It's.

We got our first look this week at the governor's plan to revamp the education system.

And it's nothing short of a sweeping overhaul that would consolidate power at the state level, diminish local control, and upend how schools are funded.

It's all in response, of course, to anger over property tax increases in other states and in the general fund.

We budgeted revenues, but in the education fund, we raise revenues to meet the approved budgets and property taxes end up being the shock absorber.

Plus, just hours after Donald Trump is inaugurated, a Border Patrol agent shot and killed in the Northeast Kingdom.

We have the latest on what we know about that case and perhaps more importantly, on what we still don't know.

All that and more ahead on Vermont this Week.

From the Vermont Public studio in Winooski.

This is Vermont this Week.

Made possible in part by the Lintilhac Foundation and Milne Travel.

Thanks for being with us.

I'm Mark Davis in for Mitch Wertlieb.

It's Friday, January 24th.

We have a lot to get to on today's show.

Joining us on the panel today, we have Lola Duffort from Vermont Public, Carly Berlin from Vtdigger and Vermont Public.

And making his return after nearly six years Neal Goswami editor over at Vtdigger.

Thank you all for being here.

I think, as we noted earlier in the show, odd number of panelists and yet a direct even split between two outlets probably the first time that's ever happened on the show.

We begin with what seems to be topic A in Vermont right now, almost every week.

And that is our education system.

Lola.

The governor signaled in his inaugural address a few weeks ago that he had some big ideas for overhauling education in Vermont.

We learned this week he wasn't kidding.

He was not.

He really decided to go big or go home.

As you mentioned in your intro, this takes direct aim at local control, and it does so on two fronts.

Right?

It says instead of 119 school districts, each with their own school boards, we should have five.

Five school boards, five central offices.

And it also says that instead of local school districts just deciding how much they're going to spend.

And then the state paying that.

The state should decide how much school districts should spend and then give them that amount.

So, you know, a pretty dramatic reversal for how from how we do business today.

What do you make of it now?

I mean, it's hard to overstate just how massive a change this would be.

And how unlikely, even a year or two ago it would be, that the governor could put this type of proposal on the table.

And, and go away unscathed.

Now, it remains to be seen if if this type of bold proposal can get through the legislature.

But the fact that it's out there and he can propose, it really shows you just how pervasive the anger was over rising property taxes.

And it's not it's more than just the districts.

I think they're proposing, moving rulemaking from the the Board of Education to the agency of Education.

So it really is consolidating a lot of power in Montpelier.

And it would just be a massive, massive change from the way we've done things for a very long time here in Vermont.

Yeah.

Well, well, I remember, you know, we worked on a story together last summer, and we found quotes from numerous governors over decades of both parties talking about the need to do something like this.

They were it was eerie how identical governor Scott said things.

Governor, someone said, thanks, Governor Douglas.

Even before that, the brass.

Yes.

The broad strokes notions here are not new at all.

But it also makes you wonder how feasible is the execution of something like this?

I mean, that's the big question.

And there are so many landmines, that Scott and the legislature will have to wade through.

One thing that we don't know yet is how much this formula would actually give to schools.

Right?

And that's a pretty huge unknown at this stage in the process that will dictate, whether or not certain people can support it.

And then there's also the question of choice.

Right.

What do you do in these big regional school districts?

Does that mean that choices expanded, or does it mean that some towns have to give it up?

Kind of either of those scenarios could be pretty big political nonstarters for different constituencies.

So, you know, and then there's also just the, the backlash that we are necessarily going to see against any centralization of power, on this scale, given that, you know, this is Vermont, but, you know, to to Neil's point, I, I, I think it's fascinating that Governor Scott proposed this.

I mean, he's someone who's got, like, such a keen understanding of where the electorate is.

I mean, he's one of the most successful politicians any of us have ever seen operate.

And so, I wonder what this might mean about the conversations the electorate is ready, to have.

Yeah.

And I think the response from Democratic leaders in the legislature is really notable, too.

It was pretty tepid.

In years past, I think they would have attacked this proposal as being unrealistic, knocking down local control.

But they're willing to talk about it.

And I think it's it's an acknowledgment of how people are feeling out there.

Of course, the Vermont NEA, the largest teachers union in Vermont, is, you know, firmly opposed to this already.

But there will be a lot of discussion in the, you know, months and years ahead as we move through this and we'll see where they end up.

We talk about local control, the term.

It's thrown out there a lot for someone who hasn't been in Vermont as long as you have.

Can you sort of speak to and explain like what that what that means to to people in smaller towns, why this is such an important thing?

Yeah.

I mean, I think we have over 100 something school districts.

We have, hundred and 1990.

And what's crazy about that is that getting to 119 was such a crazy fight.

I mean, Neal was here.

I was here during the act 46 wars of ten years ago.

And that's when we went from, like, 300 school districts to 119.

And that was, you know, so it's just so funny that now we're having this conversation absolutely makes 46 look like nothing at all in communities.

Are there so used to having their hype hyper local boards put together school budgets for at times individual schools, not just supervisory unions with multiple schools.

But they're very used to having this done at an extremely local level.

And what the state is proposing now is that these funding choices will be made in Montpelier, not in these towns.

And, you know, we're going to have a lot of reaction over the months ahead from people, and we'll see how they take it.

But it's a massive change.

Well, the governor also sort of made a comment that part of the thinking was effectively that it's easier on the state level to make really hard decisions than it is on the local level, that there had been a sense that perhaps we were punting really tough things.

And by that I mean closing schools, consolidating schools on local volunteers, and not sort of state experts and state professionals, which would seem to indicate that they fully anticipate hard decisions being made or this to be implemented.

They're being very upfront that this plan would contemplate closing schools and, you know, taking that decision away from the hyper local level.

And you're right.

That's the argument they're making.

And I have heard that argument, you know, from Democrats, I've heard it from superintendents.

I don't want to say that all Democrats agree with that or all superintendents.

There's a huge you know, there's diversity of opinion.

But and so Scott's not making it up when he says that he's heard that from folks on the ground.

Another argument that we hear, though a lot from from the governor, from others, is a great deal of concern about the fate of Vermont outside of Chittenden County.

You know, it's not an original thought.

The governor talked about it again, I think in more stark terms than he ever has.

And his inaugural address a few weeks ago, Chittenden County's prospering.

It's the rest of Vermont that we've got to worry about.

However, when we start talking about school and school, consolidate, and it would seem likely that, at least on paper, a lot of the communities and places where some of these hard decisions are going to have to be made thanks to population size, thanks to population projections that might well be in the very same communities that the governor is saying he's most concerned about going forward.

How do we square that circle?

I think the administration would argue that their plan is actually going to direct more funding to some of those communities than those communities are right now.

Asking.

Right.

One of their arguments is that in this local control system, you actually have quite a few high need communities that are just low spenders culturally, and that a lot of the higher spending is going to more affluent liberal areas because more affluent liberal communities are just willing to say yes to higher spending.

And that a foundation formula.

So a formula where the state decides would, would direct more of that money towards those places.

But yes, they're also saying we're going to see some school closures.

I think, I think it's some rural schools would close.

I think it's also possible that under that scenario, places like Montpelier High would close or Stowe, you know, like places where it's not necessary.

It's actually because they're not geographically isolated that the argument could be made that they close.

And I think, you know, a lot of opposition or championing of the system will boil down less to kind of Partizan politics and more to geography.

Right.

And to be clear, there aren't specific decisions like that or proposals aren't that on the table right now.

That's where we are this week, Neal, to to to wrap this up, where where does this go from here?

I mean, I think you're going to have some pretty interesting committee hearings in the legislature this year with a lot of tough questions from lawmakers, and others testifying in committee, really hammering the administration with questions to understand the full impact of this.

If I was betting, I don't know if I bet on, on moving this forward because it's such a massive change.

But given given the state of affairs with property taxes in Vermont, it's possible much more to come.

Obviously.

Well, the week started Monday afternoon.

So many of us were glued to the coverage of President Donald Trump's swearing in ceremony down in Washington, DC.

Just hours after that, we got some tragic and shocking news.

Up in the Northeast Kingdom, border Patrol agent David Chris Malins, was shot and killed, along I-91 in Coventry.

A second person was also killed.

A third is hospitalized.

Neil, information about this case was was pretty scarce this week up until a few hours ago.

We learned a lot more.

What do we know right now?

Yeah.

So we know that we don't know a lot.

What we do know is that on Monday afternoon, Border patrol agents stopped a car on I-91 in Coventry, and, that resulted in a shootout that killed Agent Maitland.

Today, Friday, a young 21 year old woman from Washington state, Theresa Youngblood, was charged in U.S. District Court in Vermont.

But not for killing Agent Maitland, but for firing the weapon and causing other harm.

So we do not know yet who fired the fatal shot.

If somebody will be charged with firing a fatal shot.

We know that the passenger in that vehicle, the owner of the vehicle, his name was Felix Bock Holt.

He is a German national.

And there's been some conflicting information about whether the visa he was in the United States on was current or not.

The FBI this week reported that it was current in court documents today.

They noted that it might be expired or is expired.

So there's a lot we still don't know.

But we do know this was a real tragedy and claimed the life of Agent Maitland.

On Thursday there was a procession from UVM Medical Center where his body, was and taken, taken to a funeral home, in South Burlington.

And, it was at least 200 police vehicles in that procession.

Just a really, remarkable sight.

Yeah.

Difficult news.

And, we'll learn more in the weeks to come.

And in court, probably, there, back, to the state House, we started talking about sweeping changes to the education system.

Cali, this week, we also heard about some new proposals on your beach.

Indeed.

Yeah.

And some overlap here, too, in a way.

So we we got some information this week about what the Scott administration wants to see in terms of housing policy this legislative session.

They started off this press conference earlier this week by just underscoring how much more housing we need in the state.

The number they gave was 41, about 41,000 more homes by the end of the decade.

We have lots of estimates that get thrown around about how much more housing we need.

This one, you know, takes into account both.

How do we house people who are homeless, get our, you know, rental vacancy rate back to a healthy state?

But also, how do we grow our grand lists and, you know, ease property tax, burdens on on people here.

So that was sort of the key in the center policy wise.

There were kind of three major buckets of things that the administration wants to see.

First is, is taking on the appeal process for new housing.

So that's, you know, how, you know, a neighbor to a project, for example, can can challenge it in court if they don't want to see that development happen.

They'd like to see those standards raised.

So if, you know, land use planning says we want to encourage housing in this place, it's going to be harder to, to challenge it, and delay it or kill that kind of project.

So that's, that's one kind of policy ask.

We're also seeing, you know, more asks around act 250, the state's signature land use law.

Very controversial.

We had a big governor's favorite last year.

And the administration wants to see, some of these kind of temporary carve outs for housing, get expanded this coming year.

Let's, we have a little bit more from the governor on his ideas.

We don't want houses to litter our mountainsides or development that replaces our farmland.

What we're asking for is to make it easier and faster to develop.

And the places where it makes sense, where there's existing infrastructure.

Governor, seem like he's fighting a little bit of a cold like most of us are.

But let's let's get back to this.

It's easy to get lost.

Numbers 41,000 homes by the end of the decade.

So five years, 41,000 homes.

Carly.

Most communities in Vermont don't have 41,000 homes.

We're talking about something really significant in scope and in size.

You've also done some reporting recently on, you know, this isn't new.

We've been talking about this for years.

There have been some changes to act 250 in recent years to encourage more development.

There is at least some indication that those are working a little bit.

You've done some reporting around that.

Yeah, exactly.

So last legislative session, there's this big active safety reform bill that had these temporary exemptions for housing in certain places.

So think downtowns, village centers, things like that.

You could go through, get a project permanent and not have to get that extra kind of state land use sign off.

And we've seen developers respond, you know, we we took a look through the act 250 database and did an analysis right before the turn of the year.

There are about a dozen projects that had taken advantage of these exemptions just over the course of a couple of months, and I spoke to a number of developers.

I can think of one in for gens, one in Brandon, who, you know, we're we're making decisions to, to go forward with some more ambitious projects that they just said they wouldn't have taken on if they had needed to go through the activity review process.

I think you reported the Virginia project was going to be nine, that it was going to be ten.

Now maybe it's going to be 75.

Exactly.

So, you know, really kind of thinking at this larger scale that you just don't see that regularly in some of our smaller towns.

All right.

41,000 to go.

Thank you.

Well, because of the nature of their work, confidentiality laws, we tend not to hear a lot about the department.

For children and families, unless something sort of comes up under the radar.

Lolo.

We had something like this this week.

A lawsuit on behalf of a mother and and some allegations, of of conduct from from DCF and some other providers that are that that seem alarming.

What can you can you tell us.

Yeah.

So the ACLU, and actually a couple other groups filed this lawsuit on behalf of this woman making some pretty shocking allegations.

You know, they said that DCFs, basically conspired with private medical providers to receive, confidential information they were not entitled to by law.

This lawsuit was against DCFs, but also Copley Hospital and Lund.

And, you know, did this in order to kind of build this trumped up case to take her child away.

And that they also, in so doing, tried to intervene while this woman was giving birth to alter the course of how she was giving birth.

They tried to force her to have a cesarean section.

A quote from one of the, the ACLU lawyers that, just, like, continues to ring in my head was that, you know, staff at Copley Hospital were texting DCF staff about the dilation of this woman's cervix while she was in labor, and she was none the wiser.

These are all allegations I should again highlight.

And the the second kind of really interesting, shocking part of this lawsuit is they're alleging this kind of practice is not unique to the situation, that DCF, kind of routinely maintains this list of women that are pregnant that it deemed, you know, they deem likely unsuitable for, for parenthood and that they kind of surveil them, by accessing their medical information, through staff, you know, providers or across the state.

The third thing that's really interesting about this case is that they're alleging constitutional violations, you know, that this woman's constitutional rights were violated under this new amendment to the Vermont Constitution that we just passed, right.

The Reproductive Liberty Amendment, which I think a lot of people think of as the abortion amendment, but actually enshrined in our constitutional the right to reproductive autonomy.

And this will be an interesting test of what that actually might mean.

Right.

Certainly.

I think I don't know if it's the first actual test of it, but certainly the first High-Profile one.

Yeah.

And so she is seeking damages.

She is seeking to eventually stop the the high risk pregnancy calendar.

It is right is what they call it.

Again I think important emphasize we have not heard from DCF yet.

These are just allegations from one side.

And I think it's also worth noting sort of the history of DCF in Vermont.

And when they sort of come into the spotlight.

I was here in 2014, for example, and we had two toddlers who were killed in the homicides.

Both of us toddlers had had contact with DCF.

And so there was this outcry for effectively, Dcfta to be more assertive in protecting children.

The pendulum sometimes feels like it can swing.

And of course, it's hard to penetrate, sort of their operations in some ways because we're dealing with children in confidentiality.

Right.

And these are incredibly hard calls to make.

But yeah, I mean, this is something that sort of I mean, I've increasingly heard from advocates, right, that the pendulum swung too far in the direct in one direction after those really high profile deaths.

And that now, you know, DCF is kind of, too aggressively taking children away.

And, you know, there's I think there was another lawsuit a few years ago, lawmakers have taken some interest in reforms to kind of internal DCF protocols along these lines.

So I think this is probably going to be a topic that we hear more and more about.

All right.

Well, we keep ping ponging back and forth between Montpelier, and DC.

Certainly all eyes on, on President Trump.

And the inaugural, address, he has made clear one of his top priorities, Neil, is reversing the notion of birthright citizenship, in Vermont that has led to and immediate outcry and action by several states, including ours.

That's right.

We saw this happen in 2016.

A flurry of executive actions, executive orders by President Trump.

This one basically tries to strike at the heart of the 14th amendment, which guarantees citizenship to people born in the United States or who are naturalized in the United States.

Most legal scholars have looked at the order and said it's blatantly unconstitutional.

And in fact, a judge, a federal judge has, put a pause on it for the time being, noting that it is unconstitutional, and that the president does not have the power to overturn, parts of the Constitution at, well, even with executive powers.

So we'll see what happens.

But, Vermont is one of the states that has challenged it, I suspect will be joining a few more, challenges to executive orders in the coming days, weeks and months ahead.

Because the president has, shown a penchant for using executive orders, more than some.

Probably also fair to denote that it's unconstitutional until the U.S. Supreme Court says otherwise.

So we might have a little place to go.

Yeah.

Neil, I'm going to stay with you.

I learned something this week that that kind of blew me away.

I had to deal with medical deaths in Vermont.

60,000 Vermonters, which is approximately 10% of our population, is carrying medical debt more than $150 million worth of it.

The Treasurer's office has some ideas to to reduce that.

Yeah.

The treasurer is pitching a plan to take about $1 million worth of money that he already controls in his office, and use it to buy, the medical debt of some Vermonters, at basically a penny per dollar.

Apparently, you can buy debt pretty cheap in this country and then try to collect on it.

I did not know that.

But for basically a penny per dollar, he's looking to use $1 million to offset maybe $100 million in, in medical debt for people and basically buy it up and then forgive it.

So these people would be, they would have a clean slate, pretty good, pretty good thing for, treasurer Mike paycheck to pitch if you have, political, I was hoping you might go here.

I was going to note we seem to hear an awful lot from the treasurer.

Yes, we sure do.

What's up with that?

You know, Mike paycheck is an ambitious person, and I think he's, you know, very well rumored to be interested in higher office than treasurer.

So, what a wonderful thing.

If you can eliminate debt for residents of Vermont and I believe, the million dollar ask, he's not asking for more money, saying he's basically already got it in his own budget.

Yeah, he does need legislative approval to do this.

Yeah.

So he will be seeking that bit of a rounding error, though, I would think, in the grand scheme of things.

All right, we got one last note.

A little lighter note.

On a pretty newsy week, the James Beard semifinalists were announced this week.

They call that the Oscars for the food world.

Apparently, Vermont, as usual, very well represented in these awards.

The owners of Burlington's Honey Road and Gray Jay were nominated, as was the bar, Wolf Tree and White River junction.

I haven't made it there.

The chefs behind May Day and Burlington and Canteen Creamy and Waites Field also nominated.

I have very little experience with all these places.

I want to hear from you guys though.

These are congratulations to all of these places.

I want to hear about snubs though.

Who should have been on this list?

Carly that that hasn't been in Vermont.

Oh gosh.

I have been really loving the new piece of place Rogue Rabbit in Burlington Meadows, where I have been trying to establish myself as a regular.

So all right, I'll be on my list.

Well, a notoriously very sophisticated taste.

What about you?

Give me.

Give me some underneath here to here.

While ones in Montpelier.

Best high food.

So.

Good.

Yeah.

All right.

Oh, good.

Yeah.

Not very creative, though.

Neil.

What do you got for me?

You know, I'm a big fan of Poco in Burlington, one of my favorite places to dine and share plates with people.

So I would put them on the list if I had the power.

Okay, not bad.

You're all wrong.

The answer to this question conclusively is Al's in South Burlington.

The best French fries, the best milkshakes, their best ambiance.

Nice.

And staff spent my 40th birthday there.

The people at James Beard need to get this together next year.

We need to be talking about Al's, as a nominee.

Maybe we could start a campaign.

I think we just did, actually.

And you've all been forced to join whether you want to, or not.

All right, well.

Thank you.

This has been a newsworthy, week, a challenging week.

And thank you all for being here.

We'll leave it for today.

Back next week with Mitch.

I want to thank our panelists, Lola Duffort for from Vermont Public.

Carly Berlin from Vtdigger and Vermont Public, and Neil Goswami back from Vtdigger.

Come see us again real soon.

Thank you everyone for watching today and have a great weekend.