 This is what attracts many of us to journalism is the idea that you can actually have some impact with what you do. The idea of kind of, you know, ferreting out, waste, fraud and abuse, that sort of thing. That may seem like a little bit of an overstatement, but we like to feel that what we're doing really matters to the people who we serve here. I mean we've all seen what's happened with the media over the last 20 or 30 years. It's a lot of cases it's evolved to sound bites and Digger still does what is now considered old-fashioned journalism. Some of it is long-form, but even if it's not long-form it at least tells the full story. I think we're really committed to sort of old-school reporting where we follow issues extremely closely. We are committed to talking to several sources and getting all sides of an issue. We are in the State House or we're talking to state officials or we're looking for documents that provide for Monters a window on state government so that they know what's going on. We like to feel that what we're doing is bringing to light information that otherwise wouldn't be brought to light. You just don't see media outlets taking the time to do that as much anymore. I mean this is a rarity. There's a lot of many many regions of the country that are not served at all by a newspaper and certainly not by a news organization of this standing. It's really good for the community and for the state and for its economy and for people's understanding of their democracy and I think people recognize that here. Welcome everyone. I'm Ann Galloway the founder of VT Digger. Thank you all for coming to this special event. I'm so pleased that so many people have come out and you know it's not every day that we get a presidential candidate who should be in New Hampshire. And I want to welcome Jen Kimick who is the co-founder of Alchemist Brewery who is going to be moderating tonight and Governor John Hickenlooper and I want to thank our sponsors for making this event possible. Green State Gardener the cultivation supply store here in Burlington. Trace. Oh please yes. Trace Vermont's first blockchain company for the cannabis industry. And additional sponsors include Burlington Furniture for the seating on the stage. It takes a village to put on an event like this. The law firm Vermont Cannabis Solutions. Zen Barn the gourmet caterers. The digital marketing company Kana Planners and Hedy Vermont which is holding an after party at Nectar's tonight. I hope you all participated. I'm Jen Kimick and her husband John founded the Alchemist in 2003. It was a pub in Waterbury then and I remember visiting in 2011 after Tropical Storm Irene and Jen and her husband John Kimick were pulling out damaged equipment and food and beer in the basement and I said to Jen what happens next and she said we're going to build a cannery and they did and they had a really popular beer known as Hedy Topper and that beer is now one of the most sought after in the country and Jen and her husband have really made this business a success. They have a second brewery in stone now and Jen who grew up in Burry has been very generous to the community that she and her husband run Alchemist Foundation, their company's a B corporation and they've made a commitment to making sure that they use sustainable water practices. I'm very pleased and thankful that Jen is here tonight to moderate and the star of our event tonight Governor John Hickenlooper has something very important in common with Jen Kimick. He's a brewer too. You may not have known that but he was laid off when he was a geologist. He was laid off in Denver in 1988 and he started a brewery called WinCoup and in about a decade he became a millionaire. He had pubs all over the city and the beer was very popular and in 2003 he ran as a dark horse candidate for Mayor of Denver and he won and in 2011 he became governor of the state of Colorado and as it turns out he just left that job in January and lucky for us because it helped our turnout. He decided he was going to run for president a few weeks ago but I met John last fall at the Tribune festival. Texas Tribune in Austin has an annual festival and I heard John speak and he was talking about economic development in Colorado and they've had a real boom economy now for a while and John was a big part of that and he also helped the state develop a tax and regulation system for marijuana and I thought wow maybe John has some things he could bring to Vermont so without further ado please welcome Jen Kimmick and John Hickenlooper. Governor Hickenlooper it's a pleasure to be here with you tonight. You bet Jen. Congratulations on your recent announcement to run as a Democratic candidate for President of the United States. I decided the Republican was just steep a hill. I'm just kidding that's a joke. It's a joke. Thank you for being an early craft beer pioneer. I have fond memories of visiting the WinCoup brewery with my husband John in the late 90s and we were really inspired by not only the great beer but the community pub that you opened and then we followed your footsteps and opened our pub in 2003. At the same time you were opening up WinCoup in 1988 our dear friend and mentor Greg Noonan was opening up the Vermont Bub and Brewery right across the park here in Burlington. Did you know Greg? I did know Greg of course I knew Greg. There was a whole kind of that class of 87 88 that we all opened kind of together and there are a couple afternoon lovely delightful afternoons I spent with him in his pub. I don't remember all the details but he was an amazing pioneer. He was a great guy. Greg would have loved to been here with you tonight. Yeah. At the same time you were starting your craft brewery you were a pioneer you were also the first brewery that I know of to make a collaboration beer and probably the coolest collaboration beer ever and it was a collaboration beer before they were trendy and cool and you made it with this guy by the name of Kurt Vonnegut. Can you tell us about Kurt's mile high ale? Well I'll tell you that that it's one of those strange things that happens in life sometimes and you know my mother was widowed twice her first husband died at the end of World War two she had two kids she married my dad had two more kids and then my dad died when I was eight so my dad was a very funny robust guy and so my mother was obviously heartbroken and so people didn't talk much about my dad and then you go forward to when I'm 46 and I've been a geologist I've gotten laid off I've opened the brew pub the brew pub finally after a few years takes off and and everything's going great and I brewed special beers on occasion for friends and and I did one for this this friend Bill Havu who owned the one over one art gallery Kurt Vonnegut had been trying to he lost his muse so he was making silk screens of some of the images and and characters from his books so Bill Havu called up and said uh would it be all right would you do a special beer with a special label with one of his images and we'll call it Kurt's Mile High Mall and I said of course I've read everything he ever wrote and Bill said great and then three weeks later Kurt Vonnegut called and and my office was a bullpen right a bunch of people in desks no walls and then I pick up the phone I said this is John and this voice says hi this is this is Kurt Vonnegut but but before we talk about beer can you tell me what happened to my good friend John Hickenlooper who I went to Cornell with you have the same name and I said that was my father uh he died in 1960 and I was speechless and that began a friendship that we continued uh really up until until Kurt passed away he was I mean we just had these wonderful you can go online and google John Hickenlooper and Kurt Vonnegut and I think you can still get a video that he did when I was getting roasted right after I got became mayor and he basically pretends you know he says well you know you were so charming and gregarious but you're I knew your father and and and he was blah I mean and and then he goes he goes well the truth is you should know that man you thought was your father was not your father John I am your father it's it's online anyway and before that when I when I told him I called him up said I was going to run for mayor of Denver right in 2003 I never ran for student council or class president or anything I just thought that someone from small business should you know should should try and bring some common sense into what I was calling then the fundamental nonsense of government and I said Kurt I think I should and Kurt Kurt looked at me uh or didn't look at me he was on the phone but I knew he was looking me telepathically and I said Kurt I would love it if you would be willing to endorse me and he could be quite a curmudgeon he went oh if I endorsed you off to endorse you know how many friends I have who want to run for office I have endorsed everybody and then people be calling me all the time I wouldn't have a moment's peace so Kurt Kurt just a question don't even think about it don't I wasn't serious the next day I got a fax he didn't really like emails I told the very end he would use faxes and I got a fax it said I don't believe in endorsements I believe in hope I hope John Hickenlober is the next mayor of Denver oh that's great that's a great story we put it on bookmarks and we got our volunteers to hand it out at the at the public libraries because the people that go to a public library usually live in the city and county and also are usually voters was our guest yeah so Kurt helped get me elected that is a great story so you started your career as a geologist you got laid off you got into the craft group business and realized you were really good at it became mayor of Denver and then governor of Colorado now you're running for president why why get out of the private sector what drives you to politics well that original I mean I when we opened the wine coop in in 88 and we did it in an abandoned part of lower downtown Denver the rent was one dollar per square foot per year as a reflection of how bad that neighborhood was and I went to the other restaurant tours there were only about six of them seven of us all together and and just said we got to help each other soon we were buying pint glasses we took out ads together in the Denver Post I mean before they'd all everyone hated each other it was competitive and they didn't trust each other but we helped create Lotto which has become this like national model of urban rejuvenation and in 2003 when when the mayor Wellington Webb was term limited out a bunch of my customers they'd been critical of every elected official and I kept saying but this is America they're us you should run for office if you don't like them and somehow they turned that around on me and and so I ran on this notion of kind of the fundamental nonsense of government I was going to bring just I knew that government was different I wanted to bring in some of the logic of small business what is what is service right when you're when you run a restaurant you really pay attention to what people want and make sure that they're they're genuinely want what you're you're delivering there's a real that the sense of service is a real relationship in a funny way for our restaurant winecubum I'll bet yours is your business is a similar way our primary service was to our staff we figured if everyone says the customer comes first but we wanted to make sure that that you know our staff knew how much we cherished and valued them and that they would then take care of the customer and I just thought that that city government should be like that and everyone said you don't have a chance and it was funny that I ran on the Denver's 20 percent of the whole metropolitan area you know it's a pretty big city and the city hated the suburbs and the suburbs hated the city I said that's crazy if I get elected we I will proclaim that Denver could never be a great city without great suburbs and I'll do everything I can to lift up the suburbs and everyone said you're crazy you're going to share sacred senior water rights very important in the west and you're going to do all these things for the suburbs Denver hates the suburbs well turn and I ran against four lifetime politicians really talented people with constituencies and who actually understood politics and in the end the people of Denver didn't hate the suburbs nor did the suburbs hate Denver it was the politicians needed enemies to attack and I got 65 percent of the vote with that with that positive just like I did with the restaurant owners lift everyone up and then I ran for you know we went to I went to all out to all 34 mayors and we got all 34 to unanimously support a tax increase to build what we called fast tracks 122 miles of new track the most ambitious transit initiative in history of the country we got all 34 mayors together by me going into their offices you know not waiting for them to come to the big city but going out to each one and and listening really hearing what their issues were and I mean that were I mean that whole process was so successful that then when mayor when governor Ritter decided he wasn't going to run for re-election in 2010 I ran for governor and I became I ran the same thing I'm going to lift up the whole state Denver was 40th in job creation then I said we're going to lift up the whole state we're not going to leave behind the rural areas and and we're just going to do what we did in the city do what I did in lower downtown with the other restaurant owners and everyone said you know you'll never win I became the first mayor of Denver in 120 years that's how long this bitterness had gone on the first mayor of Denver in 120 years to get elected to become governor of Colorado and and now I mean we went and we will be by the end of 2020 maybe a month or two into 2021 but I think by the end of 2020 we'll be the first state to have broadband in every single city in town in the entire state that's incredible that's really incredible I know you've done a lot in Colorado made a lot of investments in infrastructure and economy other than broadband I want to talk about Vermont's economy a little bit one of the biggest challenges we have is a declining workforce can you talk about some of the investments you made in Colorado to attract and retain young people and what suggestions do you have for us here in Vermont sure and I think it's the right question we thought about because we were having the same problems that our young people were going to San Francisco in New York and Chicago and we decided that we would take our capital investments and try to imagine that we were millennials and obviously I'm not a millennial so you fast forward and even where we didn't have investments we wanted to champion things that young people valued so fast forward we gave a we now have a thousand miles of bike trails in metropolitan Denver we have we celebrate musicians and made them you know made them significant we gave them status we do parties for any band so we attracted bands so I don't know if you have if if we have an audience of with some young people but I mean the Luminers are a Denver band Nathaniel rate lift in the night sweats the fray one republic I mean we have all these amazing musicians and so we celebrated them we now have more live music venues in Denver than there are in austin or national it's it's not bragging if you can do it that's what Ernie bank said but anyway we invested in the things that that that we thought young people if they had control of the money what would what would young people and what kind of infrastructure would they invest in but getting light rail a big part of our push to get transit and nowadays you know certainly in a smaller city like like Burlington you might do something like a bus rapid transit or something that's it's less capital intensive but you know so many of the millennials don't want to have two cars right and we made it so that Denver doesn't you don't need two cars if you're gonna live in Denver for in most of the occasions those investments helped really turn Denver and ultimately Colorado into kind of a magnet like we had beautiful landscapes and we had you know lots of tourism just like you did we started using some of our tourism dollars which we'd advertise in New York and we we twist the ad just enough to say you know you're coming for this vacation think about if you lived here you could have a vacation every weekend and you know we attracted we began to get some young entrepreneurs the goal you try to attract young people and if you do that successfully you'll get lots of entrepreneurs and you need you know let's not kid ourselves you need schools that work and you need a healthcare system right you got to pay your teachers something that matters I mean you got to have realistic compensation for teachers but that kind of investment has really turned Colorado around in the last 15 years we've been you know one of the top destinations for young people in the whole country and our economy I mean we were down for a while there we were about 2.3 percent unemployment I mean it was actually unhealthy there was so there was such fierce competition for employees that's what we're faced with here in Vermont really yeah and in in regards to the economy can you talk about the critical role that immigrants legal and illegal play in Colorado? Sure and I think we have and I'm an unabashed supporter of of immigration I think that this country was built on immigration right now if you look at the Department of Labor statistics we have about 7.2 million job openings unfilled in the United States and about 6.3 million people unemployed so even if we had perfect skills training which we don't right so many of those 7.3 million or 7.2 million jobs are unfilled because we don't have the right skills training in place but we still don't have enough people and if you were going to squint your eyes at the landscape of the country and say if I really wanted to hurt long-term our economy maybe I would design a system where we would attract the best and the brightest the most talented electrical engineers from all over the world we'd give them PhDs at our best universities and then we forced them to leave our country before they could possibly do something as awkward as starting a business and creating jobs and I think what we need to do in immigration it's and it's not just technology it's it all manner of of our jobs are going unfilled and many of them are high skilled but not all of them there there's no machinery yet there's no robot that will go out and pick apples or pick blueberries pick peaches and right now we're at the edge in Colorado where we're not getting all of our crops harvested that is I mean that's a crisis in its own self and I think that uh look at construction jobs a lot of those jobs people can't get them filled I was talking to a person here he's got a construction company uh just before this show it was describing that there are all kinds of job skills skilled and unskilled that he can't fill and somehow we've got to make again smaller cities attractive so young people want to come back and then at the same time make sure we have the skills and ultimately I think we've got to get we've got to rethink our immigration program obviously we need to have an ID system that works I don't like paying people under the table I mean that's a great incentive to get the system fixed properly so it actually works but to continue this this non-function status quo is is self-destructive absolutely and and again again we have the same the same challenges here in Vermont with construction and farming I think with our economy Colorado and Vermont really have a lot in common I also think as far as the climate goes Vermont and Colorado have a lot in common we're both mountainous states we both have large rural populations both states are also part of the US climate alliance and have pledged to stick with the Paris climate accords that pledge is to reduce greenhouse gas pollution by 26 to 28 below 2005 levels by 2025 sadly neither state is on track to meet those goals what actions can individual states take to reduce climate pollution in ways that strengthen the economy and are equitable to our most vulnerable citizens excuse absolutely and I am you know I think one of my staff members uh interns went and researched I think I'm the first professional geologist ever to become a governor in the history of America I'm not sure what that means I'm not sure it's a good thing I know I'm 99% sure that I'm the first brewers in Sam Adams in 1792 to be a governor but I think that masters in geology I mean I understand science I understand it's not perfect but but the most recent uh reports that have come out suggest that we're within about 12 years of irreversible uh damage to the planet uh and the consequences in the oceans uh onshore with the the extreme uh weather events you know these incredible typhoons and and hurricanes and we've had record floods record fires from the record droughts uh we are at close to that point of irreversible concern it needs to be everybody's responsibility and there has to be a recognition that science isn't perfect they say 12 years it could be nine years or eight years and we're there are places uh where we've we've been able to bring people together in in colorado uh we have a uh you know uh the normal battles between the old traditional economies and the and the new uh green economies we were able to get the oil and gas industry to sit down in the same room with the environmental community uh and actually hammer out methane regulations and methane is 25 to 40 times worse than carbon dioxide in terms of it's as a climate change pollutant it's it's really one it doesn't last as long as co2 but it is very very intense and very very uh destructive the only gas industry and trust me the only gas industry and the environmental community hate each other i mean in the original meeting i couldn't even put out an agenda or a timeline because both sides would have suspected that i was helping the other side and we wanted to start with a a flat table and a blank slate 14 months later they've they reached agreement and and the the criteria we laid out the beginning was no red tape and bureaucracy we'd make sure that every dollar made the air cleaner and then we'd share the credit so 14 months later we had the executives from the oil and gas industry and the environmentalists taking credit together and the oil and gas industry agreed to pay 60 million dollars a year to basically it's the the the equivalent of removing 320 thousand automobiles a year from from our roads and canada is now rolling these methane regulations out nationally we're hopeful that that mexico do do it this coming summer uh unfortunate course president trump has rolled them back they were on all all federal lands i mean that's something we could do in every single state attack methane and then we'd have to do it globally and whatever we do in the united states almost doesn't matter if we can't build and re-engage our allies and our relationships with the rest of the world to make sure we get that done the other thing we've done two other things quickly in in colorado we've done one was we were able to go out and uh really make the application processes for wind and solar as efficient as possible again protecting protecting the public interest making sure no one's building something where the local community doesn't want it but we are built we're going to close two coal plants uh and that we worked this out last year but we're going to close two coal plants and in the process we're gonna for the first time in the country's history replace those coal plants with wind with solar and batteries no natural gases as filling in when the sun doesn't shine right so we're gonna and and even more exciting than that is we went so aggressively to make it easier for you know make it really really much easier for uh for them to get their permitting that for the first time will not only close the coal plants will not only replace them with wind solar and batteries but the monthly bill coming to the consumers for their electricity will go down and that's when that when the market can begin to accelerate and and really push a transition from the old you know carbon emitting fuels into totally clean energy that's when trains is going to happen really quickly uh and then the last thing we got from the Volkswagen diesel scandal a huge settlement we took a big chunk of our settlement and said we're going to use in Colorado we're going to use this to build a rapid recharging stations for electric vehicles right so as that demand grows and you know Detroit's saying that by 2022 2023 every vehicle you can imagine you'll be able to get it in every style automobile you'll be able to get an electric vehicle we want to make sure the recharging stations are there and then we said well let's we reached out to the governor of Utah it's a governor herbal what do you think about it would you continue our network into Utah I said sure and then we talked to the governor of montana and so he did it and then we went to the governor of Wyoming he's a good friend but Wyoming's a you know coal state a lot of hydrocarbons and we said you don't want people driving around Wyoming to get the yellow stolen park and so he did it so we now have we now have 10 states you know five republican five democrat 10 western states that have all integrated their networks so that as electric vehicles become more popular you know the lack of finding a charging station won't be an impediment to to scaling that in real time did you really drink frack fluid if so why so and and I have been excoriated I'm not sure what that word means but I know it's not good I I was in my office with the head of one of the oil companies and I was talking to him about methane and and we were also talking about at that time the oil and gas industry would not reveal the components in in any of the frack fluids I said well we're doing we make them when they're going to drill an oil well they have to drill water wells in five different places around where that oil well is going to be and then they have to test it every three years test all the water to make sure that we're not seeing any pollution but if they wouldn't tell us everything that was in the frack fluid we couldn't be sure of that and he said well you know we're working that direction and sensitive but we might think about it and this is a prototype that's made this is this frack fluid is made with all FDA approved ingredients so it's food quality I said yeah right and he looked at me and he was offended and there was a level of trust that was going to happen we were going to get the methane we're going to go forward or not he said you can drink it he picked it up it was like thick but but transparent he took a sip and I had that moment whether he we were going to trust each other or not and he passed it to me and I took a sip because I wanted to make sure that if we're going to get methane regulations done if we're going to get them to reveal frack that all the components of frack fluid which they did you're not going to get there without some level of trust it was I know it just seemed like the only way I could not separate us I wanted to be able to bring us closer together it didn't it didn't have any taste which was awkward just the fact it didn't have any taste was weird last year a study was released by the Colorado School of Public Health researchers they found that people who live within 500 feet of a well in Colorado may experience a lifetime excess cancer risk of eight times higher than the EPA's upper acceptable levels what do you say to the families who live near those wills those wells and who have children who walk past those wells on the way to school sure we have studied this relentlessly that's particular study was a professor at the University of Colorado it was not peer reviewed and my scientists and my scientists are the most liberal people you've ever met you know our department of public health and the environment their job is to protect the public safety the health and safety of of color and they disagree vehemently that when you push back I mean we can't measure the you know with it when you're five feet away from one of these wells it's not we've we're not emitting methane anymore there there are essentially it's rare that there's ever a surf surface spill we find the living daylights out of them if they do it and we clean it up immediately it's unsightly and I don't blame people for not wanting to live near where a commercial operation an industrial operation is taking place but unfortunately people have continued to move out to places where you know in many cases in Colorado these old leases that you know the old glad the people that own the minerals underground are not the same people that own the surface ground right like where someone might have a house and so those people that own the mineral rights have a right to that private property and we've offered for those communities that wanted to really cut back on you know have any drilling they wanted to have 2,000 feet or 2,500 feet I offered is on behalf of the state that we would pay half to buy that that little sliver of mineral rights and or probably would have paid 60 percent because this we're not Russia we're not China we don't take people's private property unless we can really demonstrate those health effects that study that if we could have verified any of those of that of their results I think it would have been a whole different case but we couldn't again my our scientists who are very very liberal could could not wreck that we not create those same those same results so when we offered to build to buy those that private property from people the communities unfortunately communities of people that were close to the drilling were happy to pay something but no one else in the community really thought the danger was sufficient for them to pay and that made it it just made it a difficult again I felt that the I mean here's the goal we need to get away from all carbon energy as fast as we can and I don't I've never backed away from that I think we are I think Colorado is the national model of how to make a path to a clean energy future faster than anyone I try to keep our focus on that a hundred percent and just make sure that those leases when they become without value which hopefully will be very soon it won't be because government took away their rights it will be because they become they became economically useless I have to ask is your campaign going to take money from oil and gas companies no I don't we've decided my campaign will take accept no donations from any company any corporation I want to shift to healthcare now I want to talk about the healthcare crisis we're having in this country Americans are suffering and businesses are struggling because of overpriced and insufficient healthcare coverage meanwhile insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies are making millions and billions of dollars each year as a business owner I want to get out of the health insurance company health insurance business and a single payer system seems to make complete and total economic sense you have said that you're concerned that the push for Medicare for all calls for dismantling the current system when less disruptive measures may achieve universal health care if you become president what will you do to achieve universal health care if not Medicare for all so Colorado and we worked very hard at this we are almost universal coverage we're just about almost 95 percent and we did this in a variety of ways I think our health care exchange is I think probably the most innovative and most successful in the country uh we've spent in Medicaid and and and even as we've done this we've also really worked hard to control the inflation of health care so much of our of I mean if you look at and this is over the last 30 or 40 years the inflation of health care overall has been astounding now I helped start a community health center in Middletown Connecticut in 1973 still there it's called the community health center it's now has 200 locations but I wrote a letter to the newspaper in Middletown the Middletown press in Middletown Connecticut in 1978 it said health care should be a right not a privilege and that is that's our north star I think we want to get to universal coverage as fast as we can and the way to do that I think is again to expand Medicaid all across the country and and then to have a a single payer option and I'm you know if we could get to Medicare for all and people would embrace it I'm 100% there but there are 150 160 almost 170 million people that have uh get their health care uh through private insurance most of through their their workplace many of them are unhappy I get that but the polling we've seen says a hundred maybe even more than a hundred million people are happy with their coverage I don't see they're all going to leave and I think forcing people to leave something that they trust and rely on is just a recipe for division and battling and I mean the reason I'm running for president is because I think this country is in a crisis of division right Trump is the symptom I mean defeating Trump in my opinion I'm sure there are Republicans here but I think maybe not and not in Burlington I think I think defeating Donald Trump is absolutely essential but it is not sufficient we've got to begin figuring out how we're going to bring this country back together again and you know taking away something through through government's edict whether it's you know private property or someone's health care that they like is is going to be a challenge I think if you have a public option so that people can choose if they don't like their private insurer they can choose to buy into Medicare or if they're if the program they can afford doesn't cover their health care needs that they can buy into into Medicare I'm all for that but we also have to look at issues like how do we get more transparency in so that when you if you're going to get if you're taking your child to get their tonsils out you should be able to on your your handheld device see which clinic which hospital what they're going to charge and and make sure that there's a minimum quality standard they're all held to right and and I think that those those kinds of things have to happen as we're doing this this transition into universal coverage we need to control that make sure that we control costs through things like transparency the other thing is Medicare Medicare itself there are certain parts of Medicare they don't allow doctors to use telemedicine it's not covered under Medicare and if you think about it more and more people are we're going to be able to serve more people successfully using the internet I mean think of a doctor looking at again your child has a rash and the doctor says oh my gosh I'm not sure I can't really tell from this imminent you better come in I should check it or the doctor could say no that's poison ivy you don't have to come in put some you know calm and lotion on it those kinds of innovations are what are going to allow us to get universal coverage and improve quality right nothing stays the same so we have to improve quality quality but also control costs and access I as an employer with less than 50 employees we spend almost $400,000 a year on health insurance and I'm not happy with the health insurance we have our employees aren't happy with the health insurance we have many of them don't go to the doctor because they're afraid of their copays and deductibles are Americans really happy with the insurance that they're getting from their employers or is there a path to a single payer system what about getting everyone in the same market pool so that we can bring the cost down well I think again if you if it's as good as what you're describing I think people will flood into that market and it will happen naturally the polls that I have seen and and polls are what you make of them right it's how the questions are asked and these polls could be wrong but these were allegedly objective polls by non-profit organizations that didn't have a dog in the fight say over 100 million people are either happy or very happy with their with their insurance you know if we provide a pathway so people can come in to to and choose Medicare and you're right that's what everyone's gonna want it might take an extra couple of years but we'll get we'll get to that scale pretty quickly um I know you've said that you don't want marijuana to be your legacy but I think we'd have a we'd have a lot of disappointed folks here tonight if we didn't talk about marijuana Vermont is currently working on legislation to regulate and tax marijuana I want to spend some time talking about the lessons you have learned in Colorado and what advice you have for Vermont as regulation and taxation is imminent let's start with the environmental impact that the commercialization of growing has had on Colorado the few available studies of marijuana cultivation have uncovered potentially significant environmental impacts due to excessive water and energy demands and local contamination of water air and soil in terms of environmental impact what tough lessons have been learned in Colorado and what recommendations do you have for Vermont so the grow houses so the the vast majority of marijuana in Colorado that is grown legally is grown in grow houses with electric lights so you need to have your systems wired and we make sure they're inspected and we didn't do that as quickly as we could have in that first year to be honest we thought people would grow it outside in fenced areas uh and we knew that a lot of people would grow it inside but again the scale and how quickly it changed uh you know it was it was more than what some of our our professionals had had anticipated I think more to the point the the water and the uh putting so much water through these indoor systems did create some uh water issues with the the runoff but I don't think they've been that significant that there was one study that that uh projected some concern but we've got the department of agriculture now that that looks at uh inspecting both water runoff uh you know make sure that people aren't using uh dangerous pesticides I mean one of the issues that I would say right off the bat the federal government obviously doesn't let us bank in other words since it's against federal law you can't your your marijuana industry in a state like Colorado can't legally use charge cards or banking or checks which is crazy so if you wanted to guarantee that a new industry in new industry would be corrupt and full of racketeering what should we do oh let's make sure it's all cash right and so and the same thing is true why don't we have why doesn't the the uh the Department of Agriculture in the United States do the testing and and set the standards by which people can grow marijuana if they choose to legally do it and why can't the why doesn't the the FDA well why doesn't the country first remove marijuana as a as a schedule one narcotic to begin and then make sure that we we we remove any unnecessary uh of uh blockages or or objects to get in the way of actually doing more medical testing so that like any other pharmaceutical we can get to a point where we have national standards of what what types of of of issues can marijuana be used for medically and and make sure that we know whatever hazards there are either for recreational use or as a medicine that that people are clearly informed about that and that is one of the things that you know people ask me whether marijuana whether I think the US government should legalize marijuana no I don't think I don't think the US government should go to Maine or to to Alabama and say you've got to legalize marijuana they didn't do that with alcohol they left it with each state and I think if you do it that way and yet make sure that they decriminalize simple possession in those states where it's legalized and get rid of those felony records I mean look at look at the old system where we sent millions and millions of kids most of them kids of color not only do we send into prison but we made them felons we made already difficult lives impossibly more difficult for what purpose right I mean absolutely and it seems to me like those folks are really missing out on the marijuana boom what can we do to bring them into the the boom well I think that the the the marijuana boom is is something just it is a social phenomenon that is something that it a lot of people who are slow to accept change are having a lot of a very difficult time accepting it and I know a lot of of some of my older friends in Colorado still can't stand the thought that this is happening this is so often the way change the way change is and I I respect that I understand how difficult that is for people and that's why I think that community states should make their votes first in most states like Colorado we've given our local municipalities and our counties the right to adjudicate on their own you know or to make their own rules and regulations limiting or permitting growing distributing selling marijuana in their communities I think that makes it a little easier for people that are so upset but I don't think we should go out it's not the same as as as civil rights right where we can go out and say listen this is America everyone gets the same opportunity to create their American dream everyone has the same basic human rights thank you many Vermonters including myself want to see licensing preference given to existing small farmers in our state or young entrepreneurs entrepreneurs of any size color really if you could go back and rewrite licensing regulations and give small local farmers more priority would you and what things should we think about here in Vermont to keep out big business from coming into our state well certainly that's that's that's a that's a good start uh the you know one of the things that we made sure they couldn't do is we didn't let them vertically integrate when they came right out of shoot just because that is another thing that will attract big businesses you're gonna see you know one of the things about our business system which you know our somebody asked me on tv a couple weeks ago whether I was a capitalist which is like a friend of mine is what I should have said was you know it's as if you asked me whether I was a nerd in high school I would say wouldn't be my first choice of a label but I'd be hardly argue with right and and I think that you know if you're gonna put a label on me I was a capitalist I started 20 businesses created a thousand jobs but capitalism right now is broken and it's gonna come back to the marijuana here in a second but capitalism used to provide security and opportunity for the middle class and for poor people and that is certainly not the case today where we have by some reports 75 to 80 percent of american families are having a hard time balancing their household budget at the end of every month and and there's it's absolutely inconceivable that is the America that most of us grew up in and whether it's you know for the last 20 years we've seen a steady decline in the number of people starting businesses business startups and I'm not just talking tech I'm talking about people just starting up a sheet rocking company or a commercial painting company and those startups those people that begin businesses are we are generally where all the new jobs come from big business somehow comes in and we have this this sense that everybody deserves a right to sell their business if they want to and people feel very strongly you'll I think even in Vermont you'll find out when you try to regulate the size of these businesses that in and of itself limits someone's ability to sell it and you're gonna have to negotiate that yourself because as we tried to protect small businesses and I am in my heart and soul is still an entrepreneur and a small business person it is difficult to navigate how to protect and motivate small businesses craft breweries are the perfect case right I think we can provide incentives we have a temporary reduction in the in the amount of taxes that small brewers pay compared to the giant brewers right I'm all for that I think those kinds of incentives for small businesses that are actually creating jobs you know make make perfect sense in all manner within construction with I mean making premium coffee however you look at it we actually almost tax businesses against hiring employees look at a payroll tax right I mean imagine that you know someone's going to point out 20 reasons why this is wrong because I haven't done the math but why couldn't we take the payroll tax or at least the part that the employee pays but maybe the whole payroll tax to encourage businesses to hire more people and and say we're going to replace that with a VAT tax that's exactly the same size so it's not a big tax increase but suddenly we're not going to give you know we're not going to give an incentive for businesses to have less employees and I think that all has to come together with when you're looking at marijuana is a new industry right now it seems easy to protect small businesses but I can tell you're just five years down the road we already see people they're saying hey I got here first I did great I don't want to make $50 million I'm happy to make my I don't know $600,000 more money than they ever dreamed of and they want to sell and that's going to those businesses are going to aggregate and get much larger right and with marijuana it's even more challenging because small businesses can't access the financing that they need is that correct are you seeing that in Colorado yeah absolutely that's we had legislation last year that would have allowed outside money to come into Colorado and we were told in no uncertain terms by our federal attorneys that that was something that you know the attorney general sessions that attorney general sessions was willing to tolerate this marijuana industry which he hated but he tolerated unless he began seeing that kind of financial intervention from out of state and so we we blocked that bill great as a mother I have concerns about the commercialization of marijuana especially in regards to processed marijuana products edibles including candy drinks oils and waxes in the brewing industry we have strong regulation that requires us to be responsible with our labeling and it is illegal to target youth how can we apply the same standards to marijuana here in Vermont not only can you you have to and and we had when we started with edibles they were making these things that look just like gummy bears they would put a brownie and they would have eight doses of THC in a single brownie we had people going to the hot the the emergency room so we banned you can't make it look like can you can't make it look like animals or anything that would be attractive to a child I think you know we have regulations about all kind you know the any kind of a pesticide in the absence of the federal government we did this ourselves and started investigating asking every single grower what what are you using and then we started testing it or finding places where someone else at some point had tested it and we pulled some of them off the markets and you this is now banned in the state of Colorado but this is a new industry and to think that industries are by themselves going to you know regulate themselves is is it's naive it's just not going to happen right as legalization expands throughout the country the value of marijuana will likely continue to decline we are already seeing this particularly in Colorado and California where the commercial marijuana market is saturated I believe Vermont has a unique unique opportunity to set itself apart by creating its own brand if we do this right I believe we can be a state that is known for high quality organic low impact flour that is hand-trimmed what do you think about this great political campaigns have ended on less I'd have to claim that I have no experience in in in marijuana branding but you've seen the price of marijuana drop you've seen we've seen billboards in Oregon you know cheap ounces all day are you seeing this are you are you seeing a saturation I don't think we've seen quite as much in Colorado but certainly that's the way you know a business cycle works right there's strong demand people build up capacity at a certain point you have extra capacity then people will reduce prices to try and you know get rid of their surplus I mean that is the business cycle I think technology is going to help that happen less and in a funny way and this is going to be counter-intuitive but one of the things that we're still battling is we still have a a black market and I remember talking to a 17 year old kid right after we legalized it and and you know I was very worried that we'd see a spike in teenage consumption and most scientists have told me that the brain scientists that this high THC marijuana when a when a teenager's brain is rapidly growing there is significant risk to losing a sliver of their long-term memory permanently with with fairly infrequent use and so we were very worried about that that that we were going to see you know some consequences like that but we haven't seen it we didn't see any spike in teenage consumption and what's been interesting is so we're about a 1.5 billion dollar marijuana industry in Colorado it's probably about a hundred million dollars of black market stuff and I asked this kid do you think that kids are going to the teenagers are going to be more likely to try marijuana to use marijuana since the adults have legalized it and he looked at me and he says no of course not using it with actually he didn't say knit what he used a worse word but he he pointed out he said we already could get it anytime we wanted the the thing you have to recognize is if you guys get rid of the black market a drug dealer doesn't care who they sell it to if you give her the black market at least it'll be a lot harder for teenagers to get it not that it's impossible they said you know we can get beer pretty easily but if you do if you drive home the fact of how dangerous it can be for teenagers you can get rid of that pretty well and that lower price that you're describing that comes from over capacity actually drives the black market right out of business so it does change the the dynamics of the industry a little bit but I don't think it's overall harmful if it is in effect getting rid of the black market can you talk about roadside testing a little yeah major issue of of one of the other fears that we were very concerned about was people driving while high we made the determination and and you can test you know we said we felt we had to set a standard that would hold up in court so we picked five nanograms to measure in your blood if you have five nanograms for most people and it's like alcohol it's not absolute you're going to get a bunch of lawyers that say oh but it's not this or what about this person you know if you're over 0.08 percent alcohol in your blood you shouldn't be driving there might be a few exceptions but you shouldn't be driving if you've got over five nanograms of thc in your blood you should not be anywhere operating a vehicle it's the same thing the tricky thing is we're trying to when you look at measuring that uh you have to take someone you have to take blood there's no breathalyzer yet now there are a couple companies that think they're close to getting a breathalyzer that'll work but so far there's there's no breathalyzer that'll that'll accurately reflect uh someone's uh thc enneburation but they are uh they are able to to do it accurately in the blood the trick try we're trying to get a measure of are more people driving while high and is that leading to accidents because we have seen an increase in accidents but it looks like the increase we've seen is the same as other states that didn't legalize marijuana we think a lot of that's distracted driving and cell phones and people looking at their maps as they're driving you know trying to figure out where they're going uh but we have tried unsuccessfully to compel all of our local authorities when there's a traffic fatality we always do a blood test well blood test is pretty cheap i mean a alcohol test you don't have to do a blood test you can get accurate uh alcohol content very inexpensively to do the thc is much more it's like 300 bucks so we're even when we offer to subsidize it and pay the difference to the local municipalities it's just too big a pain they we've had a hard time getting that so we still don't know whether we're getting you know accurate data on whether people are driving while high the one thing we we've seen is we haven't seen any demographic of increased consumption people getting high more frequently or more people in a demographic more people smoking actually that's not true with the exception of senior citizens just these are just the facts you can draw your own conclusions but but based on that that we don't see more people using it we don't think we're seeing more people driving while high but we are spending millions of dollars a year driving home the fact that teenagers shouldn't take high take any kind of marijuana shouldn't ingest it in any way and the drivers absolutely should not and less speeding and less speeding yeah time has gone by pretty quick i want to ask you one more question before we go to some questions from our guests here tonight i truly believe that most americans are fed up with the divisiveness and anger that is plaguing our communities we need a leader who will help unite and support all americans if you become president what will you do to start uniting and healing this country well i think that i mean a big reason that i'm running for president is i really feel that we're in a national crisis of division and that we've never i don't think we've been this divided and i grew up protesting in vietnam war you know joining in the civil rights protests i don't think we've been this divided probably since the civil war and we have serious serious challenges to face the the issues of of climate change we've talked about of health care how do you control the inflation of health care how do we do these huge social transformations efficiently automation and artificial intelligence right we're trying to scale up our community colleges to you know i think we'll get to free college for all i think that's a goal we should get there we will get there but but i but i think it'll take a while again we we just i mean we just our our national debt is such a we have to find some ways to to to find the resources for that but i do think we can get to free community colleges in a year right and get free skills for everybody you gotta remember 70 of our kids never get a four-year college degree we need to make sure they have the skills that they need anyway these are all issues that we can't tackle when we're divided and i look at what we've done in in colorado where and i really i look at the other candidates who are you know visionaries and and dreamers are mostly you know senators and congress people and i feel like i mean it's good to have dreamers and i'm i'm a dreamer too but i'm also a doer and we've been able to bring the oil and gas industry together with the environmental community and actually get you know methane regulations that no one else had been able to get done we brought together you know on a bipartisan way we got we spent in medicaid and got to 95 percent health care coverage we've reduced now uh we've been able to provide young women the ability to control their you know when they when they get pregnant when they want to start a family we've reduced teenage pregnancy and teenage abortion by 60 percent i mean these are the kinds of things that i think the country needs more than anything and the way we've done it i mean again and again when i went to the suburban mayors as a big city mayor i went to them and i didn't tell them why i thought i was right i listened to them and i and i repeated back in their words what i thought their concerns were and tried to you know we learned this in the bar in the restaurant business the bar in restaurant business when someone's angry you don't ever try to tell them why you're right and they're wrong and it's a friend of mine pointed out last week there's also in in couples counseling it's a similar thing you you learn to repeat back exactly in the words that the other person uses you repeat back their own words to them and they feel validated that they're word that they've been heard and and by saying the words you change yourself you hear them in a different way and suddenly people begin to you know be able to to to you know see some common ground that they hadn't seen before now i'm not saying you can go to somebody like mitch mcconnell and and get him to to to be reasonable in any sense and this doesn't always work we obviously we you know we had the shooting in the aurora movie theater in in 2012 that 70 people shot 12 people died uh we came out of that and i'll tell you you know i saw i was there at the the mobile command center and saw the video when they first came out with the video what the crime scene looked like i'll i'll never forget those images and the first thing we did was we committed in that next legislative cycle we could have made $30 million to to mental health because so many of these shootings are are suicides in a in a in a in a in a real way but we also then went after universal background checks and like most states we were getting to 50 percent through the existing laws 50 percent of the gun purchases but the republicans were saying well but crooks aren't stupid they're not going to get a background check why are why would we spend ten dollars and all of us have to get background checks and we made the decision we're going to do it anyway and and that we sat down with the nra multiple times and they in the end refused to be reasonable just like just like mitch mcconnell um and we you know i made the mistake actually i made the mistake of coming home one night and complaining to my son who at that time was in fifth grade and he goes oh dad what's so hard about your job making decisions i said i said well teddy it's not that easy he looks at me and he goes dad get the facts make a decision check next i i said well teddy that's that's not that easy and he goes dad get the facts make a decision check next he goes every day i've got to go into school learn something completely new i didn't know existed the day before if i don't get it perfect the next day is misery because everything's based on the day before i after five minutes i said teddy you're right you know fifth grade is harder than being governor but but then i then i came i i went in the morning the next morning and i knew i realized we'd had the national statistics on gun safety we hadn't gotten the statistics for colorado and so we went back and it took us four weeks and and the nra was unreasonable and we just we went ahead and passed universal background checks with first purple state to do this and we just it was a a bright clear line that we said we weren't going to cross we're going to pass this but as we were doing that and i think we can go to every state in america and when we get these local statistics i think it's hard for any republican legislator to back away in colorado in 2012 getting within that half of the background checks we we we we did it's a 50 percent of the gun purchases 38 people convicted of homicide tried to buy a gun and we stopped them there were 133 people convicted of sexual assault 620 burglars 1300 people convicted of felony assault that's where somebody usually goes to the hospital and and they tried to buy a gun we stopped them there were 420 people who had judicial restraining orders against seeing their ex spouse or their ex boss they tried to buy a gun we stopped them and just in case those republicans didn't think crooks were stupid there were 140 criminals who were arrested for an outstanding warrant for a violent crime when they came in to pick up their guns so and i think i think if we take that those statistics in every state i don't think anyone in a in a in a in a state capitol is going to be able to stand up and say no no i don't want this and then once you start that i think then you have the momentum to really change public public opinion and you didn't take anyone's guns away we never took anyone's guns away we have some great questions from the audience we don't have a lot of time left but i'm gonna start with this first one from isaac bissel of south burlington hickenlooper made boast of a strong state economy under his term as governor but how much of that was due to oil and gas extraction um oil and gas i'm not sure what it is i think it's 12 of our economy so there's some component there but it was our economy before i don't think that part of the economy changed significantly if you look at where colorado's and the other question that i always get is it was marijuana you know we have a 320 billion dollar economy uh maybe 330 billion dollar economy now and marijuana is 1.5 billion so just it's about 0.6 percent or 0.7 percent of of our economy what we tried to do is really become the place that young people and especially young entrepreneurs wanted to set up their businesses and part of that means you got good you got to have good schools but part of it was the bike trails part of us making sure you know part of our of the strength of our economy has come from when we expanded medicaid and when you make sure that the workforce is healthy your businesses do better that's an economic fact and you begin adding incrementally these things the difference between a remarkably strong economy and a slower a slaggard a slovenly economy is a couple of percent so when you are able to improve your workforce if you're able to attract more startups uh if you can stimulate you know that entrepreneurial vigor uh there's a chain reaction that all you know you have these startups and they need more accountants and they need more doctors and they need you know all the support that goes into a new business another thing we did which i think vermont could could capitalize on more i believe that i think of exports and and and president trump's war on on trade is be fuddling right the tariff war is what i think the worst failures i've seen in my lifetime of anything and i view exports as anything that brings money into this country from outside the country or anything that brings if i'm talking about colorado or vermont brings money into the state that didn't originate here and tourism becomes one of our best exports and one of the tragic consequences that people aren't talking about from president trump's reign is is the the drop in international tourists wanting to come to our country right it's more than eight percent is what i was told a couple weeks ago and that's a drop in in our export capacity and i think we see in all states one of the things we did in colorado was really pushed our international relationships talk to our local businesses ask them to promote tourism in their you know if they had an office in london or an office in in italy or a loss in an office in asia continue to be part of our ambassadors for for more tourism because tourism and i think vermont would be the exact same thing people will come here for for vacation and if you if you promote it a little bit they'll start thinking huh maybe i could live here and and a convention and visitors business on that is the same thing you know those conventions allow your restaurants to usually there are mondays and tuesdays and wednesdays which are slow nights in the restaurant business you get that and you'll have more restaurants if you have more conventions uh those kinds of things are make you an exporter they bring new dollars into your community i think raise opportunity up for everybody i think those are some great lessons for us here in vermont scott visage of callus asks what will you do to minimize interference in your campaign from social media experts wow that is such an open ended question and you know colorado is a is a home of norad the northern command down in colorado springs and in nineteen i think in 1993 they decided to put space command in that same center and space command is given the overall primary responsibility for cyber security and so i have seen up close and personal the issues around cyber security not just in terms of someone getting into your into your uh checking account and and causing mischief or trying to steal your credit card or that stuff that usually you're protected by your bank on that the stuff that we saw in the election in in uh in 2016 i think surprised a lot of us and the inability of our social media to police real facts from manufactured disinformation that had a political political point you know i told i told hillary clinton after i saw her i said not only not only were you the first female presidential candidate from a major party but you're also the first person whoever got your email hacked by wiki leaps wiki lease and distributed to everybody you're the first candidate that a foreign government maliciously created false information to uh to to attack and diminish your campaign but you're also the first person now the fbi come out and make false accusations 10 days before the election and you still won anyway i think i think everyone has to have i mean right now on our campaign you have to have some cyber experts that are out there and monitoring and have a relationship with facebook uh and instagram and and and be monitoring what people are saying because but by the time you know what is it that old there's an old saying that says a lie can go all the way around the world before the truth can even get its pants on get out of bed and i think that's truer now than it ever has been and so we have some some experts and are really looking at how do we make sure that we have firewalls when i my cell phone knows such a pain in the neck right when i'm about to make a call all of a sudden i've got to do my second dual authentic that does random secondary authentications what a pain in the neck but but good right is it it it dramatically diminishes the ability of of intruders to hack into your into your system and i think probably all of us in this country you know cyber security everything i mean it's probably the next you know military style conflict or next theater that we're going to have most at risk and we don't have protocols yet that's a big reason why you know president trump's people ask me if his commander chief how would i react i'll tell you the first thing i do i would not ignore and and deprecate the most talented information and military you know intelligence and military officers in the world and i certainly wouldn't alienate and diminish our allies of longest standing because if we're going to deal with things like cyber security and create protocols that are international we need relationships we need allies but we also need relationships relationships with everybody on earth and right now we're going in the wrong direction on that so i need to squeeze in one more question because you're in bernie country here really quick oh good you got lots of time i'm fine why do why do you think you would make a better president than senator bernie sanders and that comes from vermont digger editor call in mine that's the second one you can end the campaign quickly um you will not hear me criticize senator bernie sanders and and what he did well absolutely i mean that's what he did was crystallize the issues of of the entire country uh in concise well fought out uh positions and this notion that you know i mean i understand that i understand that just because corporations are having record profits doesn't mean the country is doing better right and i understand that you know that millennials don't hate the idea of buying a house and having children right they're buried in debt i understand that the baby boomers shouldn't have to choose between you know taking care of their parents their aging parents and sending their kids to college in either case when they're not going to have enough money for their own retirement those are the issues that bernie sanders crystallized that really had been talked about but not put into such clarity that he provided and while i don't agree with all the solutions i really salute his his ability to create that clarity and allow people to get to the crux of some of the most important issues facing this country i think a lot of us appreciate that thank you one last question sure a ski and a beer colorado or vermont you don't have to wow so here's here's the easy answer which i learned in the beer business years ago actually greg newton might have been the person who told me this whatever your i mean beer is food right it's not like wine doesn't improve it's if it's made properly and not pasteurized it has a very limited shelf life right to be at its pinnacle probably six weeks maybe eight weeks so my favorite beer is always the local beer right it's crazy sir so when i'm in vermont my favorite beer is always a vermont beer uh skiing is a little more difficult but you know i did have hip surgery a few years ago and haven't been able to ski so i'm not sure i'm it's applicable to my present situation i look again i think outdoor recreation skiing being at the top of that is something that we have really recruited in colorado uh i think that well however you talk about health care one of the most important things about controlling costs is to get the country to move towards preventable preventive health care right and and skiing and hiking i mean i think and i think this could be a great future for for vermont and new hampshire and main uh if we'd really drive this home because i mean our you know when i was a kid all the hospitals were nonprofits and then all of a sudden the powers of b decided that for profit would do a better job which is certainly looking pretty questionable right now just in the given the inflation in the last 30 years it once you become a business once you make everything for profit business is only going to find where they can get where money is it's going to follow the money and what that means is if if you're a doctor and you convince someone to take to change their lifestyle and and prevent them from getting a lifestyle based disease right what you're really what your compensation is going to be is zero but if that person gets the disease and has a health crisis all of a sudden thousands of thousands of thousands of thousands of dollars are going to be spent we need and i think outdoor recreation is such a powerful tool to do this we need to compel people to get outside more often we created something in colorado called colorado the beautiful uh you know that it's in colorado springs is where america the beautiful was written i'm just again not you know urney banks the chicago cub shortstop said it ain't bragging if it's true i'm not sure that's fair but anyway we had we created colorado the beautiful to make sure that within 20 years within one generation every single kid in colorado would be within a 10 minute walk of a green space right just to encourage so that as we go out and get outdoor recreation you know people paying attention to almost i mean every every kind of sport you could imagine any kind of outdoor activity we want to celebrate and a lot of the companies that make outdoor recreation equipment and clothing and i mean it's an 887 billion dollar a year and a lot of those companies don't want to be in big cities right they'd much rather be in smaller cities like berlington and and in smaller communities even beyond berlington those are the kinds of places we're trying to kill to get jobs so i think there should be a united front of of outdoor recreation support and so we're there now i think 10 states that have an office of outdoor recreation and those offices are really trying to work to facilitate between government and business and then local government how do we get more outdoor recreation companies in our state not to steal from somebody else but how to encourage the the the people doing the startups to do that because i think long term it's clean healthy business and it's also going to make people i mean to help us control our our own health absolutely i agree governor hickenlooper i want to thank you for coming here today thank you for coming to vermont we don't get to see a lot of presidential candidates and you're the first sane one we've seen in many many years so thank you thank you very much thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you everyone for coming have a good evening