LAMOILLE, WASHINGTON COUNTY – Incumbent Rep. Dan Noyes (D) is running for reelection in the two-seat Lamoille-Washington House District where Rep. Melanie Carpenter (D) is not running for re-election. The district stretches from Belvidere in the northeast through Johnson and Hyde Park to Wolcott in the southeast. The field includes Republicans Richard Bailey, making a third attempt at the seat, and Mac Teale in his second attempt. Democrat Jim Ryan is making his first attempt to fill one of the seats.
Question: Tell us a bit about your background, why you want to fill the position and why you are a good candidate for it.
Noyes: I live in Wolcott with my wife Amy, we have two adult children. I am the director of the Vermont Association of Senior Centers and Meal Providers. I have been serving in the legislature since 2017, where I’m on the human services committee and work a lot with issues affecting older Vermonters. We just created Age Strong Vermont, which is a long term plan for aging well with a lot of important initiatives I would like to work on implementing: We’re looking at housing, we’re looking at access to services for older Vermonters and making sure the agencies that provide services to them have the funding they need.
I’m interested in how we’re going to work around education funding and how we utilize the money we already have in the system to provide education to our children.
I have been working on the Office of the Child Advocate, and want to continue making sure they have the tools they need to help youth in the custody of the state transition into adulthood. It’s a bill that I’ve worked on for a number of years and a position I created in state government to be an intermediary between DCF and children who are in the custody of the state.
Bailey: I have been a resident in the town of Hyde Park for 31 years. My background has been mostly in the energy field. I’ve sold propane, coal, electric and fuel oil. Part of that background will give me some insight to work with people down in Montpelier regarding taxes on fuels. I don’t think a lot of people in the legislature really know the whole industry, therefore my background would be able to help these people out. My taxes this year went up $900. This is an unsustainable path for everybody in this state. We need to find a way to bring some of this stuff under control; it’s just getting completely out of hand.
Ryan: I am a Wolcott resident. I live on a farm in Wolcott with my partner Katie. We are part-time farmers. We grow blueberries, greenhouse tomatoes and grass-fed beef. I am recently retired from the state of Vermont’s Agency of Natural Resources, where I worked for about 25 years. I did water quality work, watershed assessment, restoration and flood resilience projects. The last eight years I ran a statewide municipal roads stormwater program covering 250 towns. I established the program from scratch and essentially ran the program by myself.
Before working with the state I worked for the federal government, with the USDA in Franklin/Grand Isle county as a solo conservationist working with farmers, doing natural resource planning and water quality projects on their farms. I served two years in Bill Clinton’s Americorps programs in the 1990s. I began my career with a summer job with Vermont Fish and Wildlife and I’m a proud Johnson State College graduate.
Teale: I have worked in the construction business since 1977; in heavy construction and more recently in residential construction. I’ve watched Vermont go from a really neat place to live, with a really interesting and unique culture, to the situation that it’s in now. Much of that culture has been lost and there’s too much emphasis on regulation and taxation. I’d like to try to preserve what’s left of the culture in Vermont. That’s why I’m running for this house seat. Generally when I do something, I work real hard at it and I’m willing to put in the effort for our state.
Question: Taxes keep rising as we address the needs of an increasingly complex society. What’s the right balance between meeting the needs of the population and keeping taxes manageable? How does funding schools fit into that?
Noyes: We have 51 supervisory unions. I proposed we have 16 supervisory unions, drawn around our technical and career centers, because having this overhead is very expensive. We should look at how to reduce costs. I’d like to have some sort of oversight; each of these supervisory unions would put forth their budgets created with their school board, then those 16 budgets would be reviewed to see what’s in them, how different supervisory unions are spending, and try to figure out how to reduce costs, not only at the administration level.
Bailey: That is a tough subject, and it’s one that’s going to need a lot of negotiations and discussions with both sides to try to figure it out, including the teacher’s union. We need some give and take. We can’t be building these buildings. It’s always been my philosophy that buildings don’t teach kids, buildings build empires. And our scores are dropping. I’ve been in situations on the school board where we’ve had a negotiating team for the teachers say we need more money. And we say, well, the test scores are going down. And they said, well, give us more money and the test scores will go up and the test scores don’t go up.
I think Act 60 just kind of put all the money in the state control, where it was more controlled prior to that on the local level. I don’t object to paying for it, but I think if we inject some school choice and some competition into the system, we might get a little give and take with the unions and the teachers and try to get back to the main curriculum of reading, writing and math, science. Those are the things we should be stressing because we’re not meeting those standards out there now.
Ryan: I’m still developing my positions. I’m doing my research and learning about the important issues impacting my district and the state. I’ve been meeting with different organizations, nonprofits and directors of these organizations and doing a lot of reading. I’ve been talking to other representatives and senators. I met with Susan Bartlett and Dan Noyes to get their thoughts on how we approach tough issues like property taxes and school funding.
I am honored to run with Dan Noyes. He’s been a great mentor so far. He has some great ideas on school funding, like reducing the amount of supervisory unions, reducing some of those administrative costs.
Teale: Spending is out of control. There’s too many people in the schools. And I think we need to really have a broad look at education. Because as we’ve been spending more and more money, there’s less and less students. And disturbingly, we’re now seeing our grade scores are not rising. Clearly, we’re not doing something right.
I’d like to have a look at the funding issue and the education issue. Education is a cornerstone of our country. I’m not adverse to paying for it, but I am averse to destructive taxation like we have now. I don’t think my friends in the Democrat Party are going to be able to address that problem. The teachers union has become so powerful in this state I don’t think there’s anything more powerful in this state other than the state itself.
Question: What do you see as the solution to creating affordable home ownership and rental options for Vermonters? How does that work to make Vermont attractive for young people?
Noyes: Rural Vermont is lacking access to housing for older Vermonters. We should be looking at how to remove barriers to allow the development of age-specific housing in these areas. We have a lot of older Vermonters living in rural areas who are now at a point where access to transportation and the maintenance of keeping up one of these homes has become difficult. If there was access to housing in village centers and downtown they would have the opportunity to move there, keeping ties with their social connections and families. This would open up housing stock that is currently not available.
Bailey: Again, another difficult issue for the state. We need to make housing affordable to get the younger folks in here to help beef up our workforce. We could do some serious re-look at Act 250, the modifications that they made didn’t make it easier to build more. I think we need to somehow get those regulations streamlined so builders know what it’s going to cost. If we can lower some of the labor regulations, it might help us out a little bit.
I could sell my house for a fortune, but where would I go? It costs me twice as much to build a new house. I could be in a position that maybe a younger family could move into my house because I’m retired and I may try to downsize, but they wouldn’t be able to afford it. Let’s re-look at workman’s comp. issues. We need to learn more to get more capitalistic in some of these solutions, rather than government solutions.
Ryan: I am a landlord, I have two rental properties and both I try to keep as affordable as I can.
At a state level, we need to do something about short term rentals and second homes. After Covid-19, there was an increase in short term rentals. I’ve renovated three different farmhouses and I think that could be done at a statewide level.
Teale: The housing problem in Vermont is complex. The cost of it is in many ways tied to national trends in the cost of material and labor costs. There isn’t a whole lot of give in that system right now.
I’ve served on the development review board in Hyde Park for 20 some years. Over the course of that time I’ve pointed out that you’ve got all this zoning regulation, regulation of the construction industry and just regulation; that drives up the cost of housing. If you’re looking at the rental side of it, landlords who own the buildings are having to pay ridiculous property taxes and they’re needing to pass that on to their tenants. I certainly think less regulation and a general effort at making particular taxes in Vermont more affordable because we don’t just stagger under the weight of the property tax, our income taxes are pretty high, too.
Question: Gov. Scott seems to be having difficulty striking the right balance between funding housing for homeless people and reducing spending on programs to house the homeless. What do you see as possible solutions to help Vermont’s homeless population?
Noyes: We have to look at the underlying issues a lot of homeless Vermonters are experiencing, whether it’s mental health or drug and alcohol abuse. Since Covid-19, we started using the hotels. I think that’s a bad idea. We need to have more congregate access to shelters where we have those wraparound services, so we can ensure they aren’t in there for an extended period of time. Either get folks into the workforce, into more sustainable housing, but in a lot of cases that’s just not available. We need to make those investments in affordable housing in our village centers and downtowns so people have a place to go, a rental they can afford.
Bailey: The homeless population is growing. I believe, as my running mate has said, we have some that have mental problems. The old-time Vermonters had this figured out. There may have been state hospitals and I believe there were three levels. There were people who needed a place to stay. I think we need to go back to that where we can, building homeless shelters.
Ryan: The motel program has been a good stop-gap measure. There’s been recent caps on the allowed length of stay; that’s 60 days now. It should be considered a short term stop-gap measure. Some of that funding could be used for a more middle of the road step and address the longer term problem of getting people into affordable homes. Morrisville has started a program for more affordable housing. There is potential for more programs like that, or renovating old farmhouses that are underutilized. Supporting programs that keep seniors in their homes but allow them to share that space, while helping that elderly person out. These are programs we should fully support.
Teale: It’s a multifaceted problem. There are people who are trying to work and aren’t making enough money to pay for housing: they might have kids. There’s a pretty good part of the homeless population that clearly have psychiatric problems. And at some point it was decided in this country that we need to close down all the psychiatric institutions and mainstream the people. We need psychiatric facilities and more psychiatric help for people.
The drug problem is playing a huge role in the homeless crisis. Part of the way to deal with that is with law enforcement. Should you put people that are involved in drugs in jail? We need to find solutions for people who are struggling financially and have kids.
Question: How can the state meet the challenges of maintaining the state and town infrastructure of roads, bridges, water and sewer systems as weather events are increasingly destructive? As more vehicles become electric and the gas tax becomes less effective at funding those needs, how can that funding gap be filled?
Noyes: We need to look at our culverts, the alignments, the road ditching and how our roads are constructed. We’ve been working on having culvert inventories: making sure they are built correctly to take these catastrophic flood events. We can’t afford to keep fixing them. We just have to build them right but that’s expensive. We are going to have to figure out a system, as people start driving more efficient cars, that is equitable and ensures we are all paying to use the infrastructure we have.
Bailey: I served on the transportation board and that issue was brought up about electric vehicles. I just said to one of the state employees giving the seminar: you need to figure out how you’re going to get the equivalent tax that a gas running vehicle pays in the registration.
So if you need to make the registration $1,000 a year, and they have to pay another surcharge on top of that, because they are electric. I’m not against people having electric cars or going green, but I don’t want it. I don’t think we can afford to subsidize it anymore.
We need to make sure the taxes coming in are used to fix the bridges and fix the roads and not go doing extra stuff that really isn’t relevant to get moved around in the state.
As for the resilience to the towns with the change, the flooding, I agree with my running mate, we need to be talking to ANR and we need to run some test areas about dredging out some of these rivers.
Ryan: Lamoille County and Hardwick have been hit by three different floods in the last year. I was a municipal roads and stormwater program manager, I established the road and bridge standards for the state of Vermont. I’m currently working with the town of Wolcott as a volunteer to bring their roads up to the standards that would make them more flood resilient by putting in better drainage ditch practices, upsizing culverts, removing high road shoulders and things of that nature. There’s a lot of good programs in the state of Vermont. The Department of Environmental Conservation is doing floodplain restoration, when rivers cant access their floodplain they cause a lot of erosion damage. Where we sometimes have vacant lots or abandoned farm fields we can allow the river to access their floodplain to take some pressure off the streambanks and off of properties in built up environments.
I would support a bill charging the owners of electric vehicles a fee because they don’t have to fill up their tanks. At the same time I would support more electric cars on the road. As well as potentially having a gas tax increase tied to inflation, so that can go up as we see reduced income from that. I would want to be sure this wasn’t a regressive tax that impacts low income Vermonters.
Teale: I’m not at all convinced that electric vehicles will take over from internal combustion vehicles until that technology is perfected. The batteries are heavy. Mining lithium for the batteries is a super water-intensive process called evaporative mining. It’s environmentally very unfriendly.
I don’t think we have adequate electricity. If everybody had an electric vehicle today, we wouldn’t have the power to run them. They’re not good when they catch on fire.I think that technology needs to be developed further before it’s embraced by the whole country. I don’t think the sales of electric cars are doing very well right now, and that might be a market response that we’re not ready for this.
We need to dredge the rivers. We could use computer modeling to inform us where that dredging would take place. If there are areas we can flood without destroying farmers’ fields or destroying our villages, then we can do that. We have not kept up with our road infrastructure, culverts and bridges, and that all needs to be fixed anyway.
Question: Please share your perspective on how the issue of abortion should be addressed in our state and country. What specific policies do you support to ensure women’s health and reproductive rights are adequately considered?
Noyes: I supported the constitutional amendment to protect abortion in our state. It started in my committee. I supported it there and then supported it on the floor. We have done a really good job making sure women’s reproductive rights have been protected in our state.
Bailey: In the state of Vermont the people have spoken. We’ve adjusted the constitution and we have the statutes there to protect the woman. In this election for my house seat, it’s a non-issue. On a nationwide basis, I do agree with the Supreme Court: It’s a state’s issue to decide what they want to do.
Ryan: I fully support women’s access to abortion and reproductive rights for women. That decision is between a woman, her physician and her family. There shouldn’t be any controls on a state or federal level. I believe the state legislature passed a bill last session to support that given the supreme court’s decisions.
Teale: I don’t personally believe that the government has any place telling a woman that she’s either going to have a baby or not going to have a baby. I don’t think that’s the role of the government. Vermont has done quite a good job of protecting women’s rights. I have a wife and a daughter. I love women. I care about women. I think the public would find a surprising number of Republicans would just as soon have the abortion issue just go away.
Do you have to have some regulation? Probably you do. I would imagine all sorts of medical procedures have regulations that are agreed upon between the politicians and the medical community. As far as a woman’s right to make her own choices for her body, that’s where I’m at, not the government.
Question: Is there anything we haven’t asked you about that you’d like to share and might be important to your constituents?
Noyes: Many low-income Vermonters, transitioning from Medicaid to Medicare, are faced with new co-pays and deductibles. We increased the eligibility for Medicare savings, because the eligibility for it was so low. A six dollar increase in someone’s social security made them ineligible, forcing them to spend up to three thousand a year on healthcare. These are people making less than twenty-four thousand a year. We were able to increase the eligibility for that program so people didn’t have to choose between buying food or going to a doctor’s appointment.
Bailey: With my business background, I think it’s lacking down in Montpelier. We need to look at some capitalistic solutions to some of these problems rather than tax and spend. We’ve been going down this road and taxes have gone up horrendously.
When I first moved into Hyde Park I think my taxes were a thousand dollars. This year it’s almost $7,800. That’s since 1993. We should freeze the state budget for 10 years and make the government work with that money. We can’t afford any more. Let’s try it and see what happens.
Ryan: There needs to be some common sense in the state house. I’m a very practical person. I’m open minded. I’m willing to hear all sides of an issue. I’m willing to work with Republicans, the governor, with progressives and not necessarily vote party lines on every issue. If the Democrats lose their supermajority in the statehouse, that will force Democrats and Republicans to work together to get some bills passed across the governor’s desk and avoid a veto.
Teale: Well, you know, the river science thing, There’s a farm on the way from Morrisville to Stowe with a beautiful field across the street from the farmhouse and the barn. If you go by that field now, there’s all these debarked trees out in the middle of the field and there’s this huge sandbar and it’s destroyed. You go up North Wolcott Road and it’s the same thing. The wild Branch has chewed into the road. It used to be really good trout fishing. Friends of mine grew up there. There’s no trout anymore. I’m unsure of the river science
Throughout the course of human history, there’s been all kinds of science and some of it was decided to be irrelevant.
