Governor Scott makes one last plea to break up Democratic supermajorities in the Vermont legislature.

While Esther Charleston pitches herself as a more effective partner for both chambers.

I need you to support common sense candidates for the legislature who actually work with me.

Meet me in the middle.

Make Vermont an even better and more affordable place to live.

Vermont needs a leader who will collaborate with legislators and proactively build consensus among us, plus, a contentious race for lieutenant governor continues, with both candidates questioning the other's honesty, integrity and party label.

Two temporary homeless shelters are set to open today.

Housing advocates assess slow moving progress in Chittenden County, and Burlington plans to take a close look at their needle exchange program.

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.

Here's moderator Mitch Wertlieb.

Hi, I'm Mitch Wertlieb.

Today is November 1st.

Thanks for joining us tonight.

And we have an excellent panel of reporters here to discuss this week's news.

Liam Elder Conners from Vermont Public, Calvin Cutler from WCAX, and Kevin McCallum with Seven Days.

Thank you all so much for being here.

All right.

An election is upon us, obviously.

Calvin, let's start with, Governor Phil Scott trying to win a fifth term as Vermont's governor.

I mean, let's be plain about this.

Doesn't seem like much is going to stop him in that effort.

Yeah, Phil Scott definitely is the favorite to win this race.

Of course.

Incumbency being very powerful.

The governor also is largely popular, in many polls as well.

his opponent, Esther Charleston, really has not had, the party, or fundraising, coalescing around her like we've seen with other candidates in recent years.

And so I think, you know, heading into the final days of the campaign here, you know, the governor, at least his time and attention is still continue to focus on those down ballot races.

you know, the governor really hasn't campaigned or engaged with his own party in years.

But, as you mentioned, off the top trying to break up the Democratic supermajority, there's several key state Senate races, that the governor is trying to, you know, help candidates get across the finish line that are more politically aligned with him and his version of of what he'd like to see in Montpelier.

so he's trying to basically get enough seats.

They can sustain his vetoes.

Yeah.

It seems like that's what the interesting races for him is.

How successful will he be in getting these other candidates he'd like to see in the legislature actually get there?

And, Kevin, I know that you, your paper did, a profile on Esther Charleston, recently.

And again, you know, she's really.

It's an uphill battle for her.

Absolutely.

you know, it's it bears repeating that, two years ago, Phil Scott was able to be a reasonably well known and active advocate for homelessness, Brenda Siegel.

And, I think the results there were like, 71% to 28%.

I mean, and she was reasonably well known and active in the state House every day for months and months and months.

Esther does not have that background.

she has a little bit of time, in Middlebury on the Selectboard and some other, experiences locally.

But from what we could tell with our profile, she doesn't have, the sort of experience in political life that would likely give her much traction.

And even with fundraising to fundraising behind it, only raised about $40,000 and the governor's got about 300,000 or so.

Yeah, it looks like he's going to walk away with it again.

Let's talk about something else here because and this we're going to stick with Governor Phil Scott on this.

It's sort of a subset thing.

But you know, recently the former governor of California, also famous movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger came out and said, well, I am endorsing Kamala Harris for president.

And a lot of people, a lot of reporters have been asking Phil Scott who he is going to vote for.

He is still keeping that to his chest.

Right.

He's not you know, we in the press corps have been asking him pretty regularly who he's going to vote for.

And he, originally said that he was going to do some research.

He wanted to have some answers about where Kamala Harris stood on things like immigration and, law enforcement.

And he was going to sort of do his homework.

And here we are a week away from the election, and he's still saying that he hasn't made up his mind, which is just astounding to me, because, I mean, every Vermonter in the state you can imagine has pretty much made up their mind who they're going to vote for on Tuesday.

But the governor clings to this line that he hasn't made up his mind, which I just find odd.

And I find it even a little disingenuous to suggest that he has not decided for whom he's going to vote.

To be clear, he said he's not voting for Donald Trump and said that.

But that is very different than saying who you are going to vote for.

And a lot of Democrats feel that a Republican, of his popularity, I mean, he has 80% popularity ratings by Politico or someone.

I think he's far and away the most popular governor in the country.

Probably.

Yeah.

Republican.

Not just Republican governor, any governor in the country.

And so Democrats are very frustrated that a guy in that position will basically, they say, stay on the sidelines.

during this whole run up to the election, which is the most important part, right?

You know, now is the time that people are deciding for whom they're going to vote.

And they think that if if the governor, like Schwarzenegger, came out and said that he was going to not only not vote for Trump, but actually vote for Kamala Harris, that that could do, her a great deal of benefit or some benefit in some of those swing states.

So they're really frustrated, that he is taking this position.

I think Verburg put out a press release the other day that said something to the effect of that.

He needs to do what conscience, morality, decency and patriotism demand and actually say how he's going to vote and, you know, to be honest, I think it's just sort of self-serving.

He doesn't really want to be out there.

Both, endorsing Kamala Harris, a Democrat, while on the other side of his mouth, going to these Republican rallies and trying to get Republicans, you know, elected to the state House by saying that the Democrats have a stranglehold on Montpelier, and we need to throw the bums out.

It's a little difficult to make both of those cases.

I will say that it Phil Scott was actually pressed about this maybe about a month or so ago, three weeks at this point.

And, you know, he said something to the effect of he's like, well, even if I did come out and endorse or tell you who I was voting for, you know, he really did question, you know, to what degree that actually would move the needle.

he's like, I'm just the governor.

Not just but he said, I'm the governor of Vermont.

You know, are people actually really on the national stage in these key swing states?

Are they actually, you know, would the governor of Vermont endorsing Kamala Harris?

Would that actually change anybody's mind in Michigan or Pennsylvania?

I don't know, but that was his his response to that.

I don't know either.

But, you know, he's also often keen to point to how Vermont is a leader on so many issues when they come up.

So, I mean, I think it's a little odd he could wait till after the election's over to say who he voted for.

I suppose he's done that before rightly.

Yeah.

or at least right after he's voted, I think in 2020, he cast his ballot and, then told reporters afterwards.

But, you know, that was the afternoon of Election day, which isn't really a time.

Right?

That saying who you voted for is going to make a real splash.

Yeah.

Well, endorsements are interesting, you know, and we should really move on now to the lieutenant governor's race, which is certainly more contentious a little bit closer.

you know, we're not sure what's going to happen there.

We're talking about David Zuckerman, of course.

And John Rogers, who's now a Republican, used to be a Democrat.

there was an endorsement that came out, Kevin, for, for John Rogers from a former Democratic governor of Vermont.

What can you tell us about.

That's right.

Peter Shumlin, came out and endorsed John Rogers, which was a bit surprising, for a lot of us because, a Democratic former governor endorsing a Republican is a little bit odd, let's face it.

but, as Shumlin points to Roger's, long history as a Democrat in the state House for doing so, he basically sees it as well.

This is a, a a Democrat at heart versus a progressive at heart.

So that's how he tried to frame it.

but I, I'm not sure I'm buying it.

What did you how much the endorsement really matter?

Exactly.

Like, you know, Peter Shumlin hasn't been governor for a long time.

He didn't exactly leave, the office, with great, ratings either.

He's not exactly wasn't the most popular at the end there.

So does that really matter that he's endorsing John Rogers?

I don't know.

Oh, I'm not I'm not sure.

I think what's going to matter far more in this race is how voters perceive these two guys as they've done these matchups over and over and over.

I, I probably have more debates than I've ever seen.

Two candidates in Vermont engage in before an election, maybe at least half a dozen.

And so I know we have some tape, from one of those debates right here.

It's been a fascinating race.

We're going to get to that right now.

I just before we hit that, that, debate that we had here, actually, between Zuckerman and Rogers, I did want to ask you, Kevin, when we talk about this being contentious, put this in perspective here.

Contentious for the state of Vermont.

I mean, what we're about to see is not going to be something like you saw on the national level.

It's really contentious.

Let's face it.

These are two guys who, you know, are politely pointing out that they don't like the other very much, but they're not throwing, you know, firebombs at each other.

They are they are pointing out that, they're very different views on several subject, which I just find strange because these two are very similar candidates.

They're middle aged white guys who have been in Democratic politics for decades, and they're both farmers, and they both have similar views on multiple subjects.

So to see them teeing off on one another as disingenuous or lying about their record, it's just odd to me.

Here's a little bit of the debate that they had recently.

Recently, I've had a lot of friends sending me, emails with some of my opponent's, fundraising emails, and it's very disturbing because there's a lot of stuff in there that's completely untrue.

So I'm wondering, do you really think I'm a toxic mail?

I don't believe I said specifically, you're a toxic mail, but you do as you have another debate.

You've actually kept your cool much better in this debate.

You've been very aggressive in the debates.

I've heard from many people in the state House, about when you were at the state House for 16 years, the way you treated other people.

and so, the angry energy is appropriate and that, people are frustrated out there.

but we also have to come up with solutions.

Well, Kevin, what's going on here?

What are they actually arguing about?

Yeah, I mean, I think at the it's getting personal, right?

I mean, to Kevin's point, you know, this is it's not like we're seeing on the national level, but I mean, the like the, the tenor of this race really is something we haven't seen in quite some time.

It's getting personal between these two people that have been at the state House for for many years.

I think John Rogers even said at one point that he considered David Zuckerman his friend.

and, and so it's really this has just become a very, very, very challenging race.

But what the stakes are in this race, what John Rogers, back during the legislative session, he to to rewind a little bit, he was part of some at several of these rallies where they were talking about, essentially gentrification and what he sees as Vermont values, working rural Vermonters really getting priced out of Vermont because of policies that have been, in his words, pushed by David Zuckerman.

And so that's, I think, in part, the the backdrop of this race and why it's so controversial and so, so, so tense between these two candidates.

It is the backdrop.

But I also think that when you look at it like, like Kevin was saying, they're really not that different politically in the grand scheme.

There are there are things that they are different on.

And I think that can sometimes elevate this contentiousness when you don't really have a lot of policy area to fight about, what do you have left to fight about?

And I think in some ways the campaign will, you know, they both say they're champions of the working class.

They're both for affordable Vermont.

So it comes down to like telling voters like, who do you like better?

It starts to become like, which personality do you want in this position?

And lieutenant governor is more of a ceremonial position than anything.

So we're also talking about a statewide office that doesn't really have that.

I mean, they do have things to do, but it is not the same as being the governor.

It's largely a ceremonial position.

And I will say to though this, given what we were talking about earlier, with some of these down ballot statehouse races in Orleans, Grand Isle, Chittenden North and Caledonia, depending on what happens in those races.

You know, the lieutenant governor also casts a tie breaking vote.

so, you know, there also is a calculus from the governor and from Republicans as well, about potentially having John Rogers, you know, in the lieutenant governor's seat.

It's interesting.

This is at least a race that, people are watching because it seems like it's contentious and maybe a little close.

Is it still zuckerman's race to lose?

I think probably right.

I mean, he's been there a while.

He's won by decent margins in past years.

And again, Vermonters are being asked to, vote for, oh, no, for a Republican to be the lieutenant governor in a state.

That's that's pretty blue.

And I think he has an uphill battle.

But, you know, the new the the new endorsement from from Shumlin, the the way these guys have tangled in the debates over the last several months, I think, you know, John Rogers, is a sharp debater.

He is a smart guy, right?

He knows the policies that he's talking about inside and out.

And I think he has effectively, created distinctions between him and his opponent in ways that voters it might resonate with voters for one, about, you know, Zuckerman's relative wealth and how he was not born in Vermont, whereas John Wright was.

So there's some there's a nativist element there that's a little disconcerting to some people when people start talking about where you were born and whether that qualifies you to be, lieutenant governor.

But, I think the wealth issue probably will be something that voters will give them some pause is John is effectively made the case that he's a he's a son of a dairy farmer and he's struggled financially.

And that puts him in a position to better understand how the affordability crisis that's going on in the state.

I think to Liam's point, too, you know, again, it's a kind of a ceremonial job.

so they're not talking really much about the issues.

It has come down.

It seems like the personality and that kind of thing.

But one issue that is going to be front and center for, for politics.

And as we get through the election season, of course, is homelessness in Vermont.

Calvin, I know you've been, covering the latest on the shelters.

I think there are two shelters opening today as we're going to tape.

What can you tell us about those shelters?

how many people they can help out following the unwinding of the hotel program?

The general assistance program?

there has been, about 21 kids families with about 21 kids collectively that the state has, known about that they are in communication with.

And they've been looking to find placement for them.

So the state is standing up, on Friday today, they're setting up two shelters, one at the Waterbury Armory, formerly, and one at the old Vermont State Police barracks in Williston.

And so these are going to be run by the state, staffed by state employees.

I got a tour of one earlier today, and, it's it's an office building, essentially, that they've converted into a shelter.

There's, individual private rooms with beds.

there's showers, there's a kitchen, there's a large open space, a common area, if you will, places for kids to play.

so this is meeting a pretty critical need in terms of that.

What the administrator, the Agency of Human Services, says that what really differentiates this, though, is there's going to be service providers for employment.

food, housing, mental health, like there is going to be, services on site to try to transition people out of the shelter into more permanent, stable housing.

That's something that the hotel program doesn't have.

But we're still hearing from from advocates, from lawmakers, from others that are saying that this is just not meeting the need, that there's still many people with disabilities, people with, you know, an oxygen tanks, there's lots of people that are still very vulnerable, that are still, experiencing really acute unsheltered homelessness, also not meeting the need necessarily housing in general.

Liam, I know that you've been covering, development in Chittenden County, Vermont's largest county.

How is that going?

I mean, is it speeding along the way?

The officials would like it to know, you know, there's every year around this time, there's a press conference from, housing organizations for the campaign that they've been running now for eight years, you know, close to a decade, covered probably seven of these eight press conferences.

And they pretty much go the same way every time, which is we're not building enough homes, and particularly there's not enough affordable housing being built.

So really, the message coming out of this press conference was, look, in the last year, last calendar year, so 2023, 720 new homes were built in Chittenden County, 125 of those were affordable.

Both of those are well below the marks that, housing organizations say is needed to put a dent in the housing crisis here.

And the legislature, they say, needs to just give them more money to do affordable housing, because you really need subsidies, public subsidies to make affordable housing happen, because it's not something that a private developer is going to make a lot of money on.

Right.

Like you need to subsidize it.

So it actually happens.

and they're pushing for more, more bonds, similar to I think it was 2017, the legislature passed a 30 plus million dollar bond to, fund affordable housing.

That money going to be there when they come to them again the next session?

it's a great question.

I mean, that's going to be a fight in the legislature.

I think Kevin and Calvin are more enmeshed in that world than I am, but it'll it'll it'll be a discussion, I'm sure.

I think, you know, everybody is made housing one of their big priorities at the state House in recent years.

There's a lot that's been done, of course, funneling money in for housing subsidies for for developers.

but right now it seems like most of the appetite is surrounding regulatory changes.

whether it be at act 250 or at the local level, local zoning and development review board type of stuff.

So that's sort of where I see the tea leaves.

but, you know, that's, we'll, we'll have to see exactly, you know, come, come January.

That's always been sort of the governor's position.

But as we're not getting as much federal money as we once did, the way that we're going to be most effective in spurring development is through some of these red tape cuts, not through just throwing money at the problem so that he sees it as a more effective and appropriate way to sort of create more housing than just, you know, getting if we don't have the millions and millions of dollars, we have to come up with another way to do it.

And I think also this year to, you know, given what we've talked about with the property tax crisis about, you know, property taxes soaring, there's that, act 167, the hospital sustainability report.

there's really big challenges that are laid bare in front of state lawmakers and policymakers this year.

that all will get back to our housing crisis.

And so I would expect that this is, you know, given those two big issues that are on everybody's mind right now, I think it's going to be, a pretty big topic next year.

There's a story that we were teasing at the top of the show today.

and Liam, you've been covering this one as well in, Vermont's largest city and Burlington, there's been a needle exchange program going on.

you know, the intent is, is to share needles and have people be able to return them.

And, you know, it's a safety issue, but it hasn't been going quite the way it's planned.

So why is, Burlington now studying the needle exchange program?

Yeah.

I mean, I think this is sort of an interesting issue in the, safe recovery, which is run by the Howard Center.

And Burlington's actually been operating for more than two decades now.

And needle exchanges are like very well, research centers for Disease Control and Prevention advocates.

Or it says these are really useful in preventing infectious diseases from being spread among people that use injection drugs.

A lot of good science and research to back up the public health effectiveness of these things.

but as the opioid crisis has really worsened around Vermont and in Burlington, people in the community are seeing a lot more discarded needles that aren't making their way back.

And there's, an uncomfortableness, with seeing this, there's concern for the people that need to clean them up, maybe getting pricked by a needle that could have some infectious disease on it or, you know, something that's not good.

And so the city council wants to study the exchange program and see if there's any ways to, deal with this, this litter issue, this debris issue, essentially, which, you know, is certainly, a very visible issue.

But I think also it's important to note that, you know, the visibility of this is the problem is there's a lot of people who are struggling and using, very dangerous drugs right now.

The fatal opioid overdoses are pretty high in the state.

You know, I talked to the safe recovery, and they're saying that's kind of the issue to them.

That is the core.

Like the litter of needles is kind of a symptom of the bigger problem and that trying not to lose sight of that, even while they're happy to work with the city to to look at this issue of litter, do you think that the the needle exchange program is kind of like a baby step toward the Overdose Prevention Center?

Because when I visited an overdose prevention center in New York for a big story, we wrote it several months ago.

They they started as a needle exchange program.

And then when it came time to expand into overdose prevention, that was the natural place to to take that work.

Yeah.

I mean, I think, that is the idea at some point.

I mean, Burlington is planning to open, an overdose prevention site now that that is something that can happen in the state of Vermont.

There has been a lot of discussion, though, on where that's going to be, but this could be a helpful step.

I could see towards that the next step.

Right.

And the program as it is now, Liam, that the onus is on the user to return the needles.

Right.

And I guess in your story, you were saying that not nearly as many needles as were passed out were being returned.

So that and they're ending up now on the streets publicly potentially.

Yeah.

I mean, I think that's you know, we don't know for sure exactly.

But I think that is the implication.

Right.

And likely what's happening.

So, you know, the city of Boston has experimented with pilot programs where, they pay people like per needle that they pick up.

They ran out of funds to do that, but they're working on a similar program.

So Burlington, I think, could look into that.

That's definitely something that is on the table for the study.

Very briefly, gentlemen, as we get towards Election Day, anything else you're looking for on Election Day?

Any issues with security, things like that?

Well, you know, I want to make sure that there's no disruptions in the election.

I'm going to be keeping a close eye on that.

There was obviously earlier in the week there was this, you know, concerning issue in the northwest, where a couple of ballot boxes were set on fire by somebody.

And so I think that actually helped prompt this sort of joint press conference that they had, you know, Secretary of State, Sarah Copeland hands this and the governor got together and tried to kind of say, let's keep the temperature down, guys.

The rhetoric needs to be, you know, kept in check.

Let's be respectful.

This is Vermont.

And so I don't anticipate any sort of real disruptions.

But, we're going to be keeping a close eye to make sure that aren't covered.

I think leading up to Election Day, I mean, those four races I mentioned, Orleans Grand Isle in the North, Caledonia in the state Senate, I think those are going to be ones to watch.

Also, you know, you look at where, you know, there's about 180,000 ballots that have already been cast, according to the secretary of state.

So that really changes the get out the vote in the final hours of, of Election Day.

And so much so that there's actually many prominent Democrats are not in Vermont.

They're campaigning, for Kamala Harris in Pennsylvania and Doorknocking.

So that really does, I think, show like just the importance of the presidential race, and sort of the sleepier nature of, of some of these local races.

But I think those, those four, state Senate races, those are the ones I'm going to be watching.

All right.

I want to finish up on a story that I'm so jealous that Liam Connors not only got the cover, but sort of uncovered.

And then when did this you found out about a late Vermonter who had the largest collection of DC comics, I think in the country, or a complete collection.

Yeah.

And I actually, I want to get I mean, seven days also wrote about it before me, so I don't want to I don't want to say, oh, I'm sorry.

Yes, I got it.

I got to give credit to Chris Farnsworth.

And you're you're fine colleagues over there, Kevin.

But, yeah.

Christine Farrell, who owns Earth Prime Comics in Burlington, died earlier this year.

And after her death, her estate decided to sell her collection, which is one of the only complete collections of DC comic books in existence, which is, tens of thousands of comics.

It's massive.

You've got the first appearances of Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, all the sort of legendary heroes of the Golden Age.

And, at the auction this past weekend, which was 500 of the rarest ones in her collection.

So not all of them, brought in more than $5 million for about.

Yeah, for a little 489 comics were sold.

Superman's first appearance was the highest selling one at $324,000, which it's kind of low for that.

But it's a restored copy that she had from 1938.

So not an original mint one could have been that it could have been $3 million.

It was in good condition.

Good condition, not not perfect, not mint, but still Superman number one.

Exactly.

Oh.

So what was it like seeing those comics?

It was great, I love comics.

Oh, I'm more of a marvel guy.

I'm more of a Spider-Man person myself.

I hear that too, but I was still pretty jealous about it.

It was pretty amazing.

Thank you for bringing us up to date on that story.

That's all the time we have for today.

I want to thank our panel so much for being here today.

Calvin Cutler WCAX, Kevin McCollum from Seven Days and Liam Elder-Conners from Vermont Public.

There's an election coming up next week.

Get out and vote.

And I hope that you'll return next week as well.

For Vermont this Week I'm Mitch Wertlieb.

It's been a delight being with you this week.

And, we'll see you next week.