channel seventeen forum with democratic candidates for governor and xander land in v t digger reporter and i'll be moderating tonight's debate we're going to start off with a minute thirty second opening statements we introduce yourself to the audience explain your platform a little bit going to be asking a series of questions after that for the next hour so all of those questions will be about expecting me to have responses of roughly so james would you start with an opening statement says james  thank you general seventeen for this opportunity i filed to run for governor a year ago realizing that our governor currently governor scott is not representing our interests as from honor's we're all working harder for less money access to health care as a struggle we're in a child care crisis our waterways are being destroyed people are not being compensated fairly for their full time work i just couldn't sit by and have that continue see it happen for another two years yet again i'm a blue collar kid i've got four small children and vermont is a special place an extremely special place and if we all come together even with my colleagues here at the table we all share a difference in some policy areas but we all substantive substantively have the same principles and that is that the people of this state matter and i welcome that opportunity to bring the people's voice to the governor's office free of special interest thank you thank you james christine i'll quest i'm a person that pulls people together to do big things until march i was the c e o of vermont electric whopper of we served about a fifth of remote with electricity and remember we were a co operative just like a food co op my passion life was to demonstrate the electric grid could solve climate change when i left we were ninety six percent carbon free we were offering incentives for people to move with  transportation and we did that without a rate increase for five years essentially prove you can solve climate change it does not need to cost more money i love vermont but when i have my forty plus years i have done everything with school board mental health board to  five years have been a moderate fatah meeting but look at the way the governor's been running the state it's been running at a division that's not the vermont i know and love what i would do for vermont as governor i would focus on rural economic development which would include connecting every home  business with fiber optic cable so providers could be connect the internet same speed as new york tokyo i would continue to move us to and improve medicare for all system for health care i would accelerate the work we're doing in climate change as well as ensure every child receive a quality public education and i will tell you that fundamental to all this is is talk to thousands of remodelers and growing vermont's economy is important because we do get more food on the table rather than to continue to fight over the scraps thank you christine brenda siegel about a year and a half ago i started doing some informal research to find out how well i was reflected in our government as a low income single mom i have course found out that i'm not reflected not locally not nationally and not state right wide that ran antithetical to everything that i believe which is that unless and until all of our voices are at the table we are not going to see the changes we want and need to see across this state and across this nation what i know from my career which is developing a long term economic driver following tropical storm irene is that when utilize the resources that already exist within our state and we connect them to small businesses and to our government that is when we begin to build a bottom up we know that wealth does not trickle down and poverty does trickle up we need to do what it takes to build from the bottom we also need to support and promote our strong education system doing things like implementing the ethnic studies that standard and centralizing services closer to schools about a year and a half ago i'm sorry and march seventh i decided for sure that i would run for governor on march eighth i got a call that my nephew had died of a heroin overdose he was a son of my brother who died twenty years ago of a heroin overdose i watched the system fail him i know that we can do better what i know is that when we all come together when we allow new voices at every level of leadership that is when we will begin to build the fairmont that works for all of us thank you brenda sen john rogers of glover and your opening statement senator rogers could you explain you are running as a write in candidate you will not your name will not be on the ballot on primary day c explain why you decided to run in this fashion and if this is a serious run for you absolutely sander and i want to thank both vigor and channel seventeen for inviting me it's the first forum i've been invited to the the write in campaign happened after petitions were  due and i got contacted by some folks who felt that there was no one in the race that they could support they they didn't think anybody share their values and they asked me if i would run and i said well the only way to do it is right and it's a very heavy lift and a long shot and they were undeterred and they said well we'll do it and i told them i was focusing on my senate race i have a small construction business and i have a lot of work lined up and people that i've made commitments to and i stick by my commitments my family and i are also starting up a hemp business so i just felt before petitions were doing that i didn't have the time to run a statewide race but i sort of felt the same as they did so i said yeah go ahead and so from there they have taken off i've been going to meetings and forums and anything that people are inviting me to but other than that have not been running a traditional campaign thank you very much even born i'm running for governor of vermont i can time up my campaign a simple phrase it's the job of government to make people's lives easier i think that and let me tell you how i think we do it i think we do it by making sure that we  increase access to health care across social economic boundaries i think we do it by raising wages i think we do it by standing up for those in our state who have been exploited by the system i also think we do it by ability and government that puts people first a government that recognizes that we of the state are only as strong as our weakest link and that until we recognize this and until we start to move towards a state that truly work for everybody and  economy that works for everybody then we can't recognize the vermont dream the way we get to a place where we can say that this is the vermont dream is when there is when there is equity is when there is transparency in government and when we are able to go to communities all over the state and say your government is looking out for you and that's how we build the vermont dream of strong communities with strong values thank you very much so now get into the questions so none of you with the exception of senator rogers have experience holding statewide public office a poll from the p r in vermont p b s that came out last month showed that of the four of you fifty percent of the miners don't less than fifty percent of homeowners know who you each of you are so my question is what makes you think that you're qualified to be governor if you were elected and also what makes you think that you could beat incumbent governor phil scott and christine well i'm very actually very proud of the fact that we got to forty one percent recognition rating when entering the race in march i think it was quite quite a move and i will also point out that the governor's popularity dropped thirty two points during this period so if he's vulnerable i would say that you know i think what vermonters should look for in a governor is leadership i have a strong history of leadership that goes way  back i will kind of tell you the story of vermont electric whopper of when i came to the co op we were on the edge of bankruptcy we were the state wanted to put us out of business we had the highest number of outages in the state and i pulled the employees together and i said look i have strong business background work with a variety of businesses but i only give myself a ten percent chance of success if we all pull together we can be successful i also did something else because i had experience working with unions and i have a strong respect for unions i said we're all including myself going to abide by the union contract that whatever race you get i get and i know the power of pulling together you can do miraculous things five years later i was invited down to the department of energy i thought i was meeting with one or two people i met with all the heads of the department they told us we were the most innovative utility in the nation we also went from a triple b minus with a negative outlook to an a plus rating and financial folks would tell you that's impossible for the size of the of the company we were and we also cut our outages by more than one half so i know that the miracle of what can happen when people pull together i'm a collaborative leader and you get so much more when you engage folks and you and you and they give you that your emotional energy the command and control model that we're seeing our governor used today that's fine during power outages in fires but it's not how you create excitement christine brenda oh first point out that phil scott had seventeen years in the state house and is a c e o and does not seem to understand leadership he doesn't negotiate with anyone he doesn't go shit with the state employees union he doesn't negotiate with the teachers union and he doesn't negotiate with the legislature so i think that it's time that we redefine leadership my career has been in executive leadership i have put forth strong visions and work with many different groups and many different opposing views and work built together to create a very strong economy i have put forth throughout this campaign some very strong plans including for the opioid epidemic and i think what we need right now is to have all of our voices at the table and until we do that we're not going to see the changes that we want and need as long as we believe that it has to the leadership has to come from the same place the same funnel either within the legislature or as a c e o that is how we continue to have the same outcome we need to see a different kind of leadership if we want to see new outcomes thank you senator rogers sander first i must say i feel a little bit slighted on my introduction i answered the question didn't really get a chance to introduce sure but go ahead r so i'm just a little bit for the audience who doesn't know me i grew up on a dairy farm in glover vermont and my family spend there for five generations so we have deep roots in a lot of the families around us have been there for as many generations so it's a real tight community and that's what i wish the entire state could be as tight a community as we have in glover i've run a small construction business since i was in my twenty's and i've served in the house for eight years and in the senate for six years so i do have legislative leadership and i have a record of working across party lines and with all people for the benefit of reminders and i think that's what i bring to the table and that's what people recognize is that i have i have that record i've built it over time when i went to montpellier i promised that i would work for the folks who voted for me i don't work for a political party very few people in that state house actually even have the opportunity to vote for me and so i've always focused on working for the people who vote for me and send me to thank you very much is there anything else you'd like to add about your sort of chances if you were pitted against the governor in relation to the shore and i think that's i think that's one of the differences that i bring to the table i've worked with both james and christine in the state house and have the chance have had the chance to hear both ethan and brenda and i think they've all got some great ideas but i think because of my background i think i do have a better chance in the november the problem is with this unconventional write in campaign i probably have less of a chance in the primary because my name isn't actually on the ticket i do realize that it's an uphill battle to get people to write your name even i think that all of the state everyone i talked to is looking for change i think i can be governor because he represents what people hate about politics he represents people who film better than the system that they've become allergic to work until we saw him till he saw his approval numbers crater he fell in title to this reelection now he's running scared we have unique opportunity to defeat him in november and i think that the way we do that is by running a candidate like we've never run before i am i am obviously very different than the other four candidates at th table and i think i am the candidate who best represents the change we need him up elior excellent thank you very much james just because someone has the title doesn't mean they have the capacity or the skills and we've we've seen that sadly with governor scott for me i've started my career if you will intrusted with the lives of our fellow americans as a naval officer preparing them and if necessary to take people into combat so i feel like at the age of twenty two twenty one that experience has transformed my entire life actually dealing with people from all different backgrounds from from all over the country all economic classes gender race and leadership is about values and it's about principles and it's about leading through example and so people are tired of the status quo they're tired of entrenched special interest and so running without corporate money running an entire year of a grassroots campaign rallying the to vermont's and perhaps we can get into that later i i have the ability to bridge the two vermont's and deliver on the state that we all know we can be and want to be thank you very much a lot of you have very similar seeming progressive democratic platforms what i think many viewers want to know is what sets you apart what in your mind set you apart from the rest of the candidates sitting at the table in terms of the policy initiatives you would pursue if elected to become governor and we'll start with dread my career has been and as well as with throughout my life in building bridges so i've been able to pull together lots of different people in order to make sure that we're making strong forward progress yes i've been a community organizer and an executive and involved in executive leadership as well but i also have a strong progressive history from the day that i first started pushing forward ideas till now i have pushed for the same set of values and ideas and i have made sure that i am working with lots of different types of leaders in order to do that and that includes working with business owners with the arts with recreation with farms and as well as with our legislators throughout the last several years i've been working on the raise the wage coalition and working with a lot of reading legislators testifying and speaking out and i think that that is unique within this group of people that i have really had a long standing history of pushing for these progressive values thank you senator rogers sr i think what sets me apart is my life experience i grew up on a dairy farm where we raised all our own food before chickens we had lay in hens we had a huge garden you know we froze and canned vegetables largely self sufficient we worked in the woods managing a few hundred acres of forest land selective cutting to allow the generations of trees to continue to come and be productive excuse me in my construction business i've done everything from building houses and barns and bridges and septic systems water system drainage sisters systems i've stabilized shorly on the long lakes and streams and and roads and road ditches so i've got a broad experience i think i understand vermonters because a lot of her manners are out there every day doing the same sort of work at not early working hard and coming home and all's they want is to be able to have a decent house and a decent car be able to pay their taxes and provide for their family and it be really nice if every vermonter how to chance to get a vacation every year because a lot of never get a chance to get a vacation and there's a lot of really bright kids out there that never get a chance to go to college because they come from poor families and that's one of the things i think we really need to improve is how do we get our kids from cradle to gainfully employed and hopefully a lot of them stay in here in the state be in the next great entrepreneurs and business leaders thank you very much ethan i agree with the promise of a question on policy  i agree with both things the other candidates here believe in will say but i think it comes down to fundamental values my campaign them based around the idea that if our state wants to keep moving forward instead of moving backward that we have to make real changes that we have to elect leaders who don't look like most elected officials go come to think back to a background of most elected officials and i think that you know it's like i said last question there are very clear differences between myself and the other four candidates up here so the narrative that we're all the same it's a flawed narrative and it's one that i wish wasn't pushed so do think there's some substantive differences so i appreciate the opportunity like senator rogers i think life experience matters quite quite a bit i grew up in a single parent household raised with the with my grandfather's union death benefit he died in the wanted to be as a firefighter and i was willing and have been ever since to do whatever it took  to get ahead to provide for myself i've worked as a farmer i've worked as a logger i've worked as a middle school science teacher i've worked as a line cook and i've been asked to lead family businesses which i've turned around in my leadership ability is diverse and it's nearly thirty years running at this point in on a policy basis i think that translates into the fact i've come into  this event tonight with proposals to double the child care assistance program free to wishin for not just people willing to pick up a firearm but also for our public sector employees as as well as the bank franchise tax too to make that possible these all come with numbers and importantly as the governor always likes to give lip service to the importance of veterans we are going to work in partnership with the legislature to ensure that veterans pensions are not taxed thank you very much christine you know i think that i will tell you right me needs more than just a nice nice guy governor we with everything that's happening out of washington and the economics we're facing in our state we need a bold and courageous leader and i think you'll see aba long history of bold and courageous leadership in my forty plus years of vermont i've served on school board chaired mental health board tom moderated for five years and all the business groups business roundtable twelve years twelve years on the economic development board i've kind of done it all and i've done that all out of civic commitment i think you know the most important thing that you can do is do a deep dive on the  resume and look at the history you know where we're sitting here talking about what we do and what we're committed to and i call that the job interview vermonters are interviewing the candidates right now what everybody needs to do afterwards is do the resume checks and the background check and i think you will see that that i have a long history of courageous leadership and the the and especially in the tear it in the area of economy you know i'm going to focus on an economy and we're going to measure that economy based on how the bottom twenty percent are doing if you look at what's happened today and it started a long time ago if there's been a systematic attack on the middle class and if the wages were were a just minimum wage adjusted for inflation today twenty two dollars an hour so we so we've got this long history we've got and we you need somebody with a long courageous vision to move forward and fix this over time as well thank you very much we hear a lot about vermont struggling a labor force and vermont's struggles to build up its population keep its population level so what would each of you do if elected governor in to attract a workforce more  workers here attract young families here and attract young people here and we'll start with senator roger well i'm going to disagree a little with the with the need for more people i think one of the biggest threats case in the earth is too many people on the planet today is driving climate change is driving the pollution of our air water and soil these are essential for life if we don't have clean air water and soil then there's going to be no life left here my idea is to try to grow from within i don't think we're going to encourage a lot of big businesses to come here we have high energy costs we have high tax costs act to fifty is hard for businesses to get through my idea is to focus more on our institutions of higher learning especially our state colleges and work with them to figure out how to connect kids to state colleges and then build maker spaces and incubator spaces around those state colleges when kids come out of those colleges they have a lot of great ideas even after they've gone away and work for a business a few years they have the great ideas that are going to be the next big inventions and the next big manufacturer and we can grow it right here and the other thing we need to do is focus on the trades average trades person is about fifty six years old now and you can make a good livin in the trades we need to start using our tech centers and creating apprenticeship programs to get more people into the trades otherwise for minors are not going to be able to find somebody to fix their toilet or build their house or fix the lights in their house we really need to focus on that thank you very much ethan i think that remark the economy has real struggles and i think the way we do it is we get our young people to stay here and we bring young people who have left back but we can't force them to come back we have to make it so that they want to come here and here's how i think we're going to do it we're going to provide incentives for small will businesses to come here in our urban areas we're going to develop business in our rural areas by increasing access to broadband and by building infrastructure we're going to raise the minimum wage so that young people when they come here they feel like they have a real shot of success in our state ah we're going to improve and increase access to a vocational training so that even if you don't want to you know go to college you can still find a job that make you a productive part of a community here in vermont and i think that the most important thing we can do is build this image of vermont as a state that it's open and welcoming and you know i think it all comes down to making sure that there's opportunity here that there are jobs here and that people feel like vermont and  schools access to higher education childcare health care and so that's why our platform is a people first platform and will be putting forward when the session opens people's first proposal that reignites the universal health care discussion that puts forward our proposal to ask the most affluent in this state to support our investment in child care assistance taxation will also attract young people most people don't necessarily think of people retiring but twenty years in the service when you go on at seventeen or eighteen you're out at thirty seven years old and that's at least in my eyes that's still pretty young so i think when we when we invest in our community and we invest in our people instead of these ten thousand dollar gimmicks which i feel are an enormous insult to vermonters here who could use that for  debt forgiveness for school loans and a governor that supports unions like the nurses strike we have it's it's absolutely horrendous that we have health care professionals who cannot even afford to live in the community they work in thank you very much christine you know getting connected to to the internet at high speed is probably one the most important things we can do and it's fundamental and i say that boldly because i spent ten years on a visor committee that oversees the electric delivery for all of real america and vermont is a microcosm of the problems we're seeing in rural america you know we're seeing increasing rates of poverty flights to the city an aging demographic we saw the exact same thing that happened in one nine hundred thirty s and then that point was when the cities had electricity and real america did not today we're facing the digital divide and and this we've carried out this models in areas of rural america third the density of vermont and six just successfully connected every home and business fiber optic cable and change the demographics and i want to use farms as an example you know every as an example of how this kind of activity can benefit because i will tell you you can't run your business today without being connected and sixty percent of vermont is connected with the with the rotting fiber infrastructure a rotting copper infrastructure needs to be replaced fiber but if you're if you're work we have a very problem where we're producing thirty percent more milk than we did in the one nine hundred sixty s we can offer the farmers the opportunity to move to more value added finished products you know that and and if you look at that we have an example that works today the maple industry built this excellent distribution system we're selling maple products to japan think about you know sally's dairy and sally started to grow blueberries to fit make a finished product like blueberry jam using the example like the hard with food now this hard this blueberry jam which is g m o free arc attic and and a vermont brand can be sold all over the world so now you've got a regular income with a higher margin product that will benefit the farmers thank you very much and brenda we of course need to do things like pass and sign the legislation that phil scott vetoed this year that would attract families to our state because our families can't if they can't live here they can't be here and that includes when he's undermining our education system we need to make sure that we're supporting and promoting it but we also can move more quickly to ninety to one hundred percent renewable energy this is what we need for the environment and it's also how we build jobs within this state that has flatlined a little bit the our job growth in that area and what we need to do is make sure we're building it back up so that we are creating those jobs for people to be here and the added benefit is that it also reaches a lot of the issues that people in poverty have in our state when you're doing renewable energy correctly you are also reaching energy cost issues within our state for people who are struggling with poverty that's a big piece of my platform as well as making sure that we are building up our economy from the bottom and we're utilizing those resources that exist in our state and connecting them to our businesses that is when people have money in their pockets and small small businesses are able to hire and farms are able to hire and arts organizations are able to hire and our state employees are able to have a sustainable living we need to make sure that we are doing what it takes to put money in people's pockets so that they then can grow their jobs their businesses and and we can help them with that because local the local economy is extremely important part of vermont a commie thank you i'm going to bring in a reader question this comes from mary alice montpelier she writes almost all of you say you're for single payer health care with universal coverage please explain what you mean by this and how you would go about getting there if you do not believe in single payer how else would you address the crisis of affordability and health care and we'll start with these here's what i've advocated since day one i think that medicare for all will work best if it is streamlined at a federal level so the day i take off this governor i'm going to start pushing for a public option and are if it looks like we're if we're three months in and it looks like congress isn't going to get anywhere on medicare for all they will take action here but i do strongly believe that this will work best if the federal program will be more streamlined will be more affordable and will be easier for people who are move or who are you know have roots in more than one state but i do think that health care should not be something that you either get or you don't based on your socioeconomic  that's ridiculous and some of the stories you read they feel draconian i think that we have to look at communities that are hurting we have to look at people who don't have insurance we have to look at people who can't go to a doctor in till they are in serious critical condition and i think that it's inhumane that we would keep  perpetuating a system like this where our you know if you have a good job with good wages you can see a doctor any time you want but if you don't then you're locked out of the health care system so i would like to  take action as soon as we can as soon as we could and our go to medicare for all as soon as we know it's not going to happen federally thank you very much james sander mary alice thank you for the good question and the opportunity for years i was with the vermont businesses for social responsibility government policy team advocating for single payer in reality right now what we would be looking for is all payer model given the federal government's involvement with medicare medicaid the various veterans programs the resupply hands but for me we can't wait for the federal government to sort this out and i believe that if we eliminate the insurance companies from this equation then we could get the equivalent of in all payer model right here in vermont and i'm prepared to reignite that conversation soon as the session before the session opens frankly so that we're we're all ready to start pulling in that same direction the the notion that  ers can't afford health care and that we as a society can't afford it that's ridiculous when we say we want to attract young people we want to retain people here universal health care is that economic development tool and so i feel very well positioned very well grounded and very confident in my ability to bring us all together even governor scott said that there's it's vantages in expanding the pool and he and he did so forced into a corner around education spending thank you very much christine yes as soon as i become governor the first thing i would focus on is as encouraging the legislature to get a universal primary care bill in my desk as soon as possible because i know and i can show that the numbers that university prop universal primary care based on the what they work they were doing that this  year will pay for itself now i am an advocate of moving to improve medicare for all system in the united states we spend eighteen cents of every dollar on health care the european countries spend eight or nine cents obviously it's better answer and in vermont we spent thirty one percent of our health care dollar on administrative costs medicare is five percent so we're obviously that's what we need to work to now for might make some progress heading down this path but we got in trouble because we're a small state i would work with other states to form a union to accomplish this because there are many other states who want to accomplish this goal and i should tell you that the end goal and encourage  not take no for an answer we we we know there are better systems this is this is about all of us i don't take no for an answer and the idea that we're profiting off of people sick and dying is such a flawed model we're the only industrialized nation in the world but i will start by working with the union with other states to get their thank you brenda we need to move more quickly to funding fully funding ak forty eight i do not favor the all payer model in part because it was rolled out in such a way that we use medicaid people on medicaid to low income the poor people as guinea pigs as if the lives of the people who are poor don't matter we can test it on them because because it is because they are poor because they don't have a choice and they were selected that way i find that to be abhorrent to be honest and act forty eight is already on the books and i do believe that it was abandoned too quickly and we need to find a way to fully fund it whether it's with collaboration with other states or within our own state i do believe that we do have a path forward in universal health care within our state and we know one thing which is that nothing is going to change in the national government this particular minute and when the states lead that is when we see real changes in washington we can't continue to be afraid to lead vermont used to be such a strong leader across this nation and one thing that we can do is we can lead  areas such as health care such as the environment such as a tax and regulate system for cannabis we we have this opportunity here and if we don't use it we're not doing what it takes to make a vermont that's working for everyone and we're not doing what it takes to build a strong economy within our state and make sure that all of us are able to be prosperous when we when we live here senator rogers i don't believe that vermont can do it on its own if you look at the numbers nationally and as christine alluded to where the only industrialized nation that doesn't take care of our people and it's absolutely absurd but we're already taken care of about sixty percent of the population with taxpayer funded health care if you look at your veterans your medicare medicaid police federal employees state employees it goes up the list goes on and on those folks already have health care paid for by tax dollars so really we're only looking at about forty percent of the population that we've got to come up with the extra money for and i understand that with the current administration it's and it's not going to happen with the way our federal government is right now it's not going to happen but i don't think a month can go it alone if there was a big enough pool of states that could collaborate there's a good chance that we could pull it off but i think peter shumlin was was really invested in it and if it could have worked i think he would have got it he would have got it to work and i think everybody realized when the numbers were crunched the vermont was too small to go it alone thank you do you think that vermont needs to change the way that it funds its education system and if you do think that that's the case how would you change it  james yes i do think we need to do that i think that we need to move to the income tax it's it is the fair more progressive manner that will give relief to lower income people particularly people on fixed incomes whose home is their financial security and are unable to keep up with property taxes you know that the universal health care question you just asked that plays into education funding enormously that is a big part of school expense is that the health care involved and so once again i disagree with some of my colleagues here at the table i do think we can afford it i know that i alone for my family i pay fourteen thousand in premiums another six thousand and deductibles and that's even i don't even get everything covered that i need to get covered so twenty thousand dollars we looked at the numbers it was the insurance companies that don't like the idea and if there's a fish in season a larger pool even as governor scott says we can get the other forty percent of the monitor's negotiate on behalf of all of those people together and that is going to help fund our schools but you know to your specific question yes the income tax thank you christine yeah if you look at the the the idea of a property tax funded model for education has been flawed from the beginning it was put together in world war two and it really has caused the division you know it and the national level it really is we did this redlining which which kept the green areas for basically  one group of folks in the red line folks couldn't get access you know vermont has a smaller problem because town by town things are quite differently different in terms of our economics and ability to to support our education system but i want to point point so yes i do believe we need to take a deep dive and look how we're funding it but i will say let me just take an opportunity to talk about the the way the governor is attacking the education system you know barking orders out of montpelier coming up with arbitrary metrics and that beating up the teacher in the school board is not going to get us where we need to to be and when i talk about economic development in vermont closing community schools will exacerbate the problem we have the shifting demographics because if we close those community schools we're going to end up people not moving to those towns so we can optimize the schools in smaller towns and and we really need to move to community based solutions on this because in one one school elementary school might have another elementary school five miles away and maybe they're willing to close that school but meanwhile you've got other towns where you have to bus the kids for twenty twenty miles so maybe the the better answer there is to optimize the existing infrastructure by offering the wraparound services such as a pediatric care mental health services daycare services all in one building so i say let's rise up above the education budget itself and look at the entire budget how we can optimize it to provide better services for a rural schools  favor moving towards an income tax but it needs to have a measure for nonresidential property tax and in order to for that them to pay into education as well we also can use the a c l u s plan to reduce half of the prison population and that money can be rolled back into education as well as i'm really glad that christine has bought into my idea that's been there since the beginning of centralizing services closer to schools i'm really excited to see that happen we live what that does is allow families that need access to those services to have easier access to those services and then teachers who who are usually burdened as being social workers are then able to be focused on teaching which then allows all of our kids to get a much stronger education system i think we start with centralizing those services which has the added benefit of helping to keep small schools open small schools are the economic centers of our town when we begin to move kids outside of our small schools then outside of those towns we're asking families to drive further which increases are our environmental impact we're asking we're asking families to work outside and people to work outside of that town which now you're hurting the economy the local economies of our small towns so we really have to find a solution for education funding that does not put a burden of a stronger burden on our small towns thank you senator i didn't support act forty six and actually put a proposal on the table to take its place and my proposal was basically starting with the state wide average which at that time was fourteen thousand in change for people average and if you wanted to spend more than that in your community you would have to come up with that extra money on your local school tax and pay a twenty five percent penalty to the ad phone if you spent less than that you would get to reduce your property your school property tax what that is is a care in the stick the problem we have in this state is we've got some very high spend towns we've got towns that are spending over twenty thousand dollars a kid and that is just too much to spend on k twelve education we've also got a lot of small schools that are doing an excellent job and given the kids a good education for a very reasonable now bunch of them for less than the statewide average in my hometown of glover we've had a tremendous influx of young families because of that because the school system is very good operates last i knew right under the statewide average but the other thing we've got to recognize and i follow governor scott on his treatment of the education establishment i mean it used to be you were just teaching kids math and science and english  now with the with the you know opiate epidemic and various drug problems a ton of kids have been born with drug addict addiction issues and broken families those teachers and schools are asked to be much more than just teachers they're social workers health care workers parents and everything else for those kids thank you very much ethan i think the education your issue i'm your candidate i do you support moving to an income tax  i think that it's how we make the education funny fifty more fair i think it's how we make it easier for you to do with to navigate as they pay their taxes and i think the speaker's plan is a good way to get there i think on individual i think each school should be treated as an individual i think every school has different needs and every school district have a different budget ah and so i think that beyond the income tax based funding system we should enable school districts to have more control provided  thank you do you think that the governor and the legislature in the last legislative session went far enough to restrict the state's gun laws and if not how much further would you go if you were elected or seek to go first of all i want to commend the legislature for passing the legislation they did pass and i want to commend the governor for signing it i think that was a bold move and it and i'm proud of the work that was done i think we've got enough work over the next two years to actually care to successfully carry out those changes you know we've got to put the processes procedures and the support in place in order to make it work and for example the red flag rule you know we've got to provide the protocols for the for the the law enforcement officers and the and the mental health people and i speak i spoke to the law enforcement officers they say look we need to know how to make these decisions what to base these decisions on you know what we were going to be we're going to be quite conservative if we don't have the protocols laid out so i think we've got a ton of work to do in the next two years to just carry out what was done so whether you know that i'm satisfied with what was done and i'm proud of vermont for what thank you brother i watched that legislation go through i sat in chambers and watched in both the senate and the house and i was i was really proud to see it see it happen i think it was an excellent first step i think that it is essential look i have students and friends who are hunters who are gun owners and they aren't bad people that's not the issue here and they can continue to own their guns while still making taking measures to make vermont safer and so i think one of things that we need to do is recognize that these first steps these first measures were an excellent first step and what could be done currently in this legislative session and i'm really i was i was there i watched the governor sign the bills and it was an excellent act of bravery though i am not in the camp that believes that that one act of bravery earns him a second term senator i actually supported two of the safety bills two twenty one in four forty two which i think will make a difference i did not support as fifty five that is a bill that does take away from honors constitutional rights and no good has ever come from taking rights from good people the constitution is a fabric and we start tearing at one piece of it and the rest of it's going to fall apart as well i think if we if we truly want safety you know the folks who voted in favor of s fifty five didn't give up any rights it's easy to vote somebody else's rights away if we truly want safety then let's look at the first amendment maybe we should give the government and law enforcement access to everybody's phones and and computers and license plate readers and facial recognition and that would make everybody safer but i don't think we're willing to give up our first amendment rights for that so i'm a i'm a strong second amends second amendment proponent and i think we did is turn law abiding citizens into criminals in my history in the state house start in the house i have work to reduce prison overcrowding and keep people who are not violent and dangerous to society out of prison we've just created a new offense that was jail time connected to it and i think that it's absolutely crucial that we move towards more civil fifty i with the legislative page this late winter early spring  my second day of the page was school shooting and my last day at the page was the day the governor signed at fifty five i think that you know w ridiculous that you can just paint anyone who disagrees with you as unpatriotic or some of you not really from vermont i've lived here my entire life i support stronger gun regulations i come from a community that values the second amendment and but it doesn't mean the second amendment we always forget about the part in the second amendment that says that well regulated militias have the right to bear arms school shooters are not well regulated militias people who are stockpiling assault weapons are not well regulated militias people who have guns for the sole purpose of this fantasy that they someday may need to overthrow the government that's not a well regulated militia and i think we have to move to a  where we put our safety first and i think it means we tackle mental health issues i think it means we tackle fifty issues and i think it means we tackle gun issues because we know that if much of the person pulls the trigger the trigger pull the person thank you james this is an unresolved issue one that on i'm eager to work on i've mentioned at the outset the opportunity to bridge the two vermont's i think you we're all hearing that right here a very different point of view this is a really important issue for me having four children four young children two in school two entering the school system this this coming fa you know it comes down to leadership once again and i could not for the life of me understand that governor scott having been in office for as long as he had had never considered the leadership response to this and his his actions caused just incredible to this of atmosphere acrimonious atmosphere mentioning people who felt like their rights  were being taken away from them while the rights of my children the feel safe in school who are still being traumatized with active shooter drills that even you think has to do i i don't agree that it was courageous i think it was politically expedient we've already heard the governor's campaign people talking about how this is going to pick up moderate democrat votes and at the end of the day we still don't have safer schools we have law abiding citizens who who are concerned we have law enforcement who are stretched having been a schoolteacher a special educator we have a lot more work to do on this issue thank you i'm going to do a question that came in from a caller i am an e m t in the northeast kingdom two squads here folded in the last six months right now we need support for emergency medical personnel what will candidates do brother we need to be working much more quickly towards a stronger health care system and to me that includes making sure that we are funding or working with private companies who are i would prefer actually for us not to be working for it to be more state run but including mts especially with such a serious demick going on right now i can it is reaching every single corner of our state and we can't have our is folding we need to make sure that they are accessible and available for people who are who are sick who are having heart attacks who are having an overt an active overdose we can't allow that to too and that this is the first that senator yeah mergence the services are a problem all over the state especially in the rural areas they count on volunteers and these folks have to put a huge and a number of hours into training as well as being on call overnight on weekends and at all times my wife was actually e m t on the ambulance for years and she's a registered nurse and even being a registered nurse working in the hospital every day if she she does not serve on the ambulance any longer because she couldn't keep up with the continuing education credits she needed to serve there so we really have to look at that structure and we want people to be well educated and well qualified but i think we overburden them with asking too much of a first time in these are these are professionals that have extensive experience and knowledge and we've got to make it easier for people to be volunteers and i think we're going to have to unfortunately i think we're going to have to figure out figure out how the state starts help in some of those folks financially because they just can't provide the services and they're not only providing the services for their community when people are passing through when there's tourists in the area if somebody gets hurt they're providing that service we have j p can burke mountain in our area when people are ski in or bike in or or any kind of adventuring and they get her those local emergency services or what take care of those people and get them to the hospital so hugely important thank you you can i think the port for health care professionals is something that unites everyone at this table as far as i know we've off in support of the v m nurses and i think that's an issue that carries here i think that my whole campaign has been about putting people first and i think that this is an important thing we can do you know emergency service professionals in kiev paramedics they save lives and if our state government isn't looking out for them then we're fundamentally failing i think that we need the state needs to be there i think for too long state government has ignored places in this state  and i think that until we are willing to go to these communities and have a conversation ah we can't really understand the issue ah so i think we need to stand with emergency services because i mean they're doing what they're doing on a public service they don't i mean i can't i'm not a paramedic so i can't speak for them but i don't think they find it fun and i think they do it because they know what needs to be done and i think that until we are a state government that stands with workers that scans of people who you know go to dangerous places and who you know wake up in the middle of the night to go save lives our state government isn't doing enough to help these people thank you james zander this is another example of an economy that we're living in that it exploits people the issue of privatizing or folding emergency services in the state is one that's been going on for some time it's not just ambulance services it's fire departments communities have  departments and are contracting with the vermont state police who are also on staff and under resourced and so this is an issue that i have been involved in and will continue to be involved in and i'm going to ask the resort's for example that senator rogers mentioned to pay their fair share we we as a group were in ludlow recently they are having trouble funding the emergency services the vail mountain for peroration had two hundred fifty six million dollars in profits last quarter and so if those fourteen hundred people that work became those profits for that company had big defied wages from one job they'd be able to volunteer and we're going to incentivize people to volunteer by offering those people free tuition and the state is going to step in and ask those who're profiting off of our people offer our communities to pay their fair share christine you know i as a as a the leader of vermont electric whopped vermont's largest locally owned electric utility i ran a company of first responders and i'll tell you the story when i came to the co op and i accepted the job from the board of directors i walked out to that into our worst storm in history that was october two thousand and five in two thousand and five we pretty much were on our own until until we figured out how to get some coordination across the state over the years the state's done an incredible job of of improving how we respond to storms and when i say for first responders we coordinated if the emergency services and and fire and others and police because our folks were out there first and we built a network we have a protocol today where when there's a major storm we all get on the phone together and we and we identify where the problems are and address the resources there that model would you know can be mirrored in terms of how we do emergency response i i have this problem is looks looks to me like  like a mirror of what we saw in terms of our emergency response to storms i am i think the state doesn't excellent job well with storm response we can do it excellent job at marja see response and i have a lot of thoughts around that around radio and all of things that can that can that help us get there if elected what would be your approach in the ongoing crisis that the state is facing the united states has a forty or fifty year history of a failed drug policy i think one of the things for months should do is look at the portugal model what portugal did was decriminalize all drugs and set up clinics to start helping drug addicts so if you had a drug addiction problem you could go and you you'd get drugs and clean needles in the have health care folks helping you if you had available treatment options they reduce their addiction over fifty percent by instituting that model and i think after forty years of failure we've got to do something bold we have a serious issue that's affecting families across the socioeconomic spectrum and i think it's time to to change course i know a lot of people it kind of freaks them out to hear that and to hear about the safe injection sites but both the portable model in the safe injection sites have shown great results in getting people into treatment sooner and providing better outcomes thank you than i think i support over to prevention sites i understand their concerns but it's imperative that we recognize that withdraw al the real thing it we're not talking though people going to get their fix we're talking about people who are in real medical crisis going to seek medical attention and i think that you know we keep the stigma around in the partisan politics we have to recognize that people are dying and we're not doing enough because you know people one side are too busy trying to portray themselves  you know law and order and people on the other side are too busy trying to avoid looking like they are in hearts we have to get beyond politics installed this crisis we have to provide access to things like counseling  and community resources for gore struggling with addiction we have to support overdose prevention sites and we have to make sure that there are acceptable to everyone in the state no matter how whirl it is where they live i think that we absolutely need to keep pushing on this issue it's just as much a health care issue as if the crime issue and i think that in less you are trying to find justice on this issue then you're doing it wrong  because if you just keep throwing people in jail felled then we're not making any real lasting progress we make we we find a short term fix for that one specific individual but we have to take on addiction as a whole and additive yes thank you do disagree with my friend ethan that it's is much a crime issue it's a crime issue because that's how we've treated it as a society and i think we need to treat as a health care issue as a mental health issue as the state of our economy and so senator rogers mentions portugal brenda has been a fierce advocate since her campaign started raising awareness around this issue we have to treat our fellow monitors like the human beings they are and so if to woman who was in active heroin user who felt like if she was rich she can get the help she needed and nobody would look down on her but because she lived in the old north and that if you want to ask for help she was going to find herself also in the criminal justice system where we already know that when common people do not get the same justice that the wealthy do thank you christine well i'm a start by  identifying what doesn't work and what doesn't work and i encourage anybody out there to go watch the movie the house i live in it's a story about the fact a trillion dollars since richard nixon declared the war on drugs we haven't changed drug use at all and we've we've really just targeted families and pretty much that's been racial targeting now let's talk about what does work last year we had the lowest smoking rates in the nation we didn't make tobacco illegal we did education we did we we we talked about access we  remember we had a problem needles on the street last year they exchanged three hundred thousand needles and they only found eighty eighty one on the streets and the howard center folks picked them all up so virtually eliminated needles on the street now let me tell you that more interesting  fact dirty needles cause six heart failed replacements per year it's there for there are six hundred twenty thousand each that's three point seven million that can be offset through a clean needle exchange her budget is four hundred twenty thousand so we first and right now our harm reduction center safe recovery to fully operate would need about six hundred thousand dollars we could happen implement that in every single county and spend only half only half of what i have allocated out of tax and regulate system which tax and regulate brings a conservative estimate of twenty five million dollars so fifteen million dollars of what i have allocated for harm and for the beginning of my opioid plan half of that can be used to implement harm reduction  centers all around our state and these include needle exchanges federal testing strips overdose prevention sites as well as as well as can an unlimited nark can cause in some parts of our state you can only have one and it sometimes takes up to three to stop an active overdose we also then have the can move to the criminal justice system where there are some measures we can take like decriminalizing deeper st bernard fien non prescribe which is a lifesaving drug we get to do that and we and there's a couple of aspects that can be used right away we also need to move to having treatment courts in every single county we also must have treatment on demand medically assisted treatment on demand as well as dual diagnosis support what i know is that my nephew had been sober for a year this system destabilized him we can do better in this state and we must do better in this state because not only are our children dying but their friends are losing people to heroin overdoses so much that they now have rituals around the death of their friends we cannot allow that to be acceptable thank you very much think we're running out of time so i did want to has one more question before we go into closing statements just to recap this brief thirty seconds or so where do you stand on a tax and regulate right i think that until or bringing in revenue through marijuana then our you know the system is putting out more money than it's making and that's not sound fiscal policy and i think that the other important part of taxation of marijuana is regulation of marijuana we need to make sure that we are not getting marijuana it's laced with any other much more harmful drugs we need to make sure we're getting marijuana only to people who had legal for because i understand that that is a real concern that if it's you know they're on the streets then people who legally aren't eligible to consume it will be able to access it thank you than just have to move on it james i thought the law that was signed last year again showed governor scott's lack of leadership on the legalization of cannabis then should have been with the tax and regulate system and so that would be a priority for me to create a system that supports a local organic cannabis industry that that's fully flunks education for drug education prevention and the law the needs of law enforcement thank you christine yeah i'm going to address this from a safety perspective the other thing i learned when i spent the afternoon with grace keller at the howard safe recovery center is that we're getting marijuana in the state today that's cut with fentanyl we have a very dangerous situation we need to move tax regulate as quickly as possible so people can trust the source of where this come from we're in a bad place right now rather i understand as a mom of a teenager that there are moms and dads out there that are concerned that their kids will then be able to get cannabis  i ask them to reflect on whether or not their teenager already knows where to get cannabis because i would propose that they probably do and this allows children to be a lot safer and also as an economic opportunity for our state and our small farms the ones who would like to grow cannabis and hamp and it allows us to bring in between twenty five and seventy five million dollars just from the sale of cannabis alone and that doesn't include the tourism destry and that doesn't include it needs to be done on a vermont scale but i don't want to see as large companies come in from colorado and california and trying to corner the market needs to be very limited in size to like five hundred square feet so that vermonters can get a permit to grow and hopefully it benefits vermonters in vermont farmers we don't need big corporations coming in here and taken it over ok now we're going to closing statements going to start with we've we face a lot of issues for the state and we need a candidate who really willing to go to montpelier and shake things up that's what my whole campaign has been about a candidate that is willing to make change and fight for people who can't lobby for themselves i'm appealing here and can't make big campaign contributions our campaign is about making sure that when government gets down to it we are making people's lives better and it all comes back to that vermont dream of strong communities with strong values i think that ultimately ah i laid out clear differences between myself and my opponents tonight and i hope that come august fourteenth i'll have your vote because we have to run a different kind of candidate against phil scott ah and we can be him but we need to make sure that we are running the right candidate and the one with the understanding of policy  and the willingness to go to communities that typically vote republican and talk to them about issues that matter thank you senator rogers yes i'd like to thank digger and channel seventeen for inviting me in and holding this it's been a great event you know i am the one with the with the legislative experience and i've always been a collaborator not basing my decisions on a party but listen into the facts with an open mind in trying to make good decisions for vermonters and i think that's what really sets me apart from the others just a touch back on the on the gun issue i really think as fifty five went too far i don't think it made for miners any safer we lost a close friend this year to domestic violence in new orleans to her or her husband another young lady from the northeast kingdom was killed in bury by her boyfriend didn't know her but my kids did and comes from a wonderful family a young lady killed here in burlington by her boyfriend all killed by the person who supposedly love them as fifty five did nothing to help those women we've got to address suicide we've got to address domestic violence we've got to stop focusing on the tool none of those deaths were caused by a so called large capacity magazine none of those deaths were called caused by a so called assault rifle and so we need to stop focusing on the tool years in the state house and is not a leader at all what we need is to make sure that we have someone who has executive leadership experience as myself and also as a community organizer can bring people together and can build from the bottom up we need to see new voices that is how we begin to build a really strong economy that is how we begin to promote our strong education system that is how we heal the opioid epidemic and transform our chance ertegun system we have to make sure that every single voice is at the table in order to do that we don't need another c e o we do not need people in the legislature we need to allow new voices to come in at every level leadership work with our legislators our incredible legislators  and equal branch of government and make sure that we are building a vermont that is working for everyone the only way to do that is if we redefine our leadership christine you know what i love i talk about how much i love vermont and i'll tell you why i love her money because we're the first we've we've always been a leader in civil rights we've always been a leader environmental issues and we're showing the rest of the country how to do good democracy and i'm very proud of that and i should tell you that you know i i it's it's i had two wonderful parents my my dad was a great engineer taught me a lot my mom was a social activists i grew up and i had an excellent career i raised three wonderful vermonters and i live in the most beautiful state in the union so you would think with all of that that that that would be enough but all this time i lived with a deep secret and when i reached my late forty's because because we based our our relationship with their children on trust and honesty i began to feel so guilty that i decided  would come clean with this truth and i was sure i was going to lose my job i was sure i was going to do everything i worked for but the truth was more important on december second two thousand and fifteen my transition from man to woman and vermonters welcomed me with open arms and that was to me  was a miracle but i realized that miracle didn't happen without the work of thousands of reminders before me and that's why i'm committed you know i i love my job i love my work but i know that people gave up a lot more before  me for fighting for what is right and what is just so you know i will tell you that i'm not going to cower in front of headwinds from washington and i'm going to fight hard for the vermont that i love and that is love me in return because i know that nothing is impossible when you're on the side of justice thank you james this race is about us everyone who's working harder working longer for less everyone worried about being able to afford their property taxes everyone being worried about being able to have access to health care for about being able to care for their child and hold down a job so one year ago i decided to enter this race when no one thought  because i knew we had to be beat he had to be beat we don't get the choose the times the child the times choose us and i'm bringing my life of public service my expense of legislative experience  c to make sure that the governor's office serves the people of vermont not corporate interest not a handful of affluent donors so i ask if this message resonates with you