 from Mark McDonnell? Curious, let me say it. That's really buggy. Well, being a newbie, I'll start out, I guess. And this is pretty open. So however people would like to know, if you want to throw any questions, go for it. But I'll give you a little synopsis of what we're working on at the moment, what the first month has been like. And then maybe Mark, maybe Jay will add something. So I started just a month ago. It seems like it's Sundays. It seems like it was yesterday. And other times it seems like it was a year ago. But it's been quite a ride so far. I'm on the health care committee, which is a great committee. It has a good group of people, very diverse, probably very representative of the state house in general. And we've been working on some issues there that I can talk about. But there's probably five things I would say are the big items that I see. The two that we've dealt with already in some form are the minimum wage bill and paid family leave bill. Both of them were watered down a bit or scaled back from what the original proposals were. And not being an experienced legislator, I assume that that's what happens. You throw an idea out there. And then it gets beat to death and something emerges at the other end. But they've both passed the House and the Senate. The paid family leave bill was vetoed by the governor last week. And tomorrow in the House we'll be having a vote to override the veto. And it looks like it's going to be 100 to 50 or pretty close to that. So it's a very, very close call on the override. And this is the new guy and an independent. I've been experiencing my first taste of people twisting my arm and got called down to the governor's office to meet with one of his staffers who ended the discussion by saying, well, my boss is going to be really disappointed. Like, what can I say? I got appointed and you've got to go with what you got. But I do support that bill. I was a little bit on the fence in the original bill, which is a fairly large payroll tax that was going to be associated with that. The current bill has removed the leave for any personal illness you may have, but does cover family members or caring for a child for a period of time with some percentage of your pay. So I favored that part of it. And probably one of the main reasons I was supporting it, even though maybe Governor Scott thought I was a little more of a Republican, was that his driving message consistently has been we need to attract more young people to the state. And we need to keep the young people that we have. And this to me is a bill that hits those people directly and should be something that would be a plus as you're looking to potentially move to Vermont. So that was one of my main reasons for supporting it. The minimum wage bill is, again, one, as an economist. I was kind of hoping that the market would take care of these things, but it doesn't always work that way. We have a very tight labor market in Vermont, partly because we don't have a lot of young people stepping into these jobs. And you would hope that the wages would rise to sort of entice people to move here or to move into a new job or come from another state to commute. And that wasn't really happening fast enough. And I think the minimum wage bill is sort of their own little economic arena that seems to be something that affects the more rural areas more than clearly Burlington. People are probably not making minimum wage in many cases. So the bill, as it was approved, scales up the minimum wage a little bit faster than it might normally move up if you relied just on the inflation index that they've created. But it gets us to a $1,255 minimum wage in about a three-year period. It doesn't even kick in for another year, and then there's two steps. So I think it's a first pass. It's not the $15 minimum wage that everybody was looking for, but I believe it's a step in the right direction, and I am supporting that as well. I expect we'll be hearing about a veto and another overwrite vote coming soon on that. But the excitement will be tomorrow on the paid family leave. So those are the ones that have been percolating currently. Then we've got three others that are coming down the pike, have been worked on a lot. One of them is the cannabis tax and regulate, which has gotten a lot of attention. But a lot of the information that I've been receiving from constituents has been more against the whole legalization to start with. And I think you have to realize we've already done that, and now we have to figure out how to regulate the market. So I do favor, at least the last version. They've done some amendments, and I don't look at the most recent version of that. But that's one where we are trying to impose some regulation, create some tax revenue to commence support the rest of the government, and also support some drug education efforts. So it seems like a pretty reasonable bill, and looks like it has a fair amount of support from what I can tell, and what a few of my new lobbyist friends are telling me. I mean, it's amazing how fast people are your best friend. I want to figure out where you stand on things. The other two, one is a revamp of Act 250, which, if you've ever had to deal with Act 250, it's something that everybody seems to hate. I think it's a well-intentioned bill. It's, I think, coming up on, like, 50 years old, and does need a bit of a revamp. And I haven't delved into that too much. I'm going to a meeting tomorrow to learn more about it. I think it's trying to improve the governance of the process and also carve out some exemptions for areas that are already regulated, like downtown and other designated town areas, to not have them subject to the long, and tedious process of Act 250. I mean, you still need to protect development and make sure it's done in a sensible way. It's going to be complicated no matter what we end up with. And for those that have tried to go through it, it can be painful, I'm sure. The final one I'll mention is the Global Warming Solutions Act, which is a first step. There's, I guess, the way it's explained to me is that the legislature has set a lot of goals to reduce our emissions, to improve our environment, to stop global warming, which I do believe is something that's happening. We could debate that as a separate issue. But in terms of what you do about it, the state has set a bunch of lofty goals. None of them have been met. We're actually moving the wrong direction. So I think this is an effort to create a framework that has a little more teeth in it that allows citizens to hold the government accountable for doing the things that they say they need to do. The transportation system and other parts of the economy have to respond in some way. So that's just kind of kicked off. I don't know where it's going, how long it will be debated. It may not even be something that gets finalized this year. But it is a good discussion, and it's been an interesting way to learn more about the issues. I do have a daughter that's of an environmental activist, we'll say, and she keeps me honest on these issues. And so that's a good thing. So I will stop there for now. And maybe these guys want to say something. And I can talk about health care in a few minutes, if you like. Talking, and it had to do with what Peter was talking about. In global warming and the role that we've done a great job in this state in reducing our electric rates and making the electricity much more using less carbon. And we're falling down on the job when it comes to transportation. And the little graph that's going around there shows the number of verminers, the percentage of vehicles on the road that are fossil fuels, 92%. And earlier I mentioned that license plates about the EVs. I bought an EV in September. Didn't get the Vermont subsidy, but there were other subsidies. And there's been a lot of emphasis on EVs and switching over to electric vehicles for all the benefits of getting off carbon. 92% of the vehicles on the road burn gasoline. 7% are trucks and buses. And 92% are light cars and trucks. And we really have done zero on finding a way to help Vermonters use less gasoline on the road. I want to go back just a little bit on the politics of this. And I'm going to use the word Democrat and Republican, not in any way in shape or form about what's sort of going on today. But the Republicans for years were the ones that were more interested in clean water. They were more interested in clean air and they made some great advances. And they wanted to get off fossil fuels and they recommended a carbon tax decades ago. And it also made sense that we charge more for gasoline, people who drive less. And as things changed in our national elections, the fossil fuel companies began donating more money to those Republicans and Democrats if they wouldn't pass any horrible fossil fuel taxes. So the original carbon tax was tough on poor people, it's tough on rural people. And so the same people that had entered the new group of folks that wanted to keep using carbon and keep selling it, I call them the Koch Brothers gang, they tacked their own tax for being tough on poor people and tough on the countryside. So I've been trying to work with others on a way to give Vermonters an opportunity who have to buy used cars in particular to go to the used car lot and have a choice. Right now, rural people that don't have a lot of money, the thing that's rough on them today. They go to buy a car and the cars that are available are a lot of gas guzzlers. And it's not like they have any choice, they gotta buy them. So it's sort of like a hidden carbon tax today. And the bill that we're looking at divides the automobiles up into the gas guzzlers and the more, personally, it's more of a... Efficient. Efficient, yes. And it charges a fee for those who wanna drive a vehicle that has a lot of performance and goes fast and collect the money. And then it's used to reduce the purchase price of vehicles that are more efficient. See if that wouldn't give people the freedom to choose and be fair, because you didn't have to buy one. And if you did buy one, you would be beginning to put vehicles in the market in five years or so. Would it be available for folks with lower incomes and they work in the countryside? And then it would gradually phase in. This has been my operating number for this year in the legislature. This is 1,336 days and I kinda use this as my gauge when I think about global warming and what you can do. Does anybody know what this number represents? Day after Pearl Harbor until the Japanese surrendered. Less than four years. The bill that you mentioned, the climate globalization. Which is a great thing, you know, because it's gonna, if you pass it, it puts our feet on a fire. But two legislatures, two elections soon enough, it's gonna be a different bunch of people in the legislature and they didn't come in there. They didn't make the promise to do this. And if they're not meeting their goal, they can just pass a law that says, well, the goal was too aggressive and notwithstanding the law, the lawsuits don't count and start from scratch. So it fails to, it has the right spirit but it doesn't, it has its loopholes. When it came to clean up the lake, it was the federal government that said the lake had to be clean. And we, in Vermont and up here, couldn't pass a law saying disregard the federal government. Well, you know, it wasn't ourselves. I don't, does that make sense? The federal government sues you, we can't weasel out of it by changing the law and saying, we'll just go back for a few, okay. What's interesting about this, 336, imagine Pearl Harbor being back in December 8th of this year. Imagine it just happened. There was already an executive order on the 15th of January of 1942 to cease manufacturing all sedans and white trucks. Zero. And the manufacturers came in and said that was burdensome. So they put it off until February 2nd. And that was February 2nd, 1942. No automobiles, no light trucks were manufactured in the United States. And that went on for until October of 1945. So if there's something that you feel is a threat to the world, and our kids seem to think so, it can be done, but you have to do something. You have to do something more than just promising to do something. So we'll see what happens for this one. That's the one thing I'm working on. There were other people for questions. Jake. Thanks for coming, everybody. Thanks, working media for being here. Thank you to the library for putting this on and Peter for putting it together. Peter has been baptized by fire. So far. We've got a veto override tomorrow, which is something that only the Democrats have threatened in my time. But here we are, the eve of, and there's a lot of lobbying going on. So it's actually more stressful than you think. I'm Jay Hooper. I represent the five towns of Brookfield, Braintree, Randolph, Granville, and Roxbury. I serve on the Education Committee, which, let me tell you, is an education in itself. We're talking about five major categories, but mostly we've been spending our time discussing literacy because in Vermont, about 32% of students by fifth grade are not proficient leaders. That means our school system is failing those students and that's something that we desperately need to fix. So we're talking about a couple of bills to screen students in kindergarten and first grade for dyslexia. The difficulty on that topic is that there is discrepancy as to what the definition of dyslexia is. And so I'm not sure if the folks in this room have ever heard of the reading wars, but the reading wars are still alive. I'm still kind of trying to figure out what the political lines are of the reading wars, but basically there's this debate, my understanding is the debate is between whether or not classrooms are taking a balanced literacy approach, which is sort of the class moves together versus a structured literacy approach, which is more individualized and based on phonetic teaching, which is I think the way that students with dyslexia end up learning how to read, but there's certainly not a consensus on that topic and the testimony has been vast and stark. So universal pre-K is another topic we've been discussing, universal after school programs is something that the governor asked the legislature to figure out. Universal free lunch, there's another, there's a bill for making lunch for you to all students. And those are three pretty expensive concepts. So where we're gonna get the money to make all three of those things happen is unknown. And I think we have to figure out where our priorities are in terms of which one comes first. But I will say that today we had some bombshell testimony from representative Laura Sebelia, she sits next to you. She's from Dover. Dover, yep. Who grew up in a poor household and she was lucky to have a good public school that got her to where she is today, she succeeded, but she told us that it's a really rough world out there in Vermont and a lot of kids aren't as lucky as she was. So she got very emotional in her testimony and it was very compelling. She basically said now that we have the report back from the two UVM professors, the Rutgers professor and some personnel from the agency of education as to how we modernize the determinants of our funding formula, the weights, so W-E-I-G-H-T, that go into the formula. So initially there were four categories, there are still four categories, but they're kind of antiquated. They're not really necessarily based on, it was kind of an experiment. So the four categories are English language learners are considered more expensive to educate. Students who come from households in poverty. Let's see what I'm going to do. Two, a high school student is more expensive than an elementary school student and a preschooler. So these, and that's not an order, but the point is that there are metrics that go into how we equalize our per pupil spending in this state, which is it takes about 11 minutes to explain the basics. So the report, the good news is that the report came back with a whole bunch of data for why those four categories are out of date. They're sort of artifacts. Updating three of those categories, adding two categories and keeping two of the categories the same, if that makes sense. So I guess what I mean to say is that we have an opportunity here, hopefully starting this year to improve our education funding formula. So that is personally more equitable for students across districts and easier on taxpayers. Save money? Save money. Save the same amount of money yet? I don't know yet. So, yeah, thanks. Always gotta be honest. So, I don't know if Peter told you, well he gave you the rundown on the Climate Solutions Act. It's more of a government accountability bill than anything else. It gives you all the right to sue us if we don't sue us, I mean the state, sue the state government. That was personally. If we're not upholding our commitment to the timelines and the goals that we set forth, I mean what's the point in passing goals if we're not gonna follow them? And I think it's a good bill to move on and I think we have the political will up there to do so and the timelines are a little more rigorous than the ones set by Patsy's legislature and McDonald, which was I think by 2050 will be 90% renewable. I think we've shrunk that timeline to something like 2030. And some people think, is that gonna be possible? And I'm saying, well we better try and I think the chair, so the chair of the committee of jurisdiction today said that I think we can do it and we just have to work hard, we really gotta work at it. Among other things, we've got a marijuana tax and regulate bill coming up tomorrow, I did you mention that? I think that that one will generate some of the money that will need to do those things in education. I think though there will be debate as to where the taxes go and that'll probably be the bulk of the conversation tomorrow in turn on that topic. So without further ado, any questions? I'll add one more thing on the Climate Global Warming Solutions Act because we've heard today in the caucus the people behind us, it's seeing John reminded me of that that it's a big part of what they're trying to do is improve the resiliency aspect of the state and making sure that we can, knowing that these things are coming, do a better job of being prepared for them in addition to trying to reduce the causes of them. So that's to me a very positive thing regardless of what you think about global warming. And again, the specifics of it have not penned fleshed out a whole lot, but hopefully it'll put more focus on the resiliency planning and some of the things I know some of the groups here involved with have worked on. And that's not the only climate action that is being discussed in Montpellier. There's another bill that the transportation, some of the folks on the right side of the conversation are calling a carbon tax, which it is not. It does have the potential to increase the price of fuel. It's called TCI, which stands for Transportation Climate Initiative. It's a 12 for 13 state coalition that's trying to put together policy to basically create a cap and invest program as opposed to cap and trade. So a carbon tax as many of you are aware is basically an idea to create a marketplace for trading carbon credits, which I actually have personal, I'm kind of critical of because I think that that gives corporations the opportunity to purchase their right to pollute. And that's not really, that's a little counterintuitive. So cap and invest is basically where I think after a certain amount of, well, it basically puts on an additional tax of fuel that the money, the revenue from which would go towards investing in rural transportation systems that people can use alternative to drive. Is that the regional energy discussion that's going on? Basically. And right now there is no bill drafted. There's no policy on paper that we're pushing. But my understanding is, and correct me if I'm wrong, Senator, but Senator Tim Ash, the president pro tem is taking the lead on this issue. And you maybe have seen headlines or heard rhetoric from the governor's office regarding his position as to whether he would sign it or not. But the point is that if everybody in the region around us goes for it and we choose to opt out, then we're gonna end up paying the tax and not getting the benefits. Because Vermont imports all of our petroleum from through those states. So the tax would happen anyway. So it's sort of like, well, we gotta think about the implications of choosing to not be a part of that. So I think New Hampshire's governor, Sununu, has suggested that they're bailing on it, which is not great for the momentum of the conversation, but all indications suggest that he would he has plenty of opportunity to come back in. And I don't know how legitimate that is, if he is out or not. So. I have a question related to that. Yeah. We have had, and I'm not sure where it stands at the moment, but we have more land than some people south of us do. And corporations out of state, out of country are creating solar farms in different places. And I was really concerned about the one that was supposed to be placed up on Randolph Center. And the issue that I have with that is, I don't like Vermont to be used that way. Sure. And so if there was a regional plan that we all were together on, then if it was a benefit to everybody that land was being used here for that purpose, then that would be a whole another story. But I'm very concerned about that. And I want the legislature to discuss that and think about that and clarify that. Because as far as I know, a lot of people don't want big solar energy. I'm very much into solar. I have solar in my house and I have Tesla batteries in it. But I think it needs to be sized properly and it needs to, the benefits need to go to the community as well as to where else. Sure. Good question. I think the guy to take that one is sitting in my left. My match of resources committee, and that's a real problem that he, and I have solar panels, so right away I'm, I have a conflict of interest. But the solar panels and the net mirroring folks were the ones that were encouraged to put stuff up on the belief that it would work. And much to the surprise of most of us, including those who got solar panels or wind towers, it has worked. And now that it's worked, the corporations and the investors are trying to get in at the corner of the market and they do things in big ways. And they can produce the electricity, the renewable electricity at lower rates than I can on my solar panels. Although when it comes, they're rather the benefits that for monitors get from net mirroring, for example, any electricity it's made by net mirroring. Vermonters are charged for the national grids. It comes off the Vermont share paying for the renewable grid. And that's a small benefit, but it's a piece of it. So we're all gonna always gonna have the problem of when something catches on, rain mountain power is, for example, sells batteries now. And they're not regulated. So they're gonna want to sell batteries to capture electricity and then make a profit from that. Net mirroring people, you have a Tesla battery, right? At two? Two, 30 bucks a month each. And you, No, 15 each. 15 each, my apologies. So you can store electricity in your home and if the electricity goes out, supply yourself. And you're bringing out in power? Yes. So we're bringing power reserves to the right and that's part of the deal to go into your home around this time of night, right now and take that electricity out so that they don't have to purchase electricity from out of state during this peak part of the day. Today was a big day for coal being, we were bringing coal in the late afternoon. And some say it was cheaper than the grid was sending coal in from other states so that we didn't have to use our batteries and we could save them for after dark if more savings was available. I mean, it's like playing three-dimensional chess. John? Yeah, the other problem is that the land that is being used for this, for these arrays is land that produces much, traps a lot more carbon if the rays aren't there. And so, I mean, there are places where solar panels are terrific. Parking lots, roofs, things like that but not on forest or fields. You're correct. And when this thing was really boiling up here about the trees to be cut down for the former ranger project and under its new name now and on agricultural lands, there was not the ability to stop that in the legislature but I put an amendment on that said that this was new and hadn't been, in the event that land is taken for solar, for renewable energy projects, that the land that was used for solar energy projects, if it was prime ag land or land in current use, would remain, for the agricultural land, it would remain agricultural throughout the renewable energy project. And if 30 years from now they cut the number of panels in half because they're more efficient, that land would remain agricultural and it was a way to not allow solar panels just by being put there to turn it into industrial use. And then 30 years from now you find out suddenly, well, it's now eligible for development because it was changed 20 years earlier. So the farmers looked at that and one of the fellows from up north, I gave it to him over the weekend and he said he read it on Friday night, he read it again on Saturday and he came in on Monday and he says, by Jesus, I read it three times and I couldn't find anything wrong with it. And we passed it, and we passed it. So that doesn't solve the problem that you brought up. No, it certainly doesn't. But it does at least keep it from being gone forever. And that was doable at that time. It's gone for a crucial time when the planet is heating up, that's the problem. Yes. How can we avoid corporations to do that? How can we avoid that? How can we, the PUC just okay stuff? The PUCs obliged to follow the law and they were given certain authorities. In a couple of cases, we've been able to pull them back a little bit, but it's tough. They are appointed by the governor and they reflect the governor's thinking, and it's tough. So that's why I need a regional thinking about it instead of getting too aggressive about it right up front. Sure. John, any question? Sure, I got a few. Well, the first thing I'm bringing up is going back to the minimum, to the paid leave positions. I suppose that it, in my heart of hearts, I would love to see everybody be able to take off as needed and not be too penalized in the process. Of course, that's never happened in my working career, however, but I can see where there is a real advantage to doing that. Where I come in is this. I'm an old part, and I'm working at a $14 an hour job to just because I'm a retired age, and there's not much money in my hourly wage, and I don't wanna give part of it away to people having babies. I'm sorry, it's just my opinion. I want people to have babies. Why should I have to pay for them to have a baby? When we had babies in the day, we planned and script and saved, and you know what, they grew up. You know, they had clothes, they had food, and I'm just wondering about that, first of all. But I have other questions, too, so don't, let's not end there. Okay, okay. I also- Is that the curve ball and you're doing the fast ball now? You know, well, I don't know, it's kind of a slider, but the educational, all right, I had dyslexia. And before they invented it, you know, they didn't come up with the term until I was in, you know, probably, you know, I was well into my 20s, probably when they decided I had dyslexia. But I had learned with everybody else in the same class I was in. Now, I went to a parochial school and it was very tough. I didn't learn how to read, so I learned how to read, but it wasn't easy. I have to say it was not easy, but I can read and write. And I learned how to get over my problem. It wasn't defined as a problem, it was just defined as you're stupid or you're slow. Right. Okay, I totally do not want that to happen, but when we talk about a class of, say, 30 people, you know, four people in that class will probably have the same condition I did. And, you know, they didn't give me any special attention. They didn't tell me, you know, they didn't set me as part from the group of people. They just made me work harder. And I didn't know I was working harder, if that makes any sense. Are we spending tax dollars to make a dyslexic person an individual that's young a carve out here from the rest of the class? We are not at this time. No, there's not really an emphasis on that so that's what we're discussing is whether or not to pass a law to train teachers, to figure out how to detect that earlier, you know? And that would probably have a cost to it, but what that would look like is unsure. And I'm not just dodging your question, I'm just saying we don't know yet firstly whether that's a good idea, because this is, there's tremendous controversy. I mean, today at 3.30 we had two teachers come in and say, you can't do this. This is gonna be too difficult for us that we can't handle this, we can't. Like education is changing enough as it is right now. There are five major changes from act 46 to restructuring the agency of education. It's not necessarily something that we're gonna pursue right away, but the point is that we're trying to figure out. That's a good thing. That percentage of students who cannot read by the fifth grade is disturbing because there's a reason why our prisons are filled with people who are illiterate. There are reasons why people who grow up thinking that they're dumber than their classmates when they're not necessarily go and go turn to drugs. I knew that. Yeah, and you know what, first, before I go on, I commend you and Mark and Peter for your service. Thank you, even if I disagree with you. Thanks for putting up with people like me. But the other, and up there in Montreal. It's worse up there, believe me. The other thing is, I have real concerns about the TCI. In terms of the regulatory aspects of it that I've read about, maybe naive about some of it, but there's certain things that just doesn't smell right. When we have a regional operation going on, little old Vermont gets pushed to the side, back burner and charged more than we should be. And we're stepped on all over the place. And by the way, I live in a rural town, in a rural state on a dirt road. How does somebody in Connecticut understand my needs? Right. You know, and understand what I have to put up with to say, heat my home, go to work, et cetera. So I'm really concerned about like, somebody in New Jersey telling me I have to do something. I'm concerned now about people in Burlington telling us what we have to do. So anyway, this is where I'm sitting. If you could relax me on that. Well, I don't wanna talk all the questions back. We do make sure to put an emphasis on proportionality when it comes to people in rural places and people from lesser means. We do make sure that if we can apply a proportionality metric, then we will. But that, it's a very immature conversation at this time. So like I said about the other thing, we don't know yet. And so I'll be sure to keep you posted. You're getting good at this. On the end, on the end, I'm learning. Cover you for me. On the TCI, it's a form of carbon tax. Which is, it has the problems that carbon tax has. But the problem of passing a carbon tax in one state when the surrounding states don't have one, is that people cross the border to get there by their carbon. And the TCI, I think it was Benjamin Franklin that said we better all hang together because if we don't, we're gonna hang one at a time. So it's hanging together to do a carbon tax in which case each state gets a similar amount of money, depending on their sales, that any other state gets per person and the state gets to use it as it sees fit. Whereas in Vermont, they might give preference to people that were less affluent in rural areas and that's where we would spend our money. Whereas in Connecticut, they might spend it on public transportation for the city. So, that's not an endorsement of it. That's just to tell you what its benefits are and what its shortcomings are. I know it would be easier to have a national solution to this so we weren't getting these regional divides, but that's not gonna happen right away either. We're trying, I guess. I mean, we can't even get the results from Iowa. Yeah. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Do you think you'll actually have some legislation on TCI this year? It sounds like it's still way out there the way you guys are talking about it. That, um... Well, speak to her. Well, I'll tell you what. The feel from the House side of things is that the momentum is dwindling right now on that policy. But we're also sort of like, well, we'll see what Tim does, you know? And I don't know if it's the same over on the Senate side, but some of these seasoned politicians have a miraculous way of maneuvering at the last minute and figuring out and then just creating something. And then, you know, it's not to say that we don't vet the policy, we certainly will, you know? As you know, these bills have to go from one chamber to the other and then back and then to the governor. And if you beat, you know, there are a lot of checks and balances when it comes to this kind of thing, but I wouldn't give up hope if that's what you have. If it passes, it's vetoed, there won't be at all. I'm not a big fan of carbon taxing because I think it is a shell game in some cases. But, you know, I think everything's got to be on the table. You know, I think we've got to look at all solutions, all possible solutions. So I'm certainly not opposed to that. It just had sounded as though that it was far down the road and not even this year the way you were speaking about it. Well, I think the people who are at the table negotiating are the governor's personnel. So we don't know that much about it. I'll be happy to check in with them on a weekly basis and let you know, John, what is happening. But that's how many days, I guess it took to find a solution to military conflict. I think that the governor is taking this topic in earnest. And I think that he believes in climate change and that we need to act on more than one front. His favorite thing is cars, so electric vehicles jazz him up, but I think he's open to this. So I'll keep you posted on that. I've got another question. Go ahead. I just mentioned EV cars. There's not a lot of EV charging available in the state. Really, this seems to be almost nothing on the 89 corridor from a fast charging standpoint. Is the state trying to do anything about that? I mean, if we're serious about EV in the state, then we've got to put in the infrastructure to support it. I mean, we're not doing that right now. They've thrown some money at it, but it's not from what I can tell. And after what we went through with our three and trying to get some charging stations through the last round of grants, and they all ended up up in Whole Foods Parking Lot in Burlington that kind of is demoralizing. But I think they are trying to put a little money in there, but I agree it's not going to be an infrastructure that allows you to be very confident in driving around an electric vehicle, in my view. The Volkswagen was sued for cheating around there, and the settlement was millions of dollars. And last year, the transportation department took a big chunk of that money to begin to establish, put in charge extensions in an effort to start EVs. And they started a subsidy in early December for moderate income to get a check to subsidize the purchase of EVs. There was a piece of digger this morning that kind of saw out a loophole and that was being exploited by people who already had EVs that were going to trade them in quick and get another subsidy. And the transportation committee by noon has rewritten that rule, and then we'll see how long it takes them to cut that off. I bought an EV, the chair of the transfer, there's a member on transportation as an EV, that natural resources in the house has an EV. And there are, I'm worried about spending a lot of money to subsidize people that have EVs like myself, and then turning around next year and putting in a carbon tax after all of us don't have to pay one. That would work real good for the liberal Democrats. And that's me. So that's a worrisome thing. The biggest subsidies in the most come from our electric companies. I'm on Washington Electric, one of the most challenged electric utilities in the state of Vermont. It has only eight customers a month. The next one up for my electric has 14 customers a mile. And Washington Electric sent me a check for 1200 bucks for having bought an EV. Why are they doing that? Why are they doing that? And Vermont Electric sends out checks for 500 bucks for buying an EV. And are they being, is this a gift? Is this a philanthropic thing? Is this a, all the co-op members think it's great? And the answer is no, no, no. The reason they want more EVs to be owned by people in the Washington Electric co-op is because EVs gobble up electricity. And between midnight and four o'clock in the morning, from Washington Electric co-op doesn't have enough customers to gobble up their electricity. So it gets spilled out in the backyard like you were pouring milk, it couldn't sell. So every time they get a new EV and the EV in the district, they help you get a charger like we've not powered us, they ask you, they say, use this to charge your EV, but only use it between midnight and four o'clock in the morning. So suddenly they're able to sell that electricity to someone, which gives them a little more revenues, which means they could buy more of the cheap 24 hour a day power for everyone else, which brings the electric rates down. Hard to understand why. For my electric co-op has a worse problem. They have the same problem not being able to sell electricity from midnight to four o'clock in the morning because none of you are up enough watching television and doing your laundry those hours. But they make so much renewable power that they can't get it out of town. There's a traffic jam, so it sits there in town and more milk is spilled and it goes to waste. And we're trying to convince them that they should be given larger subsidies because there's a lot of electricity to be used by electric vehicles that would help all the rest of the ratepayers lower their rates. They're not convinced yet, but they're different. They're a different socioeconomic group and they're kind of not eager to send money to a lot of people that own electric vehicles, even if you can do it to fleece the electric vehicle for your own benefit, which is what utilities are doing. So that's gonna grow electric vehicles more than state money to be used for anything other than the chargers. Dylan, you wanna go first or something? Well, I was wondering, given that the power that runs the EVs comes from somewhere on that, as an inherent carbon footprint, to what extent is public transportation part of the climate solutions conversation in multiple years? To what extent is public transportation part of the climate solutions discussion in my play? That's one of the main things that you can implement to reduce the carbon footprint for us to do in this time. Did you see that little chart that went around with the graph? Yeah, it's over there. It's okay. Well, if you look there, you'll see that 7% of the electricity, excuse me, of the vehicles, 7% is trucks and buses, and 52% is, 92% is cars and trucks. They're experimenting with a couple electric buses down in Rutland. And I'm sorry, guys, I just keep going. Oh, good. The question is, if you have an electric bus in Rutland, how do you get people to ride it? And why would you want them to ride it? And we were, I think I was arguing with Sam the other night, maybe if you use the electric bus 10 times and you get your ticket punched, you'll get to go a certificate for $5 worth of groceries or $3 worth of gasoline because every time you use the electric vehicle, you're not driving your car. And the goal is to get people not driving their cars to save cars. How do you get them not to drive their car and get off, you know? Hard thing to do more for sure. Yeah, so my question for each of you would be on a scale, and I've got a follow-up question just so I want the mic back, please. On a scale of one to 10, what's the severity of climate action now? 10 being the most severe, one being lowest priority? You mean like as to the political will in the building? No, just as an issue for us as humanity. You mean like so our personal opinions on that? Sure, urgency. And 11, is that on the scale? Yeah, you can take 11. Okay. This is not pitched against any other issue. This is just one of the top issues. The Global Solutions Warming Act provides lawsuits and probably isn't going to get any definite legislation that you have to do something for two or three years. Okay, I'm going to restate the question. On a scale of one to 10, how severe is climate change? Oh, well, that depends on... whether you believe that the oceans are going to get higher and refugees are going to move and we're going to have more roads washed out. And it's going to dance now. So I don't know. To me, it's my number one priority. Thank you. Okay, so. I give it a 10, but the response is about a two right now. Okay. So yeah, we're saying the same thing. Yeah, we're saying the same thing. The reason for my question is, is we know that climate change is a serious issue. We know that the science is there. It is a fact. We've been denying it for a long time and now we have to move faster on it than ever before. We've now rolled out new goals to make climate action accelerated, a better number than 2050, 2030. We're saying, Jay is talking about how, you know, maybe they're too lofty, but we got to try for them. The point of my statement is, when we're talking about incentivizing and de-centivizing the use of carbon, when we're talking about a collective carbon tax, when we're talking about solar panels and whether somebody's getting rich off of them or not, we're talking about whether Vermont is being used to help the Connecticut millionaires become net zero. At the end of the day, I think the facts are the facts. Like it's as severe as it can be, so we have no choice but to do everything. And so that's just my only point in terms of like, let's not sell this issue too short just because we want to keep a piece of ag land that isn't being at, you know, and I understand the argument with the Ranger Solar Project, but I'm just playing devil's advocate here to the point that this is something serious and we can't be too selfish as to not wanting to change our day-to-day lives and the way we do things when in fact it matters, everybody's gonna have to change. Well, I think your impatience is well-founded and we appreciate that. But let me just add to your statement, we're also not considering another whole aspect of the conversation and that is preparation for what will come in terms of weather and sort of the fallout as to the impact of what we haven't done. So I think that, I hear you, I hear you. The concern I have with that and I agree completely is, and I do, I guess I, again, sort of with the TCI thing, it's like we need a little more of a national approach to this and I'd hate to see Vermont be the one that sacrifices everything to do everything that we can and end up surrounded by people that I don't care. And so we're doing the right thing but we're suffering relative to everyone else in the short term, I mean in the long term, clearly a much bigger problem. Yeah, thank you. We're getting back to the chart that you circulated with the 92%. I'm wondering, embedded in that 92%, what data have you or others collected other than the financial aspect of it? What are the variables that play in terms of why people are reluctant to go the EV route? And what strategies are you or others coming up with that can address those other concerns that people have about moving to EVs? People are, I'll just pass this around. This just shows the gas mileage that vehicles get in Vermont. Vermont alone and the most popular one gets 28 miles to the gallon, that's the middle, that's the middle. So that's the data, that's what vehicles get. And I'm sorry, you're... Robert. No, we have a question. No, my question is... No, my question is the implication of that chart or the implication of the chart is that there's a whole lot of potential out there for expanding the EV market in Vermont beyond advertising or license plates. So, aside from the cost element in terms of I'm an individual, let's say I drive a petrol car, something is preventing me from moving into the EV world. Aside from cars, what are those other things that are preventing me? And what can be done in your opinion to address those things? Someone asked me what it's like with my EV. It's sort of like we're having a set of crutches for the first time and try to ask yourself how far can you get away from the house and still make it home again on your crutches? And it's a... Psychological. Pardon? Psychological. Yeah, psychological. So if EVs are going to become popular, they're gonna usually be in households that have three or four cars. That's where they should start. Anybody that has three cars in their household that doesn't really consider an EV is probably missing an opportunity because for short trips daily, wow, you can't beat it. It's cheap, it's efficient, and you have to worry about speeding tickets because they go like the blazes. But that's a vehicle you might use. And then if you're going on vacation, down in New York City and taking the family, you might take a vehicle that you didn't use every day because you have a pickup truck. You don't want to plow on it. You use it when it snows, you use it when you can't get to town for other things, but 16 miles a gallon, you don't try to. That's where it starts. And the more of those vehicles that are... What you have on the road, the more charging stations you get and the more the neighbors go, hey, so in fact, he drives a little fast, you know, it's a pretty handy vehicle. And it costs a lot less to operate. Don't you think in Vermont, they also have to be more electric vehicles that can really work in the back, muddy, muddy road. You have to have ground clearance, you have to have all-wheel drive. Tesla all-wheel drive, plus if you can hit a button and they go up high to get over the month season, they go down, but most people can't afford those. That's how it's going to expand. Once they begin to... Once the charging stations come up and people feel more comfortable, they'll buy more. In the meantime, 92% of the folks are stuck with no way to reduce their carbon use and poor country cars. At the used car markets, where, you know, four out of every five or three out of every four cars are sold in Vermont, at those used car markets, poor people don't have a choice. They get the hand-me-downs. And if you don't change the new car and purchase it, those people, it's worse than having a carbon tax. Everybody else doesn't have it, just you have it. You've got to pay more for your gas guzzler because that's what's on the lot. Two have to work. Pass on through EVs while you're getting off but reducing your gas guzzlers. I'm curious, with regards to climate change, is there any discussion in the legislature about what the impacts of climate change will be like for small businesses throughout the state and throughout the country? Because that's rarely ever discussed and the reality is, even if we're not suffering here, capital's going to dry up. If the rest of the United States is suffering from climate change like Florida, capital, the availability of credit is going to dry up which is going to impact small businesses across the country. Insurance rates are going to skyrocket and may be unavailable to businesses. I don't see those kind of things discussed. Climate change isn't just floods and migration. It's a main street issue because without credit, small businesses disappear. Without insurance, people lose their businesses and all of that's going to happen. So, is that discussed at all in the legislature? Is there any view of what the impacts are going to be on the business world which is, we're all dependent upon that? Yeah, well, that's the proverbial elephant in the room. The conversation is not being had, you're right. The impact of climate change, disaster relief, emergency resource management, these conversations are not taking place. They are between the seven progressives in the Ethan Allen room once or twice a week, but it's not a conversation that we're engaging in as a group, as a whole. If you think taxes are high now, right, ten years from now, I imagine what taxes are going to be like when we have to address people. When we struggle to keep the grid online. Speaking of the grid, people may not realize the impact we've already had here in the Randolph area. November of last year and November of the year before, large parts of East Randolph lost power for two days and five days. There's been flooding on Route 14 with a lot of erosion the last couple of years. It's real now, and I'm not sure people understand the impacts that are taking place already here. And that was relatively minor compared to the major weather events of 2011. Right. I've lived there for 30 years, it's always been that way. Oh, really? East Randolph, South Randolph Valley? Oh, yeah. It's always flooded. Well, so, thank you. Oh, just for like, Laugers are in there for 30 plus years. Yeah. Route 14 is always flooded. Many laugers are, you're correct. Yeah. But many laugers are not in the woods this winter because the ground hasn't frozen and they're afraid to tear stuff up. To answer your question, it's been estimated that if all the world cooperated on dealing with climate was able to do something, it would be 4.5% of every country's gross domestic product. 4.5%, that's what it would cost. And so we looked up what the United States did during World War II. We spent not 4.5% but 40% of the gross domestic product to tackle the war. We did it in four years. 40%. So, yeah, taxes are high, I miss that. The next thing, if there's something that needs to be done, people do it. But many people haven't felt the sense of urgency in the way that the younger folks have. And old geezers like myself would like to see it started before I'm dead. Rest, everyone else seems to have a little time in the room. We solved all your issues. I think there's someone about healthcare. I can tell you a little bit about healthcare for a long time. Yeah, it's just saying as if you can talk a little bit about it. So the healthcare committee has been pretty busy. We haven't tackled too many bills yet, but we've been looking at a lot of issues and taking a lot of testimony. The one that I've been most interested in has been last year. Actually, Ben Jickling was one of the prime movers on this, was getting a rural healthcare task force put together to take a six-night-month look at the facing rural healthcare, which affects us here at Gifford and all around. And we just received some of that feedback in the last couple of weeks. And there's a couple of major issues. One of them is a big push towards using technology telehealth to connect medical professionals that may not be right next door to you and to kind of broaden the scope of what a small hospital might be able to do to reach specialists without making people travel 50 miles to go down to Dartmouth or go up to UVM. So we've got a little more testimony on that tomorrow, actually, and it's been a very interesting topic. But the other bigger problem for rural healthcare has been the workforce problem. We're short, at least 70 or 80 primary care physicians in the state already. And as we see here in town, the old-time physicians are all retiring and they're being forced to kind of hang on a couple more years just to get us through. And I was talking to one of my colleagues on the healthcare committee whose father was a small town doctor up in Waterville and he retired a couple of years ago and they're never gonna have a doctor in that town again. So we're looking at ways of trying to bring more primary care physicians into the state or keep the ones that we have, offer some incentives at the UVM medical school. They graduate 100 doctors a year, five of them go into primary care and most of them don't stay in the state because then you have the, what are you gonna pay? We heard an interesting stat the other day about the split of primary care versus specialists in our country. It's about 25% primary care and 75% specialists and in most other countries in the world it's exactly the other way around. And so one idea is to basically offer, I mean there's debt reimbursement kind of schemes and that sort of thing, but one of the ideas we're keeping around is just a straight up full scholarship that anybody that wants to come to UVM medical school be commit to being a primary care physician in the state for some period of time, maybe five years after graduation and hopefully that will one, supply us a little bit of new resource and also hopefully those people might stick around but the economics around being a primary care physician are pretty dire when you look at being able to make five or 10 times as much money if it's just money, but when you have a $400,000 student debt bill to deal with you're looking for a way to pay that. So, and it's not just the primary care physicians that goes down to the physician assistants, the nurses, the whole array. I mean you see it in paper every week there's five ads for various healthcare organizations looking to pay bonuses and things like that. So it's a challenge and I don't think we have any exact answers. We've actually had a couple of people from Gifford come and testify for us so it's been interesting to see the hometown doctors come but that's one of the big things that we'll be working on and I think we're trying to get a bill through that we'll start to address some of that. Yeah. Isn't it also an issue, a federal issue of what Medicare will pay and the rates that they pay for primary care and they really need to raise them and they haven't. Well, that's an issue for sure and I think that affects, might affect the hospitals more than it affects the actual doctors but Medicare actually pays more than. They're not just paying the doctors. Right. They'll get more red money. The problem is probably a little more with Medicaid than Medicare because the rates there are much lower and if you look at many of our rural areas there's a big population of people that are on Medicaid in all ages. So it would be nice. That's again, a little bit of a national thing. I think Vermont has actually done a pretty good job with the structure we have under one care and having an accountable care organization and actually getting a little bit of more payment out of those services but it's still a small step forward. The other thing we're looking at is prescription price, the prescription drugs and how that market works and trying to find a way to, if anything, at least slow the growth of prescription drug prices. It's just shocking. We were looking at some statistics today. The one that this was the most painful statistic I've seen in the month I've been there but we were looking at the cost of your regular prescription drugs that you might take for a statin or something like that that are have been pretty flat over the last several years. The growth is in very specialized medicines. One of them that we talked about was Humero which you see advertised a lot and it's used for inflammatory diseases and it's a great medication but the company that makes that drug spent $500 million last year on television advertising for that drug and it's outrageous. You see the ads, you can't avoid them. It used to be that they were not allowed to. So it's sort of like allowing people to donate to political campaigns. Once you open the door, it goes crazy. So we're talking about there are other ways we can import drugs from Canada and maybe take advantage of the lower prices there but I'm not sure they have the resources in Canada to supply the drugs we need. So there's a few initiatives there but that is really a battle of just maintaining where we are. Major reductions are gonna be a serious challenge and I look at the number of lobbyists we have floating around our committee room and I see why they're there. They've done a job to do and it's to protect their customers. I'm a nurse practitioner. I've been one since 1974. Glad you're still here. And I just have seen a patient now. I've kind of, I'm saying I'm retired with the question marks like this. And for me to continue to work, I made decisions to stop working last summer. But there are people like me around who can do stuff but we have costs related to that. So right now I'm good till 21 in my certifications, in my licensing, my DEA license costs $800. So I'm trying to, for me to continue, I'm not gonna renew it next time around. And so, and one thing that I hope you'll learn, you'll be learning that Gifford right now runs with the nurse practitioners. There are no, there's one full-time physician in primary care. I don't think I've ever seen a physician there. So there's one full-time, Ken Boyd. And the other ones are once a week, two times a week, something like that. So think about other providers, you gotta remember that and don't create obstacles for them in their caring. I've seen the whole gamut since 74 with a classified. So I've seen things change over the years. No, the mid-level providers are the core course of the healthcare system. And we sometimes don't like to be called mid-levels. Right, well. Because we have another kind of service that we do, but we tend to do primary care for sure. So I see the future in that direction. And so, but you should be able to do something with semi-retired people or even retired people in terms of helping them help you. That's a good point, I can even. Because I'm here, but I'm not ready to, I don't wanna go working full-time. But we should be using your talents. But you can certainly use, you know, I can guide you or I can tell you my feelings about stuff. I could for you specifically. Well, the other related problem is that it's very hard to find nurses and professionals that can get the teaching level where they can teach other nurses. And I've done that plenty, but you know, I've precepted medical students, you know, and nurse practitioners, and I taught diploma school as a nursing. So, you know, I've done that all. Well, and we've heard from some nurse educators, why should I go through two more years of training to become a nurse educator to then take a 50% cut and pay? Yeah, that's true. It's a tough one. So there are people around. You just, somehow they haven't been helped to kind of stay in there longer or made use of their talents. I'm sort of pushing young people away by not making Vermont more affordable. For people who want to live here, who want to start businesses. I mean, if we're talking about acting more for payroll, for paid family leave, I don't think pushing people away. People would invest in our local economies. Well, I think on the paid family leave, you could see both sides. One is, yeah, it's an additional payroll tax. It's relatively small, but. But still something we're all struggling. Right, and the argument that I've heard from several people is, well, it's just the wedge and the door, and then next year when you figure out we can't afford it, we're just gonna make it, you know, a little bit bigger and a little bit bigger, and then you're going down that road. But I look at it from the other perspective of if you're looking to come here and you're a younger person, you're thinking about a family, both people are working, it's like, is there an opportunity to take advantage of a paid family leave? If we do have kids or if our parents need help, I'd like to see that that would be an inducement rather than a negative. Well, I make it mandatory, make it optional. I think if it was optional, it would never work. I don't think you'd ever get to critical amounts. For some employers, if they have the means of doing it, don't they? Well, I mean. Somebody like Bob's M&M, he has bottle carts, he has gas, folks. How's he gonna be able to afford that? And then he's gonna hire somebody else to take the place. No, I mean. Because people are on a paid family leave, how's he gonna survive? That's a real small business and we end up. Well, I think aren't the small businesses exempt like that? I don't know enough, but I don't think anybody's. Nobody is exempt necessarily. So what Bob has the luxury of choosing is whether or not he pays the bill or if he puts it on his employees. So for somebody who makes $50,000 a year at the end of the year, the cost to them will be something around $100. So it's pretty small and they're afforded the benefit of taking 12 weeks of leave. But then Bob has to hire somebody to take that place. What does he do now when he lets someone take a family leave? Does he have to hire somebody? I don't know, sooner or later, he's still got to run the business. He's still got to cap bottles, he's still got to. Right, right, he has to go buy something. You have to shut down because you got to hire somebody to take that place. The service has to be done. But he's not paying for the leave part. The state is paying for that. So the person on leave is getting covered. But then he has to hire somebody. Yeah, he has to hire somebody else, but that's a problem no matter what. Hopefully that person will come back eventually and not just disappear. Disappear? Disappear? Does the paid family leave feel guarantee if you're out there coming back? Like a business? I don't believe it does, no. But I'll check into that on the hunt for it. I don't know enough about it. That's a good question. That's a good question. He's a business person, he's still got to provide the services that they have. No, and you'd like to think that, I mean a lot of businesses, they get a little bigger, provide some of those benefits as part of the package to attract people. So you're getting down to the smaller business, might be three or four people. I mean one of my colleagues on the healthcare committee, she with her husband runs a flower shop in essence. And they have people that go out, they try to keep paying them even though they're out sick or they're out, I mean it's just sort of because they're a family, and that gets kind of tough as well. It's like we can do this for a week or two weeks, but we can't do this forever. So a lot of those businesses have favored the ability to have someone be able to go out and know that they're covered. I think that the job is secure. I mean that's kind of the idea, right? That you get to leave and come back. But I'm not sure. I think that's the, yeah. I don't think it's true. It's a statement. I think that's what we're trying to change here. But I'll follow up with you on that one. You're just gonna think about how it impacts as people are investing in small businesses. Yeah. It's real money, and even if someone's getting $12 an hour, they're not making $50,000, that part of that one's pretty sure. No, right. Yeah, you're right. It's all real, real money. It's hard enough to meet that $50, and if you're gonna start taking more out, we just gotta figure out the implications of that to everybody. Well, you know, from my perspective with the PID Lead Bill is it brings a level of control and security to the workforce situation. So as a business owner, Vermont is at full employment, period. Can't help it. We need to find ways, great point, Peter, to attract people to come to Vermont. And this is just one way to, A, attract people to come to Vermont, but also for me as a business owner who may suffer, or a lot of other businesses in Vermont suffer from turnover in their workforce, and the statistics on women after they've had a child who do not return to their job is astronomical. And so that comes to me from being able to scale, borrow money, invest in other workers. If I don't know that my team lead or my manager is gonna be able to come back. It's the conversation around family we've needs to be seen as this is a great opportunity to create some security in our workforce development system here in Vermont. Well, one of the points we had too, if you want to retain quality people, we're gonna offer more pay. We're gonna give them quality of lifestyle. We don't need to state honestly how to do it. They'd like to think the market would take care of these things. It doesn't always get there. That's the same with what we're having today. I think one of the points that really convinced me on this paid family leave was one of my other colleagues pointed out, this is an issue that disproportionately affects women, women are the ones that take care of the kids. Generally the ones that take care of the aging parent, the relative, and I guess it's a small step forward to maybe level the playing field a little bit. I think when a lot of people think about where they wanna move and settle young people, they think about how good is the school system and can I have a family and comfortably and raise a family? And I think the hope is that this will improve our demographics issue as well. My question is about the largest government workers, state, teachers, municipal, that's the largest single employer in the entire state. They're already covered under this. You have a pool with guaranteed pay, why not build upon that as a volunteering let? You can sign up for that program. Anyone can sign up for that program as the governor has proposed, as opposed to forcing it on law. One can sign up for the program that the majority of workers in this state, the largest employers already participated. Build on that, it's more secure. It has the benefits of a pool of workers that can garner better deals, that's all. I agree, it should be something to suffer. I benefit from it, my wife benefits from it, you should be able to sign up and benefit from it. And so let's do that as opposed to force Bob to join something that he doesn't know what it's gonna be. We none of us know what it's gonna be. There's a lot of uncertainty I think, and we don't know, so we're hearing this, that it's being handed down, it's coming, nobody knows. And to us it sounds like another tax to the regulation state government. Some of us are a little overwhelmed by it right now. We're just trying to raise our families where we're from, does it cost to it? It's real. I guess maybe I'll be sick tomorrow. No. I notice when I get the broadband questions we used to get. Because now that EC fiber is building out and people have a world-class broadband to take advantage of, EC fiber territory is getting young people that won't go to Corinth and won't go to places that don't have broadband. That was an investment that we made locally because we were fortunate enough to have no broadband to speak of and we were able to invest in communities and get good take-up. And today this community isn't talking about how to, the need for broadband to bring young people to many places in the rest of the state where broadband is an evil, tougher thing than family leave. I go to Vermont and many places I can get broadband. It was kind of ironic that it sounded like part of that Iowa caucus reporting thing was due to the fact that they didn't sell services on the places they were trying to report from. So it happens everywhere. The new people that leave rural Vermont to go to Burlington. And we have people that leave the cities to come to rural Vermont where they have broadband. Rural areas of the United States are losing young people at an extraordinary rate which is devastating rural communities throughout the United States. And Vermont, for all our troubles, we're holding our own. We're not getting the ones we need but we're not losing a lot more than we're getting. I think everything we do to get young people to feel our schools are good. You can do business at a broadband. You can take family leave. Teachers and professors and people that get 60, $70,000 a year, their employers find a way to get them through the family leave issues. They can flex time and their valuable employees but the average person who's working an unskilled job is just treated differently when it comes to family racing. It's a tough call. It's a tough call. And that most of them were, and was growing in retirement age and not in young age. It's definitely growing in older, like that. So I haven't heard that we are getting young people or even I think they're losing them. It's marginal. It isn't a mass exodus. Slow trick. One of the dilemmas when we're thinking about this as individuals is we all know the people that are leaving. There are neighbors' kids, there are Johnny and the kid you used to deliver the newspapers. When they leave, we know them and our heart's empty. When someone else comes in and you don't know them, your heart's still empty for the ones that left but statistically, we're not doing bad but young people coming in. And compared to the rest of rural America, we're doing very, very well. We're the most rural state in the union by the federal definition, which is the number of people that live in municipalities of less than so many people. We're the most rural state in the union. Chippin County's the only place that isn't rural. And we're holding our own and I'm trying our best to get young people to come. Mostly they're college kids that stay. They're summer people that stay. They're people that drift through and stay. They come to visit their friends and they stay. Then we lose others that go out to find out what the rest of the world is like. But I'd much rather be us than Ohio, like Kentucky, Tennessee, Kansas, Missouri, and all those states that are losing people and boarding up their buildings. I think it is very helpful with the broadband. That's a good issue. And there are parts of the state that don't have it yet. And they're in their struggle. We're lucky we didn't have any, which made it easier for us to get it. One of those weird circumstances. No questions? No, thank you all for me. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.