of his mantra for no taxes no fees and and that's a real discouragement which terry just talked about about borrowing money into the future  so driving while black racial racial discrimination health care there are all pressing issues that continue to need our attention even though we've given it our attention it's baby steps legislation is baby steps and the targets do keep moving as new problems arise if i had to choose what specific new bill i would put in  for a bill number one it would be forced fragmentation a bill that i created along with representative sheldon from middlebury that made it all the way through the house got into the senate and through treachery never never got to the finish line it's an awesome important bill for the state of vermont as more and more climate change and people are moving into the state and sprawling out away from our urban centers thank you jan infamy tell us your priorities for the next by name perfect you know most of my platform revolves around a couple core issues   we received a near failing grade for and haven't been able to pass legislation to establish long term funding to revise or permitting process for storm water runoff for the excessive pavement that's how the paving that's occurred  burlington and other you know waterside towns that's a huge part of that i think clean water funding not just for recreation but it's a source of drinking water for us it's a natural resources that it's a natural resource that  we need to care for and that we need to establish the funding for the second sort of arm of my platform deals mainly with social issues and i see social issues as a great step sort of mentioned before that we can use it to attract people to not just come to williston but to actually stay and listen to things like paid parental leave i think that would be probably my main priority upon potentially be to provide a source of funding for young new parents so that they don't have to worry about the financial threat or potential job loss i've read a statistic that one in four mothers go back to work within ten days after giving birth  that shouldn't happen absolutely you know we should be caring for young new families within our town and i see that as a way of strengthening our economy and strengthening our communities as well certainly creating  governor scott ok not what i just heard that if we want bright young minds to come to the state of vermont beautiful new families and ideas we give them paid family leave we give them a livable wage we give them the security the racial racial system systemic racism is going away in vermont we don't veto these things we give them clean water  minute rebuttal if you well know i actually agree with that wholeheartedly i think we have this fixation on costs and reducing costs where we can or potential you know new taxes things like that  economy and growth will come in time with acknowledging that something like paid family leave could potentially you know increase the number of people that would want to be here the quality of life that just because we have a great economy doesn't necessarily mean that people's qualities of lives are improving having affordable housing livable wage affordable health care access to health care in general all of those things will allow the rest to come in time and i think sort of back to what jim said those should be the priorities in the legislature as expressed interest in accomplishing those things and it's a shame that they haven't been accomplished yet terry just willing to talk about cleaning up lake champlain but in the legislature we did talk about a total cleanup of waters in the state of  how can we as a ski continue to deliver high quality education and all these questions seem to have two questions do you support consolidating the teacher health care contracts across the state so two pieces to that question and you can you can start off sure thank you i certainly see education as a priority obviously for the legislature it's hackle we seem to run a deficit every year we have discussions about student teacher ratios where additional funding will come from i see a model similar to what colorado currently has we recently legalize recreational marijuana that i certainly see as an opportunity to regulate and tax it's sort of a missed opportunity in my mind that we aren't using this as a potential revenue stream for the state instead of considering cuts there's potentially revenue sitting on the table that we could allocate towards something like education just in the you know first years alone they're able to allocate ten tens of millions of dollars in colorado towards updating building new schools i think that would be a fantastic opportunity for us in vermont as far as the teacher health care contracts go sounds like the vermont teachers union is on board with that i would say as long as the health care is being administered in a timely and effective manner and it's clear to the teachers how they are able to  health care through this new administered program and then i certainly agree with it if it can potentially save the state and teachers money to actually be spending on other important programs as well ok thank you terry  education sure so we have process a i'm with education in the state obviously we have a small high schools that find it very difficult to give a good quality education so consolidation while it's on the the front burner in a pill year there's still a lot of concern about what will control so somewhere along the line the smaller schools have to figure a way to how they're going to pay their own way and not the pen upon rich towns to bail him out that's going to take some time to do the the issue of local control certainly is one that we've seen in the over as long as i've been there and probably longer which will not go away when we do have these so called small school grants that need to disappear as well in order for consolidation to occur so we've done a couple of things in the last couple years in the last year we just did pass the bill the first national education that will allow more diversity better ways to spend special ed within the school districts to take better advantage of the money and yes i do it's a support the concept of the consolidation of health care contracts for teachers and other others that are in school districts that's going to take some thankfully there's a new commission been established for equal weighting of teachers and seventy five or a new test there's a huge price difference but there's a huge difference in what you're getting our education system in vermont depending on who standard you're looking at but widely believed is we're in the top five for student outcomes in vermont what's not to be liked about that perhaps we ought to turn it into a pinto and be in the bottom three i would disagree with that i think the governor is on track for doing that he wants to i i believe wants to do with school boards he wants to do away with collective bargaining and and so then off that so box jim and on to act forty six started a tsunami of consolidation which is expected to save dollars and increase comes first students yes we have a declining population across the state and yes we need to address all manner of education issues and we're doing all of that carefully and productively without said that will work for them if it will work for them what am i worried about i would support that with a tear on my cheek and this is why they used to have an equal say in their health care on the state board that designs the teacher healthcare possibilities that go to roaded through politics to where they only had one voice instead of equal now they propose that it's going to be equal but that snow what's happens next year or a different administration who knows so i don't particularly like it i like my own town deciding what they're going to do in their town and my own teacher's liking or disliking and having  input thank you jim we mentioned health care so let's actually talk about the larger issue of health care as well obviously increasing cost of health care putting pressure on individuals in the state as well and the economy should we continue to move to the all payer model  and the second question how do we how do we how to contain health care costs and perhaps that's all really one question but i terry you can start us off sure so we've looked at all payer now for a long time and i think called total care and the biggest user of this is the u v a medical center that has polluted total care and there are two pilot projects as i said that encompass about one hundred fifty thousand patients in the state and this is something in the i think looking at the pilot projects for going to see whether this really has an impact on saving money or not whether it's something that will extend this throughout the whole state we know that so along with all payer to use the total care concept and they think that that will reduce the costs to the patients there so i think that will be something that we'll be looking  will also be looking at looked at in the past by any i'm was something called universal primary care and that would be sort of like an all payer system there's been there was a proposal to have this studied during the next during the course of this coming year that failed in the appropriations committee so the bill will be reintroduced and we'll see whether that's so a way that we can actually get sort of an all payer concept was saving money my one of my major platform point was affordable accessible health care for everybody that remains one of my platform hi priorities i only want health care for vermonters and for the for the everyone who lives in this country to be as good as our congressmen and women have is that too much to ask i do not believe it is too much to ask  can we afford it of course we can afford it can we we can't afford to take not to take care of our people at least as good as the rest of the developed nations in the world health care in vermont and beyond so i will echo a little bit of what has already been said about health care i think it's becoming increasingly clear that the state of vermont needs to do whatever we can to protect the right of health care within our own state even just yesterday the federal government slash the budget for the accessibility to obamacare the affordable care act by twenty six million dollars down to also has a lot of social socially progressive values and i see health care as absolutely falling into that category and we need to do whatever we can to protect the veil ability and affordability of health care again that falls under the affordability in general within vermont but certainly health care and making sure that that people have access to medicine and hospital roles pain employ employees in hospitals fair wages i certainly think all of those things will help make vermont a better place to live and improve the quality of life overall so certainly you know that the state will have to take some sort of action in order to protect the afford health care right thank you gentlemen so i underlying all of this is the discussion of the budget yes so given the perennial revenue and expense challenges we face and certainly has faced how would you approach balancing the budget in the upcoming next year and we're going to start with jim thank you it doesn't sound like an answer does it but the way we've been doing it largely for years  balanced budget presented every year and we work very hard throughout the the budget debate to keep it balanced having said that the  the governor for the past two years phil scott has been unbalancing the budget by taking by taking revenue that he says is free money that we didn't plan to get and making  holes in our budget in the upcoming years by by by spending that money now instead of paying off all debts and obligations instead of mentioned paying now for water pollution control we're putting it on the credit card this is all about balancing the budget and how would i go about continuing to do that what the legislature did three years ago seized using one time money to put a finger in the dike we made the necessary cuts we made the necessary expenditures from receipts to get the job done and not put it on credit cards so that's how i approach the budget thank you anthony how we're going to balance the budget next year i certainly agree with a number of things that jim said  i understand the concept of not wanting to raise taxes it certainly seems to be the governor's go to strategy for you know avoiding having to tax anybody additionally that's obviously not a very popular thing to run on i do see as i sort of mentioned before the regulation taxation barrel on a as a potential revenue stream well it might not be enormous some estimates have put it up to twenty dollars annually and you know what the last budget shortfall that we had was fifty four million dollars or so and i see that as at least covering part of the gap in addition to that we have another industry that was just  legalize through a supreme court ruling on be in sports gambling again that's a potentially untapped source of tax revenue for the state and that again to sort of echo what jim said  we need to you know prioritize our funding and ensure that we're not just trying to do something one time to appease people or make people happy that property taxes dropped slightly instead we you know we could use that as a  are not required develop some legit reason but we always do and if we didn't we would be in trouble on wall street so we're going to have a balanced budget the governor proposes a budget the legislature disposes of the budget and last year we did not agree with a number of the governors suggestions about cuts and reinstitute of those jim mentioned the use of one time money we tried to do that now over a course of several years the governor last year can that's because of the veto that we needed to use one time money and created the problem for the year he commits this again with the veto that we had to use one time money which creates a problem for us next on education and using the monies to for people who become addicted to that school while that may come about i don't expect we're going to get a lot of money to balance the budget so  we need to look at economic development we need to do look at job growth that's probably not going to happen over the course of one year and i think that that's something that we will be focusing on over the course of several years to help to on with that sector and i'm curious i had to hear what you see as the future of these nonprofits and how the legislature should or shouldn't be involved with the future of i'm not profit organizations and if we you are starting point thank you  nonprofits obviously serve a very significant role in the lives of a lot of vermonters everything from housing to meal delivery to public access television like we're enjoying right now so they serve a purpose that otherwise might be assumed by something like the government they you know operate on their own they carry a zero balance budget and they provide a lot of services that people have come to not only enjoy but to rely on  there's something like six thousand nonprofits currently operating within vermont as far as the legislature becoming involved in the operation of those i see a potential for possibly more of an advisory board  it's through you know merging and sort of integrating based on a regional approach or the actual services that they provide i certainly think anything that we can do to help them deliver the services that they are already delivering  more effectively more efficiently anything that puts more money towards the actual delivery of services to vermonters i think would be beneficial i don't see an oversight panel as having regulatory or  any sort of authoritative capacity merely as a way to help these nonprofits operate as efficiently as possible to continue providing the services that they have and have done for a long time 're dependent upon and they're sort of gross of those the government they don't get much money from us the most of the stuff that we've talked about tonight means money and certainly we need to fund the nonprofits better than we are right now how we do that i'm not exactly sure but right now there are those nonprofits for the most part are understaffed their staff is underpaid and that becomes a problem for them which becomes that was supposed to be profitable but it was not a profitable for over forty years and i will say that legislature rightly does not makes every attempt not to dabble in appropriately in for profit businesses they get to run their business we don't run it for them nor do we really do we tell them how to run that  and i would say the same for not for profits i don't see legislation that has been talked about or i don't have any my imagination right now that that that does otherwise i will say there is a very very large not for profit half a mile from here whose workers are going on strike tomorrow morning at seven o'clock and whose management no i should correct that who's c e o salary has increased six hundred thirty percent and the nurses seventeen percent we seen that with blue cross blue shield over the years another not for profit another very important service course we need our hospital and of course a very important and of course i love them but i don't wan into legislating how much the c e o s get paid nor how much their workers get paid in the not for profit arena other than the minimum wage and livable wage discussions that we medical medical assistance prescriptions to two for inmates and correctional facilities so this will treat people who are addicted when they come into a question a facility and if they agree to participate in the program there is less likelihood that they will be overdose when they get out of prison so this i think and this is a large price tag for the question of facilities that actually started on we we started a long way to go we need more rehab facilities or war beds and rehab facilities than we have at the current time so i think those are the way that least a way that we can start to rolling stone laughed at us maybe six years ago when governor shumlin said we've got a problem here governor shumlin was ahead of the curve for all the other states but unhappily even that the time amount was behind the curve so am i satisfied with what we've done absolutely not am i proud of what we have accomplished yes we as terry says are we still have a long way to go and it's all about the money so movies that show me the money regulation and taxation of marijuana will show us the money that's where meat is that can be directly put to not just opioid and in fact the senate versions of that bill  consistently have delegated the receipts from that bill to to addiction not just opioid addiction alcohol addiction tobacco addiction you name your kind of addiction and those dollars will  help and that is not designed to just take care of medical or or issues from marijuana it's going to help the opioid addiction tremendously and give us the dollars we need thank you anthony opening up attending i certainly agree with both of those statements i think i am pleased with the progress that we have seen we've eliminated the wait times and sh county alone for people seeking out treatment i think part of the problem now is is finding a productive way a suicide wish outreach to actually connect with people that are seeking treatment and that want to get better for a lot of people unfortunately you know the end of the road for them is either passing away due to their addiction or going to jail i don't see that as a productive way to solve this problem i think getting to people when they need help  having an effective means of outreach and reducing the stigma a lot of people don't reach out hope for help because of the way that they may be judged by friends family their community is similar to mental health awareness i think certainly the addiction as jim mentioned not just within the opiate epidemic but across all addictions are certainly treated with a stigma eliminating that will help people feel comfortable seeking out treatment we need to expand the number of rehabilitation facilities that we have in carson incarceration is expensive and it means that someone is no longer contributing productively to society rehabbing them and getting them back into  know the public arena and contributing to size society will be our best bet in solving this great thank you so much john and we're going to go to closing statements that went fast in it this is just going to pass there you go jim let you start us off thank you very representative for years now and i still have a new and better idea than we've been able to get on the table and off the table into reality and it all i'm doing a great job i'm having a great time thank you very much voters of willesden for that don't forget to vote in the primary august fourteenth and don't forget to vote for me thank you very much anthony closing statement perfect thank  you thanks again for moderating for us thanks to channel seventeen for having us i'm very proud of what i've accomplished in my time as a public servant within the town of well listen both of my time the conservation commission and the cat opportunities i found my opportunity here not just to make a living but to actually give back to the community and to sort of provide the same things that both jim and terry have made us do for a very long time now and i'm very proud of what we've accomplished within our town i think i can bring a lot to the table in terms of a new perspective as a young person who chose to stay that understands the hardships of affordability and the cost of housing and a cost of health care  important for the town for the town and towns and for the state to have the bonded money ability to to spend the funds the going forward  them i hope that you will consider that but there's lots of problems that we need to solve within the state and there's lots of opportunities for us to solve those problems sometimes that said that good ideas take a long time to develop and the legislature that's true but would like to continue doing that and i encourage you to vote tomorrow or a through august the fourteenth to your home thank you so so again thanks for joining me and don't forget to vote august or it now or august fourteenth on primary day thanks so much for joining us