LANDEL COCHRAN

The following five questions, along with a requested word limit, were asked of each local candidate in a competitive race for the Vermont House or Senate.

The questions are not repeated in the context of each candidate’s response, but are recalled by subject at the beginning of each answer.

Primary Election Day is Aug. 13.

1) PERSONAL BACKGROUND: I have been serving on the Huntington Selectboard since 2018 and I got into local government to help my town make smart decisions. I believe I can help guide state policymaking in the same way. Although I am not registered with either national party, I am running on the Republican ticket because I support Governor Scott. I’m 36, married, and we have a 2-year-old daughter. Nothing matters more to me than her future. Senator is a tough job but I will be honored to take on the challenge if the voters of the district give me the opportunity.

2) THREE ISSUES: The big three issues for the next legislative session are affordability, economic growth, and climate resiliency. I have heard from quite a few lifelong Vermont Democrats that they are disappointed with the legislature’s inability to control spending. On a quest to help the Vermonters most-in-need, our legislature has grown the scope of our government beyond what Vermonters can afford. You cannot solve equity problems in Vermont by creating equity problems.

Economic growth is a vital element to solving our fiscal problems. At this point Vermont is a top-ten state in education spending, property taxes, and electric bills. We could afford this if our state’s median household income is also top-ten, so let’s focus on making that happen. That means attracting new business to the State and carefully reviewing our existing policies that are discouraging companies from investing here.

As the climate continues to change in unpredictable ways it is essential we better defend ourselves. Our outdated, insufficient, and underfunded public infrastructure needs to be updated and protected before we sustain more damage. Fixing our deficiencies before they are literally washed out costs much less than replacing them after they fail.

3) PAYING FOR SCHOOLS: The education funding mess is a direct result of two things. First, the supermajority in the State House has expanded spending dramatically in the past few years which results in less money available for education from Vermont’s General Fund. The remaining amount needed for education funding comes from property taxes. The “hole to fill” has been much larger in recent years because Vermont’s revenue is going elsewhere. Programs and services started during the COVID era on federal dollars are now siphoning from the General Fund.

The second cause is the 2022 update the legislature did to property tax equity distribution amongst school districts across Vermont. In our broken system, school districts create their budgets, have voters in their district approve the budget, and then send the bill to the State. The State then calculates the total amount needed to fund all of the school districts, and then adjusts that tax burden up for wealthier districts, or down for less-wealthy districts. That’s where everything went wrong. The ups and the downs changed substantially in 2022 so that the actions of one school district have significant financial impacts on the taxpayers in other school districts. These policies resulted in property tax increase of 8% across the state last year and 13.8% this year.

The long-term solution will take time. However, there are some immediate changes we can make. I suggest changing the order of the funding process so the property tax funding pool is calculated and apportioned before school budgets are made. All additional amounts needed would come directly from taxpayers in their own district. No more blank checks. The size of the funding pool should be a reasonable increase upon the size of the previous year’s pool. Reasonable increases are proportional to increases in Vermont household income.

4) HOUSING: We need to work aggressively against the affordable housing crisis from three different angles. First, the recent updates to Act 250 and the efficient building standards that just went into effect July 1 make building your own house a lot more difficult and expensive. I support easing land use and building restrictions only for owner-occupied housing and only in specific areas designated by each city and town. Our housing shortage is serious enough that we need to worry about the supply of homes more than making sure those homes are perfect.

Second, affordable housing also includes everyone who is barely getting by to stay in the homes they already have. We have to stop this onslaught of property taxes. We cannot do 13.8% again next year.

Third, we need to continue supporting affordable housing development in our population centers. The legislature has started working on this front and it needs to be continued. It is imperative that we do not lose sight of what affordable means as well. To most of us, $400,000+ is not an affordable home.

5) CLIMATE: Vermonters are by and large very concerned with our changing climate and we want to do something about it. We are also smart enough to know that making home heating oil and electricity more expensive is not going to make our climate go back to normal. Climate change is a global issue with global players. Most Vermont residents already strive to reduce our collective carbon footprint and we do happen to live in the middle of a gigantic carbon sink. Furthermore, the Global Warming Solutions Act allows outside parties to sue Vermont over certain carbon metrics. Let us change this law before the State, and in turn the taxpayer, is tied up in court. I am in favor of plans that support a greener future without heavily penalizing Vermont present.

With the substantial floods of this and last summer, we are facing the reality of a changing climate. We need to bolster our flood-prone communities and protect our homes and infrastructure from the very-real threat of another flood. We want our tax dollars spent on solutions that protect us from an unpredictably changing climate, not on costly attempts to chip away at a global problem.

Read more Addison Independent coverage of Landel Cochran here.

Find our Q&As with the rest of the Vermont Senate and House candidates here.