Suzi Wizowaty

So, what about taxes?
There were no broad-based tax increases, but rather tax changes to put money in Vermonters' pockets at a time they need it most. They are designed to promote fairness and economic competitiveness and help sustain our schools and state infrastructure. Vermonters will now be able to, among other things:
• be exempt from the doubling of interest and dividend income in the property tax adjustment, if they're over 65 (more…)

With thanks to the many reps who contributed to the following:

What is the Working Lands bill? What does it do?
Recognizing that Vermont’s most reliable assets are our people, our natural resources and our brand, the Working Lands bill will stimulate economic development by encouraging entrepreneurism and job creation in agriculture and in Vermont's forest products industry. The Agriculture Development Board (more…)

Why are we Americans not more concerned with this? Some of us in the Vermont House sponsored a joint resolution trying to bring our attention back to the issue--an effort at best symbolic, at worse futile. At least the House passed it.

"JOINT RESOLUTION EXPRESSING DEEP CONCERN OVER THE GROWING INEQUALITY IN WEALTH AND INCOME IN VERMONT"

Offered by: Representatives Davis of Washington, Pearson of Burlington, Burke of
Brattleboro, Edwards of Brattleboro, Fisher of Lincoln, Haas of Rochester, Lippert of Hinesburg, Masland of Thetford, McCullough of Williston, Moran of Wardsboro, Mrowicki of Putney, Poirier of Barre City, Sharpe of Bristol, Wizowaty of Burlington (more…)

A hundred years ago, the U.S. created the first juvenile court. It was a radical idea at the time, born of the same impulse that created compulsory education and child labor laws, according to Rachel Aviv in a recent New Yorker article, and it recognized that adolescents were not adults, though they might look and sound like adults some of the time. The goal was to treat criminal behavior in young people (more…)

This spring I introduced a bill, H.535, which the House Judiciary Committee just passed, that authorizes a study of bias in the criminal justice system and mandates that law enforcement agencies adopt bias-free policing policies. But what is bias? How do we recognize it?

That's part of the problem, of course. Unconscious bias by definition lives outside our immediate awareness. Only (more…)

The income gap between the wealthiest Americans and the average worker is greater now than at any time since the Great Depression. Vermont has not escaped this trend. According to a recent study by Public Assets Institute, the total annual income received by Vermonters between 1989 and 2009 rose 60%—the same rate as the overall (more…)

Several articles came out this week, including in Vt. Digger, reporting on testimony by Burlington Police Chief Mike Schirling and Rutland Mayor Chris Louras to a legislative committee dealing with Corrections. What was widely reported were their assertions that crime is going up and their conclusion that this is largely because the legislature is (more…)

What a week. Across the country, the fundamental progressive spirit of this country rose up and asserted itself, surprising pundits and reporters who had to scramble to keep up and make sense of it all.

Maine voters rejected a right-wing assault on voting rights and defeated an effort to eliminate same-day registration.

Arizona voters recalled Russell Pearce, (more…)

Last week, I went to D.C. with five female legislative colleagues to meet with other women legislators from around the country in order to reframe the debate about national security. According to polls, for the first time in decades American women care as much as men about national security. But we believe that national security depends on economic security. And (more…)

This most recent government stalemate has disgusted and frightened many of us. The refusal to compromise and the apparent willingness to send the economy into further decline are disheartening at best. But where to direct our frustration, our outrage?

Some of us want to point the finger at government generally. But it's not government per se that's dysfunctional, but rather (more…)