hello and welcome to channel seven teens town meeting television and another live candidate forum i met calley your host thank you to all our viewers enjoying our live stream at c eight seventeen got t v joining us this afternoon for a live conversation is martin lawn he is running unopposed for chipman county state representative district seven dash one this is the district that serves south burlington martin it's a pleasure having you on the show today thank you for coming and  have plenty of time for a wide ranging conversation here as you are running unopposed so we'll ask you for an opening statement and then we'll get right into our conversation excellent thank you very much yes so i'm represented chittenden district seven one for the last four years so two terms i'm running for my third term it is in unopposed my my background is that i am a lawyer by training and i practice law in washington d c for thirteen years before we moved up to south burlington vermont eleven years ago and i became the primary at home parent became very involved in in the kids schools and then ended up getting on the school board where i've served for eight and a half years my term is up in march and i'm probably going to be running it again board association board i'm currently on the vermont water color society board so i've been involved in that respect but what four and a half years ago the representative who had been the representative of for self burlington one of the four representatives reached out to me to see if i would run and it's sort of like a great opportunity to use my legal background and to get even more involved in issues so so that's why i initially ran i been on the judiciary committee for the last four years i've found it very engaging and i think we've been doing very important work and the primary reason i'm running is to continue that work i hope to be back on the judiciary committee but there are other issues that are very important to me as  well environmental issues are that that's in fact the area that i was working at the department of justice was in the environmental environment division and education issues certainly and there are several others a concern for making sure vermont is a viable place is have revenue growth at this time same time that we're watching the interests of our working families so any event that's that's why i'm running again to continue that continue that work and continue  to to really work on the issues important to solve point and the rest of vermont as well very good lots in there and i'm excited because we're going to be able to talk about a number of judiciary issues which covers equity it covers education criminal justice reform it actually even includes you know the legalization of marijuana and the commuting of sentences and things like that that might entail but before we get to that i want to ask you you are running again unopposed for chip and seven dash one now i had asked some earlier state representatives who are also running unopposed this year and the question is is this a situation where voters are are quite satisfied with your tenancy if you will as as a state representative or is it more a case of candidate apathy or candidate intimidation right combination of all of that but i don't think it's i don't think i'm very intimidating so i don't think i don't think that's the that's the issue i do believe i despite the fact that i've run unopposed this is my third time running for legislature unopposed i do go out and knock on doors and talk to constituents whenever i'm in town on saturday i have meetings at a local restaurant  the starving artist on shelburne road which are in my district and i advertise that on the front porch form we during the session sell through into reps have a monthly get together open to the public in the library at my point being that despite not being opposed i'm told they're trying to make sure i you know the constituents know who is representing them and who they can go to if they have issues and also talking to them about what the issues are and  s certainly are our concerns but i think i think what i represent and what i am pushing in the legislature is what my constituents want me to be doing there for instance environmental issues for instance the gun safety issues some of the stuff i'm doing on the judiciary committee i think i'm pretty well aligned with the large majority of  individuals in my district so that's one aspect so i think there is some satisfaction at least i like to hope so and and because i'm so available i don't have an overwhelming number of people yelling at me that things aren't going to terribly you know the question is more is it a question of candidate apathy right i mean we're seeing a lot of democrats running unopposed this year yeah that's that's that's true and i think  knowing a lot of those candidates we i think the democrats do have a lot of very quality candidates running as well but it is difficult to run it is difficult to have this is a job that's another problem it's a citizen  legislature it is five to six months hopefully usually five four to five but just seems lately we've been running a little later the pay is not very good there are no benefits there's no staff it's a difficult job i'm not complaining because i very much enjoy i think it's very important work but there's only so many people who can actually do it you have to have a spouse who is the main breadwinner which i am fortunate enough or you have to have a job that's very flexible or many people are retired are there it's really tough to hold a regular job and also do this but it's also really tough to just do this and if you know you can make a living right because here in the state of vermont we're not looking to hire legislators here we're part time citizen legislature exactly exactly and it's and it's closer to full time for five months so so it's that combination and i think that i think that vermont is lucky that we were able to get the number of people running for these seats that we are i wish we could because i think in a democracy the idea is that you want to have people running for the seats you want to have choices for individuals  but i don't take for granted that i don't have opposition and that means i can just coast i feel that i'm representing these individuals are putting their trust in me and so i have to make sure that i'm talking to them let's move on to some other of the questions here and it particularly relates to criminal justice criminal justice reform equity being one of them what is the state of vermont and what are you doing to dismantle the systemic and institutional racism that really just persists here in the state of a right it's so hidden and yet deep right yes so we certainly have played a big role in that the nasty internet trolling that's been done and such towards her she's a i understand i'm glad that you brought that up because i wanted to ask you about that statement about vermont what does that say right out vermont right it says that we're not different than other states that there is there's even outright racism or there's if not that there's systemic racism people may not have an intent that there's outcomes that are adverse or different depending on one's race there may not be the intent there but there may be either not having sufficient knowledge that these things happen and there's there could be a lack of acceptance of diversity and that is coming i think from some of the atmosphere that we see at the national level and  people feel that it's ok to be biased i guess so so i think that because of those issues you know we have to recognize that from out is not different we're not a of talking earlier in a sense you're involved in a lot of projects or an issue did let's say on the judiciary committee that in a sense actually literally come back to that issue whether it's criminal justice about equity sure so i'll talk a little bit about criminal justice reform but before i do just on the other issue of dealing with diversity in racism and such we passed a law in the special session act nine it's called and that creates a position in the executive branch in the administration to look at issues such as as systemic bias systemic racism in state government you know we can do that in state government we can look at that we can address that we can come up with ways to address those kind of things going on there we also there was a bill that i believe it made it through the house in didn't quite get through passed the finish line that would've had the agency of education working on updating certain creek to bring in more diversity that there's parts of our history that are not being taught in that they need to be taught so there's an education piece in there as well and my school board role you know we've we've been looking very close we've had issues in south burlington we changed our moniker from the rebels name because it was cause discomfort for a lot of students  and it's background where that name came from we changed that moniker so it and we're also not just doing that we're we're offering more educational programming and diversity training for for our staff and teachers and such so education helps as well that's another place to do it so in the in the justice and criminal justice area we're really we're dealing with a couple things there and it's not it's it's not just racial bias i mean there's certainly part of that and we have fair impartial policing training that we passed a couple years ago to make sure that you know the law enforcement interactions are not colored by the color of somebody's skin  and if we can just even just expand on that a little bit in the criminal justice where we're in the twenty first century there is absolutely no reason that any individual should die at the hands of law enforcement to day there's no reason there  restraint methods that can do an attacker right out deadly for right right and that is part of the train and that is critically it's the training i mean it's the training that in that police that law enforcement is getting that has steered towards where where individuals are being shot i mean it's the training where we have more and more deescalation type training that's part of it so that that you don't have to get to that point to be making money available for body cameras for yeah there's there are there is increase in the use of body cameras as my understanding that part's a little it's dealt a little bit more in a different committee that i don't get into those details quite as much as government operations but but on the on the criminal justice reform it's not just the boat that kind kind of equity it really goes into also our issues with addiction right now with the opiate epidemic and what we're doing in mental health goes it is it is definitely definitely it goes back to education right right so so really i look at the whole spectrum of what we can do and we are working on these things there's there's trying to have individuals not be arrested as often not have to or not committing crimes and that goes exactly to making sure our mental health system is as fixed because it is broken right now it is treating addiction as a as a health issue not not as a criminal justice issue it's trying to find making sure there is treatment available for individuals ultimately poverty and other societal things lead to individuals committing crimes that's a bigger task to try to deal with that but those are all things to try to reduce crime to begin with once there's a crime that that's kind of the next step is is we'd like to find ways where there's an alternative route th incarceration incarcerating nonviolent criminals it's not constructive it cost us fifty to sixty thousand dollars a year to keep somebody in prison and they're perhaps only learning to be a better criminal unless we're doing the right things in prison which is another thing so so we need to do stuff like having treatment courts so that individual this is a court that is is much more involved on a day to day basis with with an individual who has an addiction problem that led to the to the criminal activity or perhaps it's even you know the possession of drugs that is the criminal activity but instead of trying to incarcerate the person you try to treat the person and you have a lot of restrictions in court supervision and probation officer supervision to make sure the individual is addressing the underlying problem which is addiction so it's so that's the kind of the next step we also have restored of justice practices that we're increasingly trying to find ways other than incarceration so the next step is all right we have people that are incarcerated there we need to provide medical medication assisted treatment and that was a law we passed this year but it's not quite going into effect as of as effectively as we'd like to see seven days has been doing a great job of initially reporting that story and in following up but we need to make sure that that's working and we need to try what we can to give individuals who are incarcerated some skills that they don't reset of eight be it high school equivalent education there's also you v m separate from the state is offering some liberal arts courses college level courses in a yet in trades should be it should be another thing which we don't have right now but but these are things that we need to do and then finally are the person i don't think i think a lot of our sentences are too long i think even for the violent criminal one has to really look at the situation of what occurred the age of the individual because those kind of violent crimes disproportionately are committed and victims are disproportionately of the younger age and the brain development leads to individuals be noted that largely not entirely but but having you know a reduction in how long we're keeping people in prisons and the other thing and once they get out of prison helping that transition back into society that means we have to do better with housing which is a problem and we have to try to do things to eliminate the collateral consequences and that's we've done a lot of work on expungement which allows an individual to get rid of the record after a certain amount of time of essentially good behavior so i know it's a lot but i mean that that's a big part of what i've been doing the last few years and will intend to do in the couple in the next couple of years that's not the only thing today and also thank you for your service it takes tremendous courage and strength to actually put your name on a ballot to face your constituents form your opinions and then draw consensus in montpelier and we thank you for your time your dedication a reminder that you can visit our website at c h seventeen dr levy for a complete list of upcoming candidates forums here at channel seventeen town meeting television we invite you to visit that thank you for joining us on that cali for all of us a chance seventeen thank you for watching