LANDEL JAMES COCHRAN

Qualification: I joined the Huntington selectboard shortly after turning 30 and I am now in my third term. Budgeting is a primary function of the board and something I believe we have done responsibly and successfully. We have managed to keep our year-over-year budget increases below 5% while maintaining a consistent level of service. People tend to go to their local government first with their concerns and issues. I am always willing to speak with any resident and hear what they have to say and see how I can help.

Education funding: Right now schools are funded based on the spending desires of each district, essentially letting each district write blank checks. Vermont now ranks second out of 50 states in highest spending per pupil. Education is monumentally important to Vermonters but we need to be honest about what we can afford. Until we can shift education funding away from property taxes, I suggest we calculate school equity distribution before the school district budgeting process. We use the overall revenue figures from the previous year, add a modest increase proportional to increase in income, and give each school district their state distribution figures. From there, if a school district wants to spend more than their state amount, they pass an “override tax” for their own district. This will stabilize property taxes as well as set reasonable budget ceilings for school districts. We have to return the link between school district voters and taxpayers that was severed by Act 127.

We also need to get honest about why property taxes went up so much this year. The legislature over-encumbered the general fund, which left less revenue for education. Making necessary cuts in non-education state spending will allow more state revenue to go to the education fund. This takes the pressure off property taxes to fill the gap.

Schools are the centers of our communities and they are evolving into more than just places for learning. Health and social services in our schools are not a bad thing, but they are not education. We should take a cue from North Carolina and separate our health and social services out of school budgets. Manage these services at a state level with HHS dollars, not education dollars.

Housing: We need housing and we need it immediately. Every viable solution needs to be considered. The legislature, via veto override, just created new land use restrictions in rural areas. These are the same towns where we barely have enough students to keep our schools open! I believe we need the opposite approach. Stop making new restrictions and allow each municipality to designate a housing zone exempt from Act 250. Or, to borrow a great idea from Rep. Caleb Elder, declare housing a public good and exempt from Act 250 altogether.

The single biggest issue is our insufficient supply. This has forced entry-level housing out of entry-level pricing. The quicker we correct the supply issue, the quicker we will see price relief. The legislature should also ban corporate ownership of existing single family homes, get money managers out of our housing market.

I believe the state can assist owners of large plots to subdivide for housing in exchange for future tax credits. The state can help get water, wastewater, and access installed for PUD neighborhoods. Reduce the barriers to entry to build. Creating buildable lots will create new tax revenue.

Continue supporting affordable housing trusts and state-subsidized development. Everything helps. We should also embrace high-density unit housing such as mobile homes and tiny houses. The ability to split obligation between land and structure opens doors for a lot of folks to buy into their own home.

Climate crisis: The Public Utilities Commission has already come out and said that a “Clean Heat Credit Marketplace” idea is an unfeasible plan at our small scale and a bureaucratic nightmare. We need to be honest about what “addressing the climate crisis” in Vermont really means. Reducing carbon emissions is a good idea, but we need to focus our tax dollars on the serious climate-related vulnerabilities we already have in our infrastructure network.

The Public Utilities Commission is now exploring a cap-and-trade market for carbon quotas. This really equates to a thinly-veiled carbon tax. The reality is with carbon taxes, they don’t actually reduce the need for hydrocarbons. Carbon taxes are inflationary and will work sharply against affordability.

Let us focus our climate legislation on a greener future while not heavily penalizing Vermonters today.

Other priorities: I don’t actually have a personal agenda in the Senate. I believe some of our biggest problems in Vermont have been acutely aggravated by recent policy made by the Democratic supermajority in override of the Governor. I am running to step in and stop making problems worse first and foremost.

As a senator, I aim to be a problem solver and the three listed above are our biggest. The next biggest problem in the pipeline is healthcare. We are seeing unsustainable cost increases year-over-year and a thinner insurance market each year. Similar to our education finance issues, we are going to need to find the correct medium between premium services and what we can afford. The single biggest cause of our healthcare issues is our housing shortage. Young families can’t afford to live and work here so they are leaving. Providers struggle to find affordable housing so we have a provider shortage as well. Vermont has a large proportion of retirees and typically older folks have more frequent and expensive medical needs. We need young families to live here, work here, go to school here, and balance out our population demographics to lower medical insurance rates. This and most of our problems come back to the housing shortage.

In the Senate, I will tackle any problem thrown at me. I don’t have all the solutions yet, but I will not turn away a good idea. Unfortunately the policy we have seen from the ruling supermajority is taking too much from Vermont families in order to fund their complete agenda. This job requires making tough choices and I will make them and stand by them. As a senator we should be judged by our results. Please join me in voting for different results this year.