 My name is David Bode and I'll be the facilitator of this evening. It's a 6.30 and to respect the time our guests have given us and to ensure we have opportunity to address everything that we have prepared, we'll begin now. Others will likely enter and perhaps our fifth candidate. Please note that we're recording this event. It will be posted for public viewing on the YouTube channel of Vermont Interfaith Action. So we have most all our candidates here. Let's get started. Okay we've got the recording. Welcome everyone to the Vermont Interfaith Action Candidate Forum for Democrats for the Chittenden Central State Senate District. My name is David Bode. I'm a member of the Burlington Presbyterian Church and of the Economic Opportunities Wing of Vermont Interfaith Action. I'll be your emcee for tonight. This is a forum of opportunity for candidates to address their perspectives, priorities, and plans regarding issues that people of faith and congregations involved in Vermont Interfaith Action value. The state legislature sets policy. It creates regulation and guidelines and allocates funding on a host of issues. State senators from every district have considerable impact on the lives of all the moderates. We hope this evening provides our candidates a satisfactory opportunity to share their views with their constituents and that it provides voters with good insight into who each of these candidates is and how they might be a state senator. So candidates, thank you for joining us and offering your thoughts tonight. I would like to first introduce Pam Lasser to give our credential. Pam. Thank you David. Good evening everyone. My name is Pam Lasser. I'm a member of the First Unitarian Universalist Society of Burlington, their racial justice team and also a member of Vermont Interfaith Action's Racial Justice Economic Opportunities Committee. 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 in Vermont. Our goal in Vermont Interfaith Action via across all our 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 guide us. Thank you for joining us. I'd now like to introduce Lucy Samaro to recognize who is here tonight by conducting our roll call. Lucy. Hi, my name is Lucy Samara and I am a member of First Congregational Church of Burlington, United Church of Christ, and I serve on DIA's local organizing group focused on public safety. Now this is a really fun part of tonight. So when you hear your community of faith or your town listed, we want you to celebrate. Make some noise and bring some joy into our gathering. So first Christ's Presbyterian in Burlington, Cathedral Church of St. Paul, Christ Episcopal Church in Montpelier, First Unitarian Universalist Society of Burlington, All Souls Interfaith Gathering, College Street Congregational Church, First Congregational Church of Burlington, and interested voters from organizations or other towns throughout the county. That's all of us. We're ready to go. All right. I'd now like to introduce Karen Chatfield to discuss the format and expectations of tonight's forum. Karen. Good evening. My name is Karen Chatfield and I'm a member of All Souls Interfaith Gathering in Shelburne. I serve in DIA's groups on affordable housing and homelessness and racial justice and the economic opportunities. We have 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 the same six questions by our presenters. We sent them the questions ahead of time so that there are no surprises and to give them their best opportunity to provide a thorough thoughtful and concise response. Each candidate will have 90 seconds to answer each question. Lucy is our timekeeper and she will help remind each speaker when they are approaching time and again when they have reached it. If the answer goes on beyond 90 seconds, Lucy will announce time out loud. We promise to keep our allotted time for this forum. This means there will probably not be time for any questions from the floor. If you have questions and we do not have time to ask them tonight, we encourage you to write them down and we will provide ways to contact the candidates following the call. Please note too that if you write anything in the chat, it will only go to the administrators of this Zoom call. The general chat has been disabled so that everyone can stay focused on the presenters. We ask it possible that all candidates remain unmuted for the duration so as to avoid any unexpected technical delays. We also ask that aside from the person asking each question, everyone else stays muted throughout. After all the prepared questions have been answered, each candidate will then have one minute to make any closing remarks. Again, Lucy will serve as timekeeper. Thank you. So it's now time to hear from our candidates. We've asked them each to make brief opening remarks. We ask that these be kept to one minute and we will introduce our candidates in alphabetical order starting this time. So Phillip Baruth, please offer opening remarks. Thank you and thank you for having me, everyone. I have been working with Vermont Interfaith Action for some years now, originally through Debbie who was in the state senate, but over the last couple of years because I've been on the Judiciary Committee, I have found myself working actually very closely with some of you on issues like life without parole among other things. So from those encounters, I know what some of your concerns are and I hope to get into them tonight. The other place that I am familiar working with you is from the Appropriations Committee angle because your group I think is laudable in its efforts to move money to needy recipients. So in those two ways I've come to know you, I hope you come to know me and we can get into the specifics when we go further. Thank you. Thank you, Phil. When do we have candidate Don Ellis? Yes, we do. Yes, we do. Some opening remarks up to a minute from you, Don. Oh, unfortunately, we can't hear you. Your Jack may be interfering with the sound. Play with that and then we'll come back. Why don't we do that? We'll circle back to you, Don. Experiment, if you will, with unplugging your Jack, perhaps. That has sometimes blocked audio. Then let's go to Martine Gulick. Opening remarks, please. Thank you so much, David. And thank you all for making this evening possible. I so appreciate being here and I apologize that I have to leave a little bit early. I love the word interfaith. I love what it means. I love what it holds, dear. I personally come from a large French-Canadian family, born into a French-Canadian family. My mom and both my parents left the Catholic Church as part of a quiet revolution in the 60s and 70s. And so I was without a spiritual home for quite some time. And then when we had our young children, I was welcomed into the first Unitarian Universalist Society, which was fantastic. My kids attended preschool at Ohavi Zedek Synagogue and as part of the Burlington School Board, we do work to assure that our students in the district went Ramadan every year. When we have Ramadan, they have a safe space to go and practice their fasting. So those are the kinds of things that I find important and I hold dear. And now I don't really attend church, but I do. Okay, that's that. I will stop. All right. Thank you. I recognize Earhart-Nanke for a minute of opening comments. Thanks, David, and thanks, everyone, for giving us this opportunity to talk to you. I have also worked for many years with Debbie and Melissa, both when Debbie was in the Senate and with many of your members. Housing has been commendably one of the priorities for minor faith action for many years. And I, as some of you know, have worked for years as an affordable housing advocate for the Vermont Affordable Housing Coalition and worked on homelessness issues as well. For those who don't know me, I've lived and worked in Chittany County for over 40 years now. In addition to my work with the Affordable Housing Coalition, I also represented the city of Burlington as its legislative liaison for a number of years. And most recently, for last year and a half, I've worked for Senator Bernie Sanders as an outreach representative and housing policy advisor. And I'll note sadly that Reverend Sengus just passed away. My wife, Sydney, and I were married by Reverend Sengus over 40 years ago. Thank you. Thank you. Turning now to our last candidate before we circle back to Dawn, if we can, Tanya Vohovsky. Thank you so much. Thank you for hosting the forum. I really appreciate the Vermont Interfaith Actions focused on examining and taking action on systemic issues without addressing the root causes of everything we're facing. We're never going to do anything more than prop up exclusionary and convoluted systems that we rely on now. This is one of the core reasons I'm running for Senate. We need to expand the voices represented at all levels of government. Change doesn't happen without new ideas that will move things forward. I'm dedicated to building a stronger, more just, more sustainable, and resilient Vermont community. Serving as a state representative has affirmed to me that we've got a lot more work to do. I grew up in a single parent working class home, and I didn't see anyone like me or anyone fighting for the things that were important to my family. And working as a school social worker, I continue to see that the daily impacts of this lack of representation and how that has led to systems that simply don't work for a large part of our state. As a senator, I'm going to continue to be a strong, outspoken voice for Vermonters struggling with the status quo, and we'll continue to fight for intersectional, economic, social, racial, and climate justice. I've spent years as an advocate, as a social worker, and now as a state representative, helping people navigate these systems, and I look forward to continuing to do so as your next senator. Thank you. Dawn Ellis, we're coming back to you. I'm wondering, aha, all right. So opening comments up to a minute, Dawn. Thank you so much. It's a pleasure to be here with you all. I'm on the road and taking advantage of our infrastructure through our libraries right now to join you from afar. And I think it's really important to understand that as a Vermont Human Rights Commissioner, I see this not as a problem, but an opportunity to understand what are the hurdles that regular Vermonters face when the world has gone digital and left so many behind from a moment of getting lost in a chat room to not having the technology. I fight for inclusion of all Vermonters, whether you roll, whether you love someone who's of the same gender, whether you are old or young. I believe you invest early and often upstream in the people, in the places we connect, the families we build, and the planet. And I stand strong running for Senate as someone who brings both national and local expertise. Thanks for having me. Thank you. It's time now to get into the questions prepared by our local organizing committees. As a reminder, you'll each be asked the same question by one of our presenters and given up to 90 seconds to answer. And our timekeeper will remind you when your time is up, as she has been so efficiently doing up to now. So I'll turn this over to Virginia for our first question. My name is Virginia Monkowitz, and I'm a member of Christchurch Presbyterian. One of our organizing committees focuses on affordable housing and homelessness. Currently, there are over 2,000 Vermonters who are being sheltered by the state in motels using federal dollars. What are your ideas on how to house these adults and children when the money runs out in the spring? And we'll start with Phil. Thanks. I want to first say these are not my ideas. In the Senate, you work in many different policy areas. You can only be the policy leader in a few of them. I'm not a policy leader in housing. And I want to just give a hat tip to Earhart who is. But Champlain Housing has been doing great work buying motels, rehabbing them, and creating more space for formerly homeless people. They're also doing something interesting in Shelburne where they're moving from Harbor Place, which had been housing people in the temporary motel program to turning those into permanent living arrangements with kitchens, etc. And so in that way, they've used the government COVID money to its best effect. In other words, keeping people off the street during the pandemic, but then not stopping there and kicking them out of the program, but turning those places into permanent housing on a kind of sequential basis. So one hotel becomes permanent. The other becomes temporary. Hopefully that then becomes permanent. So funding organizations like Champlain Housing and keeping that money flowing rather than throwing up our hands when the federal money runs out, that's what I recommend to begin with. Thank you very much, Phil. Dawn. Thank you. I've been talking to a number of people who are experiencing housing insecurity on the campaign trail. I think it's really important to hear from them directly about what works and what doesn't work. So I've spent a lot of time late nights in the communities that gather in parks and on commons and really listening. And I hear the many reasons that you experience housing instability. It can be anything from a painful eviction because your apartment has been bought, which was the case of the person today, to a family turning their back on you at a time you're needed and having no place to go. And so we actually need to be thoughtful that different solutions are needed for different people. Families have been very clear in this community of people who are experiencing instability that they need kitchens. They need continuity to be found in order to get that job that is stable to be found and consistently in a place is one of the most important things. And so I am talking with people about how housing is really healthcare. And we are okay spending a lot of money on healthcare. So if we just go upstream from this idea that housing is a if you like and maybe you can have it thing to this is the kind of thing that makes everything else work better for families, for individuals, for people who have addiction. So I think we reprioritize completely where it is in our governmental support. Thank you very much Dawn. Martine. Thank you for the question. Yes. So I think we all can speak to the fact that houselessness, homelessness is a very complex issue. We've heard that over and over again. It comes with a variety of causes. And there are so many individual stories to every person who is experiencing houselessness. But mental illness and drug addiction are certainly two aspects that keep showing up over and over again. So whatever we decide to do for permanent housing, the motels have been an adequate temporary fix. But in terms of permanent housing, we have to make sure that we have a continuum of care and wraparound services that come with the housing. We've had some great success in this country, for example, in places like Houston with providing, simply providing homes for folks and paying rents. And because these folks are in safe and secure dwellings, it is much easier to target the wraparound services to these folks on an individual basis. In terms of affordable housing, we need to look at increasing density in towns and in urban areas. This is proven to work. I really think in a way as Americans, we also really have to start looking hard at this idea of not being, you know, I don't want to see my neighbor. You know, I want to live on so much land that I don't have to look at another house. That causes problems, as well as the idea of NIMBYism, not wanting construction and housing developments in our backyard. These are things that I think we need to look hard at during this crisis. And I will stop there. Thank you very much, Martin. Erard. Thanks for the question. And thanks to VIA and its members, all of you for your tireless advocacy for affordable housing over the years. So as, you know, we've partnered on the struggles at the State House to get more affordable housing for Vermonters. I was one of the folks that worked for years to preserve the emergency housing program that allowed the thousands of folks that have been sheltering safely during COVID in motels to actually exist. If we didn't have that as a basis, then we would have probably seen significant numbers of unhoused Vermonters contracting COVID and possibly dying. Vermont is one of the few states that has done really well in terms of its homeless population, saving folks from the tragedy of COVID-19. We have chronically underfunded housing for decades. The Vermont Housing and Conservation Board is our primary vehicle for creating new affordable housing. We need to fund it fully. We have lost the opportunity for literally over a thousand units of housing as a result of that underfunding. We need to continue to fund housing first so that when folks do run out of money in the federal dollars in the motels, that we have housing first available for them to provide the supportive services that folks need in order to live independently in affordable housing, as well as rental assistance. I'll stop there. Thanks. Thank you very much. You're welcome. Antonia. Thank you so much. When the federal money runs out to fund the emergency housing, we have no other ethical option than to continue to house people. And I've been an outspoken advocate for extending emergency housing throughout the pandemic. Going forward, we can and must make this a budget priority. However, it's not a long-term solution and the living conditions in many instances are not acceptable. We don't have enough shelter space and we need to make investments in permanent affordable rental housing as well as permanent affordable home ownership opportunities and move away from a transitional model that is both more expensive and less stable for those living in transitional housing and motels. However, we're not simply going to build our way out of this issue. Statistically, over 50 percent of people experiencing homelessness are working full-time, which says we also need to invest in an economy that actually works for everyday Vermonters by raising the minimum wage to a livable wage, taxing out of state vacant homes to help ensure that all Vermonters have the ability to have a first home and a roof over their head. We also need to look at innovative solutions that use publicly owned land to put in small, affordable, or even free rental units to anyone who needs it. And we need to invest in affordable home ownership that not end to allow the conversion of affordable rentals into affordable home ownership opportunities. Shutting people out of being able to buy a home that is affordable keeps people trapped out of the wealth market and they are thus more likely to experience generational poverty. Thank you very much. Marty, are you ready for question two? Are you talking to me or no? Oh, because Marty's my nickname. That's why I got confused. Good to know. Can you unmute Marty? Okay, there we go. My name is Marty Roberts. I'm a member of Christ's Episcopal Church in Montpelier and also part of the Organizing Committee on Homelessness and Affordable Housing. So I have a question here. What measures will you champion to ensure that those who need the affordable housing that is being built now with federal funds get access to it? And how will you ensure that those who need supports to stay in this housing receive the help that they need? And we'll start with Dawn. Thank you. Well, I think it's the opportunity to put into place infrastructure that's communication and listening infrastructure because these are not all the housing that is needed. And it's really about relationship building to be able to connect with the people who are at their moment of need and actually be trusted to serve them well. So what I'm finding is the kind of people who are willing to be out after 10 p.m. and spending time where people who have housing and stability gather if they have no roof over their head that is a home for that evening. We kind of need to privilege the off-hour person. So in the same way that we thought about healthcare connects needing people to be a conduit. So too we could use conduits to the opportunities that are available who aren't just nine to five workers but who might be the night shift workers who are out and really making relationships and listening and getting to know the people who are in their neighborhood of service. And so understanding both the opportunities are but what the needs are so that they can begin to address the long term relationship and the government trust needs to be taken care of too because there have been uses of power. As a Reminding Rights Commissioner I see it behind the scenes all the time. So we're going to have to shine light on places that have otherwise been pretty much closed. Say look, we will clean up our act. We will hold us accountable to provide a new service to the trust. Thank you, Don. And next is Martine. Thank you. Yes, as I said earlier and I'll repeat, you know, this is a question that is extremely complex. We do have fair housing laws and income eligibility thresholds in our state. They need to be in place and they need to be followed. And I would say revisited frequently as we know in this current economic environment with inflation, I think that threshold may change over time and it's important that we revisit it. Again, wrap around services are crucial and the Champaign Housing Trust has done a great job of hiring social workers and having them on staff. That's a great way to again provide services to folks who need it and really target the services on an individual basis. The incredible lack of labor right now is exacerbating this situation. But I do believe that providing housing will ultimately be an investment that will pay off in terms of welcoming more folks into the labor force. So it's incredibly important that we look at that. I do just want to say that as someone mentioned earlier, we know that home ownership is a very tried and true conduit to wealth building. So, you know, just given that it does boggle my mind that we allow folks to make fortunes off the backs of renters and I do think we need to look at more stringent rights for renters, especially during this crisis. We know that folks are building wealth not in just in a home ownership but also on the backs of renters. Thank you. Thanks, Martine. And next, we have Erin Hart. Thanks, yes. As a founding board member of the Champaign Housing Trust, I'm incredibly proud of the work that they're doing and the mission that they've taken on over the last years to really provide permanent supportive housing for moderates experiencing homelessness. And as Philip mentioned earlier, purchasing motels and turning them into micro units for permanent supportive housing is really one of the longer term solutions. And hopefully folks will move from micro units to permanent rental and onto home ownership eventually. So providing housing is not rocket science. As I mentioned before, what we need to do is provide the political will to provide the resources to create more housing first opportunities that include rental assistance for folks coming out of the motels as well as housing first supportive services to help folks successfully maintain the housing that they receive. Again, we have a number of programs, existing programs that have been underfunded for many years. Family supportive housing is one of them that provides supportive services to families experiencing homelessness. And with challenges, I also have fought for a number of years to preserve the SASH program, Support and Services at Home, which is expanding into family supportive services in the southern part of the state and will hopefully provide expanded family support, excuse me, supportive services statewide soon. Thank you. Thank you. Next we have Tanya. We do need to invest in housing first models that recognize that housing is a basic human right. The very first priority we need to make is getting people housed and then working directly with them to determine what if any supports are needed to make that housing successful. In Vermont, we have an organization doing housing first and it provides supportive services and housing for Vermonters across much of the state in a way that's person-centered and allows people to be the driver of their own lives. And we need to expand this to the rest of the state. When I worked for Pathways Vermont, I saw firsthand how we allowed participants to choose where and how they lived and supported their success in a way that is less expensive than the alternatives as well as more successful. We need to ensure that every Vermonter experiencing homelessness has access to programs like this and we need to invest in specialized services agencies like this so that their workers are paid livable wages. And we really need to center the needs of housing and supports around the people who have the most expertise in this area and that's those who are experiencing that crisis. I'm a renter because I can't afford to buy here. The housing first model has been incredibly successful in housing people across the country and in Vermont with over an 80% success rate with their participants staying housed at the one year mark is how they measure that. And we need to really make sure that we're working with people to build out these models so that everyone has access to the housing that they need as well as the supports that they may need but that they get to be the driver of where they live and what it is that they need. We also need to look at our means testing. It creates barriers and administrative cost drivers and really makes it and we don't update it enough and so we need to make those investments and look at whether means testing makes sense. Well, thank you, Tanya. And we have Phil. Thanks. I thought this was a really interesting question because if you think about it in part at least it's saying how do we make sure that the policy that we've put in place ultimately serves the people that was designed to serve rather than getting diverted in some way. And on the appropriations committee we do a lot of thinking about that trying to make sure that the money that has been put in the budget the numbers go where they're supposed to go. As people who have worked in the state house know the budget has two pieces. There's the long spreadsheet of numbers very long and then there's the addendum the language and the language is the how to in terms of the money what the recipients are allowed to do with that money. And so in the case of this question how to make sure that the people who need affordable housing are the recipients at the end point what once it's built that's something that can be laid out in the very foundation of the funding itself. So in that case in areas where I'm not the policy expert I do go to people like Champlain Housing Trust and people in the Senate who know this area Vermont Interfaith Action among other groups and ask for suggestions about language to make sure that that money is targeted properly. And in this case as in a number of others that's what I would do. Thank you Phil and thank you to all of you who answered this question. My name is Fran Carlson and I'm from the Cathedral Church of St. Paul. Another important issue focus for VIA is reform of our correction system. We have found that there are varying perspectives on the concept of incarceration. What do you believe to be the purpose of incarceration? What needs to be done regarding the culture, the physical facilities and the programming to achieve this purpose? We'll start with Martin. Thank you. So I'm a big fan of Brian Stevenson. I like the work that he's done and I've read a lot of his work. What I like about what Brian Stevenson has to say is that he really looks at each individual and he sees and he shares with us that each individual has his or her own story. Typically folks who are houseless or who are incarcerated have suffered some kind of abuse or some kind of neglect in their lifetime. So I do look to one of the large parts of my platform which is supporting education, early education, child care, paid family leave as one way to alleviate some of the suffering that we have in our society. Incarceration to me is a temporary situation and a temporary solution where folks go to receive the care that they need, whether it is reading instruction or mental health services or addiction treatment. Ultimately in the hope that folks who have been offenders can reform and come back into society and join the workforce and be contributing and healthy members of our society. Prisons are a huge industry in our country. I think we need to end the privatization of prisons. They should not be a for-profit institution. This is just simply wrong. We really need to take a close look at that. We need funding and coordination to support folks who have been incarcerated and thank you, I will stop. Thank you very much. Earhart? Thanks for the question. I would start by saying that for me the purpose of incarceration really is rehabilitation and ultimately reintegration into society. I think one of the first things we need to do is to set up and strengthen our restorative and alternative justice system so that we avoid incarceration wherever possible to begin with. And as Martine said, we really need to avoid privatization of corrections. We should not be sending Vermont offenders out of state where they receive very little in the way of supportive services and in the way of rehabilitation while they're incarcerated by private for-profit companies. We also need to look at some of the administrative provisions that have led to a very high rate of folks going back into prison once they've been released as a result of minor administrative fractions. This level of recidivism is part of what's driving cost and unnecessarily brings people back into prison. So while folks are incarcerated, I want to see more substance use disorder treatment, more job training, mental health counseling. We have a very large percentage of folks incarcerated in Vermont who have mental health disabilities that need counseling and of course, education and training. So that when they are released, they can find jobs and also afford housing. And obviously, lots of supports are needed when folks come out of prison. The supports that we're providing currently are inadequate. Thank you, Erika. Tanya? Thank you so much. What we currently have is a system grounded in punishment and retribution. And what we need is a system of restoration and rehabilitation. Our current system is both inhumane, expensive, and it isn't working. We have the highest per capita prison population of any country in the world. Shifting from our current model will take time, resources, investments, and a fundamental culture shift. We need to fully invest in restorative justice that is full scale and begins with community building and community investment that meets everyone's basic needs, not the shortcuts that we currently have that are often only triggered when someone has already done harm or been harmed. When I was a graduate student, I had the privilege to study abroad in Finland where they have a beautiful restorative system. The vast majority of the prisons in Finland are open prisons where people can come and go as they please, but they are offered job training, mental health supports, substance use supports, and the ability to fully build out everything that they need to feel like they can function and be welcomed into their society. There is one locked facility in the Finnish system. And in that locked facility, people have apartments where they're treated like human beings and can graduate into the open facility if it is deemed that they can be safe. We need to move towards systems like this one. Even in my work in schools where we talk a lot about restorative justice, that restorative justice is often only triggered when someone has been harmed or has done harm. And when you don't have a community that you're welcomed into, it's really hard to care if you've done harm, especially when you felt like you've been harmed by that community. So I think this is a really deep systemic issue and that is going to take investments from community all the way into restorative justice. Thank you, Tanya. Phil? I definitely believe that the correction system should be rehabilitative in nature. And at its best, that's what it's accomplishing. I also do want to say though that public safety is a very real issue. You don't want people on the street that are an immediate danger to themselves or others. And so there is a function for a locked facility. The question is, how do you balance those things? And let's just take life without parole as an issue. So in my mind, it is the definition of control-based corrections to say, we're going to put you in prison and we're going to tell you upfront, we're never going to let you out and we're going to do everything we can to make sure you live as long as possible without the hope ever of leaving this facility. That just seems to me insane. So I would like to end life without parole across the board with no exceptions because all it means, it doesn't mean that someone gets out after 25 years or 30 years. What it means is that you have a chance to make your case to the parole board, that you have changed, that you have genuinely seen a different path. And the parole board does its work and they determine, are you a threat to public safety? So that seems to me a way to balance things. Our current system where people commit certain crimes, 50 years later they're still in prison when all the statistics say they're no longer a threat to public safety, that has to end. Thank you, Phil. Dawn? Thanks for this question. We don't have enough time to lay out a vision of the kind of open system we truly, truly need. But what we have right now is cool. It's punishing. It's whimsical. It targets people who are black and brown. Disabilities. That very little money that harms them. That's not caring. That's not rehabilitative. And that's not effective. And it costs $50,000 a year. So I'm going to give you with that $50,000 and use that to address the systemic problems that brought people to a point that entered into the system. Until we get to the point where justice really works, are actually held accountable, used, you know, they cannot use it to harm people. They cannot forget the law and apply it unevenly to some people and not to others. When government itself is held to the same standard that these vulnerable people have been held to will begin to get to something. I think we need an alternate system completely because the people in jail may not need to be in jail at all. And the people who have harmed them to put them in jail may need more rehabilitation than the people we're talking about. Thank you, Dylan. I have another question on the criminal justice system. There's been a great deal recently about the shortage of correction officers in Vermont. How would you suggest we handle this shortage and their working conditions? How will you ensure adequate funding for your ideas? Earhart? Thanks for the question. So, not surprisingly, we have a shortage in the correction system. This is a workforce shortage that we're seeing across the board in all sectors in the state of Vermont right now, whether it's a nursing shortage, whether it's teachers that are taking early retirement or leaving the profession, whether it's for construction of affordable housing. It is a statewide problem that is not unique to corrections. That said, I don't think the answer to that is by instituting a 60-hour work week, which the commissioner of corrections has recently proposed. I think that's a recipe for more corrections officers leaving the system and leaving employment. I think we need to have decent pay for corrections officers. We need to have hiring incentives. We need to provide housing supports. One of the things that has been successful because of our extreme housing shortage is providing either first and last month's rent or down payment assistance or other forms of housing assistance that can bring folks into the state that may take one look at our housing costs and our shortage and say, I'm sorry, I can't move to Vermont based on the housing shortage that you're seeing and the housing prices that you're seeing. We also need to provide family and medical leave and other positive workforce policies to help incentivize folks for taking those jobs. Thank you. Thank you. Tanya? Thank you. We took many days of testimony and joint hearings with my committee and House corrections on this issue, this past session. We heard from corrections officers, supervisors, probation and parole. And the stories we heard were gut-wrenching. I cannot believe that anyone continues to go back to a system that is instituting mandatory over time in the way that it is, that is asking people to sleep in their cars because they're so tired, they are afraid to drive home because they're worried they may get in an accident. We have to change the system as it is and we cannot keep asking for more and more from our corrections officers. We are asking them to be in hot, un-air conditioned buildings where you cannot even have your own water bottle. And we heard from our officers that largely through the pandemic, violence has gone down. And most people are there with substance use issues that could be treated in the community if we invested in harm reduction. We need to invest in good wages, training, job growth and humane work environments for our corrections officers, of course. And likely it still won't be enough. The corrections system is brutal and inhumane to all involve, including the corrections officers who experienced, who reported vicarious trauma and so many other challenges like an astronomically high rate of contemplating suicide. We have to invest in the restorative system that I previously discussed. It will help our corrections officers as well as those who are incarcerated and we need to learn from COVID that we can get people out of prison and provide them community supports if they're nonviolent offenders. We can look towards providing home confinement and community supports there. So there's simply less people in the system and using that model will make the system better and less expensive. Thank you. Phil? Yeah, I spent a good half an hour, I would say, the other day on the phone with Steve Howard, who's head of the VSEA, talking about corrections and the change to a 60-hour work week that Erhard mentioned, it's not a change that the correction officers have agreed to. They're being moved to it willy-nilly and it would be, I think, okay with them if it was limited to 12 hours, but what they often experience is whatever the agreed upon shift is, then there's a mandatory overtime added on top. So under the new system, they're going to work a 12-hour shift and quite often be told they have to work an additional four hours. So that's 16 hours in an un-air conditioned facility. Now, I don't know anybody who can do any job for 16 hours, especially under those conditions, you know, given the stress that a corrections officer experiences, not to mention what that experience is like for the inmates themselves. So it does come down to money. In New Hampshire, they start at 22 plus an hour in Vermont, it's 19. So if people have the option, like in southern Vermont, where the border is pretty close, they always choose to work in New Hampshire. Same if you go to the border with New York, people will go across the line to work in New York. So as with housing, as with harm reduction, as with a million other things, the state has to invest more and where do you find that money? I think, as some people have mentioned, taxing people who have the means and second homes is not a bad place to start. Thank you. Dawn? I feel for the people who are asked to be overseers in a place where slavery is still legal. Slavery is legal in Vermont and in the U.S. in a number of ways. Slavery is legal for children. Slavery will be incarcerated and it cries. So, as quickly as possible so that officers are not being overseers. They are not just going to have into and rather moving to the kind of system that rehabilitates everyone. And that you can get to the place in question and it's so non-binary and more sex-acquired because it basically means I get to decide. Hi, if I think I'm going to hold you back for a while is that I think you get off spot three as long as people are there. Off spot three. Summer Greendale and stuff like that. Unbalanced system, that's what's going on. So I think first people out non-violent offenders and in terms of going case by case we can take a look. We're hungry. Did you see because you were hungry? That $2,000 meant to lock you up. Can sure and help your family be not hungry anymore. Problem solved. The whole idea that the people who have committed non-violent crimes need to be kept away from society is backwards and mixed families in the fabric that they find. Thank you. More team. Thank you. Yeah, I agree with everything that's been said by my colleagues this evening. So I'm not going to repeat everything but I would like to suggest that we shift the scenario from increasing the number of corrections officers to reducing the prison population and again focusing on shrinking that population by alternatives to prison and wraparound services. The demand for correction officers also diminishes. These are investments that ultimately pay dividends in our society. They're not simple financial outlays. I will share a very brief story. I know folks on this call, some of you know this, but I did lose my father to violence, to gun violence in 1994. He was a victim of a carjacking and there were six young men who were involved in that particular crime. One of them was an adult and the other five were minors. Because it was a federal crime, my family was given the opportunity to weigh in on what to do after their time was served. And we voted as a family and especially my mother to release the five minors because they had shown a willingness to learn, to educate themselves to want to get back out into society. The adult in this scenario had not done any of the work at all and he remained in jail. But looking at, again, each individual scenario giving them the opportunity to rehabilitate and allowing them to enter society, it's what we have to do. I mean it's just we don't have an option as Tanya said earlier what we're doing now is not working. I just want to end with a quick quote by Peter Drucker that I find so valuable to everything we're talking about tonight. Tell me what you value and I might believe you. But show me your calendar and your bank statement and I'll show you what you really value. What do we really value? We have to put our investments there. Thank you. Thank you everyone. My name is Frank Sidowski and I'm from Christchurch Presbyterian in Burlington and I have the the next two questions for you. Many members of our congregations are highly motivated to take action to dismantle systemic racism in its various forms in our state and nation. One primary example of an institution where racial disparities need to be addressed is in public safety. What do you think the best approach is to create new organizational cultures in our municipal police departments and what measures need to be taken to make all Vermonters and visitors feel safe? We'll start with Tanya. Thank you so much. I think we first need to recognize as you did that racism the racism within our police departments our public safety system and our corrections system is directly tied to the racism in our larger society and frankly to a culture of punishment. I think the first thing we need to do is start having conversations about public safety that span beyond policing and corrections and really start to look at ensuring that we've made the investments in our communities that everyone has what they need. There are some obvious immediate issues that would include training changes ending pretextual policing stops demilitarizing our police force and instead investing in community policing. I also think a key first step is building out civilian oversight of the police with carefully selected members of a community who historically have been harmed or unheard by these systems of power to really provide insight both to the community and the police force. I introduced H660 in the house which would establish municipal citizen oversight of our police that would have training disciplinary and oversight power. This bill was based on legislation from Nebraska extensive research and I worked with the ACLU and community members to build it and have continued to work with local police who are interested in this kind of change as well as communities of color mental health professionals and others to strengthen the bill that I hope to reintroduce in the Senate next year. Thank you. Phil? After the George Floyd killing there was a lot of ferment about how do we deal with the use of force as we saw it in that incident specifically the choke hold. And so I authored a bill to ban the choke hold in the state of Vermont that ultimately became law but along the way we did something else. So we not only made it a crime for a police officer to use that move in a situation where lethal force wasn't required but we prohibited the training at the academy and we did that after talking with a lot of professionals on the public safety side and a lot of advocates on the reform side because what you're trying to do is not just put a penalty out there but make it clear to those officers that their own culture forbids that activity. And so the academy is one way to do that. The other thing we did in that bill was to create professional punishments so things that are purely within the culture and the society of public safety and law enforcement. So professionally you suffer if you do that as well as legally. And that's the sort of thing we need to be doing more of is changing the culture as much as you can with a statute. Thank you. Dawn. I just want to agree that this question it infects our government it infects our justice system. It infects law enforcement which whimsifies ideas about the punishment piece that we were talking about for corrections to a moral aspect of people. Can you all please if you've been abused by a judge making of it. I'm using it against you. You can call me but your business has robbed you of your pension over time. You can't call if a policy is semantically raining you in like a red red line sort of policy keeping you from driving. It's a great variety of harms. And so it really is a system as you know that grew out of how do you capture people who are property and bring them back to their slave owners. It grew out of that and it has many of the trappings of catch and hold and punish. It's been interesting to see additions to that that are very community policing but it is built on a design of fairly targeted people based vulnerable people based punishment. And so I think in overhauling the system and really we have all the alternatives in the meantime for both the community whole and for the considered offender to make it up and make it better are critical as we transition into a different kind of system not being built on slavery. Thank you. Martine? So this is a question that has a few facets and it is fairly complex as well but I do want to give an example that hit very close to home for many of us who live here in Burlington. Last week a recent VHS graduate was shot and killed in Burlington. He was member of the new American community and the first person in his family to graduate from high school. He went on to college where he struggled. He wasn't given the support and the structure that he needed to be successful beyond school, beyond high school. And this is something that I've talked a lot about. We do a fairly good job with wraparound services from K to 12 and when students graduate from high school they are sort of left to their own devices. We don't have a systemized approach to how to help young people. That's something that we really need to look at and I know a lot of folks on this call tonight have talked about that but really a centralized collaborative approach to helping folks who are in our most vulnerable communities. In terms of policing we need massive police reform, bias training, de-escalation training. I believe that we need more women on police forces. They've been proven to be better at de-escalation than men. That's just a known fact. So, yeah, and again just making sure that we provide social services as well. Police have asked for social services as part of their work. They know that they need help so we need to provide that to them. And I'm going to have to leave after this question. I thank everyone so much for their time tonight and I look forward to seeing you all soon. Thank you very much. Earhard? Thanks for the question. My wife and I are the proud parents of two adult children, one of whom is a young African-American man who we have raised from infancy. And as a result of raising someone, raising our son as a white father of a young Black man, I think I bring a unique perspective for white folks to this conversation. I have seen racism directed at my son. I've seen microaggressions and I've seen that through his eyes and felt it felt it for someone whom I love unconditionally. My son is living out of state because Vermont is not as welcoming a state as we all might like. And one of the things that he's told me is that he feels much safer out of state than he does when he comes home to Burlington. And some of that has to do with the systemic racism that we must acknowledge that's spread throughout our society but also is in our police departments statewide. So all that said, I think I would agree with what others have said. We need anti-racism training at the academy and ongoing once officers are hired. We need to continue to look at our use of force policies. I want to continue to look at qualified immunity even though that the bill that was drafted this past year was rejected by the governor. We need to have more mental health workers that are working fine with police. Sorry. I missed the queue. Thank you. Thank you. Our last question for you all. It's been well documented that another area in which systemic racism exists is in the area of economic opportunities. Particularly the large racial wealth gap that exists because of past and present inequities in housing and land ownership. What steps to the steps excuse me. What steps should the state take to create more opportunities for BIPOC owned businesses and to create housing opportunities for BIPOC Vermonters. Phil. I'll give just a an example of what we have done although there's as everyone agrees I think there's a great deal that we haven't done. So the cannabis market the retail cannabis market is due to open in Vermont any time. So it may be a couple of more months before a store opens in the Burlington area but there are areas around the state that will see retail cannabis operations quite soon. In setting up that operation one of the things that we did was to make sure that BIPOC owned businesses had a couple of different legs up on that potentially extremely lucrative market. So in terms of getting a license that can be a barrier that the that the legislature can take down but to go further in terms of BIPOC land ownership and how little land ownership that group has we've tried to also encourage small growers to again those licenses favor BIPOC owned businesses. We also created a revolving loan fund for people who need the capital to start up one of these operations. So what makes that such an interesting market is that it's starting from scratch now. So hopefully we don't repeat the mistakes of the past. We put in place some opportunities for BIPOC owned businesses and in that way we don't just level the playing field but we go a little bit further and that I think is a model outside the cannabis industry for other industries in the state. Thank you. Dawn. As a verbal language practitioner I a pretty ugly slide of our state and it is targeted at people both of color and people who have disabilities as well as people who may be more vulnerable and that we need some light we need some light on that this this stuff so it needs to be named it needs to be shown up it needs to be held accountable what if we three time a river program ready to reach someone in front of the project again worried in an awful way they had a consequence that was big enough that it could be growing three time some group of people decided to realize about this business this is a moment of light of please actually show up and again again some sort of resource could be extracted from those who were not reaching people with dignity and to come listen to what happened for all of us like this system is not not has a side that is dealing with me systemically racist and you don't brand that way we will risk most to face that it is present it is in our community it is daily to me because it is not the way we want to be and so each of our leaders has a role in lifting this up to say we must be better we've got to be better and here is how I like in my career time thank you Eric thanks as you pointed out in the question there have been systemic systemic racism has basically created housing policies over decades that have discriminated against black indigenous and people of color I would again point to affordable housing as a way to help level the playing field and help BIPOC families and new Americans create wealth through home ownership the Shemplain housing trust and other nonprofits around the state are leading the way in helping folks who are both new Americans and African Americans and indigenous and other people of color get into home ownership I fought hard while I was working at the state house for many years to increase the state's affordable housing tax credit which has done a lot to increase home ownership throughout throughout Vermont and also especially mobile home ownership which is one of the opportunities that many lower income folks and folks on fixed incomes have used as a way to get into their own their own homes and away from rent out of rental housing I think we need to look at our fair housing law to make it make our fair housing laws more stringent and make it less difficult to prove discrimination discrimination in housing is still rampant in our state and that's another way that I think we can help folks BIPOC folks to have stable and affordable housing thank you thank you Tanya thank you so much we need to continue to make investments and grounds grants and revolving opportunities that are explicitly earmarked for BIPOC owned local businesses with the necessary technical supports to be able to access these funds we often don't talk about the soft skills that are often passed from generation to generation when you have access to wealth that simply are not given to people who are first time entering into these fields so we need to make sure that we provide that we need to take all the aspects of H414 the cannabis social equity bill that were left out of the cannabis legislation we passed and fully invest in these social equity programs and we need an equity screener for every piece of legislation that we work on we need to make deeper investments in BIPOC in first generation home ownership grants and revolving loans as housing equity is the place where Americans hold the vast majority of their wealth and policies like redlining have prevented BIPOC home ownership are a huge part of the reason that the average black family has the last time I checked one 13th the wealth of the average white family and the statistic has gotten worse in the last five years not better and we need to look at every one of our systems to make sure that we're bringing historically shut out voices into the conversation and listening to them when they tell us what they need one bill that I passed in the house this year H661 Act 117 sets up a task force comprised of people from that are underrepresented in the mental health field to tell us what would make the field more accessible and we need to listen to those voices that have been silenced and take the information they give us to strengthen and diversify all of our systems while working in partnership to break down barriers name and call out discriminatory behavior to make Vermont a more welcoming and safe place for all individuals. Thank you, Tanya and thank you all. Thank you so much for your preparation for your answers. We would like to offer each of you 30 seconds and 30 seconds only to make any closing remarks. We'll use the same a time card as before. Let's start with Dawn. And the best of us the best of Vermont and I write tirelessly to put us in the place of a culture that includes thank you all so that from birth to the end of our journey we are invested in so that we can run with it not in programs that take a job just to get the help we need when we need help not to allow harm to stand for so long and not for others. Thank you so much for your time and your attention and your life and your experiences and your hopes and dreams of Vermont for the rest of the day. Thank you. Earhart Thanks for the opportunity. I would ask for members that live in our district for your vote and your support on August 9th in the Democratic primary. I'm someone who has spent his entire career in public service. My experience is broad. It is deep. Housing is foundational and it touches on so many different areas so that I have touched many many policy areas besides in addition to housing. My experience at the state house so that I can hit the ground running when I get there in a time when we have so much turnover experience voices will be needed at the state house. Thank you. Tonya Thank you. I want us all to leave here tonight knowing that this is not a hopeless situation. There's incredible grass roots work happening all across the world and Vermont. Models that center people who are being harmed in a truly transformative way and it is now is the time to bravely fight for them. We've passed the point of sitting back and allowing the status quo to continue. I've shown in my time in the house that I will bravely stand up for systemic for systemic transformative change and I will do exactly the same as a senator for Chittenden Central. I will bring the kind of change that I know firsthand from my own experience and the work that I do that we simply must have right now. Thank you. Phil bring us on. Thanks everyone. I'm I'm very passionate about an issue we didn't get to talk about tonight and that is gun safety. I've been working on that for the last 10 years we've had a good deal of success but our gun laws are still unconscionably weak and we are seeing massacre after massacre around the country. We need to change our gun laws nationally but if Congress won't act we have to and if you send me back I recommit to making that happen. So thank you to Vermont Interfaith Action. I I respect and and I'm grateful for your work. Thank you. Thank you all. So hopefully this was a valuable forum both for our candidates and our attendees and if this has sparked more questions for you and you would like to reach out to the candidates we have asked each of them to provide ways in which they can be contacted and we will share that with you and put that in the video description of the recording of this event which we will post on our YouTube channel. You can find the link directly to the video on our website via vt.org Voting in this primary election will happen on or by Tuesday, August 9th. You can vote 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 on the Vermont Secretary of State's website. There you can set up your very own My Voter page at mvp.vermont.gov Candidates, thank you so much for your time this evening and thanks to you all for attending this forum sponsored by Vermont Interfaith Action. Make it a good rest of the evening.