WINOOSKI — There are issues where Republican Gov. Phil Scott and Democratic challenger Brenda Siegel merely disagree. And then there are issues where the gulf between their positions is a good deal wider.
During Tuesday’s debate between Scott, seeking his fourth term, and Siegel, who acknowledges she faces an uphill battle trying to unseat him, an exchange in which the candidates were allowed to ask questions of each other showed where they disagree most: On drug treatment policy, housing, and fiscal policy.
The hour-long debate, the fourth between them, was hosted by Vermont Public, with “Vermont Edition” co-host Mikaela Lefrak as moderator.
During the candidate question segment, Siegel cited the overdose deaths of her brother 20 years ago, and more recently, her nephew, a friend’s brother and a friend’s son — each among the more than 845 Vermonters she said had died of overdoses since Scott became governor. Siegel said each would have lived if there had been an overdose prevention center available to them.
“My question is: Were their lives worth saving?” she asked Scott.
Scott first replied that he felt that question was unfair.
“We have done a lot of work together over the last six years” on saving lives, Scott said, crediting former Gov. Peter Shumlin for his efforts as well. But he said as a rural state, “we just don’t have the resources” to put injection sites in every city and town. “So I think it’s unfair to think that providing that would have saved all their lives. [It’s] unfortunate that we lost them to begin with.”
Scott also said he could not support the injection sites, which he called an experiment, “taking those resources away from the measures we know work. And I don’t believe we should be legalizing small amounts of recreational drugs either. And I don’t think we should be erasing the records of drug traffickers as well, which means they could buy a gun eventually.”
Siegel restated the question.
“I think it was unfair that I had to bury my nephew. I think it was unfair that we had to bury my brother,” Seigel replied. “So I don’t think its an unfair question for all the people whose families who’ve lost people to ask you if their lives were worth saving because ... many of their lives, if they were in overdose prevention centers, would have been saved. So I’m not asking if we should divert resources away because we need it all. ... But I’m asking if their lives were worth saving.”
“Obviously, every life is precious,” Scott said. “Every single day we have to make choices about what we can do, what we can afford to and where we want to focus. I believe the strategy we’ve used is saving as many lives as possible. I don’t believe your strategy will save every single life.”
Scott’s question to Siegel was how she intends to pay for her campaign pledges on housing, child care, paid medical and family leave, universal primary care — which he estimated at between $500 million and $1 billion. “You’ve made a lot of promises. And those are all priorities of yours. Where are you going to come up with a half a billion to a billion dollars to pay for that?” he asked.
“We’re paying for this already,” Siegel said, “The national average for the cost per person experiencing homelessness is $35,000 a year. We have about 3,000 unhoused people in Vermont. And that means that we’re spending about $105 million a year, $525 million in five years and $1.05 billion in 10 years. If we address the housing crisis upfront, then we end up actually saving taxpayer dollars.”
The same is true for people not covered by health insurance, for the lack of child care preventing people from working, and for people with substance use disorder, she said. “So I would argue that we are actually spending quite a lot of money right now by not solving these problems. And it’s time for us to be responsible with taxpayer dollars.”
Scott said those problems are being worked on, and posed the question again. “I know you’re saying we’re paying for it now. But there has to be a transition and you don’t have a magic switch. To do this you have to have money to invest. So where are you going to come up with that?
“We have to make strategic investments. One of my concerns about this administration is that you have not made those strategic investments,” Siegel said. “Over the last two and a half years, we have paid over $5,000 a month for hotels, when instead we could have started with that plan and come up with a transitional plan so that people were housed and we were not wasting so much money ... We can’t just throw money at new builds and hope that it solves the problem.”
The two candidates also sparred over Scott’s veto of the Clean Heat Standard bill — he said the Legislature had never asked him if he was content with the bill, an assertion Siegel challenged — and over state funds allocated by the Vermont Employment Growth Incentive program to Marvell Technology, despite a lack of new jobs created with the money. State Auditor Doug Hoffer recently criticized the grant for a lack of due diligence, and Siegel questioned why that money wasn’t spent on housing the homeless instead.
Scott said that Vermont Economic Progress Council, not his administration, had made that decision, and that if jobs were not created, “they have to pay it back.”
“But I do think it’s a good idea,” Scott said. “If we don’t have a healthy economy that brings in tax revenue, then we aren’t going to be able to take care of the very people you want to help.”
