good evening and welcome i'm diane meyerhoff host for tonight's candidate forum for state representative in chittenden district three jerko underhill and district four one ensure a lot tonight show is being aired live on channel seventeen and streamed live on the channel seventeen website we so george tell us why you're running and what qualifies you for the position what are your priorities as we come into the next session thank you that i've ever been in the legislature now for five terms ten  years and although i've had the you know some real successes along the way there are some priorities that i have that really haven't gotten across the finish line yet and i really want to continue on in but am press for those  particular the things that i did i'm really interested in this year is raising the smoking age to twenty one the problem of adverse childhood experiences or says in vermont and how that impacts our health care spending our schools our social services and our corrections and so as well as our economy  d in addition we need to have an excise tax on electronic cigarettes i want to push once again for primary enforcement of our seat belt law  d paid family leave is it is a big priority for me again this year so that's that's why i want to be there the second reason i like to be there is a lot of times the discussion is very negative about her mind and i'd like to emphasize that there are a lot of very good things about her mind you know vermont has is rated by wallet how has being the best state in the schools the fifth best in the in the country the opportunity index says that vermont is the best state to be born and we have a low unemployment rate and so there you have a very low infant death rate we have a broad with a very low maternal mortality rate there are just so many good things about from our and i think the negative things are often overstated the issue around you know the taxes in vermont those sort of things i think there's a lot of opinion about that but sometimes the facts don't exactly line up with with a lot of what's said so that's that's why i'm running again ok i sound like an impish just agenda  travers well thank you for having me i'm the newbie of the three here i'll be going into my second term florida enjoyed my first term challenging interesting learned a lot  i've always felt that serving your communities a very important thing to do i have moved through underhill in two thousand and i've been there for eighteen years now i got involved in the in more of a local community in terms of the conservation commission ended up sharing the conservation commission and also ended up being a member of the planning commission and sharing in the planning commission and one time i was chairing both at the same time i don't recommend that to anybody  so obviously i have a strong interest in environmental issues and i carry that over into the into the into the state house i always have an interest in in running as a legislator but didn't know  opportunity would present itself and the opportunity to present itself two years ago when incumbent bill frank retired after twelve years and he saw that as my opportunity to see what it was like to campaign and politics again and become a part of the legislature and i was fortunate to win and i got my choice to be on the natural resources committee so i got to delve into the those issues that are probably closest to me which the iceberg i've been in the legislature for eight years and you know i'm there to work for values and opportunities to benefit all vermonters i've served on a natural resource and energy committee for six years and then that committee was split up into two committees well actually the the responsibilities went to two different committees a new committee was created energy and technology committee which i'm on and the natural resources part went to the committee th on so my focus has been on the environment and we noble energy and i want to continue working for you know the  the aspects of the energy aspects and the committee also has responsibility for telecommunications and the id infrastructure of the vermont government so there's a lot of work to be done there not only with  have on the monitors to secure as well so you know for a month families need a healthy and want and healthy environment and so we need clean air and clean water and that's an essential part of what we're moniz so i want to continue to have the education issues but every child deserves an excellent public education system so that they can  become productive citizens and develop their to their full potential so we need to continue supporting that and we all need access to affordable health care safe community stories our kids and economic opportunity so that if you're working forty that's great so let's start also with health care this is a number of you brought it up and i know this is a particular topic for you george yes so i'm lots of great ideas but you know how do we limit the spending with that the cost is for folks who  have to go out there and find inch well you know as the only physician in the fed just later for the past ten years i have a a little bit of a unique perspective but that the real essence of limiting the cost is getting serious about prevention and using other policies to help with with preventing health problems the things that are so obvious things like that the back obasi right so so what we spend a year on tobacco related diseases we spend about three hundred forty eight billion dollars a year on tobacco related  illnesses just in vermont smokers die and have reached ten years earlier than others accounts for about one in five deaths nationally so it is it's a it's still a huge problem we've made some progress we are in very high risk at very high risk of losing that progress with the whole he cigarette things but one of the things that virtually costs nothing and has been proven in multiple places now to significantly reduced smoking is raising a smoking age to twenty one it really matters it really matters it really matters because if you don't start smoking before you're twenty one you're probably never going to start  you raise the smoking age to twenty one that means the eighteen to twenty year olds can't buy the cigarettes is that really true here and they really not get them well if you're in forcing properly but we know that that's the group who provides ninety percent of the cigarettes to younger younger people we also know that the earlier you start the earlier you try nicotine the more likely you are to be addicted it takes less to get you addicted and it's much harder to stop so raising the age to twenty one you know it's art is a movement and him one town down in massachusetts and in that town it's a boston suburb and they raise the age to twenty one here we hear people would just go across the border to buy it in new hampshire but guess what they didn't go across the town line down there in just a few years their smoking rate was fifty percent below the surrounding towns fifty percent below and that was the single intervention was raising to the smoky haze so you know it works it's been done in multiple states now we've passed it in the house the house gets it it came to a very close vote in the senate sadly there were a couple of people who would shock that they voted against it but they did and and so it it didn't pass but we're going to give it a go again because if you want to control your health care costs this is hanging fruit three hundred  forty million dollars if you cut your smoking rate in half that's a huge amount of money there and there are other examples of that same kind of thing where if we get serious about prevention and we know what accounts for what causes twenty five percent of cancers twenty five percent of heart disease you know why the range of diseases and we know how to reduce that do you do you folks agree as well where you and support of this  an excise tax on it at the distributor level because we know that there are two groups that are most price sensitive with things like tobacco and he cigarettes and that's the younger people and that's people of lower income and those are both groups that we have salute the need to target if we're going to if we're going to reduce our health care costs the cigarettes are every bit as addictive they do not really help people stop smoking it's that and you know the turns out that  snuck in before we were ready for them it sounds like and the utilization is exploding in the teenagers which is why i say we are about to start losing the war and cigarettes are much more expensive than than than cigarettes and will for mont where it look at all the different sectors that contribute not just in lake champlain but those of a watershed i just talked about and from that the treasurer and state treasurer was tasked with looking at would cost to meet the requirements under the e p a and meeting some requirements under x six to four and it was determined we probably need over and above what we already get for funding from various sources about twenty five million dollars each year for the next twenty years and in a sense to hold the bitto total bill with all the revenue sources about two billion dollars over twenty years so our big struggle and one of the things we keep working on our committee and put over the last couple of years is where we come working on twenty five of them were passed if you will and two being worked on and one not a pass and the biggie long term funding and there's been an overreliance in this administration on the which is bonded money to help support that worker fill that hole that's not sustainable over time and we need to figure out how we're going to come up with with that long term funding we have some money if it comes from the property  transfer tax which is about four million dollars a year of a goes toward the queen was fun there are some additional monies that are going to move towards clean water funding called the sheets which is the money tied up with bottled deposits and things like that right now the distributors if they don't reimburse they get to keep the money we're going to take that led him and directed towards water quality and now we have capital bond funding but filling in the rest of that and we're still not getting to twenty five million  getting to about eighteen or nineteen million and that's what the agencies are talking about in terms of moving forward in physical year two thousand and twenty that's not enough and relying on the capital funding is not going to do it over the long term either about where we could raise those funds but i was at a forum last week where all the agency heads were present at a part of the water quality initiative and they're starting to realize that they have to come up with a long term solution the status quo what taxes right right so think about this if you took the cost of one cup of coffee at dunkin donuts to starbucks a month and a sip and take take that two dollars a month and put it on every to give up a coffee cup of coffee a month for this if it's going to help clean up the lake polluters need to pay and who are to polluters it's all of us forty percent of the pollute of the phosphorous going into into the lake it comes from agriculture another forty percent comes from our roads and our municipalities and only three percent is actually coming from our wastewater treatment plants so you know we need to we need to everybody has to be and we had that same all in we don't come up the e p a is basically said to vermont yoof you come up with this idea and we'll work with you on that if we fail to do that the e p a could come in and tell us what we should do but the and that's still least contributing factor now so if e v g a comes back and says you will do to me it does require but we're going to be spending a lot of money with very little benefit from that and that's a reality this could very well happen so let me let me let me chime in just a bit the e p a has said mid two thousand and nineteen as the time by which we need to tell them what our long term sources yet all of last year two years ministration came in time and time again and said we don't need to identify a source now we don't think funding source funding source now there are a lot of a lot of thoughts about different funding sources there were proposals about different funding sources you know ideally in taxing you want to nexus you want some connection between what you're charging and and in the purpose you know the  one of the suggestions that came from the natural resource committee was rooms tax a surcharge on rooms it is an issue in terms of our tourism i or lake is awful our tourism is going to tank if we lose the vermont brand by being obviously polluted that the tourism is going to get down the hill and so you know i see  nexus there a lot of other people didn't it's seem to see a nexus there what you know what makes the most intuitive sense to most us i think was an impervious surface charge so the whole state is being mapped to for what's how much is impervious because that's where the water runs from and so you could conceivably look at each parcel what amount is impervious and charge it attacks based on that that makes the most sense the problem is that a it's going to be very expensive the set up and b has to be costly updated because things are constantly changing so it's not only a set up expense but it's an ongoing expense so the next proxy for that that is has been suggested is just a partial fee so rather than based on the actual physical set up of the parcel that just parcels pa equally and there are people who think that that is an ok nobody is wildly enthusiastic about that but but people point out that well but some parcels forest lands actually reduce the run off and yet we're going to charge them too so it's something a bit messy and it's all more complicated by the fact that the administration keeps insisting we don't need to identify more in the last point i would make is yeah we're using a lot of bonding money and who's go pay that back it's not us it's our kids and we're pushing this off onto our kids we've created the pollution for profits and whatnot but we're going to pushed this off on to our kids to pay for and that's just not right and tell me i know some of the towns have surfaces that goes into their waste water and storm water right so is this is this sort of a similar thing to that have had they've been successful in figuring out those issues of impervious versus pervious and kind of keeping track and does it make more sense out of town level than  those issues around their own raising funds for waste water not just everyone's trying to raise funds for the things that are important right all of us so ok interesting so let's and we talked we touched a little bit on agriculture as part of this this runoff thoughts on that or that the reformers right now or really being stressed because of the low price that they're getting for the milk it costs them about sixteen dollars on the way in order to break even and they're only getting twelve to fourteen dollars per hundred weight right now on a couple years ago they were going to eighteen dollars four hundred weight which was a really good year for them  to exactly sure how the prices are set but i know that that they're pretty much dependent on what the co ops that they're selling the mill to are giving them for and and  i don't know how those prices are set when we go to the supermarket we're paying three to four dollars per gallon of milk that's not what the form is a getting  so i don't know how we deal with that the farm bill did not pass in congress and that was on that was legislation at the federal level that would have helped farmers to reform yeah the only thing i would add to that is that a certain leave as there's a group we've had a lot of conversation about we need to move away from conventional dairy farms to more like organic or before so it's more specialized you know but it also begs the question is when you have a conversation about what it would take to move to more of the organic practices sorbet and not specifically organic but natural more natural processes where's the market for all of that and i think that's the market's not quite there either to for everyone to move in that direction right it's not so i agree with with what and said but the the only thing i would the only things i would add are number one the i don't have very many positive this things to say about the administration in washington but the one lit piece of the the trade deal is going to make make for more milk exports to canada  and that's a good thing for vermont that's that that's one thing and the other pieces i think it partly is going to it's going to take a commitment on the part of for monitors in general to do more pay more for local and organic stuff grown here in vermont and it's going to be a little more costly but can but i think that's going to have to happen to save the farms and it's happening somewhat all right absolutely i have said they're very successful foreman in my community jericho settlers farm see them a lot of farmers markets we see them in the market at the hospital every week  know i mean lots of good things happening there lots of innovative thinking so it's possible that we're getting so i said if you believe in that direction to you're also having a positive a more positive impact on the environment a nice large conventional there reforms that support but also in the nondairy farms we are seeing a growth in those and there's still a small part of the agricultural economy but  at in a way that provides an opportunity to increase jobs and it could be a boon to the economy we created with renewable energy our renewable energy policy has helped to create nine hundred thousand jobs shame we need to do some investment though where we are planning all our goal was to have eighty thousand homes weatherized lowing low income family  homes weatherized by two thousand and twenty we are way behind the curve on that we are nowhere near getting that done that that's funded by the gross receipts tax which is like at this point three quarters of a cent three quarters of a percent on the price of oil the sprawling to the state and passed on to the consumer of course so in a way that's a little bit of a carbon tax  it's a very tiny one we have to get off fossil fuels that's the only way we're going to impact climate change transportation and heating sectors are the two biggest components of greenhouse gas emissions instead of going down which was the intent dog greenhouse gas emissions actually went up and it's primarily due to the transportation and heating  sectors cars are becoming more fit vehicles are becoming more efficient but same time more vehicle miles are being driven and that's one of the reasons so how do we get people to change on the on the other hand the electricity o electricity sector is becoming cleaner and cleaner because we've got the renewable energy standard that utilities are working to and so what we need to do is we need to transition our transportation and heating from fossil fuels to electricity cleaner electricity and the how do we do that that's a big question so you could do that either by mandate nobody likes mandates you could do that by market forces so what does  fuel and used those revenues the plan in the essex plan was to use those revenues to reduce your electricity bill for both businesses and for individuals for cent per gallon tax would raise about thirty million dollars a year if we take ten percent of that three million dollars a year and we took that and put it into the  we could increase the number of holes instead or insulated better so that they don't use as much feel to it so it provides their economic opportunities for all vermonters if we are willing to make the investment and address climate change but we have to be willing to do what we have to be willing to do what we just can't wish this problem way that seems to be the theme of many issues that we're talking about tonight we can't wish them away different options one of those yes explain the other one is western climate initiative and please correct me if i get any more you're right you're the expert and that's more of a cap and trade that's actually a number of states and also quebec is part of that and i listen to a presentation a very program a number of well what a number but it's going out that i was very impressed with that and there's both three or four maybe five items that this research firm is looking at and is to present to report back to us  and talk about what how they wanted to make sure that the direction they were taken was what the public was looking for in the people and did that and he hadn't let that happen last week and i thought was preposterous and the the the thing another point was that george just wanted to make the point that we can't do it ourselves of the money by itself is not going to do this and there are a number of approaches we can use to to do this to help people transition from fossil fuels but we're working with other states there's a group of us that are working with legislators in massachusetts connecticut rhode island and hampshire maine new york and even montana are gone washington  producing c o two it wouldn't change the trajectory of global warming and we can't do this alone and we have to be very careful that we don't hinder our ourselves economically this needs to be a regional thing and it's you know that's why the importance of working with legislators from from other places this needs to be at minimum regional given what's happened nationally it it's very frightening right now and and you know clearly what we can do here by ourselves is is completely inadequate so so it is going to take a group of provides actually are quite a bit of money and for vermont utilities saving us more than four hundred million dollars over the years that that's been affected and what triggers how are how are the electric utilities doing in terms of moving toward one hundred percent we know that sounds like what the the goal is yes yeah the goal is ninety percent renewable by twenty fifty but all the utilities are doing very well with the electric is one hundred move from sixty i mean sixty to ninety sounds like a lot i don't i don't know well is that reasonable and how many you know a lot of that a lot of it is an accounting because it's based on renewable energy credits and you can have more renewable energy right now let's see starting in twenty seventeen there was a such an increase in the percentage of renewable energy that you have that the utilities have to each yea increases each year so if they're actually if they've actually got renewable energy credits and if excess of that they can sell those excess renewable energy credits to connecticut rhode island new york whatever and  and they would get some money for that which would offset the amount of the charges that we have to pay for electricity so that's been a successful program p yeah i'm so we have a few minutes left let's talk we really we covered a lot of topics here thank you all for being so so game i mean let's talk a little bit about education you know concern how do we maintain the quality of education at the same time we have to  as worried about the quality of the education as i am about the equality and the equality of opportunities across different districts and the how we're going to fund  know when you when we go around knocking on doors which we've all done over the last ten years i can see far and away the most common complaint i get is about property taxes and we have chosen to fund education through property taxes and that causes a bit of a problem you know if you look at our taxes compared to other states in the joint physical office does this every year in the tax foundation does this every year the one that's actually really consistently very very high is our property taxes and you know so we need to control the cost and there are a couple big initiatives around that one  school mergers which i can say we did and chip in in the east and has paid real dividends but so that helps but then there's also this past year we we worked on the special education and how we deliver it and in doing a very very different paradigm with special education which i think is going to go a long way towards helping contain the cost and special education instead of the very regimented federal plan and more allowing to the school districts to manage more how how they do their special education  so i think that that the those are steps in cost control i think i think that the mergers are important for opportunity you know in our district we had six elementary schools you know three of them barely more than a mile from each other and and you know the larger one had more programs that our kids would have loved but we couldn't afford in our little school you know the merger has allowed us to do things like that like foreign language in elementary school i mean that's tremendous but the mergers allowed us to do that and so you know it's the opportunities the breath of opportunities you know just over and over again we ranked as one of the five or six best schools systems in the in the country and public school systems and that is a huge piece of attracting people to vermont you know it's something we should be celebrating selling you know and making making a fuss about i knew were the one who said that you felt there was too much negativity selous that sounds like that's when we you know we have although i think i think we are known for that i mean i don't i don't i think we are that is out there that the education system here is going to mongst other things but on my did you want to add anything to that no not really we were trying to support thirty thousand fewer children with same infrastructure pretty much that we had one you know thirty thousand kids  make vermont more affordable how do you do that well one way is to help reduce the cost of childcare that's that's a big negative when it comes to somebody that wants to move to vermont that has kids because you've got to either have one per one parent staying at home or all supposed parents are working and we have a lot of two to group families one of the parents is going to paint the paint a huge percentage of their income for child care and so that's something that's another thing where we have to invest in order to an order to make things better for all the mourners so  last year or so that looked at it is a bit more conversation about we're spending too much money in our educational system and i think when you look at the sort of what i call the general educational piece of it people seem to think the resource seems to show we're doing just about right and back to representative tells comment about it's a special education piece in particular that's out of whack and that we need to get away from that regimented structure and provide more flexibility was into schools think block grants and let them decide course and i want to let everyone know don't forget you can vote now you can vote early in your town or city hall i always forget to say that i want to make sure i got that in there or you can vote on election day tuesday november sixth and be sure to stay tuned shall seventeenth as we have lots more election coverage