good evening and welcome to channel seventeen town meeting television for our continuing coverage of general election twenty eight thousand this evening we have geno sullivan with us she is running unopposed and district six two two district six two and that isn't brawling tins you north and welcome jeanne so great to see you thank you new and old north and i have the best district that's right believe in the state i go i have a full spectrum economically i have i go from the a wonderful district and you have been serving for four and a half terms yes i have so why are you running for reelection well i have a course of when i am ranking member on house commerce and we have done for the past four years a lot of work on ticket three thousand actually this is a free coffee number three thousand young people graduate from our eighty six percent graduation rate with no job skills no pathway to middle class job no idea what a middle class job is when the retail association came to our committee and said we need workforce ready people and i said for the record define that and they said able to add and subtract and show up for work that's terrifying now let's say equate to we also have in the state champlain college and norwich which are two of the five top ranking in the world cyprus security educational facilities in the world we have tech in this state that is amazing we have so we are brilliant in this state of starting small businesses we are our challenges going from small to to actually sizing up that's where we really need to work with our small business community but what i know is is that i've been in for four years that's twelve thousand young people who've graduated with no job skills and a lot of that has to do with the fact that tech ed we say career technical education we're talking with burlington tech essex tech and all of that when you look at the funding mechanism it cost a sending school money to send a kid to tech so you've got a barrier there to our world just changing the world of work is changing the talents you use are changing one of the things google figured out years ago was that the people who do automotive tech are brilliant at three d computer aided design so all of these different levels of how we the the nature of work the type of jobs we have are changing and the traditional k through twelve hard line and then you have quote technical education that when i go to my district  i talk about this wonderful well opponent the tension people say i really want to help those kids those kids are their kids those kids are my kids my kids went to the burlington school system both of them would have loved to play that you know academics both of them would have loved to have something they could put their hands on it was talking to a graduate from b h s one of my son's best friends are all forty somethings and know who is saying i love video production but it was a center and there was a stigma to being in the tech center so you got to knock all of that town and we've got to look at the european models we've got to give search it we've been doing a lot of work in our committee for the past four years on looking hard at one of the certification programs that are world that are recognised there is a construction certification you can get post i school or in a high school that is recognized in all of the construction industry so then you know that if i am a construction company and i'm hiring that person they've got that certificate they've got certain skill sets on board julian from whose last name escapes me but she's brilliant in burlington and seato is doing this training up i think it's fifty people that the city council is supporting so what we need to do is break down the barriers change the entire funding mechanism and and get a free flow and we're what we've done in this legislature now is we've created four pilot projects that are driving tech a down or applied education should talk about it down into grade seven and we're saying to your k through twelve schools come up with something there was a reason why woodshop was brilliant in schools back in the day as was music we we have different skill sets we need and we need to do that's why it's so that the table is laid we had a workforce development bill we passed that next year in this first session we're getting a report on adult education which people think of as adult basic good getting your ged but that could also be workforce development we're not utilizing our facilities to train up working people everyone knows that people we've got a low unemployment rate and we've got people who are working in two and three jobs at the jobs are paying them enough we could take some of those people and train them in adult workforce education so if we do that the first year in commerce commerce committee because we took that funding out of the education fund into the general fund so commerce gets to do that if conversely education can join together in the second half to buy any of it because now the congressman has had a fairly good training in out to the education committee we could form some sort of a special committee where they form it where we could really redesign the funding model the training models everything that we've got so that is a freer flow from i would say an artist and a will and a pipefitter both want to learn how to weld well it sounds like and we can do it in two years so that's why i'm running for reelection ok it sounds like what we lacking in the educational system is a well rounded education where people are aligning with their head and their hands in glee right and so we don't use it is going to help you be better in math and right what work is going to be better  at pretty much anything including the exercise of your will to stick to whatever job you're going to do and education should give every student a pathway to a middle class income earning potential and i was talking to a young man who wants to be a physical therapist that's a ph d program now and i said to him well why don't you get a personal care attendant certification while you're junior and he said why would i do that and i said because that would allow you to work in a nursing home where they do rehab so you'd be  the ground doing that that's why connecting work to students the k through twelve students and the tech students we're not kids don't do summer jobs anymore so they don't have any of those as we we need is this as it as an educational facilities to bring well rounded we did bring our our students in so they really have ladders that same kid who could get a personal care tendency to feel g killer recommendations for college now let's talk to the kid who really cares where people really hate school for whatever reason just wants to get out get on their own and have their own apartment and they care about people that same kid in a sophomore year could get a personal care attendant that would be the summer after school job if you do that and your care about it fizzing nurses association will pay full bore all the way up to a b s in nursing so they're all of these ladders that we need to connect from the workforce in the workforce needs to our students so that's what keeps kids home that's what builds a community and how do you think that this ties into one of the questions we have here about for months meet interesting people great brains and one guy said yes we've got to stop paying for student tourism in the state of vermont what's that mean everyone comes and goes to school loves it and leaves that's not a sustainable model and and we we are well one of the really cool models we've got now is we now put in full bore full scholarships for the national guard one to make us more competitive my other day job is i'm state chair the s g r which is employer support for the guard and reserve which is a department of defense grouping in every state that is a liaison between guard and reserve members and their civilian careers because when we got rid of the draft we hung everyone out to dry we said oh great will save millions of dollars and just in time inventory for defense and actually does work but any given moment fifty four percent of our deploy deployed troops our guard and reserve people  now let's figure out how what how that impacts a small employer in vermont so instead of being honest and actually taking a lot of those billions of savings in the department of defense and putting it toward supporting guard and reserve members in their crew civilian careers because they're going to go off and drills and they're going to get deployed and all of that and that has an impact instead of doing it to support them they basically do nothing and buy more boy you know toys for boys which is really probably the worst thing i should say but i don't care so that's a piece of what i do that what i do there is i'm working with employers to bridge and get our particularly our mountain troops which are infantry or air the airborne are they've got all stem jobs but the infantry don't so i did look at a lot of people like relents capers and things and if they get deployed they lose their business so what we're trying to do is build a better bridge for guard members and their civilian jobs so let me ask you about the climate economy and how vermont can take advantage of the opportunity that climate change presents we need to do a carbon tax we need to understand that if we can do it we have regionally we should but we absolutely have to do that we need to just work as diligently and as conscientiously as we can the other thing we need to do is clean or water it not just because it's for tourism it would not just because we want clean water and it's good for tourism that estimated twenty million dollars a year is economic development those are construction jobs that's money we're investing in building a vermont that's where the sustainability comes in you get it we've got to start thinking about that we're going to clean up our waters then we invest in and we train burling to vermonters for those jobs so where is the money going to come from to clean up the lake and the cleanup of the waterways and general honestly i liked i like the treasurer's original plan which was the plot it was bit it was based in there was a ten there was a surcharge in every on every plot we're going to have to figure it out i don't know what's go happen with the federal government but we need to think of it not as a tax it disappears we need it we need to quantify that as economic development for construction in our state in our state i think that actually paul ralston was talking about this down in the addison saying what we should invest in the state should pay for the the buffers on the edge of the river and that's i think we should i think we should look at that and say to do that to make those riparian buffers i think this phrase that takes workers people have to do it those are vermont jobs and those can be very skilled for munch ops so i want to repeat i want to rephrase a lot of those this is a ability economy is looking at reinvesting in ourselves if we have if we are putting guard members for your scholarships in vermont schools then why don't we make sure that we have really good jobs for them when they come back when they're when they're here so they stay here so being in the district that you represent six two it's probably one of the more diverse districts in the state would be my guess  elation right is and so what do you see is the challenges to institutional racism i mean how can we as a state dismantle that systemic racism that is contained in how we do business i remember in the legislature when we started talking about driving while black and this is before we had the wonderful study for you yeah and people are standing up and saying no no no this can't be here to this can't be true and to have objectively fact based discussions helps a tremendous amount one of the first things i ever did in the legislature was create it was exit to first the nation bill we the national guard now reports every on sexual harassment sexual assault and discrimination in the guard instance that were complaint and now we added another stream which is women being recruited how many have re upped and how are it how are they be are you  elevating them in the force because the only way you're really going to take care of that situation is to get a better fifty fifty mix gender was well that's about qualify qualify qualify and part of the thing we have to do is look at the numbers it's we are incarcerating i believe the highest number of black men in the country in vermont yes and if not if we have the highest we're damn close and we're sending them to mississippi to a for profit prison in this state that flies a flag that has a confederate battle flag and that i was a civil rights worker for snick in mississippi for a year i know that state and i visit that state it hasn't changed i do i worry about our population so we just have to look at it recognize it and embrace england in the forty's went to just a similar situation it was it ireland population there all white all of a sudden the empire came home and that's when the teddy boys were there and all of that and eventually it's challenge because we have burlington with our fabulous diversity and then we have maybe i don't know springfield so it's it's bring it along i keep saying that it's like whenever i look at anything that the travel and tourism puts out any brochures it gets to be a joke in my committee because bill bought so my chair was wonderful would give me whatever brochure and i would flip through and start counting the black or brown faces i'd see in if we're selling for mont sell a multicultural for a month but what if we're not really hospitable the multicultural vermont we need to make people aware and that's how you do or you have multicultural brochures ever ties in your state you were recognize institutional racism with with driver stops you look at discipline problems in schools you start you start coal just a hub ject of looking at facts i think most people  well meaning i think people are unaware if you are if you are part of a if you and aware of if you look like me you wander blissfully su world and you don't there's no moment because i'm in the majority all the time it's only when you're in the minority that you get a different take and so it's conversation it's talking it's making but it's also hard nosed looking at traffic stops looking at incarceration figures looking at who chooses to prosecute looking at housing looking at economic diversity look at who are we who are we recruit so let me ask about the economics of our educational system and how we maintain a quality of education with a declining population of school age students  you know the standard the standard statement is if you got off the proper it doesn't make sense for property owners to function to pay for education yes we have by definition we get a benefit because you know we it my property it gives my house value up but that's really not the way to to fund things if you did it on economic if you did it on income we all know work better that's just so that you spread the spread that  there are states where education is finance based on income you're got i don't know today ever say that burning babeu sheets under my fingernails is more preferable than being on the education committee honestly i that i have so much respect for the the education committee that is a very arcane and tough world i do block chain and commerce my other deep weeds world but that i i willingly i you know janet and so has an encyclopedic knowledge of taxes and how they affect people and and she's ways and means yes right and we have the education committee and dave sharp as retired and  everyone on the committees is stellar so it's a tough place i just you know my i know that i know and i'm a retired start program know the dollars and cents the dollars and cents or if it's on income it works out  agriculture the dairy farms in our state are really having a very difficult time just because of the way the financing of milk is structured and for other reasons so how important is this is agriculture and and general dairy farming in particular how important it does it remain for our state and what can we do to support it well i had a wonderful experience actually with a constituent our for to plate and our the what we're doing in agriculture is pretty impressive and it's about diversity it's about getting getting our ag our our particular dairy group the farmers to to to find more profitable sidelines and to diversify their product in order to survive that being said i have a constituent who makes an amazing dip that is now in hannaford and she has an opportunity to go from seventy hanford's to a thousand and also cost at costco's talking to her so she is she's a start up and she needs to ramp up so i called aggregate department of agriculture to see what they've got going and they've got a specialist in there who knows every dairy license in the state absolutely on point right there knows how to scale people up neatly said there of their various distributors the refrigerated trucks that was one of her challenges and so they're doing an excellent  price there's cut there's a cost involved in that and there's a time lag it's a challenge and it's and it is and the backbone of vast number of our dairy farms documented folks so what's your view on this isn't a question but just has the ice strategy and its impact on the state just in the light of what you just said we had general came to the judiciary last year and said look we've got the money we're doing it anyway we're defending undocumented people at local in the local level and then they go to immigration court down in boston and you know they sure do there's sort of they thought would be good come to the floor and no problem it was it was like the poison from the national world was coming into or some of the things that people said about those people and arena it passed and so were defender generals are doing it but what they're talking about we're not there we're talking about our undocumented people who are keeping the backbone of our state and our dairy farms afloat but this poises venomous thought process is even coming to vermont and granted it's in small doses and i am wildly proud of our legislature i think we really we pride ourselves in being as like especially in congress you're really are porch forum we are going to be in front porch for a form telling district six one which is the fourth to north end and district six to who's most who's coming out to vote more we're going to get is to to six we're going to tell you how to do early voting the one thing you can tell the world is join us in this onslaught of voting vote your conscience vote for you you want but just get out and vote this is the saving grace of democracy wonderful thank you you know solv unopposed for the district six two and brunton that covers the old north and part of the old north end and part of the new north end and we hope that you will stay tuned here for continuing coverage of channel seventeen town meeting television general election