 Well, thank you all for coming in. With the second oldest population in the nation, 45% of Brahmans are either retired or about to retire. As we know, many of them do so elsewhere. I'm sure each of us in this room have heard from people who tell us they just simply cannot afford to retire here in Vermont. Many of them leave the state, and those who stay are burdened with the increasing cost of living while on fixed incomes. They deserve, as much as anyone else, to live with the dignity of a retirement they earn through a lifetime of work. Part of what's made us so uncompetitive with other states is Vermont was only one of a handful of states to fully tax the federal tax proportion of Social Security benefits. In my budget address in January, I asked the legislature to join me in changing that. And I'm very pleased to be here today to report that together we did just that. Working with the legislature, AARP, and many others, we were able to eliminate the income tax on Social Security benefits for low and moderate income Vermonters. Mr. Sandsom will go into more detail shortly. But this new exemption saves about $37,000, low and moderate income Vermonters, about $5 million this year. And that will continue to grow. For folks on a fixed income, these savings each year will make a difference. But we have more work to do to seek tax relief and make Vermont more affordable for retirees and all Vermonters. I want to thank the administration Secretary Suzanne Young, Finance Commissioner Adam Gresham, and Commissioner Sandsom and their entire team for their hard work. I also want to thank the legislature, the House Ways and Means and Senate Finance Committees, for their work to strengthen my original proposal so we can implement a full exemption for some this year. And I'm pleased to have here today Senator McDonald and Senator Sussi, as well as representatives Ansel, Baser, McFawn, Sullivan, Turner, Wright, Meyers, and Shaw here today. Did I miss anyone? Great. And to AARP, we're pleased to have Greg Marshall on. Marshall Dunn and his colleagues here as well. Thank you for your support and for ensuring you understand the impact of this tax on your members. While we have much more work to do, this relief, coupled with the Working Family Taxpayer Protection Act, provided $30 million in income tax relief. Additionally, we ensure two consecutive years without raising a single tax or fee in the general fund and level property tax rates for residential payers. With that, we were able to take critical steps to helping Vermonters keep more of what they earn and move up the economic ladder. As we continue to work to make Vermont more affordable, grow the economy, and protect the most vulnerable, these steps help us move closer to each one of those goals. I'll now invite AARP State Director Greg Marshall Dunn to say a few words on behalf of AARP. Thank you, Greg. Thanks, Governor. Probably won't surprise you that no issue, federal or state, is more important to AARP than protecting the financial security of older Americans. And social security is a critical component in that financial safety net. Social security provides a basic foundation of income security for over 143,000 Vermont retirees and their families. Seven out of 10 Vermont social security beneficiaries rely on that money as a primary source of their income. Over the past year, we've heard from many older Vermonters who are struggling to make ends meet, and the income they get from social security is absolutely critical lifeline for them. While much of this work in this area has been done at the federal level, the practice of state taxing Vermonters and their benefits clearly needed to be addressed. When we launched an effort in a campaign here in the State House with our members across the state to ask them to contact the governor and their state legislators to let them know how strong they felt about this issue. While the session did last a little longer than I think most people thought it might, we did get it done. We're really happy to be here today to celebrate this accomplishment on behalf of the 37,000 or so low and moderate income Vermonters and retirees who are going to benefit from this new law. Vermont was really only one of a few states that saw tax social security benefits at the income threshold set by the federal government way back in 1984. When the median income of Vermonters was significantly lower, so as a result, the number of Vermonters paying taxes under social security benefits had more than doubled over the past 34 years. The measure fixes this outdated structure and boosts the household budgets for thousands of old Vermonters. Finally, I'd just like to thank Governor Scott and all the legislators that are involved in this. We met with Representative Wright and Representative Ansel many, many months ago and started talking about this issue at a time where I think a lot of people look around and see not a lot getting done in Washington, not a lot of bipartisan cooperation on important issues. It's a very exciting day at AARP and AARP members to see that happening here in Vermont. When we were thrilled to see Democrats and Republicans work together with the governor to get this done, we're really proud to be here today. Thank you. Thanks. Cost answer and commissioner of taxes and I just want to get into some of the details of how this exemption works and what it affects. And before that, I just do want to thank our members of my team that are here today, Andrew Stein, Doug Farnum, Lynette Kemp is here from our office and Deborah Carroll and all of them had a hand in designing this exemption and helping work with legislators and the administration to get this to fruition. Before we get too much into the exemption, it's important in Vermont and what was passed and the brutal impact is important to understand what Greg alluded to a little bit, which is how taxability of social security benefits works at the federal level and how prior to this year it worked in Vermont and only three other states that failed to provide any additional exemptions. But at the federal level, social security benefits depending on your income are taxed up to 85% of them are taxed down to zero depending on your income. But the thresholds to have it completely not taxed at the federal level are quite low, around $30,000 of combined income for married, finally, jointly. Vermont's always, again with those other three states, has always been linked in such a way that if it's taxable at the federal level or whatever portion of your social security benefits or taxable at the federal level flows through and became taxable in Vermont. That now changes because we've expanded that exemption quite a bit. So now the way it'll work is that that taxable portion comes through and goes through a Vermont-based calculation to see if all or some of it is additionally exempt from tax in Vermont. So what I hear a lot about as a CTA and being staying close to the tax preparer community are a lot of anecdotes and stories about the tax competitiveness and the advice that sometimes as faithful Vermonters, these preparers, pains them to give advice to think about moving or going to that second home and making that permanent residence out of state or even moving to a different state where the children are perhaps be closer to the kids and grandkids and to have one more factor in that decision be the fact that there are great tax advantages of doing that has not been good for Vermont as far as tax competitiveness. So along with other things that were in the Working Family Protection Act, this does assist in our tax competitiveness. As we've heard about 145,000 Vermonters receive Social Security benefits. 80,000 of those receive or pay some type of tax at the federal and state level on those Social Security benefits. So about 65,000 are already fully exempt due to the federal calculation. Of the 80,000 that are paying some tax at the federal and state level in Vermont, this will affect, you heard 37,000, almost 40,000 Vermonters or half of Vermonters that are paying Vermonting contacts will pay zero or a portion where we'll have the taxable portion of that be zero to some percentage. So maybe we'll get some benefit from this. Average benefit across that whole population of about 40,000 is $125. The benefit among those that are under the thresholds which I'll go into in a minute can be upwards of $400. And we ran a couple scenarios where folks, Vermont taxable income could go almost a half from like $1,200, not taxable income, sorry, that Vermont tax could go almost a half from about $1,200 to closer to $600 because taking full advantage of this additional exemption. So very generally, married filing joint filers with adjusted gross income, $60,000 or below will no longer pay or have any taxable Social Security income in the Vermont calculation. That benefit phases out for married filing joint between $60,000 and $70,000 proportionally. So if you're halfway in that phase out at $65,000, 50% of your federally taxed Social Security will be exempt in Vermont. So the benefit stretches all the way up to $70,000 for married filing jointly. And then for single filers, everyone under $45,000 of adjusted gross income in the Vermont will have no taxable Social Security included in the Vermont calculation. And then there's the phase out between 45 and 55. So anyone single with $55,000 of adjusted gross income or less and anyone married filing jointly with $70,000 income or less is likely gonna get some benefit from this proposal. And yeah, I just wanted to emphasize again that this is not just retired income. This also affects all recipients of Social Security which includes disability and survivor benefits. So as you can hear from those thresholds, I just mentioned in the populations that this really does help with tax competitiveness, but also it's an aggressive proposal that really helps Vermont's vulnerable populations and helps folks that are struggling on a fixed income to keep more money in their pocket. So that concludes my comments. And I think we'll open up for questions. Sure, maybe if we have questions about this subject first. Sweet. What do you expect the immediate impact is gonna be on the seniors? They're gonna be able to either save more, spend more. What's the biggest benefit? Yeah, well whatever they choose to do with their money, there'll be more money in their pocket every single month than before. And I think that is something that's long overdue, particularly with a vulnerable population. And again, just give some more money to do whatever they need to do to take care of themselves and their households. Why did it take so long to see the situation? Well, it's a good question. I've heard over the last few years about this inequality among states. I chose to move forward on it because I thought they need to be more competitive. We were seeing a number of people, I believe, leaving the state for tax reasons and this was one of the, we didn't need to give them another reason to do so. So just a fairness issue and to make us more competitive with our other states and across the nation. Was this one of the easier asks and easier paths to sort of bipartisanship that you saw this year? Well, it is good news. And when we have bipartisan support, I believe that in the end, because we have surplus money, we have more money coming in that this made it easier and this was the year to do it. So I am very appreciative of the support from a bipartisan standpoint to accomplish this. And I believe that, again, this will be beneficial for all of our moderators as well as those who just seek to retire here and we need to keep them here. If I heard you correctly, you said the work through the session made it better, made the proposal better. What improved? Well, we were going to phase it in over a three-year period. The work of the legislature made it better. They were able to do the accelerating that and do it in one year. So that was the improvement. I believe that was the improvement that was made. Ty, was there anything else? That's it. It's the same administration proposal. They were just, it's effective. It's important to know it's effective now. That's effective in 2018. So to the question of what does it mean for Vermonters, Social Security does not withhold state taxes for the states. So many folks that are there in these income ranges and are primarily there in kind of Social Security, if they have a tax liability or having to pay estimated taxes. So one thing I'm glad you asked the question I forgot to mention is that folks that are working with a tax preparer or do their own estimates, they can wait and potentially get a bigger refund next spring, but they can also look at the estimates that they've been paying before the estimates and perhaps in some cases skip the last quarterly estimate or reduce their quarterly estimates to see more money in their pockets immediately. This change is effective, or is effective for tax year 2018 and also securing reported as of January 118 through the year. And Greg, is there anything else you'd like to add in terms of what the benefit is for the retirees over the, they do with the money, the extra money? I think, you know, much of what you said, Gavin, right? I think, you know, what we're seeing is, you know, this money's gonna go back to the local economies. And so it's an extra two, three, four, five, $800 a year to some people that may not sound like a lot, but the folks living on a fixed income, that's a significant amount of money. And that money is not, you know, it's not gonna go anywhere else, but into the well, you know, somebody's gonna be able to go out to dinner at a local restaurant. They'll spend money in their local communities more. This money is gonna stay in Vermont to spend here. And as the governor said, people are gonna be able to do what they want with their own money. And we agree with the governor too. This was a pure issue of fairness. We didn't think this was fair at all. And I think that was recognized by both the legislature and the governor. I think it's one of the reasons why we're able to get to this job pretty quickly. If I recall correctly, you didn't actually sign the bill that this measure is contained. Correct. Is there any irony in you taking credit for it then? Well, listen, I don't think I took all the credit for it. I'm giving a lot of credit to the legislature. Couldn't do it alone, as you know. There's bipartisan support, which is important. But as you know, as I think most legislators would acknowledge, I thought the budget was good in a lot of ways. I disagreed with raising a tax in a year when we had a surplus. And that was the basic premise for my vetoing the bill on a couple of different occasions. But in the end, I believe that the meat of the budget itself had a lot of the proposals that I had initiated that we worked together on. So throughout all the drama, even though we had a lot of drama throughout the legislative session towards the end, again, I think that there's a lot of good that came out of it. And we need to acknowledge that. You proposed this social security adjustment. Has this been, and maybe this question for her, President Vancell, has this been discussed in past sessions? Has this been thought about in the year? Yeah, we started looking at it last year, actually. And with this, I think what really happened is the federal tax changes gave us an opportunity to restructure our income tax bill. And so we were thrilled when the administration came in with this proposal and included the social security exemption as well. So we've been looking at it for a couple of years and suddenly we have the opportunity to do it. That's great. Thank you. Any other questions? You're one of four governors that didn't sign the letter recommending the President's nominee for the Supreme Court. Were you asked to sign it in decline or were you not going to ask? This is the part where we're doing it. Is there any more to the answer? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because you're welcome to say this first. I'm just being here. Is there some representative of a non-partisan audience? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Pull it out of the line. Yeah. Yeah. Fire. That's fine. I'm sure you have a hard night. You're right. Clear the run. I'm sure you have a hard night. As I recall, I believe we were asked, that I was asked to sign on the letter from my standpoint as I said last night. I don't want to rubber stamp anyone. I don't know much about the nominee. I believe that there have been a letter asking for a fair and open hearing on the confirmation I would sign it. But to blindly rubber stamp someone that I don't know a lot about, I didn't think it would do great justice to anyone. So I decided not to sign on until I learned more. Senator Leahy is seeking, I guess, about a million documents from the nominee's time working in the White House. Is that something that you think should be reviewed? Well, again, I believe that this nominee should be created just like any other nominee, fully vetted. I believe that there should be those hearings and ask all those important questions. I mean, this is Supreme Court's significant. In many different ways, so I think we need to learn as much about the candidates as possible. And who asked you about the letter? Was it the White House or was it, you know, I get a GA or I can find that out, but I don't know at this point in time. I just don't recall. The Vice Chair of the Republican Party, the State Republican Party, put out a tweet basically criticizing him for not signing the letter. I won't ask you to comment on a tweet, but I will ask, you know, is there a distance between you and the party? And is that a concern to you going into the elections? Well, obviously, you know, I don't want to disagree with the party, but I have to do what I think is right for Vermont and for myself. And again, without knowing the nominee, without doing my homework and looking at the credentials and so forth, I just don't feel as though I can blindly rubbish the nominee of any sort. I don't believe, I'm not sure that anyone should do that, but they chose to go forward with the letter. Just to be clear, you're not saying you opposed the nominee, you're saying you haven't? I haven't said that, because yeah, I don't know much about the nominee. I haven't done much in terms of my homework and trying to research that, but I'm sure it will all come out in the Senate operation hearings. There are some reports out there that are changing your social media policy after taking some criticism for blocking users. Can you talk a little bit about that, why that's happening? Yeah, and I may have Rebecca come up and elaborate on that, but you know, we thought our policy was in terms of trying to keep as open as possible, but you know, I don't tolerate that incivility and disrespectfulness, and I believe that we have also an obligation to make sure that we keep it clean in some respects. When there's racial bias and there's inflammatory remarks made about different categories of people, I believe that we want to be welcoming and opening to all, but when there's that much discourse and really hateful discourse, we felt that it was an obligation to mute that in some way. So we took what the ECLU has suggested, we're trying to change the policy, we unblocked all of those that we blocked, and we're starting over from scratch with the policy that we feel is more in line with what the ECLU would like, but again, as you know, with some of your social media and some of your responses, sometimes you can't tolerate that and we've chose not to tolerate some of them. The ECLU is saying that some of the people that were blocked, according to their reviews, it wasn't just people that were making hateful remarks, it was somebody who was just, they were post your political stances. Rebecca, you answered some of that, because I didn't see them all. So I'm not sure, I don't think it's review, I think it's anecdotal, they have received some anecdotal. Our policy has been, it's been outlined on our page, and just to be really clear, comments have only been deleted when they violated the policy, and the policy is based strictly on vulgarity, language, hate speech, things of that nature, not local viewpoint whatsoever, and they've only been blocked when they repeated the violated that policy. What we took back from the ECLU was that our policy could be more specific in the language, and that's what we're working to fine tune right now, and given that we are going to be more specific, we thought we'll start from scratch again, but it has been exclusively focused, and I would challenge any of you to go to any posts, even prior to the ECLU letter, and find the single post without counter opinions towards the governor on it. So it was not based on that whatsoever, it was exclusive to comments towards, and really focusing on attacks to other folks. An example of a deleted comment would be telling a female commenter, a male commenter telling a female commenter to suck an expletive, telling a female commenter she was a whiny expletive, saying things like, why don't you expletive yourself before I make it easier for you to get expletive, expletive piece of expletive. These are the comments that we're deleting, and again, as the governor said, his page is a page for all the monitors of all ages, and everyone should be able to be comfortable coming to the page, expressing constructive criticism, expressing unconstructive criticism in a way that isn't going to be harmful to our kids, setting an example for our kids, or offending entire groups of people with racial, homophobic, so there's an interest in gender individuals, this is what we've been focused on. So we'll fine tune the language to improve and make it more clear as to what's being, what we're moderating, and we'll start from scratch from there. So Rebecca, how close are you to finalizing that policy, because it seems like people have been unblocked now, and... So we won't be moving forward, nobody will be reblocked until we put forward the new policy. So we're still finalizing what that would constitute, what the, and I think we talked about, part of it was procedural, how we were communicating with and documenting that was part of the ACLU's concern, so as we're still finalizing those procedures, so until we have those procedures finalized, we're gonna leave everybody as they are. We do use, and this is something offered by Facebook, where you can put in a preventive filter, and that automatically hides comments. That's still in place, that's something, that's a feature offered by Facebook, it's clearly content neutral because it's just the language used. So is it gonna be like a Wild West until you finish this? Minus the profanity filter. So we do have a profanity filter so that those really bolder terms will be hidden until then, but we're close, we're close. We wanna communicate with the ACLU before we finalize and put the copy forward. You're still free to comment. Was that filter on before? Yes, so that was a majority of, I would say, what was getting hidden through the filter. Oh, so it was automated? A lot of it, no, I wouldn't say all of it, but the attacks on people that may not have used a preferred, but were personal attacks on individual commenters would have been an example of something that might have been deleted that wouldn't have been picked up by the filter. You can set up an uncensored channel. Governor, does it make you uncomfortable knowing that some of these things have to be censored as you're trying to balance First Amendment rights and protections? Absolutely, but at the same time, I've conducted my life, my political life, my business life in trying to treat people with respect and civility. I believe we have an obligation to do so and be as open as possible, but set conditions in order to do that and I think we have to be better role models. I think we have a set of examples and we certainly want to do so with our kids and those who are supposed to be looking up to us. So we have an obligation to be better people. Governor, what is the point of being a lawsuit like that with Paige Mayn or Marilyn in Kentucky? Is that what you're assuming about Facebook? Well, again, you know, we want to avoid any lawsuit if we can and we want to be honored the First Amendment and I believe in the First Amendment. So we're willing to work with them to do whatever we can to be as open as possible, but again, to have certain conditions where we expect people to act appropriately. Governor, kind of out of the blue question as we're in the middle of summer, but towards the end of the- I'm not used to that. Towards the end of the school year, I've always saw school safety assessments, grant applications are being reviewed now. Is that a conversation you see carrying over into the new school year and maybe even the legislative session? Yeah, I don't believe this is over. I mean, these were fairly small grants. We believe that they'll make a difference, but as we move forward, our task force will make recommendations as well as to what we can do to protect our kids and to protect those in a community atmosphere and to address mental health issues and the underlying anger that exists and the violence that exists in our society. So I wouldn't be surprised if there was more requests for dollars to make sure that people are safer. Are there any particular disparities that the assessments found that you hope to see addressed? Yeah, I haven't looked through the assessments and to see exactly what the awards are going to be and I will do so, but I don't believe that there were any surprises from my standpoint. Governor, I really brought up the surplus. Do you expect to see any kinds of surplus next year? These that continue and why are we around? Well, stay tuned. We have an emergency board meeting tomorrow and we'll be unveiling that request. We have the economists that have been focusing on that and we'll have some news tomorrow, but suffice it to say, I think it's positive news where we're seeing surpluses. We saw an unprecedented surplus for the first time quite a while in terms of our state revenues and we hope to see that continue if we focus on the economy and grow this economy and make the right investments who will continue to see growth. Have you reviewed the consensus forecast yet? I have reviewed part of it. Some of it isn't quite out yet and they're still working on it. Are you and or your team preparing for any sort of turn back in the economy in both the next year? At this point in time, obviously we'll watch revenues on a monthly basis to be sure if we're on solid ground. It's important to me as a fiscal conservative to make sure that we're spending beyond our means and we'll continue to do so. That's why it was so important. To me, to have a growth rate calculation where we're developing a budget that didn't grow faster than the economy or wages, so we made sure that we were able to live within those means and we did that in the last couple of years without raising any tax and fees for the general fund. So I believe we'll continue to do so and we'll watch and to see. I mean, it's certainly volatile on a national level. I don't know what effect tariffs will have. I don't know what effect the lack of a lack of agreement will have and certainly that Canada being their largest trading partner, we're paying attention. So you'll be monitoring, but have you seen anything that you think you should be planning for in terms of planning that? I have not, but we'll wait and see what the economists have to say tomorrow. I think that will be important. A consensus forecast is very important. What did you take from the morning consult poll that showed that your favorability to drop substantially in the last few months and was more or less in line with what the BPR Vermont PBS poll showed? Yeah, I can't say that I was surprised. You know, I feel it on a daily basis when I'm out in the public to be perfectly blunt. I was more surprised when they thought I was the fourth most popular governor in the nation. I didn't feel I was up to that level at that point in time, but this is a correction. This is, again, I'm not going to govern by polls, but I understand the disappointment. I understand the anger that's out there, but I'm going to continue to do what I feel is right for the right reasons that will benefit from ours. Do you think it's basically because of the gun legislation or do you think there's any carryover from the budget vetoes and the two years of likely standouts? I could probably add a few things to that as well. I think for the most part, I believe that it has to do as much with the gun legislation as anything else, but certainly there are plenty of other opportunities where I may have disappointed or angered a few other people along the way, but I'm going to continue to do what I think is right. For the moment at least, according to morning console, Democrats like to be more the Republicans. Is that a weird position at the end? Well, it is, except we're in Vermont and there are more Democrats in Vermont than Republicans, so I've been competing in stock our raising for three decades almost, and I've had my share of disappointments. I've been leading races where I've been through some stage of the race have been involved in some sort of maybe controversy, but the career and you just beginning it. So I'm going to continue this race, this competition and we'll see what happens in a year or so. Does it matter to you, the party label who supports you or the majority matters? Well, no, I mean, I'm a fiscal conservative and I've said before, I'm not going to apologize for being a fiscal conservative, but I'm a moderate in many ways as well and for those in a Republican party that are much more conservative than I am and some don't appreciate my moderate tendencies. So again, I think in the end, they will see the benefit of my fiscal stance in so many, many different ways. I mean, having two years, all the things we accomplished is social security, removal of the social security tax is a big deal, lowering the income tax rates, it's a big deal, say $30 million. I mean, there's so many things that we've done that I believe will have an effect on the long term, on the economy and on the lot and focusing on those issues and workforce development and the demographics is something that we're going to continue to struggle with, but again, I think they'll appreciate that the vast majority will appreciate the efforts in that regard. Thank you very much for coming in, I appreciate it.