Times Argus: Three challenge Washington district senators
October 25, 2024 | Eric Blaisdell | Times ArgusMONTPELIER — Three incumbents face three challengers to represent all of Washington County and the towns of Braintree, Orange and Stowe in the Vermont Senate.
Democrat Ann Cummings is seeking her 14th term, Democrat/Progressive Andrew Perchlik is seeking his fourth term and Democrat/Progressive Anne Watson is seeking her second term in the Senate. They are challenged by Republicans Michael Deering II, Michael Doyle and Donald Koch.
The candidates are listed alphabetically.
Ann Cummings
Cummings, of Montpelier, said she’s seeking another term because she enjoys the work and believes in democracy. She said she’s doing important work at the State House and voters seem to agree.
“I like bringing people together,” she said. “And I think as our national political environment has become so much more divisive, it’s important that we do not let that creep into Vermont, that we make sure that everybody is allowed to be heard and heard respectfully.”
Cummings said the state has some major issues it needs to address. She said increased property taxes and the cost of education are on top of many people’s minds. Cummings said lack of housing and increased costs for health care also need to be addressed.
She noted when the Legislature starts back up in January, only half of the Senate will have previously served for more than one session. Cummings said it will be important to have people there who have experience and know how the system works.
Cummings said this past session was the worst since the Great Recession from 2007 to 2009, in terms of the Legislature making “painful cuts.” She said the economy appears to be strong now and she didn’t expect any further cuts to social safety nets in the next session.
“But it will be a difficult year,” she said. “We are going to have to make progress on property taxes. Last year’s increases were unsustainable.”
Cummings noted she’s serving on the committee looking at the future of public education in the state. She said she’s hoping some interim measures can bring relief to taxpayers in the next year while officials work on longer-term solutions.
She said she didn’t think it would be sustainable to continue to pay teachers to teach classes with less than 10 children. Cummings said there are no economies of scale that way. She said a statewide discussion is needed to figure out how the education system should be configured and how the state delivers those services.
On housing, Cummings said she’s concerned that increased rents and increased property taxes are going to price more people out of the state’s housing market and increase the state’s homelessness issue. She said she’d like to see local communities have some control over rent increases and she wants to look into what’s possible there.
Michael Deering II
Deering did not plan to run for the Legislature this year after his unsuccessful bid for the Vermont House two years ago, where he lost in the Republican primary by five votes. The Barre City councilor made a promise to his constituents that he would focus on the work the city needs and would not run for higher office again, at least anytime soon.
But he said residents approached him and offered to write in his name so that he could run for the Vermont Senate. He said he did no campaigning through the August primary, and enough residents wrote in his name so that he received the Republican nomination. He said it’s the will of the people that he run again this cycle.
He said that defeat two years ago ignited a passion within him to get more involved in politics and better understand how things work. Deering said his time on the council has helped him understand how government works, how to be responsible with public dollars and how to be a responsible decision-maker for the community.
“But also how to ask tough questions, how to communicate with people, how to work behind the scenes to get things done with people,” he said.
Deering said he’s running because the state needs a more affordable future for families like his. He said he has four kids and he started serving the public because he wants a better future for his kids to live in.
“To me, Vermont is becoming so unaffordable that it’s just not going to be a place that my family can continue to live, let alone the people that around me. If we want the people who have made Vermont to continue to be here in Vermont, we need to make it affordable so they can continue to live here,” he said.
He suggested possibly switching from a property tax-based system for public education funding to a system that uses an income tax. Deering said he’s been looking into such a change, because he didn’t think it was fair that property owners bear the brunt of education taxes. While rent goes toward property taxes, he said renters directly paying into the education system could cause them to get more involved in the school budget process.
Deering said a priority for him, if elected, is to help Gov. Phil Scott secure his veto, with a Legislature that just recently had a super-majority of Democrats and Progressives. He said he’s hearing from residents that those in the Legislature aren’t listening to them and he tries to listen twice as much as he speaks.
“The governor has a mandate to take care of the best interests of the people, and I feel like the super-majority has done nothing but take care of their own interests,” he said.
Deering also brought up national politics and the negativity seen there. He noted it can be difficult for a Republican to get elected here, but he wanted residents to know that he’s a “Phil Scott Republican” and what’s going on nationally is not a reflection of what he hopes to accomplish, if elected.
Michael Doyle
Multiple attempts were made to interview Doyle for this story, without success. After initially stating on Oct. 8 that he was willing to speak with The Times Argus about his candidacy, he did not respond to follow-up requests for an interview.
Doyle, a Montpelier resident who ran unsuccessfully for the Vermont Senate in 2016, appeared on the “Barre Beat” podcast last month to talk about his latest campaign.
He said he has been operating a guest house out of Montpelier for the last 25 years, where people, such as traveling nurses, stay for extended periods.
Without getting into specifics, Doyle said the election in November is one of the most important elections that residents will see in quite a while. He said running for office was one way he could participate in that process.
Residents had written in Rob Roper’s name as the third Republican to run for one of three seats in November. But Doyle said Roper, the political commentator and former radio show host out of Stowe, dropped out of the race for personal reasons. He said he was then approached by Washington County Republicans to run for Vermont Senate again.
Doyle was asked about the Clean Heat Standard and the concerns raised about how that legislation could end up costing Vermonters more for heating fuel while trying to reduce the state’s dependence on fossil fuels. Doyle said he is no fan of that legislation, stating it is, “precisely the opposite of what Vermont actually does need to return to some sort of growth and prosperity.”
Doyle said the state is dealing with a housing shortage, a labor shortage and a shrinking population. He said taxes that are already high are set to get higher, with fewer people here to pay them. He said these issues are the result of “good old progressive orthodoxy and economics.”
He said the “scheme” from those on the other side of the aisle appears to be to raise prices, tax more and spend more. Doyle said part of the problem comes from temporary federal dollars that came to the state during the pandemic. He said while those dollars may have been spent on things that were good ideas, those dollars are gone.
“It seems to me that Progressives don’t seem to understand that it really is possible to spend all of your money and when you reach that point, you run out of choices,” he said.
Doyle said the three incumbents are “tax and spend” legislators and he would have a different approach, if elected. To address inflation, he said the state needs to increase supply. He said lowering the price of energy and fuel would help bring down costs for everyday goods.
Donald Koch
Koch, of Barre Town, is no stranger to the State House. His father, Tom, served in the Legislature for 22 years. He said that experience had an influence on him, as he’s been around politics his whole life. He said his father was serving in Montpelier during Koch’s formative years, stopped for a while to help raise his family and focus on his law practice and eventually went back for more.
Koch said he decided to run for public office for the first time this time around because no one else would. He said things have gotten so bad in the state, with the super-majority in the Legislature, that Republicans in the county were looking for people to run, but what they found was a record low of people interested in entering politics. Koch serves as the chair of the Washington County Republican Party.
“We were coming up empty. Everybody we talked to either flat out said ‘no,’ ‘You gotta be crazy,’ ‘Well, let me think about it,’ and came back with ‘no.’ Finally, I just said, ‘Well, I guess I’ll do it,’” he said.
Koch owns and operates a trucking company. He said he’s trying to change the course of his career by selling his truck and coming off the road to work on the family farm and help out his parents as they age.
He said police aren’t enforcing minor traffic violations anymore, so its getting more dangerous to drive truck, as violations become less minor and he said he didn’t want to die on the road.
“It’s getting crazy out there. I’m not enjoying it anymore,” he said.
Koch said as a business owner, he has more appreciation for the issues and a better understanding of the issues facing the state.
He said the main reason he’s running is to support Gov. Scott and uphold the governor’s veto.
“He’s working very hard for the people, ordinary people, to be able to afford to remain Vermonters. But he doesn’t have a cheering section. He needs people behind him to support him,” Koch said.
He said he doesn’t agree with everything the governor has done, a sentiment shared by other conservatives, but Koch said the governor is the best choice to lead Vermont that the state has seen in a long time and he hopes to be in Montpelier to support the governor.
He said he’s hearing more and more from residents that they can’t afford to live here. He said residents are telling him if things don’t start changing, starting with the election in November, they are leaving Vermont.
“And a lot of people have already gone,” he said. “It’s not tenable.”
Koch complained about the super-majority and how it overrode some of the governor’s vetoes. He said those on the other side of the aisle have the power to do that, and he noted Republicans do the same when they have the super-majority.
“We get control and we run with it,” he said. “Eventually, you go overboard. Well, they wasted no time in going overboard. A super-majority on either side is not good. You need to be in a situation where you need to reach across the aisle and work with both sides because both sides have valid view points.”
Andrew Perchlik
Perchlik saw his stature rise within Democratic leadership this last session. The Marshfield resident had been serving as vice chair of the Senate Committee on Transportation, but had to take over that committee because of Sen. Dick Mazza’s health. Mazza was the chair of the committee he had served on for nearly 40 years, but he resigned in April and died shortly after that after battling cancer.
Perchlik also served as vice chair on the Senate Committee on Appropriations, a committee that has jurisdiction over bills pertaining to how funds are appropriated from the state’s treasury. The chair of that committee, Jane Kitchel, is not seeking reelection.
“It’s been a meaningful year, in that regard. We have these senators that I have a lot of respect for and worked with for years that aren’t going to be there, and how the new generation of senators is going to follow in their lead,” he said.
Perchlik said he’s both excited and daunted by the prospects of possibly trying to fill Kitchel’s shoes, but he was honored to even be considered as chair of any Senate committee.
If reelected, Perchlik said he wants to keep working on funding issues on the transportation committee. He said revenues are going down and costs are going up, especially after the state was rocked by significant flooding multiple times in the past two years. He said federal dollars help, but they require a match from the state. He said even with a 10% match, the state is on the hook for millions of dollars, given the extensive damage seen. He noted that’s on top of all the regular infrastructure work needed in the state.
Perchlik said he’s excited to work on how the state changes the source for its transportation funding, while continuing to electrify transportation infrastructure and supporting bike and pedestrian infrastructure.
With Green Mountain Transit announcing in August that its reducing routes in an effort to cut increasing costs, Perchlik said a priority for him will be to find a way to maintain public transportation, given the financial pressures companies like GMT face which cause them to reduce routes and services.
On the appropriations side, he said his focus will be on housing.
He said he didn’t support keeping people in motels and hotels indefinitely, but the state needs to spend more to create housing that’s accessible to all income levels.
“Anywhere we can support the building of those structures and housing units is going to help relieve pressure across the board. … So we just need to build a lot more housing and have a plan to do it over the next 10 years,” he said.
For education funding, Perchlik noted he took part in a previous effort by legislators to look into switching to an income tax-based model instead of property taxes funding public education in Vermont. He said what they found is such a system disproportionately impacts renters, who tend to have lower incomes, because they end up paying the tax twice, once in their rent and again through their income. He said while the switch sounds like it could be a good idea, it’s more complicated than it seems.
Anne Watson
Watson said she expected jumping from mayor of Montpelier to a seat in the Vermont Senate nearly two years ago would include more work, she just wasn’t prepared for how much more work. She said she found her first term in the State House to be, “super exciting, very engaging, endlessly interesting.”
Watson, a math and science teacher at Montpelier High School, said there was much to learn and she felt great about nearly everything the Senate passed.
While the increased workload was a surprise, she said she was able to find her rhythm.
She said she shouldn’t have been surprised that there were great people working out of the State House and she enjoyed getting to know them.
Watson said, if reelected, her top priority will be working on reducing property taxes, particularly in relation to education funding. She said the current system is untenable and a mess.
“We need to make our education funding formula work better for working and middle-class people. Where we’re at now is not working, particularly for people in the Washington (County) district,” she said.
Watson said she wants to break the non-homestead tax rate down into its component parts. She said the goal would be to tax those who own second homes at a much higher rate.
While she said the state’s wealthiest residents could afford to pay more into the system, she said taxing the wealth of working and middle-class residents, in terms of property taxes, is rough because the value of a home is only realized twice, once when the home is bought and again when its sold.
“If the market fluctuates in between, we don’t necessarily feel the value of those increases or decreases,” she said, adding it may be more logical to tie education taxes to income, though that system also has hurdles to overcome.
She said the state needs to be building more housing at every level. She said multiple industries in the state are having difficulty finding workers, and those they want to hire can’t find housing here.
“Housing should not be a barrier to entering the workforce, but it is right now,” Watson said.
She said continuing to work on climate action and resilience remains a priority for her. Watson said she was proud to be a lead sponsor on the climate superfund bill that passed in the last session in response to funding needs seen after the flooding the state has been dealing with in the last two years. But she said more work needs to be done to harden infrastructure and reduce emissions.
On the Clean Heat Standard, she said any talk about increased costs is too early, at this point. She said there’s been a fair amount of misinformation put out about that legislation.
She said what residents need to know is the program is still being designed, details haven’t been finalized and no solid numbers on cost are expected until around December.
“People are like, ‘Oh gosh, is it going to raise my oil bill by $4 per gallon?’ I think that is entirely premature, and let’s just see what the values are. The Legislature needs to do something that is going to be financially responsible for people. I am totally behind that and understand it,” she said.
This story was originally published in the Times Argus.