Lt. Governor Zuckerman Holds Press Conference on Economic Policy Initiatives
PRESS RELEASE: September 23, 2020
Lt. Governor Zuckerman Holds Press Conference on Economic Policy Initiatives
MONTPELIER: Today, the Zuckerman for VT campaign held a press conference on the statehouse lawn to present two of Lt. Governor Zuckerman’s policy proposals to improve the wellbeing of Vermonters and their families, and produce and preserve affordable housing in Vermont.
The press conference began with a list of statistics that laid out the need for these policy proposals including:
Under the Scott Administration:
70,000 Vermonters are now unemployed and 60,000 are food insecure.
Rural hospitals are closing and while nationally, health care costs rose 121% from 2000 to 2018, in VT they rose 167%. For Vermonters that’s a difference of $1 billion in additional increased healthcare costs in 2018 alone.
A quarter of all Vermont renters pay more than 50% of their paychecks for housing.
Many small colleges have closed and our Vermont State College System is at risk of failing. These are vital economic drivers in our rural communities and businesses rely on them for interns, customers and employees.
Lt. Governor Zuckerman’s first priority to improve the wellbeing of Vermonters and their families includes: working with the legislature to pass continued increases to the minimum wage to build our economy from the bottom up and put more money into our communities, expanding broadband through new approaches, including the community based ECFiber model and treating Childcare like Unemployment Insurance and Worker’s Compensation and require all employers to pay $0.10 per hour per employee into a statewide fund.
Lt. Governor Zuckerman’s second priority to produce and preserve affordable housing includes: building permanently affordable houses as a means to create jobs and be an engine driving Vermont’s economic recovery, fully fund The Vermont Housing and Conservation Board that is a vital partner in meeting our housing goals, yet has been allowed to be underfunded, use capital investments and/or tax credits to incentivize the redevelopment or repurposing of vacant office spaces for housing, maker spaces, and other community-driven needs and to fund these initiatives by proposing a .25% increase in the Property Transfer Tax for homes valued over $700,000.
Lt. Governor Zuckerman said, “Vermonters are hard working and resilient. And they deserve a government that will do the hard work for them. As Governor I will ensure the programs we invest in are supporting Vermonters’ needs, making sure they have better paying jobs, and that there are more dollars circulating in our local economies. Together, we will invest in Vermont and Vermonters to build a better future. A stronger Vermont.”
He was joined by Helen Head, currently serving on the board of the Champlain Housing Trust and formerly the Chair of the House Committee on General, Housing and Military Affairs and Peter Clavelle, former Mayor of Burlington, the city’s first Economic Development Director and an international development consultant who has spent the past 14 years designing and implementing USAID projects around the world.
You can watch the full press conference on our Facebook page. For Lt. Governor Zuckerman’s full remarks please email Kelt Wilska: kelt@zuckermanforvt.com.
###