Tim Wassberg – Bennington Banner
With the recent change in presidential nominee on the Democratic side, a swath of flooding and climate issues in Vermont, housing concerns and education roadblocks, Senator Peter Welch [D-VT] has seen a cross-section of intent and needs of response across the board but has also been very direct on his perspective. Senator Welch sat down with the Bennington Banner on Thursday to discuss approach, hard decisions but also the love and joy he has of Vermont.
Welch began his day the Old First Church in Bennington seeing the progression on the roof replacement and renovations. “It’s like an architectural wonder of the country and it was a beautiful day to be in it,” explains Welch. He described the windows letting the light flood in making the proportions and the structure look “exquisite.” He was proud that there was big turn out from the community “who were all committed to raising more money, and preserving [the church] for many future generations of Benningtonians.”
“It goes back to 1763,” he adds. “Some of the revolutionary folks are buried there and the wiring is about the same, so maybe it’s time to modernize, right?” He continues that what was inspiring to him was to be with a significant group of people from Bennington who are descendants of the original people who built the church. “The common bond between them is that they all are committed to working together to do something for future generations.” They may never get credit, he says, but their actions sustain their commitment to the community. “It’s pretty inspiring, and it’s a big challenge they have. We were very successful, helpful anyways, in getting them $500,000 to help [with this work], But It requires a match, so they have to undertake the very hard work of raising that money locally.”
Affordability is a question and that applies to the housing issue as well in the state in terms of possibility. “We’ve got to build more housing. I think it’s pretty simple. Our problem is the lack of housing availability. We stopped building. And there’s a lot of reasons for that — some federal, some local.” Welch says locally, there has to be much more accommodating zoning and planning. “You’ve got to remove obstacles.” At the federal level, he adds that they need to do some things that are incentives to really make building affordable housing profitable, so that housing itself can be affordable. “But I also think that we’ve got to put the lid on some private equity practices where they’re buying up total communities and then sticking it to the people who would be the stabilizing folks in the community.” Right now, he says there seems to be big private equity firms buying up and acquiring whole neighborhoods, then boosting the prices and enriching themselves through finance (but not through construction). “There should be disincentives for that.”
Another housing challenge, Welch explains, is for people who are in Vermont to be able afford a house. “So many folks can’t live anywhere near where they work, especially with our tourist economy. And that’s really wrong. Our firefighters, our local police officers, oftentimes, in many communities, can’t live near where they work,” he explains. “This is a real crisis, and also it’s heartbreaking for families when they see their son or daughter who might want to stay here or return here but they can’t do it because they can’t afford a house.”
This also integrates into the context of education, both on a more primary level and also with college since the generation coming up will, at some point, be the next leaders. “I mean, [in terms of] local education instead of college….we have an incredible challenge with our property taxes, and that’s really very integral to how we afford education,” Welch explains. He says that Vermonters can’t afford 15 or 20% increases in property taxes that have become normal recently. “That essentially [becomes] a local and Montpelier-based decision on how to do it and how to address it,” he adds. His point that this is not a Washington-based problem. ”At the end of the day, it’s [down to] local school boards in the state. They have to make the major decisions about education practices and instruction and finance.” He warns though that the federal government has to be careful about not imposing any expensive mandates without paying for them. “That’s where I think we have to be careful. If we, in Washington, think something is so important that it should be required, then we should take on the burden of financing that, not just imposing it.”
Comparatively with college, he adds that there is a crisis of affordability there. A lot of students are just saddled with an immense amount of debt. He says that it has to be clear right about how that happened. “When [the country] went into the education lending business, initially we gave banks guaranteed loans, [but then] the banks ripped off the borrowers (i.e.) the students, by charging above market interest rates, even though it was a risk free loan.” He says the colleges saw the availability of loans as a justification to increase tuition. In addition, a lot of the construction in some of the bigger colleges has created additional expenses. That said, Welch says he tries to remain hopeful. He thinks part of college education has to be a real partnership with the federal government, providing some help but then the state, maintaining its local effort. “There has to be an acceptance of responsibility to stabilize tuition, not just ratchet it up constantly.” He believes UVM has done a good job with that under President Suresh Garimella, who’s going to be leaving soon. “I think he has stabilized the tuition for maybe five years”
Welch just returned from the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Vermont’s delegates were the youngest there, a point he is proud of, which also bodes well for the future. “There’s a couple things that were remarkable about the convention,” explains Welch. “But one of the most was how responsive the political system was in Chicago in 2024 versus 1968.” Welch explains that he was at the convention in 1968. “I had dropped out of college and was living in the west side of Chicago, doing community organizing, working on housing discrimination.” The convention was there, so he went downtown. “I was against the war, so I was outside protesting.” Welch says that there was almost a sense of despair then, because no one seemed to be listening to them. “Mayor Daley sent the cops out to have some fun and bust heads and tear gas us.” He admits that a lot of the folks who had his job at that time were totally for the Vietnam War “and just wrote off the cries of the anti-war protesters as nothing to be paid attention to.” The system, for him at that time, was really very unresponsive.
“Whereas in 2024, after the debate of the President, you had an awareness on the part of the Democratic voters that, ‘Hey, this is a problem.’ And these were voters who were fully supportive of President Biden, particularly in Vermont.” Welch explains that Vermont gave Biden the highest winning percentage of any state in the country. “Yet everybody I talked to in Vermont said, ‘Peter, you have got to do something!’” Welch adds though, “in fact, the President ultimately made this extraordinary decision to step aside. He had already won the nomination, but he heard the concerns and ultimately accepted the validity of those concerns and stepped aside. So the difference between 1968 and 2024 is you had a deaf and unresponsive party in 68 and you had a responsive and brave president in 2024.”
As to when his concerns shifted as he was the first US Senator to ask President Biden to step aside from the nomination: “It was the debate. I mean, all of us had concerns. And, as far the age issue, you saw that in all the polls.” He adds that the polls showed that the vast majority of Americans did not want a Trump/Biden rematch. “And it was both they didn’t want Trump and they didn’t want Biden.” Welch does go on to add that he and many Democrats are “very, very grateful to President Biden for — from our perspective — the extraordinary job he did, beating Trump, getting us through covid and his environmental work with the Inflation Reduction Act and the American Rescue Plan.” Welch says that is an extraordinary legacy. “But [as far as the next four years], the debate crystallized it, because that’s when it became very apparent to anyone watching that this was not a bad night. This was a ongoing condition. And it will only get worse, not better.” Welch started hearing from Vermonters to do something. “And the President responded.”
He says the energy at the convention and beyond is enormously different now — “between a funeral and a wedding,” While Welch did urge the president to step aside, he and his colleagues did agree that they we should have an open process for selecting their candidate. He says there was an open process but “it was just very quick.” He says within a day, Vice President Kamala Harris had raised $100 million, 150,000 volunteers signed up, and all of the governors who’d been mentioned as potential candidates endorsed her. “So this was a bottom-up explosion of support for the vice president. It is night and day” The key now, he says, is to keep the energy running especially with the next scheduled debate on September 10 between Harris and Trump. “We’ve got to harness the energy, to be disciplined. And we still have a very significant challenge.”
Beyond the next four years is the more immediate impact of recent flooding and disaster conditions in Vermont. Welch has been at the forefront of helping engage the recovery effort but these recent events also speaks to the larger issue of climate change, which possibly means that these weather events will continue.
“Well, first of all, the weather patterns have changed, and we’re going to have more of this, and we’ve got to recognize that,” explains Welch. “It actually creates a long-term urgency to do as much as we can, as quick as we can, to be bring down carbon emissions and get back to a more stable weather system.” Welch says what he has seen with FEMA is that, as far as the immediate response, they do a good job especially with administrator Deanne Criswell at the helm. The issue, Welch says, is “as time goes on, those towns where there’s been a bridge out, or those homes that have been wiped out, or those businesses that are trying to recover, or those farms who’ve lost their crops the down the road [are left by the side].”
Welch says, in this way, the performance of FEMA is extremely problematic. “My conclusion is that it’s less about the people at FEMA — I think they’re doing a really hard heartfelt job under very difficult circumstances — but it’s the lack of local control.” Welch recalls being in Londonderry and meeting with the Select Board. He said they just had endless frustrations when they couldn’t get a consistent response from a FEMA administrator. In all fairness, he says, the FEMA Administrator might be somewhere else like Puerto Rico or Texas, tending to another disaster.
“But if you’re the Select Board in Londonderry, and there’s a bridge out, you’re hearing from people at the town dump every day or when you’re getting coffee, to ‘get that bridge fixed.’” Welch says those local people also are in a position to know who the contractors are that can help. “What I believe is that we’ve got to restructure FEMA so that they do the oversight, but the delegation of authority and resources have to be pushed to the local level,” explains Welch. This way recovery can go “much more quickly, much more efficiently, and if it’s done right, with much more accountability.”
Another example Welch gives is up in Hardwick, where the water treatment facility had a lot of damage. ”There was a generator in there that needed to be fixed. But the FEMA regulations were very complex, and you had to do this-and-that in the application and meet this-and-that standard, and it just took forever.” Welch says, oftentimes, the only kind of contractor who could meet all the specifications required might be a national contractor that, by definition, is going to be more expensive and less available.
“Well, at a certain point, the town managers got a little frustrated, and called up a guy in the neighborhood who knew how to fix things.” What he was told is that a repair that was supposed to be a $50,000 job and take months was a $5,000 job, and would only take two days. ”So that’s the opportunity you have if you give the local folks more control. But that’s a structural issue, and it’s going to be tough.” What Welch says he is finding in his position as Rural Development Subcommittee Chair of the AG committee “is that my Republican colleagues, when they’ve had a disaster, they’ve experienced the same kind of challenges so this is not a red state/blue state deal.” It becomes about pivoting.
“It’s like, ‘How do we get the job done? Let’s get that bridge fixed! Let’s get that cropland repaired. Let’s get the buyout completed for that homeowner.” That said, Welch thinks the only way it can really work is for there to be much more local control and local responsibility, where the federal government does provide the money but imposes accountability to protect taxpayer money. “But, on the other hand, it’s not [about someone] in Washington or in Houston or in Puerto Rico or a regional office making the decision about who fixes the generator at the water treatment facility. We’ve got to do [make that decision]. And people locally are ready to do it. They want to.”
Welch says part of what pulls people together and keeps them together after a disaster is fixing the place up. “But if you’re there, ready to work, and you show up with your backhoe, and you’re told, ‘Well, we’ll get back to you,’ and that goes on and on”, it tends to create real frustration.
Another issue that stems from these same problems involves the crime reform element including repeat offenders which also extended into the drug trade and, by extension, addiction. Welch says these are two separate issues. He says the fentanyl trade has lot of crime which associated with predators, the dealers, the importers, the gangs, and it feeds everything else. Some of the enhancements that could be made could include strengthening the border protections against the smuggling in of fentanyl. “And actually, again, it’s a bipartisan issue, because most of the fentanyl that comes in, it comes through ports of entry, as opposed to individuals smuggling it in,” One advancement that he says can help is getting new technology with X ray machines that, in effect, can inspect and hopefully capture and deter [such actions].
It is also about meeting these problems head on. Welch says the tragedy in the community is that a lot of the users/addicts could be significant contributors to the well being of the community. He recalls when folks got addicted to Oxycontin. “And that horrible Sackler family was cooking the books on how ‘beneficial’ it was; And then [there was these] pretty unscrupulous petty criminals coming up who were then selling this very cheap, very lethal and highly addictive substance.”
On the other side of the coin, Welch says, in addition to more law enforcement, treatment is important. “And there’s been bipartisan support to continue that. But there’s a big part of me that thinks that in order for us to effectively deal with the Fentanyl crisis, the demand side, which is a user wanting it, is that we’ve got to rebuild our communities. You’ve heard that term ‘depths of despair’ right?” He says the question is why is a person choosing or allowing themselves to become addicted to something that’s going to make their life pretty miserable? “They’re kind of mitigating the pain,” he adds. That’s why see a community rebuild and renovate like Bennington is doing with the First Old Church is hopeful. “It is also important to keep the southwestern Vermont Medical Center in peak form, so that people have a sense of community, a sense of safety.”
People have pride in their state. And Welch, of course, feels that connection, “You know, there’s something wonderful about rural communities where you mind your own business and you get along with your neighbors, even if they have beliefs or lifestyles that are completely different than yours. If they get stuck in a ditch, you help pull them out. If you’re stuck in a ditch, you ask for their help and you get it.”
Welch loves the fact that Vermont is all about the outdoors. “I like to cross country ski. I love to hike and I love to walk around. And all of us can do that…and it’s your own damn fault if you don’t take advantage of all the nature that is around in Vermont.” There’s also a kind of practical, pragmatic approach to things that Vermonters have that Welch really admires. “So it’s a pretty special place. I find it very tolerant. People are blunt and direct, and everybody treats everyone else pretty much the same, you know?”
Story Written by Tim Wassberg, Bennington Banner