is like the week after the quote mid term part of the term because there's there's this date set up between the speaker of the house and the president pro tem of the senate when buil have to be out of committee in order to ensure that the other body will take them up in the end the idea is is just that is so that you don't just continue on working on bills  you know they're introduced in the house and get them over the senate and so that date was last friday and so there's always of a slew of bills that come out of committee  this time and then of course when there's a slew of bills that come out of committee there's a slew bill to take up on the floor and so it's just a busy time of trying to finish up house bills take u take them up on the floor to get them over to the senate and prepare for the the bills that come from the senate to start working on so they have to be out of committee but that it that they don't have to pass the house at this time so and then it's all at there's also you know some exceptions for this for example that the budget isn't out yet but you know that has it and some other money bills like that but let's be basically is so that's where we are so probably next week we'll see both the budget bill and the big tax bill come out next week so this is days and the capital bill the capital bill in the transportation bill so the next week is going to be really  while it's been sort of you know the departed and the tax bill have been the elephant in the room obviously this year just looking at the numbers the short fall so it will be a very interesting next week so how did we get here i did we get in the red hundred thirty well a lot depends on what you call in the red you know we had a but a budget last year you know and we funded that that pledge as we have every year this year so that's where you typically start for the next year is that the same level and revenues are lower this year than that bunch of last year so that's what that difference is six hundred thirteen million shortfall in revenues is that the problem is part of the problem there's also the expenditure issue so dollars ok health care spending has gone up about three hundred thirty million dollars so what that means is over that time frame everything else in the budget has been shrink because health care is eating it all and you know in fact it continues to be the case that you know our fastest growing part of our budget is health care to help this point we spent twenty three percent of our general fund on medicaid only  schools the twenty seven percent said in health care is coming up fast you know so so it is both an issue of the things we need to fund and believe we should fund and the fact that you know that the prospect of revolution has been much slower than anybody ever crispy back in zero seven zero eight when we started this recession so it's really it's a combination of those things be smarter to use bonding and the state of vermont is very very i would say mine is a would finding it so hard and so it's trying to find long term infrastructure capital investment with current revenue which is the wrong way to finance those kinds of expenditures and my question is is anyone in the this problem with the the teachers retirement health fund which were coming out of current current money you know is coming out of our current budget which is the course was a number that was growing and and since it was a big deal so yeah i mean people look at that kind of thing and they say ok can we find another alternative how much bonding we do is something that the treasurer's office spends a whole lot of time on in the joint to school committee spends a lot of time on figuring out you know they're very concerned about bond ratings and but they come up with a number and i cannot tell you the process or whether i believe that it's really the right number or not but they have a process by which they figure out each each to your blog how much they think that we can afford to put out in bars not disturb our bond rating and some of that to the capital bill and some capital capital budget don't you think since i've been in there's been suggestions to do this and they have slowly added more things to be bonded but you know it's like you know i this like change it just takes a while to to to get that through and that committee has has not endorsed that as much as others would like i mean that best pretty clear when you when you talk to those members and you know it's just like other things that you know that committee has has traditionally not use bonds for certain things and it's taken them a while to readjust that one of the things that has worked though in and bonding is that instead of doing a capital bill every year which always needed to be adjusted they are now doing a two year capital bill so the capital bill is done this year and then next year they won't do another one but a a just the end and i think that's that is a good indication that there will be time to consider you know alternat going i can tell you what's on the table you know i'm so so we've you know we've done a number of revenue bills already i mean we've done the clean water bill in the you know we voted out the education bill today and we have a a bill with a lot of revenue in it from health care which we won't start till next week so the target that we've been given is to raise somewhere between thirty two and thirty five million dollars still in a little bit of fly hand and i could tell you the front runner for how that would be done is a cap on itemized deductions on your  income a personal income tax the governor has suggested removing completely the your property tax deduction from vermont state income taxes which was going to raise about fourteen and a half million dollars and then the rest would be by capping your deductions at two and a half times the standard deduction so for a married couple that's thirty one thousand dollars it would be capped so beyond thirty one thousand dollars you wouldn't be able to use those to duck sions to lower your income tax in vermont but the property tax goes out the property taxes so the other deductions you know right medical deductions charitable deductions and mortgage insurance are mortgage interest  among those guys you would condense there are some miscellaneous ones but among those it would be capped at thirty one and thirty one thousand dollars is it because they believe that there are a lot of well the property tax payers too large an auction property i don't think anybody believes there's a lot of wealthy people who get too much i believe when you're making a choice among bad options people you know or you know of the of the various options that have been discussed that's been the one that has been passed by the house ways and means committee before i was in on the committee at that point so it's one  committee is pretty familiar with that has before said that this is the way we want to do it you know if you raise the revenue deficit so i think that it's more a recognised as a choice among really bad options you know so so you know what we were looking at was a start with one hundred thirteen million dollar shortfall and so you know that what this is talking then about is you know a little less well as i can tell you that's the target that we've been giving ways and means which can only lead me to believe that the rest of it's got to be with cuts if we if yeah if we if we are raising the money in ways and means that it's got to be done in the budget process by there's been a lot of talk about you know ok what are going to be the cuts what's you know what's the what's what's going to suffer and it's good it's going to be some painful stuff can be stuff that it's going to be very hard for a lot of people there's going to be something for everybody to hate and so the what what these cuts are the reductions are you want to refer to it the appropriations committee this year has been has i mean there's a lot that there's always suggestions that come out of the governor's proposed budget obviously because that's where they start and so immediately when there's a reduction you know in this little section there is somebody that doesn't want that production mess their favorite program are or important program are or whatever and and you could go down the whole list and there's always somebody that gets interested in that and obviously there are even legislatures that course interested in because we're the ones who put it in the first place i mean that it's how we built the budget at one time so the the list is even longer this year because we did a lot of brainstorming amongst legislators and small groups large groups committee offices committees and everything to just come up with a suggestion upward of of what to cut and these are things that you know if we would ask you you would come up with also you would and people come up with with both on the makeup that come up with those a way of saving some money and they also suggest that we can't cut this this program but we can cut that program mean that that's how how it just works and so the most of the news that have have concentrated on this list the cuts that's in the appropriations committee and and it seems to have the have the term representative johnson's cuts she says she's the chair of the appropriations committee and so so this sort of is is what it's called this year that that mitzy wants to cut this mitzi wants to cut this and everything but you know it suggestions that come out and it's been quite an interesting process to to do this because i think or cut cut out for my wife you know and when you're brainstorming you know of any idea how much that saves but you know you put that down the appropriations looks at it and puts a you know a dollar figure next to it and it goes up on the on the list and that list just keeps changing you know as far as priorities and stuff one of the things that is interesting this year is since since this list has gotten so much publicity many people have contacted us and say you know i don't want you to vote for cutting x y z well if that was a bill all by itself you know then we would be voting on that but remember that when we had cuts like this that's in the budget and some of the budget gets presented to you there's a zillion cuts in it and you have to make a decision about whether the you know the total cuts are what you're supporting because you you know you're making one vote for the whole budget and like this and so when people say to me you can't cut this well that certainly i don't want to cut either and and when we talk to members of the appropriations committee and express that feeling and and they you know they take that just like we take any other suggestions about what it is and and it gets factored into the whole thing but so when when you when you hear that the appropriations committee is going to have their budget out next week what that means is that they finally are going to settle on this list you know and which ones are going to come out of the budget like that and so that's not a process and i think right now the goal is is to have the budget up for discussion a week from today which means it will probably be voted out of committee on monday they say that the appropriations also meet some monday so are they'll do a straw vote on monday and actually voted o least as the session goes on there's more and more fiscal information that that's available and sometimes things change substantially as time goes on revenues commune higher than expected or revenues can lower than expected or is to right now the gas tax you know it used to be you go to the gas station and there be a little sign there said state tax x cents and federal tax accents total tax but to omar maybe something else well over the years over the last couple of years we have changed the state tax to be not just a flat tax or not just to be a percentage you know and this is to to cope with when gas prices go up or down so it's a combination so it's a combination and it's not just two things it is more than that and i think it's time to get back to you know just a flat rate on a gallon of gas that people can understand and so when we say raise it you know you really know that that's what we're doing and  that it does go toward the transportation fun instead of now what the these were so i agree with that i think a slight increase would be ok and get it to have level everything else i could tell you what we voted out was not of ways or means when transportation bill came very briefly to us it was not an increase in the gas tax and what we did today but it was a setting of a floor so so that when it doesn't change anything when gas is two forty nine a gallon put it to drops to two two dollars a gallon you'd still be paying the taxes if we were to forty nine a gallon not about a penny a gallon if it went down that far but you would continue to pay extra for some of that so just assuming the floor and chairman brennan's words to stop the bleeding in the transportation f and i'm not sure the florida talking about three eighty i can i can only say that we cut cut mr brown at the very end of the day a lot more federal funds for transportation and that is going down and that's also part of the part of this hundred million dollars is that the term is one time funds you know funds that come in this year but that you know that they're not going to come in possibly next year is for something and it happened that this year that it was pretty well dried up we just there's very few of those those kind of funds that work that could be used for the budget know everyone knew that that could happen you know that you could have a year when you didn't get any special funds so the question always was what do you do get the special funds what do you use them for principle there's all this talk now about taxing sugar sweetened beverages well if you see in curbing consumption then your revenues will go down and some of the conversation here to me just seems to be very low informed i have to say that so i mean maybe the doesn't go down i mean you get that drop right away when you put the tax on you get to people who aren't going to pay that much for their their lives but then it actually stays pretty constant and actually anything inches up a little bit as time reference as a secondary got to the area where we are losing the battle in health care you know that's the fastest growing part of the budget if we don't start to serious about population health and prevention we can't but it's still going to be a six five vote it's just going to be a question which way it goes right you know next week and to tell you the truth if it comes out of ways and means i would not venture to guess what happens on the floor of the house that the talk of months legislature is just all over the place and i swear you can talk to somebody who supports it today and doesn't support it tomorrow or this  example something gives a great example of jim a border town it was in where there is a supermarket and a beverage store right beside each other and the beverage stores you know a small kind of convenience every store which is stayed in business for decades now if you looked at just the produce there price you could buy a lot cheaper next door in the grocery store but here you go and you can get a you know it's cold it's you can buy a single a single one that was the point was this this place to stay in business for years even years even though they have a much higher price than a place literally next door and it's it was about the convenience you know so so the important thing about this i think is that people that already  go across the border to buy and why they go across to buy groceries because there's no tax on groceries on either side but i think what it is is that they go across to buy something else and then go to the supermarket i don't know what that is so i'm saying but those people if they're already going over to new hampshire will continue to probably continue to go there and buy their soda over there but the point is is that there's no evidence that people will change their habits to go over there for reserves now for sort of now there is all kinds of talk that cigarettes is a different story that people do go across the border to buy their cigarettes in new hampshire worth where the taxes less you know that that's an interesting story because if you talk to any legislator who's the connecticut river they will say that they talk to their their store owners and they say that they they would like not to have to sell cigarettes but that's what keeps them in business and everything well you know my point is is that ten years ago they were selling fifty percent more cigarettes than they are today if we look at that the what the smoking rates are doing and yet they're still in business they're still sold us people still go across the border buy cigarettes and so you know i don't think it's a given now and i don't think in talking to legislators there are a lot of across the connecticut river that will vote against it because of that and there are those will vote against it because they don't like it for some other reasons but i don't think it's  they that they will talk to people who understand that you know the reason for the tax and they're sort of torn between supporting their little local store and their local doctor i liked it that's what i told one of my set so you rather support your your convenience store over your doctor i mean the last line we heard was who are you going to trust your doctor d the letters to the editor and the ads and everything about this definitely i mean there are good ones that you know point out you know this but i think that we need to stress that more because people that talk to me about the fact that you know we're going to raise the price of sotto by sixty percent or forty percent or one hundred percent or whatever number they want to use you know it depends on what size sort of the model they're talking about when you change the topic or you don't change the topic but you explain that that is not the reason for raising it and there are choices well that you can still you can still buy soda at the other price and everything the conversation sort of fiddle fizzles out for some reason we have this the this and i think this the beverage industry has done that is is to say that we're and this thing about it doesn't change people's habit we are we have employer we have great data on cigarettes that when you raise the price of cigarettes the tax on cigarettes by a dollar or more that smoking rates among teenagers drop drastically and they don't come back up they drop drastically and that if we look at the the graph of teenage smoking there are these plateau plateaus of these drops and then the plot toes oh and then it drops and every time it drops drastically is when the taxes gone up by a dollar a year there was a couple years that we raised that tax by a quarter and the curve did nothing for a quarter wasn't enough to you know to talk on but you know when you when you go from i can't even tell you it's seventy eight dollars a pack or whatever the number is you know that when you get bet attention and to go back to your question about we if you if you're good if you're using this tax and yet you want those sales to go down which is that's my goal in into battle is i would i would just assume that sales went down to zero i mean that that's where i would like it to be especially among among kids who haven't started smoking yet the tax is used to fund health purposes interesting if you you know if you go into a supermarket to be sold a area which is humongous right and you know you can see by color you know how  the regular coke is and how wide the diet coke is my contention is all we want to do is to three straight red coat you know the sugar sweetened coke and increase all the other ones you know the variety of other sweeteners that they use in the so i have a question because my understanding is those artificially sweetened drinks are also not very good for your health and there's been some research that they may be just as addictive so leaving that aside and getting people to switch to artificial health solutions but my understanding is that there was an alternative or there has been an alternative proposal to simply take candy and i guess this category of non so that's dying and i don't know well you know that taking the sales tax exemption off of candy and soda will come up next week when we talk about the health care bill because i will bring them up but here's the problem we're part of a compact the interstate sales sales tax compact and we have to use their definitions so a legion of very weird thing with candy if you take one that a twix and you take a hershey's bar to its house and flour by their definitions that's not a candy but the hershey bar is that we have to use those definitions so it's real to streamline sales tax  purposes yeah and the problem number two is because the federal government allows those things to be paid for with food stamps the real tip retailer cannot charge sales tax on those things as part of the food program the retailer has to then figure out if somebody is using food stamps to pay for this stuff in which case they can't charge the sales tax so those numbers some practical complication medicare because that's a federal program but medicaid medicaid has done well ok the way the bill was drafted is that two thirds that would go to our health resource allocation fund which is you know where we pay for it here we put that in for federal matching  would pay for two to one fresh vegetables and fresh fruits for people who are using those cards that those places there would be a revolving credit line for small small zero so now i know you're creating maybe four or five billion dollar expense to go to the grocery stores and food markets and all that and now you're going to have to tax something  because that's a good program we can't let that go well let me say this your health care costs are going to come down substantially you are you would save more you would save more just in what we pay for children's whatever and so this comes up now should this be bad not just in this past year but of all humanity why haven't we done this you know five ten twenty years ago because we didn't need it we're thing and they advertise with literally hundreds of millions of dollars in crying children t v viewing time to get kids interested in these things you know you no matter how much education you do you cannot overcome are you heard it before but but the sugar sweetened beverages really have a very unique problem and that's that there's there's no other health benefit to them and there's nothing else in them when you drink a mountain dew there's great so so what happens is it right through your system right through your stomach and it sends your insulin level through the roof and insulin is what makes your deposits fatter right now when you ea a milky way that's still terrible but it's a little slower and it's because of the because the fat slows down the gastric emptying so so the sugar sweetened beverages are actually almost unique approach it is people want specific committee so you you know you know send one hundred fifty percent to specific committees of jurisdiction about something so in this case it would be it would be  well you know e mails are interesting because you do get a lot of e mails and if i if i recognize the name because i you know i know you were you know i will read it automatically but i don't recognize the name out open it and see what the topic yos and i will lot of times scroll to the bottom to see if they're from jericho or under seal if i really interested in the top eight you know i may read it anyway but you know as you're going through a lot depends on how much time you have but but there's something about calling the sergeant at arms office and leaving a message for a legislator that does not say i support h two fifty three that says i support those insured or sweet beverage tax because if it only goes to build number and i you know that bill number doesn't ring a bell with me i have to look at up and i may not look it up but there's something about getting that pink slip because you're sitting there and the page brings it to you and hands it to your it's right there in your hand you just sort of open it up automatically to see who it is and is just a short know that that is really effective and on real controversial items it is sort of like how many did you get today you know i got seventeen this morning oh i have twenty  mean you don't know you i don't get kono me it's just a stack of a so that's one thing a second thing is i agree that you have two legislators here that that are that support this but it still is important to hear from those of you that support it also because you don't know how many we are getting that's a form letter that says i'm against it and even though that doesn't count you know after you get fifteen of them you know you think jesus anybody support this and i go back and i always tell myself yeah  i going to because it's the right thing to do but you know it just because you know that we support it doesn't mean that it's not a good idea once allowed it to to remind us to so remind us and  or anyone else and they have a pad of paper who answers it there they write your name on it they write usually a topic if you give them a copy and then they will if you can give them any message no they don't you know they don't want to scribble off long messages so they're usually short little one liners and they then give they take this and they give it to a page and a page  handing it to you it's not setting on your desk the pages are instructed that they have to hand it to you so it's not like they go in your committee room if you're not sitting there they leave it on your desk pages are told you have to hand the liberal to the to the legislator and so that's what that's about half of a page is job if you so that the number is eight to eight to two to  so and you know that so there are times when the sergeant at arms office gets so many call on certain topics they will take one of the little note pads and write th topic down and then make copies of that so all they have to do is write names down you know and then if you want to add something else that they will do that but typically people just say you know vote yes but you know i supported something like that and  so they're there they're flying around but that that really gets i mean you know that there's a how much difference does it make well the point is is that the legislature has it in their hands and the legal age to buy a bicycle products from eighteen to twenty one and the reason is that we know that the younger you are the easier it is to get addicted to nicotine and that we know that ninety percent of the younger teenagers get their their cigarettes from order to use those between eighteen and twenty one and so you know it's one of those absolute minimal so so the website was rebuilt the summer and so if you use it if you haven't looked at it this year it looks altogether different it's one of those things when you first look at it he said where do i find anything but it is pretty well designed and one of the things that's nice about it is when you go there you can type in this bill number eight for eighty eight that george gave you on the first page right there and it will go out and it will bring that it will bring the whole status of the bill not just not just the bill another saying that you can do now and then if you are if you're really interested in the bill and its progress through the legislative session if you go to the committee website work where it is and if you look up the bill it tells you what committee it's in but if you go into that committees page there is over on the left hand side there's a thing that says documents and something reports and documents up like this where we click on that you can find every piece of paper ever every every testimony has been given to the committee is listed in there so when somebody comes and testifies and gives a written almost to written which most everyone does they may not everyone doesn't read yet but they may submit a written one it's listed in there this listed in there by bill it's listed in there by date that when you've done a it's listed in there by the person who gave it i mean it there's a whole variety of ways to search for but if you're interested in a specific bill you can go in there and you can actually see this and the the the best thing about this is that a bill is introduced and is a certain form and then the committee works on it and they make changes to it and and they'll review that the next day and then they'll make more changes and they'll be another version these aren't versions has been voted on they're just versions is this being worked on you can look up every one of those and see what changes are made and where they and where they are and then when the final bill is passed it's listed there is the easiest place to find the actual bill that's going out to the floor and instead of the and that's what people get confused on and basically we get confused too is that if you just look up the bill you typically get the initial bill that was submitted as introduce as introduced and the one that comes to the floor could be altogether different than fret a lot of times there are three bills on the wall that are our common and we'll put them together into one do it it sounds like there will be a gun control bill that will come across it will not have the universal background checks i would i would support it if it did i would support it anyway and and you know the same thing with the n t vaccination programs if they are regularly in people's faces even though they realize that ninety nine percent of people vaccinate their kids having people there and people in legislators faces every day kept that from you know kept vaccination legislation from passing and it is this up a long time so the senate i believe was voting on it this week to do the bill that didn't have universal background checks but did have three provisions in it so you know what the third provision that was added that hadn't been talked about at all is the problem we really have with guns in vermont suicide the vast majority of gun deaths in vermont are suicides and so this is who require information in the gun shops about suicide prevention and where to get help and that sort of thing so yeah i absolutely would support it will support it or try to add stuff in yeah i just have another little piece that one of our my friends and neighbors really for you know for what you do with a billion you know you take testimony on it you hear i would like to hear not only testimony what the senate pas but i want to hear testimony on what they took out of it so i am proposing i'm going to propose that we take testimony basically the original bill in other words a background check part also so so that house members have the opportunity to make to make a decision on that not just accept what what the senate did but from bill from what i read about the work where the senate is now i can support that but obviously i can support the background check all told because i'm willing to bring that up good but when you say well you support anything well you know there there are times when you don't support something that somebody is suggesting in committee you know you think you know some far and that's what some of my committee members will take of me when i suggest that we put them back  you know to waiting periods when you if you buy your first gun waiting period so you don't have a problem that unforeseen has happened more than one time here with somebody who does badly on a test and goes and buys a gun  and is dead before dinner you know so you know that when a bill gets assigned to a committee it's the chair of the committee that has final decision whether you're going to pick it up or not now the chair may ask for opinions and all members give opinions but the chair can you know never put it on the a agenda so it doesn't get taken up however typically when a spill comes over from the senate it is always taken up now i'm sure that there are times when it hasn't happened but that that's typically what it is and so on a bill like this what happens a lot of times is the decision which body to start it in is to started in the body were you're pretty sure that it's going to get taken up you know there are some there so far and you know by the chair of the gym it just share a committee versus the other one there's other reasons why you decide which which body takes it up first and every once in a while actually a similar bill gets taken up on both sides goes over and they emerge at the end but you know there are so many bills that it doesn't make sense for both bodies to work on the so you know i mean i think the most the way it works is the speaker appoints a committee chair your committee chairs decide what's going to get taken up or not and i think if you know if you were a com commitment there on the part of the people who agreed to be chairs of committees that you know that though they will cooperate with the speaker but you know that it's not that the speaker just works on his own weekly the speaker has influence but you know he does have the final say and if you know if he goes to the speak to one of the committee chairs and said you will take up this bill typically they will of the four   ramping up the learning curve kind of thing and i i can't remember but but i thought seems to me last year it was a couple hundred that we passed on this and that's right but i was just trying to think i would say that we're in the range of having passed seventy bills in the house so far this year you know and there's another group this this coming out but it would be less than zero definitely less my first two terms the speaker was my district made you know when gay simonton was speaker but her assistant or chaps assisted now will take the call and he will actually he will talk to you about what what you want to do and he will relay that message to shap and if you e mail it if you e mail speaker at the either you that you know the assistant gays assistant sometimes would just come and see me because it was a constituent question and she knew that i could answer it instead of you know adding one more to gaze list and sometimes i said well no you know that's one that i think they should answer but typically i would write the reply and then the and then she would take it and write it up for a day they would always review one but so i'm assuming that chap has the same licensee as a district mate but i don't know you know i don't know how the new district made his they work that but but that's how it worked was when gay was was and you know this help you know help their assistant to help her and so was typically and you know a lot of times i had gotten the same e mail anyway so three hundred fifty workers may give weight off of those the just get disbanded and she said you know i'm not going to lose my job because i have enough seniority to take another job but yet you know somebody else well right so we this will be near the end of you never know when the end of the session is but but i think this is like the second or third tuesday so it's getting near the and so so if you're planning to come you might want to call first and just see if if if we got tied up at the state house call well you know it's tuesday april twenty first ok so i