Oct 20 Addison-3 Candidate Forum Questions
1. Affordability
The cost of living in Vermont – including property taxes and housing – is a significant concern for many people in our community. What specific actions would you support to improve affordability, and what tradeoffs or funding choices would those actions require?
First, let’s define “affordability”. For me, it means letting workers keep more of what they earn and spend less on housing, taxes, and healthcare. Why? Because that will spur more innovation and business growth and keep more young working Vermonters in Vermont which is what we need.
For others, “affordability” means more government subsidies to help pay for all these things, which in turn means higher taxes and wealth redistribution. People say to me “Rob, we need to tax the rich - make them pay their fair share!” So I looked into it and it turns out - WE ALREADY DO! We are one of the most progressive taxation states in the nation! Our top 1% of earners pay nearly a ⅓ of our income tax. The top 10% pays nearly ⅔ of the total income taxes and the bottom 50% of earners pay essentially NOTHING or actually GET money from the state, so half the earners don’t pay anything into all the services our state provides.
Top taxpayers are already leaving. I know several people from our area who have left or are planning to shortly. With upwards of $50K/yr property taxes, it's no wonder! And if you want to add a wealth tax on all millionaires in Vermont, well, the statistics say that likely includes most of you in this room. Given our demographics and home values, it turns out over a ⅓ of all Vermonters have a net worth of $1M or more and would be taxed even heavier if we “taxed the rich”. You want to see even more working people and people with money that support our economy leave the state? Add a wealth tax. There would be a mass exodus.
2. Education
Vermont is making significant changes to the structure and funding of public education. Looking ahead five years, what should Vermont's education system accomplish for students, taxpayers, and communities, and what changes are needed now to achieve those goals?
Vermont’s Education system is in crisis. This chart tells it all. The best performing states are in the upper left - low cost and high performing, and there are many of them. Vermont is all by ourselves in the bottom right, highly expensive and poorly performing. Change is both necessary and possible.
Governor Scott’s AOE has already hired some of the same people that helped these states in the upper left get to where they are and we’re implementing the same literacy, math, & assessment protocols that the best states use & starting to see improvements.
To reduce costs we need to continue the foundation formula and district expansion that we started with Acts 73 and 170. We keep the same schools, just expand the district boundaries to include more existing schools within a single set of administration. Our problem is that we have 3 times the number of administrative and nonteaching staff as the best schools up here (upper left). We have about 7,800 teachers, and we need to keep them all, but we have over 11,000 non teaching staff! That ratio is nearly three times too big. We need to reduce that towards 4 or 5,000 by merging district administration and sharing administrative services, IT, HR, finance, maintenance, and transportation costs.
What needs to be done this next legislative session is to
Clarify budgeting for our highly valuable CTE centers
Shorten the delay to full effectivity
Define clear savings targets and incentives for achieving them
This is change and change is hard, but every business goes through hard times. We're Vermonters. We do hard things. We can do this, for our children and for our future.
3. Housing
Vermont needs significantly more housing, but there are legitimate concerns about where and how that housing is built. What would you change about Vermont's current approach to housing development, and how would you balance statewide housing needs with local priorities?
Business owners across Vermont say they can’t find staff because workers can’t find affordable housing. This is the primary root cause of many of our problems. “Affordable housing” does not just mean government subsidized housing. It means a livable house that a working Vermonter can afford to mortgage and own. Two things drive housing cost: availability (supply and demand) and property taxes. Property taxes were addressed in the Education discussion.
Availability and affordability will increase when the costs of building and refurbishing a home come down. Right now, building costs are driven by our complicated and siloed permitting processes. Repealing necessary environmental protections is NOT what we want to do. Making it stop blocking housing in places where we want housing IS.
First, we need to continue what IS working, such as: CHIP to finance roads and utility infrastructure; Act 250 exemptions for housing construction in designated areas; VHIP and MHIP programs to bring Vermont’s aging housing stock back into service; and first time home financing aid through VHFA.
But infrastructure funding and financing trapped in a multi-year permit cycle doesn’t get us there. The next key step is to improve permitting predictability, speed, and costs by:
Requiring a one-stop-shop for all housing permit applications,
Concurrent permit reviews
Transparent application status,
Hard deadlines for housing permits,
Energy code flexibility to keep prices down, and
Various permit and mitigation fee reductions.
This will have the double effect of reducing housing costs for existing Vermonters and attracting more people to Vermont, which will improve our entire economy and reduce the $73M/yr the state spends on housing the homeless.
4. Health care
Vermonters are facing rising health care and insurance costs, while many rural communities struggle to maintain access to providers. What specific legislative actions would you support to address both affordability and access?
According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, the “benchmark” silver insurance plan premium in Vermont is a staggering $15,600. That’s more than three times the $4,800 for the same plan in New Hampshire.
Why is there such a big difference? During the 1990s, ME, NH, and VT all adopted similar restrictions on health insurance pricing to pursue government-run “single-payer” healthcare systems. This was a major system change. Governor Shumlin ended that effort in 2014 deeming it “not financially viable”, yet many of those policies remain in VT statute today!
Both ME and NH legislatures modernized their policies after prices skyrocketed. Costs in their states came down. People came back to the insurance market and premiums fell by thousands of dollars for young adults and people in their 60’s. We can do that too!
While universal healthcare may sound like a simple answer, we’ve tried the seismic shift method and it doesn’t work. I have talked with Bob Ortmeyer, President of Porter Hospital and asked him about universal healthcare and he immediately responded “No, not in our lifetime.”
What does work, as our neighboring states found, is exactly what Governor Scott initiated in his Executive Order, this summer:
Allow insurance plan age rating so younger people can rejoin the insurance pool thus reducing everyone’s rates;
Add Non-tobacco and other healthy living incentives;
Capture federal innovation waiver dollars we currently miss;
Allow Association Health Plans and stop-loss rules; and
Protect the vulnerable with guaranteed-issue insurance for pre-existing conditions.
We MUST follow-through on these significant common-sense statutory policies laid out by the Governor. We do NOT need an expensive seismic system redesign like any form of universal care would be.
5. State spending and fiscal responsibility
Vermont has many important needs, but there are limits to what taxpayers can afford. If elected, what policies or programs would you prioritize, where do you believe spending could be reduced or eliminated, and if necessary how would you propose raising additional revenues?
Our affordability crisis dictates that the status quo is not sustainable. We have both a spending problem and a revenue problem. Vermont’s state budget has increased by 62% since 2019 that's double the inflation rate. Our tax burden as a percentage of median income is highest in the nation. Vermont has double the budget and ½ the people as New Hampshire, so it is possible to live well on much less.
We should increase revenue by growing the number of taxpayers, NOT by raising taxes on the same people who are already here. Our net migration is currently negative. When we fix our affordability problem, we can turn that around and enjoy the associated revenue growth.
We’ve already discussed how to reduce spending in Education, Housing, and Healthcare. Our other spending problem in Vermont is death by a thousand cuts. A million dollars here, a million dollars there, and it all adds up to A LOT of money.
Here’s a specific example. The AERAP collected ~$1M from tax payers in 2024 to pay for fixing car exhaust systems for people who can’t afford it. After spending over $200K in 18mo, the program helped a grand total of 3 Vermonters for a total of $5,000. That’s $5K out of $1M! That’s 0.5% effective. I asked for the rest of the money to be returned to the taxpayers last budget cycle and the answer was No. Our state budget is chock full of this type of inefficiency.
It takes some real digging and fortitude to find, understand, and rectify this type of over-spending. That is a legislator’s job.
6. Public safety, mental health, and substance use
Vermont communities are facing interconnected challenges involving substance use, mental health, homelessness, and public safety. What specific actions should the state take to help address these problems, and what role should local communities play?
One of the reasons I moved to Vermont 33 years ago was its safety record. I frequently spent afternoons and evenings on Burlington’s bike path or Church Street. But no more. People I talk to say the same thing. “Why are those arrested simply returned to the streets only to recommit the same crimes?”
One of the biggest concerns for me is the “catch and release” process which allows those arrested and charged with a serious crime, even including death of the victim, to be released back on the streets before their trial, with the possibility of further endangering the community. Unfortunately, it will require a change to the Vermont constitution to resolve this problem. It’s a lengthy process but one that I and my fellow Republicans have promised to initiate.
Another problem preventing juvenile accountability is the "Raise the Age" law which allows older teens and young adults, currently age 18 but eventually up to age 22, to avoid meaningful consequences for serious crimes by being treated as “children” in the family court system rather than as adults in criminal court. DCF is already overwhelmed and can’t handle more offenders being considered “children”. The legislature will need to address this again in the coming biennium.
There are other laws that should be changed to enhance accountability. I have already begun working with the family of Kyle Conner on a bill to increase accountability for DUI convictions. If you want Justice for Kyle, vote for me. The safety of our families and children is a high priority for me.
7. Economic development
What can the Legislature do to make it easier for businesses to start, grow, and create good-paying jobs in Vermont, particularly in rural communities? Are there new policies you would propose or current policies or regulations you would change to achieve that goal?
Vermont already has good targeted business assistance programs like VEGI, STEP, Elevate, and Brownfield Revitalization. And we have businesses that use and promote the Vermont brand well like Vermont Cookie Love, Dakin Farms, and Beta Technologies.
What business owners tell me they need is relief from the stack of burdensome policies that drove the need for all the targeted assistance programs in the first place. Even with all our natural beauty, Vermont’s net migration is negative. We are losing our most precious resource: our children.
Business owners tell me:
They can’t find staff because housing is scarce and expensive,
Taxes punish profitable business years and crush growth, and
Permitting is a huge barrier to those trying to expand.
At the Northlands Job Corps Community Relations Day a couple weeks ago, Kevin Chu of the Vermont Futures Project confirmed that across all states there is a strong correlation between out-migration and low housing permits per capita. That is a huge clue.
What should we do therefore? Follow Governor Scott’s lead:
Make permitting faster and predictable;
Build enough housing so workers can live here; and
Reduce the tax load.
Businesses will thrive when workers can afford to stay and success is not penalized. Vermont is a beautiful place to live and work. Our policies should stop making that a luxury. Re-elect Rob North and Joe Baker to ensure this happens.
Closing Remarks
Friends and constituents, I hope you’ve enjoyed getting to know us a bit better here this evening.
I have faithfully served you and regularly communicated to you exactly what is going on in the state house with my newsletters. I’m actively engaged in our community and frequently respond to calls for help from constituents.
Last year I started a local Advisory Committee on Clean Water and Agriculture (ACCWA) and have successfully begun to ease the tensions between lakefront property owners and Farmers right here in our towns. We’re enacting plans to install a new Phosphorous reduction filter system in a farmer’s field right here in our district!. This is revolutionary. I’m not waiting for the state or feds to act. I’m doing this right here, right now.
Just a couple weeks ago I responded to a plea from Heidi Giroux, the new owner of the Early Childhood Learning Center in North Ferrisburgh to support her zoning permit application. I promptly attended the zoning board meeting. Zoning administrator Katie is doing a great job. Last I heard Heidi’s application is being approved.
Folks, Vermont is in crisis. We’re at a cross-roads. And YOU get to decide our future. Will we continue on the path of increased spending, increased taxes, unaffordable housing, sub-par and expensive education system, and highest cost healthcare in the nation?
If you, like me, have had enough of that, then it’s time for a change in leadership in our Legislature. The group that got us here is NOT the same group of people and policies that are going to get us out.
After 30 years of progressive democrat control this state needs a change in the right direction. Vote for me, Rob North, and my colleague Joe Baker. The experienced team who is able to make real change for Vermonters.
Stay tuned and stay engaged.
I remain honored to be your Representative,
Rob North
Addison, Ferrisburgh, New Haven, Panton, Vergennes, and Waltham
