 Hopefully I will be able to join my colleagues again, at least on Zoom. I have, let me tell you a little bit about my background and I came to the legislature having worked for 25 years in community mental health. I'm trained at a master's level in counseling psychology. I worked as a substance use disorder counselor and founded a foundation, film tropic foundation, the Samara Foundation of Vermont which is now part of the Vermont Community Foundation as a major fund. And I brought that background into the stay house because I felt like I wanted to make bigger changes than could be made as, even though profound changes happen when I sat individually with clients and then when I became the executive director of the counseling service of Addison County, I found the metaphor that I always found myself thinking about was I want to paint on a larger canvas because as I met with individuals, I knew policies that made it hard for them. I then was the middle manager and then the executive director and even as executive director, there were policies that needed to change at the state level. And so I organized statewide groups for substance abuse counselors. And they then said, someone needs to go to the stay house and make that change. And they said, Bill, you helped get us going, you go to the stay house. Well, that was what got me to the stay house for the first time. And I have had the good fortune to serve there for nearly 25, 26 years. I've been able to be part of making some major changes in social policies. And each time that I find, and not alone, of course, but with my colleagues and each time that I've found that we've touched people's lives by actually making change at a policy level at the state, it just renews and rekindles my desire to be part of that. And so that's why I'm wanting to go. I've been, again, I've been appointed by three different speakers of the house as the chair of first the House Judiciary Committee and now the Health Care Committee. And being elected as a trustee of the Vermont State Colleges Systems twice by my colleagues. So I feel like I bring both a depth of experience in my personal life. And I brought that to the state house where I have learned to build relationships that help move social policy forward. That's a broad general description of why I'm interested, but that really is my motivation. I want to be part of making change. Well, I'm glad we have the time to go into depth on this because it's an interesting story to tell. And I wonder when you look ahead to the next session and the unique challenges of this time and also the challenges of our state, what's your priority? What's important for you to continue working on? Well, several things come to mind and nothing could be higher on the agenda right now than supporting Vermont and Vermonters around the pandemic. This COVID pandemic has upended so many people's lives. It's actually upended all of our lives. And I think partly because of, perhaps because of some of my background in mental health, I'm also acutely aware of the stress that each of us is operating under. Even those of us who are fortunate to have enough food, to have enough shelter, to have transportation if we can ever use it. But there are many of our fellow Vermonters who are reaching the end of their unemployment benefits who are struggling with shelter, who are struggling for without sufficient food or money for food. And so at the personal level, that has to be top of our agenda, making sure that Vermonters are safe, healthy and secure in terms of COVID-19. We need to ensure that the healthcare system of Vermont continues to be able to respond nimbly to the changes in the pandemic. And at some point, I'd love to talk a little bit more about what we've done, which I think has been extraordinary actually. And under the leadership of our governor, who I give credit, we are safer than almost any other state in the country. So COVID-19 response to that. The second thing I look forward to really working on is continuing our long-term commitment to social justice, particularly around racial inequalities. One of the things that became so horribly clear in the midst of this pandemic is how the social inequities in our society, particularly around race, played out both in Vermont, but even tragically more so elsewhere, but absolutely in Vermont, where people of color who contract, who are much more vulnerable to serious illness from COVID-19. And it just really reveals the underlying social inequities in our healthcare system and in our social system generally. So I want to continue to be part of initiatives that are trying to address systemic racism, eliminating systemic racism, unbuilding it, taking it apart. And that starts by acknowledging it and we won't change it in one day or one with one bill, but that's another one of my priorities. You're muted, so. Thank you, everyone is very right on the mute. That's great. We encounter it regularly in our legislative life, after we mind each other all the time, you're on mute. That's funny. My question has to do with the substance abuse epidemic, which I would even say is beyond opioids. I think people are under enormous stress and are having a real struggle with addiction. And I wonder what's happening in the legislature, what will you be working on your committee to address this? Interestingly enough, this is an area where the legislature, I think is not structured in the house in the way that it might be. Substance abuse or substance use disorder issues actually are under the jurisdiction of my good colleague, Representative E.M. Pugh, who I believe will be part of this sometime soon. While I chair the healthcare committee and we do now have jurisdiction over the issues of mental health, jurisdiction for substance use disorders are in a different committee. Nevertheless, I have worked in that area, both as chair of judiciary and in conjunction with my colleagues. I'm not surprised, but I'm really dismayed. When I hear how much additional alcohol is being consumed during this period, I heard something that was like 25% more alcohol is being consumed. We already, opioids is a scourge and just in the last, literally the last day, I think we've heard about a settlement with the pharma company that promoted, wrongly, the highly addictive opiates. But I think I continue to hold out, even as we have to address the opioid epidemic, people need to recognize that alcohol is still the number one drug of abuse. When I was the chair of judiciary, I actually with legislative council would insist that when they drafted a bill for us and not say alcohol and drugs, that it say alcohol and other drugs. Because alcohol is a drug. It happens to be the drug of choice. It happens to be the socially acceptable drug for many, many people. And yet the damage that is done by alcohol within our society is enormous. Both in terms of personal lives on our highways, someone once told me that very, very high percentage of all the emergency room visits have some type of alcohol related involvement. And so I have to say I'm a little bit out of touch with specifics around what's happening with the opioid epidemic at the moment. But I've heard indirectly that in fact, things have gotten worse, not better. And that doesn't surprise me either. We were really focused as a state on the opioid epidemic. And we really did some, made some cutting edge changes that were actually mirrored by a lot of other states. The hub and spoke model, which really made opioid treatment more available to more of our monitors, particularly in a rural state, engaging primary care physicians, as well as hubs where medications could be prescribed that couldn't be prescribed as easily by physicians. So I think we need to continue to put some attention there. It's challenging, I'll just say this. We're a citizen legislator, legislature. We, I think we do a pretty amazing job at juggling many difficult issues at a time. But this is one which I think has started to slip off of our attention and we can't afford to do that because Vermonters continue to suffer. I have constituents who approach me about family members and how to get help. I think most, every one of us knows someone whose life has been disrupted by, if not opioids, certainly other drugs, including alcohol. And again, I don't want to sound like a prohibitionist, but I do think we need to recognize that as much as alcohol is a source of enjoyment and relaxation for many people, it's also the source of enormous social disruption. What's your view on the marijuana legalization or commodification in Vermont? Well, to be quite honest, I've not been a fan of promoting it, of promoting, I supported legalization because in fact, it was so clear that legalization was disproportionately impacting Vermonters, and I'm gonna talk about Vermont now for, they was disproportionately impacting Vermonters with consequences that didn't make sense as we came to understand that marijuana was being much more widely used and the federal government was actually had pushed for years to make it, to have high penalties. And then I think some of us began to understand that there was a way in which marijuana nationally, again in Vermont to a degree, but nationally as well was disproportionately impacting communities of color. And so I supported as the Chair of the Judiciary Committee, in fact, I was the Chair when we decriminalized small amounts of marijuana. I knew full well at the time that that was going to lead to a conflict because, okay, now it's not illegal, but how do you get it legally? My background as a substance use disorder counselor has led me to be very concerned about the way that, particularly the way that corporate America markets drugs. And again, I'm calling alcohol a drug, which it is. And what I've seen happen with alcohol is for me, there's just no shame, no level of shame that the marketers will have in promoting the use of alcohol. For me, the final straw, I mean, I don't know what the final straw was, it was like when they started to promote something called alcohol, which was powdered alcohol. They said, well, now you can take it when you go backpacking, now it's like, and the claim was, oh, youth won't use this and college students won't use this and no one will abuse it. And next, within weeks, within months of it coming onto the market, stories of people snorting it, people having difficulties from it in emergency rooms, and we banned that in Vermont. We banned the sale, but we were one of the states that stepped up and said, no, you cannot sell that in Vermont. And I'm concerned, so I was reluctant, I was not one of the people pushing to have a legal regulated market, but I came to realize that it's here. People are using it, people are buying it, better to have a regulated market, particularly when fentanyl, when fentanyl laced marijuana became available, it was not a came available, it was around, we have deaths, you don't, what are you buying? Now, of course, we're in conflict with the federal government still, but I, we took testimony, I said, okay, if that bill is gonna move through the legislature, it's gonna have to be, have testimony in the healthcare committee as well. And we took testimony and added provisions in our committee, which were an attempt to protect romances from high dose, high unregulated dosages from, we actually supported having the health department make the decisions about advertising and a number of other provisions to try to, I finally decided strategically, one of the things I learned over the years, if you wanna affect something and you're not a big fan, decide to support it and try to make the change. You're more likely to make successful changes if you're supporting it, and I knew it would pass. There was not a question that it would ultimately pass at some point, and so I tried to improve a bill that I wasn't thrilled about, but I did vote for, I say I voted for it, because it included a number of provisions, which I thought we're going to be helpful in keeping it out of the hands of youth. My big concern is that when we get, we talk about a big pharma, big tobacco, I think it won't be long before we're talking about big marijuana, and I, the small growers in Vermont say, well, we need to be part of the market, and the committees tried to set it up so that would help. I'm not fully persuaded that we've been successful in that effort, and I think there's a lot of money to be made here and where there's a lot of money to be made, I think we need to be very vigilant and I intend to be. Lisa's for what part I can play. Thank you, that's an interesting insight into how politics works also, not only. Yeah, well it is, it's because it's like I, and I had a constituent say to me, in a rather confrontational manner, I don't know, I can believe you anymore. You said you weren't going to support legalism, you weren't going to support tax and regulate marijuana, and now I see you doing it. Well, I tried to explain, and I tried to explain in some written materials to my constituents. So they were disappointed, but I made that decision and it's one I'll stand by. We have time for one more question. So do you want to talk about the COVID accomplishments or is there something else you'd like to say? It is time flies by, doesn't it? I know, no, we can talk for an hour. Yeah, and I would love that. Because actually I found myself thinking, I would love to think of this as a conversation because there's a lot to talk about. Well, let me say a couple of things. Let me just look here and just make sure that I'm, well, first of all, Vermont received an extraordinary amount of federal assistance, $1.25 billion. We don't usually use those numbers and throw them around as easily. Just yesterday, I'm also, I didn't mention that I'm a member of the Joint Fiscal Committee. We met this morning and the report is that, well, one of the things that we did between our committee and the Human Services Committee that represented Pew, we worked collaboratively and we crafted with the administration collaboratively a proposal to have, I think it was about $250 million go into helping to support the healthcare infrastructure in the state of Vermont, which stood itself up in record time. If you remember, we were setting up surge hospital beds. We were all elective, all elective procedures were dropped. So that, and that is where unfortunately in our current fee for service setup, the hospitals were bleeding dollars, medical practices. I've talked to someone in my community who works with a private, you know, primary care physician practice. They stopped all their visits because of COVID, because of infection, but because of also they needed to be prepared for what we thought was going to be an enormous influx of sick Vermonters. Now the good news is that didn't materialize in the same way, and that we are so incredibly, it's not just luck, it was good leadership and good implementation by Vermonters who took this seriously, but the result was we lost hundreds of millions of dollars in our healthcare sector, which we cannot afford to do while we're in the midst of a pandemic. And so I want to give credit to Speaker Missy Johnson who on the middle of March, I think it was actually it must have been March 12th because it was Friday the 13th, when we on March 12th she called a special meeting of all the chairs of all the committees, including myself as the chair of healthcare. And she said, I want each of your committees to take a look now what kind of emergency COVID legislation we need in the next 48 hours. And I want you to have legislation that you can pass out of your committee by Friday evening. That was like two days. I mean, that was an extraordinary challenge. And I have to say that the partners that we worked with, we worked with a group of nonprofit healthcare leaders who stepped up and we passed within 48 hours an extraordinary piece of legislation which authorized the secretary of human services to suspend all kinds of rules around, you know, like nurses can come into Vermont if they usually it takes a while to get in here. We authorized them to move money out to nonprofits which we're going to go under because we appropriated, let's say, you know, emergency, I think it was $150 million that the administration could appropriate themselves on an emergency basis. And then we said the joint fiscal committee would be involved for further things. And then we, when we came back, we appropriated the $250 million for healthcare. And $87 million has gone out the door as of yesterday. There's a round two and we made sure that small healthcare providers could get access. And so we deliberately said it's not going to be first come first served because we knew the larger organizations which need to have a larger infrastructure because of the complexity of what they do could get at the front of the line quickly. And we said, no, we need small primary practices. We need dental practices. We need an acupuncturist who's in a private practice. We need other healthcare providers to be able to submit what their losses are because of COVID, have the agency of human services sorted through and as of yesterday, they have appropriated or they have spent and sent checks out for $87 million. That still leaves us over $100 million. And there's a round two that's just starting because we know that need will now, now they can apply for money through, I think September 15th and there may be around three. I think, you know, we can be proud of how Vermonters responded to this pandemic at many levels. And most Vermonters will have any reason to pay attention to what I'm describing. But I am very proud of the Vermont state employees who really, they brought in employees from all parts of state government. This is a major undertaking. We engaged a federal or a national group to help us monitor to make sure we weren't spending money where we shouldn't be spending money. And there's a lot more that could be said about this but I'm very proud of that. In addition to which I'll say one other thing, our committee in healthcare had started to work on promoting or making telemedicine more available. We did that before there was a COVID and we had a bill already in the Senate from the house. And so when COVID suddenly hit like it did and we knew telemedicine had to be part of this, I felt very, very proud that our committee had already laid the groundwork and we folded that into the emergency legislation and actually promoted it even further. I think there's a lot of stories to be told about housing, how the committee that deals with housing responded to the pandemic. And I think we're going upstream and making changes so that the homeless population of Vermont, both on an emergency basis was taken care of and hopefully we'll do some structural changes. That was one of the other directives from the speaker. Think about how to use the COVID dollars, not just to jam them out the door, but think about how we can do something that will structurally change. This is an opportunity that will not return in our lifetime. Hopefully, now hopefully we'll get another stimulus package if the Congress can get it together. But we are still working on how to responsibly use the 1.25 billion dollars. Just yesterday, I'm a trustee that run state colleges and I'll just, and just yesterday I learned that 2.3 million dollars was appropriated for emergency free courses with free support and computers if necessary. And I learned yesterday from the head of the state colleges that that 2.3 million dollars is gonna be completely used over a thousand Vermonters applied in short notice for 3,000 different special free offerings to help them with get their employment back and again, it's another way to support the Vermont state college system and the state college system supports Vermonters. I think there's a lot to be said. Usually you're muted again. We're touching, yeah, we're just touching the surface of the work that happens in the legislature and that you have been doing in your capacity and leadership and also as a representative from District 4-2 for Heinsberg. So I wish we could talk all day, but maybe we could do some talking during the legislature and get an update. I'd be happy to do that. Can I say one last thing? I don't know if you have a minute more. Go ahead. Just yesterday, this is, I'm gonna take, just yesterday, Pope Francis announced that he thinks civil unions for same-sex couples are appropriate. A huge change. 20 years ago, I as the vice chair and Tom Little as the chair sat in the House Judiciary Committee in Vermont and coined the term civil unions. There's some, knowing that we finally achieved full marriage equality, but knowing that we helped set something in motion that 20 years later would affect one of the largest influential institutions in the world gives me great satisfaction. And I think Vermonters should take great pride in many of the work, many of the things that we've done that we're very forward-looking. And I think we're at a place to do some of the same now. I'd love to come back and talk more. Bill Lippert, thank you so much. Representative Bill Lippert from District 4-2, representing Heinsberg, he has an opponent, which is Sarah Toscano, Rony Toscano. Sarah Toscano, running as a Republican. Don't forget to vote on 11-3, November 3rd. Yes, don't forget to vote. If you haven't already, don't forget mail-in ballots are due on the 24th, but it's Saturday. So depending on when you're watching this, if you have not already mailed your ballot, bring it down to the voting place or to your town clerk. Now or before November 3rd. So thank you for your time, Bill, and your service. And thank you very much for watching. Thank you.