about that's one two three four five six seven eight that's the test for good product and we're going to go live soon  good evening and welcome to another candidate forum here on channel seventeen town meeting television i name is howard would now be the moderator tonight tonight we're doing democratic primary candidates for chickening county sheriff and i want to introduce our candidates this is michael major and kevin mclaughlin i did mispronounced your name earlier but i think i got to write this times you did so gentlemen we're going to start with an opening statement i'll start with you michael if that's ok and i will it will give you a couple minutes to basically tell people why you're interested in running for this position and what what qualities you bring and i appreciate that i've been a state employee and working with the sheriff's office for thirty four years worked for other agencies i worked for heidelberg police richmond police i also work for the addison county sheriffs and frankly county sheriffs for a term each since one thousand nine hundred two approximately i've also been a field training officer for the agency we would have to be done also during that time i've done some volunteer work i did twenty years with the kids in cop program special olympics i've also done eighteen years ward dealing with inmates and and and them what they call a direct referral which would go to the board instead if somebody actually going to court first on a different charge that we actually come to the board we would discuss it and then we would act as a judge actually determine what people would have for penalties or any kind of punishment based on their first time charge i've also done going to work with house different committees i'm currently assigned to the governor's marijuana bill as a committee through the of my police association so i've done a little bit of everything in my thirty four years and recent been with the sheriff's office now for forty five years and i started out as a deputy and worked my way up all through the ranks and became the chief deputy and then in one thousand nine hundred eighty five eighty five eighty six i went to work as a d a drug task force agent came back and then that year in one thousand and six i ran for sheriff was successful and i've been sheriff ever since basic i'll use some of my professional developments that i've done over the years i'm a graduate of the f b i national academy i'm a graduate of the national sheriffs institute on management university of southern california los angeles also graduate of the senior executives of state local government kennedy school of government in cambridge then with the vermont police academy and many different functions over the years about thirty years as a training the training corps nadirs what we do is we actually called the tac committee training advisory committee what we do is actually plan for the training of the police academy for the sixteen weeks that they go through drug schools department of homeland security go on and on as sheriff it's very unusual position because you are hire all the staff you're also the human resources director you have to take care of all the payroll systems the health care systems the retirement systems you prepare plan develop and oversee the state and county in department budgets we handle all the contractual services the sheriff of the county is the legal contractor for the department we do all the civil process in the county which is between four and five thousand people yearly also oversee all the transport state budgets  all the seizures and share of sales that we do in this in the civil side of the house put together all the rules and regulations standard operating procedures and on and on and on and basically my priorities for the next four years are to maintain a da drug task force agent that i have assigned at the dea a drug task force for the last finished two thousand and six and he is currently the longest serving task force agent what he's doing he's assigned there to fight the opi drug issues that we're having in the state and around the country because they go beyond the state of vermont we have a new governor's highway safety person coming on hopefully in august and october and that will be a full time position that he will oversee the grants for all of  the court system and to continue all the programs that we've developed over the years school resource officer child support we contract services for their investigative unit civil process department health to prison the children the families patrols in three towns court security and drug payback stuff so that's pretty much what i've accomplished over the last thirty one years and i want to continue to do that for the next four i think we're lucky to have two such people point after this i ask a question i'll start with you kevin a little bit about why for those people that don't realize that we have a county sheriff's department as opposed to the local sheriffs how do you see your role or you could help us to explain to the viewer what is the share of does our the sheriff's department does as opposed to the local police department well there's three layers of government state county and local  we contract for services first a lot of towns that do not have police departments can't afford a full time police department so what they like to do is they'll contract with the sheriffs in vermont whether it's for five hours a week or fifty hours a week we currently can contract with because we have the only female jail in the state or my here and the only jew in our unit so many times when they call us to transport we may have to take somebody from south burlington to bennington or brattleboro new board so they go all over the state so they're always moving in the civil division to the deputies that work there they work in plain clothes in plain plain cars and they serve civil process throughout the whole county and what they do is those are summons of complaints court orders seizures as it's we do share sales from time to time we seize as said because of a court order so this is kind of a thing that we're all over the place people see traffic control you see officers out in traffic control when we have those type of contracts also that's already michael you mentioned that you were part of the governor's kind of task force on marijuana and tell me a little bit about your involvement in that and what your views are and how you think that's going to impact children county in the future and where you think that's going to come back when when you become sheriff was part of the legislative board for the for my police association and part of the governor's request is that they have a member of the association on the actual board so i've been on it for a year and it's going to continue for at people have thirty and forty years plus and they have a state experience absolutely and absolutely and they're studying it you know day to day so we were taking that information and as a board and looking at it but we're also looking at it from different views we have the taxation part of it we have the medical side of it and then we also have the public safety side of it i am on the public safety side so we need to currently we've met up you know four times and then we  meet at individual units and then we meet together as a cumulative for unit to discuss all the issues and then we end up making a report to the governor which we did in january so we have another report that has to be done by december eighteenth we're doing you know more research as you know legalization of marijuana is a huge topic and colorado is actually finding out some of the issues that it's causing to having more homeless move into the area  people actually you know mailing mail online or through the postal service which is you know other problems for the postal service and it in the county we're going to see now that it's legalized we're going to see a lot more issues i think  mile or so not to show or where it's going to end up in six months or a year but the board is working hard we're trying to get the right information to the governor that's great kevin you must have you know pretty clear or some ideas on where this is going for as well what are your thoughts i have many friends in colorado who is sheriffs and and when i go to the national shares conference as we were on the committee i'm on the drug enforcement committee of the national sheriffs association i've been there for almost t years and basically we talk about that we talk about the drug issues nationwide where it's coming from where it's going what's happening and the sheriffs in colorado tell me to tell the sheriffs in vermont get ready it's coming your way and i  think one of the questions as you know does it complicate your job in any way i think it's way too early for that but i think the complications would be on drugs while driving i mean is there any testing for that we haven't got that yet and i think that that would be the first issue to come in we would have to get more d r rees which is a drug recognition expert that's a police officer who gets a little elaborate training in this area where he can actually see certain characteristics that occur that a judge judge would accept as dui kind of thing so these are issues that i think we're just at the beginning of and you can just look at other states to see where they were day one week one year one year five that kind of thing and they say it's pretty going to be pretty much the same you know some people just so want to go back and plus with people retiring like state police to have a lot of people retired to share so if some of them that idea or us are taking that training with them obviously that's a big issue also we don't really have good field testing equipment to give to the officers in the field so you're sitting there are wasting an hour hour and a half waiting for a dairy to come over the new area hit easily take two to three hours oh now processing so it's not it's not short sweet and quick really to for a long time to get the process going because there are so few other called out more often and think about it if you're the only person within fifty to one hundred miles on a weekend in this is going to be an issue how many times you going to get called out and after a while they go this is this is enough you know what's the answer to this and more d r reason better testing testing equipment and we get to testing equipment dairies is pretty much it so what that just and there's a whole sheet of questions that have to be asked and answered first and then based on their scientific knowledge of the drugs they'll go into like physical testing looking at the eyes of the sort of speech but the process like i said it's this extremely long yeah it's really tying up officers on the road and then if any what happens in court if the case gets asparagus a lot of that time is wasted yeah they really don't want to show that an officer did something wrong because it goes against the here our program right but like the status tasked with buying all the equipment that money has to come from somewhere but what about you know in terms of not just marijuana but in terms of things it's interesting you know and so there's appears from both of you that there and we have a real need for many more officers that are trained in that as well as the equipment that goes with it where does that what does that funding come from working well the funny would come from most likely a state o either through governors highway safety or federal green those kind of things not less to state department public safety and get it in a grant for them and then deal it out through other agencies throughout the state are you seeing that coming in the future that obviously the opioid thing and other drugs you know besides marijuana seems to be on the increase anyway all the all of the law enforcement agencies with that you know it where does the sheriff how do you see the sheriff some role and  back the bigger issue is the opiates obviously but with the legalization it's going to make a lot harder but do you think well i agree that it's going to be a lot harder and at the same time i think that more people are going to be carrying it because you can carry up to a certain amount and not get into trouble if you have any problems and because more people are carrying it i think what worries me the most is that it's going to be easier to say oh you don't have any here try some of mine oh that would just go more and you know more and that bothers me because i think the younger y know your mom and dad are gone i'm coming over i worry about all that well it's very little bit into the whole notion about the you know the gun control kind of legislation i'll start with you michael a little bit about what your view recent you know legislature and legislators just passed in i've got a gun control legislator legislation what are your thoughts on those things and how is that going to impact your your viewpoints and all five of my kids have taken one hundred fifty course before they were able to look at a gun buy a gun or even go hunting with his lawyer ways but to me the education part of it to me it's not a punishment i think everybody should know about  officer like the extreme think it's called the red flag one where law enforcement officer if a court orders it could go to seize a weapon from somebody who is shouldn't have it for a year and those kind of things so that that would affect law enforcement that way and that's my job is to enforce that i think some of the other things that a lot probably law enforcement will get involved in but we as shares could get involved in when i look at the law the way it's change of somebody has that stuff that they're not supposed to have and it gets that way where maybe it's a civil case of somebody takes the civil case to court and all this and there's an order to go seize it so we as sheriffs may get involved in that also so it's you don't know how it's going to turn now by my opinion is is is  's a statute i am mandated to do it and i can't take sides either way because if i do some is going to say he's biased against there he's biased for so we have to remain i have to remain neutral on that this may get me in trouble  harassing this question and you feel free not to answer but is there a need from a law enforcement aspect for more or more gun control at all do you think well as you know vermont is one of the safest states in the union we have had very few if any gun laws i think what happened recently is an eye opener where that young man and very in the down south in the school district down there where he was saying to he wanted to hurt you kill more people than the virginia tech did that that's an eye opener it's like wait a minute this is vermont this is not supposed to happen here so when you step back and take a look at that saying oh my god this could happen here too so it's an eye opener i think that we all have to pay attention to it we have the mental illness thing going around where we have that that is really great causing a lot of issues we need more help in that area and police are getting it to some to back up a little bit like the sheriff said you know when you're talking about the mentally ill having access to guns you really don't know what's going to happen how do you prevent that there has to be something out there we can do  you know better background checks who's really going to apply for a background check probably the honest person you're not going to have the bad guy or the mentally ill person going to who are a gun shop and applying for a gun they're going to get it from our friend guns in marijuana that is once once again guns and marijuana haven't really surface in vermont yet and if that does happen how those going to be twenty seven percent one thousand percent five six years from now right on the right something that watches so wonderful about what do you think that issues or if you and when you get elected what other what are the things that you want to bring to the table and really focus on what you know they w more outside yearly contracts we only have a couple right now and we depend a lot on part time officers by having a full time contract full time for trolls like the sheriff said we can increase our staffing by doing that having more staff you can do more contracts as far as profitable contracts bring in the money to pay off you know the debts we accumulate because we have self funded there are only certain positions in the maintain that financial stability we have to have officers on the road and work and i agree with that and like i said the sum of the issues you have is you have your good years you have your bad years and you have to plan for those in over the years i saw a huge thing happening around two thousand and eight i saw our civil division going way up way up in demand for services civil process or whatever and you and i look back during that time and basically it was a credit card companies they were coming after you when you were five hundred dollars behind twelve thousand and they were coming that's when the economy collapsed back then and they do now in the last twelve months we've seen a huge decrease the civil process the economy's good people are paying their bills are civil process is going down so it's an up and down ride and you have sheriff plan for this because you have people working for you on a full time basis the people who work for you part time they and they like to have the ten to twelve hours a week extra and so does your as your years go up and down you have to plan for this because the fact that we don't get funding for motor vehicles with twenty five cars r s imagine what that cost just right there right then uniforms for all the staff are not supplied by the county or state those kind of things so as i look forward to it as a forward in in the contract world yes but at the same time law enforcement generally nationwide in vermont we're having problems finding qualified candidates because you read in the paper every day what's going on in you know who wants to be a cop anymore i mean that's an issue that we're seeing in the  in the candidates you get are the ones that maybe would have wanted five years ago so these are the issues that you have to have to look at and you know the millennial generation is a little different from the inside ratification generation from this generation inside while i had to work weekends w the work nights i mean sometimes that happens and i think we're down to the just a few minutes so i want to give each of you a little minute or so to make a final statement michael we'll start with you if you can just you know let let the viewers know and let the voters know and by the way i want to make sure that everyone realizes go out and vote but michael michael major what is give us a minute or so of your movement there thank you over my thirty cousy and h in a unit for special investigations i was one of the founding members thirty one years ago when the chiefs got together said we need to have a unit specialize in these kind of things because we're not getting good good cases because there are so few and far between  having transformed transform my staff in one thousand and seventy around from around three or four full time positions to twenty one positions today over the years modernizing the agency working with all of the law enforcement agencies in cheating county and around the state of  t there's so many things that happened in my career that are so successful that i love this job like i was i was chosen to be a grant reviewer by president clinton's staff on america so i went to washington and things that i've been involved in i was on the national chairs conference real committee which assisted in writing the manual for court security and transportation of prisoners that was a national study this was for all share of around the nation i was on that committee in chosen to be on that committee based on my experience in my in my office tenure as sheriff so i'm looking forward to it i'm also looking forward to the new governor's i wish safety program we're going to implement this year hopefully on october first went from a few things  fill in and basically i'm running for reelection and i ask for your vote and i want to thank you for your continued support thank you to both of you this is been great conversation we did not have enough time we were just kind of touching the race issues here but i can tell the rear blast i have two great people running for on this side and i'm i want to urge our our viewers if you want to see this again