Issues
What I’m fighting for
1. Keeping Vermont affordable
A government that spends wisely earns the right to ask for what it needs.
In Pomfret, we’ve kept tax increases below the state average, not by cutting services, but by questioning every expense and treating every dollar as our neighbors’ money.
The first time I sat down with a town budget, I was struck by how much of what we spend locally is driven by costs we can’t control: health insurance, state mandates, education assessments. That’s what I hear from neighbors and small business owners across our communities — whether in Thetford or Springfield, Norwich or Ludlow. It won’t get better until Montpelier starts treating affordability as an obligation, not just a talking point.
When we get this right, families can stay, businesses can grow, and towns can plan for the future instead of just surviving each budget cycle. I will push for education funding reform that includes removing the school construction debt penalty so that communities can invest in their children’s future without going broke.
I will fight for meaningful action on health insurance costs that squeeze town and school budgets alike. And I will demand a state budget built from the same hard questions we ask in town halls across the county.
2. Schools that strengthen our communities
Investing in our schools is investing in our future.
That conviction drove my work on the Mountain Views school bond, which passed this year after a difficult two-year conversation across seven towns. The questions the bond forced us to ask — what do we value, and what can we afford — are exactly what our senators must ask themselves every day.
As the Senate navigates the sweeping changes of Act 73, my focus is on ensuring that Montpelier’s new funding formulas work for every community, not just the ones that fit neatly into a statewide model. Through my work with the Mountain Views district and our BOCES partnerships, I’ve seen firsthand that education isn’t just about K-12. It begins before kindergarten and opens doors for a lifetime.
I will fight for education funding reform that prioritizes classroom investment over administrative overhead, protects our local schools, and ensures that a student training to be an electrician or a nurse receives the same quality of preparation as one heading to a university.
3. Emergency services that reach every door
Where you live shouldn’t determine how long you wait for help.
When we realized 350 neighbors in northeast Pomfret faced long 911 response times, we didn’t just accept it. We sat down with our neighbors in Hartford, analyzed the call data, and built a service agreement that cut those times by up to eight minutes. That’s an eternity in an emergency.
Our small towns face the same challenge: volunteer rosters are thinning, call volumes are rising, and the cost of equipment and training keeps climbing. I will fight for state policies and funding that help rural towns cooperate to protect their residents, while keeping emergency services under local control. This means removing financial and regulatory barriers to volunteers and helping departments meet NFPA and OSHA standards.
4. Protecting the working landscape
I live in North Pomfret, surrounded by working farmland.
Across Vermont — in Barnard’s forests, Bridgewater’s fields, and the hillside pastures from Hartland to Weathersfield — farmers worry whether their children can carry on what they've built.
Act 181’s tier system imposes blanket restrictions on rural landowners that are excessive for the problem it’s meant to solve. One of my farming neighbors set aside building lots hoping his kids will stay or move home one day. New state maps now threaten that possibility.
I will push to amend Act 181’s tier system so that restrictions apply only where development pressure is real, not across rural Vermont indiscriminately.
Most Vermonters are good stewards of their land. Vermont’s land use law should reflect that.
5. A Vermont where the next generation can stay
My wife Katie and I moved to Pomfret in 2018 looking for exactly what has become hard to find. We found it.
And I hear regularly from neighbors whose grown children want to come home to Vermont but can’t afford to.
When young families leave, schools shrink, volunteers disappear, and the civic life that holds a town together begins to fray. This is true in Pomfret — and it’s true across the county, from Hartford, where young workers are priced out of the rental market, to Springfield, where economic development and workforce housing go hand in hand.
We already have models worth building on: Springfield’s Black River Innovation Campus is drawing investment, and the BOCES partnerships across the Mountain Views district show what communities can accomplish by working together.
We have real assets: skilled tradespeople, natural beauty, growing remote-work appeal, and a civic culture most places have lost. I will support reforms that make it easier and less expensive to build here. That means supporting accessory dwelling units by right and reducing the Act 250 permitting burden for workforce housing near our job centers.
These aren’t five separate problems.
They’re five symptoms of the same thing: the slow unraveling of what holds Vermont together. When families can’t afford to stay, schools shrink.
When schools shrink, fewer families come. When there are fewer families, emergency services go understaffed. When farms can’t pass to the next generation, the landscape that defines this place begins to disappear.
Anyone who has sat around a Selectboard table knows this. Montpelier tends to treat each of these as a separate problem. Our communities deserve a senator who understands how the pieces fit, and who has spent seven years learning what breaks when Montpelier doesn’t see the whole picture.