by James Dwinell Christine Hallquist already has made history and will need to make more to become Vermont’s next governor. The former CEO of Vermont Electric Cooperative and an engineer by education, Hallquist is the first transgender, major-party candidate for governor in the nation. But the Democratic contender also will need to reverse a near-60-year trend in Vermont. To beat Republican Governor Phil Scott, she’ll have to unseat an incumbent, which hasn’t happened here since 1962 when Phil Hoff beat Republican F Ray Keyser Jr. This article will also run in the October issue of Vermont Business Magazine. One on Phil Scott ran in the September issue.
VBM: Do you support Act 60 or does it need changes?
Hallquist: The property tax system has been a flawed model ever since it started. Look at what happened after World War II. The federal government incentivized housing. They created zones of success with targeted loans allowing folks to build houses, then businesses came in to service the new developments. They isolated people of color in different areas and did not provide the same sort of help. We didn’t give them the opportunity to grow equity in their homes.
So in the white areas, wealth grew with the equity in the homes, that money was available to folks to send their kids to school and so forth. Thus the property tax was flawed from the beginning.
When I was on the Hyde Park school board, we filed for Act 60. In Vermont we had similar zones, marginalized communities in Vermont that aren’t getting equal treatment. The exacerbates the opportunity gap. I believe in creating opportunity for all. We need to move away from the property tax to fund schools.
VBM: At the time of passing Act 60, the legislature did not decide what it was that the state should fund. For example, if there was a chamber music program in South Burlington, should the state fund a chamber music program in Hyde Park, or just reading, writing, and arithmetic so to speak?
Hallquist: I think that teachers, school boards, and basically employees know the best answers, certainly management does not. Good answers come from employees. One of the principles in the cooperative electric business is that each firm is autonomous. You have to let each school be autonomous.
VBM: Are our schools good enough?
Hallquist: We can always improve everything. Nothing is ever good enough. We are the most rural state in the country. There is a clear connection between density and cost which makes us more expensive than more suburban states. The high per pupil cost is driven by this. I think that we can change this demographic.
We are seeing increasing levels of poverty, flights to the city, and an aging population leading to the changing demographic. We changed this in the 1930s. The cities had electricity but rural America did not. Two thirds of Vermonters live in rural areas as defined by the federal government, that being the whole state excluding Chittenden County.
We electrified rural American running wires to every home and business, radically changing that demographic. We did then, and we can today by connecting every home and business to fiber optic cable, we will be able to grow our population to what I consider ideal, 750,000, by creating that infrastructure. People want to live in Vermont.
The worst thing that we can do is to close our small schools.
VBM: Are you talking about Act 46?
Hallquist: Act 46 has accomplished its goal. We have 90 towns which have followed the rules. Though as we close small high schools, we encourage private schools as the kids are tuitioned out. This is a clear attack on public education.
VBM: Are you in favor of a statewide teachers’ contract?
Hallquist: A statewide teachers’ contract will cost the state more money. Most union trouble is created by poor leadership leading to poor morale. Rarely are unions interested in money.
I think that when teachers are intimately involved with the town, they will negotiate better with that town than they would with the state. If you remove that emotional commitment, then it is all about money.
So, no, I am not in favor of a statewide teacher contract as it will cost the state more money.
VBM: Do you support a statewide teacher health care contract?
Hallquist: If it had been a good idea two years ago, the teachers would have obviously supported it, and they didn’t.
VBM: Are you concerned about our very low adult-to-student ratio on our schools?
Hallquist: I think that the state needs to work collaboratively with the teachers and the school boards to improve the educational outcome. Class size concern is totally blind thinking.
VBM: Should the Vermont Department of Education provide professional help to school boards in negotiating contracts with teachers?
Hallquist: That would be up to the school boards. The communities want to solve issues.
VBM: How does Vermont grow to 750,000 folks?
Hallquist: By growing the rural economy which will bring more people in.
VBM: One of the constant issues in attracting new employees from out of state is the high cost of housing.
Hallquist: We need to subsidize housing. Back in the ‘60s, the minimum wage was enough for a two-bedroom home. Today it is not. If the minimum wage had grown with inflation it would be $22 an hour, and that would be enough to have a two-bedroom home. We need to raise the minimum wage. Otherwise we will grow the homeless population.
VBM: How high will our taxes go to do this?
Hallquist: This all depends on our values. This is what this election is all about. We know that the working class has been duped. I think that there is a revolution coming in this country. For every action, there is a reaction. The election of 2016 energized and woke up folks.
VBM: Are you a supporter of property tax income adjustment?
Hallquist: I am not familiar with that.
We have a divided state today. We need to decide where we want to go. I think that we need to make strategic investments. Just saying no to taxes is a no-brain activity.
I ran an electric utility and people would ask, when will my rates come down? They will never go down. We have to pay for things, how we collect taxes we will have to decided collectively. We have to decide what we want to do and fund that.
VBM: The adjustment is a program where about 70 percent of Vermonters pay property tax somewhat based on their income, generally not more than 2 percent of your income. Do you support that?
Hallquist: That makes sense. I am an advocate for making our tax structure more fair. Some years ago when I did my daughter’s taxes, I was shocked that she was paying a higher tax rate than I. That’s not fair. People should pay their fair share. If I am a wealthy person and writing off many things against my taxes, then I am not paying my fair share. It never occurred to me how unfair the system was until then.
VBM: Do you support the current use tax program?
Hallquist: Overall yes, but there will be no program that is off the table in making a more fair tax system.
VBM: Does Act 250 need updating?
Hallquist: Act 250 is a very good program. It needs to be made more effective in housing construction. I am a big believer in high density construction, going up, not out. We need to construct incentives for developers who do high density housing development. Act 250 needs to allow for this.
VBM: Do you support subsidizing housing?
Hallquist: We absolutely have to subsidize housing. Let me tell you why. If you look at the minimum wage adjusted for inflation since the late 1960s, it would be $22 an hour, or $44,000 a year, plus benefits equaling $55,000 a year.
We have had a systematic attack on the working class and the unions since President Reagan. The working class has not received a raise since then.
It costs $250,000 to build a two-bedroom unit. At $22 an hour, one could support a mortgage on a $250,000 unit. Because we do not pay a living wage of $22 an hour, they will be homeless.
Are we a civilized society? A living wage, Medicare for all, and ending homelessness is what a civilized society would provide. Until we get to a living wage, we will have to subsidize housing. Accepting the fact that we are an uncivilized society does not work for me. So we will have to subsidize housing.
VBM: How will this be funded?
Hallquist: By us. This is what this election is all about. This election is about how we know that the working class has been duped. I think that there is a revolution in this country. For every action, there is a reaction. We are seeing a reaction to the election of President Trump in 2016.
We have to figure out what to do with our divided state on taxes, where do we want to go? We need strategic investments. We need to work together. We have to pay for these things.
VBM: Let’s talk about prisons for a moment. Governors Shumlin and Scott each said that Vermont should consider looking differently at crimes that are evil where the perpetrators were dangerous and crimes that makes us mad.
Hallquist: That makes sense to me. Let’s talk about substance abuse. Vermont has been making progress because we have recognized that it is mental health issue. Putting people in jail for substance abuse is a flawed strategy.
In Burlington, the Howard Safe Recovery Center with little money has made great strides towards users using clean needles and with needle exchange, so we’re not finding used needles on streets and in parks. Clean needles also help to reduce heart related issues. We can afford to do more of this. In the end, it saves us money.
We are beginning to understand that spending $63,000 per year to incarcerate someone with drug issues is not a good idea. We can use that money to pay for mental health instead.
VBM: Do you support shipping inmates out of state?
Hallquist: I’m in favor of bringing prisoners back to Vermont and cutting our prison population in half by following the ACLU plan. I don’t know the detail but you can read it online.
VBM: Are you open to reviewing existing prisoner’s sentences as sentencing has evolved over the years?
Hallquist: Sure.
VBM: Do you support Vermont restoring “good time”?
Hallquist: I don’t know enough about that so I would leave that to the experts, though is sounds logical.
VBM: The rivers and lakes are dirty, and most of the blame is placed on the dairy herd, what is your plan to clean up our waterways?
Hallquist: I think that we need to spend approximately $25 million a year based on research done by state treasurer Beth Pearce. That is another strategic investment we need to make.
I want to create the opportunity for dairy farmers to move to more value-added crops. Today we are producing more milk than in the 1960s and consuming less. Farmers are making less money in a market with oversupply.
Our maple industry works well, selling all over the world. It’s not just growing new crops but in the packaging of them. There are cooperative processing and packaging facilities. For example, you move from diary to blueberries to selling blueberry jam, globally, organic, GMO free, and the Vermont brand, and the world is your marketplace. Then you will have a revenue stream coming in from the finished product. The state can help with revolving loan programs to get the farmers started. State government cannot make this happen but it can enable this to happen to help farmers diversify.
VBM: Beth Pearce’s plan is generally one based on a per parcel fee or tax on property, would you support that?
Hallquist: I will support whatever collaborative approach is realized.
VBM: Vermont’s pensions for state workers and teachers have been underfunded for over 30 years. As more teachers are retiring and fewer teachers are employed and paying in, the hole is growing. What will you do?
Hallquist: We will fully fund the pension program. We must make it up, we should not have let this happen.
VBM: Do you support legalizing the production and sale of marijuana?
Hallquist: Yes, we need to move to tax and regulation as quickly as possible. Today, we are in a dangerous place from a safety point of view. People do not know where the pot is coming from. They don’t know if there were herbicides or pesticides used. More dangerous, the pot could be cut with other drugs. And of course there is a tax potential.
VBM: Are you a fan of hemp?
Hallquist: Hemp is a great product. Hemp has the highest production per acre of any product.
VBM: What are your plans for workforce development to provide workers for the thousands of jobs going wanting throughout Vermont?
Hallquist: Our tech schools are pretty awesome. Whenever you want to do something good, you have to fund it.
VBM: How are you going to raise the state’s population to 750,000?
Hallquist: We are going to put a plan together to accomplish that. The plan will include redevelopment of rural downtowns. The only part of Vermont by USDA criteria that is not rural are parts of Chittenden County.
We will string cable fiber to every home and business on our existing phone/electric poles just like we did in the 1930s with electricity. Copper is wholly inadequate for a high-speed network. Fiber is the backbone of cyber communications. There is a myth that rural Vermont has access to the internet. DSL is not the infrastructure that we need to compete.
It will take two years to plan and obtain legislative approval, and five years to build it out. The utilities will build it out with their equipment and poles. And they can borrow money at a very low interest rate and not have to pay it back for 30 years, making it cheaper to do.
VBM: Can you comment on your Medicare for all in Vermont?
Hallquist: We spend eighteen cents of every dollar on health care in America, while European countries spend eight to nine cents. Vermont spends thirty-one cents of every health care dollar on administration, Medicare spends five cents. Can Vermont do this on our own? We tried going down that path and it did not work. I would work collaboratively with other interested and willing states to form a union to accomplish this goal together.
VBM: The state has recently said that our greenhouses gas emissions are going up, not down? What is your plan related to that?
Hallquist: I spent the last two and a half years with the utility installing our system called “solar pathway.” It maps out how to get to 90 percent by 2050 by addressing the technological issues. I would make that the comprehensive energy plan for Vermont as well.
VBM: We are using more fuel as it has become cheaper. How do you change human behavior?
Hallquist: I drive an electric vehicle and it costs me the equivalent of a dollar a gallon. It is cheaper to go away from fossil fuels. The utility got to carbon free in five years without a rate increase. We can solve climate change without it costing more money. Energy was my life until now.
VBM: Thank you.
Click IMAGE for the article on Phil Scott
