good evening and welcome i'm diane meyerhoff posts for tonight's candidate form for choosing how any state senate tonight's show is being aired live on channel seventeen and streamed live on the channel seventeen website we welcome your comments and questions please join the conversation at eight six t three nine six six that shouldn't count the senate delegation is made up of six seats as such will be taking candidates in groups throughout the evening three separate groups candidates joining me now are the two incumbents democrat progressive  statements up to two minutes each then they will answer prepared questions and also questions that we e mailed to us in advance for two minutes with a possible one minute rebuttal we're going to start with opening statements and when i ask the candidates why they're running the experience that they bring to the position we're going to start with to match him well thank you diane so i've been very privileged to serve as a state senator since two thousand and nine i was elected on the night that president b elected i didn't know how important that night would be until i have watched the last year and a half or so in the senate on the president of the vermont senate which means that the other twenty nine senators elected me to be their leader i've been very proud just this last year we were able to achieve something in working closely with senator berth on this gun safety legislation which had alluded previous legislatures and administrations for a very long time that was very community driven which i think makes it all the more promising in terms of public safety that it offers there are a whole variety of issues that i care deeply about and that i want to return to work on including increasing the minimum wage rebuilding our mental health and human services infrastructure including most importantly the workforce fighting climate change an area that we've made some strides here in vermont but we now know that we're meeting more than we were twenty five years ago or so so we have more work to do there i'll leave it at that and say that my professional background i worked a number of years developing affordable senior housing for cathedral square before that i worked for then congressman bernie sanders i've done teaching in our state college system and work with non profits on development projects so it's been a great privilege to serve the to mention the two thousand and eight barack obama election i was actually a delegate that year to denver and it was one of the more amazing experiences of my life so i like to think in some microscopic way i contributed growing the economy or doing my best to grow the economy and looking out for our children and their education and also the taxpayers that fund that system so just a couple of things from each of those venues in terms of economic development and general affairs as the committee is known we passed among other legislation the fifteen dollar minimum wage and also paid family leave we worked very hard on those i think the bills were necessary they would have helped us become a more attractive state for people to move to unfortunately both were vetoed by the governor but it is my intention certainly and i think tim's a senate president that if we returned by the voters we will go back to those issues very quickly and then the other thing in terms of education to mention gun safety and that was huge something that i worked very hard on for five years but in addition to that the legislature also passed a four million dollar grant program to upgrade security physically at schools and then in addition to that my committee wrote a grant program to make restorative justice an attractive model for districts to adopt so that they can get grants to adopt that disciplinary model why is that important because another reason why people believe that mass shootings occur is that sometimes you have students who fall through the cracks or harbor grudges because of suspensions and disciplinary matters stop you thank you opening statement yeah first i'd like to think channel seventeen and diane for moderating this debate it's definitely huge currently our sitting senators consist of twenty one democrats seven republicans and two progressives personally that worries me i think it should worry anyone not because there's twenty one democrats i'd be worried if there is a twenty one republicans in the senate rather the legislative branch is supposed to be having these important debates and with one side dominating the debate it's very hard for the legislative branch do that job with anything for a different perspective a perspective in the senate and you know if elected i would not only be the first libertarian sitting senator but also be the youngest sitting senator and as you'll see a lot of the issues facing vermont and vermonters today have to do with my younger generation a lot of which are leaving vermont we need to figure out how to best keep for monitors here and want and have the monitors want to stay so if anything i offer a different perspective in a way of looking at that perspective degree in finance and since i've worked as a data analyst at a small mutual insurance company i bring a perspective of a demographic that is rapidly fleeing our state and it's one that's not represented in the senate right now and  scares me not only a set point out that we have a supermajority in the legislature one that can really dictate the the flow of policy and the conversation that goes on but it concerns me that this demographic is not represented because  as i said it's one that we're struggling to hold on to now i've served my community in a number of ways right now i'm on the steering committee of my neighborhood planning assembly in the new north end of burlington i served for a while on burlington board for the registration of voters where we registered folks some new americans some folks that had just fallen through the cracks and never got registered and some folks that were new in town and that was extremely rewarding and encouraged me to get more involved and so after that the mayor and the city council appointed me to the parks commission parks reckon waterfront where we've had to ensure that we keep parks accessible to folks of all income levels and and make sure that the things that we love in burlington are acceptable to everybody so again i want to bring these perspectives to the is projected to be the second worst in the u s of the next five years while income growth is expected to lag behind do you agree with this assessment what is your plan of action to strengthen vermont's economic outlook and we're going to start with i agree that we have work to do i think forbes typically undersells what's going on in vermont we've had very low unemployment through the great recession to now i think we have been lagging behind for as much as we have my web grocer and dealer dot com some some very iconic internet businesses we have lagged ever since the douglas administration desperately online and broad and so i think the number one thing we can do to grow the economy is to finally make good on jim douglas called vermont the east a in his you know ideal world that we would lead the nation in terms of our providing of broadband in this day and age cellular access and we didn't make it during the douglas administration peter shumlin came in and then we had a large amount of stimulus money that was brought forward by the obama administration in their first year and the the chamonix ministration offered incentives to telecoms but i think basically the failing idea has been that telecoms will do this build out to the last and they won't they've made it very clear that they don't want to do it on their own they've made it clear that even with incentives they won't get it done so christine how qwest are democratic candidate for governor has what i think is a very out of the box idea and that's to use electric cooperatives to complete that that you know our current generations version of electrification how do we get broadband out to the barns and the ends of the dirt forty seven for business cost and forty eight for best business best state to work for businesses and that's not really coincidental at all the economy is by far a complicated issue much of it revolves around businesses  jobs and you know what seems good isn't always good curlier vermont unemployment rate is four percent which is one of the lowest although that seems good is surely not it means that it's really hard for businesses to find workers to work their jobs actually were a bit below four percent a normal unemployment rate is around four percent and being below four percent with that horror having a hard time to find jobs or create a price wage spiral which means that you then start to raise prices on products and by raising prices on products it increases the an affordability vermont one of the other issues is the cost of living in vermont which is extremely inducive of our economic climate right now and a lot of that has to do with the permits we have on development most of the money from development our most money of development funding goes towards permits which then goes on to the cost of living so that's one way we can really look at fixing vermont's economic issue by helping out those who need affordable housing because affordable housing is extremely hard to find in vermont especially in chiton county thank you  me i absolutely agree with this is in fact i'm i'm one of five siblings and three of them have left this state because it was just it wasn't possible for them to stay here and so i've seen it firsthand my siblings my friends and opportunity assess said opportunity is not there i talked to a business owner a couple weeks back who said i'm not afraid of competition because nobody's going to enter this market the permanent process is too  with said incredibly low unemployment rate that indicates that employers are having a very difficult time finding talented workers we just aren't doing anything to help ourselves so if we can build in the permit some permit reform building into act two fifty streamlining prop projects that will add job growth or will add a certain amount of housing to start start chipping away at these issues and it's not going to happen overnight we've got projects going on such as came bearing rise in north and that's not going to have an immediate impact on the housing costs but we have got to take another look at permit reform to streamline projects that are going to start to chip away at this issue thanks jim talking how to improve the economy well i would go back to something phil started with i think in increasing the minimum wage will put more money in people's pockets the kind of money that they will spend on every day uses and for too long the national economy as a result of our place in the global economy has allowed economic gains to be distributed in a most unfair way most of the money drifts to the people who have tremendous resources where middle class and working class people have had their wages and salaries be flat so a minimum wage increase in my opinion is very important i worry a little bit when i hear people say that permitting reform is going to boost the economy in tremendous ways as someone who has gone through the act two fifty process as a developer i know something about it and while we can certainly make improvements the vast majority of projects around the state do not go to act to fifty so it is no silver bullet and i've been hearing about perma reform for a long time and i think admittedly it's a complicated area should we streamline some projects absolutely and we have done that we have a number of initiatives with passed with the douglas administration with the around new neighborhoods legislation we've increased expend support for the downtown in village tax credit program we've funded for months center for emerging technologies with increased resources for vetoes small business loans tech loans agricultural loans we have put more money into workforce development in recent years than in the past all of which are good things so those are some of the things we have to keep doing and do better including the way we do our regulatory system for development so i do agree there's room for improvement  but another opting we have to do is we need to get more young people quipped to enter the workforce high school kids many of whom if their parents don't have resources or connections to jobs and internships have no job skills they don't know what it's like to work with others in a team setting they don't know how to communicate to a customer so one of the things i hope will do is build on programs like the youth conservation corps and give every high school kid an opportunity who wants it for some type of internship or work opportunity so that's something i'm determined to revisit when we go back to montpelier thank you let's switch gears and talk about health care how do we limit health care spending in vermont while also remaining one of the healthiest states in the nation so yeah so health care is definitely a complex issue now whether or not we're talking about health insurance or actually the health care system there are two very different issues with health insurance most businesses and most people have been seeing a rise in cost in health insurance part of this is due to the high cost of health care but also the government forcing you to buy different types of health insurance is what i mean by this is the government in vermont mandates forty different types of health insurances one of which being herbal care you might not want this sort of our insurance but the insurance companies are forced to purchase this for you which means you are forced to buy into this this in turn raises the cost of your health insurance now with the health care market it's a it's a lack of competition you know when you go in to get an x ray you don't know how much the x ray costs and whether or not there's a cheaper x ray you can go and get this causes a lack of competition in the health care market because of the lack of competition there is no set costs and therefore monopolies kind of form now and it's even harder to form a medicare or medical service than it other states for the most part now this is more of a national issue while health insurance and health are sorry health companies have a hard time forming we need to make it easier and less less complicated with the red tape in the paperwork for you to enter the healthcare market to create a better competition to care under the under the a c l model that that care can be tweaked times could be increased now something that we could take more steps and i know there have been some but something we could go after mor price transparency price transparency can empower patients to better understand what they're paying for what's what's on their bill a lot of folks you get the bill and you don't know what's on there and frankly you don't know what you're going to pay until after you get service so empowering patients to better understand what they're going to be paying for and and compare prices like we would do with any other good or couple good first steps that i think we need to continue to pursue ten well the primary thing we have to do is rein in hospital spending we have a six billion dollars so total amount of spending on health care services in vermont about two and a half billion of which goes to hospitals right up the hill here in burlington it's about a one point three billion dollar operation which almost matches the size of the state's entire general fund so it puts it in some scale the growth of u v a medical center budget just to pick the largest on an annual basis if it's two or three or four percent that can be almost thirty million dollars a year of growth and that money is coming out of the pockets of businesses and individuals and state and federal government so we all of a stake in reining in hospital spending and i think what that would allow us to do is use those dollars upstream on preventive in community based services so that we can treat people in an appropriate way before they wind up in the hospital that over time will break the cost curve we hope price transparency i absolutely agree is something that we need more of one of the challenges right now is that the information is available but it's like you have to go through a labyrinth to find it the other thing is that the insurance companies themselves should care where you go to get your procedure and sitting here in burlington right now we have access to two or three hospitals within a forty five minute drive or so and blue cross blue shield should care if we have three equal care options if one is say half the price of going to one of the other facilities in our insurers have shown little to no interest in exploiting those kinds of savings the other is we have a small but important independent doctor workforce the powers that be have tried to squeeze them out over time by holding their reimbursements flat have opposed the creation of a new surgical center my belief is we need those independent doctors not only for the choice they provide but they hold the rest of the cinemark synth system accountable and some of the monopoly concerns that have been raised i absolutely agree with independent doctors are a good testing case to see if they can deliver the services at a cheaper price than the larger entities and so we have to make sure that they don't go extinct there dangerously close health care spending yeah i would second what tim and alex said about price transparency but i would just insert a note of caution about the free market and what i mean is this i think if you listen at the national level you'll hear the republican party acting is the competition itself will bring prices down clearly it hasn't over the years but if you think about just a common example you know you want to buy a plane ticket to go somewhere you can go to a web site that will give you the different prices on different airlines and you can use that to make your decision but if you had to take that airplane or die you would lose a lot of your your power as a consumer and that's at at the root of it that's why we spend so much money on health care people don't really have a choice when they go to a doctor and they're told you will die unless you do this they simply not there had to every single thing that the doctor says because in effect there disempowered as consumers to me that suggests that health care itself is a field that needs to be heavily regulated you know again national republicans will raise a cry about one sixth of the u s economy being turned into a government run entity i look at medicare my mother just passed recently she was on medicare and she had tri care because my stepfather was a veteran and both of those entities took remarkable care of her from the time she was diagnosed until the time she died and it seems to me that a medicare for all solution is the path we should be moving toward and i believe the national conversation is going away and vermont is very much in sync with that so i think in addition to the steps that have been mentioned we need to be moving systemically toward something like that ok we have a question from the audience which plays on this questions that i time to rebut a little or you know we can do it because this question i think will perhaps address some of the issues that we talked about let's try it on so are the trump administration as part of its efforts to dismantle the affordable care act is now allowing small employers to lead the small group marketplace through associations and if member we had this system was similar in the past at least that's been my experience there's a broad agreement that this will lead to higher costs for those who are left in the individual small group insurance pool some believe this will put the stability of our health insurance marketplace at risk do you share these concerns will you work to prevent this from taking place and we're going to start with alex well given given the recent changes to at the federal level i'm not sure that there's a lot that we could do at the state level to impact this now the concern of this dismantling the insurance market i'm not sure that would be the case i know to some extent small businesses may may advocate for this and i think further studies required to see if this really would bring costs down but i think the focus should be more cost containment at this point and empowering patients ok tim well the blue cross blue shield and i do not agree on everything but on this one we do that it will increase premiums for those who remain in the exchange which would be a very serious problem especially for all the individuals in the exchange i happen to be one of them so maybe i have a little self interest but the the federal government's attempts to dismantle it you know by these little nibbles around the edges have left us in this awkward situation trying to determine what the state of vermont can do relative to the federal government so i would be concerned with dismantling this system and i should also say one of the because the rollout of vermont health connect the website was so clumsy and so frustrating to so many people one of the things that was lost was the ability of income eligible individuals in the exchange to avail themselves of federal tax credits which greatly reduce the cost of health care for people if plans leave the exchange that resource is threatened or taken away altogether be that many businesses will actually stay in the exchange for that reason because it might be better for their employees with their coverage but at the moment if i find out that it's going to raise the premiums for everyone who remains in the exchange i would be i would do what i can to stop that from happening ok thank you if anything is available to the we're talking about the affordable care act exchange for instance association policies that yeah i i do also agree that if you allow this  exodus out of that small market you will increase premiums for those who remain in it i think in general the trumpet ministrations approach because they couldn't get the votes to dismantle the act they've been trying to make small changes that when taken together will make it appear as though the affordable care act is collapsing when in fact all of the things that were very carefully put into it to make it succeed are being pulled out one by one so that of course in that event you'll have bad policy i guess the other thing i would say is that if you think of it as an issue of individual freedom that no individual should be made to buy a product and there was in fact a famous suit to the supreme court that was decided by chief justice roberts where he upheld the affordable care act that it wasn't society's interest to regulate and group together to bring down these costs to keep everyone in the country healthier now if you're someone you know my libertarian friend here i'm sure will take exception to that you know bring it down to a very tiny level i have a friend in the senate joe bending who's a republican he hates motorcycle helmets and he wants to pass a law to get rid of the requirement that they be worn but the logic is in that eventual have a lot of people with severe head injuries the whole system will have to pick up that cost so individual freedom and the needs of the whole are intention in this case i think it's it's just a better argument that regulating the insurance market requiring those those businesses to stay in will keep prices lower and everyone will be healthier into the bargain ok and we're talking about the aca exchange versus association policy set yet still certainly beat me to it is a question of individual liberties and whether or not you have the right to choose what you buy including the individual mandate and whether or not you should be forced into buying a certain policy health care policy premiums will most likely raise there's  not much of a debate towards that now well up route health care insurance market probably not now it's important to know people are not going to canada for the most part for health insurance or for health care most people from canada are actually coming to america for major health care issues part of that is due to the fact that us and in the fear of the free market and how we run most of our health care insurance and it can certainly be better in our health care is that by having a free market money although it can be seen as evil helps people get what they need to live you know most people in the u k have wicked long wait times and don't get the policies they need it's a scary thought to have the government be able to tell you whether or not you can get that cancer inducing treatment that you need or not you know the free market is best able to work with these issues so that's why i believe the best way to fix this issue is kind of deregulate the market you know the u s is one of the leading countries in health care research most other countries with socialized healthcare have a much lower health care research because our marijuana something a little lighter now that marijuana is legal this is a question that we got the e mail now that marijuana is legal i'm do you support taxing and regulating it and to me your first the short answer is yes the senate has  d a full seed to sale regulatory system should be revisited in light of what we've continued to learn from other states including most recently massachusetts and what we are now seeing come online in canada yes but i do support it and i am concerned that right now we have a system that allows people to use legally but not to purchase it safely and i believe that marijuana and alcohol should be handled in an equivalent manner and i think we're missing the boat not because i'm a huge enthusiasm i don't i do not want kids trying it young ages i want there to be good public health and public education to tell people what the risks are i don't want people driving while they're under the influence of marijuana on the other hand i know that tens of thousands of are minors are using marijuana responsibly in their homes not causing problems for anyone else and for my point of view right now the one thing we're not receiving is the tax revenue which we could use to support all those public health measures so i absolutely support moving forward and if returned to the senate will will vote in favor of that film marijuana my position is similar to thames i've been an advocate for a long time of decriminalization and then legalization i think you always need to do that in light of public safety and especially how we prevent young people from acquiring it when they're not legally allowed to do so so vermont going back to prohibition has been what we call a heavy control state with regard to alcohol so we have a  an alcohol beverage commission that has oversight and a great deal of regulatory authority we issue licenses and it's somewhat difficult to get a license and we try to distribute them geographically but also the state has control of all the alcohol until you buy it the state controls and that's no accident so there are other states that are lose control on alcohol we've chosen over the years to be heavy i think we should do exactly the same thing with marijuana to mentioned seed to sale that's secure seed to sale so knowing exactly literally to the seed where the marijuana is keeping it behind fencing making sure that people have proper  idea all of those things right now you're allowed to grow a couple of plants legally i think one of the things that we might want to look at is making sure that those plants are themselves secure my my memory of the legislation is that it's silent on some aspects that i think could use some tightening up and there is no roadside test for t h c that's continues to be an issue that i think we have to grapple with  balance i think it's revenue that the state needs and it's also additional control in terms of regulation seth marijuana taxing and regulating would be in favor of opening up to a legal market or tax regulated market in part because when the law was passed to legalize marijuana initially although legalized marijuana it created a black market because there was no way to legally purchase it you could grow it but most people would want to purchase more so without creating that legal market you then create a black market and with the black market became risks of whether or not certain marijuana's or certain drugs were safe whether or not it was because you might be purchasing a leas marijuana plant or other other drugs introduced you into the market it became more risky by a by opening it by legalizing a market for marijuana not only will we receive the tax money  but we could also waggly what drugs are rather sorry regulate the safety of marijuana in the market and whether or what people would be purchasing ok alex taxing and regulating  i think there are a lot of benefits to a tax and regulate model and the recent legislation certainly improve the odds that what you're getting is a safe product now i think senator breaux thirty voiced would be my concerns which are that we do have roadside tests right now for t h c and unfortunately until that is nailed down i'm not sure i could support a tax and regulate model now being said i have no ideological opposition to it because of the benefits but an education campaign and doing more to ensure that we have a roadside test are absolutely necessary before we go forward with a tax and regulate model ok thank you we have another question from the audience on end it is what is your opinion on the the asterisk legislation campaign do you think college students that are dismissed for sexual misconduct should be able to transfer to schools with no notation on their transcript as to why they were dismissed kind of a specific very specific question feel you start us off so this is a campaign that's been pushed and i think successfully pushed by a u t m student a young woman and i think she absolutely has right on her side so the way it stands now if you're a young woman and you've experienced some some form of assault on campus the odds are very high that that system is going to not serve you well and i would draw on experience not simply in vermont but nationally speaking so i think young women have a hard time when they come forward they have a hard time in terms of making their case at the university level but then if they are successful and you know the student is found to have committed some some form of assault that student in many cases can go on to another university with absolutely nothing trailing them and perhaps commit the assault elsewhere it's the sort of thing we would never allow with teachers you know we would we would never allow there not to be a record that followed that person around the school system but in the higher education system particularly young men because they are statistically the ones who commit this sort of crime the most they can move freely and that has to be fixed ok so oh yeah i would say it should be taken to a court proceeding i this stay in how college campuses deal with a lot of these sexual assault issues and for it to be able to be taken to the courts i think we really need discuss what we define as sexual assault because sexual assault is a very complicated issue i find it disgusting that happens especially how often it happens i call it campuses now what do we legally defined as sexual assault vers i would say creepy behavior that's something we have to discuss i think it's best discussed in the legal court system rather than the jungle court system of college campuses now once it's legally founded in a legal court then that should follow your record everywhere so that's why i would say ok alex i think especially right now it's incredibly important that we do everything we can to protect and believe survivors and more importantly protect our entire student body from from the potential of that occurring and if you've got students transferring from one university to another i think it is important that folks in student services are able to communicate i think maybe not via transcript via the common what would be critical is that all the higher education institutions have to work together so that when one school has an asterisk and explains why it has a common meaning across all colleges i think that's an important part of kind of the intercollegiate system of justice is different than than the state run court system and so i think that's part of the effort that needs to be furthered and it's not just on individual student activists to make that happen that's the leadership because and universities all over the country who have to make it a meaningful terms of that when they see that they know what it means and their red flag oh ok thank you we have another question from the audience people have been calling in for you guys have done something right here and we should actually say eight six two three nine six six we'd of course would love to hear from you so this is the handle at big rig the tea asks how did the recent gun laws passed by the legislature do anything for school safety  down with you perfect you know this is one of the facts my my school more specifically in other schools i don't think it really did a lot in vermont i'll be very honest you know when it comes towards school shootings in school issues are and gun violence issues it's very close to my heart i was at the fort lauderdale shooting with the v m swim team at the time and although it was a firearm being used at the time by the crazed i would say man who shot up the fort lauderdale airport i never really quite blame the firearm you know he was able to get the firearm because the background check system kind of failed because background checks systems are all effective in some ways that needs to be looked at and whether how we fix that you know it's an issue of whether or not specifically school shootings recently teenage depression and teenage suicide has as risen and i would  share that school shootings have also risen because of the same cause it's i would say it's a mental health issue that we really have to look at and how we help out these teenagers and see what's affecting this rise in depression in teenagers to really get down to the roots of the issues you know the guns  always been here in the united states they are fifteen has been here since one nine hundred fifty so what has caused an increase in these recent violent shootings that's why i would say we have to take a look at ok what about gun regulation and school safety alex well i'm not sure you can ever say the number of violent acts prevented by a law but you know that's not to say that commonsense measures shouldn't be implemented  now there are methods of going about this without diminishing folks rights and i think some of those were in the legislation that recently passed now there's i think a lot more that we can do in terms of working with folks  and continuing to work with programs like the howard center that are right here in the community that will be able to do more outreach and take a preventative approach now again i think it's all about common sense  tactics that don't diminish the rights of hunters and sportsmen but but again i think for the most part the legislation that recently passed achieved that ok ten well yeah it is impossible to know what's been avoided by laws that you pass a general nature but i can tell you why we passed some of them or at least why some of us supported them increasing the purchase age to twenty one unless you've been through an approved training program means that people are less likely to buy firearms on impulse right now you could just walk into a dick's or a wal mart and walk out with a gun if you were seventeen in some cases nineteen depending on the firearm you're purchasing and what we heard from public health officials and pediatric doctors was that it's those impulse purchases that are often the ones that are most likely to result in a violent act we passed an extreme risk protection order bill what that means is if someone is threatening others threatening harm to him or herself that a loved one or a community member can go through a process that respects due process to have firearms temporarily removed while perhaps that person cools down or gets through that acute episode they're going through in the state of connecticut that helped reduce  was used to intervene in potential suicide he says more than anything else and about eighty five percent and i might be slightly off on the percentage i think it's actually greater than that of the firearm related deaths in vermont are actually firearm suicides so that's going to be really critical there and universal background checks is another instance where it merely extends to purchases online or at a gun show in the parking lot the same requirements to go through the background check that purchases at a licensed firearm dealer have to go through it i've never heard a good justification of why if i went to buy an air fifteen at walmart i have to go through the background check but if i check on craigslist and meet someone in a parking lot i don't so whether that will prevent a school shooting as we will never know if there's a direct link but it could only help promote public safety phil mentioned the investment in our physical grants for schools to do things like more secure exits and entrances and things like that and then lastly i'd say we've we've put some major resources the last two years into our mental health workforce it has been starved over the years the turnover rate at places like howard center is very high because of low pay and so in order to have the proper therapeutic environment you need staff who are compensated fairly they don't get rich doing this work and they never will but if they're constantly turning over because they can't make a living at those jobs  that is a deterioration of the therapeutic resources that they're supposed to provide so we have to continue to maintain and strengthen our human services infrastructure ok thank you film tonight gun regulation and school safety right so mentioned the need to strengthen background checks and i think that's exactly right that's why we passed universal background checks because it's to mentioned we have had in place for decades background checks for new weapons what we didn't have was background checks for used weapons and by used i mean it could be five minutes or so literally i could go into a gun store get a background check buy an a r fifteen go to the parking lot and on my laptop so it legally to someone else without a background check to my mind that was always insane it was very similar to saying on the highway in the left lane we're going to have new cars that have to go fifty five miles an hour and in the right lane you can have a used car that goes as fast as you want just doesn't make any sense if you're going to have background checks it should apply to all weapons and all people and that's more what we have now and i'm  proud that the legislature did that in terms of knowing how many of these incidents we might have prevented one thing that we do know is that background checks prevent a certain number of prohibit every year and the f b i gives us those statistics in twenty fifteen the legislature passed two modifications to the background check system and vermont digger reported we had seen an additional one hundred  sixty plus denials under those changes so just take the twenty fifteen law which was nothing compared to what we just passed that was one hundred sixty people who were not supposed to buy a weapon either because they were domestic abusers or they had some other reason why they were denied that right so preventing an actual number of people from acquiring a weapon who shouldn't have it whether or not we know for sure that they would have shot up a school or a mall or a nightclub or a church we do know that they weren't supposed to have a weapon and that there was a good reason why so i think that's justification enough for that law and then we we hope that in addition it will prevent in the future mass shootings ok thank you i'm going to shift gears a little bit we have time for a couple more questions or maybe only one and let's talk about the environment and water quality how do we increase funding to clean up from lakes and rivers and alex you can start us off absolutely so this is an issue that is is vital and there has been more research into exactly how we're going to clean up the lake and it's something we know we have to do because if for no other reason this is an economic asset for us this brings people to our state where they come spend the money so to lose lake champlain as one of our assets that we can sell is an absolute mistake so it is worth investing the money  now the question will be where does that money come from and one of the one of the proposals this year was to start taxing the the hotel industry either two dollars or one point it was proposed five dollars a night which to me is extremely misguided because this is pinning the issue on one industry that i don't think it's fair to say is responsible for the problem now spreading that amongst the entire state with something like a partial fee that's a reasonable approach but i simply can't understand why the senate well actually this came out of the house but why the majority in the house was willing to support targeting an industry that had nothing to do with the problem but that being said i'd like to go back to the fact that it is crucial that we clean up the lake ok about water quality funding ten well one of the concerns some of us had back when the so called water quality bill was passed three years ago was that it had all sorts of directive about how different types of properties would have to behave in terms of managing their their runoff and contributions to water quality but it never identified the way to pay for all the work that would be needed in system wide across the state it's not just lake champlain it's many other bodies of water it's a huge undertaking that will take decades really to get on the other side of and what the problem is now is that there's no shortage of ideas about how to pay for it at its core right now we have a governor who opposes any new revenues to pay for anything not just this and that means that you would have to cannibalize from within problem is there aren't many he places to cannibalize right now in our capital budget which is how we often pay for some of the water quality infrastructure and have for many years that's a resource that has declined pretty precipitously over the last four five years and the committee that sets that amount that we can borrow each year for capital expenses says that it's going to go down another seven or eight percent next year so it's an already oversubscribed source of funds that now is going to be even smaller despite the needs growing with every day so in terms of paying for it my own preference would be something that is very broadly based that that people will feel like everyone's making a small contribution towards what is a collective problem but i'll just tell you the politics of this particular issue have been horrendous because no matter which source of funds one suggests to help clean up the water the governor and his allies attack it they have to attack everything without proposing a solution and i know that now one of the things that's being floated is some complicated structure of course will be all yours if it's a good idea and it has merit will will will will hear it out and maybe it will be the right thing but sometimes tried and true means of funding things are probably the more appropriate way but we'll be all ears for the governor to signal if he's willing to pay for that to clean up this problem or not ok i did not talk about water quality funding fell i second what tim said about the governor's approach to this i would have that they came out with what i thought was one of the most disingenuous bits of misdirection i've ever seen which was to say let's not talk about how to fund  cleanup of the lake let's talk about how we can make money cleaning up the lake and so the administration came out with grants to subsidize work on extracting fox phosphorous from the lake in our streams and other waterways and then selling that elsewhere in the country now if you could do that right now it would be a magic solution so we'd have all the money we need because we'd sell the phosphorus as we took it out of the lake and it would be a self perpetuating machine but anybody who has any expertise in this issue will tell you that's a fantasy and it was a fantasy that was put out deliberately to delay the amount of time that we would have to raise the revenue to clean up the lake because it would take at least ten years to get to the point where you might have some workable pilot program that would do that so let me go back to to mention two thousand and fifteen bobby starr one of my favorite senators from the northeast kingdom chairs chairs agriculture and he came up with a very smart proposal that would have taxed people when they buy phosphorus or other fertilizers so you'd be raising revenue from the people who are using the phosphorus and that would disincentive eyes them from using it so connecting the money that we're raising to the actual use of the nutrient and that was a brilliant idea bobby brought all the stakeholders along had them all ready to go along with it and the show i'm going to ministration at the last moment pulled a switch a roo and put in the property transfer tax instead of that connection to the polluter so that's the place where i think we should go back immediately establish that connection between the polluter and the pollution and the cost there by ok thank you seth water quality funding yeah i would echo a lot of the words alex said beforehand about targeting a specific industry it seems up both the other senators are sitting senators seem to not want to target the industry now i would say that enforcing a new tax would not be beneficial to vermont's economy which  something we talked about earlier i would agree with phil scott on the issue that it might be worth looking into self cannibalization of certain of areas where we have spending for months means a lot of money in different areas where there are not be roads or welfare both of which haven't been extremely effective for them was a whole you know looking at vermont's road industry we spend a lot of money on roads in new hampshire spends half as less as us and yet have much better roads than us and you know that's a thing kind of have to look into and if we can look into fixing that area in our tax pending we can certainly look at putting that money towards cleaning our lakes you know looking at our welfare where i brought up earlier we have seventy four thousand about citizens who are below the poverty line we spend one point seven billion on welfare that's effectively twenty two thousand nine hundred six dollars per person under the poverty line if the money was going to directly to the citizens who are below the poverty line none of them would be considered nationally under the poverty line so clearly the money there isn't being spent as effectively or going directly to the people who are below the poverty line so once again if we can look at these systems and self evaluate and see where we can cut spending and move spending around perhaps we can help our government clean out the leaks i'd like to respond what i actually i'm going to i'm going to not do that because we're almost out of time believe it or not but i'd like to do is give you each  have appreciated the opportunity to engage on the issues here i will say what the state of mind is not spending one point seven billion dollars on welfare if you came up with the most expansive definition to include medicaid which is in some people's eyes perhaps welfare but it's not welfare maybe you start adding up to those types of numbers but some people think that there are many many people tens and tens of thousands of people in the state received very generous cash payments each month which is what welfare more conventionally is and that is not true  i have greatly enjoyed being the leader of the vermont senate one of the things that i take most pride in is that despite the perception pitched by the governor's team his political team the budgets passed by the senate last year were unanimous in every instance the tax bill enjoyed a majority support of the republicans in the senate so despite the fact that its partisan break out is about two to one we had worked very well together which i think means that we came with very balanced solutions to the states needs i would be very proud to return to the senate represent the people of shinning county which has been the great honor of my adult life i worked very hard to be in communication with my constituents throughout the summer and fall and not just when we were in the session and i hope to continue to be engaged with you solving all of our problems vermont's a great state to live in one of the most important things we can do is stop letting some people for political purposes trash it every step of the way i have a much more positive vision and most of the people i serve with in the senate have a positive view about vermont want to build on it thank you thank you phil well i'm very excited that we talked some tonight about gun safety that's something i've been talking about for a number of years and i will say that of of the moments that i think back in the senate as my proudest there are two that i that i would just point out one was standing beside governor phil scott and his wife when he signed those going bills this past year on the steps of the state house that was an amazing moment even though there were people there who were calling for his hyde and people there who were yelling their support we were divided to a certain extent about two thirds of the state indicates strong support for those laws now and i think that's a fabulous thing for our state the other thing is just recently a cup weeks ago to vermont medical society named to be one of their winners of their twenty eighteen founders award and that's an award that they give every year to someone who has moved the needle on safety for the lives of vermonters and the lives of americans generally and they noted my work with gun safety they noted that i had pushed through five years of obstacles i'm not the only one to receive the award the governor did as well and the two of us will receive  together and i think that's additional proof of what tim was talking about that when push comes to shove in the vermont state house we often work together in the best way great thank you seth yeah i'm extremely happy that we talked about some of the issues regarding affordability of vermont as fresh in the house emaar housing market and affordable housing i wish we could have gone into more detail about what's causing that such as zoning laws along with the permitting process we talked about briefly  and we talked a bit about economic issues tonight a lot of which is very important to vermont because without a growing economy we won't grow our population and the more we can grow our economy and help businesses foreman from our i think the better of the stronger population will have and the more we can help grow vermont smuts a beautiful state and as well we want to keep it that way as much as possible we also have to grow and if we don't grow as a state we won't grow and compete in the the growing country as we are today and you know as one of the younger candidates for the senator position i would love to talk about a lot of the issues regarding education one thing that i didn't we were able to talk about today was education i'm very pro a school choice system so you aren't forced to go to a school that you live in the area of rather that you get to decide which education is best fit for you so then you can learn those skills and set of being forced to go to a local school and you know i would push as a state senator i'm going to push through my campaign as well with that i would say i hope to get elected so i can continue to have these discussions i will continue to have these discussions either way but as an elected official i would have more of an influence on the senate thank you alex final statements well i've been in vermont my entire life i stayed here for college at the university of vermont and i stuck around when i graduated there and  continue to live here for the rest of my life my family's been here for many generations and rightfully so it's a great place and i love it here and i'm a big cheerleader for the state of vermont we know what our issues are people my age are fleeing as we get it because it's very hard to leave seniors are feeling it's because they're on a fixed income and their property taxes are rising and given that we had a massive surplus this year i cannot imagine a situation in which the majority party would not raise taxes i feel compelled to already party if there is such a situation and so what i want to bring is some balance we have a delegation from chipman county that's made up of six folks that all represent one ideology i would bring a  moderating and different perspective i'm somebody that watches their friends leven and i know what i want to see in my state to stick around and i plan to but i need to bring that perspective to the state senate thank you gentlemen so much for joining me tonight stay tuned for more state senate candidates from jitney county because we have two more groups of people coming in and of course don't forget to vote either now early at town or city hall or on election day tuesday november sixth and please stay tuned to channel seven for ongoing election night coverage thank you so much