Senate and House lawmakers work to reconcile a $9 billion state budget.

As federal funding uncertainty looms.

We don't know if what the feds are doing are going to run our economy right off the cliff.

And if it's that it's hard to prepare for running off the cliff, it's just going to be so catastrophic.

You can't really prepare to that level.

Plus, detained Columbia University activist Mohsen Badawi is released from prison, and a loyal county sheriff's deputy has been suspended after a murder trial ends in a sudden plea deal.

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.

Here's moderator Mitch Wertlieb.

Thanks for joining us on Vermont this Week.

I'm Mitch Wertlieb.

It's Friday, May 2nd, and joining us on the panel this week Stephen Biddix from NBC five, Aaron Calvin from Stowe Reporter news and citizen and Liam Elder-Conners from Vermont Public.

Thanks all to all of you so much for being here today.

And, Stephen, I want to start with you, because we, as you saw at the top there, there is a state budget, kind of a reconciliation process going on right now.

Where do things stand with the state budget?

Yes, Mitch.

So there's the afternoon.

The state budget, right around $9 billion, is given final approval from the state Senate, is now going to be in a conference committee with three members of the House and three members of the Senate working with the administration to try to find a grand bargain.

Typically, what happens every year but this year's budget, a year over year increase compared to years prior, it's definitely tighter.

Democrats don't have the supermajority.

There's not the surplus cash coming in from the federal government anymore like we saw during Covid times.

But as we've heard from the governor a lot in recent years on a lot of different spending packages, it's still too much money and not what he wants to see.

But I'm not going to necessarily speak for the House.

But from what I've heard from the Senate, they are very much understanding that what they passed this past week is not going to be final.

They know they're going into this conference committee and the budget is going to get tighter.

Things are going to get cut.

They're going to spend less.

Because what I am hearing is everybody knows education was the big thing going into this legislative session.

They don't want the budget to now get in the way of that.

They don't want to go through a veto process and then having to just go down that whole entire loophole.

So from the Senate side, they're expecting to go into this conference committee, know the budget's going to get tighter.

Know that number that we saw on Thursday is not going to be the final number.

And try to get this through and get the governor's approval on the first time instead of having to get veto.

Stephen, you alluded to this, you know, federal funding.

There's a lot of uncertainty around that.

And I was hearing some talk that, you know, legislators may be thinking about coming back in the fall if certain amounts of funding is not available.

What are they doing to prepare for that?

And why are you preparing for that?

Well, we even had one Democrat vote no on the budget because she did not believe that it did enough to have a catching net, basically, if federal funding were to be cut.

So just out of that, she voted no on the budget.

But from my understanding, the Joint Fiscal Committee would come back.

The board committee would come back, which is all of the money chairs and the governor.

And so if there's a certain percentage of money that does not come flowing down from the federal government, then lawmakers would be coming back to kind of reassess and figure out what is going to happen with spending in the state.

And briefly, what about the process of this that you've seen so far?

We've seen a lot of wrangling in the past on this.

And as you said, you know, Democrats don't have that supermajority anymore to fall back on.

But was this a a fairly amicable process this time around?

I would say it's a lot more friendly of a budget year than we've seen in recent years.

For example, in Senate Appropriations, it passed out unanimously.

Even on the Senate floor, we had multiple Republicans stand up and say, there's so close to voting yes on this bill, but couldn't quite do it because they'd like to see a little bit more spending cut.

But at the end of the day, we did see bipartisan support.

And five Republicans vote yes on the Senate floor for this budget.

I understand one legislator, Scott Beck, has made some amendments, to, to to this, which is, I guess, complicating things.

But, there's a reason behind it.

Yes.

So going back to November, what a lot of people ran on was lowering her property taxes and also trying to figure out how to keep Vermont green or clean energy, but do it at a more what they said was affordable pace.

One of those that a lot of Republicans won their seats on was the clean heat standard of potentially eliminating that and removing the private right of action from the global warming Solutions Act.

So Scott Beck, the new senator who's now the Republican minority leader out of Caledonia County, he put in an amendment on the Senate floor that would have repealed the Clean Heat standard and made some changes to the Global Warming Solutions Act, saying before the vote, we were told we would have a vote on the Senate floor at some point on the clean Heat standard.

Now, that really hasn't happened yet.

It's been held up in committee, and there really hasn't been talk in the Senate Natural Resources and Energy Committee for quite a few weeks, not months now.

And there's definitely not going to be a bill coming from that committee to the floor.

So this was kind of like that last ditch effort to try to get a vote on the Senate floor.

But what happened is it was found not germane, because to attach something to a bill germane basically means they have to be somewhat similar.

So if you have, say, a tax bill and you want to add a tax cut amendment on it, that would be called germane because or similar enough, but the budget and the Clean Heat standard aren't very similar, you can argue.

So it was found not germane meeting that there was no vote to even be held on whether or not that so that amendment didn't make it didn't work.

Okay.

Transportation funding is a big issue here.

We're taking we're spending less.

We're taking in less to, you know.

Yeah.

The way it was explained to me by the chair of Senate Transportation, Richard Wiseman, is we are on a cliff looking over the edge, which is not something you ever really want to hear with anything in life.

Basically, a lot of it comes down to the state is just not making as much revenues off of things like gas tax as electric vehicles have become more common.

But it's not even EVs that are the most, I example, have a 2015 car, but these cars made in 2021, 2022 or 2023, they're much more fuel efficient.

So people are just going to the pump.

Less cars are now getting, on average, 25 to 40 miles per gallon instead of in the high teens or low 20s like before.

So that's a big issue.

And while this year they were able to make a balanced budget to be able to get federal grants, federal matches back in FY 27 and FY 28 is where there's going to be issues.

Right now.

They are forecasting that in fiscal year 27, there will be a $30 million hole there that Vermont will not have to get 150 million back in federal match grant money.

And it's even worse in 2020.

There's a $45 million hole that would have brought back 200 plus million dollars in federal match money and I talked to Governor Scott, a couple of days after that vote happened, just about, hey, like, Vermont does not like any state like to leave money on the table from the feds when it comes to this.

And he said, leaving money on the table is not a question, but how they fix that is going to be one of the big questions going forward.

And with that money, we have more from Governor Scott on that.

On Vermont Edition recently, the governor was asked about a letter the Trump administration sent to states last week saying that they could lose transportation funding if they don't cooperate with federal immigration authorities.

Now, host Michael LeFrak.

Asked if he sees abiding by state laws and sticking to programs like Vermont Driver's Privilege cards, which are issued to people without lawful status to drive.

We're one of 19 states and D.C. to issue these, by the way, as worth the potential loss of federal transportation dollars.

Here's what he said.

We don't have a great hand to play here.

In Vermont, we rely heavily on, on federal funding.

And that's, that's not good in this situation, because, because they do hold a better set of cards than we do.

So we have to reflect on that and each and everything that we do, and they're going to be times, that, that we're going to say, you know, it's it's worth losing the funds over the principle.

So we're going to have to watch that story as it progresses and see how the governor reacts.

The amount of cars I want to move on to a huge story which has made, you know, headlines here and well beyond Vermont's borders, most of Madeley was released from prison.

You know, his saga has been one of many.

You dealing with immigration issues.

So where do things stand with most of Madeley right now?

He is allowed to stay in Vermont for the time being, right?

He's allowed to stay in Vermont.

He's also allowed to finish college in New York at Columbia University, where he's been a student.

But the immigration case against him is still pending and is still going on.

The Trump administration, you know, is challenging his green card status, and has alleged that his, activism, pro-Palestinian activism is a threat to foreign policy goals.

Now, most in Madeley and his attorneys are saying, you know very much that that's not true, that you know, that he's being targeted for for his activism and that this is, constitute tional issue.

This is a free speech issue, and he's being targeted and abridgment of his free speech that he's just been protesting and expressing, views that are protected under the Constitution and really remind us how he was arrested all to begin with.

He went for a citizenship, update.

Right?

Yeah.

He was, set to become a US citizen and, went to do a citizenship interview in Colchester, Vermont here and was arrested by, hooded federal immigration agents at the, at the interview.

And he, he has said in court papers that he suspected that that might be the case, but decided that he would go anyways.

Well, he sounded very defiant when he was released.

And here's what he had to say to supporters when he was released from prison.

Me standing here with you, among you since a clear message.

It sends a message that is loud and clear, not only to the Vermonters, but to the rest of America.

And the message is we the people will hold the Constitution accountable for the principles and values that we believe in.

That's.

And I am saying it clear and loud.

Yes, to President Trump and his cabinet.

Yes.

I am not afraid of you.

Yes.

And federal authorities have, appealed the decision, to release him.

And obviously the saga is not over, and we'll be following that news.

We have to turn to something now that's, really sort of, an incredible story.

Aaron, you've been covering this, a murder trial ended in a sudden plea deal, and I'd like you to remind folks that what happened here with the, the murder of a young trans woman.

So in April 2022, Fern feather was killed by a Seth Brunel after they picked Brunel up as a hitchhiker.

And, the trial took three years to get to, to happen.

You know, he admitted to the murder, right.

Well, so there a plea deal was struck.

He admitted to second degree manslaughter, admitted to the killing.

Initially, pled self-defense.

So the the question there was never really a question in that, but, you know, a little bit of background really, about, father who was a beloved member of their community.

There was a big vigil for them in, after her death in Morrisville.

And they were killed in Morrisville, and, their friends held a, a music festival in Johnson the summer after they were killed.

You know, just a beloved person.

And this was a big trial in the Walla County.

And, you know, it's expected to go, over a week long.

But halfway through the trial, they reached a sudden and surprising plea deal which saw Brunel, instead of facing, you know, further jail time, he faces no further jail time and will be on parole for ten years.

So what changed?

Basically, at the suggestion of, of Vermont police, Vermont State police officer and a higher ranking the Moyle County Sheriff's detective, a deputy, Chris Turner, turned on his body camera while transporting Brunel to and from the prison in the courthouse.

What?

The Vermont State Police officer and the other sheriff's deputy did not direct Turner to do was question Brunel about the trial, which he proceeded to do.

He questioned him about the murder weapon, about the vehicle that was involved, about his legal strategy, that, according to Sheriff Roger Marcoux, is something that everybody knows not to do.

Now, Marcoux is not commenting further on this until the, Vermont Regional Internal Investigations Team conducts their investigation into Turner's behavior.

But, Turner is is on.

Is suspended for the time being.

Because, as Marcoux admitted, everybody knows that you shouldn't do this.

What Brunel's lawyer alleged happened here was a violation of Brunel's Sixth Amendment, which is, you know, your right to an attorney.

Basically, if some if the police are questioning you, you have a right to an attorney.

So, that was basically was at play here.

And, the behavior risked, a mistrial.

The pronounced lawyer filed for, a mistrial and moved for a mistrial.

And, you know, white State's Attorney Aliona Gerhart said was, this was what she thought was the best possible outcome given the circumstances.

But both Gerhard and Parnell's attorney called it egregious.

But Brunel has only spent three years of jail time up to this point.

You know, you know, give or take a few, escape attempts.

But yes.

What's the community reaction to this?

Devastated.

You know, a juror who spoke publicly about the the trial afterwards said there was no justice here.

Feathers family, has just been has not minced their words when, talking about how devastated and disappointed they have been about the outcome of this trial.

Sheriff Mark, who himself said he couldn't find the words to express to Feather's friends and family, that his department had something to do with, the the quick and disappointing end to this trial.

And the deputy sheriff who made this apparent mistake in questioning this individual, when he should not have been doing so.

What's the status of that deputy sheriff now?

He is, suspended for the time being, pending the results of this investigation.

All right.

Thank you for the update on that story.

Aaron.

I want to turn now to, Steven, there has been, some bills that have been passed, dealing with hate crimes, workplace violence in hospital, in hospitals as well, which we know has been a problem in recent years.

Yes, it has been.

We've seen lawmakers pass multiple bills in the past couple of years trying to curb violence in the workplace, especially in hospitals, or just give those nurses, those doctors and those people that work in hospitals more protections.

So what this bill does is it requires hospitals to develop a security plan and ranges from a plan of what to do when certain things happen.

But it also requires the hospital identifying what employees may need to go through, say, de-escalation tactics, defense tactics, what to do if they see a firearm or something they may find threatening inside the hospital.

What do you do?

So basically, it's to develop a plan to be able to help these employees be able to be more prepared for that potential worst case scenario, or something happens.

And then it also creates a new incident reporting system as well for employees in hospitals.

And so moving over to the hate motivated crime.

So the House passed that months ago.

Senate got around to it.

It's now, law hate motivated crimes are already an enhancement.

And so basically the way they work now is they have to be able to tie that act from an individual to another individual in a protected group to call it a hate crime.

But what this does is that broadens this out to a group.

So if an individual, they spray paint something on a municipal building or something like that, it may not be targeting one direct person, but it's targeting a whole entire protected group that could now then become a hate motivated crime and enhanced on whatever charges they're already facing.

I appreciate that update.

Thank you.

Liam, I want to turn to a story that you've covered for a long time.

And I want to know if this is the end of the EB five saga.

Maybe not.

Is that ever really going to end now?

I really don't know, but Burke Mountain, has been at the sale that has been approved.

It has?

Yeah.

Brooke Mountain was one, obviously, of two ski mountains that were tied up in the Eb5 scandal, the other being J.P. Jay got sold a couple of years ago.

Is wasn't is not in receivership and Burke has been in federal receivership for, almost a decade now.

But a judge just approved the $11.5 million sale of the mountain to a group that has some pretty strong local ties, including the Burke Mountain Ski Academy.

So, you know, we'll see.

The new owners have promised to put a lot of money into infrastructure at the mountain.

It needs some work.

But this is certainly the end of a part of the Eb5 chapter.

There's still the vacant lot in downtown Newport.

That is, a big question mark.

But this is one of the last big kind of pieces of that puzzle.

Okay, well, at least that that has gotten, taken care of.

But the pit, as you said, is still there in Newport.

A bad reminder, of that, difficult story.

But I want to move to a better story now, and this is quite astonishing.

We have some video to show you now.

And, Aaron, I know this is something that you've covered.

You know, the Johnson Library was in a floodplain, and it's a it's a beautiful library.

It had to be moved.

But how do you move a library?

Well, we've got some video to show you how that actually happened.

This idea of moving the library, people say, oh, let's move it.

But it was always a pipe dream.

Railroad Street's been destroyed by the last few slides.

We can't keep it away anymore.

And so we have to think of something else.

This first corner was the hardest.

There was just no room.

There's this moment where the roof of the library was stuck on the roof of a neighboring building.

Like this is like somebody's apartment building.

The library's been an important part of the town for years.

It's the heart and soul of Johnson.

It's the place where everyone can go.

And no matter who they are, that building flooded in 2023.

And then while we had a FEMA claim open, it flooded again.

And it was like, okay, we have to do something different.

When we started realizing that there was actually some grant funds, through the Department of Libraries for facilities, it was, yeah, let's try this and see, see where it goes.

And tonight it's going the building.

Wait, 156 tons.

The project itself was, a challenge the whole way through.

At three M, we were supposed to be on route 15.

We had from 3 a.m. to 6 a.m. to close down the state highway that was issued by the commissioner, and that's firm, like you don't have any wiggle room there.

I took a long time just to get it around that corner.

All of a sudden you see Brian on the roof with a sawzall and it cuts the library like cuts off part of the library, and it goes past you there.

Cheer.

When we got it around that corner, which was kind of sweet, and I think we were only like 100ft down the road.

Basically.

So I'd make a call.

You're going to make it or I'm that like, yep.

And at 608 we got off route 15 and we did it.

It's just like truly the first chapter of rewriting our story of Johnson to do.

It's rethinking how we're going to work.

Johnson is moving forward.

This is all part of the rethinking with the police.

It's going over next to the elementary school, and there's so much joy, and the kids are going to be able to walk over right after school, and it's just going to serve so many more kids.

It's already been decided that we're not going to fix that corner of the library.

We're just going to like, leave it there because that's the story of this building.

Correct?

You know, like, how cool is that?

Some astonishing video work there from Bryan Stevenson and Kyle Anderson and Aaron Kelvin.

You got up super early in the morning to watch this as well.

What was that like?

Yeah, I was there at three in the morning when they were supposed to be turning, from Railroad Street on to Main Street.

That was not the case.

As town administrator Tom gallant talked about in that video, there were multiple disruptions to the process that, they didn't plan for, the biggest of which which was getting part of this, you know, big squat, 100 year old brick library, kind of stuck against another building on that street.

Now, that was when, Brian Rowland, a, inveterate volunteer that has been there for the library since the 23 flood and before that, you know, of his own volition.

Got a got a ladder, got up there and just hacked off a piece of the roof.

And, you know, it was kind of surprising, but it worked.

It got them back onto Main Street and got them turning on the Pearl Street.

Right at the end of this window, between 3 a.m. to 6 a.m., that they had to be on that, you know, state highway they had no room for, for error after that.

They could not be there.

You know, they only had permission to be there for that three hour window.

But, you know, they made it and, you know, covering Johnson, since the 23 flood has not been full of a lot of feel good stories.

But this library moving process was incredible and quite a sight to see.

You know, being out there at three in the morning, there was a crowd of people out of their beds, you know, here to witness this happening.

It was, you know, it was the biggest event that happened in Johnson since the 23 flood, I think.

But it was nice that it was, you know, something good, just remarkable.

And I love the fact that they're keeping that that corner part of the library which was sought after.

They're just going to leave it there as a, as a way to say, you know, this happened.

It's a marker in history.

It's just incredible.

You know, it's like the the marker they have on the, Grand Army of the Republic monument in Cambridge that, you know, marks where the 27 flood came up to.

You know, this is this is a marker of of a piece of history.

That's fantastic.

Let's get some more good news in here.

We all could use it.

Stephen, I know that you have been, covering, movie theater stuff there.

Waits, fields, big picture theater, which was not there.

That was back.

What's happening there?

Yeah.

So the big picture closed back in the fall, and we saw multiple other movie theaters across Vermont and in Chittenden County, closed as well.

And so while the big picture has closed, it is now going to work under a nonprofit called The Bigger Picture.

And so the meaning and phrase behind that is there just want to do things bigger and better now that they're coming back.

So what will be a movie theater?

They're going to have the restaurant and bar reopening in June, but people are also going to be able to rent out space inside and just turn it into a greater arts hub.

So if theater organizations want to go or just other kind of clubs related to the arts want to go and use this building, they're going to be able to rent out spaces inside, all while still showing movies and doing some of the things they did before.

But they really want to make it a community feel and a community project, which is kind of the thinking behind turning it into a nonprofit.

And we were talking before the show as well for those people in the mad River Valley, if they wanted to go see a movie, they were going to have to go drive to see the Capital Theater in Montpelier or somewhere very far out of the way for them to go see a movie.

So people are very excited to have the bigger picture back.

In a way, it's feel fantastic.

Now.

Liam, I know this is, something that you have been to very you.

This is a kind of a wistful story, I guess I would call it Waking Windows.

Final year.

Final year?

Yeah.

I've been it's been a it's a sad, wistful, bittersweet moment when you ski festival.

Music festival, an arts festival that has been going on for more than a decade now, is in its last year, which, you know, the organizers, have all, you know, busier professional and personal lives.

And it's a lot of work to put on a music festival.

But, for me personally, it's been a long standing part of my, you know, life, for a long time through college and and through my 20s.

And sorry to see it go see and seeing a lot of great bands.

But, you know, there's space for, for new music and new opportunities for people to make something, which is kind of how the festival started.

So to me feels like, you know, the end of one era and the beginning of something new, potentially.

And that's happening this weekend, that is this come out and see it.

And this has been a sort of a signature event for Winooski for about 15 years.

Right?

Yeah.

And, you know, I think about it, it kind of coincided with a time when Winooski was maybe a little bit less on the on the map, as it was a little rough around the edges kind of thing and growing and developing.

And, you know, there's there's a lot of housing development that's happened in Winooski in recent years, you know, that wasn't here when Waking Windows started.

And it's a very small festival, really local.

You focused at the time and, you know, got to the point of drawing, you know, I don't know, thousands of people and big national acts, coming and playing just down in the circle.

So it's a it's a pretty, pretty incredible arc for them all and something you can do this weekend.

Also this weekend, the annual green update, when you get out and help clean up around your communities, folks are going to be out with trash bags and just helping, Vermont look a little bit nicer.

So there's a lot to do this weekend.

And that's what we're going to have to leave it.

Today.

Thank you so much to our panel, Stephen Brooks from NBC5, Aaron Calvin from Stowe Reporter News and Citizen, and Liam Elder-Connors from Vermont Public.

Thank you all again so much for being here today.

I'm Mitch Wertlieb, thank you so much for watching and for listening.

I hope you'll do so next week as well.

Tune in to Vermont this Week.

In the meantime, have a great week.