Lisman Prepares For Vermont Primary
- Details
- Created on Tuesday, 12 April 2016 17:10
- Written by Dylan Robichaud
Lyndon- With less then four months to go until the primary, Republican Candidate for Governor Bruce Lisman sat down with news sevens reporter Tyler Cadorette to say why he should be elected, and the answer was quite clear.
Lisman says that the biggest problems that are affecting Vermonters is the cost of living, the cost of higher education, and the drug problem.
“I’m running for governor because I believe the state is in a bad fragile position, like it’s moving in a bad direction,” Lisman said. One so called “bad direction” is the Heroin epidemic, which continues to be on the incline despite all the attention brought to this problem. Lisman remarked on Donald Trumps plan to build a wall.
“The judicial system isn’t on top of there game yet, we don’t have enough police officers. Its not about building a wall that one of our candidate wants to build, but theres a wall of preventative policing that would be more effective. We don’t have enough mental health or drug related counselors, so the problem is that our good ideas are not funded.”
Lisman thinks that other drugs that have been highly spoken of recently, such as the legalization of Marijuana, has stopped us from being proactive about problems that really matter to us.
“This is a distraction from the hard work and discussion and what to do for our future, is it important to some, of course it is, is it important to our state? not important enough,” he said. “We know from the colorado experience that children under the age of 12 have been emitted to emergency rooms for eating the weed, We know the elements in todays marijuana have a direct impact on the development of the brain, certainly before the age of 25 it has important implications,” He said. “We know the police department in Denver had to hire more police men.”
Aside from the drug problems, higher education is certainly one of Lisman’s top priorities if he gets elected.
“The state has done a crummy job in supporting an important part of our economy, and an important generator of talents,” he said. “The legislation passed a resolution, they want a significant number of vermonters to have at-least a bachelors degree but provide no money and no way to achieve it.
The Vermont state colleges are going to need to find a way to build a reputation, and a magnet for kids not just in our state but in other states as well.”
In addition, Lisman also says that one of the biggest problems is that the cost of living in Vermont continues to rise.
“Part of it is our state its self, during the last five years, taxes and fees, surcharges, and property taxes are up by around 650-million dollars. Theres another 50-million proposed, there is increased cost to live here for what purpose? We’re spending at a rate of 5.4 percent a year in an economy thats only growing at 2% a year, and it’s not sustainable. People pay for it, vermonters pay for it.”
“We are always going to be short of money to do all that we want to do, so lets choose five things that we wanna do. we have a couple things we have to do, the EPA is requiring that we clean up lake chaplain and the waterways. We have to deal with the heroin epidemic, we’ve mandated pre-k education but haven’t funded it, we need to get ahold of property taxes, restore the value of local democracy so you can have an impact on what the budget is and what your property taxes will be.”
Lisman also mentioned that in his free time he like to be physically active. He loves kayaking and walking. At one point he walked 200 miles, coast to coast, in England.
The Vermont Gubernatorial primary election is August 9th. Currently Lisman is racing against republican Phil Scott, and Democrat Mat Dunne, Sue Minter, and Peter Galbraith.
