Vermont's congressional delegation was heard from in Washington this week.

In the House, Congresswoman Becca Balint proposed an ambitious plan to build more housing.

And in the Senate, Bernie Sanders and Peter Welch made a lonely stand against sending more money to Israel.

We are witnessing one of the worst humanitarian disasters in modern history.

It is unfolding before our very eyes and we must not run away from that reality.

In Montpelier, lawmakers tried to rush through a last minute fix to an education spending disaster.

But no one knows if it will work.

Governor Phil Scott wants more focus on public safety.

And some Democrats want more taxes on the wealthy.

Meanwhile, sports gamblers are breaking financial projections and a Franklin County hero has broken her own record.

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 lintel foundation and Milne travel.

Welcome back, everyone.

Mark Davis, it's been a very busy week.

Let me introduce you to the panel we have today joining us from Vtdigger reporter Erin Petenko.

From Seven Days making his first appearance, reporter Derek Brouwer and from Vermont Public reporter Abigail Giles.

Thank you all so much for being here today.

Busy week.

We begin, though, in Washington where a $95 billion foreign aid bill passed the Senate, but it did not get the support of Vermont's delegation.

During my years in Congress, Mr. President, I like you.

I have voted for tens of billions of dollars in aid for Israel, but I cannot send more taxpayer dollars to support Prime Minister Netanyahu's continued bombardment in the wholesale destruction of Gaza, knowing that the calamity that more U.S. bombs and artillery shells will cause for countless more civilians who had nothing, nothing whatsoever to do with the atrocities that were committed by Hamas terrorists on October 7th.

And I am very sorry to say, but we in the United States are deeply complicit in what is happening in Gaza.

What we do in Congress right now could well determine whether tens of thousands of people live or die.

Erin, only three Democrats voted against this bill.

We just heard from two of them what happened in D.C. this week?

Yeah, two of them along with a senator from Oregon, voted against this legislation, which would have sent money to Israel as well as Ukraine, which intriguingly Welsh came out and said, you know, I'm really not voting against Ukraine here.

I'm just voting against Israel.

Now, both senators have previously come out against the Hamas Gaza conflict, as in the way that it's been operated on Israel's part.

Sanders has been a little bit more consistent from the beginning, even in the weeks after the October 7th attack, he put out a statement saying, you know, I'm against Hamas, but Israel needs to take a more measured response.

Welsh took a little bit longer to get there, but he called for a cease fire in November and has kind of been, you know, voting in opposition ever since.

Although the two were split on a vote to debate a different spending package, that ultimately did not go any further.

A couple of weeks ago.

So Senator Sanders and Welter, you know, it still passes quite easily.

It's in the house.

And from there, we're not quite sure where this bill goes.

Correct.

Yep.

Yep.

And also Representative Fallon's are the last member of the congressional delegation has said that she wants to give it a good read before she decides what she's going to do about it.

All right.

Well, as with so many things, we'll see what the House of Representatives has to say about it here in the weeks to come.

Staying on Capitol Hill, the aforementioned Congresswoman back a ballot this week proposed an ambitious plan to address the housing shortage.

The congresswoman and others spoke to the press close to home in Windham County.

Affordable housing is built with both state resources and federal resources, and the creation of new housing is the very foundation of the well-being of every Vermont community, because it has been many, many decades of not investing in housing at the levels that we should, that what we need right now is a big, bold investment of federal funds.

And I'm not talking a couple million dollars.

I'm talking $500 billion invested to really, really address this crisis.

$500 billion.

Derek, what's in this bill?

Yeah, I mean, this this bill has something for everybody.

There's there's money in here, largely a boost for existing federal programs.

But this would go to help renters with through emergency funds, as well as paths to homeownership programs like Shared Equity and Community Land Trust that do get some money from the federal government but aren't a huge part of the mix right now.

But I think the key thing to remember with this here is, I mean, that $500 billion is a would be a massive investment in housing at the federal level to put it in some context.

The House just passed a bipartisan tax deal and they're patting themselves on the back for including $6 billion toward a different housing program.

So it's ambitious, you might say.

It's farfetched as well, but I think it does make sense for balance.

Who is really still trying to define herself as Vermont's congresswoman, to focus on housing and in this scene, you know, as you saw in the clip there, I think she's really trying to project leadership on this issue, which Vermonters obviously care increasingly about.

Yeah, well, it's certainly an issue that hits close to home for her constituents.

This is probably the point where we should know this is her first term and her party is in the minority party right now in the House.

So the fate of this legislation uncertain at best, I would imagine.

Yeah, I would be surprised if it goes anywhere.

I think really this is about projecting, you know, what she cares about and what she thinks ought to be our national priorities.

Right.

Interesting.

All right.

Well, it's been seven months now since the flooding that devastated so much of our state.

Abigail getting us up to speed on legislation dealing with flooding in Montpelier.

Yeah.

So the latest figures we've heard, Mark, are that by the state's estimate, this summer's floods cost Vermont upwards of $1,000,000,000.

And that's just one storm.

There's been some modeling I've seen that suggested over the next century it could be closer to 5 billion, that just in the Champlain Basin alone we incur as we see climate change, make these events more sort of extreme and severe.

So there's a bill in the Senate that really tries to take kind of a comprehensive look at how we can leverage our landscape to try to become more resilient in the future, kind of taking a sort of turn where in the past, flood planning and resilience, you know, the way we regulate development in floodplains and in river corridors where rivers move in these events was really done kind of on a town to town basis.

This, you know, certainly lawmakers really want to see that become more of a statewide effort with new new regulatory programs through the Agency of Natural Resources, where any new development in river corridors in flood floodplains would have to get a permit.

We'll also take a look at wetlands in the state and would make it the policy of Vermont to manage for a net gain of wetlands at a 2 to 1 ratio and additionally include some new provisions for dam safety and increased oversight of private dams.

A sprawling piece of legislation.

And, Erin, I know some lawmakers went to a very, I believe, this week to get a firsthand look at some of the flood issues.

Yeah, I traveled them around on Friday while they were touring both the housing situation and a lot of city properties that were affected by the flood.

When you walk down toward the north end in Barre, you'd be surprised that seven months have passed since the flood because there are still so many people who have not returned to their homes or, in the words of one city councilor, are probably living in their homes when they shouldn't be, simply because they have nowhere else to go.

But of course, the city officials also highlighted the kind of infrastructure challenges that they faced, both from the public works.

Crash was flooded, but they don't really have a better place to put it in the future to bridge that needs to be raised, that got coated with debris during the flooding and possibly led to additional flooding that was necessary.

So, you know, they definitely made the hard sell to the legislators, kind of reminding them, you know, what their you know, their decisions, how they will be impacting everyday residents of very well only several months that unbelievable and still that horrible and very probably something we should be talking about more here on this show and everywhere.

Well, one of the big stories in the legislature this session, the education funding crisis.

Property taxes right now are projected to go up about 20% on average.

A lot of districts would see much bigger increases than that.

A lot of people are blaming an education funding law that was passed just two years ago.

Abigail, you drew the short straw.

You have to try to explain this to everyone today.

This week, lawmakers were scrambling to revise that law from just two years ago, a tall order.

Can you explain for us where this currently stands and what lawmakers are trying to do?

Well, I first want to say that anyone who's interested in this topic should absolutely check out our colleague will do first reporting on this.

But essentially, the House passed a bill Wednesday to essentially postpone school budget votes.

And I think as you spoke to Mark, the projection is for property taxes to go up as much as 20% this year.

That is an outcome that is not palatable to either Democratic leadership in the legislature nor the governor.

So essentially, as you spoke to, you know, I think inflation is part of the problem we're hearing.

But so too is this temporary tax cap from two years ago.

So this bill would essentially repeal that tax break and give time, schools extra time to draft new budgets and it also proposes some some changes to the funding system that are intended to hopefully restore some balance between property tax rates and the sort of changes that we see annually in school budgets.

I must say 20 years in Vermont media, I have never seen an issue this complicated and challenging to break down for people, which perhaps is part of the underlying issue here.

But effectively, the idea was to encourage more spending in rural districts, less affluent districts, and to sort of balance out the spending between the poorer districts and the wealthy districts, which would require the wealthy to kick in more.

However, because of the sort of nuanced, complicated way of the funding structure and because of this tax cap that was put in place, basically everyone's going up more.

There seem to be right now no winners and losers.

Everyone sort of seems to be a loser.

Everyone seems to be upset to some degree.

And so this is a rather frantic effort to try to pull back some of that.

It's remarkable.

We're talking about delaying school budgets, right?

I mean, these votes town meeting is right around the corner.

We've never in my time here seen anything like this.

So I wonderful job explaining this.

I think Vermont media is going to do the best they can.

I know this is like Topic A and a lot of voters minds right now.

It will be interesting to see two districts take up the legislature on this offer to delay these votes.

Are they going to go ahead and vote anyway?

This is a very big mess.

Yeah, I think so, Mark.

And I think that's part of what where the uncertainty lies.

You know, analysts with the fiscal analysts for the legislature say it's hard to say what the economic impact of this will be at this point, in part because we don't know how many districts will take the legislature up on this sort of offer, if you will, to revise their budgets.

And I think key Democrats are saying, you know, this is a this is just the start of a longer conversation that needs to be had about how we fund education in Vermont.

And meanwhile, the clock is ticking quite, quite loudly right now.

All right.

Decker Towers is an 11 story apartment building in Burlington for low income seniors and people with disabilities.

And it was the subject of a remarkable cover story in seven days this week.

Derek, you're the author of that story.

You describe Decker Towers and the people who live there as being overwhelmed by a surge of homeless people, of drug addicted people coming into the building.

In your words, that the building became, quote, an unfunded warming shelter, an unmonitored injection site, and a hub for distribution of drugs and stolen goods.

Tell us what you learned.

Yeah, I mean, I think this is really Decker Towers, the starkest example of something that's happening around the state and smaller apartment buildings.

But this is the tallest apartment building in Vermont.

And so it has been a magnet for some of these for some of these challenges.

But I spent, you know, parts of seven evenings there spending time with residents sitting in the lobby and walking through the stairwells.

And, you know, at any given time, it's not just Friday nights, it's Monday afternoons.

There could be a dozen or more people who are hanging out in the stairwells, either sleeping or injecting drugs there as well.

And there are just so many people coming and going from this building that it's proven really hard to secure access to the front door.

So you can just see people coming in and out almost at will to either to get warm or to to buy or use drugs there.

And it's really it's a really sad situation.

It's a complicated one.

And it's unfortunately also untenable.

I think the residents there have voted to form a neighborhood watch.

They're arming themselves.

They're barricading their apartment doors, and they are now talking about patrolling the building stairwells and the front doors to try to kick people out, which is already leading to some clashes that I fear could get more violent.

You basically document people afraid to come out of their homes to to leave because of what's happening in this building.

The big question, where are police?

Why why is this happening in such to such an extreme degree?

Yeah, I mean, that is the big question here.

And it is a point of frustration and contention right now between the Burlington Housing Authority and the city of Burlington.

The Burlington Housing Authority says we've done everything we can or can't afford to do so far and makes the point that the problems that the that they're encountering at this building are largely related to illegal behavior drug, drug dealing or trespass.

And but, you know, there have been some arrests made.

It is it is difficult to arrest drug dealers.

Those investigations take time.

And the evictions also take time.

And during that period, problems are festering, too.

So that's that's one bucket.

But the other thing, too, is I mean, so many of the problems here one resident talked to me about this as being, you know, suffering from so many paper cuts that are each a violation of their space.

But but in terms of a law enforcement challenge, those are problems that are hard to really solve through law enforcement, things like trespassing, violating conditions of release, petty theft.

Those aren't things that we incarcerate people for.

Even pretrial in Vermont.

And so I saw instances myself of of people who were being picked up by police for something minor, like violating conditions by being there.

And we're right back into the building that night or days later.

So it's it's intractable in some ways, but it's also unacceptable.

And it's going to require some coordinated effort, I think, to figure out a solution.

And for context for people, this building is located we're talking just a couple of blocks from Church Street.

We're talking just a couple of blocks from one of the wealthiest residential neighborhoods, probably in the entire state where this is all happening right now.

Yeah, absolutely.

And unfortunately, I think this is an example of how our, you know, low income residents and neighborhoods end up bearing the brunt of these social problems that unfortunately are, you know, increasing around the state.

Powerful story.

Congratulations.

I urge everyone to check it out.

We're going to stay with public safety for a minute here.

Governor Scott made that the focus of his weekly press conference.

Let's have a listen.

Some have described my approach as tough on crime, but the alternative is being soft on crime.

So I want to be clear.

I'm not talking about going back to the approach of the eighties and nineties for some while swing to the right again, I'm just asking lawmakers to meet me in the middle.

Now is a time to be realistic, pragmatic and responsive.

We should learn from the failed experiments in places like San Francisco and Oregon, where even they are thinking of repealing many of the measures they put into place.

Derek, what's the governor asking for?

Well, it's a whole host of of measures that are in play at the legislature right now.

But the governor is really focusing, I think, on issues around bail reform and what some people will term catch and release issues.

So but but it runs the gamut, too.

I mean, and I think it's going to prove a, you know, a longer term conversation in the in the state as well.

But he's talking about, you know, reforms to the juvenile justice system as well as as part of this.

And I think, as you saw in the clip, he's really trying to characterize the reforms that have taken place in recent years as Vermont as as sort of extreme and too far to the left here, and couching a sort of rollback of some of those not as a tough on crime approach, but as sort of pragmatic, moderate, moderate line.

All right.

Shifting gears completely here, Abigail, I've got to say, I did not foresee that legislation dealing with seeds and pollinators would become such a hot topic this year.

But if the reaction to our newsroom's coverage is any guide, there are a lot of people who are really interested right now in what's going on with neonicotinoids.

Explain this for us, please.

Yeah.

So in Vermont, as well as across the country, most of the corn and soybeans that, you know, grow the food that becomes grain for livestock and that we ultimately consume are coated with this pesticide that prophylactically that essentially is really toxic to pollinators, both native pollinators and to honeybees.

And so that has raised some concerns, especially considering all the other pressures on pollinators right now because of climate change, because of land use, because of parasites.

So essentially, House lawmakers are looking at a bill that has been a couple of years in the making that would ban the sort of prophylactic treatment of seeds with this pesticide neonicotinoids in the state of Vermont.

And we've heard a lot of sort of caution being urged by the administration on this topic.

They say, you know, Vermont farmers are already off to the market disadvantage.

This potentially could be one more thing.

Also, they've noted concern about whether or not seed companies will even supply seeds to Vermont that aren't treated about 99% of them are right now for corn seed.

But interestingly, Mark, this week we heard some pretty kind of emphatic testimony from an entomologist at Cornell University in New York State who did the biggest literature review that's ever been done looking at the impacts of neonicotinoids.

He looked at three more than 300 peer reviewed studies examining the impacts to pollinators, found that it was pretty clear that these these pesticides are killing bees.

And in addition to that, more than 5000 trials looking at their efficacy.

So the European Union has banned them, Quebec and Ontario have banned them.

And in all of those markets, they've seen that corn and soybean yields are doing just fine.

And in most of those trials, the vast majority of those 5000 trials, scientists found that neonicotinoids aren't even improving crop yields and in many cases aren't economically effective for farmers.

So I think it really kind of raises some big questions about what happens next.

It's pretty clear that the data in The Science show that there are I think there's a really good case to be made for banning this pesticide.

Don't mess with the pollinators increasingly.

This one's going to resonate with all the parents out there.

There's a proposal kicking around the state house to ban cell phones from schools this week.

Health Commissioner Commissioner Mark Levine weighed in and he gave a bit of an equivocal answer on this idea and he called it unrealistic.

So equivocal.

I mean, he he didn't say that cell phones and smartphones don't have negative effects.

It's more of about, you know, can we actually realistically prevent kids and teens from using them, either sneaking them around on school grounds or just compensating by using them after school?

And he also said something along the lines of it coming off as potentially paternal will stick to children and that perhaps a better approach would be more to educate them on the potential harms almost from like a health education standpoint.

I'm going to jump ahead here quickly, but I must say, I when I was reading the story, I was thinking of the lawsuit recently the Vermont's been pursuing against social media companies and all the the devastating harms and the mental health of young people.

And it just seems increasingly like this is a conversation that is that there's a lot of that that is happening.

And even more than a couple of years ago, I think this what doesn't seem to be the concern than it is now, is that reasonable?

Yeah.

I mean, there is there is a ton of research showing the negative effects of smartphones and social media on children.

I think it's just a question of can we put the rabbit back in the hat and, you know, try to prevent children from using these?

Or should we try to take a more like responsible use approach?

All right.

More to come, doubtless skipping to another topic here.

Been a busy week.

We've talked a lot recently about this tough budget season that's coming.

I think there's been a sort of consensus that it's a more difficult budget year in Montpelier.

That's been for a while.

Derek, some Democrats want to fix that by trying to get more money out of the wealthy.

Yes, it's an age old proposal that, as always, seems to have an uphill climb in the United States.

But yeah, Emily Kornheiser, chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, has put forward two different approaches to this.

One is to tax assets over $10 million in the state.

And this is an interesting bill because this is not earned income.

This is what some people call unearned income.

When you get rich enough, you don't have to rely on income to make money anymore.

And this is a way of trying to grab some of that back.

The other approach is similar actually to something that voters in Massachusetts passed a couple of years ago.

This would be a 3% surcharge on incomes over $500,000.

In Massachusetts, it's a millionaire's tax, but the proposal here is for $500,000.

But, you know, I think the odds on both of them are still long, despite, as you mentioned, the difficult budget season.

But they're intriguing proposals nonetheless.

A little bit of good budget news out there.

And it comes courtesy of all the sports gamblers.

Revenue for the first few weeks of legal sports gambling in Vermont is way over projections.

More than $20 million was wagered in just the first few weeks of that new law that generated $1.1 million in revenue for the state.

Some interesting notes here.

More than half of those wagers came from people outside of Vermont who placed bets while they were visiting here.

The average bet placed so far was $23.

I pulled the panel.

Not a lot of gambling happening here, but maybe there you go.

Can step it up to help fill this state's coffers.

I've been indulging a little bit, haven't been very successful.

But, you know, there's always there's always hope for the future.

We need to end this show today with a couple of congratulations.

The first one is for Stuart Ledbetter, who is of course, near and dear to everyone here at Vermont this week.

He spent 17 years in this chair, which makes him the longest tenured host of this program.

And today is his last day at NBC five.

He has been he's retiring after a 40 year career in Vermont News.

And he was recently honored with a surprise resolution in the Vermont State House.

Congratulations, Stuart.

I can comfortably speak for everyone here in saying you will be deeply missed in the Vermont press corps.

The second congratulations is for Franklin County's favorite daughter, Ellie Perrier.

Saint-Pierre, the pride of Montgomery broke her own US record in the women's indoor mile on Sunday in New York City.

Her winning time was 4 minutes, 16.4 1 seconds and oh, by the way, that was one of her first races since she gave birth to her son a little under a year ago.

Now, go check out this race.

It's cool.

It's called the Wanamaker Mile.

The way the race sort of shook out, Saint Pierre was right behind her arch rival for much of this race.

They started the last lap.

The bell rang, and all of a sudden there must have been like a giant whooshing sound because she just turned on the jets.

That race was over in an instant.

Pretty exciting stuff.

The Summer Olympics start in just five months now, so hopefully we'll be seeing more of her and that is all the time we have for this week.

I want to thank our panel, Aaron Pettengill from Vtdigger or Derek Brower from Seven Days, and Abigail Giles from Vermont Public.

Mark Davis, thank you so much for watching this week.

We'll hope you tune in again next week.

Take care.