 Zoom interview. And I couldn't be happier that it's an old friend and actually one of our most frequent guests. Please welcome back Chittenden County Senator Debbie Ingram. Welcome. Thank you so much. It's great to be here. Now we have a lot to talk about because life as we knew it in January has changed in many ways, one by virtue of how the Senate is operating in the bills you're looking at, and also something that you might be doing for the next step in your political career. So let's talk first about the Senate and how are you all doing with this new reality? It is a new world for sure. Well we are doing this same thing that you and I are doing now. We're doing a lot of Zoom remote meetings. Actually I'm on the Health and Welfare Committee and so we immediately jumped in to pass some emergency legislation to make sure that our healthcare system was working well for Vermonters as we began dealing with the pandemic. So I have been on committee meetings well three to four days a week which we would have done anyway if we met in person in health and welfare and then we've had all Senate meetings together and then we finally made the transition to actually being able to have quote-unquote floor sessions by Zoom. So we've been doing business and actually passing legislation. So it's quite a steep curve. Now do any of you actually come into the building anymore? We did at the very beginning. We had we've had two sessions since this all began with only 16 of us because that's a that's a quorum in the Senate and we had to pass some legislation before we gave ourselves permission to do things remotely. So we've done that twice and we were socially distant and we wore our masks and our gloves and we follow the guidelines but now we can do everything remotely. Now and this has worked out well and if I as a constituent have an interest in the particular piece of legislation is there a way that I can track it in committee and see what it is the committee is taking correction or testify if I wanted to. Yes yes so our website the legislative website is still functioning well and updated all the time and so you can see our agendas when a piece of legislation is coming up and then when we're actually in session meeting we have our Zoom sessions are broadcast on YouTube so you can follow along on YouTube but if you wanted to testify then you'd have to contact the chair and the committee assistant beforehand and be invited into the Zoom platform. We are trying to avoid having Zoom bombing which has unfortunately happened so that's why we put it on YouTube for people to watch. Now you had mentioned that health and welfare had passed and and very quickly some COVID specific pieces of legislation. In other states there's been some conflict between the legislature and the administration about how the administration had approached COVID. How do you all feel about what our administration has been doing and their approach? I think for the most part we've all been very pleased with how the administration has handled things and we especially appreciate the caution and the ability to listen to our scientists and our doctors to make decisions which is something of course we don't see at the national level fairly so we're happy to see that. I think the biggest concern we have though is the lack of preparation for the huge number of claims for unemployment insurance and how that has really been kind of a mess to use a technical term when people have been calling in and trying to make claims and then when they've had issues or problems with their claim trying to get back into the system to get somebody to correct it and that has truly been a terrible hardship on many Vermonters because they've had to go for weeks with their claim not being processed properly and then not having any income and so really we've unfortunately heard from some very desperate folks. That's been the worst part of the response so far. Now is it possible that the legislature is going to step in and take action or are you somewhat confident with how the administration has tried to turn that around? Well that is really a function of the Department of Labor so what the legislature has been able to do is put pressure on them we've you know we've had the Commissioner come in and speak to us in various settings several times. We have individually emailed and called different employees in the Department of Labor the House members actually did take it upon themselves to be able to enter the portal that the Department of Labor runs to actually check on individual cases of constituents so they've done some of that so we've tried to do as much as we possibly can although it I mean it is essentially an administrative function. Now building off what you had said about we had Vermatchers who were waiting for a paycheck and waiting for the additional monies that had been promised to come in. I noticed that the legislature had taken action to try and put in place moratoriums on evictions and foreclosures. Are we likely to see more of those types of actions? I think that we've done we've laid a good foundation. We did pass that legislation. We've reached out to financial institutions and to landlords also and encouraged individuals to do that because we have been told that there are a lot of institutions that are willing to work with their people who borrowed from them to to work out a different payment schedule. So you know we've taken quite a bit of action in a lot of different areas and I think at this point we feel we've covered most of the essential things right now so we're actually beginning to move towards some of the legislation that we had passed out of committee before the crisis began and we're just yesterday we started expanding to look at some of the bills that we were trying to pass before this all started. Which is a wonderful segue into the other than COVID. You all had and you personally had some priorities of actions that you wanted to see during this second year of the biennium. What are those pieces of legislation that you're really hopeful are still going to see some action and is there a sense of how long the session might now last because I had seen some of the public media reporting that with the remote accessing and you know all of the changes that were needed to take in place that you all might still be meeting remotely into the fall. That's right well some of the legislation that I'm particularly interested in is some of the climate change bills. I've been on the climate caucus and climate solutions caucus and especially the global warming solutions act. The House passed that so it's coming over to the Senate. We also in the Senate we passed a bill called the justice reinvestment to act and that would help to reduce the population in our prisons and improve programming for inmates so that when they get out they are more likely to succeed. So we are hoping the House will take that up. There are a variety of since I'm on education and health and welfare there are a variety of different bills that we've been working on in education delaying our change changes in special education so we're better prepared for them and also restructuring how the teacher health care bargaining happens. So some of those things are still important to us but yes in terms of the schedule what we're being told now is that hopefully we'll be able to do the budget adjustments for this year and then we'll pass a limited budget for just the first quarter of FY 21. Hopefully we're going to get that done by mid-June then we'll stop from mid-June through the primary through about mid-August and then we'll go back to have a better sense of how much federal money we'll be getting, what our revenue looks like so that we can do a budget for the rest of fiscal year 21. So that's what we're looking at now. Okay so a couple things that you touched on quickly I mean first climate change I mean certainly with the stay-at-home orders we've seen some of the dramatic benefits from reducing carbon footprints but let's talk about education and funding and maybe Vermont colleges since you're on the Education Committee and all of a sudden it became more of a priority than when you thought at the beginning of the session. What are you all thinking in and how might you all be approaching that? Well we we do have a financial crisis in our in our colleges. We were working on trying to provide two years of free tuition to Vermonters for community college that we had a bill that we were working on when the crisis struck because we've heard for many years now that and it is absolutely true that the state under funds our colleges I think we're actually 49th in among the 50 states and how much money we invest in our higher education which which is dismal obviously but we had we were we were taken by surprise with the Chancellor's kind of nuclear option of actually shutting down some of the campuses and that of course catalyzed everybody into action though because you know these these colleges are they're important of course for the students they're important employers for teachers and other staff and they're really cultural centers in the communities in which they're located so this would have a devastating effect you know all across the state so so now that that proposal has been pulled off the table we're working to use some of the federal funds that we're getting in to to do some transitional funding for a period of time so that we can call in Olson to help analyze the situation and work with the trustees and come up with a long-term solution that will make sure that we can keep those colleges open so might education and free tuition be part of someone's platform who might just happen to be running for Lieutenant Governor well that might be true if I be true well you know I I am running for Lieutenant Governor thank you for that for that segue and yet truly I think that this crisis has helped us to shine a bright light on the gaps that we have already in our in our systems we're we're just seeing we're seeing the problem with education we're seeing the problems with broadband we're seeing that if for monitors have been making higher wages they would have had some savings to draw on so that two weeks of not getting paid wouldn't be devastating for them we're seeing that if we have paid family leave that we that could help tide people over we're seeing all sorts of problems with our systems and one of the reasons that I'm running for Lieutenant Governor is to is to say well let's yes this is a crisis but let's also view it as an opportunity because we obviously too were able to address some of these problems literally overnight you know our our homeless population we were able to to house and you know the Burlington mayor put motor homes on North Beach you know we put folks in motels it's because we decided as a group and we had the leadership to know that this this is urgent and we have to do something about it now if we brought that courage and that political will to all of our various problems including college tuition and and all kinds of other things then I think we would really see some big changes in our society and that's the kind of vision and the kind of forward thinking that I want to bring to the office of Lieutenant Governor and from reading your statement on your campaign page you or someone who has confronted challenges and showed incredible strength and resilience so what I would ask you is why this move now what why is this the time Deb Ingram should be Vermont's Lieutenant Governor well the originally the reason I I've been thinking about it for a while but just for a practical reason when David Zuckerman to the current Lieutenant Governor decided to run for governor it created an opening and and practically speaking in Vermont you have to seize those opportunities when when they when they come because they they don't come around that often but but I do think that the timing has has been really really special because yes from you know from my my early days by my dad died when I was 16 to my early career when I was discriminated against and fired from work because my sexual orientation to living overseas in a in a developing country in Bangladesh and having to deal with the challenges of of that existence you know to my recovery from alcoholism all of these kinds of things are you know they make you a seasoned person and and I think that you there's no substitute for life experience and I really believe that I'm a candidate that can be compassionate to all of us as we're facing the the grief and the loss of what we've had to go through in the crisis and also be hopeful and optimistic and help lead people forward to a stronger tomorrow and I've always been impressed by your honesty and integrity and your willingness to respond directly to a situation so as we are rapidly running out of time people who want to become involved in your campaign we will put the contact email address on the screen you have a series of virtual tours that you were doing that's right yes there are 14 counties in Vermont and we're going to each one virtually hopefully at some point maybe in person but we're going to each one in turn so each week we're releasing a new video next week we'll be releasing the one on Washington County and I'll be interviewing people who are doing exciting things either in businesses or nonprofits in Washington County talking a little bit about things that are fun to do once we can get out again and also looking at the historical contributions that the county has made so they'll be on my YouTube channel you can go to my website ingramvt.com to get the link and yes email me if you want to be on my email list and the primary is August 11 and I before we started taping you said that people would probably be receiving postcards encouraging people to do a mail-in ballot that needs to be received by your town clerk honor before August 11 and you were endorsed by L-Pack yes I was that's right I'm very excited yeah I'm very pleased and that wasn't a merely here I am and I fit your profile you needed to be interviewed by them and they needed to say yes what you stand for is something we would support that's right that's right yes yes and I would be the first openly lesbian statewide office holder in Vermont and it would give me more than ample opportunity to come back and say old friend if it's time for us to talk again I would enjoy that very much so with that thank you very much for being our first Zoom interview and good luck with your campaign thank you thank you it's been great to be here