live on you tube right now and channel seven hundred t v and also we will be sharing this with our colleagues in community access channels across the state so hopefully you are watching this from the comfort of your home in some beautiful remote corner  vermont so without further ado please let me introduce the candidates will start with chris erickson she is from chester we have steve marks from stratford trevor barlow from cavendish and emily peyton from putney phil scott our governor from berlin christine how quest from hyde park and charles laramie from fairhaven welcome everyone and thank you for joining us thanks for having us so we're going to start tonight with the opening statements chris erickson we will start with you please tell us why you were running for governor and what experience he would bring to the position already a lot of you know me as the united states marijuana party candidate and i have run with the united states marijuana party repeatedly in the past now this past year governor phil scott signed a little marijuana law and i thought people wanted to sort of digest that first and see how that went so i thought i'm going to have a whole brand new platform and i'm going to be an independent this time now my new platform is the most brilliant sharpest clearest plan of any candidate in the united states of america whether you're running for statewide office or federal office listen up look at my website in d v t dot com indian racing to win vermont i n d y v t dot com now what i'm talking about is if i'm elected governor i'm going to hold a governor's conference and i'm going to get everybody together to sign a petition to the united states congress demanding that they write up the bill based on my new plan and this is it you pay your federal tax dollars the federal government lets the united states congress decide how to spend them they give billions of dollars to the end i h the national institute of health they give billions of dollars to the pentagon and each of these gives out millions that end i h gives out millions to pharmaceutical companies defense the pentagon gives out millions to the defense contractors they use them for research design and development to design new products now whether they're pharmaceutical prescriptions or defense products they start out with either a blueprint or a written design any blueprint or written design falls under copyright law under work made for hire law because we paid for it we own it we deserve a share of the profit they're making trillions of dollars trillions of dollars we deserve a share of the profit and that money has to go back to the fifty states to pay for health care education low income housing etc thank you so much steve mark your opening statement and i'm running as an independent on the earth rights ticket i am trying to get a constitutional amendment in vermont to give the earth rights if corporations are considered people the earth should be considered a person and what i want to do is i want to make sure that we take care of the earth most important thing that we have mother is the earth everything that we own is comes from the earth so my hope my whole platform is to take care of the earth to clean up the pollution and to and to help us all what qualifies you to be governor besides your strong feelings i was been a selectman in strafford for four years on the health officer  now i've been on the planning commission i love i love community service to me being a being in america is community service it's taking care of the people believe in vermont and so having grown up here and gone to school in springfield vermont and a time when innovation in our rural areas was something that was to be aspired to i i left went around the country i've worked in the startup technology world for the past twenty years and i've been able to see how amazing innovation is out there with regards to ideas that can change our communities and what i found when i came back to ramana was a changed economy and i think we can do better and so the reason why i'm running for governor is because i believe we need to shrink our government we need to lower our taxes and we need to take existing funds within our budget and invest it back in our communities and innovation centers and so in order to do that it's not something that can be done in a single two year gubernatorial term but it is part of a longer term plan in order to bring prosperity back to the full state and not just certain areas of it let alone in my opinion the state government should never be the largest employer in a state thank you what qualifie you my experience in business having run companies and founded companies as well as i throughout my life has been involved in volunteerism and community development thank you very much you and peyton tell us why you're running and what qualifies you well as many of you might know that i have been in tube toy races before and i actually stopped out of disgust at the state of our democracy that it was not actually fully democratic of the type of integrity that i believe we need to have and democracies to have a fair competition with all candidates i'm very thankful to be here today and there are seven of us and that's how many should be at every debate so i've been working for environmental justice for economic justice and in two thousand and eight i became quite angry at the kind of economic injustice that was happening as long as a lifelong fire in the belly about the destruction of the earth and to that end i've been studying how we can use our social technology for means of exchanges so that we can effectively end the economic rat race and put people into a position where they can to fill their life purposes with the freedom of fulfilling all the work that we need to do in this in these very trying and hard times so essentially if we continue to be chained to the u s dollar working as hard as we can just to get a few dollars we will not be able to do the work that we really must so i bring to leadership systems of economic change knowledge of that i also bring in integrity that comes from being a person who has personally ho homeless people over eight winters ten seconds and i will say this we have a lot of work to do and we need to step into a new paradigm to do it thank you very much phil scott why are you running for reelection and what experience do you bring to the position well thank you very much twenty years ago i didn't have a political bone in my body had absolutely no interest in politics whatsoever but i was complaining a lot about what they were doing to me and my pill year so i stepped up the side to be part of the solution  and i haven't looked back since i served washing county in the state senate for ten years that is lieutenant governor for six years and then i decided to run for governor because i thought vermonters really need a break we need to live within our means and and we've been doing some great work over the last two years we didn't raise a single tax or fee for the general fund we cut income taxes by thirty million dollars we we eliminate the tax on so security for low and moderate income for monitors and we provided seventy one million dollars  here stay here work here play here and have a much more prosperous from out thank you very much christine how quest tell us why you're running and what qualifies you for the position of governor well i i love vermont in my forty two plus years here i've done everything from serving on the local school board chairing mental health board past five years i've been town moderator to name a few i have a long history of leadership experience but i will tell you in two thousand and four i went to the intergovernmental climb a change commission report a report out in quebec city and i realized the electric grid would be key to solving our climate change i became c e o of vermont electric cooperate of the second largest utility in vermont it's a co operative just like the food co op  in two thousand and five it was on the verge of bankruptcy had the highest rates in the state highest number of outages i pulled people together using a collaborative leadership model hiring the best people and we know that when i left in march of this year we were ninety six percent carbon free we were offering incentives for people to move away from fossil fuel heating cooling and transportation and we did that without a rate increase for five years such a proven you can solve climate change but it does not need to cost more money but the  november ninth two thousand and sixteen changed everything for me that's you know the following year i did a lot of marching but i realized you know seeing some white supremacist activity in late two thousand and seventeen and then listening to the muslim girls making change and slam poetry about what it's like to live in vermont i decided to run for governor and i did you know and i voted for phil scott but i'm highly disappointed because you know i look when he talked about affordability he he vetoed the minimum wage bill he vetoed  family leave bill he vetoed a bill to breath toxic in toys and make polluters pay so it looks like affordability we're not talking about the people in the lowest and rung of the income ladder so what i do for vermont as i would i would definitely focus on two thirds of voters live in rural vermont i would focus on growing for months real economy connecting every every home a business with fiber optic cable as well as rebuilding the downtowns continue to move to improve medicare for all  and sure every child receives a quality public education and will solve climate change on the way because we can thank you very much charles laramie my name sells lammy i'm an independent candidate for governor i grew up in vermont family of eleven when in the military i served in the navy in the air force so i have leadership skills from the air i worked roofing for ten years before i  into public schools for twenty five years i just finished in june in what brought me into i like mr scott had never thought of running for public office but on april fifth i met with mr scott in his office for an hour and we talked about education and i told him education vermont public schools were really in dire need that if they mention anymore that we had the best school system in the country it would be a lie and that's continued it is a lie we don't have the best public school system in the country actually all the schools are in pretty bad shape but vermont's also i have ways to fix  quist they have no experience in that area and they they don't have any idea about fixing it also the economy they talked about whether bush she just wrote an article i inserted it on april twelfth she said we had vermont has currently has a strong economy in the best education system in the country per capita incomes twenty five to thirty thousand vermont has a terrible economy vermonters are suffering i got into it because i want to correct the education system and fix the economy so that people can start to be able to get by without scraping by every week wondering where the next bills coming from and that's why i got into it thank you very much so what we're going to now go to the question about the economy this is an issue that some of you have raised just remind folks who are watching our numbers eight zero two eight six two three nine six six and of course we have a live studio audience we love that so much if you have any questions please give them to barry who's sitting there with the red computer thank you so much for the next question has to do with them our economy there forbes magazine has said that our economic outlook is present and is projected to be the second worst in the u s over the next five years while income growth back to the live behind the rest of the country starting with these marks do you agree with this sussman and what is your plan of action to strength to strength in vermont's economy promote income growth and generate a sustainable economy and what the sustainable to you well this thing  means that it will keep going and i think i personally think the romance economy is in terrible shape but it certainly needs improvement and what i would like to do is there are a number of things i would like to do i mean we need to bring young people into vermont and by getting a constitutional amendment provide giving the earth rights i believe that a lot of young people move into vermont because they believe and that and they believe that that's that that will help and i feel that instead of giving  fifty years old so it would be great to have an apprenticeship program that brings people into vermont says if you stay in vermont for five or seven years you you will you will not have to pay for this program and vermonters will will help out by helping local people that the do the apprenticeship program pay for that because this health insurance is things that they can't afford and that's what and that's what the my local kaufman jurors and plumbers of told me you would help them and i mean that's just the beginning there there are so many things if we if we sit down and talk together and and figure out there's so many little things but but i think the main thing is getting people   don't own a computer i don't own a cell phone but i love but i love the state i mean it it has just changed my whole life the people i met i was a literacy teacher and the people i met by being a literacy teacher showed me the vermonters are amazing people great thank you so you're welcome i appreciate it alright trevor barlow you spoke a little bit about the economy and your dissatisfaction with it in vermont tell us a little bit more about what you will do to strengthen the months it can on my outlook and what it's dana will economy mean to you so i think we have some wonderful examples of them on what a sustainable economy can be we've obviously in the past twenty years of our history gone through one of the most significant technical transformations or technological transformations we've ever seen in human history and so i think we need to leverage that as a state that has always had a history of innovation to bring that out to our rural communities and so as a part of that you can look at incubators that particularly chittenden county is a great example of how things are working quite well where you can grow companies like my web grocer dealer dot com and not just strictly technology but we can get into healthcare and other options where we can do things that businesses can be created in the rural areas and so my idea for accomplishing that is that we create a venture capital type fund that is started by the state and we leverage our twelve regional development corporations that are already existing as the conduit for this and so we give each of them a million dollars a year that we say do what you want to improve your communities make that a fund with a goal of trying to find matching funds within the private community as well as allowing because of the new financial laws vermonters in those communities to invest as well so we can start to create a virtuous cycle that we're starting to see up in chittenden county as well when a company does well and when the creative economy isn't leashed and people see that happening they tend to want to reinvest in their communities for the betterment of all and i think that is something i personally have witnessed all around the country and there's no reason why there are existing infrastructure in vermont and with our current budget that we can't account for that type of situation here as well thank you very much m peyton your thoughts of vermont khana me and what you would do to move us toward that picture ok there's a broad picture issues that as a governor i can deal with and one of those broad picture issues is coming up with the legal definition of greed versus abundance financial abundance and i believe we need that at this time when does capitalism become destructive and when is it an appropriate healthy competition amongst businesses now all the social technology that we need for an environmentally and sustainably just society exists for us to create an abundant mechanisms of social exchanges so we mustn't be limited by by only using us dollars to get the work done that we need to do i believe that we need many more apprenticeship situations and we did exactly what trevor is also talking about and probably also christine's work too so one of the things that's a marvelous about being a governor is that one can pull from the strengths that we have in our in our state to pull together and work together another thing we need to do is at the educated level well we are educating for compliance i'd like to remove that burden of educating for compliance which is essentially feeding of pharmaceutical industry as children are often drugged just to comply we need to encourage the creativity encourage the future generations second to begin even if it's  imental to work on sustainable just economies thank you governor scott what's your assessment of the health of the vermont economy and what will you do to move us towards a sustainable economy well again this is exactly why i ran for governor i believe that we were spending more than we were taking in we needed to need jerk reaction was always to raise a another tax or fee and so that it made it more affordable for people to come and stay in vermont we have to recognize we have to face our challenges we have to recognize what those challenges are first of all we have a workforce shortage what we we have fewer people working today than in two thousand and nine that's that's an issue we have a population stagnant we have a demographic this shifting we're getting older so we have fewer youth i mean you look at the the canary in them in the mine shaft here is the thirty thousand fewer kids we have in our twelve education system that should tell us something about what's wrong with vermont we need more immigration we need to attract more families in demat it's not that there's a brain drain in some respects it's that we don't have the crop coming in what we need to do regardless of your political stripes is the focus on the demographics bring more people more families into vermont because there are jobs here the good news is we have jobs who whether it's back molding down the southern part of the state looking for hundred people to fill them and that's our challenge right now it's not as though there's no jobs which has been a problem in the past we have them but we don't have the people to fill them so we need to continue to businesses want certainty we need to make sure that we give them that vermonters need certainty we need to make sure we're on the charted course ahead that they can see we need to grow the economy and make promote more affordable and protect the most vulnerable and if we adhere to those principles work on workforce development bring more families and it more affordable we'll have a much more prosperous for mom thank you very much christine how quest what's your assessment of the rim on economy and what's your plan of action well i'm not going to make any judgment on the forbes article and what they say about the vermont economy but i do know i've spent ten years on i can technical advisory committee at the national level that looked at all of real america the problems we're seeing in river modern microcosm what's kept happening in roll america we're seeing increasing rates of poverty flights that the city in an aging demographic the same thing happened in the one nine hundred thirty s when the cities had electricity in rural america did not when and so when we connected every home and business with electricity we saw growth return to rural america today we're facing the digital divide that's why it's so important to get every home and business connected with fiber young people and entrepreneurs aren't going to come to vermont if they can't get connected you know if you look at connectivity today it's as important as roads sewer water and electricity for development so and it's got to be fiber our copper infrastructure is wholly inadequate for competing with when the urban areas today and i also work to rebuild the downtown similar to you know if you see what's happened in white river junction st albans using a tax increment finding sing model we've rebuilt downtowns out so i did vision of vermont where you know we've got entrepreneurs and young people who are able to go to work in their homes and come to their communities and go and we'll have shared working spaces similar to what i just saw get commission and bradford for about this the saturday we you know shared working spaces where people can share ideas congregate and meet and used to use a teleconference facilities i'm very bullish about vermont you know where the safest state we do have the highest education performance or the healthiest state we were an amazing state with amazing views we've got an incredible outdoor recreation economy once you get people connected we will we will grow vermont and it's very important for the folks in shit and county tensing we grow roll for it's going to benefit everybody because we'll have more resources a good business person knows you've got to have a way to grow things and that's where we're going to grow  taught for twenty five years and our current your current education system is going to reflect your future economy and currently based on that our future economy is in in deep trouble in the one nine hundred eighty s i was making ten or eleven dollars an hour nine hundred eighty nine that was good money because consumer prices were comparable today people are making maybe a couple dollars more in our consumer prices have skyrocketed and a lot of small businesses companies want to want to tell you that you know they can't raise the livable wage because then they would have to raise the prices but they don't have to a prized profits have been shooting up we need a fifteen dollars an hour livable wage of argued this with some small business owners mr scott because he's a republican his party says he can't do that  she's going to do that because the democratic party says to do that she's also going to institute a carbon tax which is going to take care of the fifteen dollar minimum wage because that's going to chew that up what we need to do is introduce a fifteen dollars livable wage to fix our education system so kids coming out have the skills to take the jobs mr scott says excuse me that are out there and this is a big thing i talked to a gentleman who said don't forget the manufacturing jobs that vermont has already wood wood manufacturing jobs that we can do  think you know i've talked them peyton about producing hemp legalizing marijuana in the businesses that will come from that and these are all things that we have to look at the you're done thank you very much chris erickson tell us your assessment of the room on economy and what you would do to promote sustainability we've got to make all colleges and universities free for the students are going to get the money for that we have to have a fund to part of the general fund has to be something that people can apply to to start a new business people have to be able to say i've got a great idea i just need the money to start a new business now to accomplish those two goals with zero tax increase we have to go back to my first plan if i'm elected governor of vermont i hold a conference of all governors of all states and say look i'm going to get us out all money we're to get our o i return on investment of federal taxpayer dollars or run it by again we pay our federal taxes the federal government allows united states congress to give billions of dollars to the national institute  united states congress gives billions of dollars to the pentagon the pentagon and the and i give millions to each pharmaceutical company and defense contractor they make copyrights which we have a legal right to ownership of because under work made for hire lies we own a fair share of those copyrights therefore we own the patents and we have a right to a share of the profits they're making trillions and trillions of dollars selling prescript drugs worldwide they're making trillions of dollars selling defense products worldwide we have a right to fifty percent of that r o y return on investment the federal taxpayer dollars divided up among the fifty states and you can make free college and you can have investment funds in every single state for people to apply to to start new businesses when you say vermont sitting on a goldmine come here show us your new business plan lots of people come before mine thank you thank you very much all right we have some questions from the audience just reminding our viewers eight zero two eight six two three nine six six we're very happy to hear from you and let's start with trevor with this question how would you protect the most vulnerable considering the attacks coming from the federal federal level federal government well without knowing specifically what attacks we're talking about from the federal government what are your it's the you speculate what they might be speculate i guess i guess in general the way i would take care of the most vulnerable is my my experience tells me that the fastest way to take care of a problem is closest to the problem and that's by empowering our local communities to once again be able to sustain themselves and have services that where they can go out and help and i think there's a variety of issues that that brings up when it comes to employment housing health care education and knowing the time limits i can't go into details i think with regards to each of those subjects but in general i think all of us as human beings know that we should be doing a better job of taking care of the less fortunate and i personally fall on the side of innovation as being the best way to take care of that were if you empower your communities to find creative solutions to problems that are unique to them then you're also going to get your best outcomes thank you very much and peyton how will you protect the most vulnerable considering the attacks coming from the federal government well one of the reasons why standing for governor is because i've been looking for stronger backbone coming from the leadership state where we have families that have been separated at the border i'm looking for a leader that will stand up and say that isn't who we are and vermont will not stand for it and we will not continue to support any federal activity on that level also that we are currently in a war at war with seven countries dropping one hundred forty four bombs a day and we're not even declared war on our our children are coming back with eight times higher amount of suicide rate we have change from being the land of the opportunity to incarceration nation this is a huge problem we haven't been talking about much on this campaign trail but we to stop having incarceration as a method to provide profit for private industry we also need of course to empower the next generations to be as creative now chris eloquently described the way we can justify a universal basic divot dividend a universal basic dividend is so important so that we can begin to have the freedom to do everything that's in our heart that we know is possible and that must be done so as as a governor there's many things i can do to speak to the crimes against humanity that are coming out of washington climate change being one of them is there more time ten seconds so i ask for your vote and i ask for your support to make a profound change in democracy where all your choices are the choices that you have to choose from in government on the money thank you very much governor scott what will you do to protect the most fun or bowl considering new tax coming from the federal level we have a moral obligation to take care of the most vulnerable and that's something that we pledged to do i think were part of our d n a in vermont i think that's something that we hold near and dear to our hearts were were very compassionate very giving in many many different ways we were independent by nature is i said we're fortunate in some respects we've set ourselves up pretty well in vermont with medicaid having the global commitment that was put into place i think during the douglas administration and and improved ministration so that's given us some flexibility and latitude to take care of the most vulnerable about two hundred thousand people on that in that program in vermont we're moving towards an all payer model again giving us more flexibility in terms of health care that's something that is somewhat of a pilot project that the federal government's was watching what we're doing that could be helpful but the elephant in the room obviously is about the push back with the president some of the initiatives  detrimental to our economy but we're through that and again there's been talk about potential cuts to planned parenthood which i've opposed as well so we'll continue all continue to push back call them as i see them a result thank you very much christine how qwest what were you to protect most funder ball in our state well you know if you if you look at where we are today in terms of health care and a living wage we have all lot of work to do you know first of all making a profit off of people sick and dying is is not is not the way we should we should be running our health care system we're the only developed nation in the world that does this so i will can i will push hard to get us to medicare for all the united states spends eighteen cents of every gross domestic product dollar on health care the european countries spend eight to nine cents and they provide death health care for everybody we also spend thirty one cents of every dollar health care for administration in our state medicare is five five cents so i am absolutely committed to move us to medicare for all and we can immediately put in a universal primary care bill i've done the numbers on universal primary care it for the for the the little increase that it costs to employers after the savings from not having to provide primary care it more than pays for itself because people are going to the doctor right away so also will point out that the minimum wage if adjusted for inflation since the one thousand nine hundred six would be twenty two dollars an hour right now that's why i would immediately ask the legislature to bring the increase in the minimum wage bill back when i asked  people in housing partnerships and folks in constructions what is a cost to live in a two bedroom unit in vermont it's twenty two dollars an hour so basically if you're not making a living wage we have to make investments and housing today with a thirty five million dollars that  spawn sixty five million dollars and bonding that meets about twenty percent of our need we need to significantly make more investments and housing and also when it comes to protecting the most vulnerable also be very supportive in terms of  marginalized computers as well as address the substance use disorder issues thank you it's difficult to answer these complex questions in two minutes i understand but everyone's giving it a good go so thank you very much charles laramie your view on how to protect the most fun or bill in the state considering the federal threats the taking care of the most vulnerable of course comes at a this is kind of a serious time to take a look as we look outside and you know tonight is going to be twenty nine degrees going to have a lot of people who are going to be living on the street and you know how do we go about taking care of those people and in one of the way of course is affordable housing coming up with it but also what we need to do when you have people who are living on the street we have to go out to them in that's not easy a lot of those people there there are costs about being approached by people there they're nervous because they've been in homeless shelters you know they're not trusting of that they wonder what's going to happen to so we need we need people who can go out even police officers sometimes to try and help these people gain their trust get them into some of fordable housing that they can that they can live in and know some of the of course a lot of these people are alcoholics they're addicts how are we going to help them then at that point and it's difficult because you know i know i was talking to some people up here in burlington in a in a two bedroom apartment that's not even a great one is you know thirteen hundred fifty dollars a month and seven hundred dollars they said they had to spend for parking so these are all difficult things but those are things that we have to start to undertake with with with these people to help them the best way to help those who are vulnerable is to give them the skills to take care of themselves and this is what we need to do as a state to get these people back on their feet thank you very much chris erickson all right everyone's ideas cost money so number one voters are always asking me where are you going to get the money to do this where are you going to get the money to do that and again it's r o y return on investment of taxpayer dollars where we're getting cheated the pharmaceutical companies and the defen contractors who are using our taxpayer dollars to make trillions of dollars for them are screwing us over because we have a right to a share the profit now if you are oh well to do person and you can afford to buy stock on the stock market you expect our oh i return on investment you expect to get a dividend but who's really paying their dividend we are the poor people and the hard workers are vermont have their taxes gouged out of their paycheck they go to washington d c united states congress votes to give them to the end i h and to the pentagon they decide to give them to the pharmaceutical companies and the defense contractors they make trillions of dollars and they pay their people who own shares in their company dividends so our taxpayer dollars are being given to the people who own shares of shares of stock in those companies as dividends we're getting screwed over o'reilly i'm going to call conference of all governors of all states and put a stop to this when we put a stop to this we're going to demand our share our fair share of profit that we put money into these companies we do for we deserve our a wire return on our investment we deserve a fair share the profit and that's going to pay for all of these programs that everybody is thinking of thank you my name's chris erickson please vote for me thank you very much steve marks i was a literacy teacher for twenty years without all these to get education in my area and strafford chelsea and what i found out was that there were a lot of people who were who were very vulnerable and if if you get somebody in their home to help them to explain to show them what they need it can it can change their whole lives you can stop child abuse or you can certainly change child abuse you can you can get people to understand different things so so i think that as a state we should be looking into our social services not going out and really working with people i thought and i think we need more social service people we certainly need more therapists and i have a plan that we should get the colleges that they have  those programs like you the m to say the state of mont will pay for your college if you stay in state for seven to ten years and at the end and i think most of those people once  in vermont will stay in vermont but all those people will help with opium addiction with you know with with all the problems that we have and also that there are i you know when we talk about vulnerable people i'm a i'm a firm believer in in helping people to create their own reality i mean i believe we create our own reality so i've worked with people and i'm member one one family where if that i did budgeting with them and i showed them that if they if they could stop doing things like one case a beer or a month and stop smoking one pack of cigarettes a week they wouldn't lose their house but they couldn't do that but i wasn't a social worker i couldn't get them to change so i really feel that we need to get people in there to help people on on a one to one basis ari thank you very much i'm just going to remind folks you can give us a call at eight six to three nine hundred sixty eight zero two eight six two three nine six six we're going to go to the question what will you do to dismantle systemic and institutional racism in vermont and we will start with m p from well first of all we  i would stop sending any body out of state to prison work on an entirely restorative model for justice and again to help us understand that the cultural nourishment that we get from people of different cultures is is so important to our understanding of the variety of expressions of human culture that there are again we got to go back to an economic standpoint where we don't in fear that somebody is going to take work from somebody else or somebody is a and we cannot tax ourselves to get there and we cannot go into debt to get there so we've heard from candidates about the justification how we would justify a universal basic dividend so i want to also discuss a couple of other options that we have that are working within the current u s dollar system one we have a vermont public bank so that our taxes go into the vermont public bank and our money stays in state and supports loans going through local banks we a credit card would have many tours having of a month credit card again the fees for a credit card will go into the treasury we have make a system a simplified self directed ira's so the people who do have money to invest in vermont know how to do it then we start thinking about moving outside the limitations of the dollar system and there's absolutely no reason that we should be limited by our u s dollar system then we get into a complementary currency to get into a work exchange system we get into how do we create community so coming back to how do we read a cape racism we begin with some economic justice ok thank you very much governor scott what will you do to you radek eight institutional or dismantle i think is the word systemic institutional racism in vermont well for ma is a very special place where noone for compassion the way we treat each other and but unfortunately we have to accept the reality and understand that we're not immune from racism and bias here in to run for re election because of the racial slurs her and her family had to endure and they just simply unacceptable i called her and told her even though you know we're one hundred eighty degrees apart in terms of our  and outlook and views but i told her that if she would reconsider that i would support her publicly because i think it's important not to let them win so we have to support each other in doing that we also have the  being a vermonter we desperately need more diversity in this state i've talked about the workforce challenges we have we need more people here and it's clear that we have much more to work to work to do to become a welcoming place i signed the racial equity bill which will identify and offer solutions to address this demick racism that where we're suffering from but it's a basic we need more civility we need more respect bullying and so forth in our schools and throughout and i'm sure that we'll hear more about that in our schools we we need more refugees  well we need to be more welcoming i reached out to the white house after they reduced the number of refugees that they were going to to allow in the states and i asked them to consider putting vermont on the top of the list because we've been successful in this area in doing so so i think it's about us treating each other with more respect and civility and also be becoming more while being in following through on each and every endeavor thank you very much christine how quick how what will you do to dismantle systemic and institutional racism in vermont well you know after november ninth two thousand and sixteen i went to political depression and in two thousand and seventeen i did a lot of marching i marched in washington with a woman's march the climate march and did a lot of marching in vermont but i was a bit in denial because what when that what happened in i thought we would be protected from these and this had winds of bigotry and racism that were coming out of washington but in late two thousand and seventeen we started to see white supremacist activity in vermont and then on january twentieth two thousand and eighteen i was down at the youth march in montpellier and i listen those four young woman high school seniors muslim girls making change talk about the harassment they see in their schools and community and that's when i cried and that's when i decided to run for governor now there's what i'm committed to do in terms of to dealing with this too shall racism is first of all i'm committed to have people of color people of color on my transition team and i'm in my admin i'm committed to take the this and have an independent commission that oversees the data in terms of policing schools and employment and how discipline is applied and how i know how growth  committed to increasing the diversity of vermont altogether i do believe robots a loving and welcoming place but i but i do think we need to do be very active in in in recruiting people of color to come here i would target our tourist dollars to people of color and i know that you know people who visit here sometimes live here and so i take very active process and that also will form a union of states have there are many states that that want that are that are very upset with what's happening out of washington and i would take an active role as a governor to organize those states to push back on some of these these policies that are coming out of washington at and i would ensure to use that that union to protect immigrants and migrant rights thank you very much charles laramie what will you do to dismantle systemic and institutional racism in our state well for one thing you know no nobody is born hating somebody because you know the shape of their eyes or the color their skin kids play together when they're four or five they have no understanding of  such a thing they just like playing together and that's all it matters so obviously racism is something we learn and we learn it from generally speaking our family so racism in fixing is about education and as a teacher of twenty five years in vermont schools to say i don't see racism in our school would be a lie i mean i hear it all the time walking in the hallways i hear our kids stock it's blatant racism a lot times things are saying it it's disturbing to hear it but i grew up in vermont and in the sixty's and seventy's and it was very common to hear those jokes and things in never thought about them and when in the military and when i went to boot camp in chicago it was quite a culture shock for me to walk in and live with eighty guys of varying ethnic groups and you learned and then i traveled all over the world and now i have friends in jordan in china and japan and different places in you know racism is about fear you fear somebody in this is what causes it and we fear things in vermont  you know i grew up here i don't find that welcoming and wonderful place all the time the people in vermont are not always that welcoming they're kind of standoffish and if you have to approach him they'll help you out but they don't always go out of their way so this idea that vermonters are always open you know there's a lot of states like that so education is what we need to do we need to teach people that everybody's assuming we all have the same holds dreams once doesn't matter thank you very much chris erickson your approach to this mantling systemic racism i have a great idea and again people say to me every time i bring upon a group of my great ideas they say well how are you going to pay for that chris  well it all gets back to the r o i return on investment of our federal taxpayer dollars that are going to the defense contractors of pharmaceutical companies they're making trillions of dollars we have a right to happen those trillions of dollars they're making we have a right to return on investment what i'm going to do if i'm elected governor is approach all forty thousand homeless united states military veterans now there are a lot of non profits that are taking care of some of the homeless military veterans on any night they don't in any given night in the united states of america there are forty thousand homeless u s military veterans and some of these are women a lot of them have a pension a lot of them might qualify for s s i i'm going to invite them all to vermont but guess what are you really prepared because half of them are black and latino people of color is a very mont really ready to have twenty thousand u s military veterans who are black or latino think about it because i will bring them here and i will find housing for them i will get a return on investment from federal taxpayer dollars and until i get that i will have vermont prisoners we've got twelve hundred prisoners in the state i will hire people to teach those prisoners how to build log cabins  when we've got big forest i'll have them the prisoners building log cabins and we'll put solar panels on the roofs for electricity and i will bring forty thousand homeless u s military veterans now start thinking about it a lot of them have pensions or they call or they qualify for s s i so that's forty thousand people that ends up paying forty million dollars a month into the economy of vermont forty million a month of their ass aside or their pensions coming into the economy of vermont thank you vote for me chris erickson thank you very much steve marks your approach to eradicating institutional racism in education education education and not just educating kids but educating the police force getting there you know i was born in new york city and i went to a high school that was fifty percent people of color and what i found was that my best friends were people of color and so for me it's really hard not to fathom how you can and then i went into the army and it was amazing to me how how wonderful everybody is i mean we are an amazing group of individuals and and but a lot of people are not they're not taught what what what it what they should learn they they're  taught to hate and hatred is the worst for me is the worst thing so so we need to get get rid of that we need and the way to do that is to educate and and i still also believe that we really need to bring back our prisoners and we need to educate them and we need to find them jobs because because that will bring us all together thank you very much barlow your view on eradicating institutional racism in vermont i agree with everyone on the panel so far who has talked about education as being of the utmost importance and i think it gets directed towards where you start it and i think it gets into our schools and curriculums where we have to have a mandatory multicultural curriculum i know myself from having grown up in vermont and in springfield when i grew up there it was a fairly homogenous society and the irony is is from on is still somewhat  compared to the rest of the country but the minute i was able to leave the state and travel my eyes were opened as far as multicultural opportunity is able to engage in and i've lived in urban areas similar to some of the commentary tonight and there's a different eat those and i think it just is an intent of the community is you have to decide that diversity is something that you seek because it's the benefit of your community and as such you will not tolerate discrimination and i think that brings about the change within the governmental aspects of how we we manage ourselves as a society to eradicate this type of behavior but ultimately you have the leadership of the governor that says it's unacceptable which i think everyone on the panel agrees which is a beautiful thing about our state but then there's the second part of it is how do you make your population more diverse to reflect that initiative and personally i come at it from the perspective of innovation because i think if you approach our small towns and rural communities and you say we're going to give you an opportunity to build a beautiful lifestyle that is diverse and is rich in ideas and solutions that will help to attract a more diverse population to our state thank you very much thank you we're going to take up the question of water quality in vermont and so everyone's going to have an opportunity to answer that and while you're thinking in your mind while other people are answering i want you to all come up with a question that you have for another candidate your saddle be our next round so here's the question we start with governor scott if elected how do you plan on dealing with the current pollution issues in lake champlain and we would expand that to say the water quality throughout the state well we're actually doing it over the last we have fiscal year eighteen nineteen we're spending seventy percent more than we have been in previous years right now we have about fifty six million dollars that where we have implemented for water quality i'm committed to this to seeing this through it's a long term play and it didn't happen overnight but it's something that's not going to be fixed overnight either so we're in it for the long haul we also introduce some some unique interesting ideas thinking outside the box we have what's called the phosphorous challenge where it's like a reverse pitch like a shark tank where we're  asked companies and any of these in newark to come up with solutions for phosphorous how can we control it before it hits the ground so to speak or before it hits our waterways we're pleasantly surprised we had twenty seven people that  switching station going to massachusetts now they've turned us down to begin with but the but t b i is the name of a company that is already put this in the place it's all ready to go we just need somebody to hook up with that all right thank you very much christine hall quest i'm sure you know what the t d i and yes i do and i will tell you that that was the third option the first option was northern pass the second option was opening the path the northeast kingdom so i would put in a real stake in the fact is going to get constructed in fact i would say it's probably not going to games construction but so the question of water quality out to the question water quality i use that really gets to what's the funding mechanism you know i you know beth pearce our state treasurer has done a great job in terms of writing putting a plan together of what it's needed to fund that plan if it requires twenty five billion dollars a year so we really need to come come up i'm committed to come up with sustainable funding for that plan  this is a strategic investment you know every dollar we invest saves three over the long term ninety four percent of our waterways are impacted in vermont you know this plan deals with the farm runoff it deals with the impervious surface issues and importantly you know if we look at sewer systems through our state we have this combined suit combined sewer overflow that happens during storms we have aging suing system sewage just of all throughout our state  so i would do that and the funding mechanisms are addressed in that plan as well so we do need to absolutely need to fund that plan because i will tell you what i'm also you know i think with real economic development the most important things we can do and our water resources are precious resources that help attract people to the state so and i'm also committed to you know help help dairy farmers be up be able to have other other funding sources that and be able to help people move away from dairy because you know that is an energy intensive crop so so you know i'm committed to solve the water quality problems i'm committed to make the investments it's a crit strategic investment we have to make for our future  and and we we need to find the resources to do that and those plans those resources are addressed in the plan thank you very much charles laramie your view on water quality and what we can do to improve well i think  stated is that we need to continue to fix our ensuite infrastructure and you know our sewer systems and things like that and generally speaking like in the town i live in we have a budget every year and you know so much is budgeted for you know if they're going to need a new fire truck down the road how much are we going to budget for that in the same can be done for for town sewer system things for overflow and water and then on the other hand you know i decided i was going to run based on what's best for the people in common since those are the things i have to answer to and  before anybody gets really frightened what i want you to understand when i was growing up we didn't have water treatment plants we didn't have sewer systems and everything just went into the river right and that was human waste garbage we had open dumps everything was just thrown over the side it was covered over with dirt these are the things that we grew up with and we don't have those anymore the water quality is better when you scuba dive in the lake she still see the plate said come out from the cottages because that's all they did they just flush the toilet went in the lake in so these are the things we had and those things evolve and stop so a lot of times we hear about you know what can we do want can we do more money we've already done a lot of those things that water quality did a is a lot better than it was when i was growing up we had open burn pits all the time in my town anybody could burn their garbage tires there was no laws against that and people did it all the time couldn't even stand the air and today that's not the way it is so  lot has changed already and so just don't be thinking we've got to constantly spend money to fix things it's not always necessary like all right thank you chris erickson your view on maintaining the quality of our lakes and rivers all right first of all from elected governor of vermont we got twelve hundred prisoners i'm not going to have them twiddling their thumbs in prisons in vermont and they have every single one of them who's intellectually capable learn how to build rowboat and build oars we've got plenty of trees my father used to build his own robots when i was a kid no problem and then we put them out in the summer that's what they're going to do all winter they're go build their own row boats and oars out of vermont trees in the summer they're going to go out on every lake lake champlain and every pod in every lake in vermont and they're going to pull the milfoil by hand and then they're going to put out the fishing lines and they're going to reel in those invasive the eels those those ugly bite fish and latch on to them they're going to reel those suckers in and they're going to spend all summer long cleaning up the lakes and ponds by hand no chemicals when my mother was alive god bless her soul she used to preach she did a lot of research on the invasive chemicals that are dumped in waste champlain to treat the invasive species the invasive chemicals are causing health problems we've got dozens of sewage treatment plants all around lake champlain in vermont new york and canada they're dumping treated sewage in the lake we've got to put a u turn on those pipes put a u turn on those pipes and pump the treated sewage to either industrial use or find a use for it thank you thank you very much steve marks earth first well you're not earth first or earth remind us what your party name or thrice so that's different but obviously this is a subject close to your heart well one of the things that i would do is i would i would make make companies pay for the poisons that they put on the earth and it's very easy to think about it you know we sell herbicides and pesticides and even plastic bags what happens is that we sell them so that companies can make money so they figure out how much they can charge for that bag but they don't they don't figure out what it's going to what that bag or what that pesticide is going to do to the earth so so my plan is let's charge them and you know if if let's say we charge ten cents a plastic bag then all of a sudden paper bags are off the off profitable so then we have things that can be composted that's just one little example there is there is there are so many ways but but the but the key is that that we the taxpayers pay for all this poison that the companies that make it don't pay and we need to switch that and then if we do that we will have enough money to clean up the earth thank you very much trevor barlow your approach to cleaner lakes and streams of pollution and toxins well thank you i would say along my innovation and technology one with regards to doing a better job of tracking sources because that always becomes when the most difficult issues you have an end result of pollution but you don't always know what the sources and we know we've had a variety of issues over the past couple of years have come to light with p f away with regards to lake champlain and algae and various other issues so i think in general there are technologies out there that we can invest in to help improve our water supply but i would also like to say with stephen's point of view with regards to getting into how do we manage our economy with regards to our natural resources and how do we do a better job of accounting for the actual impacts so we make sure we have more visibility on what the costs are in order to provide for that so in a nutshell we know that water is the most important resource we have on this earth just because of who we are as humans and what we're made up of chemically any issues with water need to be addressed immediately we don't want to find ourselves in a situation like unfortunately happened up in flint michigan where you have people after ten or fifteen years of neglect finding out that they have terrible illnesses or imp packs on their bodies because of a lack of action and so ultimately water as far as natural resources should have our highest priority with regards to investment solutions thank you very much and payton your approach to water quality and funding yes of course water is the most important resource we have and i hope i get a chance to talk about the role cracked gas across the border we have such a profound change to make in our behaviors because we have twelve years to make them and we can we maybe have to figure out since money is first amendment right according to the supreme court maybe we need to step outside the u s dollar to make them happen some of the things i'm concerned about is the cam trails the  the amount of poison that we're putting on you go in you can actually buy a can of round up and round up is it uses the same chemicals they use an agent orange so we we need to incentive five educate and change our behaviors it's absolutely absurd that we're going to bathroom in our clean water we need to be moving to come composting systems across the board these are the kinds of profound societal behavioral changes that we need to be prepared to make in order to meet climate change and you can we can make fun of it but we need to do it we need to go to a zero waste system down in brattleboro there mandatorily banned all plastic bags we need to do that state wide they're charging for every paper bag that needs to happen there's so much work that we need to do in order to meet the challenge that we have ahead of us and we just must have the money to do it we have the will and we will do it thank you very much all right so here's the lightning round if you have a question for one of your candidate the fellow candidates now is a great time to ask that and i'm going to start with christine how quest if you have a question for any of the fellow candidates you feel free to pass if you don't have a question but no it's a great time to fill you can actually source i've said all along that we don't need another kneejerk reaction every every problem that needs to be solved seems to have been just let's raise another tax and that's what we've been doing over the last ten fifteen twenty years since led us to the position we're in today  so i found a couple of existing tax sources that i think could be leveraged and used for this purpose over the long term as we know during a campaign season like this if you put anything out it's like a team sport and then at that point it will be it will be discounted and rejected out of hand been through it i've seen that in this is too important and i believe that what we need to do is have a good discussion about  it a good open discussion in the legislative process and so from that standpoint i'm i'm committed to water quality committed to cleaning it up this funding source is something that i think can work and i'm working with the legislature  in the next session if i'm elected to do that thank you very much charles do you have a question for candidate here at the table my question is actually for two candidates  quist may not know i was escorted out of the last to be in rutland and because i stood up and as to be included in the debate because i'm on the ballot and the only ones there allowing in the debate are the republican in the democrat the independents are not being allowed in the debates there's one more debate coming up at the p r we've been told we're included they've refused to do that this disenfranchises hundreds of thousands of vermont voters that's your question so my question is for the last debate will you guys please stand down unless we're all included in if not could you explain why you won't do that christine i defer to comment on that i you know i i'm the underdog here so it's i certainly  i wouldn't go unless all the candidates were invited believe was not invited and so i said i wasn't going so they had an empty chair there and temperatures there was only one candidate that showed up and they had the debate without me unfortunately it didn't have much we encourage other candidates we encourage whoever is putting it on to invite everyone i think it's important for democracy i think it's important for everyone to have their voices heard and then we hear of the different perspective  so i'm in favor of it but as far as i stood down last time it didn't seem to have much effect and i'd encourage anyone else to include everyone in the debates because i because i think it's important so that said no you won't i'm not going to stand  this time around because as i said i wasn't it didn't seem to have any effect on any one point but i heard them stand here publicly asking anyone in the future that when we have these debates they should include everyone very much chris harrison you have a question for us they do for christine how christine phil scott this is the first time in my life i have ever seen you were met you absentee voting started almost a month ago people have been voting for a month i have been excluded from every the single debate the two of you have been in are you my question is are you seriously willfully and intentionally committing fraud in a fiduciary capacity in conspiracy with vermont public radio and vermont p b s to commit fraud in the use of taxpayer dollars are federal taxes get paid to the to the government ok night states congress question is that i'm not for dinner the united states congress votes to give our tax dollars to public broadcasting public broadcasting gives our federal tax dollars to v p r and vermont p b s they have no legal right to act as a poet little action committee to promote two candidates while excluding five n the two of us get off talk offline about this but at this point this is this is really these others set up the rules so so you know i'm i'm new to the oh if somebody says up the road to commit a crime then have a question for the candidates yes i believe that that we need a constitutional amendment in vermont to give the earth rights and and the rights of nature and i would like to ask every every candidate yes or no question whe support a constitutional amendment that would give the earth rights if corporations are considered people why should in the earth being considered a person the earth gives us everything that we have including our bodies so you have a minute  trevor personally i would answer that with a different logic in that i would say that i wholeheartedly disagree with citizens united i think when we're dealing with a democratic process and dealing with politics politics in a test sense is about people the proverbial zoon political so we as people need to say that only people as individuals can participate in this process to be recognized and corporate donations cannot be qualified as an individual or human entity at just it's not logical thank you m page in your response to steve marx question thank you just restate the question should there be to be a constitutional amendment in vermont to give the earth rights  course we should revisit the constitution it's a living document and women have not participated in that and i want to add that one of the things it can do in that i have done is to pledge my allegiance not to a corporate empire but rather to go like this i pledge allegiance to the earth upon whom all life depends and to the beings with whom we share her our of the universe it is beyond comprehension that is why i pledge my heart my will and my life thank you very much governor scott well again it would really depend on what it says but i can tell you it's very difficult to change the constitution in vermont as it should be it's a doctor it should be preserved we know a number of times throughout the last twenty years they tried to turn the governor's term into a four year term instead of a two year term or one of only two states that have two year terms that's been passed out of the senate legislature see if you can get it through but it's very very difficult to get any kind of horse legislative does it change would you support well i mean i it would depend on what he says that a blanket just to say you would support if it's a simple simple type of a piece of legislation a constitutional chain i'd have to read it to see if i support it or not but in concept of course the earth is important to us of course of this but it just passing a law doesn't make it so either it takes all of us in order to to make sure that happens and that's what we have governments for that's what we have a legislative process for is to make sure that we protect what we have thank you you know  response i would have to take a look at you know what the cause what it looked like and what it and what impact it might possibly have i've actually never been asked this question before so i certainly have not done any research on it but you know if i if it makes sense and it's going to it's going to solve problems sure i'd support it but again it it is as the governor said the process is complex you know i just i just don't even know how to answer that question forty six or i can the adirondacks all the time i fight all the high peace i love nature in a mountain that all the time and i think governor scott said i mean we all need to protect it and that's a given i don't think a constitutional is going to change that at all ok i stay out and enjoy the nature as much as a kid thank you chris erickson mother earth should be made a citizen of vermont thank you trevor do have a question for the is fiber the best solution for broadband connectivity in the state and peyton and let's try and keep it the thirty second so we have time for closing stance i do believe it is my believe that we have another  broadband capacity but is it going to be in the future i don't know technology is changing every single day i mean we're seeing more and more in terms of satellites and so forth and we'll see where this goes but we still need fiber and we still need to make sure that we have a system that is backed up with fiber in order to connected to everything else thank you christine i've been studying this for about eighteen years and i will tell you i've looked at every technology and fiber is the best answer it really gets down to basic physics there's nothing faster than the speed of light you know your radio frequency doesn't have the same capacity and actually with every cell tower you need a fiber back hall so ubiquitous fiber actually helps you with additional in the cell tower so it's absolutely the answer for the long term thank you charles when i said on our library board we were bringing it in there was a big thing we could get so much for free for a period of time and it's probably a great idea also like governor scott says you know things are changing fast and like with our solar panel it's really done them up all over the place but you know in five years technology may come along and all of a sudden we have all these things out there and now we're going to wonder what to do with them because we have this much better technology so that i'm sure ok thank you chris erickson number one fiber cable strong all over the neighborhood are ugly as hell i've been in chester vermont fifteen years and then they started putting in these ugly fiber cables are ugly they're just so offensive to look at number two low income people in vermont cannot afford why fly in broadband what is the point of talking about something people can't afford thank you i don't own a computer but i think that we should definitely have fiber optics come up in fact i live on the end of a of a dirt road and fiber which i think we should be supporting organizations like that just brought wife i up my road whether all have it or not is another road with another thing but yes i do support it and peyton you have a and how would you implement a system of processing hemp to the purpose of building homes that sequester carbon and use a quarter of the energy to do so and are you aware that buildings can serve  capabilities hemp is something that we're doing a lot more of in vermont in fact you may have read some of that in the paper there's been some vandalism in the damage and theft in the hemp industry but it's catching on something that really does have whether it's in building or whether in clothing or within other some of the oils and so forth it's something that i think they promote can capitalize on so we're moving forward or agency of agriculture is working with those  farmers and trying to make it make a go here in vermont thank you christine how qwest and i'm a big supporter of have you know in my energy research in terms of growing crops for energy wood which by the way i don't think is necessary good idea but but charles yeah i'm a big supporter of that too and i've been talking to him about it and she's been discussing it and i've heard her talk about it or form and i think those are good ideas i mean they're going to bring jobs in help the economy and this is you know this is what we need we need good paying jobs and people who can take these jobs thank you chris erickson your view of the use of hemp as a building my grandfather george robert erikson was born on the hemp on farm on the kentucky and eight hundred ninety eight and then the federal government of the united states made it illegal so i started campaigning for hemp in marijuana in two thousand and two and i'm still in favor of it thank you very much steve i'm definitely in favor of anything that will help farmers and throwing him has definitely good for farmers and it's and it's good for the environment yes thank you trevor i grow so i'm in full support of it as well as actually looking at the plan itself is cannabis not only for construction but for health care and just in general for innovation within our economy thank you did you ask a question i have not please do ok well i'm a big supporter of our dairy industry it's part of our tradition in culture to two billion dollar industry for a searing vermont and we've been talking about diversity and so forth but my question is christine is talked about on a couple of first of all that was definitely was not about labor it was way over simplification of creating alternative revenue streams for dairy farmers to supplement their income you mentioned yet i was an example but the point being absolutely dair important and i and the idea behind connecting every home and business of fiber is creating a distribution network so farmers can create additional value added products off of their farm to create additional revenue streams thank you charles i agree we need to keep arrogant cultural farms dairy in particular dairy in particular i know it's difficult for a lot of i mean when i grew up by you know a lot of my friends of course they were very friends and things and you know i've watched it go away for them and you know a lot of them grew up expecting that they were going to be able to do this for the rest of their life too and then they end up having to sell the farms and subdivided land and sell it because they just couldn't keep up with the profits but pm in the one nine hundred sixty s and one nine hundred seventy s instead of putting people in prison and sending them out of state prisons a lot of vermont prisoners were sent to farms i'm sixty six years old i don't know if i'm the oldest candidate here but when i was a teenager from our prisoners were sent to farms all the farmers had to do was you know give them food give them a roof over their head there were twenty five thousand farms in vermont now i mean then and now there's only a couple  thousand farms let's send the prisoners back to work on farms as a economic development strategy yes yes because if you don't pay anything for their labor they're furry ok and the constitution of the state of vermont states the prisoner shall work for the public in view of the public so we're wasting prison labor steve marx well i definitely support forms but i would really like to to see all the dairy farms become organic dairy  farms it bothers me that we have farmers that are putting poison is on the earth and our spraying chemicals on their fields that are there are bad for our children i mean and i'll do everything i can because  when i've been able to go around the state and visit with farmers there are two things have come up one is assistance with marketing and funding to help them to expand and specialize their products so they can get a higher premium out of their actual milk production and so i think along with that we should also work towards encouraging our farmers not only to be organic but to be carbon negative which i think is possible because farms are a wonderful ecosystem unto themselves for innovation and for ways that we can lead the nation in agricultural production thank you very much and pay to this one of the wonderful friends i've made on the trail is roger albi who is working on a plan for all of our farms dairy farms to become organic as a matter of viability so if we were to have and we would when i'm governor to have a credit card we could use the profits for that i would oppose any ideas that have gone in history that plague prisoners or slaves i don't believe that anybody should be slaves not in prison or somewhere else but i do think that we can find the savings if we're not sending them out that we are now spending fourteen million dollars to send them out of state prison so there are some savings that you can apply to be organic and free range is very important because of the methane costs to climate change when you have standing pools of manure and waste so free range is also important with going all organic thank you very much all right so the last question ten minutes means everybody's got a minute and the last question is if elected what will be your first legislative action and we start with charles my first legislative action is going to be to remove all cell phones and pads from schools now a lot of people phrase just did that and the reason behind that is they've done a lot of studies this summer throughout the united states saying th effect of cell phones on students cognitive learning is is bad but of course she didn't even need to do that study all you had to do is as teachers and teachers would have told you this is a huge problem i left teaching in june and i left teaching because i've been clean and sober for twenty seven years and during that time during all that twenty some odd years where i was an addict alcoholic  you know i wouldn't be disrespected and i was i was always this respect that i mean so i could no longer allow that and so i just walked away teachers retirement everything and i won't put up with it  and to change what's going on in our schools today this is a first step but that's the biggest problems with our schools ok not act forty six any of that other stuff thank you charles laramie chris erickson what would be your first legislative action will governor doesn't do legislative action governor passes law after the legislature has had their hands on what would you propose what i my first proposal is governor would be to have a set or day night governors pardon t show where i would invite one hundred audience or two hundred audience people how many ever can fit in that building in montpelier that the governor's office isn't isn't for an audience and i would invite maybe six or twelve prisoners to come  their sorry stories about why should they should get a pardon i'd have their family and their friends come and try to speak up for them or not or the opposite and then i'd have the audience take a vote and then i would sell this t v program nationwide and worldwide and cable t v and put the revenue from the sales of the program into the general fund thank you very much chris erickson steve marks what would be your first legislative initiative action first thing you do right out of the box i would go to the legislature and i would tell all the all the lawyers to sit down and figure out a constitutional amendment because that's what people have asked me why i don't have one and i've talked to a number of lawyers and every one of them has a different one so i would get them all together and i would say you sit there and you come up with something and then i would start the three year process of getting a constitutional amendment in vermont to protect the earth to protect the earth thank you very much trevor barlow your first initiative my opener my first initiative as governor would be to create the innovation fund that would be administered through the regional development corporations and as part of that set out the criteria for what we consider to be the new vermont and moving us forward with revitalizing our rural areas through innovation and technology thank you very much and peyton your first legislative initiative well upon getting elected and if i can't get elected this time because people don't know that i'm a choice i will continue but the very first thing i will do in the of them is to go about and begin the history of the women who are behind the men all the men that are up there in the state house and photos and everything there are women beside them that belong to be up there so that young women understand that we are equal participants we require equal pay and we also need to step forward to help men and everybody understand how we can prepare a world of nurturing and a nurturing economy thank you very much  scott what will your first action be well again to continue the good work that we've been doing over the last two years and chris landed on that we actually can't produce legislation sometimes you have to react to it but we do have to supply a budget so we're working on the budget lived through this means and works on three different fundamentals grow the economy make from a more affordable protect the most vulnerable in those three very simple guiding principles that's we will build a budget that vermonters can afford and that will invest in areas to bring more people into the state and grow the workforce that's what we need the workforce needs to be at you asked first and foremost thank you very much christine how ques well i thought i would ask the legislature to bring back the bills that the governor has vetoed increasing the minimum wage family leave toxic and toys as well as making polluters pay and the first new legislation would be related to climate change you know i spent but i spent many years working on this when i left for model lecture co op we were ninety six percent carbon free and we did that without a rate increase for five years the state actually exports two billion dollars a year for the fossil fuel industry rob that that will help  i spent two years working with the vermont energy investment corporation on a grant from the part of energy to write a plan called the solar pathways plan that defines how we get to ninety percent by two thousand and fifty i would ask the legislature to codified the goal of getting good ninety percent to two thousand and fifty into law because that is actually something we will that will spur jobs spur innovation and it does not cost us more money thank you very much i'd like to thank all of the candidates here today on the panel for the race for governor in the state of vermont for joining us here apparently this is been the only debate where all of the candidates have been invited and that is a hallmark of channel seventeen town meeting television's approach to local government because we think the more ideas in the better more diverse ideas that are on the table the better policy that we have and people can make up their own mind so i want to thank you all for being here thank the audience and please stay tuned to continuing coverage of town meeting television here especially