 So welcome everyone to Vermont Interfaith Action Candidate Forum for Chittenden County State's Attorney. My name is Peggy Owen Sands, and I'm a member of the First Unitarian Universalist Society of Burlington, and I'm also part of the VIA Public Safety Group, and I'll be your emcee for this evening. The forum isn't this forum is an opportunity for the Democratic candidate, Sarah George and Ted Kenney to address questions about their perspectives, priorities, and plans regarding the issues of justice and our office of state's attorney. The state's attorney is the highest-ranked prosecutor in Chittenden County. Their primary responsibility is to protect the rights of all people in Chittenden County. Innocence, victims, and those charged with a crime. It is the state's attorney who ultimately decides who to prosecute in Chittenden County, what crimes to charge the person with, whether to offer plea bargains, and whether to take a case to trial. We hope this evening provides our candidates a satisfactory opportunity to share their views and with their constituents, and that it provides voters some good insight into who each of these candidates is and how they might be as the Chittenden County state's attorney. Sarah and Ted Thank you for joining us for this offering for this and offering your thoughts tonight. So first I would like to invite Eric Picard to offer a credential. You're muted Eric. Second try. My name is Eric Picard, and I'm a member of the College Sheet Congregational Church and the Public Safety LOM of VIA. Vermont Interfaith Action is a coalition of more than 70 congregations and individual persons of faith who work together to affect systemic change around social justice issues facing our communities and our state. Altogether we represent about 16,000 people. The leaders here tonight are members of the local organizing committee of VIA that focuses specifically on issues of racial justice in the realm of public safety. We recognize that systemic racism is prevalent throughout our society and we seek to dismantle its negative impact on policing and law enforcement by reimagining public safety, making every municipality in Vermont and the state as a whole safe and respectful towards all. Our goal in VIA across all its issues is to improve the quality of life for all Vermonters, bringing the values of justice and compassion to the public square as our faith traditions guidance. Thank you, Eric. I would now like to invite Lucy Samara to allow members of these groups and those in attendance to introduce themselves. Hi, good evening everybody. So this is your chance to unmute yourself and to make some noise and bring some joy representing the community that you, when you hear your community's name called out in the roll call, my name is Lucy Samara. I'm a member of First Congregational Church of Burlington, a UCC congregation, and I'm also a member of the Public Safety Local Organizing Group for VIA. So the first congregation I'm going to call out and make some noise if you're here, First Congregational Church of Burlington. College Street Congregational Church. All Souls Interfaith Gathering. Congregation of Temple Sinai. First Congregational Church of Essex Junction. St. Paul's Cathedral. First Unitarian Universalist Society of Burlington. Woo-hoo. Friends who live or worship in Shelburne, Charlotte, Heinsberg, Richmond, and Williston. Those from Jericho, Underhill, Westford, Milton, and Colchester. And those from Burlington, Winooski, and South Burlington. Those from Bolton, St. George, and Huntington. And other friends and people of Goodwill in Chittenden County with us tonight. Thank you all for being here. Welcome to the Candidate Forum. Thanks, Lucy. So I'd like to now invite Bill Neal to discuss the format and expectations of tonight's forum. Hi, my name is Bill Neal. I'm a member of the First Congregational Church of Burlington and also a leader with Vermont Interfaith Action. We structured this forum to be as straightforward as possible. Each candidate will have one minute to make an opening statement. Following that, they'll each be asked to answer questions by our presenters. We did send them each a copy of the questions ahead of time, so there should be no surprises, and to give them their best opportunity to provide thoughtful, thorough, and concise responses. Each candidate will have two minutes to answer each question. Lucy, whom you've already met, will be our timekeeper and will remind each speaker when they're approaching time, and again when they have reached it. You'll see her hold up signs that say 30 seconds and time as indicators. If the answer goes beyond two minutes, Lucy will actually say allow the word time. To keep our one hour promise for this forum, there will not be questions from the floor tonight. As you might have noticed, the general chat is disabled, so everyone can stay focused on the presenters. Questions in the chat will go to the administrator of the Zoom call. If you do have questions that arise, we encourage you to write them down, and we will provide ways to contact the candidates following the call. We ask that if possible, both of our candidates be unmuted for the duration so as to avoid any unexpected technical delays, and also ask that aside from the person asking each question, everyone else please stay muted throughout the event. Also, after the prepared questions have been answered, each candidate will then have two minutes to make any closing remarks, and again at the end, Lucy will be our timekeeper. Thank you. Thanks, Bill. I'm going to start chopping at vegetables. So can people make sure that they're muted? I can hear some people. Thanks. So it's now time to hear from our candidates. Hooray. We'd like to invite them each to make brief opening remarks. We ask that these remarks be kept to one minute. Lucy will offer reminders of the time. First, we'll have Sarah George offer her opening remarks. Go ahead. Good evening, y'all. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you for VIA for putting this on. It's a pleasure to be here. My name is Sarah George. I am the Chittenden County state's attorney. I became a prosecutor straight out of law school back in January of 2011 in the same office in the Chittenden County office. I was a prosecutor, a line prosecutor for six years before being appointed to the state's attorney role in 2017 and then being officially elected to this role in 2018. In that time, I have prosecuted thousands and thousands and thousands of cases. I have figured out some of what does work and very much of what does not work, the ways that our legal system is flawed. And so I've been spending the last five years as the state's attorney, given that I have complete control over the policies that our office implements trying to dismantle some of the system that oppresses people of color, poor people, people with mental health issues and mostly poor people in our jurisdiction. Happy to be here. Looking forward to the conversation. Thank you, Sarah. Now we'll hear opening remarks from Ted Kenney. Well, thank you everybody for hosting this. I really appreciate it. My name is Ted Kenney. I wanted to tell you a little bit about myself in the 60 seconds that I have. I'm a native of Chittenden County. I was raised in Richmond, Vermont at the last of eight kids. We had a series of things happening in my family that inform how I view things. I had two oldest brothers who were paranoid schizophrenic and we had alcoholism in my family. So my dealings with mental health and some dysfunction goes goes deep. I became a lawyer by working full time and going to law school at night. I got a public defender contract following getting out of law school. And since then I've tried to engage with public service as much as I can. I was the president of the Vermont Dismas House Board of Directors. I'm on the board of the joint urban ministry project. And I'm the vice chair of the select board here in Williston. I've also served as a division chief of the agency of human services. Essentially I am putting my name forward because I want to continue my activities in public service. Thank you. Thank you, Ted. And thank you both. So now it's time to get into the questions prepared by our racial justice and public safety group. As a reminder, you'll each be asked the same question by one of our presenters and given two minutes to answer. We're going to alternate who goes first so that it will be fair. And Lucy will remind you when your time is up. All right, go ahead, Joey. First to you, Sarah, how do you define restorative justice and how does that impact decisions on who you'll prosecute? How do I define it? I actually often tell people that the criminal legal system is saying that you're sorry. A person who goes through the system has to say they're sorry. Restorative justice is doing sorry. So it's actually taking steps to make sure that you are being held accountable, that you're taking responsibility, and that you're doing things, actual concrete things, to make sure that you are helping to heal the harm that you caused and making sure that it doesn't happen again. So that's how I describe it. It doesn't necessarily play a role in who I prosecute, but it certainly plays a role in how I prosecute and whether or not I prosecute. If there is a way that somebody can do sorry with whatever harm they caused and the legal system isn't necessary to do that and the person harmed doesn't want the legal system involved, I always look for a restorative process to take its place. There's also a lot of ways that the restorative process can be used along the way, parallel to prosecution or post prosecution. So it's something I'm always thinking about at every possible part of the legal system to determine whether or not a restorative process makes sense for the people involved. I don't even think it necessarily is related to what charges the person in. For some people, very serious offenses, they want a restorative process and for some people, the more minor offenses, they want a restorative process. I'm always looking for ways to heal people's harms outside of the legal system and restorative justice is a fantastic way to do that. Thank you. Ted, how do you define restorative justice and how might that impact decisions on who you prosecute? My definition is about the same. I view restorative justice as a way to empower the person who has been harmed by having them be in the same place with the person who created the harm so that they can see each other and that the person who created the harm, in this case, somebody who committed a crime, can make amends and do that which is right by trying to fix what can be fixed and make up for things that can't be fixed. It's a huge process that is very important and I fully support it. In terms of what cases would be prosecuted, I think if there were, and I don't know that this is the right word, but if there was an algorithm for such decisions, the first step would be whether it is a case that can be dealt with purely through restorative justice processes which would involve talking to the victim, the facts of the case, the severity of the conduct, things like that, history of the defendant. If it can be, then it should be brought through the restorative system, period. If it can't, then the next question would be if it's something in the gray area and things don't fall on one side or the other in life all the time. If a case is close but not quite okay for pure restorative processes, then I think the option, next option would be to bring a prosecution but suspend doing anything on the prosecution while the restorative process played out. That way, if the restorative process does not play out, then there would be a consequence. And the third is just that I think restorative concepts have to be all the way through every case. I think that without that, then it just becomes about vengeance and that it's not something, I know a lot of people are motivated by that. I wish that we're not the case. I'm not motivated by that and I will do everything I can to make sure that people are more motivated by something a lot more constructive. Thank you. With this round, I'll start with Ted. How do or would you educate the public on restorative justice principles? That's actually probably one of the toughest questions that you folks sent. I think we do a bad job of educating people to the law anyway. So I think it would be, it's not easy. One thing that I have thought about is having the state's attorney or somebody from the office have either annual or biannual meetings with select boards and city councils and such. Within that, that would be explaining to the representatives of the people of that town or city what's going on and part of that would be a restorative justice kind of primer. Other than that, I think it's certainly in dealings with the media, in dealings with the press, that has to be emphasized that restorative principles should always be at play except for some very serious cases. And then basically just by example. But the honest answer that I would have to give is that I think continuing the education of the public for restorative justice and how it works and what the principles are is going to be difficult, particularly in the charged and polarized era that we are living. Thank you. And Sarah, the same question, how do or would you educate the public on restorative justice principles? I spend a lot of my time educating the community on restorative justice principles and more so what it means in relationship to the legal system. I also teach at Champlain College and I was teaching a family violence class and it was through that that I talked to them a lot about my experience prosecuting domestic violence cases and how restorative processes would have gone a long way in a lot of those cases and it's it's statutorily prohibited in our state. And so I went on to develop and teach develop implement and teach restorative justice and criminal prosecution class at Champlain. That has allowed me that coupled with my job have allowed me to talk to a lot of people in the community about what restorative justice practices mean, not just in the legal system, but starting arguably more importantly starting in schools. If we had a more restorative approach to our discipline and conflict resolution in schools, we'd have less of that conflict in the criminal legal system. So I start by teaching or speaking with schools, going through our truancy process and our delinquency process teaching schools how we can be addressing conflict within the schools in hopes of keeping some of the later conflicts out of our legal system. And then meeting with law enforcement officers and attending trainings with law enforcement officers to try to help them understand the benefits for a restorative process. And I think the most important aspect is this idea that it's less punitive and trying to highlight that it's actually far more accountability for the person that has caused the harm and it is much better for victims of harm and victims of crime they are far more likely to be satisfied with a restorative approach. So really making sure that law enforcement understand that and anybody else in the community that will listen to me talk about it. I talk about it a lot. It means a lot to me and I think it's really important. Thank you. We have heard from community conversations that there are certain populations that need special attention in the criminal justice system. Sarah, what decision making processes do you use about whether to prosecute cases that involve racial justice, mental health, and substance abuse disorder factors? That's my entire job. I appreciate the question. It's really hard to answer. Like you said, not only some people in our system struggle with those things, I would say that most people in our system struggle with those things. There are of course some outliers, but for the most part, people who are committing crimes have some sort of either substance use issue, mental health issue, an issue of poverty, or a racial issue, whether that means that they, because of the way that our system is designed, they have been set up for failure for their entire lives, or they've been denied services or resources that others have not. So I am constantly thinking about that. I think that the more we work to keep everybody out of the legal system by lifting people up instead of lifting the legal system up, lifting people up in their communities through an abundant of services and resources, that will automatically keep more people from committing crimes, and therefore keep more people out of the system, which will in itself keep more Black and Brown folks out of our system and more people with mental health issues in care instead of incarcerated. If that doesn't happen though, if we are struggling with the services in the community, like we certainly are now with COVID, we immediately try to put those people up with a pre-trial service order or a pre-trial monitor that will, while their case is pending, work with those people to connect them with the services they need. And then for the racial justice issues, we are constantly looking at data, both in Chittenden County and statewide, looking at our own data and holding ourselves accountable and making sure that we aren't perpetuating the racism that exists in the community or we are implementing, designing and implementing policies that will Thank you. And Ted, the same question. What decision making process do you use about whether to prosecute cases that involve racial justice, mental health, and substance use disorder factors? They have to be taken into account at the outset. There's no question about that. As I've indicated, we've had mental health struggles in my own family. That's not a unique story. And a lot of, there is a lot of mental health issues that are not being addressed right now. The question always comes down to whether or not the mental health issue is one that absolves somebody from criminal liability versus whether it's something that should be considered within the process. I don't, I would never not consider mental health issues. It's just too prevalent out there. These are cases usually where somebody does have a significant problem where they are not being there. We just don't fund mental health in the state of Vermont the way that we should at all. And I get very angry about it. The relative to racial issues, you know, I have to be kind of a technical weirdo about this as a lawyer. The taking into account somebody's race on whether or not you prosecute them is unconstitutional. It would violate the Equal Protection Clause and it would violate Vermont's Constitution of the Common Benefits Clause because other, because if that can, if that is a factor, then it could be a factor going the other way. And it would also make people who are not in that group say, wait a minute, where is that person getting a break? And the system just can't operate that way. But the deeper issue there is the one of the systemic racism that is creating these problems in the first place. Most of these problems are really more tied toward poverty and lack of educational opportunity. And when it comes to poverty, lack of educational opportunity and somebody's individual story, unfortunately, a lot of those stories are not great because of the racism that we have. And those individual stories are things that I will absolutely take into account and treat with compassion. Thank you, Ted and Sarah. With this next round, I'll start again with Ted. How do you or would you work with both the police and with the Attorney General's Office? Well, it's an important relationship for both. It's probably more important to have a good relationship with law enforcement than it is the Attorney General's Office, frankly. But both of them are important. It's a question of having the stakeholders at the table. And it's not just law enforcement. It would have to be conversations and relationships with victim advocates and with racial justice advocates and people who address poverty. I really want to try to have a collaborative approach as much as possible because all of these issues are going to involve all of these groups and all these professions. So it has to be a collaborative relationship. I don't want to go on too much, but I would say that the way I would want to have a relationship between the state's attorney's office and law enforcement described is one of constructive friction. The state's attorney does not report to law enforcement. Law enforcement can't direct the state's attorney to do something, and vice versa, the state's attorney can't direct law enforcement to do things. So there's going to be just inherently there's going to be some friction in that relationship. But I would work very hard to exercise patience and listening skills that I hope I've honed a little bit as being on the select board forever and being on the school board before that to listen as much as I could and to get people to talk. So that's how I would do it. Thank you. And Sarah, that same question, how do you or would you work with both the police and with the attorney general's office? Thank you. So I have been working with both for nearly 12 years now. And actually more than that, before I became a deputy state's attorney, I was the domestic violence investigator in the office that I'm now in. So I did a lot of work with law enforcement directly then in trying to get updated statements and photographs and 911 calls from victims of domestic violence. It is a crucial relationship. Speaking first with law enforcement, it's a crucial relationship. We have thousands of cases, 10 to 15,000 cases a year in my office, every one of them brought by a law enforcement officer. It is incredibly important that they know who we are, that we know who they are, that we have trust amongst our offices, and also that we hold each other accountable. And part of that friction that Ted was speaking of is definitely there. But I think ultimately when you have the ability to have conversations with them and relationships with them, when you disagree on something they call my cell phone or I call theirs and we talk about it, we do not always agree at the end of it, but making sure that that conversation still happens. The AG's office actually has a lot less contact with our office. Their criminal division does a pretty specific set of crimes that our office doesn't really do. So there isn't a ton of overlap. And then the rest of their divisions are civil law, which we might try to send somebody to their human rights division or consumer protection fraud. There's different divisions we might send somebody to, but we don't actually overlap all that much. That being said, when we do and we need their help or they need ours, it's obviously an important relationship to have and to maintain. Thank you. Sarah, how do you or would you in the future staff your office if you thought of making any changes? What structure do you use? And what kinds of experience do you look for in attorneys? That's a great question. So my office is almost never fully staffed. Like most public service jobs, especially through COVID, we struggle with keeping staff. Our caseloads, including mine are often over 200. It's not closer to 300 each at a time. And our pay is pretty poor for attorneys with $250,000 in student loan debt. So we have a lot of attorneys that will come and get experience and then move on to a much better paying jobs with a lot less stress. But when I am hiring, I am always looking for folks who immediately understand that prosecution is not about winning. It is not about convictions. It is about having compassion and mercy for all of the people that are involved. And to making sure that the people involved in our system, the people charged, the witnesses and the victims all leave our system in a better place, if at all possible. Sometimes it's especially for the victims, just not possible. But that they already understand that and have some life skills or background that allows them to truly know the alternative. And I say that to mean sometimes my waitress, I've been a waitress my entire life. I was a waitress up until COVID. I worked every weekend as a server to pay my student loan bills. I got a lot of experience being a prosecutor by waitressing and talking to people and understanding different people's needs and priorities and being able to, even when they are very upset about a particular thing, being able to have a conversation with them about what the reality might be of the situation and getting them to a place where we can agree. So I look for all of those things, especially some life experience. But if somebody comes in and says that they're looking for guilty verdicts and trials and convictions, I know for sure that they are not a person that I want to hire in my office. And Ted, similar to the same question, how do you imagine staffing your office and what structure would you use? What kinds of experience would you be looking for in the attorney's? Thank you. I actually do have some experience doing this as a division chief in the attorney general's office. I supervised about 30 assistant attorneys general and support staff and through COVID we were losing people and it was difficult to get new folks in. The way I would structure it is with a combination of experienced people and inexperienced people, hopefully with the experienced people mentoring, the inexperienced people. How that would go about is I would try very, very hard to recruit deputy state's attorneys who look like the community that they're serving. And that would include posting things in colleges and sorry law schools that are not in Vermont. We did that in the attorney general's office. We had some success with it. It's harder than just that, unfortunately. But I would be looking for people who have a significant amount of life experience and varied experiences. Not necessarily people just getting out of law school, I wouldn't need them to have done every internship and law clerk position that they've ever had. Maybe that's my own personal experience. I worked full time and I went to school at night and I worked as a secretary basically. I had some internships but not a lot. So I would not hold that against people. I think I would be more interested in the hiring process of making sure that people know what the job is and getting a sense for what they have for basic life skills and any degree of wisdom that life has taught them. Deputy state's attorney has its own powers and I would want to make sure that anybody who got that job understood that power can hurt even if it's not being abused. It can hurt if it's not used wisely. So I'd want to get as wise a group of people as I could get. Thank you. Last question. Ted, what are your top priority issues that you believe the state attorney's office should address? I think that there's a combination of both public safety and continuing on with opening up to reform and continuing community conversations with all of members of the community, both individuals and groups. My concern is that the place that we are in right now as a country, Vermont used to be a lot less affected by that kind of stuff. I think that's true, but I don't think that it's as true as it used to be. So unfortunately it's easy for people to go to one side or the other and I want to make sure that we have a balanced approach and we address the issues of community safety and community justice as best we can balancing them. So it would be a combination of those things. Thank you. Sarah, the same question. What are the top priority issues that you believe the state attorney's office should address? Well, I think our top priority is public safety and it's frankly in some ways the only priority of the state's attorney's office. The difference is how you view or what you consider public safety. And my view is that true public safety means keeping more people out of a legal system that has proven for 200 years to cause more harm than it does good. So by lifting, again, lifting people up in the community through direct services and resources, through housing security, through food security, through childcare, through healthcare, all of those issues are my priority because I believe they are public safety. The more we focus on keeping kids in school, the more we focus on making sure that families are housed and fed and that people are not having to quit jobs or choose between a job and childcare, which is what is happening at an just incredible rate right now in our community, by focusing on those things and lifting people up through those services and resources will mean more public safety, less people committing crimes and therefore less need for those folks to go through the legal system when those people going through the legal system right now are being put into a system that is already overburden and with COVID is even more so. We are nearly a year behind in catching up just from COVID and we were already struggling to stay and to keep up with all the cases that we had. So public safety first and foremost and only but by doing that through lifting people up in the community and not lifting a legal system up that causes more harm. Thank you. Hi, my name is Ryan Page. I'm one of the community organizers from Vermont Interfaith Action. We have done a really good job of being ahead of time and so Ted, Sarah, with your permission we'd like to field a couple of questions from the chat for about 10 minutes before you make your closing remarks. Sarah, I will start with you. This is a question from both of you. Lucy, if you could just give us one minute for these questions because it's pretty quick here. We have a question. Sarah, how would you distinguish yourself from Ted in this race? Yeah, and then it'll be the same question in the world. Well, I think that I have been, I've only ever been a prosecutor. I wanted to be, I actually went to law school to become a public defender and realized that through my internships at the public defender's office and the state's attorney's office that if I really wanted to do more good for victims of crime and to dismantle the system that is racially oppressive that I needed to become a prosecutor. So the biggest difference is that I've been a prosecutor for 12 years. I've been doing this job for 12 years. I have, I currently do this job. I have over 200 cases and I think beyond that the biggest difference is probably that I have acted on my opinion that this system needs to not only be reformed but dismantled and I've implemented policies that actually do that and I've done work in the community to act to work with organizations to help them put into place actions and policies that will implement criminal justice issues, criminal justice reform and practices that dismantle the system. Fantastic. Ted, how about you? How do you distinguish yourself from Sarah? I think we have different experiences and come from different perspectives. I value people who have different sets of life experiences. I started my own practice right out of law school. I had a public defender contract where I also had hundreds of cases at the same time. I had a juvenile defender contract so I have firsthand experience in juvenile court representing parents and children in abuse cases, neglect cases and delinquencies. I think the experience is a significant thing. Also, in terms of community leadership, I am the vice-chair of my select board and Williston, I've been on the select board forever. I've led the Vermont Dismas House which tries to reintegrate people just coming out of prison. I'm on the jump board of directors and I think all of those things give me a unique perspective to try to bring a difference to the office. Fantastic. Another question. Ted, we'll start with you on this one. What, if any, is your experience with harm reduction for mental health and substance use and how would that play into your role as state's attorney? Well, in terms of professional life, it depends on what we mean. If we're talking about harm reduction in terms of safe injection sites, I don't have any experience on that. I think we should explore that option. If we're talking about harm reduction in terms of individuals, I worked very hard for my clients, both in public defender work and private practice, to make sure that the system did everything that it could to address the issues that they have. And that was probably a little bit more one-on-one. But, you know, that's the difference between being, I'll say it for this group, between being a parish leader and being somebody who's higher up in the bishop's office or something like that. I guess I've been more active on the parish. Fantastic. Sarah, same question for you. What has been your experience, if any, with harm reduction for mental health and substance use and how does that play into your role as state's attorney? I am an enormous advocate for harm reduction and I actually believe that, again, public safety is harm reduction. We should constantly be striving to reduce the harm involved in our community and happening in our communities. I got my master's degree in forensic psychology and a big part of that education was around my personal thesis and others was around domestic violence and harm reduction as it related to domestic violence. And then when I became a prosecutor, the term harm reduction was always coming up in the drug use sense. I was the first person, first state's attorney for sure, and other than a couple of reps, the first elected to push for safe injection sites in our community. As a state's attorney and as deputy state's attorney, I go to the scenes of a lot of untimely fatal overdoses, talk to a lot of families about what their families could have used to save the life of their loved one, and I do everything I can to try to prevent that from happening. And if that means meeting people where they're at and allowing them to do behavior that I might not personally want for them, but understanding that it'll at least keep them alive, I strive to do that in any practice or policies. Awesome. Thank you. Sarah, we'll start with you on this one. How do you respond to community members who interpret the use of restorative justice as more crime and less accountability, but who want more law and order? Yeah, so I think that one thing I do try to focus on a lot is the fact that victims who go through the restorative process, their satisfaction rate is 88%. They're 88% likely to have felt good about the process. And I believe when they're going through the legal system, the last I checked the data was around 36% or maybe 38%. It's very, very low. More victims are not adequately provided the services that they need through our system. And most people who go through restorative process, the offenders, well, are less likely to commit more crimes. So I use it a lot to tell people that what you might think is a slap on the wrist or you might think is getting away with a crime is actually better for victims and it's better for offenders in terms of their recidivism rates, which is better for all of us. Some folks who are just want a tougher on crime situation are never going to be satisfied with that answer. But I think it is important to know the facts of it and the data that supports it and make sure that we're pushing for that regardless of the rhetoric around tough on crime approaches. Thank you so much. Ted, same question. How do you respond to community members who want more law and order and just interpret the use of restorative justice as a more crime but less accountability situation? I think this is going to be the issue going forward. I get very concerned when people talk about law and order that they are using that for code for going back to the way things were like in the 1950s or something like that or drag net episodes from the 60s. We can't go back. It wasn't fair then, it wouldn't be fair now. Restorative justice is a wonderful thing to use and it should be used as much as it can. Restorative justice, I think it doesn't work for every case. My concern is that the public is that if we start using the criminal system for more cases that should be in the criminal system and not in the restorative justice system that we don't overdo it. I want to make sure that that balance is struck. Fantastic. This is a big broad question. Do your best in a minute, Ted. Do you believe that systemic racism exists and in the state's attorney office? You've already mentioned it this evening. If so, what do you plan to do about it? The answer is yes, and here's why. As I say to people when I talk about this, it's even worse than that. I think all of us have a sliver or a wedge of racism in them at the least. I think I learned it. I will share a private story that we have two children who are adopted from China and I'm a native of Vermont or we don't have a lot of minorities in Vermont. The first couple of we went to China to get my daughters, one and then the other, and when I got home with Ella, I noticed that I was noticing that there was somebody of a different race in my house and this is my daughter. Now that didn't last. It was a successful adoption. She is my daughter. I am her father, but that woke me to the idea that I think all of us have to deal with it. Again, we have to deal with it time and time and time again because it's like being in shape. You can't just do 10 push-ups and say, okay, I solved it. You've got to continually work at it. I think, unfortunately, this is part of human nature and I'm very suspicious of people who say that they don't have any racial issues to deal with. Fantastic. Sarah, we know you've heard you mentioned it already, but do you believe that systemic racism exists and in the state's attorney's office and how do you address it? What do you do about it? Yes, it absolutely exists. It exists in the entire system of prosecution and incarceration, so it's of course going to exist in our office. What I do about it is look at the data, look at our numbers to determine whether or not we can actually see it by our numbers and then I work with community organizations who are impacted by it and are doing this work to figure out ways that I can do something within my office. As I said, keeping as many people out of our system in general is always going to help keep our racial numbers down, our racial disparities down, but when we see that more people of color are being held on cash bail, I eliminated the use of cash bail. When we saw that the numbers of people being black and brown for monitors being pulled over by police officers was disproportionately high, I implemented a policy that would highly criticize and be very presumptively decline cases that were from pre-tech stop policies which are disproportionately impacting black and brown for monitors. Working with organizations and people impacted by our legal system, especially people of color in our community and working with them to find out ways that our office can be doing better. Thank you so much. We have one more question written in the chat. We do have time for another question probably. If you have something that you'd like to see Ted and or Sarah respond to, you could put it in the chat right now, but if we don't get anything else then this might be the last one. Sarah, we'll start with you. What has been the hardest part about being the state's attorney? It's a really hard job. It is, like I said, our office is by far the biggest in the state. Our county is over a third of the state's population. We have between 10 and 15,000 cases that come through our office a year. We have 14 attorneys including myself doing that work. The math is not in our favor and we are doing that with very limited resources, very limited services provided especially now in our community. On top of that, you have to educate the community on the realities of our system. I think the biggest thing when I talked about dismantling the system because of the inherent racism and classism involved in it, I underestimated how much people would push back on that when they stood to lose from some of the policies that I was implementing. Either losing power or money or positions within their professions. I was surprised at how many people push back purely for that reason not because of the actual racism and classism involved in our system and the disparities that are in our face. We cannot deny that was, that is definitely the hardest part for me. Thank you. Ted, a version of that question, what do you perceive to be the hardest part about being state's attorney? I think it's going to be balancing the different demands of the job. When I was the division chief in the attorney general's office, I described my job as, you know, if I would describe my job, I would say my job is to be interrupted all day and that's what I did. The phone would ring, emails would go off and that, within that, you have to set a goal and you have to set steps to achieve those goals. I think the hardest thing about being state's attorney is going to be balancing the need to create new systems within the office with keeping up with the workload and with keeping up with being the liaison between the criminal justice system and everybody else, victims particularly, but everybody including defendants and defendants families and defense attorneys and the police. That's going to be, that takes a lot of time and it takes a lot of sustained focus and effort. Fantastic. I'll combine the last two questions we have time for and is apropos to end on this. Ted, why did you decide to run for this office and what is the most important reason that people should vote for you? Well, I think the most important reason people should vote for me would have to do with trying to bring a sense of, and again, I don't really like questions like this. There's nothing personal in any of this at all. Sarah George is a good person and I value her. We have a difference of policies. I think that some of the policies have been put in place and maybe they're not policies but their practices are things that could be changed. I think we could seek conditions of release and we disagree on this that are more stringent when there are repeat offenses. I think that the pretext stop issue, I agree the racism is there but I would like to address it in another way. So, we have differences in policies. I would like to think that given my passion for public defense that I have done in community service and trying to, well, I would like to think that I can pull off a sense of balance and give people help. Awesome. Thank you. Sarah, why did you decide to run again for this office this year and what is the most important reason people should vote for you? Thank you. I decided to run for office again because despite how hard this job is, I really love this job. I am stressed all the time. I am working all of the time but I really enjoy it and I know that at the end of the day the work that I'm doing is based on data and research and evidence and not an archaic way of doing things that everybody wants us to do and maintaining the status quo that I am making decisions based on information and evidence-based research. That to me is incredibly important but it is changing a system that has been in place for 200 years. There is always going to be an incredible amount of people that are not happy with you doing it but I see all of the benefits. You all might see five or six cases occasionally that don't go well or the press decides to cover. I see 10,000 plus a year that go really well and I want to keep doing this work to make sure that I am the person making those decisions and making those policies so that we don't go backwards and I'm hoping that people will vote for me so that we can keep pushing forward and not get into the narrative that the only way to be safe is to put people in jail or to have more people in the legal system. Excellent. Thank you both for this surprise lightning round here of questions. I'm going to turn this back over to our facilitator Peggy to move into closing remarks and the end of the evening. I just agree with Brian that thank you both for your flexibility in this change up in our plan. So thank you both for your preparation and thoughtful concise answers. We would like to offer each of you two minutes to make any closing remarks. So Ted, you are up first. Thank you and thank you everybody for paying attention. This is how democracy works and thank you for putting the effort in. I'm not running for state's attorney saying that the next four years are going to be easy if I went because I don't believe they will be. I think that we have significant challenges that we've never had before in our society. I think they are sometimes worse in other places but that doesn't really matter. What matters is our own home. I will say the system does need to continue to be reformed. There is racism in the system. I have stood next to people who have been racially profiled and pulled over. I have been in court when I heard a judge say a racially charged thing. I was a very young attorney and I live with the genuine shame that I didn't know what to do and I didn't do anything about it and I'm sorry about that. But these things actually happen and now they are happening under more of a cloak of secrecy. So the system definitely does need to be reformed. I would like to put my experience to work with that and with continuing to work on public safety issues. Again I have done hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of criminal defense cases. I also have civil litigation experience. I also have leadership experience both through Dismas House and the joint urban ministry project but also through being in the Attorney General's office and running my own practice. That is a business and you have to meet a payroll and you have to make decisions. All I can say is if I am elected this is not a and I'm not saying that Sarah is looking at it this way in any way at all talking about myself. This is not a stepping stone for me and I will use every degree of mind and spirit that I possess to dedicate myself to the office and to the concepts of justice and fairness and balance. I would ask for your consideration and thank you. I know actually can I ask that we said something about ways to contact us that you wanted us should I do that now or you can ask for email addresses later. We'll ask for email addresses at the end and then we can send that out to everybody and that way it's in writing. Thank you. Thank you Ted. So Sarah your closing remarks. Thank you and thank you so much for putting this on and for everybody who has tuned in. I am incredibly grateful and honored to be the Chittenden County State's Attorney. I have been honored since the day that I was appointed. I never expected to be in politics. I never had any interest in being in politics. I took on this job because I felt like I had something to add and I felt like I had the courage to do some things that other people might not and that was my dad is a carpenter and whenever I bought houses he always tells me or I look at houses he always tells me it doesn't matter what the top looks like. You've got to go straight to the basement and determine what the foundation looks like. That's what I've done with the legal system. I've gone to the bottom. I've seen what the foundation is made out of and so I'm not interested in just making the top look prettier. I'm interested in really digging out the foundation and making sure that our system stops racially disproportionately policing, prosecuting and incarcerating people of color. Vermont not only is an immune to this but we're second in the country with most disproportionate prison population to our racial makeup. We are not only not immune we are doing a terrible job and we have to stop acting as if we're doing everything that we can when there are so many other things that we can be doing in the legal system to keep people out of a legal system that is proven to do more harm than good. That is what I've been working on. It does come with a lot of pushback. It comes with a lot of fear mongering. It comes with a lot of misinformation in our community but I feel like I have shown the community that I can stand up to that, that I will not back down. There are a lot of opportunities I could have just said okay you're right. I'll do less. In those moments I push forward and I'm committed to continuing to keeping this movement moving forward because I know that it works and I know it works because it's based on research and not based on the things that we've been doing and it's not based on fear mongering and it's not based on disinformation so I'm hopeful that the community will trust that I am the best person for this job for another four years. Thank you so much. Thank you Sarah and thank you also Ted both of you for this. So hopefully this was a valuable experience for both our candidates and our attendees. I know it has been for me and if this has sparked more questions for you and you would like to reach out to the candidates we've asked them to provide a way for them to be in touch with us and we will share that with you and put it in with the video description of the recording that will be posted on our YouTube channel and you can find the link for that on our website www.viavt.org. So voting in this primary election will happen on or by Tuesday August 9th. You can vote for Sarah or Ted by requesting a ballot by mail by visiting your town clerk's office or you can show up at the polls on Tuesday August 9th. All the information you need to find out whether you are registered where your polling place is and to request a mail-in ballot can be found at the Vermont Secretary of State's website. There you can set up your very own my voter page at mvp.vermont.gov. Ted and Sarah thank you thank you so much for your time this evening. Thank you so much and thanks to all of you for attending Vermont Interface Action's first candidate forum for 2022. Have a wonderful night.