This week, on Right Side Up, Alison and Mike discuss New York’s climate superfund law, industrial solar in Lowell, public safety, and affordability.
Transcript below.
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un-edited transcript:
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, you’re listening to Right Side Up. My name is Mike Tagliavere. My co-host is Alison Dispathie.
Alison, how are you? I’m good. Good morning. Good morning.
So, the day after Labor Day, we hope everybody had a nice Labor Day holiday. Yes, and many thanks to all the people out there who work hard to keep us all going. Absolutely.
Hope you enjoyed the break. Yeah, we all need a break every now and then. Yes, that helps.
Yeah. So, okay, we’ve got a lot to talk about, as usual, and never enough time. Right.
So, I think we want to get into New York, the decision that came out of New York with respect to their climate super fund. Yes. So, that’s been in the courts for a while, and I believe, did Vermont sign up to that particular lawsuit or a different lawsuit? I think we have our own state lawsuit, but it’s very similar.
We basically copied, and it was the same year. I think it was all 2024, and that was passed over the governor’s veto. That was, again, a super majority law that came through, I think it’s like Act 122 right now, 122.
And yeah, so basically, it’s a nightmare for Vermont because we are spending lots of taxpayer dollars and the attorney general’s offices, obviously, time and resources and lots of money to try to do something that is pretty hypocritical and doesn’t make sense. Well, especially if we all were to sit down at the dining room table or in their favorite lounge chair, including the lounge chair, and look around and see how intertwined we are with petroleum. We are a petroleum-based economy.
Whether we like it or not, whether we acknowledge it or think about it, literally everything. I’m 63 years old, and what has happened in the 63 years of my life and how many people have come up out of poverty because of the availability of inexpensive fuels and energy to help people elevate out of poverty, make their lives better, make their kids’ and grandkids’ lives better. People would only do a pros and cons list to find out, and I’m not saying we shouldn’t make things more efficient when it comes to energy.
Of course. That’s not what I’m saying. I think we need to apply common sense.
You can see this trend in so many other countries who are trying to ramp up their energy. You see this in India. You see this in Africa because they want to try to help bring people out of poverty.
Like you said, Mike, the efficiency and supporting this tech and reduced consumption, all of that makes sense, but our entire economy and society would collapse if the petroleum products were to go away. We’re so worried with climate change because that’s why these super funds have come out. If we’re so worried about that, well, we need to take into consideration also that more people die from cold than heat.
It’s a statistic that’s out there. We’re not making this up. Right.
So take that into consideration if we were to take the ability to have energy sources like coal and petroleum products, whether they be home heating, oil, propane, whatever, even natural gas in certain municipalities in this state. There’s not a lot of natural gas in this state, but in other states there are. Mostly like Burlington, Shannon, right? And with an economy that had more access to natural gas, if we did, we would have been cleaner.
We would have been cleaner, but the net zero movement kept us away from that. So we had to burn more, less efficient forms of petroleum products. Right.
And even when we look at our renewable energy, I mean, people want to push for renewable energy, which as we’ve mentioned many times here, and people are well aware, intermittent, unreliable, not baseload power. And the bottom line is to make a wind turbine or to make a solar panel, you need petroleum products. Yeah.
I mean, it’s just unbelievable. And this is where there’s so much hypocrisy behind this law. And I mean, obviously, right now, Vermont is in a lawsuit with the federal government because of this.
And I just want to read, Mike, if you don’t mind, the ruling that came out, I think it was just September 2nd, a federal judge in the northern district of New York has struck down New York’s Climate Change Superfund Act, ruling that the polluter pays climate law is preempted by federal law and quote, simply beyond the limits of state law. And this is a decision that’s from gravel to gavel. This is someone that follows a lot of just policy and some of the lawsuits around energy.
And it’s obviously, it’s also just, it’s all based on greenhouse gas emissions and arbitrary analytics and data to try to determine how much harm has been done by this. I mean, there’s nothing grounded in substantive data to try to make any sort of evaluation. And as we know, the science is completely divided on this whole sort of focus on greenhouse gas emissions and carbon, et cetera, as well.
Well, that’s what I really want is scientists to all come to the table, bring all of your information so that there can be comparison. And do real science. Do real science.
Not agenda, not political driven ideological science. Not driven by grant money, driven by actual science and looking to see, looking for efficiency. Not looking for grant funding.
Not looking for making markets to make certain sectors, certain individuals wealthy using a keyboard, sitting behind a laptop when, you know, we live in a state that it was agriculture driven and where this net zero stuff, this green economy stuff is going to demolish everything that made Vermont, Vermont. And it just would, we know, crush our entire economy across the board. I mean, and this is where also I think it is worth noting that the decision was issued by a U.S. district judge, Brenda K. Sannes, who was appointed by President Obama.
And this is the first judicial invalidation of a state climate super fund statute. And this is where we have to look to like, why is Vermont going down this road? And it brings me to bill number 518. Yeah, I introduced that.
And I didn’t look for co-sponsors because I figured it was probably going to be a lightning rod. And if anybody wanted to support it, if it managed to get taken off the wall in committee, which it didn’t, it would have had to go through two committees, both the Environment Committee and Energy and Digital IT. Yeah.
And there was no interest in it. Right. But that was your bill to repeal the climate super fund.
Because of, I believe it was going to be a waste of money and other resources. Right. Especially with respect to the attorney general’s office going to court, we need more victim advocacy, not concentrating on a lawsuit or a law that is, it’s already been shot down in another state.
We should, because we have internet service and we have all these other information services, to know this is really not going anywhere. Right. Right.
And we need those resources in the attorney general’s office and others dealing with public safety issues. And this is not a public safety issue. And this is where it’s like that, your bill to repeal this just brings a necessary reality check of let’s just look around like you said.
Yeah. I mean, I hope that you are reelected and I hope you can reintroduce it because again, like you said, there’s a lot of other places where that money could be appropriated. Yeah.
And we already know there’s hundreds of thousand dollars spent and they’ve come back and they’ve asked for more because of the court case against this Climate Superfund Act in Vermont. Yeah. Wasted resources.
And that’s the other thing, when we’re coming up, we’re going to be coming up, believe it or not, on budget season already. Yep. So it’s going to be interesting to see what that’s going to look like.
So, because a lot of people, you know, I forgot the recent polling, but I think it’s north of 60% of Vermonters believe that Vermont or know that Vermont is unaffordable. Oh, absolutely. And across party lines.
I mean, across party lines. 100%. Right.
What’s the budget going to look like? Is it going to be level funded? Are there going to be massive cuts proposed in the interest of keeping the Vermonters we have here and enticing people who would like to move to Vermont to actually come because they’ve seen tax cuts and growth in the idea of affordability, both in housing and taxation. Right. That’s what I hope we’re going to have to see.
I know. And it looked like the governor had already put a cap, maybe at 1% or so on his executive branch on the agencies and what they come back when they’re asking for their funding in the legislature this coming year. I think in his recent press conference, I watched most of it, but I didn’t watch all of it.
I think that was toward the end and I missed that part. Yeah. I think it was just definitely less than inflation, just trying to say, hey, we got to keep this tight because what are we at? It was 9.4. 9.48 billion, I think is the number.
And up from maybe, what was it? 5.4 billion in 2019, 18. 2018, 2019. It was like a 61% over 2018, 2019.
Yes. When inflation was half of that. Yeah.
We have doubled. And this is where, like you said, hopefully there’ll be cuts. I would love to see it just slashed.
And some of this Climate Superfund, this sort of unnecessary ideological, you know, make us look good in virtue signal policy needs to go away. And like you’ve said on this show and we’ve said on this show, we are the cleanest economy in the United States. And we are paying dearly, our citizens, our taxpayers are paying dearly so that energy companies in other states get the benefit of it.
Right. We’re not even with these ridiculous carbon credit schemes. Oh, my gosh.
We’ve got to break through that. We are breaking our economy because of it. Yes.
And we’re all paying more because of that as well. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
And, you know, like I said, we need to grow our economy between, what is it? People dying and people leaving, just moving. We are net negative year over year. I’d like to see a net migration in.
Yes, especially for younger people. Yes, we do. That’s the other statistic.
What is it? 56 years old is the average. For Monarch this time? No, the average tradesman. Oh, wow.
That’s right. So it’s like my husband is in this realm because he’s a builder and he’s in his 50s. And it’s like, OK, who’s coming in? Where are the apprentices? How old are the apprentices? They’re not in their 20s.
Most of them. Right. The vast majority are not.
Right. That’s not a good signal. And that’s where there’s been definitely such a push for the trade schools and having the legislature focus on the trade schools.
And let’s make sure that’s happening. So we have people moving in in this world. I mean, especially speaking of Labor Day, we need these Vermont laborers.
There you go. Right. And these trades, turns out, because there are so few and there’s such a high demand, they’re very good paying jobs.
Right. Very high paying jobs. And in most cases, the training doesn’t cost what a four year degree from college would cost for other professions.
So your savings start to grow very quickly as soon as you’re out of trade school. Whereas for other trades or for other professions, how many people are in their 40s and 50s and are still paying off college loans? Right. I mean, how does anybody afford college loans and a mortgage and car payments and the rest of the thing that has to go with raising a family in this state? And that’s where I look at my son, who they’re a young family.
They’ve got two kids. They live in the Northeast Kingdom. He’s on the electrician path doing his work.
And they work so hard and budget so tight to try to cover things. So that’s when I start to hear talk about, we’re going to raise heating fuel costs. We’re going to raise transportation fuel costs.
We’re going to raise electricity. All I can think of is my son and his beautiful, wonderful family. And this is a direct hit on all of us, but especially this young couple trying to stay in Vermont who love Vermont, who have family here and shouldn’t have to take a hit by bad policy.
Yeah. And, you know, maybe going into the next segment, we can move on to other things. But you received a correspondence, I think, on social media from a single mom talking about how difficult.
We should go over that a little bit. Yes, definitely. So maybe in the next segment, because we’ve only got less than a minute in this one.
But just the economy, young people trying to stay, trying to raise families. And trying to stay, Mike, if you don’t mind me saying, like trying to stay independent and not have to rely on the government and government programs. Yes, I’m glad you brought that up.
That’s a big thing. Yes. The enticement to jump on a government program.
There have been numerous people throughout our history who have come to this country from other countries that know, that have known, that have written about it, done many interviews, that know what it’s like to live in socialist, Marxist, collectivist countries that break the will of their populations. And make you dependent. And make you dependent.
Right. And we know that never goes well. We don’t want to see that happen.
Absolutely not. We can pick back up on that next time. Yes, yes.
So we’ll be right back. Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve got to pay some bills. You’re listening to Right Side Up.
[Segment break]
Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, you’re listening to Right Side Up. My name is Mike Tagliavere. My co-host is Alison D’Espathie.
Okay, so we’re going to switch gears here a little bit and we’re going to talk about some real world situations, real Vermonters, what they are experiencing. Due to, and I’m going to say it to quote from Rob Roper because we actually, I don’t know if it was me or us, who covered his People Experiencing Progressive Policy. Oh, yeah, we did that together, yes, yes.
We’re going to deal with two real life situations. Okay, Alison, I’m going to let you talk about the one that you showed me, I read the correspondence, so you can deal with that one and I’ll describe in short one that I know of personally. Yeah, and I think we maybe mentioned this last week briefly, but there was a woman who commented on, it was on, I think it was the 802 Scoops page with one of the shows that you and I did, and we were talking about this bad policy that makes it more difficult for people to pay and survive and stay here.
And so this woman shared, and I did ask her if it was okay to put this out there to everybody because it’s just a sad situation where she is working so hard. She has definitely a limit amount of funds, she has children, she’s trying to afford groceries to feed them properly and cover her bases, and she just feels completely attacked by all of this policy thinking about she’s got to pay for her electricity on her own, paying for her heat on her own, and so many times just seeing that this is a lot of the legislation that super majority, majority, Democrat majority who’s been in there, I hate to say it, but it’s the reality, want to push through to make it more difficult. And so she’s in this place where she’s making basically just over to apply for programs.
She doesn’t seem like she really wants to apply for programs, there’s a lot of us who would like to try to remain independent and have our money and hold on to our money and budget as we can, especially Vermonters, we’re thrifty and frugal and careful, and we like our independence, many of us. Fiercely independent, I find. That’s definitely, that’s how I feel, absolutely.
And so the struggle was basically she’s told, well, you have to make less money or don’t work as much so that we can get you covered. And what sort of situation is that? Because as we know, that’s just digging a big hole, it’s just going to bury us because then eventually where does the money come from? Who is funding if everybody has to go on these programs to try to cover their bases? And that is bad policy, it’s a bad idea, and it really sets up a vicious cycle in Vermont that we need to break. And I just also want to say the last note on it, Mike, I know you had a story to share on this too, but the same situation, and we may have mentioned this, or maybe I just thought of it, I’m sorry, but the medical debt program that Treasurer Mike Pichek had put out there, it was the same situation for a family where they’re basically just making enough to try to make ends meet.
They had some high medical debt for one of their children. They couldn’t qualify to get coverage or a percentage of it covered because one of them had to quit their job in order to get the coverage. So it’s like what sort of program or policy- Go from being a contributor to somebody who’s- To having to be dependent on programs.
Having to be dependent. Exactly. Like not an okay system.
So again, it’s just looking at how this policy is put together, who it helps or doesn’t help, and what are we trying to set up here in Vermont? We want people who can be independent and work hard and keep their money and cover their bases, not the opposite of that. So that was just one example of someone feeling the effects of these policies. So just to add onto yours before I talk about the more local situation, I’ve got a legislator I’m currently serving with who has a child who’s living overseas in Europe and is apparently working a job but also getting public assistance.
This legislator described what’s going on, which is what we need. Okay. Where, like you said, this woman who needs help a little bit, doesn’t want all of it.
She wants just a little bit until she can get a little bit further, right? That’s basically the system that’s operating where this legislator friend of mine has a child who’s living. They need a little bit, a leg up, not a handout. This is the difference.
Right. Like a temporary aid situation. Or, well, okay, just say for instance, we’re going to use round numbers.
If your gross income for the year is $50,000 but your expenses are $75,000, there’s a little bit of aid that you can get based on like a sliding scale. So you use yours and if you need a little bit, you get a little bit. In our system, it’s not that way.
It’s not that way. You can’t, you’re just under or you’re just over. The only way you get anything is to quit your job, say you have no income, and then you get the full boat.
The whole shebam. And this is the problem with a lot of the homeless people who I’ve spoken to, many times addicted to drugs, but don’t want to work, well, maybe for different reasons. But some of it is they’re afraid they’re going to lose their food assistance and their health care assistance.
And that’s where I think we’ve talked about in the past. It would be amazing if we could design that graduated system so you can help someone along the way. The problem is we don’t have people who measure success by how many people go through the system and get to the point where they’re self-sufficient and they’re out.
Those are successes. That’s how I would measure success. There are too many people who measure success by how many they get signed up for the program.
It should be a process of coming in and working your way through and working out. And there are too many people in the system right now who are part of it, who are getting people into it and think, oh, look at how successfully we are. We have 100,000 people in the system.
How many have worked through it and gotten out? That’s the way we should be, in my personal opinion. That’s how we should be measuring the success. And that’s also something that, in my opinion, the legislature should be demanding of these departments of, we want to know this data.
We want these numbers in order to make better laws. It’s going to depend on the makeup of the legislature. Of course it is, like so much of it.
And that just reminds me, Mike, also of just, in general, we know there’s many bad policies and laws, especially that were passed during the time of the supermajority, that need to be corrected. I just want to share a recent situation up in Lowell. I know we’ve talked about it in the past.
So Lowell currently has, Lowell, Vermont, over 20 industrial wind turbines. They are a town of, give or take, 2,000 or so. Those turbines supply enough power for 22,000 homes, a lot of it being shipped out.
The whole history of these industrial wind turbines completely divided Lowell. It was incredibly divisive. There are still families and neighbors and people who do not talk to each other about that.
And now they have a solar developer who’s come in and basically, as long as he gets his certificate of public good and is approved for his big industrial solar project, he has acreage, and it would be about 22 acres, maybe 14,000 solar panels or so. And this is right in the downtown village. Lowell is very rural.
But in this beautiful agricultural field, it’s been hayed since 1902, there are some neighbors around it, and he wants to put this big industrial solar project there. And some people might say, well, whatever. It’s your private property, your thing.
But what we have to keep in mind is, if we didn’t have the renewable energy standard at this time, there’s no way that this project would be moving forward. So a supermajority renewable energy standard is what is forcing this. And the reason I bring it up is just on Friday, what ends up happening, the legislature, and again, this is Democratic majority legislature, has used the Public Utility Commission and weaponized it, where for these projects, in order for a town or neighbors to intervene, they need money and lawyers.
So basically what happened on Friday is the chair of the select board in Lowell had to pretend, basically, had to act like a lawyer at a Public Utility Commission hearing. She had to cross-examine witnesses. You’ve got a developer with multiple lawyers and multiple experts.
So now you’re putting this town, which has come together to try to raise 30 grand, because they don’t want this project in their downtown village. Think about what could be there. There could be homesteads.
There could be housing. What if their village expands and has a little main street with some shops? I mean, it’s a very hideous situation. Instead of a hayfield, could it actually be some sort of a farm with livestock? Right, right.
And then the housing piece. I mean, there’s so many ways that this could be something. And honestly, right now the town of Lowell is trying to come up with some more money to keep this fight going, because they don’t want this in their downtown.
They feel like, we’re already doing our fair share with our wind turbines for renewable energy goals in Vermont. Why should this be here? And so they’re struggling. It’s really a nightmare of a situation, and it’s just so sad to see the town having to go through these hoops, where this project should go through Act 250.
And even the Public Utility Commission is now saying, we should not be doing these projects. They understand they are not the right body to be making these decisions. It should be going through Act 250.
But again, I bring it up because it was heartbreaking to watch this woman attempt to go at these lawyers and compete, not compete, but be on that level with what she was dealing with with this developer. She doesn’t have the training as an attorney to depose people. They don’t have the money going up against these people.
And it was just devastating. And it’s, to me, it’s again, a classic example of bad policy, the Renewable Energy Standard, as well as what’s called Section 248, which is what moved these decisions. Oh yeah, we dealt with that in legislation this past session.
Yes, exactly. And that’s where it’s just, hopefully these things can get fixed, because it is the super majority, majority, Democrat majority at this time, picking winners and losers. And in this case, essentially, they are choosing developers, renewable energy developers over this town and this community.
And it’s just an unfair situation. And we did have, obviously, you guys, there was some legislation in there to try to correct this issue. We tried.
But it was squashed, again, by the Democratic leadership. And it’s just very unfair to community. So I just, I want people to be aware and hopefully that can get fixed along with some of the other bad policies.
Well, you know, it boils down to that two-word phrase, local control, where, you know, this locality, they apparently have decided they’re going to resist this, they’re going to push back. Right. And because of what came out of Montpelier, you know, that, to me, doesn’t represent rural Vermont.
No. You know, a solar field, and again, I need to restate, I live off grid. I take advantage of solar, battery, and generators to deal with making electricity for our home.
But get this stuff in the right place. Like this is unbelievable. Like they have to talk about preferred locations if we’re going to do projects like this, like a gravel pit.
We’ve talked about this. Like, where do you put this stuff? Yeah. Yeah.
But not in a town, not in a rural town’s downtown village area. I mean, it’s appalling. It was heartbreaking.
Yeah. Yeah. So I want to get to the story that I have.
Oh, yes. You know, think about your story was a single mom trying to make ends meet. Mine is a young family with a new child, newborn, less than a year old.
Both parents work, so they have lots of expenses, including childcare, which is a massive expense now thanks to the way the legislature has meddled with it. Okay. And I’m going to say meddled because that’s the way it looks.
So you’ve got one parent who is a small business owner, very large equipment expense. You’ve got another parent who is a professional and they both work long hours. They both work very hard and they are still trying to make ends meet, still trying to stay above water.
We are at a point where we must look at the green books in the statutes, in the state of Vermont, examine them and come to the realization that we must learn from our mistakes. We must be able to tell ourselves, admit to ourselves that some of the legislation we’ve passed has not turned out the way we liked, the way we hoped. Legislation that sounded good in actuality is not.
And repeal it for the sake of Vermonters, for the simple sake of Vermonters. We’re a state that cares deeply about the environment, but we also care deeply about our neighbors. And the way we demonstrate that in Montpelier to me is looking at the green books and cleaning them up.
Right. And it sounds like what would be amazing, if you don’t mind me saying, is if there could be some sort of a joint resolution or house resolution that basically says, how can we make sure, guarantee that Vermonters can keep as much of their hard-earned money as possible? Like that should be a legislative goal. I feel like that needs to be prioritized.
I agree with you. And I think, you know, ladies and gentlemen, we’ve got an election coming up in November and there was a very big statement made in November of 2024. And I believe we have the ability to make that statement again at the same level.
Right. So that changes that are necessary, that the vast majority of Vermonters know are necessary, have stated in numerous polls and have also, they voted with their, what is it, with their feet and left. So there is a very distinct possibility for change.
I really believe that. I’m very optimistic about it. And if people actually look, I think if Vermont voters actually look at what this sort of red wave, what happened and what you guys were able to do and, you know, blocking more tax and fee increases and repealing some of Act 181, hopefully that can be acknowledged and understood and people can be given a chance like, yes, let’s get you back there.
Thank you. And let’s get you some more numbers for that balance. Let’s hope so.
Ladies and gentlemen, we’ll be right back. You’re listening to Right Side Up.
[Segment break]
Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, you’re listening to right side up. My name is Mike Tagliavia. My co-host is Alison Dyspathy.
Before we get back into our conversation, uh, right side up radio at gmail.com. If you’d like to drop us a line, if for some reason you can’t catch us on WNTK radio, go to wntk.com, uh, find the podcast button, click on it, and you’ll and scroll down to right side up. You can listen to just about any or all of our podcasts. You can find us on pod bean.
You can find us on 802 scoop, uh, both YouTube and Facebook, and you can find us on granite grok.com. So Alison, we’ve got, uh, a number of issues that a lot of people, because it is campaign season. A lot of people are talking about a lot of different things. Um, and public safety is still very, very high on people’s list.
A hundred percent. Um, yes. And we see it especially, but not solely.
I think part of the problem is it’s bled out of Burlington because of the efforts over the past, I don’t know, years, five to 10 years in Burlington to defund the police and restrict the police. And, you know, with the, with the, uh, with the mayor, uh, forcing the chief of police to, uh, send his, his, um, his press releases to her to be edited first before they could go out. I know that’s not separation.
No, really? It’s not. So the city of Burlington, and I’ve talked to people on a daily and sometimes weekly basis where they talk about how Burlington used to be a destination for their family because, you know, the city, the waterfront was beautiful, they could take their families and that’s no longer the case. So we have a situation now where the mayor was upset.
Apparently the governor had sent the state police without notifying her. Well, the governor is the governor. And unfortunately for him, the situation in Burlington has not been made better by the mayor.
And the citizens of Burlington are also citizens of Vermont. Although we like to jokingly talk about Burlington not being part of Vermont because it’s so out of control sometimes. And then the business owners.
I mean, the business owners. The poor business owners are trying to stay in business, whether it’s for the safety of their employees, they’re looking for more safety or to stop the rampant crime theft. Yeah, the theft.
Right, exactly. And this is where it was just so shocking to see Sarah George be voted in over the other person who was running Bram, I think was the name. It was just it looked like a lot of the business owners were really supporting Bram, like, come on, we need a change here.
And then we keep seeing and hearing like, oh, look, you know, Burlington’s all set. We’re committed to public safety. It’s all good.
You know, things are better. We’ve improved. And then basically it seems like the next day there’s, you know, attacks or, you know, more drug crimes that happen.
So it’s a constant cycle. Yeah. Well, my personal hope is that the voters look at actions, not words.
Right. Because the words sound all fluffy and good. Right.
But the actions don’t mesh out with the reality of the reality. Right. And this is where even the city council to see the city council trying to take some action of we got to get a plan in place here.
And then also we’re seeing this in St. Johnsbury. I’m obviously on the other side of the state in the kingdom. Right.
And we see this in St. Johnsbury. We’ve got this whole sort of place in sort of a downtown public park area. And there’s people there and there’s drugs there.
And there’s so many calls to the police officers. And many times it’s the same people who are being called upon for, you know, issues at Domino’s, for example, or somebody’s passed out. I mean, it’s, it’s just regular peace, but I will say, Mike, there was this really amazing recent event that happened in St. Johnsbury where a lot of the community, the business owners came together and they’re like, we got to stop just talking about this and screaming and yelling about it and being angry.
What can we do? So they actually got together and it was really amazing. This one woman, a business owner in St. Johnsbury, she bought a bunch of snacks and breakfast sandwiches, and they put it all out to some of the homeless people who are living down there. And they said, you know what, we need your help cleaning up the community.
Please come help us clean up the community. And we’re going to give you breakfast sandwiches. And it was amazing to see what ended up happening where they were like, okay.
And they had quotes from some of the people of like, it felt so good to be helping and to be part of the community. So you can see that struggle. I know.
I mean, it still is going on, but it was a step in the right direction of how, is there a way that people can be supported and try to make a change here? But it brings me to, of course, if you don’t mind me asking, one of the the parts of the Vermont promise was directed at public safety. If you want to maybe give us a rundown. Well, the public safety, the part of the Vermont promise you’re talking about is a pledge to start the process for a constitutional amendment to deal with the no cash bail issue, the revolving door that people have been complaining to not just me, but everybody, including law enforcement about for a very long time.
And apparently in the eighties, this, this change was made to the constitution instituting the bail only for risk of flight. Um, and there was another, there were a couple other extenuating circumstances, but that’s mostly what it was about. So judges are very hesitant if at all to impose bail.
Right. And you know, when we get asked, it’s, it kind of falls flat when you tell a constituent, well, it’s in the constitution and we can’t do that. And the judges, the law enforcement can’t impose this.
It needs, we need a constitutional amendment and a constitutional amendment is a very high bar. It’s, it’s a two biennium or four year process. Right.
And the Vermont promise includes starting the process beginning in January. That will start if we get the right numbers of people who want to start the process in the past two or three bienniums, we did not have the numbers to get that process started. Right.
So that’s what people need to keep in mind with respect to the Vermont promise and what that means. It only is going to, is only going to happen if we get the correct number of people who are willing to sign on to, yes, we’re going to do start the process to change the constitution. And the Vermont promise was obviously put out by the Senate, Senate Republicans.
And it seems like as far as I can tell, most of, if not all of the house Republicans are absolutely jumping on and support saying, yes, we want to move this forward and so correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems like one of the aspects being considered for this constitutional amendment would be that if someone was arrested and they were a threat to their community or themselves, then that would be one of the reasons that a bail, a cash bail could be imposed. And I think what we need to also examine is repeat offenders because, you know, in, in the city of Burlington, and we covered this on the show when it was first reported in other outlets, there was one individual that had almost 1,600 interactions with law enforcement, 1,500 plus interactions. Right.
And just catch and release, catch and release, catch and release. Now, how many victims did that particular one person rack up? And why do not those victims count? Why is there’s not somebody who’s very concerned at some point, more and more concerned about the victims than they are about the perpetrator, because the perpetrator apparently has learned that his or her behavior is okay. Right.
And this is obviously one of the main functions of government is this public safety. Exactly. First and foremost.
It truly, truly is. And we deserve that. We deserve to be in a safe place where we’re not going to be attacked or under threat of, you know, the theft or stealing or assault.
Especially if we’re law abiding, tax paying. Exactly. Contributing to, to Vermont society.
Exactly. You know, too. So I would love to see that happen.
I know it is a long process, which makes me think of two, of course, this one, um, on this ballot, this election cycle about to come your way and land in your mailbox, or if you go to vote in November, um, is prop three. So we have prop three and prop four, both have their own set of issues, but prop three in particular, really both of them in particular, but prop three, I wanted to just bring up because that has now gone through, like you said, this two biennium four year process. Um, I really, it does not seem that people really knew what they were voting for, uh, but the bottom line is this is your right to organize, to unionize, which we already have, we have that right in our first amendment.
And so what we’re now moving into is the risks around this prop in the second part, where it says that the legislature would not be able to intervene or, or, um, negate or diminish any of the work done by a union. And so this is where you are really putting at risk employees at the expense or you’re, you’re empowering unions at the expense of the employees. And the thing that bothers me about putting this kind of stuff into the constitution, it’s, it goes back to the no cash bail and the revolving door.
We realize now after decades that that was a mistake. Okay. And we’re doing, we’re going to try to do things to correct it.
Right. Putting prop three in without a better examination because I voted no. Yeah.
I’m going to vote no. When I get my ballot, thankfully. Yes.
It it’s going to create the same problem we had with no cash bail. I’m going to have, I’m going to have constituents coming to me with a problem. Can you fix this? And my response, unfortunately, if this passes is going to be, no, I can’t help you.
Right. And my hands are tied. I can for four years, unless we get the, this process to repeal it because the legislator legislature would be made power powerless except to take it out of the constitution.
And this is where, you know, if a union was overreaching, if they were, and it’s also, this is protecting private unions over the employees again, because the public unions, there was the Supreme court ruling, the Janice decision that said, if you’re part of a public union, you can opt out and you don’t have to pay fees. Whereas if this passes, what ends up happening is in a private sector union, you, it will be, it could absolutely be as it already is in some places, a condition of employment that you are part of that union, meaning they can give money to people who they want to support politically. They can give money to political causes or social causes, things that you may not support or want to be a part of, but you wouldn’t have a right to pay those dues.
Exactly. And the legislature couldn’t come in. And the other part that I think is really upsetting, and there was some polling done around this question is with the public sector unions, when the unions are negotiating contracts with state employees, if there is something that is going way beyond the means of what the taxpayers could do, or the state of Vermont could handle again, the legislature’s hands would be tied.
So this is a direct affordability issue for Vermont taxpayers as well. So there’s a real, there’s definitely a lot of risk around this and there’s already businesses like Healthy Living, I think we had mentioned, struggling with this situation, Hunger Mountain Co-op struggling with this situation. And I will also say, I think it’s important for listeners to understand that the only other state that has done this in their constitution is Illinois.
And there was already massive litigation happening around this. So it’s not, why would we be experimenting with Vermont in this situation? Well, there’s been a lot of experimenting with the state of Vermont. I know, it’s so true, so true.
But my big concern is we know from the mistake with the no cash bail issue in the constitution, we know with Act 181, there were mistakes made by the legislature. I say mistakes because most, a lot of people, I’m not sure most, a lot of people were very upset with what Act 181 was doing. That was through the legislature and we were able to make changes.
Mistakes were easier to fix. If this goes into the constitution, it’s harder to fix. And the constitution, we need to have way more deliberation.
And I have a problem with just going and putting it, oh, we like this, put it in the constitution. We like this, put it in the constitution. I don’t think the unintended consequences have been considered enough.
No. And if it comes back to bite us, it’s going to be another four year process to reverse it. To even try.
That’s why I’m a no on it. Yes, definitely. And hopefully people will do their research.
And I would encourage people, you can look at rightforvermontfoundation.org to go through and check out some really good information just to try to do some, you know, what is this? This is not just about the ability to organize and form a union. We already have that right guaranteed to us. This takes a whole step further and empowers unions in a way that could be very detrimental to Vermont and employees in Vermont.
Yeah. Right now we’re a right to work state. And this would basically change that.
Yeah. Well, we would never be. We would never be able to become a right to work state in that situation.
Exactly. So, yeah, well, ladies and gentlemen, I hope you enjoyed the show. I hope you learned something and I hope you found something in the show that will make you want to dig deeper and stay more engaged.
So with that, remember, please stay safe, stay informed, listen to Right Side Up.
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