My State Reps

In my county we are lucky to have two state representatives. I really like our two state reps, Mitzi Johnson and Bob Krebs.  They are very open to talking with constituents so I thought I'd look up their voting records for the year.  The state has a pretty good searchable database so I did some research and this is what I came up with:

Bill	Topic	Mitzi Johnson	Bob Krebs	Status
H99	Equal Pay	Yea	Yea	Enacted
H520	Greenhouse Gas Reduction	Yea	Yea	Enacted
H530	Budget Bill	Yea	Yea	Enacted
H200	Decriminalization of Marijuana	Yea	Nay	Enacted
H536	Sexual Harassment in National Guard	Yea	Yea	Enacted
S14	Unions	Nay	Nay	Enacted
H270	Public Pre-K Education	Yea	Nay	Stalled after House
S77	End of Life Choice	Yea	Yea	Enacted
S59	Unions	Yea	Yea	Enacted
S38	Drivers' Licenses for Illegal Immigrants	Yea	Yea	Enacted
S7	Social Network Privacy and Patent Law	Yea	Yea	Enacted
S81	Poison Flame Retardant	Yea	Yea	Enacted
S82	Campaign Finance Reform	Yea	Nay	Stalled after House
s152	Health Care Reform	Yea	Yea	Enacted
H112	GMO Labeling	Yea	Yea	No Senate Action
S129	Workers' Comp	Yea	Yea	Stalled after House

They mostly voted the way I would expect/hope but there were a few surprises.  Bob voted against the marijuana decriminalization bill, the Public Pre-K bill, and Campaign Finance bill.

Don't really care about the marijuana bill, though I'm glad it passed and I would have voted for it.  But the other two bills didn't pass (they did pass the House just not the Senate),  and they are two bills I do care about quite a bit.  I'll follow up with Bob and get his take, I'm sure he'd be glad to talk.

I'm also bummed the GMO bill didn't pass but both my reps voted for it.

Later, I'll try to do the same for my state senator, Dick Mazza as well.

Local Business

Today I decided to keep it local and check out my towns website.  It has really improved in the last year.  it used to be very out of date and only of limited use.  But now it has a lot of good stuff including town meetings minutes.  So I decided to check out the most recent selectboard minutes.

So it started with the public input section which had a slightly disturbing story of a residence that had their door kicked in by a man.  They of course called 911 but it wasn't during our Sheriff's department operating hours so the call was sent to the state police, who showed up 40 minutes later.  Wow, thankfully there doesn't seem to be any more to that story but certainly concerning.  It turns out the town pays about $95,000 a year for 50 hours a week of Sheriff coverage.  Now, this isn't an outrageous amount of money it works out to about $35/hour but there are also other towns paying in for overlapping coverage so it would be interesting to see a comparison to what other counties pay.  The Sheriff's department has at least 4 cars and even a boat it seems, maybe we need more personnel to do more hours and less cars? 

The kick in story combined with only having 30% of the hours in the week being covered by local police makes me think about getting a gun.  I don't really want to but I inherited my mother's ability to over worry.  We live in the most gun lax state in the country, I may ended up taking the leap some day.  It is a whole balance of protection by the gun vs safety from the gun.  I think I'll probably do a whole post on this someday.

The Selectboard also set out 14 goals for the year.  I'll talk quickly about a few

• Consider eliminating invocation before Town Meeting - I don't have a big problem with this and it isn't unconstitutional (The US Congress still does it).  But I would hate to make anyone feel uncomfortable and it doesn't affect how I face town business so I say get rid of it.
• Discuss a Town noise ordinance - I like the idea (some people party a little too hardy) but with no local police to enforce it it seems like it would be pretty ineffective.
• Look into obtaining land in South Hero for a future Town center - I'd certainly like to hear more about this.  I don't know what would be in a Town Center but our school, Folsom, serves fairly well so far.
• Explore the possibility of combining local schools or the supervisory union - This is a big one.  I'd like to hear more on this.  My kids will be in school in a few years and I don't love the idea of having classes so small that there are multi-grade classrooms.  More would mean more efficient use of money, and maybe better educational opportunities.  A friend of mine on the North Hero school board is fairly set against this(based at least on financial disincentives that the State have in place).  I'll have to reach out to discuss further, and of course report here.

Next, they passed a motion that says no private vehicles can be worked on in the town garage by town employees.  Wow!  That wasn't already the rule!  There are so many reasons that is a bad idea, misuse of public funds, town liability, favoritism/perks... the list could go on and on.  Maybe town garages should consolidate?

Finally, a shout out to my wife who was appointed to the Planning Commission.  Congrats babe!