 Good evening and welcome back to channel 17 town meeting television. We are here with Barbara Rachelson She is a representative from Burlington's sort of middle south end. That's district 6 6 Barbara welcome. Thank you. We're so glad you're here It's great to be here. I want to remind people you can certainly give us a call if you have any questions at 8 6 2 3 9 6 6 we're continuing our coverage here general election 2018 so thanks so much for tuning in so Barbara. Why are you running for re-election? You are going into your fourth term. I am going into my fourth term. Yeah, so my whole professional career has been pretty much focused on social change and I'm a social worker and am very concerned to make sure that all of Vermont is thriving and so It's been While I feel like I have made a little bit of a difference so far there's more work to be done and I'm excited to go back and try to make a difference and what do you want to be working on this next biennium? So I have a wide range of things that I want to work on one thing that's important to me being a director of a nonprofit organization and having worked in the nonprofit sector for I I'd say most of my professional life is Making sure we are Being as efficient and effective as possible with public dollars as we are with You know as nonprofits do so there's lots of work in that area I'm very concerned about the high poverty rates in our state still We need to make Vermont affordable Having heard from constituents in the door knocking I've been doing the last few weeks There are so many people that are scraping by at best and are working hard and not being able to make ends meet and I'm worried about Continuing to look at how to make Vermont affordable and make it so that people can retire here and not feel like they have to move because they can't afford it I Also have a great interest in both consumer protection issues because Many of them are critically important and I'm happy to talk to you about that further As well as Protecting privacy and civil liberties So let me ask you that one of the questions that we sent you had to do with the efficiency and effectiveness of government and How do you know that Vermont government is doing a good job? so mean I Think in some ways we are doing fine, but we could always do better and I'd love to see us one make sure that every Investment that we're making is reflective of something that There's a good reason and there's a return on investment for doing it And not that we're doing it because we always have or it's a sacred cow and you can't mess with it. So one thing for example that I Have been thinking about a lot since my first term when I served on education is I think education is critical. We definitely want kids in Vermont to Do well in public in public school graduate high school being able to read right think and be ready for whatever is next and The number of students has decreased over the years. We're now down to roughly Figures are like 77 to 80,000 students in Vermont down from the high of I don't know 127 something like that a bunch of years ago We're spending $1.8 billion to educate 77,000 students and if we were designing a system from scratch and said let's take that money and Devise a system it would look incredibly different than our current system So while we did some legislation to encourage people to do some mergers we're like We're not necessarily Going to get at the type of savings that we could get at without harming Education. So what am I thinking about Hawaii has one school district for a hundred and thirty thousand students something like that And as we all know Hawaii has many different islands with the ocean between because people have said We can't have one school district in Vermont, you know, we have the mountains, etc But if we did one school district Think of the amount of money that would be going to indirect and overhead That we could be saving from having three hundred something school districts each with its own Principal with it's whatever it's sort of business office looks like the number of supervisory unions that are Again, you know each of them have an audit they have tons they there's tons of overhead Which is not making a difference to kids and the education so we could have one statewide teachers contract and Every time we negotiate a teacher's contract We don't talk about how much does it cost in legal fees or the other fees? Why not put the money towards? We should pay teachers well. It's an admirable important profession and We could have more of the money going towards Programming classroom You could have more magnet schools like Burlington has done and have different high schools so that there would be Again, not necessarily. I mean my goal is not to close schools It's let's not spend as much as we are on all the other stuff So that's just one example of what I think is critical to do and then on this question of a making Vermont affordable Do you have some policy ideas or that you've been able to work with other people or that you have for the next biennium so Again, I think you know, I I know Everybody in the state house is concerned about that. We all have constituents who can barely make their property taxes So I know we've looked at are there different ways to fund That the Items that property taxes are funding so that we don't have so I've talked to two people this past weekend one It's a 89 year old and his Mid-80s girlfriend they can't get married because that would be financially costly and Their property taxes are $7,000 which is Huge for them. We were able to make a dent in Looking at social security not being taxed and again, we're one of not many states that do tax Social security, so we do need to look at you know I had a friend that went to the Social Security office and they said you're not going to retire in Vermont Are you it's the worst place to retire, so that's not a good message for For Vermonters who were you know who lived here who can't afford to retire here So we definitely need to look at that and Social Security again if we're looking at Our investments where a state I'm ashamed to say that spends more on incarceration and corrections than we do on higher education and If you look at the return on investment for how many people go into corrections and recidivate Why are we spending that much money doing that? We would be better off using an evident evidence-based approach especially for people who were not a threat to society To take a different approach rather than continue to incarcerate and in fact To have to incarcerate so much that we have to send people to a for-profit prison In Mississippi that's going to make the chances of reunification horribly difficult for them And we have shareholders who are going to make money at the expense of Vermont tax dollars So talk about consumer rights and privacy. Sure. So a couple of bills that I worked on That became along the last session were one like when you get a magazine and all of a sudden you get the renewal charge on your credit card and it's or Subscription radio and it's like whoa, that's I didn't sign up again And it's way more expensive than it was last year and then you have to figure out how to get it The charge undone. It's it's an onerous burden on the consumer. So the bill that I sponsored That got signed into law Has you opt into wanting? Auto renewal rather than having to opt out and again auto renewal is fine in some circumstances but I want to drive that bus of when I want that and not have to Find all these little surprise charges on my credit card and so do other consumers So a consumer issue that I'm working on And I think maybe I've chatted with you about this before is Vermont has very archaic Toeing laws. So when you get your car towed in Vermont it is very easy for the Company that towed your car to Get possession of the title of your car within 28 days by writing DMV If you haven't kept your address current with DMV The letter is going to go to your old address and you won't necessarily be notified And then they have the ability to sell your car and keep the proceeds Usually cars are like the second most expensive thing most people buy and for most of her monitors for many Vermonters who aren't homeowners It's one of the more expensive things this bill and I mean this law ends up hurting Students it ends up hurting poor people because It's also not regulated what a tow company can charge you for the tow unless it's under like a city contract for Storage and what the rules are for getting your car back. So I'm aware of at least one person who couldn't afford the $600 charge and she had to forfeit her car When I've looked at the data over 230 people in Chittenden County last year alone lost their cars think about our state treasurer if you have five dollars left in a checking account That money is there waiting for you and there's a lot of advertising that goes to find you your money Why aren't we doing that with your car? Why do we have the tow company? Be the one to keep the money like that seems like a perverse unintended consequence. So in Vermont We have people actively trolling all the time You know offering to if you have a private lot to say we will come and tow cars from your lot for free Where other states have looked at only cars being towed if there is like a safety issue or somebody makes a complaint Regulating how much it can be charged and certainly I've not heard of any other state where that tow company keeps the money so So that is something that really needs to be addressed and I'm hoping we can get some public hearings on that All right, let me ask you a couple of environmental questions. How can Vermont turn climate change to its advantage? So I think we all are trying to do what we can as private citizens to Especially I feel like folks in Burlington Care a great deal about the environment and what's happening with climate change and there are so many entrepreneurial efforts going on that I think if we help to continue to promote Vermont as a place a great place to come and Do your business that's related to climate Change efforts, you know, it could be something that we could try to incentivize people to move here It's a growing. I mean, we know that Vermont is doing great in terms of solar Panels and I remember Governor Shumlin really touting how many people have come in to work to do more efforts related to Climate change. I just had the opportunity not too long ago to be in Sweden and see how much they are doing with recycling and how little trash they throw out there and in fact are a Business for some other countries to send their recycling over there. It's it's pretty amazing also Bicycling in Sweden is Incredibly Convenient totally convenient like we you know, it's wonderful that we have some bike lanes starting But this is like an entire system that is set up in a way that Is really geared for for it like here we're sort of competing on the streets with cars still It wasn't designed that way and it's just great to sort of see a different culture and how much really can be done So and what about the financing of the cleaning up of the lake and rivers? I sure wish I had the answer to that and I know that that Pierce had a lot of ideas Which I'd love to see get some more serious play. So I must confess that I My expertise has not been in sort of coming up with proposals for the environment, but And certainly supporting what comes up. So We have to clean up the lake. It's it's I Mean, it's the right thing to do and obviously, you know, it's the Legal thing to do even if Washington ends up changing that it's the right thing to do It's an incredible resource. Tourism is so important here. We need to find a way to do it and not You know what to do it fairly so that you know, I again, I'm thinking We can't make so many Extra charges that you know People are not able to make ends meet and I'm just really worried about like safety nets for folks So I think in your work, you probably observe the institutional racism that exists in our state And I'm wondering what policies you see as being Credible to helping us dismantle that kind of racism deeply rooted in our state, right? And I'm really glad you asked that So it's interesting because we At my organization just had a mandatory cultural diversity training for everyone on our staff which was Fantastic, and it was a really great approach of sort of calling people in As well as at times calling people out, but not just sitting idly and not doing anything So one of my first thoughts after the training was we need to make Legislators go through that training because frankly in the past few years the number of comments that I have heard on the house floor is unbelievable and That needs to not be tolerated. So I think that's one important thing the other thing that's really important that I know was tried and was not successful is We do need to have Our schools have a mandatory cultural diversity approach and training because again That's the time to Expose children to different views. So if we're not Trying to sort of change the next generation people tend to Pick up what they hear and a lot of it seems like it's both fear lack of understanding and We need to both show people that one Um Diversity is better. It's a better way to live like and we need to celebrate People's differences and help our state sort of look at The diversity of Vermont being a good thing not a bad thing So what's before we wrap up and you do your final comments, what do you think is the single thing we could do to? Redistribute power in Vermont That's a that's a great that's a really good question. So redistribute power in Vermont. I Mean, what's what I mean? I'm gonna approach it from legis the legislative perspective What's great about Vermont is the citizen legislature? What's difficult about Vermont is the citizen legislature? So there's not I mean It's very limited who can run and it's I actually just saw the chart I can't remember a few had done that about what percent of the people have full-time jobs and what percent are retired So one we need to make sure that It's not inaccessible for people to be in the legislature to we have no staff So many people heavily rely on lobbyists for information You know, I I don't think ill of lobbyists, but that's not how we should be making our decisions or getting our information and so We need to sort of put more I mean I Spend a lot of time doing research on issues, which is why I can't necessarily spew off an answer about the environment Because it's like there are so many issues coming at us that at some point we need to look at is this the right Legislative structure for our state including the The governor only having a two-year term late. So in some ways we're setting our state up for not Allowing power to be More distributed frequently people will say we didn't hear from any renters So we know they don't have any complaints about this tax or whatever. It's like, are you kidding? How many renters? Know what's going on in a particular committee room can get off of work if they You know want to come down to Montpelier have transportation and are going to make their views known. So we can't assume silence is Agreement and You know, there are lots of there's lots of people that are paying for representation in the state house But it's like all the people that don't have it that you know is Concerning so closing comment anything you like to say to your voters Get out and vote. It's incredibly important. It is I mean, I I will continue to work hard as a legislator should I be reelected and It really does make a difference to reach out and share your views and Ideas and I wish more people would do that. Thank you so much Barbara Rachelson. Thank you So Barbara is running on a pose in district 6 6 which is in Burlington's south middle and how would you describe that geography? Part of the health section part of downtown. Yeah, partnership playing college The Redstone campus. There you go, and she is running for her fourth term So don't forget to vote and thank you very much for being tuned in here to channel 17 town meeting television for our continuing coverage of General election 2018 and don't forget we will have live election results starting at 7 30 on November 6th. So stay tuned