our spending. You cannot run a business spending more than you make. It is simple economics. I learned that very early on. There was all sorts of things as a small business owner. I wanted to buy, but no. As a state house lobbyist, you must see this all that. You spoke of it about 28 minutes ago of how you go into a committee and people say, I want, but I don't know how to pay for it. They, how do you change that culture in the legislature and in the governor's office? Well, I will leave the governor's office. I'm focused. Because they are part of the legislature and they do submit a budget. They do, I guess I look at so many things that are just slipped through the cracks when bills get passed. Because in a lot of times they're done in a very hurried fashion as what we saw, I saw painfully in this last biennium. Or they get passed on year after year in the legislative session like school finance. Yes, you just pass the buck or the deficit in our pension. I mean, this just gets shuffled on to the next, okay, that's the next biennium. What would your legislative prior, other than guns, put that aside? Guns is not my legislative priority at all. Exactly. What would your one legislative priority be sitting in the state Senate? What would you really like to focus on? Well, I guess part of that answer is somewhat simple because I know I can't make any wild promises. Oh, if I get elected, I'm going to do this. I'm going to be the minority party. I feel very much like I'm going to be in for two years of abject frustration and two years of running around being a little Dutch boy, trying to put his fingers in the dike to try to get back the water. What would you focus on? Education primarily, I think we have to do something there. The costs are simply unsustainable. Everything from having multiple plans for health care to some of the unforeseen... So you'd like to see the unified health care contract? Yeah, absolutely. Actually, the NEA even came around and said that that did sort of make sense. And of course it makes sense. It's single bargaining statewide. You're going to get a better deal. Everybody's going to get a better deal on that. I mean, as opposed to local people making up their own things as they go along. So there are any number of things like that that we can do. Our time's run out. No, no. Thank you so very much, Chris, for being with me. My great pleasure. And I'd like to urge everyone not only to watch all of these shows, but get out and vote and make sure your neighbors and your families get out and vote. And thank you very much for watching.