HARDWICK – Roughly a dozen people turned out at the Hazen Union School library for a Politics and Pie event, Monday, Oct. 21, put on by Hardwick Community Television (HCTV) and The Hardwick Gazette.
Caledonia County Senate Candidates Scott Beck and Amanda Cochrane were on hand to share their ideas for taking on Vermont’s pressing issues of education funding, universal school lunches, universal pre-K education, housing, homelessness and substance misuse.
Sabrina Morrison, running for Vermont House in the Caledonia County 2 District to represent Hardwick, Walden and Stannard, had a chance to share her thoughts about that position during an open response period toward the end.
The conversation often touched on tax policy as the means to achieve ends of reducing the tax burden on Vermonters that both candidates and most attendees seemed to generally agree on.
All three candidates stayed for small group conversations with potential constituents during the pie and brownie segment of the evening following the structured question and answer period making up most of the evening.
Mike Southworth, also running for the House seat, declined to attend. Many have already returned mail-in ballots, he said, adding, “It’s very late, this should have been done a month ago.” He’s been going door-to-door, saying he feels he’s achieved what he’d hoped to with his campaign.
HCTV’s new Executive Director Macy Molleur, who has been at the job for just over a month, introduced herself and welcomed everyone to the event being recorded by HCTV to be broadcast later.
Jan Meuller, who did the bulk of organizing the event, began by laying out basic guidelines to help keep the conversation respectful and genuine. He suggested the goal was to look for consensus wherever possible and for those asking and answering questions to be tough on the questions, but soft on each other.
Beck shared his personal history to begin, noting his civic contributions and experience as a five-term member of the Vermont House. He said he approaches issues first from a policy perspective, only venturing into politics when it’s essential to moving policies he sees as important forward.
He styled himself a centrist, saying he’s won an award for being so. With issues he’s working on, he looks to take a block of constituents from the middle of the spectrum, and ignores both extremes in the hope of coming to solutions that two-thirds or three-quarters of his colleagues agree on.
Cochrane’s opportunity to share her interest in the position came next as she shared that Sen. Jane Kitchel, who’s served in state government since 1967 and as Caledonia County’s Senator for almost 20 years, had asked her to run. She said she feels her moderate voice is important with so many moderate senators departing the Senate this term.
She’s running to help marginalized people, be innovative and be a strong moderate voice in the legislature, she said. She cited experience gained in the fiscal management of nonprofit organizations and working on environmental justice after earning an MBA in nonprofit management.
Mueller’s first question was about school funding and the impact of the property tax. Beck had the first opportunity to respond, saying he sees three fixes necessary to provide transparency to school funding.
Already set to take effect in FY26 is reform of the Common Level of Appraisal (CLA) process used to adjust locally assessed property values to their estimated fair market value, he said. That legislation passed in a bill Beck said he worked on while serving on the House Ways and Means Committee.
School spending decisions not being closely connected to the tax rate is the second area needing attention, he said. He suggested giving weighted grants to schools in an amount equal to the roughly $10,000 available from non-tax sources, leaving towns to levy property taxes for funding above that.
His third suggestion is to remove the Property Tax Credit and have taxpayers deduct the credit from their taxes as many other states now do. Later, in response to a question about those without tax liabilities to support the credit, he suggested it could be made refundable and a low-income cash flow protector could be implemented.
Cochrane said she felt the current Property Tax Credit seemed best for many and Beck’s suggestion seemed to be adding another thing to administer.
Cochrane pointed out increases in school budgets are not improving school outcomes, suggesting perhaps the right things are not being measured. She sees schools taking on the costs of areas not directly related to student outcomes, such as mental health and dealing with the capital expenses of construction as potential areas that might be moved out of school budgets.
Schools can look for ways to partner with other organizations and ways can be found to make the timing of grant opportunities fit in better with the budgeting process to reduce school costs, she suggested.
Nancy Notterman asked a followup question about the potential of moving to fund schools through an income tax. Both candidates said they saw that as unlikely, agreeing an additional tax on top of an already high income tax is unlikely to gain support.
On the issue of universal pre-K schooling, Cochrane said her experience working to administer child care assistance that became newly available with 2023’s Act 76, leads her to suggest it be given a chance to work.
Beck said legislation, passed just before he was first elected to the House 10 years ago, put schools and private pre-K in conflict over limited resources. For now he suggested districts must work with area providers to develop complementary services, but that leaves Vermont with a patchwork of solutions, which isn’t ideal. The original $3M cost has become $40M.
Judith Ruskin asked about options to offer schooling that offers more of an arts and nature-based curriculum, perhaps with charter schools. Beck indicated he does not know much about them, but sees funding unlikely because of pressure the National Education Association and others would exert to prevent them. Cochrane agreed.
Sarah Houston asked Beck to explain who were the non-teachers he mentioned in a comment he made when noting the 4-to-1 ratio of students to staff in Vermont is much higher than in other states. He said 80% of the cost of education funds employees, thus raising the ratio to 5-to-1 would make a big difference in reducing costs.
Mueller turned the conversation to policies and how Vermont does business, asking both candidates how the state can learn from others.
Beck took that opportunity to point to the legislative supermajority as a problem because it shifts the conversation, so instead of swirling around the middle, it is shifted to the left. He suggested the legislature needs to look at ideas with broad support to move the state forward effectively.
Cochrane said she would look to those close to each issue for suggestions, using small-e experts to work on them from an on-the-ground perspective. She said the state lacks vision, noting Governor Scott provided strong leadership during the Covid-19 pandemic and recent floods.
She then turned the conversation to housing, sharing a report she said identifies a need for 36,000 additional housing units between now and 2029.
To a question about specifically what kind of vision and bean-counting is needed to create that many housing units, Beck began by saying most builders are working on high-end homes and it doesn’t make sense for them to take on construction of basic dwellings. There’s a need to reduce construction costs because public money doesn’t exist to solve the problem.
Cochrane shared her difficulty helping people find housing in her work at Umbrella in St. Johnsbury. She agreed with Beck that there isn’t enough public money to solve the problem, identifying Act 250 reform and the need for a comprehensive solution that looks to the bigger picture. She noted there’s a lack of rural examples elsewhere in the country to follow, saying new homes need to be built for one to three people on smaller lots, rather than the large families many rural homes were built to accommodate.
Beck noted areas of the country doing better than Vermont have simpler regulation and permitting. He suggested higher density housing and abandoning the one-off model most housing here now follows, for easier and less expensive to construct more similar homes, would lower costs too.
To an open, candidate’s choice question, Cochrane pointed to substance misuse and public safety as an issue raised by many voters. While we’re doing a lot to address the use of fentanyl and overdoses, she said we need to find ways to offer support and perhaps housing for those exiting treatment programs limited to two weeks.
Cohrane emphasized she brings experience working on behalf of those facing challenges, pointing to her collaborative approach and ability to be persuasive when necessary.
Beck said Vermont’s several decades of increased taxation and increased spending are a by-product of that philosophy. He pointed to the need to focus on innovation and efficiency, citing his work on corporate tax reform and the Common Level of Appraisal.
Morrison said she’s new to politics, but has experience serving on three school boards while raising her family and keeping up a family farm. “What’s happening in Montpelier doesn’t always address local needs,” she said in bringing the question and answer portion of the evening to an end.
Guests broke up into small groups to enjoy the pie and visit with candidates, getting to know them better in an unstructured environment.
A video recording of this event will be posted soon at HCTV.us.
Paul Fixx is editor of The Hardwick Gazette and lives in Hardwick.