 So, um, we are taking questions from the audience and we'll hand those to our moderator, Ann Galloway. A round of applause please. She came all the way over here to help us out. The cards and pencils are located at the refreshment table. And, uh, if you have a question, you can just give them to Liz Schlagel. Look behind you and you'll see her. She's in a black top and she's right there. She's our chair, yes, so that's how she gets that job. And she'll get them to Ann and Ann will choose them or not, depending upon what Ann wants to do. So, uh, we're going to start with, uh, deciding who goes first. The format is that each candidate will get three minutes to make an opening statement. Ann will ask questions of any candidate that she likes to ask the question of. And, um, then they will have two minutes to answer. If Ann decides there's a rebuttal, then there will be one minute. I'm going to be the timekeeper again. This is why I have to, yeah, because I'm the new guy. Um, I have a paper plate that's a 30 second mark and I have a red cup that's times out. Okay? So, um, we're going to let them draw cards to see who gets to go first. Who got number one? Oh, you go last. No, I'm kidding. You get to go first. So, ladies and gentlemen, from my left, uh, current, well, current House Speaker, until somebody else's elected House Speaker, Chef Smith. These are all Democrats, so we like them, right? Because we're all Democrats, so most of us. Um, in the middle, Keisha Ram, who's a member of the House for six per eight years. All right? And, uh, Senator David Zuckerman, who's been a representative and a Senator for, uh, for a while. Hello? All right. So, Keisha went first, uh, who got two? You got two? So, it'll be Keisha and, uh, and, uh, David and then Chef. Good. So, let's test the microphones. Hello. Can you hear me? Yeah. Oh, okay. Folks, great. Um, thank you so much for having me tonight. By way of introduction, I'm Representative Keisha Ram. I've served in the legislature for eight years. Um, and as some of you may know, I started in the legislature when, um, I started my campaign when I was a senior at the University of Vermont. Uh, it was the start of the Great Recession in 2008. And, uh, young people particularly were facing, um, the back of the employment line, huge student debt, and not sure if they would even have a place on their parents' couches. So, I challenged incumbents for a seat in the legislature, uh, wanting to represent my generation and be a voice, uh, for our future as a state. Um, right out of the gate, I heard kitten with lipstick, not sure what she thinks she brings to the table. Uh, so I knocked on every door twice. I, uh, registered hundreds of young people to vote. I sat in everybody's living room, and I won by the largest margin of any challenger in the state that year. So, I'm used to being underestimated, and I think, um, that spirit and that work ethic comes from growing up in my Indian immigrant father and Jewish-American mother's Irish pub. Um, where I was sweeping peanut shells off the floor and, uh, and pitching in in the family business and just really figuring out, um, what I could contribute while recognizing that when the health department came in or when the fire marshal came in, it was always a stressful time making sure that everything was in place. And I see a lot of that same spirit, um, in your small businesses right here in downtown Waterbury. Um, we had a great opportunity to connect with folks, uh, you know, just this evening, not that we haven't been, um, before. I'm actually on the board of the Center for Whole Communities in Feaston, uh, and I'm always traveling through and staying at the inns and, um, experiencing the business community. But today was particularly helpful just to connect with folks. And, um, you know, it was talking to John at the stage coach in and he was just saying, you know, shoulder season has been softened even in a terrible year for snow by having the craft beer industry around. And that was confirmed when I went to go see Caleb McGoon at Waterbury Sports and two guys walked in and said, well, we were just driving through, but we thought we'd stop and get some local beer and then we thought we'd stop in and see what's going on here in the, the sports shop. So, you know, just being able to hear from people what is making the ecosystem work in Waterbury and you all are doing something right. Um, and then I do think back to, um, you know, some of those early days after Irene and, you know, I can't help but be in this area without thinking about an experience that I had. Um, when I was at a board meeting at Noel Farm in Feaston at Bragg Hill Road and, uh, we were having our meeting people from out of state. We had gone to volunteer with a local farmer and, um, you know, helping pick things out of his field to get ready for, for clearing it after the flood. And this woman came up to us, um, and she asked if we'd seen her cat and she was almost in tears and not quite there yet. Um, and I started to ask her about the cat about where she was staying and pretty soon I just said to her, it sounds like this is about more than your cat. And, you know, she burst into tears and talked about being in a local mobile home park um, and struggling to figure out where she was gonna put her child in school now that she had to move. And so, you know, I just think about those things that are right under the skin for a lot of folks still. Um, just really being, being upended. Thank you. Ready, John? Everybody hear me fine? Hi, my name is David Zuckerman. I am running for Lieutenant Governor in the Democratic Primary, which is actually, essentially started. The ballots are coming out in some towns already and, and shortly here in other towns. And, uh, so I encourage you to vote either early or, of course, by August 9th, and I would love your support in this race. I've been a state legislator for 18 of the last 20 years, both in the House for 14 years and in the Senate for four. You may be familiar with some of my work uh, leading the way introducing legislation around GMO legislation, which obviously we have our GMO labeling law, which is the first in the nation about to go into effect within about two weeks. But I also was a lead sponsor of Marriage Equality for all of the years from civil unions through to when we passed it. And I really pride myself on putting issues out there that sometimes not everyone's quite ready for in the political class, but that in the public folks are hoping to see happen so we can improve our society for individuals and take on social stigmas or expand our economy, et cetera. And so I also take on issues like cannabis reform, which I've been introducing since 2000, including both our medical marijuana law uh, and now full-on cannabis reform, where, as we're talking about the economy some tonight, the main reason to do that bill is around changing youth access and having resources for drug issues and treatment and prevention and education. But it also, just as my colleague spoke about how beer has become an economic engine for some, there are plenty of folks who would be interested to come to Vermont, where they might have choices of different flavors for lack of a better term of cannabis and also ski or recreate and participate in other aspects of our Vermont economy. So when I was growing up, we had a garden. It turns out that that was a big seed for me and I'm now running a farm with my spouse, Rachel Nevitt. We have a full moon farm. It's a business with about 10 employees in the summer, three through the winter. We grow about 25 acres of vegetables, quite a few acres of straw, which I was bailing today, so I'm a little exhausted tonight. I apologize if I fumble at some point along the way. But working that farm, producing food for people, I sell at the Burlington Farmers Market. And to me, producing food is in a holistic way. We have an organic farm is about thinking not just about what we can produce today and for whom, but also how are we treating the soil and how are we leaving it for the next generation of farmers? And for me, in my political role, whether it was marriage equality, end-of-life choices, GMO labeling, livable wages, affordable housing, to me, all of these issues are not just about today and how we're helping people today, but how are we thinking about our future and not just in the two-year electoral cycle, but actually in the 15, 50 and 100-year cycle? And as a farmer, that's the way I think. I don't know who heard today on public radio that tonight's full moon on the solstice. It's actually the next time that's going to happen is not for another 80 to 90 years. This is the only time this century. And I think sometimes we get so wrapped up in the short-term thinking when also we need to be thinking long-term and putting ideas out there for where we're going to be in the long-term. Thank you. My name's Shapsmith. I grew up up the road in Elmore in Wolcott and went to school in Morseville. I had the opportunity when I was growing up to spend some time at the Partridge Inn. I don't know if anybody ever went there up in Stowe and stood behind the Hobart washing dishes there as I grew up and realized that there were some other things I wanted to do with my life rather than wash dishes for the rest of my life. I am very proud to be living back in the community that I grew up in with my two kids and my lovely wife and working in Burlington and my wife works in Stowe. And part of the reason that we've been able to come back to Vermont, both of us left for a little while, is because of the incredible public education system that we have and the opportunities that we both got, me at People's Academy Middle Level and People's Academy and my wife at Stowe High School. The reason that I actually am starting off talking about that is that we're going to talk about economic development today and how the economy is doing and part of how the economy is doing has a lot to do with the investments that we make in the state. And part of the investments that will allow us to be successful are investments in our kids, making sure that they can climb out of child poverty and that they have early childhood education. And it's investments in our downtowns. I remember the day after Tropical Storm Irene, walking Randall Street with Liz Schlegel and Tom Stevens and seeing the wreckage and understanding that it was going to take government investment for us to restore Waterbury to the kind of community that it was. And that was just one example of where we had to invest throughout the state. And look at what has happened. We are in incredible reinvigoration of our downtowns and when I come to Waterbury, I see the amazing work that's been done by the community reinvesting. And I'm looking at Rebecca Ellis right now and Rebecca and Tom also went to the mat to make sure that a huge employer in the state of Vermont came back and I fought with them to make sure that something like that would happen, understanding that moving the state office complex to a green field might be cheaper in the short term but it would be much more expensive in the long term. Government has a role to play in making the investments that are going to create the economic development. One last thing, you look at our renewable energy industry, part of the reason that we have such a robust renewable energy industry with young people working and getting jobs in it is because we have had the foresight to encourage renewable energy development through tax credits, through standard offer making sure that you have standard pricing. Those are the kinds of things that matter. Those are the kinds of things that I will push, continue to push as Lieutenant Governor. Okay, for the first question, I guess I'll... Does it matter who goes next? Oh, okay, it's all on me. Okay. Dave, I'm going to start with you and you guys can each answer this question and then if you want to do a rebuttal, we've got time for that. So just if you want to do a rebuttal, raise your hand, okay? And then you each have two minutes to do this answer and then one minute for a rebuttal. Vermont gave a million dollars to global foundries after they assumed ownership of the IBM plant in Essex. Do you think this was a good use of tax dollars? If not, how would you have used that money? Well, you've taken one of those sentences from my closing remarks. Oh, gosh. Because actually, for me, when you're talking about a billion-dollar deal with a company that's got even more billions behind it in global foundries and oil resources, I don't think our million dollars probably was truly the thing that made a difference to their returning or not. And when I think about the backbone of Vermont's economy, I look at our small businesses. You know, we talked about beer earlier, met the looses earlier about their business that was here in Waterbury. And my own business, a small 10-person business, those are the backbone of our economy and the primary direction I would go with our resources is supporting our three to five to 10-person businesses become five to 10 to 20-person businesses. Because ultimately, those businesses that are rooted here and are owned by Vermonters are going to stay here. And they're going to look for someone to pass it on to, whether it be family members or employee ownership, maybe, when they're ready to retire, or someone else nearby who's worked for them who might want to buy it out from them. And to me, local small businesses are the backbone of our economy and will continue to be where our economy builds in the future for a much more stable long-term situation. So I would use the million dollars either towards grants or small low-interest loans to our Vermont businesses, much like we have through Vita and other opportunities, and add more resources to that direction of investment. Thank you. Kisha, why don't you go next? Yeah, so businesses like Global Foundries get a lot of support through research and development tax credits, energy efficiency programs that help them reinvest their own monies into making them more energy efficient. And that's really the way to go to support some of our larger employers to make sure that they have what they need to be sustainable, but our million dollars doesn't necessarily mean a lot for them. At the same time, it's more of a climate issue, and I think that million dollars became symbolic of what is the state doing to constantly reach out to our business community and say, we want to keep you here, we want to build a partnership. What does that look like without spending resources flippantly when there's the threat of leaving? We know that that's really just not the best way to keep and retain and attract our businesses. I would be looking much more at reducing barriers for small businesses, for figuring out how we attract more startups, how we align our policies with the kind of future we want to create in the state. Do we want to be the small business state, the climate economy? What does that look like, and how do we then align our tax incentives and our policies strategically in that direction? Thank you, Shep. So this is a tricky balance. I think David's right that the future of our economy is really going to be driven by growing companies like Concept 2 or the Alchemist or Keurig Green Mountain Coffee Roasters that we should be putting our investments in supporting smaller businesses that are going to grow. But I can tell you that one of the things that worried me over the last eight years as Speaker of the House was whether IBM, before Global Foundries, was going to close. And I can tell you right now we could have made a lot of investments in small businesses throughout the state, but if IBM had closed in 2009, 2010, or 2011, that would have been devastating to the economy of the state of Vermont. And if Global Foundries left right now, that would be pretty devastating to the state of Vermont. So we have to have some balance. We do need to make sure that investments are available for all businesses, but we need to also focus on the fact that, frankly, our economy is going to grow by supporting the smaller businesses that are going to become bigger ones. That is the nature of Vermont generally. We know that that's what's made our economy constantly revive itself. Thank you, Dave. You want to hear about that? Well, I just want to say that I believe I'm the only one that made it clear whether the million dollars should have gone to Global Foundries or not. I'd love to know if the other candidates think it should have or shouldn't have, because we would love to have money for everything, but ultimately we don't, and we have to make decisions on what we would do, and I feel like I was clear about what to do with that money, and I don't know if the other two would like to be more clear. So I'm actually willing to put money for bigger employers if it goes to employee training, if it goes to making sure that the employees are hired, if people, if that money is going back into the state of Vermont, I think that sometimes those investments are okay, and it's a tough balance, but I don't think that we should discriminate just because one company, like a Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, is 2,500 and another is 20. So I think there's a bigger question here about having an enterprise fund that was four and a half, five million dollars, that became a slush fund for the governor. You know, we are the legislature, our job is to hold the purse strings, and our job is to spend wisely and not react moment to moment, and so the enterprise fund should have never existed in the first place, and we should be much more strategic about the investments we make, because you look at other states that are in a race to the bottom with tax incentives and trying to attract businesses, and they end up spending a lot of tax payer money without great result, as opposed to working on quality of life issues, workforce development, tech and telecommunications, and attracting businesses for the reasons that are higher on their priority list for why they want to relocate and be part of a community. So I'm going to be the big meanie and ask the yes-no question. Global Foundries, yes-no? I supported it. Okay. Kisha? Yes, because we were put in a bind. Okay, thank you. That's helpful. So next question, and it goes first this time to Shapp. Should we invest in the hydropower dams? Why or why not? Yes. I was one of the first state leaders to say that we should explore purchasing the dams along the Deerfield and Connecticut River. I believe it was a mistake in 2005 when we did not invest in those dams, and I believe that the governor then put his thumb on the scale to ensure that we did not purchase them. The reality is that we may not be able to buy them solely through the state government. We may need to do a public-private partnership, but I believe that the long-term benefit to the state of Vermont, industrial power rates, perhaps lower rates for consumers throughout the state, and because I believe there's going to be a premium on renewable energy and hydropower in the future, I think that we ought to buy them. Thank you. Dave, this time you next. Absolutely. I was in the legislature back in 2005, and certainly at the time was an advocate for purchasing those dams and would agree with the speaker that Governor Douglas really put the squeeze towards a no. We look at our energy future and I'm honored to have received the Renewable Energy Vermont Award as legislator of the year, in part because of my stance on renewable energy here in Vermont, and we absolutely should invest in it. When we look at our global climate situation, the absolute situation over the next 20 to 30 years is going to be a complete shift away from carbon-based fuels and to buy it now as opposed to pay even a higher premium later and as the speaker said, possibly in a public-private partnership because it is a tremendous number of dollars, but when I served on the board of the Burlington Electric Department back in the mid-90s, we divested from Vermont Yankee, we invested in hydropower both in New York and here in Vermont, and Burlington Electric now has some of the best rates in the state. Overall, we have some of the best rates in the region now because our Vermont utilities have moved in the right direction. So I'm a very firm, maybe I would like to hear more of the information that's coming out, and I've been Vice Chair of Natural Resources and Energy for this past year, and we talk a lot to our utilities about the volatility of their portfolio, and I was in Bellows Falls this weekend chatting with some employees at TransCanada just talking about, you know, maybe in the future, the price of purchasing hydro is going to be strong, so a company like TransCanada can balance that against their other assets in the region and can really float some of those costs and, you know, make it all work, and we as a state are not particularly well-equipped to do that. You know, we have locally-owned utilities and that's worked very well, but a state-owned utility is something that would be uncharted territory. I would really want to see how it worked, and I know a lot of folks in Wyndham County whose group was put together to look at the issue, no one from Wyndham County was appointed to that study group, so we really have to listen to the voices that are nearby that are working at that plant about what they think their future is going to look like. Thank you. Vermont's population is aging. A large number of young people leave for college and then stay near the place where they go to school. Vermont Higher Education tuition is among the highest in the country. There's no tuition to attract more young people to come to Vermont to go to school and eventually settle here. Keisha, why don't we start with you? Absolutely, and big priority for me, I'm on the board at the University of Vermont, and what we should start by recognizing is that Higher Education is one of our greatest economic development tools in the state. It is the largest net importer of young people and talented professionals into the state who stay and contribute to the economy and to our larger intellectual and economic engines. So I would start by saying that I have introduced legislation this year and in the past as part of a tripartisan future caucus to look at all the many pathways to Higher Education certification training of all kinds. And what we know is that through dual enrollment and our early college programs, we're starting to get there in terms of giving young people access to one or more years of college education if we lift those caps and let everyone participate. So just starting by helping kids get out of a K through 12 setting if they need to and have that experience is hugely important. I was talking to a young woman named Elizabeth who's a waitress at our VODs who went to Harwood and had ADHD and just wasn't having a good experience and was able to use some money from a family member who passed away to go to Rice. And from Rice, she had the partnership at St. Mike's where you get $5,000 off your tuition each year and you've gone to Rice to go to St. Mike's. And those kinds of pathways for young people where they see a conveyor belt to their options and how they can afford that for families as well is hugely important. So figuring out the cost of what free tuition for at least two years of college would look like is a huge priority. Getting more manufacturing internship tax credits because not everybody is meant for college and there are some folks who want to get into the trades where we also have a heavily aging population. So figuring out how to support that. And then finally, looking at all of the alternative pathways that people might access higher education that we're currently underfunding or not paying enough attention to. And for me, that's reach up. The reach up caseload is almost all folks who stay on the program and access from prison as well as through our substance abuse programs. Thank you. Shat. So in the last couple years one of the priorities in the house and I think in the senate too as well as with the governor has been giving kids an opportunity particularly when they're high school to take college level classes so that they earn college credit while they're in high school. This has actually two benefits. While we have one of the highest graduation rates in the country we actually have one of the lowest aspiration rates of kids going to college. And what I remember when I was in high school and when I see when I talk to high school students now is that if you have the experience of what a college level class is particularly if you're first generation you realize it's not as scary and it is something that you can do. So dual enrollment and early college have been something that have been funding priorities for us in the legislature. This year it was not enough but we put $700,000 into the budget to increase funding for the Vermont state colleges. And last year we did something pretty novel working with the president of Vermont tech Dan Smith we bought advanced manufacturing equipment using capital funds so that there would be equipment that kids who were going to school could use and they could work on it and it was equipment that would help them with other employers like GW plastics and other employers. So I think we have to be creative in the way that we're making investments in our state colleges. I'm very intrigued by the proposal that Sue Minter put on the table about funding two years of school and the community college and if I was lucky enough to be elected lieutenant governor and Sue was elected governor I would look forward to working with her again. David. Well a couple of things. One is I think it's really important that we in our high schools start talking a lot more about financial literacy and so that folks when looking at going to university or college also know what they're getting into in terms of the pros and cons between the cost and the benefit and generally of course it's a net positive so long as there are jobs out there to go into from those fields of $1,000 in debt. I actually hire folks who want to get into farming and they've done four years of college or university and they realize they now can't farm because they have so much debt and they could have actually worked on farms, learned what a business was like, earned money while doing it and would have had a better opportunity to start a farm. So I want to make sure we look at all the different pathways to a successful future and it actually isn't always higher education our rate of attrition to higher education unfortunately is abysmally low in the country but I also want to talk about tuition this last session we actually advanced legislation from the house side that the Board of UVM and others supported to get rid of the 40% rule which made it so that Vermonters would pay no more than 40% of the out of state tuition rate and the university came in and said we want to eliminate that so we can lower out of state tuition to draw more kids to go to Vermont and we said well can we put a governor on the in-state or some kind of limit so that we don't all of a sudden start costing in-state Vermonters more and more during this process and they refused and essentially the house version more or less passed. We did pass language which would give folks with trades credit for that in their higher education learning so that also when they go to higher education facilities in Vermont they start thinking that's that the overall bill in the long run would be less. I would finish with saying that again reforming our cannabis laws the first money should absolutely go towards prevention, treatment, education and law enforcement but there's no doubt that there are additional resources and the first place those should go is the higher ed trust fund so we can invest in a future fund to make sustainable long-term higher education funding. Thank you. Yes. I'd just like to say that when we remove the 40 percent rule on graduate level education at UVM what we were hearing was in the business school there were a lot of masters level business students who were simply talking to other Vermonters and while there's huge benefit to that most world class programs allowed for a lot of networking and people from all over the country and really the world to be able to come be part of a program like that. We had a master's program in business education and we were able to get the 40 percent rule removed two years ago we had already seen what happened we just lowered out of state tuition for that program so that it would be competitive nationally and bring more students in and that's exactly what we're doing here which we need to be part of the national market on higher education and attract more folks to the state who are going to stay. We all hear about the need for young students to come and that was a big part of what we accomplished through changing the 40 percent rule. Yes. Well I understand that for post-secondary degrees but for straight up BAs and BSs we already at UVM are a huge percentage of out of state and out of country students so I don't think that necessarily needs to be our draw in the same way that it does in the graduate program so I did support it for the graduate programs I think that's much more elective than the economic needs for our flagship institution. Okay next question thank you all. Why do you think personal income tax receipts are down and we're going to start with Dave. Wow well you know there's no doubt that our economy isn't doing particularly well overall I know that Vermont and Governor Shumlin talks about how we have more people working but the actual wages of a lot of workers are not going up and I can say as someone who is working every day while running for office you know it's tough to make a living out there we run a farm some years are up some years are down but that's because of weather but you know Vermont there's a lot of myths out there and the public assets institute has a number of a lot of numbers around our rich people leaving because our taxes are high and actually we have just as many rich people moving in as moving out we also have discussion about young people moving in and moving out it's actually a steady flow in both directions but I don't have a magic reason why income receipts are down except that I would say the ski industry this last winter certainly was poultry you know this area you know has a lot of support from the ski industry with big resorts north and south and I'm sure the overall traffic I think was down about 33% so there's no doubt that that's going to be an impact. Thank you Shep. I don't think we have any idea why frankly and we this has been a trend where personal income receipts have been sort of they have not been growing as fast as we thought they would and part of it is that W2 income is not going up wage income is not going up what's striking though is that our personal income if you look at the median personal income in the state of Vermont it is going up and it has gone up for the last five years so we we're having a very hard time understanding why we're getting less in taxes it could be as simple as this the market was not doing very well over the last 12 months people took a lot of capital losses and we have a lot of estimated taxes that are paid and taxes that are paid on investment income because we have a lot of people who are doing pretty well here and once they take those capital losses we don't see as much tax revenue and all I know is the economists keep not getting it right and it is one of the most frustrating things to be building a budget and in January on estimates and then in April all of a sudden have them $20 million so thank you Kisha so having spent three years on ways and means what we would constantly hear from Tom Kovat are warning signs that we have a very volatile tax base in Vermont that unlike many other states most other states at this point we tie ourselves to taxable income rather than adjusted gross income we take a lot of the federal loopholes that people rail against all the time in Washington and that makes it so that if you're deducting your gambling losses we're not going to see as much revenues come in so you know if we have a more stable tax base what that looks like is moving to fewer loopholes a broader tax base and often lowering the rate so when other states say we have a lower income tax rate what's going on in Vermont it's often because we have a much narrower base we're taxing and it's very volatile so year to year we end up saying oh we're short and we're going to have to increase the budget and nickel and dime people somewhere else and we don't rely so much on property taxes and we move from taxable income to adjusted gross income you often end up with a much more stable tax base and our state economists have been saying that for years so can I respond to that? because last year we actually did cap itemized deductions and so moved closer and closer to what's called an adjustable gross income gross income moving in that direction we had gotten rid of or minimize the deduction of the local and state income tax deduction and so we've been moving over time towards that the issue of volatility of income is going to happen whether you have taxable income or not because income is volatile it depends on how the economy is doing and one of the worries that I have about going to an income tax for school funding is that if all of a sudden you had a huge drop in income one year where are you going to make that up for paying for schools and so that I just I wanted to lay that out there thank you one of the things you're fortunate with all three of us actually served on Ways and Means Committee which I think is probably unusual and I served on Ways and Means the last two years when SHAP became speaker we didn't have any money but none of us have spent any we haven't been on the appropriations committee this is true but you know really when we look at our overall tax structure while we have one of the more progressive tax structures in the country we still have an unequal system that preferences wealthier individuals over working class people if we want to see more tax revenue then we need to see more people spending their money locally in this state and the people that do that are working class hard all day and then if they make a little more than 10 or 12 or $15 an hour they spend it here in the state and so for me if we want to see our taxable income our tax revenues go up in the state we actually should have our working people get paid a livable wage and we would start to see a much more stable economy in the long run thank you very much while we're on this lovely subject let's keep going because this is one of my favorite topics okay so what initiatives would you pursue to change the way K-12 education is paid for and why you're at it would you change any other tax policies well I hope what you mean by that is pre-K through 12 education because let's say pre-K to 12 great and we're working really hard to include access to early care and early learning in what we consider a basic education forward that with the inclusion of four and five year olds in our education funding system and that's hugely important because often that saves us money in the long term I was talking to another waitress tonight at our VODS you have great waitresses here in town and you know she was saying that she ran a home based day care out of her home so she could spend more time with her son and then he ended up getting he was diagnosed with autism and she realized she had to send him to a childcare so that he could get the real services and informed based care that he needed so now that she's done that he's doing incredibly well he's progressing, he's much more on track to stay at grade level to stay in classes and so you know those are the kinds of things that early learning help us save money in the long term with specific to moving to education funding but we do have a system right now where property taxpayers become the pressure valve where if you're paying full freight then you're a smaller percentage you're about one third of the state that's paying based on your property value rather than the almost two thirds that pay based on their income and that often means that you make a little bit more money one year and all of a sudden your tax is double and that's a situation that we should not be facing when we're moving to a hybrid income and property based system where we're still taxing commercial properties based on a property valuation and we move towards income based payments for everyone it's really a way to make sure that certain people at the top and not really even at the top just above about a hundred thousand dollars of income don't become a pressure valve to say we need more money in the system and we also have to look at the cost side of things Aaron's Chris Pearson in the house and Anthony Plene in the senate who both support me actually introduced the concept of moving towards income based education funding for all homeowners in Vermont so it includes still the hybrid of business owners and second homeowners that's based on property but that the rest of us would pay based on income and if the top third of our income earners paid based on income the same way that those of us at the lower end of the spectrum or middle income end of the spectrum would be about $120,000 would be about an $80 million tax shift of relief for ordinary hard working Vermonters but really it's more than how we fund the system serving on the education committee for the last four years it became very apparent whether it's due to the opiate situation but other situations as well that so many of our teachers are now also primarily being social workers for the kids that are coming into the schools and we really feel that we need to hybridize our human services agency and our education department and that if we had human services personnel based in the schools where we have room because we've had such a decline in students anyway that folks that live in rural communities would have more local access to human services and understanding the different programs that are out there to give them a hand up to get back out of poverty but also those children as they enter the schools would enter a familiar environment and so a school environment which can actually be very scary for kids particularly if they come from challenged situations would become more comfortable and then teachers could also focus on teaching and inspiring and being those people that for many of us you look back on your second or your third or your fifth grade teacher and that person inspired you to go in some direction that you now are in but they're spending so much time as human services folks that it's very difficult and I think we would also save money because by merging those services we don't have to duplicate them and so it's both financially better and I believe better for our children and our outcomes for our children which is the ultimate goal with our public education system. Thank you, Chef. So it does, I actually agree with both Keisha and David that it has to be on both sides of the equation. We have to deal with making sure that we're providing education in a way that's cost effective and that we are financing correctly. I was down in Williamstown a couple weeks ago and was really amazed at some of the work that they're doing. The principal allows his office to be used for counseling one day a week and what they do is they bring somebody in from Washington County Mental Health and they work with the kids who they've identified as potentially moving beyond sort of some problems to even more major problems and they're intervening early and what they've seen is in the last three years their special ed enrollment is starting to go down because they're trying to get at the challenges earlier and we need to reinforce that throughout the state. That's a real opportunity. And the thing that the principal said is he would like to see DCF working with the families in coordination with the stuff that's happening in the school because they can't get DCF involved until it's a crisis situation. So they're not getting that counseling earlier and that would save us money. You intervene early you are going to save some money. We do need to expand our education to basically birth till three because we know that brain development happens in the first two to three years and that's where it's most critical. I just want to say one thing about the financing I think that we ought to expand income sensitivity to $150,000 a year. We tried to do something like that in the house the last couple of years the senate and the governor were unwilling to do it. I don't, I think there are some concerns about expanding to an income based system totally because of the volatility of the income tax. Thank you. Just to be clear the shift towards income sensitivity for everybody still bases it on the initial property tax value so that creates and would maintain that stability but also earlier one of the folks mentioned that folks at the higher end pay full freight and I just want to say that as lieutenant governor the language we use is very, very important and I think everybody in Vermont is paying the full freight that they can afford to pay and that it's really important not to diminish that those that pay based on income are paying somehow less for education system when actually still as a percentage of their income they're paying more than wealthy Vermonters who pay two and one and half a percent as they become much more wealthy versus most of us that pay between 2.6 and 2.9 percent of our income towards our public education system. Okay, Schaap asked first then Yukisha. So I just, you know 2009 when I first became speaker when Governor Douglas was pushing to cut income sensitivity we had to go to the mat so much that we had to override a veto of the budget and the tax bill. So I have always stood firm for income sensitivity because I believe that it makes sense for people who make under $90,000 to pay for education based on their income. In fact, I think we ought to expand it. The question is if you expand it all the way up is that going to create some real challenges for the education fund? A fund that we already have challenges with with regard to whether we have enough money to pay for education every year. Thank you. Dave do you want to, no we did it. Keshia, sorry. I just wanted to say that when you have middle class families and parent households where both are working and you hit that cap and you end up paying quite a bit more right away you just fall off that cliff that does feel like a drastic change for people who aren't making a whole lot more income. You know my partner and I experienced that ourselves as young homeowners and our property taxes tripled and for a lot of young people that you're talking about they pay for childcare, healthcare and property taxes at the end of the month to reinvest and so this is an issue that we're going to have to address for middle income families just as much as anybody in the state. Okay. I guess we'll who do I owe the first to at this point? I'm a little confused. I guess I probably owe Shab. So what's the biggest barrier to a strong Vermont economy? I think the biggest challenge right now is the lack of broadband infrastructure throughout the state. I think that's really challenging. You know we're on DSL at home. My kids like to stream all of their stuff and you know I go and try to use the computer to work at night and you know the arguments are not a lot of fun. Let's just put it that way. They're more interested in watching entertainment than daddy making a living but it's a challenge. And the fact of the matter is we need more public investment and if I have one regret as speaker over the last eight years it is not bonding for telecommunications infrastructure more than we did. The second thing is that when I talk to employers these days they're saying they can't find employees and the challenge is training and it's a real challenge and so we need to expand our training programs. We need to work with our higher education system but we also need to work with the technical schools that we have because I think that both Kasia and David correctly pointed out not everybody wants to go to college but guess what if you learn how to be a plumber you're probably going to be doing better than an English major coming out of UVM and so I think that we have to understand that there are different pathways but we need to get our kids better trained and our adults as well. Thank you Dave. Well I'm going to echo some of those points as the, I'll shop employees and folks too I think at the law firm but as someone who employs working class young people I think certainly workforce training work ethic we're here in Vermont we're Yankee and I'm actually having a hard time finding people and farming obviously is a hard profession but who look for the efficiencies and look for that next step and we train them in the farm and a lot of folks are not always quite ready to work in whatever the environment might be so I think workforce training is a huge piece of it I talked earlier about financial literacy I think that's also really important because I talk with my employees and say you know the food that you get from the farm which you get to have free on the side so we don't pay payroll taxes on it you know is also an economic benefit and sometimes they value that sometimes they don't but also hope you know I think a lot of Vermonters are really sort of not feeling like there's a lot of opportunities and a lot of options out there and as we spoke earlier because I think we're nearing the end about the million dollars more investment in Vermont small businesses so that those businesses can grow and have great jobs not just seasonal jobs for folks to have year round employment that's another arena we need to move in but there's no doubt I agree workforce training is a huge piece of it there are a number of employers out there that are looking for folks and actually can't find them but that's also about wages we've seen employment levels the unemployment level is very low but the wages being offered are just not there to attract folks so it's not just on the employees but also on those of us as employers to make sure we're paying a livable wage that we're offering earned paid sick leave I was a legislator in the senate when I had a chance to go to Washington DC to lobby on GMOs I stayed back because I was the 15th vote on a 15-14 vote in the senate for paid sick leave and we need to make sure we offer employees the work environment where they're gonna stay with you as well thank you so I was just in Weston the other day and I finally had to say what I keep hearing and can somebody please help me is that there are so many mostly entry level jobs open I was talking to the folks at Hap goods which is a great general store and cafe in Peru and they cannot find enough workers to take their shifts and then you talk to other folks who are coming to the state who are skilled professionals have a degree and they have a real opportunity cost and they can't find a job that matches what they might get paid elsewhere in the country and so what you essentially have is Vermonters being asked to take a Vermont discount on their wages while they're paying a Vermont premium on their cost of living and it's becoming highly unsustainable and so being able to not only invest in the training and getting people you know the skills that they need but not having people drop out of the economy for other reasons and there's no chance with substance abuse childcare transportation you know access to education that's basic so that they can even figure out how to dress and put a resume together as they crawl out of addiction and substance abuse issues or are you know basically trying to get a job for the first time so you have to do that work while you also think about what is it that's making people have such a difficult time taking a job and there aren't enough of those available there is that opportunity cost where wages are higher out of state and we just learned you know that the wage that it takes to truly afford a home a two bedroom apartment even in the state jumped from $19 an hour wage to $21 an hour and so a lot of folks can't find the housing that's affordable to them to be able to take a job that pays them a wage that helps them survive and we'll wrap up with the two minute closing statements and we'll start with Keisha let you get a drink of water there and then we'll go with Dave and then Shaap. This was wonderful to be with all of you tonight and you did a great job and I don't know if some of these questions came from folks in the audience or you have more questions for us it was nice to let the Lieutenant Governor candidates go first but you all have a long way to go. We're building a truly grassroots campaign that's all about reaching folks one by one and I just want to end by talking about when I was first in the legislature you know a business owner just a couple came to me we're opening a cafe in Burlington and they had gone through the fire marshal they had gone through everyone they needed to go through then the health inspector came in and said you only have one bathroom so you can only have one and they said you know we need some support we know we didn't support you in the election but we need your help and you know we I said I don't know any better but to try to make this work we got the health department and we had a hearing we learned that it was about a pandemic flu issue that was a rare circumstance and that there was a bathroom next door to them in another spot that they could use and so we asked for a variance from the health department they were trying to make sure that they didn't have to go through bathrooms and so often what businesses face are those small barriers are somebody is somebody just willing to listen and think of no problem as too small to address so that you can turn around and make sure that the next business owner the next family doesn't go through the same obstacle and that I believe is what the lieutenant governor can do is be a real connector in chief for Vermonters I've been a preschool student for a long time and I believe that's what the new of the community really is and that's our our social workers our small business owners are people who are just holding the community together volunteering like so many of you did in Irene and so I just want to commend you for being such a strong community creating an ecosystem that's really envy the state over and I want to be there to support you in furthering that thank you very much and let's when I think about our future and I think about what we can be as a state I often think about my 10 year old daughter who just finished fourth grade going into fifth grade and I am haunted by a statistic that many of you probably know that one out of six of our young people are growing up in poverty and half of those are growing up in extreme poverty and in this day and age I just find that completely unacceptable and I think partly the job as lieutenant governor is to talk big picture individual items here and there but what are we going to do in the big picture and as a legislator that's always how I've brought issues to the table when I grew up as a kid there was a poster on the wall that said behold the turtle who only makes progress when it sticks its neck out and I've been doing that for 18 years in the legislature much like Bernie's been doing it on issues in Washington that we're all so proud of moving towards an agenda of economic and social justice rights and human rights and all the challenges that we face and so I was there for marriage equality when we passed civil unions and continued to introduce that. I've been there for our GMO legislation. I would continue to do that as your lieutenant governor especially I hope one of the three candidates up here tonight wins the governor's race but also if someone else wins as someone who would really challenge that person on the issues and what the future of our state is going to be with our jobs renewable energy. I'm very pleased to have been supported over the years. I've been recognized by Vermont Children's Forum women helping battered women renewable energy Vermont. Vermont Natural Resources Council and Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility for sticking my neck out and being a leader on issues and in this election I've already earned the support of the Vermont state employees who many of whom work here in Waterbury as well as the community. Doug Racine and I would love to earn your support in this primary to take on Randy Brock in the race for lieutenant governor so that I could serve you in the future. Thank you. Thank you. Shep? So I can't believe or I couldn't have imagined in 1983 when I graduated from People's Academy up in Morseville that I would be on this stage. But what I know is the reason that I'm on this stage is because of the investments that were made by the people before me in the legislature. The investments in public education. The investments in the infrastructure that we have. The investments in the people of the state of Vermont. I want to be lieutenant governor because I believe that this is an incredible place to live, work and play. And we need to continue to do work to make sure that we can be even better. We need to make investments in our public infrastructure. And David's right. Our childhood poverty level is too high. So we need to make investments in our kids. We need to make sure that our public education system continues to be strong and recognize that we live in a different world today in 2016 than we did in the 90s. And so we're going to have to make some changes around things like governance. And we're going to have to make difficult decisions. Throughout my time as speaker, we've made progress. We've strengthened the renewable energy economy. We passed marriage equality over the override of Governor Douglas. We have made investments in our infrastructure, our roads and bridges. And I've been working on those particular items. And we've made progress by increasing the minimum wage and paid sick days. Not only am I often at the start of the issues, but I'm at the finish. I'm seeing them across the line. That's the person I want to be as your next Lieutenant Governor, bringing the issues that Vermonters care about to the State House and bringing them over the line. I ask for your attention. So we have three-minute introductory remarks from each candidate. Ann Galloway is our moderator. Please, she drove a long way to help us out, so please. She's the behind Vermont Digger, V.T. Digger. So you can thank her for all the wonderful information that we have available. And I'm sure she wants me to point out that she has a great staff. So we have three-minute opening remarks from each candidate, which we'll draw the equivalent of a straws for them to choose which one goes first, second, and third. Ann will ask questions of one candidate, all three candidates. It's up to her. And each candidate will have two minutes to answer. And if there happens to be a rebuttal from another candidate, why? They'll have a one-minute to rebut. Ann's in control. That's where we're at. So our three candidates are over here. We have a great crew, not only the Lieutenant Governors, which if you missed that, you missed a great debate. But we have in no particular order. But I'll try to go alphabetical. Matt Dunn, Peter Galbraith, and Sue Minter. So give them a round of applause and welcome them to stage, please. Now it's on you, Ann. Have fun. Thank you, John. And who got it? Thank you. 30 seconds left. Stop. Great. Thank you all for coming out, and thank you for having us. This is an important election, both nationally but also here in Vermont. I grew up in Hartland, which is just south of White Red Junction. My father was a civil rights activist, turned country lawyer who helped start the Vermont Land Trust. And my mother was the first woman to go to college. I was elected to the state legislature at the age of 22. I served in the house for seven years while helping grow a Vermont based software company. I then headed up the AmeriCorps VISTA program under the Clinton administration, came back, served two terms in the state senate, and for the last eight and a half years I was bringing Vermont values to a company called Google, building out community programs throughout the country. We're struggling. We're seeing poverty rise in a way we have not seen in generations. We have a housing shortage which is turning into a homeless crisis, and we have a heroin epidemic that is affecting each and every one of our communities. And I believe that if we're going to tackle the economy issues that we are facing, we're going to have to do it on two tracks. The first is to deal with the issues of poverty. And yes, that means minimum wage up to $15 an hour so that no one works 40 hours a week and is still in poverty. It means investing in new housing, and it means continuing down the path towards universal health care reform. But that's simply to build the platform from which we can succeed. From there a true economic development program will have three elements. The first is a stimulus piece. That's why we started with the green jobs fund that would put $100 million towards making our apartment buildings more efficient, putting people to work across the state and reducing our carbon footprint, and a dedicated revenue stream so we can get ahead on our housing building across the state, and invest in a micro enterprise fund to allow people who are displaced workers to actually start small businesses and infrastructure investment. To actually bring the electricity of our time, which is broadband, to the last mile of every community. Lots of politicians have talked about it. In my job at Google we actually did it, and I know the regulatory and the investment strategy to get it done. And the third is investing in entrepreneurs, making sure that we are creating co-work space and co-living space, having startup competitions so that we can help companies here and grow them. But also eliminating the debt that hits our young people with the Green Mountain Service Scholarship that will allow anyone who does two years of national service to be able to graduate from UVM or any of our state colleges debt free. This is an important time. We need to build an economy that works for all Vermonters and all Vermont, and together we can do this. I'm Peter Galbraith and I was a diplomat. That's why I'm trying at least for a period of time to maintain the demeanor of that with my jacket on. So I come from on my mother's side. I'm the fifth generation of my family to live in Vermont. Ancestors go back to the original settlers of Burlington. And on my father's side, my father was an immigrant from Canada. He grew up on a cloud behind a horse, gave him a lifelong hatred of horses or dislike of them, never understood why I had them. But he came here. He served in the Roosevelt administration and the Kennedy administration and was one of the leading economists of the 20th century. Who's John Galbraith, whose values really are part of who I am, which is to say for a society that is far more just than our society was when he wrote The Affluent Society and then it is now. I began my career teaching at Wyndham College in Putney, Vermont and when the school went bankrupt, I became a foreign policy expert and then a diplomat, the first U.S. Ambassador to Croatia during the war there and at the beginning policy was not what I liked and I constantly annoyed my superiors in including the president by saying that we couldn't be passive in face of such evil and through persistence the policy changed, we became more active, we brought the war to an end and I had the privilege of participating in the negotiations that ended the war in Bosnia and of being the mediator and author of the agreement insignatory of the agreement that ended the war in Croatia which was the second deadliest war in Europe since World War I ended my drip diplomatic career in Afghanistan in 2009 I came home to Vermont which had always been my home but ran for the senate was elected and I suppose I was persistent there and occasionally annoyed some of my colleagues by pursuing some things that they didn't want pursued I introduced the only bill that was ever introduced to pay for Vermont's single-payer healthcare system, I initiated corporate campaign contributions boy politicians hate it when you go after their money they like to denounce corporate money but when you actually do it I pushed for a higher minimum wage $12 the governor wasn't too fond of that either because he preferred a lower amount but I felt that the higher minimum wage was the best anti-poverty program that we could have and I got into this race in March being discussed and I'm pleased that they are now being discussed but what I did in the senate is what I'll do as governor that is to say push for a $15 minimum wage by 2021 continue for universal healthcare get rid of special interest tax breaks thank you all so much for being here and it's wonderful to be in my community and in this place of so many memories as a parent of two kids going through these schools I welcome that and Peter to our community I've been to theirs I have to tell you it's been an extraordinary experience running for governor traveling to every corner of our amazing state and meeting lots of people people addressing our challenges and thinking about our opportunities but what I can tell you more and more is that too many Vermonters are struggling in this economy because wages are not keeping up with most of living and we need to change this story my own story I grew up in a raucous household I was the fourth child and the only girl which meant I had three big brothers that like to push me around a lot tease me they practice their wrestling moves on me I had to learn at an early age how to stand up for myself and to fight back and really that's what I've been doing throughout my life fighting to try to level the playing field and pursue economic and social justice in our country and our state and our community I'm a working mother with two wonderful kids so proud to have been a volunteer in our schools here coaching soccer on those fields serving on our planning commission being elected to serve as your representative then as the transportation secretary and Irene recovery officer I am a leader who brings people together to get things done and you can count on me as governor and I'm going to focus on three key things first to grow economic opportunity and that's why I rolled out my economic development strategy based on two programs first invest Vermont focusing on investment in our downtowns and villages secondly innovate Vermont focusing on innovation for key sectors of our economy second I'm going to support working families to fight for increasing the minimum wage fighting for equal pay and to break down barriers to post secondary education through offering tuition free college two years at Vermont community college or Vermont technical college that's my Vermont promise third I'm going to stand as a strong environmental steward focusing on fighting for clean water and addressing global climate change I'm a leader with the passion the vision and yes the experience to get this done and I ask for your support to be the next governor of the great state of Vermont in closing I do want to just say that my mind and my heart is with the families of those who are mourning the high school this evening and I just wanted to extend my concerns and condolences especially to their children to his children their family and the many families who he touched through our school sorry to interrupt I know we're out of drinks and I just wanted everyone to know that there is a drinking fountain behind that screen so if you need a drink of water by all means go for it thank you so the order of things this time around will be Peter Galbraith first then Sue and then Matt Dunn and the question is we have finite money and big challenges many people believe the way we're doing things isn't working how would you specifically solve our budget gap so the question is why would anybody want to do business in the state of Vermont and the answer is it's not because of our low taxes we'll never compete with New Hampshire on that it's not because of low wages we won't compete with Mississippi it's because it's a great place to live and why is it a great place to live it's because of our environmental protections and because of our public services including quality schools healthcare and that we care about one another these things cost money and it is we cannot have a discussion about maintaining quality of life in Vermont and then ignore the question of how we raise the money to do it and that's why I will tomorrow be outlining $45 million in special interest tax breaks that all of you pay for that I'm sure that nobody here in this room benefits from if you do benefit from one of them you're very lucky but I'll just give you an example the kind of things that the legislature with lobbyists puts into the tax code we give away one if you go out and you buy a a new carburetor for your car you pay a sales tax on it but if you're one of the lucky few who have your own private plane and you need to buy a spare part for your plane no sales tax we give $1.1 million to people who own aircraft so that they don't basically in foregone taxes so that they don't have to buy the spare parts we give $600,000 to people who invest in coal technology and I could go on there are $28 million in special interest tax breaks raising the minimum wage to $15 will generate an additional $18 million and then we give subsidies to large corporations that'll lend we gave $10 million to Green Mountain coffee roasters over the years and what did they do they moved their coffee buying business to Switzerland and lost 200 jobs that kind of thank you is not what I'm going to tolerate as your governor thank you Sue so yes I think the economy and our economic challenges are really on the forefront of our minds and that is why I have developed a very focused economic development strategy around two programs invest Vermont and innovate let me tell you about invest Vermont it's about investing in our infrastructure and recognizing that the public sector plays a critical role in stimulating private sector investment just think for a minute about the city of Barry six years ago Barry was a city struggling with empty storefronts we put a $19 million public investment into water sewer, wastewater, stormwater a new pedestrian oriented main street and within six years we have leveraged over $45 million in private investment and go to Barry now it's a community growing in a manufacturing residential retail commercial growth I can say a similar story for here in Waterbury but even more for St. Albans and Winooski that's what we can do across Vermont, strategic investment to create stimulus second is about innovation and four key sectors of our growing 21st century economy advanced manufacturing high tech and what I call the green economy both the farm and forest economy the incredible entrepreneurship in our ag industry, our local food movement as well as our green energy focusing on renewable and efficiency one in 17 Vermonters now are employed in the green economy we can grow these four sectors to create economic opportunity and to develop the opportunity for workers for the future by looking to the workforce by developing career ladders for next generation Vermonters and dislocated workers to get the jobs of the future I meet businesses all over the state that are ready to grow what they need is the workforce to make them grow I am focused on those four areas how we grow our communities and how we create greater economic opportunity for the future just for clarity the question is about job it's really like no one really answered the question can you try it again? I mean there were good answers but it wasn't specifically the question I was asking which is how would you solve our budget gap well Peter addressed it well it's basically cutting but nobody has said what would you cut in the budget that would be a nice answer if you could come up with one so first of all what would you do on the budget besides the tax breaks? well I mean that's a cut and I want to say Peter has done incredible work on behalf of the state by going through the work he's done he would make an excellent in-house auditor for the next governor and it would be fantastic no seriously identifying these particular pieces is very important because we have to be looking out we've raised taxes we have cut programs the most vulnerable and cut frontline workers and yet the next year we come back with the same thing and it's simply not sustainable part of it will come out I think of scrubbing the tax code which I think you've outlined some great ways of doing it I look forward to the full list the other major driver though that we have to talk about is the cost of healthcare it is eating us alive the cost of healthcare in Vermont is going up $650,000 a day each and every day it is $650,000 more expensive now in order to get us back on track to true healthcare reform we're going to have to rebuild some trust and part of that is going to be fixing the dam website which we have already spent over $200 million on a failed consumer facing website now in the past people have asked what the background have to do with being governor they're not asking that anymore because it is absolutely critical in a modern governance to have strong IT so that you can deliver services less expensively in fact the area that I would look to cut in state government in Vermont is in IT we are spending too much on programs that do not actually communicate with each other the second place is healthcare I will fix the website move us to funding public health services and then move to universal primary care so everyone gets a doctor all the research shows that that is what will save money spent the last three years on the board of Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center we can get this done do we have a one minute? yes please so thank you for clarifying I want to say that as the secretary of transportation I had a $600 million budget to solve many many difficult decisions every year about what we do and how we prioritize it is about prioritization and it is about how we support our workforce I want to tell you we've actually saved money by hiring more state employees and we've proven that by looking at the cost of hiring contractors versus employees I also want to tell you that I've been very focused on efficiency we've actually reduced the amount of time it takes to build a bridge and we're building bridges faster, cheaper we're saving money every time so I also was in 2008 at the height of the great recession in the appropriations committee that is the budget writing committee I've had to make tough choices we'll have to make tough choices again it's about our priorities and I know that I will not be solving our budget problems on the backs of Vermonters who need it most growing the economy and getting good paying jobs and economic opportunities is about saving to reduce needs for general fund services so they are all very much related to how we solve the budget Peter, you want to say something else? I just wanted to emphasize that tax expenditures are no different than appropriations when you decide that you're going to cut somebody's taxes a special interest, what a lobbyist wants you are in effect raising taxes on everybody else the legislature keeps doing it this year it repealed the sales tax that the tax department had determined should be paid by products that you acquire on the cloud you go to staples you get your word processing you pay a sales tax, you do it on the cloud you don't that's costing Vermonters 4 million dollars and that amount is going to increase because more and more is going to be done on the cloud and that begins to star of public services and there are millions and millions of dollars in interest tax breaks they are justified on the grounds that they will boost the economy it is nonsense, they do not thank you so I'm going to switch tack a little bit now because we have a lot of questions to go through and thank you all for answering my question I appreciate it so the next question I'm just going to direct to one person then you guys can rebut so we'll do this a few times and see how we get there we need to name one long-term investment that the state needs to make given our difficult tough financial situation with this economy what would it be and this goes first to Sue Minter and then Rebuttels thank you I've really thought along and hard about this and I think the most and critically important long-term investment we have to make is in our kids focusing on post-secondary education the reason is because right now we do a great job getting kids through high school high school graduation rates in the country but when it comes to beyond high school we are at the bottom of the country two-thirds of the jobs of the 21st century require post-secondary education when we don't give kids that opportunity they are losing economic opportunity they are going to have a service sector job minimum wage job and we'll be not able to break the cycle of poverty when we give kids the opportunity for education it's a win-win-win those students get an opportunity we gain economic opportunity everyone who gets associates degree earns on average 12,000 more per year bachelor degree 35,000 more per year right now 4 out of 10 of our kids in Vermont are not getting that economic opportunity so for me it's about our future educating our kids getting them a chance for livable wage jobs so we can both grow the economy and break the cycle of poverty that's my passion that's my commitment that's my Vermont promise of all of the things that I have been focused on learning about throughout this state that's the decision I've made to prioritize for the next generation and for the successive generations because what we also know is if you do not go to beyond high school the high probability is that your children, grandchildren and their children were not post-secondary education now is what a high school diploma used to be a diploma in high school isn't enough anymore and we need to make sure that those who need it most those who would otherwise not go on have not just the college opportunity but will be working with a volunteer mentor to be their champion to get them that job to give them that opportunity to make a living wage and support our economy okay Matt you get the first rebuttal so it's actually a difficult question to answer because we have been living in depreciation as a state for so long we have allowed our water and sewer systems to go to the point where they are failing our lake we have allowed for the kind of housing infrastructure we have to fall into disrepair and to be leaky not affordable to live in and not inviting to the next generation and we also are nearly dead last in our investment in higher education and if you look outside of a couple of specific places like Burlington we have some of the slowest internet connectivity that's why in our plan we have a number of investment areas that we have to make I guess all of them are important I would say I'll just throw out broadband as a critical one because it's the electricity of our time and in fact if you do not have access to high speed internet you do not have access to the same educational opportunities, entrepreneurial opportunities and if we do it right we can become the telecommuting capital of the world and create an entirely new middle class thank you Peter Sue and I agree on the importance of higher education for young Vermonters but we have a different approach to it her approach will be to provide tuition for two years at the Vermont Technical College and Community College of Vermont. I am proposing to do what Bernie Sanders proposed nationally to make education free for all Vermont high school graduates for all four years and I will finance that by closing it with just it will cost $28 million you will notice that I talked about $50 million in special interest tax breaks $28 million a year will enable us to provide 8,000 Vermont high school students with free tuition for four years this will make an enormous difference not only will more kids be able to go to college and take those 21st century jobs but when they get out of college they won't be burdened with $40,000 in debt which will make it impossible for them which makes it impossible for them to buy a home and even affects decisions about whether to start a family this is about choices and investment do we invest in subsidizing airplane parts for wealthy people or do we invest in our kids thank you so now I'm going to give the big question to Matt for two minutes and then rebuttals as you guys want we hear over and over again property taxes are too high how would you lower taxes so I want to talk about property taxes in two contexts is there is almost no relationship to your ability to pay and the value of your property so fundamentally the way that we pay for education is flawed I have had a long track record of moving the way we pay for education towards ability to pay we need to continue in that direction increase income sensitivity and make sure that Vermonters are paying their fair share but based on their actual ability to pay the other piece though is the fact that we have a declining student population we've gone from 128,000 students in about 1998 to about 78,000 students today that is a huge drop the other statistic though that isn't talked about as much is that the number of children in special ed has stayed exactly the same so it doesn't take an education specialist to know that that cost per unit is going to continue to go up as you have that special education community that we are just now introducing into our schools a generation of children who are born with opiates in their system so anyone who thinks that the cost of education is going to go down needs to think about things in a different way because we need to address those individuals and their needs immediately now that doesn't mean there aren't things we can do to reduce costs in education without hurting our schools I am not a big proponent of immediately consolidating schools in some places like around here consolidating governments when they are all going to the same high school anyway makes sense and I am glad the legislature gave some resource to allow that to happen in other parts of the state it doesn't make sense and it can actually do harm what I am proposing is that we do not need 60 superintendents for 78,000 children the way to get there is by actually rolling up payrolling so that not each and every school district does its own payrolling we can run that centrally we have electronic student records that each school district does they don't even speak to each other so we lose kids that have to move from school to school we can roll that up and then we can do assisted distance learning using video conferencing eliminate the overhead and keep the money focused on kids thank you Peter as a senator from windham county I couldn't help but notice that the property tax was the tax that my constituents hated the most because they were representatives to pay attention to what people actually think so in the senate I proposed I was on the finance committee I got three votes one of my democratic colleagues and a republican unfortunately I needed four to pass it out of the committee to transfer to eliminate the pass through the federal itemized deductions that would generate 70 million dollars in income put that into the education fund if that had happened there would have been no increase in property tax over the last it does it makes it does not make sense to fund education on property tax it's not a sustainable source it needs to be shared with the income tax because the income tax is a tax that is linked to people's ability to pay thank you so I think there really are two key elements the first is how do we reduce costs the second is how do we restructure how we pay so reducing costs I know this community is across the state have had deep discussions about school governance and for some communities like ours I do believe the discussion is going to help lead to single unified governance and reducing costs we need to be thinking differently everywhere and it isn't going to be the same approach in every community one thing I want to say is I believe education is the most important thing we do for our kids we need to think about never closing a school but perhaps repurposing part of a school to get it off of the property tax to use early childhood education perhaps K through 3 and then move to using other revenues to help support other needs in our community like seniors who need healthcare oral healthcare mental health services social services so we can actually reduce property tax burdens by utilizing our schools in a different way we also need to move further revenues into the ed fund by greater investment from the income tax thank you very much so the 2 minute question goes to Peter this time what's the biggest barrier to a strong vermon economy I think the question of what is the barrier to a vermon economy I think the preps said we'll turn it around again come back to the point why would anybody open a business in the state of vermon why did Watson bring IBM here because it is a great place to live so as we think about how we can strengthen our economy let's get away from magical solutions you know some people candidates talk about increasing the state's population to 700,000 I can guarantee you there's no governor and no legislature that's going to be able actually to do that we're subject to the same demographic trends as the rest of the country other politicians talk about bringing in wonderful high paying jobs well I've been through 24 elections in vermon I think I've heard that every election cycle you know if it was going to happen if it was going to be easy it would have happened by now and then we have what we've had in the last 10 years policies based on giving subsidies to large corporations usually just to stay here because they threaten to leave and then they collect public money let's take the IBM global foundries deal and I voted against the my last budget as a senate over this because they snuck it in it wasn't in either the house or the senate bill 5 million dollars to support a deal between global foundries and IBM global foundries is owned by the ruler of Abu Dhabi IBM had 11 billion dollars in cash on hand it was a 1.5 billion dollar deal and it concerned billions of dollars in infrastructure do you really think that 5 million dollars made any difference this is where our priorities are wrong so if you ask me the place that I'm going to invest is just keeping Vermont as it is as a wonderful place to live that's our competitive advantage I come from a family of economists my father my brother is Bernie Sanders principal economic advisor comparative advantage is a fundamental concept in economics quality of life is ours that's what we should emphasize thank you Sue you want to go so I've been asking that question of many Vermont businesses that I've been traveling around and the issue that I keep hearing about is the workforce as they want to grow and many businesses are growing quickly but can't find qualified workers I've already discussed my passion and focus on infrastructure the next focus is workforce which is why it isn't just about getting kids educated it's about connecting the dots between our education programs especially our high institutions of higher learning and the workforce the opportunities for jobs in Wyndham County they're creating very unique and important collaboration business collaboration on what are the jobs that they can't recruit for and then the institutions for higher learning trying to create the curricula to actually make sure they invest in what it is students need to be able to get an internship and a job at the end when we connect those dots we're going to have the workforce of the future livable wage jobs and grow this economy we have to grow the businesses that are here we're not going to be able to bring in great new white hopes and we can do it when we work and collaborate together okay Matt so I think we are actually at a real crossroads and I think fortunately I don't share Peter's cynicism about what we can do about it because I believe we do have an extraordinary state and in fact we've got all the really difficult pieces we have an amazing sense of community we have beautiful downtowns we have more institutions of higher education per capita and we have the best beer in the world and we all know that that is key to being able to have people excited about innovation but it's absolutely critical that we talk about an economy for the future we've been transitioning from large scale commodity dairy and large scale commodity manufacturing to something else for about 40 years we haven't thought about what the something else is we need broadband infrastructure we need to have actual affordable housing that young people want to live in and we need to talk about the state as a place where we can create jobs for the future I believe we can defy the trends because of where we're located because of our entrepreneurial spirit if we make those investments and we make them soon so I want to interject a yes no question for you Matt and for Sue and that is would you have supported what ultimately is a million dollars that went to global foundries but would you have supported that kind of investment for that deal the global foundries I've been looking at it in retrospect I don't think that was a great deal for Vermonters how about you Sue I think the enterprise fund has been used successfully to keep businesses here global foundries has invested a lot in training I would probably support that perhaps would have at that time it is absolutely critical that we kept a business in Brattleboro that was ready to move across the river had they not been able to invest in the training for that business so I actually do believe in partnership and have seen the success of keeping businesses here we cannot entice businesses and we are in a very competitive market when you talk to businesses who are looking across the river at some of the lower crosses so we have a disagreement there good thank you I think the enterprise fund has disagreements more interesting you were just asking specifically about the global foundries the enterprise fund generally if you want to answer that just looking at the evaluation I wasn't in the room when they were talking about what was going to happen or not happen what I can tell you is that we are not good at harpooning large corporations and dragging them into the middle of the state and I would have to see real evidence that they are going to have a return for vermoners and so I don't take a tool off the table but my understanding of that particular deal is it didn't look very good to me they certainly stayed in Vermont they were a lot of jobs they were here they were here it is a fantasy to think that they were going to leave over whether they got $5 million or not I mean it's a $1.5 billion deal you know and what we have is companies who basically come in and extort the taxpayers of the state oh we are going to leave if we don't get the money this is a suckers game New York state you see the ads for New York state they pay $100,000 for each job they get frankly they'd be better off just giving the people each worker $100,000 rather than engaging this kind of suckers game there's a lot of money there's a lot of information no governor's enterprise fund no gifts to large corporations if a company comes here and wants money we'll do it the same way you would would you make a gift? no we'll make a loan if the company fails okay the loan doesn't get repaid or we'll have equity participation if the company fails we'll lose but if the company succeeds like Green Mountain Coffee Roasters we'll lose $100,000 instead all it got was the company moving to Switzerland and loss of 200 jobs it is a suckers game and if I'm governor it will not happen alright then well okay well you didn't sure quick quick rebut I just think it takes a governor to understand how to partner with business I will tell you I wouldn't want to be the governor I would say that's the most IBM those are intense negotiations that involve very intense commitments and if there was an administration that was not interested in supporting a training program to help Vermonters get trained for livable wage jobs for global foundries and that business decided we'll just stay in New York we'll close up our shop in Vermont I think that we would not be very happy to have a governor okay so I think this is an important discussion okay sure go so look I think it's important that you have a governor who's actually had time in Vermont growing a business and been involved with a company while based here in Vermont that's doing business across the country and across the globe so that you can be able to sit across the table understand what's being offered what the balance sheet look like the Vermont taxpayer dollars are going towards are something that will actually get Vermont taxpayers a return and it's very very difficult business it's intense and I believe that the experiences that I have would actually set me up for doing that and I you know I wanted to say up front I wasn't there in the room when this negotiation was going on and there may have been information that isn't privy to everyone on it I have to say though from the news reports it didn't look like the best use of dollars especially when we were cutting benefits to the most vulnerable in the state of Vermont okay so I want to come back because I actually think that what you really need here is a governor who is a skilled negotiator and I've negotiated with some of the most difficult people in the world Slobodan Milosevic, leader of Serbia architect of the Bosnia war war I mean I've negotiated with people and I've gone to the Hague and testified against them I understand something about negotiation when they come in and they say if we don't get what we want we're going to bomb you you don't say oh yes whatever you want when the company comes in and says if we don't get your tax dollars we're going to leave oh yes of course the reality is you make an assessment you analyze your leverage you analyze what their decision making is you figure it out and realistically if they have billions of dollars of investments if they have $11 billion in cash on hand $5 million is not going to be decisive but the companies have figured out that we can be played for suckers because we don't know how to negotiate and I know how to negotiate and that's why I think I can handle this well shall we move on or are we going to keep on this topic I just have to respond about being able to negotiate because let me tell you when I was the Irene Recovery Officer and the FEMA had decided it wasn't going to reimburse towns for the millions of dollars literally hundreds of millions of dollars that they weren't eligible for when I was the Irene Recovery Officer and this incredible state office complex was in ruins and was never going to be rebuilt again when we didn't have the ability to get the allowance to rebuild the state hospital it took a strong negotiator it took a fighter someone who was in their face every day every week negotiating, discussing and yes coming up with solutions to get hundreds of millions of dollars to this state hundreds of millions thanks to the work that we did collaboratively the governor's office the office of Senator Leahy Senator Sanders Congressman Welch that's what I know how to do I understand the levels of power to make sure we get in Vermont what we deserve and what we'll be continuing to do as your governor okay wow that was great I don't know if we can do that again so I'm going to turn up the temperature a little more I like these yes no questions because they go someplace how about Trans-Canada dams yes or no let's start with Matt so I was actually part of the team that helped put together the offer back when they were up for sale before because we thought we would be able to get a deal on them I am hopeful we would get a deal on them again and actually have some stability in our base load power moving forward but until I see a term sheet I can't tell you whether it would be a good investment for Vermont but I would be inclined hopefully to be able to get to a place where it worked well for Vermont thank you Sue I'm in the same place as Matt I need to see what it's going to cost what it's going to deliver what the power is going to cost what is going to mean to the local taxpayers whose grand list is going to shrink we need to think comprehensively as much as I love the idea thank you yes it was a yes no question right yes assuming that I can negotiate as I think I can reasonable terms if we acquire the dams we will meet it will provide a third of our base load that will go us a long way toward meeting our goal of 90% renewable by 2050 I'll tell you something else when I was in the Senate I joined up with Tim Ash the progressive from Chittenden and Vinciluzzi a Republican from the northeast kingdom and we tried to get as a condition of the GMP CVPS merger for the state to acquire a 51% interest in Velco the company that owns the transmission lines it would have been a fantastic investment for the state of Vermont and 8% guaranteed rate of return if any of you have 8% please let me know if something goes wrong with the lines and you have to fix it you just do it and you add in the 8% it would have been terrific but of course we have a government that is simply too tight with the utilities too tight with the corporations and who are big campaign contributors and it was ruled out okay thank you so we're going to move on to health care here as requested another increase in health insurance premiums it's going to be about 8% how do you propose to make premiums more affordable for Vermonters and would you keep the Green Mountain Care Board in its current form and I'm giving this to you Sue well I think as Matt has said healthcare costs the rising cost of healthcare is the thing that is breaking our family budgets our school budgets and driving your property taxes your state budget so it is critically important that we rein this in I absolutely would keep the Green Mountain Care Board but I would want to expand some of their authority to go beyond just looking at hospital budgets to increasing regulatory authority to consider in fact how the people are compensated Peter loves to talk about the compensation of the highest paid individuals but what I really want to focus on is how do we actually reform the delivery of care and the cost let me tell you an incredible story and this is what it takes it takes thinking much more broadly and differently about how to deliver care how to incentivize healthy outcomes instead of the current system which incentivizes more pills more visits and more procedures think about it a hospital makes its bottom line when all of its beds are full we want its beds to be empty because we want people at home I learned from one of the top administrators at the hospital that UVMM hospital discovered last year that one of the cost drivers the highest cost driver in their budget was a homeless man with who needed insulin he could not keep insulin refrigerated his needles were getting stolen so how did he keep himself healthy he would go to church street and collapse for a couple of weeks he would end up in the emergency room and then he was back on the street homeless and you know what they decided they would save costs which ultimately reduces consumer costs and insurance rates if we think differently and actually how's that homeless person so now our hospitals are in the discussion about how do we cut down on homelessness because when we can bring down homelessness we're actually going to save we have to think differently about how we provide health care and we can do it with greater focus Peter well, Sue referred to this homeless person as the biggest driver of cost at the UVM health network system but the biggest driver is the salary of the CEO $1.9 million the top 10 administrators $8 million now this isn't a private company this is a non-profit that is supported almost entirely by your tax dollars it's tax dollars for Medicare, Medicaid Affordable Care Act subsidies and the tax breaks that health care plans make the CEO there makes over a million dollars again in a non-profit I mean if we are not prepared to address the costs and this is part of a pattern of executive compensation which is not market driven in the United States it is as my father said a very thoughtful gesture by the CEO of a company or in this case of a non-profit to his most favorite person and that has got to change so as I mentioned earlier the biggest driver of cost in our state is health care and the cost is going up $650,000 a day and we can't do it by taking changes here and there in 1994 I co-sponsored single-payer health care because the math didn't work then and boy does the math not work now because as long as we are reimbursing essentially for volume we are going to be in a whole year after year after year on the board of Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center that is very committed to funding public health we at the end of the quarter still had to figure out how we'd fill more hospital beds and have more people use our MRI machines to make our number to make a 1% margin that's crazy we have to move to funding public health we then need to move to universal primary care and then continue on the way to universal health care if we don't do that our premiums are going to continue to go up and universal primary care where everyone gets a doctor is the fastest way to make sure you get the right care at the right time at the right cost so thank you another yes no question for the other candidates Sue do you support universal primary care yes okay can you say yes or no and not say anything else Peter no I can't say it I'm going to say yes and unlike the other two I've actually said how I'll pay for it which was with a 2% payroll tax which will cover the cost for how you'd pay for universal primary care so what I want to say is because you asked for the yes and no I'm looking at both the universal primary care discussion as well as the doctor dinosaur 2.0 instead of focusing on how we pay for universal care we would actually look at universal care for universal payment for all children up to the age of 26 increasing doctor dinosaur I don't know how to pay for it because I don't know what it's going to cost to support the concept I want to look at both of those we are looking at what the outcomes are going to be what the costs are and what the proposals are okay Matt okay thank you Matt how would you pay for it I believe there is an estimate for it and I think it's 72 million for the universal primary care I think full universal that was the study that came out because part of it is that it comes that a large amount of it will come out of existing Medicaid costs of what you're currently paying for Medicaid even though a lot of those Medicaid costs have deductibles associate with it the other is I would use the same mechanism for the time being that we use currently which is a progressive mechanism using payroll so that they could actually see a reduction in their premiums that maybe employer provided and in fact you would see not only a net wash but in fact a reduction as we actually reduce costs of health care over time that's what I voted for in 1994 and that's what I would push for again okay I'd like to move on if that's okay tax revenues continue to fall how specifically would you change the tax system and I'll start with Peter you've already addressed this a little bit so if you could talk about other things you might change besides the tax expenditure business you've already described that would be helpful well the tax expenditure is a huge amount of money sure but let's move on is there other stuff you did once you've raised 45-50 million dollars you've gone a long way toward dealing with the problem but I'll tell you the other thing that I would do is I would look at which I've also said at eliminating the pass through of the federal itemized deductions but if you don't itemize this isn't a benefit you get if you have a super mortgage it's a great deal for you but if you just have an ordinary mortgage it's not even much of a benefit to you and so if we eliminate the pass through of the federal itemized deductions we raise about 70-80 million dollars in additional income and again then you can use that both either to balance the budget although I think that won't be entirely necessary because I think between that and the special interest tax breaks you will have generated a lot of extra money and you can put that into the education fund for property tax relief the issue is not whether it is the distribution of taxes not so much the totality we have an unfair tax code that is really begged in favor of large corporations and in favor of wealthy individuals and why is that? that is because and I saw this you serve on the finance committee it's not people coming in and having a discussion of what would be a fair tax system there wasn't in fact I was the only person in the finance committee who was in favor of raising his own taxes it is a parade of people coming in and pleading either not to raise their taxes or to raise them a tax break and since the lobbyists have outsized influence in Montpelier partly due to the fact that we allow corporations to finance our campaign something that I fought against as a legislator we end up with a tax code that is riddled with these tax breaks and that is fundamentally unfair so Peter brings up this idea of the eliminating the pastor right and I guess my question about that and maybe the other candidates might be able to answer this I mean how would this affect charities in Vermont? as I said I think Peter has done a good job of bringing to light a number of the areas where I think we could actually have some cost savings that would allow for more fairness and I am for for example he's proposed eliminating the deduction on interest on second and third homes that you might have on mortgage interest on those homes and you know if Peter wanted to do that on the mortgages he has on his second and third home he could do that or yours or mine or anyone else's and I think there is a I think that's actually fine I do worry though a lot about charitable contributions and having been on the Vermont Arts Council for a number of years having worked in the nonprofit sector having supported AmeriCorps VISTA members who are out there building the capacity of nonprofits across the country we do see that the kind of deduction that you can make allows for an incentive for people to give charitable and I know that's not the only reason that people do it but it does make a difference and there is evidence to support that and so I would not be for getting rid of all deductions for Vermonters I do think there are some areas the airplane one is a new one I think that's very interesting to look at I think there are places where I would not go to eliminate deductions Can you talk about how you would change taxes? I mean you guys have all talked about investments that you want to make in Vermont so it's actually more than just closing the gap I think a lot of people recognize as all of you have addressed them one way or another that we sort of have to shift our priorities in order to meet the needs in Vermont at the same time deal with ongoing budget gaps so how would you change the tax system met? Well I'll tell you there's one thing that I would do although I would challenge the premise a little bit the first is it makes no sense that a bookstore in downtown Waterbury has to charge sales tax and someone buying the same book on Amazon does not I consider that a fairness issue and I think we should actually go forward as other states have to allow for fairness for main street businesses in comparison to online retailers so I think that's an area where I would certainly change it but I'm going to challenge the premise a little bit because I believe that if we are able to do revenue bonds which is how we're proposing to do the $100 million green jobs fund to put $100 million in construction jobs for both apprentices as well as construction workers making our apartment buildings across the state more efficient you're going to actually affect a short term stimulus that will have revenues that will go up from the construction work and the like and unfortunately when we do those kinds of things we don't actually book the resources that come in from those kinds of public works investment and we have to because I think that's the only way we're going to get through this trough as we do the other investments that allow for a platform for growth the other piece is if we address the issues around both broadband but also doing microfinance the success rate for doing small loans to people who are low income or displaced workers internationally have been successful for decades but in Vermont it's actually been successful they've just done it with an infinitesimal budget if we can scale that we can bring in federal funds and actually build back an economy that will increase revenues so and to your mind Matt should we be spending four to five percent more a year on the budget every year just to ask so more than we're bringing in revenues yeah we need I think there's two answers to that we're not in a sustainable place right so how do we address that we're not in a sustainable place but if we think we're going to get through a heroin epidemic without doing additional investment we're crazy and someone is actually not telling you the straight story because you would have to cut a lot of money to get on top of that problem sure but I had to do a little bit of both what Vermonters want is a plan what they want is a plan Dick Snelling set up a plan right he actually said we need to get from here to here here's how we're going to get revenues in the short term here are the investments we're going to make hold us accountable that's exactly what I will deliver as governor thank you Sue it's all yours so back to the tax structure three things I want to talk about really thinking much more holistically about our taxes and it's very you can't just talk about taxes we've got taxes into the general fund taxes into the education fund taxes into the transportation fund all of them need to be rethought because we have several areas where we have declining revenue sources and obviously the gas taxes one I know well and have several proposals for thinking very differently about the future of the transportation fund but I also wanted to add on to what Matt was saying about bonding because my proposals also look to bonding he's focused on housing I'm focused on clean water bonds again knowing that if we do not bond upfront with big capital investment we are going to make it cost more and more down the road as an addition to the economic stimulus that we know that that can do we also have our general obligation bonds that I believe we can that I will propose to extend beyond the current cap and that's because we have a triple A rating that I believe we need to utilize interest rates will never be lower I don't believe and we need to take this moment to really invest in our infrastructure but I want to mention a few other ideas social impact bonds there are states and I've been talking to treasures from other states who are actually getting investors from the private sector to invest in actually doing social programs that they know will in the long run save money by reducing costs by getting people for example off of opiates and this is an area that I want to link opiate treatment and renewal recovery from social impact bonding so we've got to think differently about our whole tax code which was essentially built 50 years ago based on durable goods when our economy now is two thirds of which is service economy so I believe need to think holistically and comprehensively about how it is that we are taxing for all the different needs that we have did I go through the time? Thank you so before I say something about charitable because there's a conclusion here can you keep it really brief? I will first nobody's talking about repealing the federal deduction we know what a pass-through is so the point is here's the point is that the people with charitable deductions get 39% back from the federal government the top Vermont rate is 8.9% but they don't get that because if they pay the additional Vermont tax they can deduct that and they get 40% from the federal again in essence Vermont loses 9% of its revenue 60% goes to the wealthy taxpayer and 40% goes to the federal government that doesn't make sense okay thank you we're wrapping it up unless you all want more rebuttal but it's late so let's have that two minute end and let's see boy how do we begin Matt started first right so let's start with let's do Peter Sue and then Matt okay I'm running for governor in order to create a more fair society one in which we invest in our children and in their higher education rather than in parts for wealthy people's airplanes and so I'm looking for a more fair society where if you work a full time you are earning not less than 20,000 a year but $15 an hour or 30,000 a year that is the single most important thing that we can do to combat poverty it will stimulate the Vermont economy it will save the taxpayers $18 million I don't think it's fair that taxpayers subsidize low wage employers like McDonald's and Walmart because that's really what happens when their employees get public assistance and get the earned income I'm looking to clean up our politics Montpelier is a place where the special interests triumph so often over the broader public interest and one of the reasons is the way we finance our campaigns corporations make wealthy individuals can contribute individually and from all their corporations that's why Stenger and Quarros were able to give $74,000 to the governor's various reelection campaigns we have a wind developer who's given $400,000 to candidates from his various corporate entities whether you're for or against industrial wind surely it's not right that somebody who has that kind of interest in the states business of the state could have that kind of outside influence I'm not running because I want to be governor I'm running to do something as governor we've had 14 years of governor's Douglas who didn't want to do all that much and Shumlin who made big promises and then didn't do them we've lost a lot of opportunities we need now to move forward thank you sir well I'm here because I think we have really serious challenges in our state and I believe that we need to work together to solve them and I have had a breadth of experiences that I believe really give me the qualifications the skills the vision and yes the experience to get things done and I want to tell you that I believe we have to invest in our future we have to invest in our kids because they are our future and that includes early childhood education as well as breaking down the barriers to post-secondary education which is why I'm so passionate about my Vermont promise program to make sure those who need it most have an opportunity to get the skills for livable wage jobs I want to make sure we invest in our people fighting for minimum wage increasing the minimum wage expanding our paid sick leave to family leave and I'm incredibly proud to have been the first candidate to stand up for gun safety because I know that we do have a gun problem here and it's often behind closed doors a very high rate of domestic homicides and I want to keep women safe behind those doors I will invest in our environment it is so critically important I will fight for clean water and to address global climate change I got to tell you that the thing that inspires me is the work that we've all done together in this community Waterbury and the Valley were really devastated after Irene and we came together as a community we rolled up our sleeves we forged a vision and a path to get to that vision look at these communities now nearly five years later Waterbury is booming it's a place with great hope and opportunity a mecca for craft beer but most important we are optimistic and this is what I know is possible when we come together we can do great things for the governor of this great state thank you so much for coming out this is a very important election as I said at the beginning and all of your participation is going to be critical not only have we seen transformation on the national stage with Bernie changing democracy as we know it but in Vermont we're going to be seeing a new governor and a new lieutenant governor a new speaker of the house a new president pro tem where are we going to go what is going to be that new era what is it going to be for us to come together to make change happen and what we've seen with Bernie on the national level has been fundamental in its changing the way we talk about the issues of economic justice but what Bernie will tell you is that his campaign is not about one person running for president that it's a movement and it's a movement that started here in Vermont and needs to continue here in Vermont and Vermonters are ready we are ready to actually move to a $15 minimum wage we are ready to fix the dam website and continue on the path to universal healthcare we are ready to actually make the investment of a generation in our infrastructure whether it's our housing or it's our wastewater system and we are ready to move into a new era of economic development one that is about the future with broadband with actually investing in co-work space and making Vermont an innovation capital as it has been in the past and can be in the future this is not going to be simple I encourage you to look at all of our websites to look at the plans that we have presented because it's going to be very important that you have a governor that's ready on day one to start to take action the challenges we face in terms of poverty and homelessness are real the fact that we have fewer young people each and every year is serious we can actually take our state in a new direction and together we can do this thank you many thanks to the candidates and thanks to all of you for hanging in there to the bitter end