 Well, hello again. My name is Guy Page. I'm the host of Vermont State House Headliners. This is our second show. They say that anytime you get asked back after the first show, it's a good thing. Well, we're glad we're back. Really appreciate the good work being done by Zach Zorn and everyone else at Onion River Community Media. Our show today, like last week's, will deal with new legislation introduced into the Vermont legislature. You can find this for yourselves at the legislature's website. It's www.legislature.vermont.gov. So new bills include transforming prisons into mental health clinics, letting transgender students self-identify in our public and independent schools, make election day a school holiday, decriminalize a narcotic drug, one in particular, tax and regulate retail marijuana, ban eminent domain for natural gas pipeline location, letting the governor appoint the National Guard Adjutant General, and training hotel and restaurant staff to spot human trafficking. Now we'll take it by topic. The first one, education. H185 would give transgender students access to gender segregated school programs, activities, and facilities consistent with the individual's gender identity. Chief sponsor of this is Representative Brian Cena from Burlington. As it says in the language in the bill, a student enrolled in a Vermont public or independent school that I believe would include all religious schools, independent schools, shall be permitted to participate in gender segregated school programs and activities, including athletic teams and competitions and use facilities consistent with the individual's gender identity irrespective of the gender listed on the student's records. Gender identity means, as an individual's actual or perceived gender identity, regardless of the individual's assigned sex at birth. Also, school teachers and other staff shall address students by the name and pronoun, corresponding to their gender identity. I haven't looked deeply into this bill. A couple of things do stand out at me. The first is that it would not only be public schools, but private and religious schools, some of whom, I can see that that would be a difficult transition for them. Also, it does say participating in gender segregated school programs and activities, including athletic teams and competitions. So you would have a situation, it seems to me, where someone who was a male at birth, but who now identifies as a girl, could and would compete on the girls' sports teams. I believe there was, I don't know if it was in Vermont or some other state, there was a, the winner of a state track award was a transgender student fitting that description. So there's that question that would have to be answered, I think, by a lot of them honors. And also the whole use of facilities, locker rooms, bathrooms, just how would that work? So anyway, H185, that's out there. Another education bill, H170, would require community service as a high school graduation requirement by the year 2526. A lot of colleges have required community service. They believe it creates good citizenship, promotes new life experiences. I believe that's where this legislator, representative Jim Maslund from Orange County, that's where he is going with this. H164 would make election day. That's usually the first Tuesday in November. Makes election day a public school holiday. And I'm really not sure why they would want to have a public school holiday, except that a lot of elections are held in schools. And perhaps the sense is that it would be, it sometimes creates traffic problems and other potential problems having a large influx of adults coming in and out of the school on election day. Anyway, that's a possibility. Another education issue, of course, it's got to be the last piece of paper. All right, so that's enough for education for now. Our second topic is health care. Topic number two, health care. First one, H195 would require restaurants to serve healthy kids' meals and establish legislative sugary drinks working group, in other words, sort of a group saying, OK, what are we going to do with all these sugary drinks? What can we do to perhaps make Vermont a healthier place regarding the high-sugar drinks that are so accessible? Also would appropriate some money for bicycling and pedestrian initiatives. Sponsors for this bill include Francis Topper McFawn from Berrytown. H183 would prohibit involuntary sterilization of individuals with intellectual disability but permit a voluntary decision. Vermont, as you may know, in 1931 passed a law that encouraged sterilization of people who were deemed perhaps not worthy of having children, became something of a black mark, the eugenics movement in Vermont. Just last year, the University of Vermont removed the name of a former longtime college president, Guy Bailey, from the Bailey-Howe Library because he was a purported supporter of this eugenics movement. And so I think this is maybe an effort to kind of roll back on some of Vermont's history regarding involuntary sterilization. H174 would set a limit on prescription of opioids and create a private right of lawsuit for excessive prescriptions. Sponsor of this bill is Representative Cynthia Browning from Arlington. And the point of this would be to reduce as much as possible the overprescription and overuse of opioids, much of which is credited for our opioid abuse epidemic. There are also a ton of very complicated bills aimed at reducing health care spending. And they're hard to follow and even hard to communicate. And I would encourage you to go to the website or check out some of the excellent journalism done on this subject. But it is not a subject for this show right now, as important as it is. And finally, I must say, I hesitate to even put this under the heading of health care. But it is in the Human Services Committee. The H57, the Unrestricted Abortion Bill, Wednesday night there was a public hearing of the Human Services and the Judiciary Committee about this bill. More than 1,000 people showed up. I'd say two-thirds to three-quarters were opponents of unrestricted abortion, which, by the way, is also a pretty accurate reflection of the state in general in terms of opposing unrestricted, that is abortion throughout all nine months, third trimester of viable fetuses. So about 700 people, opponents turned out. A lot of testimony. Overflow rooms downstairs. The well of the house that was filled upstairs. There were about 200 people left hanging out in the lobby, just because they had no place to sit. And they were listening to the coverage on VPR's live streaming. So a lot of them left thinking, all right, what's next? What's the legislature going to do now that we've showed up and said, we really don't want this? We don't like the idea of aborting viable, healthy, third trimester fetuses. Thursday morning after the hearing, the House Human Services Committee met to make a decision. And the chairman, Ann Pugh, asked Topper McFawn from Berry Town, asked him for a motion to make a motion about the bill. And he told me on Friday, he said, yeah, I'll make a motion. I vote that we kill the bill. The motion failed because most of the members in that committee are supporters of age 57. However, the committee did strike language that was found objectionable about denying any individual rights to a fetus. It clarified that partial birth abortion is illegal under federal law. But it's necessary to point out that they only made these decisions after it was made clear that these changes do nothing to restrict unlimited abortion up to the moment of pregnancy. Really, what we have now in Vermont is a legal situation of passive acceptance of unrestricted abortion. That's what the court decisions have brought to us in Vermont. Now, this bill would be our citizen legislature intentionally enacting unrestricted abortion. And those are two very different things for most voters' point of view. In this bill, we could choose to restrict third term abortions. The Roe v. Wade gives us that option. We could allow parental notification, if that's what Vermonters wanted. So the real difference with this bill is passive acceptance of how things are and intentional enactment. And many people see those as two very different things. So on to the third page. Third page, drugs and crime. H182 recommends a study, taxpayer-funded study, to transition our corrections system, our prison system, into a mental health rehabilitation clinic system. This is sponsored by Representative Brian Cena and others. I believe the idea behind this is that people who break the law would be better off with treatment of the mental health and drug issues that they are facing rather than mere incarceration. So H182, that is in the corrections and institutions committee. Human trafficking has made it into a bill in Vermont. H161, sponsored by Linda Joy Sullivan of Dorset, would require hotels and restaurants to train employees to identify and report suspected human trafficking. So our restaurant workers, our waitresses and waiters, our front desk clerks, all manners of workers in our hospitality industry would be trained to be alert to human trafficking. And with the idea that they would then also be reporting this and police would be able to follow up on it, for those of you who watched the State of the Union speech, one of the points that President Trump made about the security on the border that I think no one really disagrees with is that in addition to people coming to work here and drugs crossing the border, there's also a significant amount of human trafficking for the sex trade and other illegal purposes. So this would be an attempt to deal with that. H162 would remove buprenorphine, I hope I said that right, from the misdemeanor crime of possession of a narcotic. So this would downgrade from a misdemeanor one particular narcotic. I believe that narcotic has a good treatment purpose to it. It reduces some of the cravings, I believe, of some of the other drugs. So the idea is to reduce it. Now in the context of the other bills that are happening in the legislature, one could see this as a movement towards overall decriminalization. For example, there's another bill in the House that would turn from a felony to a misdemeanor possession of LSD, heroin, and cocaine. So if someone is caught with a relatively small amount of heroin, LSD, or cocaine, that would not be a felony. That would be under this proposed new law, would be a misdemeanor. And many of the people who are coming forward and arguing for this bill have in the recent past also argued for total decriminalization of these hard drugs. So it's a real question, is this a slippery slope? Is this where they're going to Vermont being basically every drug legal society? It's a question that I think needs to be asked, and I don't know the answer to, but needs to be asked. H196 would tax and regulate the cultivation and retail sale of marijuana. This is opening marijuana stores, storefronts, coming to a street corner near you, a marijuana store. The things about this bill, this House bill, and for that matter, the Senate bill, there's a companion bill in the Senate, the state has estimated that the tax on this marijuana would need to be at least 26% to just pay for the setup costs and the education and prevention costs of legalizing marijuana. No one at all is any more talking about getting new revenue for the state aid to education or for our roads or whatever. That's totally out the table. The only hope is that they can get enough money to just pay for setting up the system and a decent education and prevention program for our youth. And I do want to say that the two leaders of the state's Marijuana Commission, including one individual who is definitely pro-legalization, they both said at a forum last week, I heard them say that legalization will impact Vermont youth. This will mean more exposure and more access by Vermont youth. One of the co-chairs, Tom Little of Burlington, went so far as to say, if what you really care about is protecting Vermont youth from this, then you really need to tell your legislators to oppose H-196, the retail sale of marijuana. If, on the other hand, you have a more libertarian, it's my right to smoke it, then you're probably going to be for it. So another bill in the House Judiciary Committee under the title of drugs and crime, H-159 would require a 72-hour waiting period for all firearms sales. Representative Martin LaLonde of South Burlington is the lead sponsor for that. So that is a, one might say, a gun control or gun restrictions legislation out there. And the final one under drugs and crime, and this would limit judges forfeiting the assets of people convicted of crimes as part of a plea bargain. And if there is a forfeiture of assets, then all those proceeds would go in the general fund. See, what's happening right now is if someone's caught, I don't know, a drug dealer, their house, their car, their assets can be, because they are presumed to be sort of ill-gotten gains, can be forfeited and the money often goes to the police, or the property itself goes to the police. This would limit the ability for that to happen. And when it does happen, the money would go right into the state's general fund, not to the law enforcement people. That's how I read this bill. It's H-151. So that's for drugs and crime. Our fourth page, just interesting fourth page, interesting miscellaneous other issues. The first one, H-175 is yet another effort to reduce carbon in Vermont's home heating and electricity. It would prohibit utilities from using eminent domain for fossil fuel infrastructure. Now, what that means is if a gas company wants to lay a gas pipeline, what they try to do is they go to each landowner and say, hey, we'll offer you some good money for this. The landowner says, sure, I'll take it. Or they say, forget it. I don't like your pipeline. I don't want a pipeline. In which case, the gas company is entitled to use what's called eminent domain, which is to basically say it's in the public interest for everyone to have this natural gas. And for a agreed upon fair price, we will be using your land to lay our pipeline. This happens for roads and bridges and other sort of public infrastructure. This law would say, no, you can't do that. That this use of eminent domain to lay a pipeline? No, you can't. And I can tell you that that will essentially mean virtually no more natural gas pipelines, which is the no more new natural gas pipelines in Vermont, which is really the intent of the bill as you read it. It's very much all about control and carbon. Some of the critics of this bill raise this question. And that is, if you don't allow natural gas, which is a fossil fuel, but is the cleanest of all of the fossil fuels, what will Vermonters do? Many Vermonters will do what they did before, which is heat with oil, which is higher in carbon, or they will continue to burn their wood stove, which is higher in carbon, or they will run their electric space heater, which also, depending on how much carbon-powered fuel we use to make that electricity, is also a carbon generator and is also very expensive. Really, all three of those are generally more expensive than natural gas. So you have a situation where Vermonters, if you got rid of this eminent domain for more pipelines, natural gas pipelines, Vermonters would be paying more for dirtier fuel. And some of them would anyway. Others, no doubt, would be using new pellet stoves, would be using passive solar heat, heat pumps. There is cleaner technology out there. It is, however, more expensive. And depending on how cold it is, perhaps doesn't deliver quite the high efficient heat that, say, natural gas or a fossil fuel would. So that's just something to think about. That's H175. Also, our Vermont National Guard, all proud of the guard, they will be electing, well, the legislature will be electing a new adjutant general leader of the National Guard on February 21st. There is a bill which won't take effect by February 21st, but could affect future namings of adjutant generals. H192 would allow the governor, not the legislature, to elect or really appoint the National Guard adjutant general. So the time-honored tradition of legislators choosing our adjutant general, no, that would be over. It would then be up to the governor. This bill also would make military retirement pay tax exempt for Vermont state purposes. Now I can tell you that right now in the state house there's a lot of legislators and a lot of several candidates for the adjutant general milling around the building, sitting in the cafeteria, having conversations. And one of the issues is the F-15, the siting of the F-15, no, I'm sorry, the F-35, siting the F-35, the new jet at the Air Guard in South Burlington, because there are candidates who are strongly against it and there are candidates who are for it. So whoever's elected as adjutant general, one can imagine, might have some bearing on that, even though that decision is purportedly, is made by the Pentagon. It's really not a Vermont decision. Well, I have two minutes left. So I'll just quickly go over H-190. H-190 says, you know what? There are fewer hunters, fishers, and trappers than there ever have been. And there's more birdwatchers than there ever have been. So maybe we ought to study how the management of state wildlife programs happens to better serve the people who are watching birds instead of shooting deer. Paraphrasing, but that's basically it. That's H-190. H-171, we know we need billions of dollars to clean up Lake Champlain. There is a suggestion here to pay for it with fees on all real estate, all rental properties, and on milk and asphalt production. That's representative George Till from Underhill. H-165, this might hit you where you live. This would increase texting while driving penalty. So do you text while drive or use your electronic device while you drive? Well, if this bill passes, $500 fine, and five points on your license. So no laughing matter. Stop texting is the point. Representative Brian Smith from the Northeast Kingdom is the lead sponsor. Of interest to Barry residents, local bill, local representative H-158, Representative Tommy Walts is proposing to set standards for care of domestic pets and banning euthanasia by gas at animal shelters. It would only be by, I guess, injection is the preferred way, but apparently gas is still legal. And this would be, no, that wouldn't be happening anymore. Plenty of other interesting bills. I recommend you go to the legislature's website or contact, go to Vermont Daily Chronicle. Google that, and you'll see all my stories there. And meantime, this is Guy Page, Vermont Statehouse Headliners. You can email me at pagecommunications4vt at gmail.com. Thank you very much.