Secretary of State for Congress. Well, thank you, Mr. Chair and committee. I'm excited to be here. We've today's been up. I've got to go. I have to. Is it something I said? No. I'm sorry. I will be right back though. I've got to be built. So, my share, it's all a little takeover. For the record, Jim Kondo, Secretary of State, with me is my deputy, Chris Winters. Also Marlene Batey is our corporation's director, and Alex Ivey has been our business analyst on the business portal. So today what I'm here actually is to talk in general about the office and kind of fill you in. And then I hope that we'll be able to come back to talk about the business portal in more detail with you. We'll give you some very brief stuff today, but for the most part, I just want to talk really about the office because there are some new members, and I think it's always good that we provide that information. So thanks for the opportunity to provide you the overview. Our responsibilities are many and very diverse. Most people don't know what the Secretary of State's office does beyond elections. In fact, it's probably the number one question I get during the campaign season, what does the Secretary of State do? And to put it a little bit of perspective, when I was first sworn in as Secretary of State in 2011, I brought my parents up from Florida, and my father on the way back to the airport turned to me and he goes, does this mean that you work for Hillary now? And I said, no, Dad, different Secretary. So he then promptly smacked me on the back of the head and said, don't get cocky with me. As a former state senator and a chair of the Senate Government Operations Committee, I fully understand and appreciate the important work that the legislature does and all the important work that goes on committee by committee. Now, with eight years behind me as Vermont Secretary of State and head of what I consider to be a very important agency, I have a greater appreciation every day for the idea of a necessity of smart and focused government. Specifically, the role that it plays with interagency government operations, commerce and economic development, and most importantly, the integrity and trust of our citizens. Setting public policy is one thing, but enacting that policy is in a smart way too often gets lost. We are proud of the collaborative and nonpartisan relationship we have had with legislative committees over the years. Good government knows no political labels. And I mean that sincerely. I also have over 30 years of private sector background working for a Fortune 100 company as well as a Vermont based distribution company that generated over $100 million in sales and for a regulated utility. So my background is very diverse as well. As Vermont's 38th Secretary of State and head of the agency touching so many people, I'm honored to continue to work to move forward working towards open transparent government, good government solutions that are well designed, efficient, customer friendly, while still protecting the citizens that we serve. For example, our office is well known for having implemented six different IT solutions in my time. We completed a website overhaul the corporation's new corporation system, including the rudimentary business portal that we currently have. Elections, campaign finance, lobbying, professional regulation, and accessible voting. And we did those all on budget and they're all working well. We operate on a very fiscally constrained budget. That's Marlee's job is to keep me in line and well thought out. We eliminated back in 2012, 13 time frame, we eliminated 1.8 million in general fund dollars that we were receiving. And really it was just an accounting issue. On July 1st, 1.8 million we get dumped into the Secretary of State's fund and we'd operate off of that. June 30th, whatever we had, which usually was more than 1.8 million, we get swept away. The next day we get 1.8 million back. And it was just this constant entry, a counting entry that had to be done. We realized actually in my first five minutes as Secretary of State, when I sat down with my budget director at the time, I stopped him and I said, excuse me, why do we get the 1.8 million? And he looked at me and he said, what do you mean? And I says, well, it seems to me we can operate right off the fees that we already generate. And he says, oh, you understand this. And I said, well, it's not rocket science. But in any case, we gave back to the legislature 1.8 million. The only general fund dollars that we use or get is in an election year, we get about 400,000, and that's to help us with ballot printing. Other than that, we're self-funded. And I'll get in a little bit later. I'll tell you how much we actually give back. We operate on our fees. We operate within our budget that we develop and you approve. When I say that, the legislature is a whole. And one thing that I've been very proud of is the fact that the Secretary of State's office under my watch has never been before appropriations for budget adjustment in January. That means we operate under the budget we have. As you probably know, we have four divisions at the Secretary of State's office, the Office of Professional Regulation, better known as OPR. They protect the public's health and safety through professional regulation, leading the way with efficient, effective licensing and enforcement. Vasara, the state archives, preserving and protecting our state's most valued history, public records, and access to those public records. And working collaboratively with state government on public records management. Elections, obviously, safeguarding the integrity and accuracy of our elections. While increasing voter participation and creating more effective election administration and corporations, ensuring the proper registration and public protection while facilitating business and commerce in Vermont. Our fifth division is actually Marlene's other half. And that's the administration office, business office. She makes sure that we live within our means, provide true accounting of our budgets, and the resources needed to provide services. And we do have on our website, you can actually access our budgets. So we post that on our website. In addition to these divisions, we also have some other programs. Our municipal division, or the municipal program, fields inquiries every day from municipal officials and many of your constituents all across the state. We receive over 1200 calls per day. And that includes some of our publications, I'm sorry, 100 calls a year. Including publications. I was trying to get away. The next step was to ask them for money. Public records and open meetings. As many of you may know, I do what we call the transparency tour every other year. We're now over 50 stops around the state where we actually explain public records law and open meeting laws. And we have the Safe at Home program providing address confidentiality for victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, and stalking. We have over 150 participants. That's men, women, and children that are on that list. Essentially, they use our office as their legal address. And all their mail comes to us. We then repackage it and send it to the correct address. That list is kept in a safe so that nobody else can get access to it. So we don't put it on our website or any place else. And I always like to tell this story because it really talks about how important the Safe at Home program is. First of all, we were the third state in the country to actually implement it. Back around 2000 or 2001. About three or four years ago, we had a call that came in and the person that was managing the program called me up and said, I got a really upset guy on the phone that's insisting I give him information. And I said, okay, send it up. This guy told me I'm in law enforcement. I know how these programs work.  We need to do a welfare check. And I said, that's great. I says, he was from out of state. I says, you know the process. If you have a court order, file it with me and I'll review it and we'll release the information. He's okay, never received anything. A week later he called and I think he must have thought Vermont was a big place because he thought he was going to get somebody else, he got me again. And I explained to him that last week I told you I did the court order and you didn't send it to me. He says, well, I'm in law enforcement and I know how this stuff works. And I said, that's fine. Something just didn't seem right. So I called the state police and I asked them to do a welfare check on the woman and her daughter. It was in southern Vermont, not your side, the other side, your side. And the state police went and checked it out to make sure that the family was okay. And then reported back to me. The guy that was calling me was a strange husband who was in law enforcement of the woman and child. And I'm just so pleased that we were able to protect that family from any potential harm. And that's the meaning of that program. It really does work. We also have the temporary officiant program which allows individuals to register with our office so that they can perform a single marriage. Started out with less than 1,000. We're now over 1,500 per year. That system is now up online and you can access it on a 24-7 basis. During the busy spring, summer, and fall, we receive anywhere from 40 to 90 applications per day. Mr. Secretary, I'd like to add something. Sure. I had a food cart in Bennington and this couple met at my food cart. And when they decided they wanted to get married, they did it at my cart. Would you the officiant? And that program, by the way, brings in about $150,000 to the state. Yeah, that's good. We also maintain the APA, the Administrative Procedures Act rules and legislative clerk duties. The rules are when agencies file rules that they're going to operate under. They have to file it through us. We make sure that they file them correctly. Make sure that they've done the public outreach. And then report back to Elkar to make sure that they have before they approve it. So with that in mind, let me quickly go over a few of our major initiatives. The corporations division is responsible for registration of business entities. From small proprietorship, such as trade names to the full incorporation process. It's also the filing repository for uniform commercial code filings for the state of Vermont. The corporations division, by the way, they have five people. They do over 100,000 unique transactions per year. They've had no fee increases since 2014. Every year at the end of the year, a general fund sweep occurs pretty much out of their fund. And in FY17, the general fund received about 2.8 million. And in FY18, it was just under 2.75 million. We also, in this past year, implemented what we call the one click filing of annual reports, which is when you have to, every business has to file an annual report on January to March. If you have had no changes to your filing in the previous year, you can just hit one click and be on your way. One click, submit your credit card information in the way you go. Whereas before you used to have to fill in the whole form and everything else, all the details. So we're really pleased with that. And we're now over 60% of our filing for annual reports are done through that process. So that really allows businesses to focus on their business rather than focusing on the paperwork for the state. We continue to work with Department of Tax and Department of Labor. Specifically in labor, it's the unemployment division on the shared business portal and service to the customer base. This past year, we implemented the first in the nation registration of data brokers and we're just in its infancy at this point. Our business portal, let's see, I was going to talk a little bit about the other, but okay. So let me just back up a little bit and just describe, in 2011, and I knew this because I had been in the Senate for so many years. In 2011, we were getting ready to put a new IT system in place for corporations. And the vendor we were using said, hey, this is a great time to do a basic business portal. So we approached the Shumlin administration and it had been tried by Dean. It had been tried by Douglas. Nobody could ever seem to get their hands on it. But because we were putting our new corporation system in place, it made the perfect time to actually do this. So that it was very basic from the standpoint of, when you're starting a business, you put in your name, your address, your DBA, all your contact information.  What we did basically was set it up so that this stuff would carry over. The information that was pertinent would carry over. And what it would do is it would just ask, when you got to tax department, when you're going for your tax ID, it would ask the specific questions that you needed to answer for tax. When you got to labor, it would ask the specific questions for labor. Then last year, this committee and the Senate Commerce Economic Development Committee asked us to look into a business portal. They set up a steering committee with Mia's chair and Mike Shirling, ACCD, and John Quinn from the ADS to move forward on a plan. The legislature also gave us a authorization for someone to do that work for us. That's Alex, and we proceeded. And you should have a report already on file with the legislature we submitted on December 14th to talk about what we could do. Alex did a tremendous amount of work reaching out to organizations, reaching out to businesses, reaching out to agencies about what are the next steps. And talking with, we talked, I know that Alex and Chris talked with other states, Indiana, Georgia, Nevada, who already have operating systems. And we talked with some of the, San Francisco, was it? Yeah, San Francisco, which has a business portal for their own city. And the report is the culmination of that. And I have to, I want to give thanks to Alex because that report, I think, is one of the finest reports set to a legislature that I've seen in my time. And I've been in this building since 2001, so, and I know how many reports are filed. There's no way we could all read them. When you get the chance, you're still chair, are you still chair of the National Association? I am president of the National Association of Senators. Could you talk a little bit about the security of our election? And also, sir, I'd like to overview of what's happening nationally, because you actually know. Sure, as many as, okay, yeah, I'll get into that. I think, let me hold off and go through the rest of this first, and then I'll get back to it. Our goal with the business portal and the goal that the committee's charges with this committee and the House and the Senate committee was to try to simplify the process to make it easier for businesses to actually run their businesses and not have to focus on filing paper with the state. Just to give you an example, when we first took office, when I first took office, I walked into the office and on the top of one of the clerk's desks was a stack of paper this high with a check attached to each piece of paper. It was annual report time. In those days, it would take 10 to 12 weeks to process all of that. And when I asked how quick did the checks get processed, they said, well, we process them as we process the paper, so 10 to 12 weeks. We had to hire temporaries to be on staff, to come on staff to actually input the data, because we didn't have a very good system. It was clunky, it was inaccurate, it was messy, it was, I can't describe it, it was just bad. Today, when you file your annual report, when you hit submit, it's done. It's up, it's posted, the check is already deposited in the bank. We used to accept only check and cash or drawdown. And what we ended up doing is we accept all forms of payment, bank to bank, credit card, everything, all kinds of credit cards. So, you know, we just improved everything so much. And I have to say that it also helped us with our revenues, because now we're capturing, for sure, capturing all of our revenues. So we're, the report, we'll come back to talk about the report in more detail, but the report basically lays it out. We did do an RFI to find out what are we talking about here with vendors. We got, what was it, three replies back. And the range was, you know, I hate to say it in terms of, for media purposes, but you know, I was asked at one point, how much is that going to cost us? And I said, it could be one million or it could be 10 million. And of course the headline was, it's going to cost 10 million. And I said, well, that wasn't fair. It depends on what level of system we put into place and how many agencies actually get on board. And the only way that this is going to work, because you can't do it all at once, the only way that this will work is if you phase it in as separate projects going along the way. So in any case, I'll continue on. We, as I said, we have the data brokers up and running. And any corpse legislation that we have will come through this committee. So if we have anything that needs to be addressed or updated, it will come through this committee. I'm not going to, I'll just briefly talk about, like, the Office of Professional Regulation, 50 professions, 70,000 licenses. This year, we just enacted the go to republics. But we have over time, over the last couple of years, we've added some licensing. We added the Department of Environmental Conservation Foresters, which was newly licensed. LADCs, the licensed alcohol and drug counselors. That one we're especially proud of because we worked with the licensees. We were able to take 30 pages of rules and reduce it to 10 pages. It's been a real boon from the standpoint of making it easier to get people licensed and operating in that field so it's an economic workforce development piece. And we're working that way now. We have, we were awarded this past year, last summer, a grant of $450,000 over three years from the U.S. Department of Labor to conduct work specifically on, continue work on the LADCs, but also on cosmetology, funeral, and real estate. And how do we can streamline those and make them more efficient as well? We are considered. Sure. The community hearings for contractors, is that through your office? Yes. And that's one that will be in the upcoming OPR bill, which will be coming out? I'll just say, Jim, that's going to be a separate bill from the OPR bill. Oh, it is separate. Home improvement contractors, and we think it's going to start on the Senate side. Senator Sorotkin has been an advocate of this for a while. It's going to start in Government Operations Committee bill, I believe. And we did extensive outreach with that, as well as, to be honest with you, a lot of the responsible contractors are actually in favor of this. It's what we're doing, basically, just to give you a little bit of a heads up, is it's going to be basically a very minimal approach. It's going to be a registration, and you have to provide your insurances so that we know that you have insurance and that you have a contract that you can, a model contract that you use or whatever. Other than that, it's really not going to be, we're not going to whack people, you know, for filing. It's not a license, so to speak. It's a very minimal. And that's really the key to the Office of Professional Regulation. Vermont's OPR is considered a model for the nation. It was considered that way by the Obama Administration when they did a white paper on it. But also CSG and NCSL, Chris goes often to many conferences to talk about how we're doing it in Vermont. And we've worked closely with the legislature to, we not only have a sunrise review for when you want to add a license, but we also have a sunset to when we want to reduce or eliminate a license. And we can get into more on that, but there really is some, there was a court decision, the North Carolina Dental Supreme Court decision that basically was looking at how some of these commissions and boards basically are protecting their profession by restricting the ability of other people to get into it. And it was considered a, what's the phrase, restraint of trade? You're also doing some wonderful work with the military. And OPR has done, and you're continuing to do that, just looking at particular training, the MOS is a military designation, and then being able to transition into a licensed profession in Vermont. And that's also, that's actually groundbreaking in the first place in the nation, so it's wonderful. So, yeah, so there's a lot that we've been doing to try to, you know, and we've been working closely with the governor on much of this as well. Really, if you look at some of the other states, many of the other states, they have one place where you go for licensing and registrations. Whereas here in Vermont, we have 50 professions. There's another 30, 40 throughout state government. You really have to know where to go in order to find out more about your license or whatever. You have to know where you have to go, whereas in many states it's one location. I remember I was at a secretary's conference in Austin, Texas, and I looked up, I was right across from the hotel was this building and it said, the Office of Registration and Licensing, and I'm, wow, and I, you know, it was, it was, they've made it really simple from that standpoint that they have one place where you go for registration and licensing. And, you know, we're already having conversations with Department of Liquor Control, with potentially with the YAG department about some of their license as well. It's just, it makes sense. We have got it down to a science. We, we know what we're doing with it. It's, we're efficient. And I'll just give you some quick numbers. In 2000, it was 2003, 2003, we had 35 professions. So we're almost, we're a little, about 40% more now, but we had 35 professions and only 35,000 license holders. And we had 35 employees. In 2014, 10 years later, we had 50 professions, and we had, well, at that time, 60,000 licensees. So we'd almost doubled everything, and we had almost the same number of employees. And the reason is because we used technology to offset and become more efficient and more accurate, actually. The amazing part for me, even with our election systems, is that the technology allows you to be more accurate by far, besides the efficiency. We also have the state archives and records administration. Just to clarify, when you're just saying, how's the licensing in your shop? You're advocating to trade to the training and all that stuff. That would stay with the home department or administrator. You would just be handing out the license. We handle the administration of the license. Right. And everything else is done, if there's a training involved or something. It could be, yes. It depends on how it's set up. And I mean, ultimately, that's up to the legislature to make those decisions. So the archives, we protect our most precious documents, as well as offer other state agencies records management, training. We've been upping our game on digital archives, putting a lot of... Every day, there's more stuff on our website than ever before. You can now access newspapers back to the late 1700s. And Vermonters can access that for free. It's done through ancestry.com. They did all the scanning and uploading. And one of the deals was, because they wanted access to the newspapers, and one of the deals was, okay, well, Vermonters get access to them. And that's how we got ahold of it. So there's a lot that the Office of State Archives does. And we're certainly... We operate a record center. It's got over 100,000 cubic feet of records, as well as the archive itself. One of the things that's kind of an awesome thing, I remember when I first was elected as secretary, and I went out there, and Greg Sanford was a former state archivist. And he took me out to the archive into the vault. It's a climate-controlled vault. And he hands me this document, it was in a plastic sheet, and I'm looking at it, and I'm like, holy cow, this is the original Constitution of the state of Vermont.  And there was a time when the archives were in the basement of the Pavilion building, and then it moved from the basement of the Pavilion building to the basement of Terrace Street, where our office used to be located. And in both basements, you had water pipes and sewer pipes going right through the archive. When the flood of two... What was it? The early 1990s here in Montpelier, legislators were over at the archive helping get all the documents and stuff up to a higher location to protect them. So it's just what we have done, we've now got, it's out in middle sex, it's a state-of-the-art facility, it looks like a warehouse, but it's a state-of-the-art facility out there, climate-controlled, and we're very proud of the work that we've been doing out there. A lot of states have been actually reducing or eliminating their archives, but we've been going the other way. Elections, you asked about elections, so let me... Sure. Do you advise other agencies on their own records? Yes. And keeping them in compliance with shredding and all the... Well, we offer them guidance on it. We don't control it, but we offer them... We wish we did, but we offer them guidance. So, in the elections area, two years ago, actually two and a half years ago now, the world of secretaries of state, this is in response to your question, the world of secretaries of state across this country changed and changed drastically. We were called to a conference call with the Department of Homeland Security, Secretary of State... Secretary of Department of Homeland Security, Jay Johnson, was on the phone with us and informed us that 21 states had been attacked. They suspected the Russians. There was only one state that they knew of that was breached and that they were considering putting elections under critical infrastructure designation. We didn't know what that meant. We thought this was going to be a federal takeover of our elections. So, we had lots of questions. It took almost a year before they actually answered them. We did, in January of 17, declare us a critical infrastructure and we still didn't know what that meant. It was not until June or July of 17 that we actually got information to explain to us that there were going to be more resources available to us. Vermont, though, I will say, we were well ahead of the game. In 2013, we had actually started to focus on cybersecurity well before we actually implemented our new election system. So, we were well ahead of the game and we were working hard on our cybersecurity at that time. We did a complete vulnerability and risk assessment of both physical as well as cyber of all three of our facilities. So, we really were a leader as far as secretaries of state across the country. This past year, past election in 2018, I will just say, no news was good news. There was no breaches that we are aware of. In either case, there was certainly no votes that were changed. We know that. What occurred in 2016 was an attempt to get into our voter registration databases. Part of our new system, we not only on our voter registration database, we not only back it up every night, but we also have something called same day voter registration, so nobody will be denied on election day. So, that's some of the redundancy that we put in place. We also, well, we're now one of 40 states, but we were, we have been a state that's considered to be a voter marked paper ballot. We also do post-election audits. These are all things that help with that security issue, whether you want to call it cybersecurity or not. And, you know, we continue. As I tell people all the time, I'm constantly being interviewed on the national press, and I tell them, you know, cybersecurity is like a race without a finish line. It's never going to end. It's the new normal for our secretaries of state. We have to be focused on it on an everyday basis. Last August, August 24th, to be exact, my IT manager came to me and said, we blocked a whole bunch of attempts to get into our system yesterday, and I said, okay. And he goes, I want you to see these two. And he gave me the document and in both of them it said country of origin, Russia. So, I immediately said, okay, you're sure we blocked it? And he said, yes, there's nothing in the system. I said, okay, then we need to send this down to the Department of Homeland Security. By the end of that day, they received it and what's called an MSISAC, which is an information sharing analysis center at the Center for Internet Security. By the time they finished that day, they had issued an alert across the country to all states to be on the lookout for these IP addresses. So, we played a hand in that and I'm pleased that we were, but I'm also very pleased, obviously, that our systems worked, our defenses worked. Yes. Well, going through voter registration files this year, I noticed there was a lot of folks that were born in 1915 or something like that. I can't remember. It was a lot of people that had been voting regularly over the last 10 years. And the reason I came upon was because I actually talked to somebody who said they had re-voted in 10 years, but had a voting record. And that's why I was at their door. I think I did talk to the Secretary of State's office about this because it felt like a security potential security issue.  Well, I can't speak to the 1905. 1915, some of those people are still around. So, they're still around, yeah? And they're good voters. But I will say that the system, you know, Secretaries of State across the country are criticized because there's dead people on the election voter registration databases. There will always be dead people on the voter registration databases. And part of it is because the dead people, unfortunately, don't call us up or send us a document saying, I died. Don't take me off the list. And there are restrictions. And actually, the restrictions about taking people off the ballot, off the registration database, we have to follow federal guidelines and it isn't easy to take someone off. And frankly, it shouldn't be easy. So, you know, we have the capability now when we are doing an audit to make sure that, you know, nobody voted more than twice and all this stuff. But let me put it in perspective. In 2016, because we haven't got the final numbers yet for this year, but in 2016, 68%, and that was a presidential year, 68% of our registered voters voted. 68%. I really have a tough enough time getting people to vote once, never mind twice.  What I will say to you is there is no widespread voter fraud. And frankly, from my standpoint, and I think most of my team will agree, when I say the real voter fraud in this country is denying an eligible American the right to cast a ballot. And that happens far more than any occasion of actual voter fraud where someone's impersonating someone. I appreciate how open our election is. Mr. Secretary, we both don't cast you for our vote. After the election, she expressed some frustration with me and was worried, frankly, about same-day registration and how the state does not require someone to provide ID. And I find that troublesome. Well, first let me say that ID would not stop someone in that case. We could determine their address. Well, here's the thing. If someone moves into Bennington the day before, should they be denied? And they wouldn't have a driver's license. They wouldn't have a utility bill at that point. And in some cases, we have three or four people living together and then only one person probably has a utility bill. So the others wouldn't have a utility bill. So it's really difficult and if you look at the Vermont law, it tells us how we can go about this. As I said, we find it very difficult to find there's an argument about same-day because the ones that use same-day most often are college students. All right? So that is something that we have to still consider. Now, this was the first general election with same-day. So it was the first time I can tell you that the numbers so far are there statewide. We had 8,000 people that voted that registered and voted on election day. That doesn't mean that those people didn't deserve to be. Voting is a constitutional right. You should be allowed. We should reduce and remove any obstructions that are in the way while we still have requirements as to making sure. You sign an affidavit when you register. You sign an affidavit and if you are convicted of voter fraud. I wasn't aware of that. So at the same day, they sign an affidavit. The application is actually an affidavit. By the way, Cassie Barbrough is our town court. They didn't mention that. And I'm aware of Cassie's concerns because you do have a college in your town. So I understand that. Burlington has, I think they had 2,500 or 3,000 same-day voter registrations that day. But same-day voter registration also offers that protection to voters whose name might for some reason have been removed from the checklist. We don't remove. It's really up to Cassie and her colleagues across the state that the way our system works is the town clerk is the one responsible for their voter checklist. So they add and remove. If someone files with our office online, it goes automatically to the clerk of jurisdiction. And that clerk has to review it and approve it before it gets added to the list. Then it gets fed up into the statewide. One follow-up. Is there any way currently, Cassie's argument was that somebody could come in to my town and go to Shaftesbury. And there may or may not be any cross-referencing as a way for the secretary of state to check for duplication. Yes. Unfortunately, unless they're online at the polling place, they can't do it from there. But that's probably in the future will be allowed. But the statewide voter checklist is online. They can access it. The town clerks have access to the overall and they can look to see if someone is registered in another town. And when they find someone, if someone's registering in Bennington and they move there from Shaftesbury, she can actually click and notice to that town clerk to remove this person they just registered in Bennington. So that's available to them. There are some one of the things that we will be coming to the legislature for, there is a a group an organization that's actually state-owned and I say that there's 26 states I think that are in it now. It's growing. It's called Eric and it's electronic electronic registration information center or something. And basically what happens is states will send their voter registration data to this group and they will massage it within their system of the consortium states and decide if there's people that should be removed like dead people, people that have moved because we don't have any system between states there's no system between states so but there are ways that we can find out some of this stuff. Thank you. First I just want to thank you for websites amazing and I spent way too much time on it in the last six months so thank you for that. It's incredibly easy to use and I was glad that you're hosting a business portal because I think that bodes well different state technology in Vermont and thinking about workforce development and how many disconnected workers I think we have right now who are trying to find their way and how sort of different government systems are really challenging for those folks. I think things like ease of voter registration is a really great way to start to get people connected to state systems enough that they might think about sort of next steps of employment or housing or something like that so I think any way that we can connect people to a sense of community and voting is a really good one of those. We might be able to grow the workforce from there so thank you. Thank you. Is it the town clerk's responsibility or the BCA's responsibility to manage the checklist? Well both. The town clerk's receive stuff on a regular basis and they actually can do it. But the Board of Civil Authority ultimately gives us that information. She's a member of that. She's a member. Typically when I was in South Burlington on the City Council there we were on obviously on the Board of Civil Authority as well and we would receive the town clerk would say give us a list and say here's the people that I'm removing or adding or whatever and we would get a chance to look at it and say or we think this person still lives there. That's the thing you don't want to remove someone if they still live there just because they didn't vote because you don't know when they're going to vote. So it's wrong to just take someone off the list and that's what same day offers the opportunity to protect that person. Thank you. This is actually a follow up on which was a point earlier so the same day registration really happy that exists and that we're doing that all about opening transparent elections. Our clerks are struggling with the additional time that comes in and heard some complaints from constituents about not being able to register to vote the day before the election because money was closed, the office was closed to prepare with the folks who voted early and things like that. So it seems that a fix there would be to provide some additional funding for our election workers being to hire somebody to come help on that day. I'm not sure exactly what the cost of elections are if there's overtime then who's that cost but it does seem that our election workers need help and I think I've heard some frustration that I'm forgetting the name of the person that's from each party that's supposed to be there and help with the elections but some frustration that progressives are not going to happen. Well let me just say there are duties listed in the statute about what the Board of Civil Authority with their job titles or duties are and we get complaints all the time from clerks who say I can't get some of my members of the Board of Civil Authority to do anything on election day they don't want anything to do with it. My only response to that is they probably shouldn't be able to do anything on election day and I think there are this issue of we don't pay the town clerks or the towns for their labor or the work that they do at that level. We do pay if a town is a we have 246 towns we have 135 of them are what we call tabulator towns a tabulator machine those 135 towns which is a little over 50% of the towns actually generate or receive 80% of the votes that come through. There is a state law that the legislature passed several years ago that any town of a thousand voters or more must have a tabulator. We provide that tabulator it doesn't cost the town anything to purchase that tabulator so we provide that. We also provide the first 500 for the memory card creation which typically is about 1200 it depends on the election and how many people are on it it's about a thousand to 1200 we pay the first 500 of that and if there is a recount we end up putting the bill on that as well. The whole idea I mean we now have data we didn't have data before what we do now with our new election management system that was put in place in 2015 and for instance we can tell you that before it used to have to register and the close of registration was the Wednesday before the election day we now know that from the Thursday Friday, Monday and the election day we can tell you how many people and for instance this year I think it was close to 13,000 people during that week that voted early we know that there's 8,000 people that registered and voted on the same day on election day we know that the day before elections there were over 7,000 people that voted that day early ballot and I know that many of the clerks wanted us to give them what they call a gap day where there would be no registration no voting in that one day, the day before elections with numbers like that it's kind of hard to say what are we supposed to do with those people that are voting early and in fact a Republican member of the Senate actually said well I think they ought to be open on Saturday before election day there is one of the things we always run into is that here in Vermont you have some professional clerks who are open 5 days a week and we also have some clerks in some small towns that are only open one afternoon a week or one day a week Mr. Chairman are you open 5 days or 3 half days but we have a town administrator who is also an assistant clerk so it basically is open 5 days so I mean it varies across the state and I don't think there is any question now I will tell you that there is a bill in congress HR1 that would require a minimum of 3 days of early voting including weekends I don't believe that that bill will go anywhere at this point but it is there and there is a growing support for at least the weekend before elections to be open and I know that several of the towns here in Montpelier John Odom will be open on Saturday until I think 2 o'clock in the afternoon on the Saturday before election day to register people and allow people to come in and vote it's just we allow 45 days for early voting but that doesn't mean 45 days where the clerk is actually available we also have an online request system where you can actually request your early ballot to be mailed to you as soon as 45 days ahead of time so we are offering as many ways possible for people to be able to register and cast a ballot I will tell you that the numbers are 75% of all the registrations for 2018 January through December 75% of those registrations came through the online voter registration system the election day registration system the automatic voter registration system which is our AVRs with the DMV the nightly file from DMV for anybody that accessed DMV that day and if we check it against our system to see if anybody and if they didn't opt out we will automatically register if they're 17 years old but will be 18 by election day we will automatically register them because they're eligible to vote in the presidential primary and the general election primary and if they're 17 or they're 17 and they won't be eligible we actually in essence pre-register and we park them off to decide until their birth date pops up and then we automatically will register them so we're doing everything we can to get people on and that's not a bad thing and I didn't mean to say that I don't mean it in that way just that when we do provide those options recognizing that their clerks are feeling overwhelmed despite that we have all these options there's still a lot of, as you said, 8,000 people to register at the same day but also the writing votes make it challenging for them I'm just wanting to communicate that there was some and we recognize that and in fact everything that I've been doing with our new election system and by the way, just to give you a background in the office we were 38th in the nation in 2012, that was the first election I oversaw 38th in the nation after the court for elections performance index it's a data driven it's now done by MIT it's the most coveted of the election performance indicators so we were 38th in the nation we started right after 2012 putting stuff online the online voter registration things like that and we've crept up the list after the 2014 election we were 16th in the nation after the 2016 election we were number one congratulations I'm very proud of our team the work that they've done to implement and much of that information comes from what's called the EAC report it's a federal commission and the clerks used to have to fill this report out it was 40 pages long and it had to be done within 60 days of the election required a lot of data points in it they hated it we hated it because then they would send it to us so we would receive 245 reports we had to aggregate it into one report and then supply it to the federal government what we did when we put our new election management system in place as long as the clerks are doing their job we have the information we can just click a button and the report is filed so we've taken that off their plate a lot of the voter registration stuff we've taken off their plate actually we've reduced the amount of work that they have to do so we've been working on the other side too I know that a lot of folks don't hear that from the town clerks but that's not a knock on them they're busy they're the hardest working municipal officials we have and I'm sorry for those that are select board members I was myself but the clerks are the hardest working municipal officials we have and it's a constant battle and we're trying to find ways that we can improve the efficiency the accuracy the fact that we used to get paper literally paper forms for voter registration and send it to the clerks because if they came to our office we would send it to the appropriate clerk and those paper forms had so much inaccuracy on it because you have to try to read someone's chicken scratch whereas now with the online system and the automatic voter registration system that stuff is automatically updated so our system is far more accurate today than it ever was we don't have an answer for dead people dying on us we don't have an answer for people that move out of state within the state we do within the state we do and it's just a constant battle thank you I appreciate that we'll get to maybe it's a question and then a shorter point of view when we voted on the same day voting I checked with my town clerk and she said that basically we've had it all long anyway it's called a provisional ballot I don't know that's not just one thing I could ask you that's what I understood from her she treats it like a provisional ballot the second thing I wanted to know was are there any rules on how you use the voter rolls for other state functions I know like the jury duty was often taken off of voter rolls and the DMV there is state law one of the restrictions and I don't have it on the top of my head but I do know that at least once a year we have to send the copy of the voter roll to the judiciary I'm assuming it's for the jury duty issues but I will say the provisional ballot, Vermont has not used a provisional ballot for years we've used what we call an affidavit the affidavit basically if someone came in and said well I registered through human services here fill out this form and you attest to the fact that under penalties of pains and perjury that you actually did do this and what actually occurred at one point was this is after the 2012 I think it was election two weeks after the election was over I got a stack like this from DMV of voter registration forms and I called Rob Ida the commissioner and I just you got to come over and see this and these things dated back to July so somewhere these things were being held and not getting to us so it was two weeks after the election that we finally got this information so we started working with DMV to improve that but we still have other designated agencies human services the health connect are considered designated registration agencies as well we don't get a lot from those agencies most of it comes from DMV you know people remember to change their address on their driver's license but not from their voter roles and it's it's just you know we're constantly dealing with that but now with the automatic voter it actually which by the way, and you might remember this Representative Dickinson when it actually was passed it passed the house unanimous passed the senate unanimous they made one slight change it had to come back to the house there was one no vote in the house on that last and final vote and it had nothing to do with the bill itself it had to be that the person that voted no was upset with the person that was reporting the bill two things what is the name of the award that you won? the other thing is general opinion on mail ballots I know what they do in the state of Washington because Washington ends up with a voter turnout somewhere around 70% on a regular basis so any opinions on that but first give me the name of your number one it's the elections performance index that's put together by the MIT election and security data center and that was after the 2016 election it takes almost two years before they actually produce that report so we won't know about the 2018 election until sometime next year just prior to the election it comes out usually in August, September timeframe of the election so mail ballots there are three states that do all mail ballots and what they do is they basically send a ballot to every registered voter that they have in their system and people that can mail it back they can bring it back to a polling location they can also go to what they call a vote center they can drop it off at a vote center mail ballots do have a tendency to have higher participation rates but I will tell you that the state that has the highest percentage is Minnesota and they have for many years now they've been in the mid to high 70s they just have a different approach to elections in Minnesota it's Oregon Washington and Colorado don't be fooled by the comments that it might be cheaper to do it that way than to have to do it the other way because first think about it this way you got a mail a ballot to every not 68% as we had voted but to 100% you have postage that has to be paid for both going and coming back so there are costs to it and I'm not saying it's not the right thing to do we do have we're kind of a hybrid because we do allow mail ballots so if you request your early vote ballot you can request it by mail and you can receive it and then send it back by mail so we're kind of in the middle between now we have about 30% of our electorate or 30% of the votes cast are cast by early ballots we have no excuse absentee and you know there are states that have like in New Hampshire they do not have early voting they do not have no excuse absentee you have to have a reason and they force you to come in on election day I don't even know what their percentage is I don't know the quality of the test everyone votes on Tuesday are there any states that have looked at state elections on other days well, if you're talking about the general election it would be difficult to do that because it's federal races many states have tried South Burlington used to be we used to vote on the third Tuesday of May and then they moved it and the reason why they did that is at that back in those days it would take that long for the legislature to decide how much money was going to be set to them for schools so South Burlington voted third Tuesday of May and then they realized it didn't make much of a difference so they moved it and the vote percentages were down for that we called our town meeting so they moved it to the same as town meeting and the vote percentage didn't change we've had other states once I think Milton may have done it for a while where they were voting on Saturday didn't change their percentages people have tried at different times and whatever I know congress in fact I just got an email this morning from representative Welch that there's a bill being presented to make Tuesday election day a holiday he asked what my opinion was and I said great idea I don't know if it will pass but it's a great idea you know there was a house member just yesterday said to me I'm going to put a bill in that requires businesses to give two hours of time off paid time off to go vote on election day well I think in most cases I'm not even sure but we might already have that on the books um I think it might be on the books I'm not sure they can't stop you from going to vote I'm not sure if it's considered paid time off or if you have to use leave time to do it but there are so many things that people are looking at to try to increase the number of voters participating anecdotally the town I'm from had a lot of road construction this year we had two the big town called the mobile early primary early voting up for primary and for the regular and so we had this huge turnout on saturdays and the comments from of course I was out there but the comments from every person coming by was that they just wanted to beat up the vote we had a really big vote on I'm not saying it doesn't work you know in every city or town might be different you don't know it's the one thing I can say is we have to have a finite date at some point for instance we do not accept any ballots that are received after 7pm on election night even if someone were to mail it back it's postmarked ahead of time we don't accept it it has to be in the hands of the clerk by 7pm on election night for it to count that's not trying to diminish it but that's just the way it is we have we've been working to improve I'm on a co-chair committee with the secretary of state from I'm sorry Washington state of Washington on overseas and military votes for council of state governments and our biggest obstacle is the post office we actually had a case it was sent to me in New Hampshire someone had they actually had a picture of their envelope where it said un address not or undeliverable and if you looked at the address and then looked at what the department of defense regs put in for that for the state of New Hampshire but if you also go to their website and look at it it was the correct address but for some reason the post office deemed it as undeliverable and I immediately sent it to the person on our committee from the post office to find out what's going on do you send a checklist to motor vehicle given that person registered to vote has 60 days to go to the law license that's not something that we're involved with so can I get off the elections for a moment? sure so in terms of licensing because with a contract of licensing I just have a question if anybody, is there any other profession that requires only a registration for the secretary that we have? there may be one or two out there so is there anybody that started as a registration to automatically went to licensure? no that's always a comprehensive review either through the sunrise process or by this body I can think of say athletic trainers started out as a certification and then went to a licensure at some point as an example but it's never just an automatic jump it's something that is thought through carefully just to take you one step further we've also had requests like for instance from the legislature to license because of various issues that have occurred from massage therapists and we've done two reports on it to the legislature two sunrise reviews and in both we don't recommend it the issue for most people was to try to stop the nefarious stuff going on at massage therapists and frankly there's already laws on the book for that having a licensure system isn't going to necessarily solve that problem and you should focus your attention on solving the crime versus solving the licensure issue so we've not chosen and the legislature has not chosen after receiving the reports to license massage therapists and it comes up every couple years so seeing the state of professional and occupational licensure across the country we are really lucky that we have the sunrise statute that we do it's the envy of a lot of those other states so that's what I'm getting called to go talk to other states about I've talked to teams in Wisconsin and Illinois, Arizona and Florida Vermont, Vermont, Sunrise Statute to help control somewhat out of control professional regulation in other states and there is there's a legitimate concern about overextending the level of licensure and what professions you actually license some people you would be shocked at some of the professions that are licensed so I've got a couple more questions so actually since we started I actually did my annual renewal for my corporation for the online school but I was paying attention you used the one-click? I did, it didn't work so I had to go back it was wonderful anyway but we heard from the Department of Labor earlier about 23,000 employers but I think that's covered employees not necessarily the number of sole proprietors doing business so I wonder if do you have stats on number of sole proprietors and that kind of stuff as well that they filed every year are you asking about the interview? this is my leave of tea we have numbers of annual reports that does break down by entity type to some degree at a certain point would be able to break down any further so you have that annual report is that probably on the website? it's actually a the interview and reports we can look into that and pull it correct, okay one more question UCC filing still done at the town level? some some with us the vast majority are done with us so I talked a little bit about the annual report and how long it used to take to register a new business you should take anywhere from 10 to 15 days and now it's done in less than 30 minutes to file a UCC 15 claim you should take 5 to 7 days to receive process and post it's now done instantaneously so we've really improved that efficiency that's why our agency for the most part has really stayed relatively stable as far as staffing although we are maxing out at this point we've taken on so much more that we are going to probably need a couple more bodies it's if you go back to what was called the SEA report which was back in 2003 or 4 it was the strategic enterprise initiative at SEI strategic enterprise initiative and then challenges for change in 2008 and 2009 both of those said there was this large bubble of state employees moving through there approaching retirement it was a huge problem when all that happens and unfortunately what was happening was the state figured oh well we can start reducing our staffing without the corresponding investment in technology to offset it and as I said earlier we've almost doubled the amount of work that we do with the same number of employees and you know I mean whenever we have an opening in our shop I asked three questions of my director and Chris can tell you because I used to ask him one do we need that position do we need it doing what it's currently doing or do we need it doing something else and I would not just fill a position just because it became vacant I wanted to do an analysis to determine what are our needs or chart for the Office of Professional Regulation in 2010 when I came in on to today it's unrecognizable it's so different the way we've reorganized the office I remember as a backer I was a pain in the ass to talk those things out could I make a mistake well Marlene could tell you we also had a problem and Chris and Elia we had a problem at one point where we had just gone to the online system and all of a sudden we had to pull down the UCC's because back in around 2001 or two or someplace we had taken off tax ID numbers and social security numbers we had taken them off the form but a lot of the banks were sticking it in the comment section or writing it on the side of the form and we were just scanning the forms and putting them up so we had to go back and then redact all those we were talking about several million forms that had to be looked at so we were fortunate we hired a vendor that could do a lot of it automatically so I'm sorry Marlene when you review the professional regulations do you check for felony status because I know there's a few cosmetology for instance I know you used to you just qualified I mean Chris Winters for the record I was the director of professional regulation before I became the deputy secretary so a little bit about professional regulation we can and it's a may not a shall deny an applicant for a crime related to the practice of the profession or a conviction of a felony that's not even related in any way we look at things like rehabilitation and the type of crime and how long ago it was so it's grounds to deny but it doesn't always result in a denial and then separately do you collect demographic data on a person who's certified or registered very little on professional regulation and very little on corporations as well we've had requests before about how many women owned businesses it wasn't required by the legislature we follow the law that's in front of us bringing it back to elections I guess just curious I know Keith Stern didn't have to there's this new ethics regulation everybody has to file the financial disclosures but my understanding Keith Stern never did and there are several candidates that never really have so it just seems like if that's a requirement but then people aren't required to actually do it to run for office is there a means of actually enforcing this do you know what I'm saying the simple answer is no that the legislature did not put a penalty if they didn't follow it the financial disclosure form itself most people didn't file and we've since taken down the candidates page which is where those were but we're going to put back the financial disclosures of the if you want to call it the winners but the statewide had to file also their 1040 they could redact certain information but they had to file a 1040 and Keith Stern was the only one that did not file but there's no penalty if I remember the debate correctly there was a lot of discussion about maybe keeping people out of it but the legislative council said there were constitutional issues with that perhaps and that public shaming would hopefully be enough and you can see that didn't quite work yeah it didn't quite work thank you any other questions we're going to have an opportunity to ask you questions about the specific report we're planning to come back for that it was nice work I think that credit Alex he did most of that work so alright very good committee there's actually a chance to understand what Bob's goes through also because a lot of what Secretary of State doesn't concern us as a committee just the business part of it but we were able to have time with you and to go through everything everyone had a chance to understand everything that you do it's pretty extensive and we're pretty flexible we can get over here pretty quickly you know give us some time if you want to good report you know it's uh we work with the legislature don't forget I was one of you guys this is one time and Jim's eyes and ears over here I spend a lot more time over here than he does by design it's a good thing any questions for Jim or about the Secretary of State's office I'm always happy to help in any way that I can or just call or email we'll be back soon to have a real deep discussion that's really exciting I'm looking forward to it alright thank you


The Power of Imagination, this is season one episode two, he says, grandiosely. The whole idea of the show is to inspire you and entertain you, and I think we're really going to do that today. First, I'll talk about a figment of my own. Every golfer, I think, has a figment when they walk up to the tea on a par three of, well, either a dream, making a whole one, or a nightmare, putting it in the water, the sand, whatever the hazard is. So, bring up my picture from Saturday. My dream came true. Number two at Amalabay, 179 yards, and it was a figment. Then it became real, and it makes up for every bad shot I've made, and there are millions of them. So, enough about that figment. We've got a great show today, a great guest, an old friend, and somebody you'll really enjoy getting to know. The intro is simple. It's General Dave Goldfein, retired U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff, and he's going to talk about a figment consistent with our theme here, where we take something that resided in the imagination and make it real. And he did that. And reminder, here's the definition of a figment, and actually here's Dave Goldfein, fingers. My good friend, the retired 21st Chief of Staff, the Air Force, he served for 37 years and was a fighter squadron commander, group commander, twice-wing commander, combat in Desert Storm and Operation Allied Force. Now he's in San Antonio, Texas, and he says he's liking retirement a lot. Aloha, General Goldfein. Aloha, pig. Thanks for having me. I'm a pleasure, pleasure. And we have a lot of connective tissue. We could take an hour just discussing our connective tissue. Amen. And it kind of starts with a squadron of some repute, the world-famous, highly-respected, triple nickel that we both got to command, right? Yep. Amen. Yep. No squadron like it. And that was long before you stood up and testified or sat down and testified to get confirmed as a 21st Chief of Staff. And a lot more fun, can I just say? Oh, yeah. Nothing like it. And as I thought about that, to me, Dave, fingers, you are every man's fighter pilot, every woman's colleague, co-worker, fighter pilot. There's a humble, common person to you that we all admire. And I have to ask you, when you first sat in the office of the Chief of Staff, the Air Force, in charge of the whole barren thing, and sat behind the desk, did you ever have a fleeting figment that maybe somebody would catch you and ask you what the heck you were doing in there? I actually lived in constant fear, especially my confirmation hearing that Chairman McCain would raise a piece of paper, you know, lean forward in the microphone and say, hey, General Goldfein, I happen to be holding the transcript from your Air Force Academy days. Are you kidding me? You were Class of 83 at the beginning? Actually, I joke. I was the Class of 81, 82, and 83. I was the John Belushi of the Air Force Academy. And that's what I wanted to allude to was the 81, 82, 83. But you were the top graduate in philosophy, as I recall. And I only know this because you told me. Number one of one. One of one. And I think you also told me you were marching towards a form of punishment that we didn't have at the University of Wisconsin right up to graduation. As a matter of fact, I had to call my physics instructor to ask whether he would share with me whether I was going to pass and graduate, because I was planning on getting married the next day. And I asked him, I said, Hey, sir, if you don't mind just telling me right now if I flunked, and I'm not going to graduate, I can save my family a lot of money, a lot of hassle. And he said, Well, he goes, I got good news and bad news or a cadet golfing. He said, good news. He goes, you're going to graduate. You passed. You can get married. He said, the bad news is you will never return to the academy as a physics instructor. Well, you weren't planning to do that anyway. Right. No, because you come from a distinguished family of fighter pilots. Dad was an icon of the fighter community. He served in Vietnam in the world famous by the respective triple nickel. And as I recall, when you pinned on Colonel, there was, was there over 100 years of commission service in the room from the Goldfields. Sure was. Yeah. Older brother, Steve, who retired as, you know, two star general acting director of the joint staff at the time. And my younger brother, Mike, who retired active duties Lieutenant Colonel and went on to be a reserve F 16 instructor for many years. And now next generation is there with my daughter serving as an intelligence officer and my nephew is a pilot training right now in at Shepherd. And my other nephew is a squadron commander flying Eagles. Cool. Finally, a fighter pilot. Yeah, that's right. My background was mostly an F 15. So a little bit of rivalry there. And our connection started before we knew it started because we were at Luke Air Force Base at the same time, doing different things. Yes, I was requalifying in the F 15 and you were in your initial F 16 training. And do you remember the conversation we had in the triple nickel bar at Aviano in December of 1998? Boy, do I ever. Yeah, when this one guy, this guy lost his brakes in an F 15 and was coming right at me. Yeah. So the way I remember you said he was coming right at you or no, you said, you said, were you there at Luke when that happened? And of course, I said, was I there why that was me? And I had lost all brakes and steering and it should have been killed. And you are the only one who saw it for 10 years. I didn't know how I survived. And then you enlighten me. And that's another 15, 20, 30 minute sort story best told with cold beverages. So we'll leave it there. And then we linked up again at Aviano Air Base in Italy, where you commanded the world famous highly respected triple nickel and had the joy of having a boss, me as a one star wing commander who had commanded the same squadron and took special interest in your work.  Oh, yeah. That was a blast. And I'm sure we'll get to it all. We'll share with the listeners the great fig leaf quote after welcoming back from Serbia. Yeah, we'll probably get to that. And you were we had great leaders there. Yes, really, Jeff Eberhardt, Dave Nichols, all the guys who came into squadron. And it was a time I would suspect that many of you this today won't be aware or won't recall what a big effort Operation Allied Force was. Because it was kind of in the background news. There were no ground troops. It was right about the time of the tragic Columbine shootings. It took up a lot of the media bandwidth. And so it didn't make a lot of news, but it was important. And we I'll speak for you and me and the folks who served with us because this this is what I've heard. We felt like we're doing something right and important and trying to stop ethnic cleansing. Yeah. And, you know, it was so unique to because, you know, you and I had discussed the fact that, you know, fighting from home where our families lived was not in the brochure. And so we had to work our way through that. And and our spouses today, you know, that went through that with us. Their their war stories are as good as anything we have to tell. It was a lot harder, I think, on them than on us, because we were doing something we believed in.  But if it's there, you want to be in the game. Yes, it becomes reality. You want to be involved in it. And we were in a unique way in a war that where the principal application military power was from the air. And I think I've picked words that won't irritate our army guys too much, our army friends too much. But it was a truth. Now, that was not your first combat experience, right? Right.  But if there's one to be waged, you want to be part of it, because it's what you're trained to do. And you want to do it with your values intact. And there's nothing better than leading a squadron into combat. And so I had the privilege of flying on the wing of an incredible warrior in Desert Storm. Again, I think we both know Billy Deal. And, you know, Billy's, I remember my first time going into combat.   My buddy's down, right? And you always sort of wonder, man, am I trained? Am I ready? And I'll never forget that first, you know, trip across the line into Iraq and Desert Storm. And our, our lead, Billy Deal, and I was his deputy mission commander, he's calling out threats like it's a walk in the park. Of course, he's a Vietnam vet, mid killer. Rest of us are green. And he says, hey, there's AAA, you know, right two o'clock, which is anti-aircraft artillery. And we look down and we're looking at it. He says, okay, there's some, and he calls it out like there's SA-2, surf stair missiles left 10 o'clock. And we're watching these telephone poles come up at the formation.  And I remember that moment in my cockpit, because I realized that what I was experiencing was not new. I hadn't experienced almost everything I was seeing, hearing, feeling in red flag at Nellis Air Force. Big training exercise for our non-air force viewers. So what I described very often using that experience as chief, I said, you know, at the end of the day, that's one of our moral obligations as leaders is to produce confidence under fire. We got to produce that same moment that Captain Dave Golfin felt because I had been trained well for what I was then asked to do. That's what we owe it to our young folks going forward. And so I became a huge believer in training hard, bleeding in training so you don't bleed in combat. And that's as real as it gets. But you still can't totally dismiss the fear of screwing up, the fear of not being able to pass the test. And I didn't have that moment until I was one start Aviano. And on my first real combat sortie, I'd flown some pseudo counters, not real demanding missions over Iraq during no fly zone enforcement, but I was scared to death. And I was terrified that I wouldn't be able to do what I preached for at that point 25 years. Once you get through that, then all of that training, all that realistic training and the fine examples of guys like Billy Deal and all the other heroes we got to learn under comes through. But at first part, I was sweating it. So you were flying over Iraq and with your last name being Golfin, how did you feel about the potential maybe being shot down and maybe captured in an environment that might not be so friendly?  And so, you know, I was pretty confident that with the name like Golfin, there would be no POW exchange or old Golfin, right? So if I got hit, you know, that was it. So I was either going to, I was either going to walk out on my own, or I was not going to make it out. So I got creative, like young captains do. And I decided that it would be far better odds for me if I replace my parachute lowering device, which is what you normally have in the back, you know, under your parachute, because there weren't that many trees in Iraq. So I replaced it with a complete head-to-toe Arab outfit, right? With everything but from flip flops to Gutra, everything. And I talked the ID card folks into making me an ID card for combat. And I flew with my childhood and college musical hero, his name. So I actually flew combat as Harry Chapin, the entire time. And luckily, I never had to use the card. And we'll get back to that. And we're going to have to get to that soon. Some folks tuning in may have thought we're going to talk about the event in May of 1999 where you were shot down. And we've got a picture of some relics there. That's the tail of the squadron flagship in the canopy from your airplane when you were shot down and thankfully rescued. The worst phone call I ever got was, of course, we lost an airplane. I was the wing commander. It was about one in the morning while it was war. And we'd already lost an F117. But when they told me it was you because of our friendship and because of your role as the squadron commander and with all the respect they did. But the next picture goes to the story you talked about. There's you after return with me and Jeff Eberhardt. I have one of the great combat leaders. Everyone can do a whole show on him too. But next to it is a picture you gave to me and I didn't zoom in on it too much. But fingers when you got back to Aviano, I did put my arm around your shoulder and say, you know, I never got shot down when I was a triple nickel commander. Of course, I was a triple nickel commander in peacetime in Arizona. But you know, I still never got shot down as the nickel commander. But all of these vignettes and figments aren't what I want to talk to you about because there's one story that I only know part of that is really extraordinary. So there's a picture of you on a bicycle with a lot of hair. Yeah, and getting back to that door. Yeah, I can't look at that too long. But the story I want to get to is I understand that you actually got time off from the Air Force Academy during your course of instruction to take a break and hit the road. Yeah, so it was, let's just say it was a sort of a mutual decision by the academy leadership and me that I was struggling academically. I was doing terribly in the military side of the house. But at least athletically, I was slow. So we we made a mutual decision that I probably on my current path was not going to graduate and really need to go get my act together. So I actually quit the academy. Now, what they did, there were there were 10 of us who they called us in and said, we're going to try something new for U10. This is just where, you know, luck timing plays. They said, for U10, we think there's potential here. So if we're going to keep you a slot for you, if you want to come back in a year. And on, I think it was March 28 or something like that, they said, you have to call back and tell us yes or no. Are you coming back? So my, you know, I had mentioned that my one of my passions growing up as a kid was music. And I'd learned to play the guitar, you know, listening to Harry Chapin, James Taylor, John Denver, Bob Dylan. And these guys were all my heroes. And Harry Chapin was especially my hero because I didn't know until I got to the academy that he went to the Air Force Academy, class of 1965. And he only lasted through basic training. And then I went off to Cornell, didn't do well at Cornell and ended up driving a taxi in one of his famous songs. Yeah. And if I could interrupt just for our viewers who aren't our age, we've got a short clip of his iconic song, Cats in the Cradle. And we'll just remind people, and this will be stuck in their heads for the rest of the day. And so that's stuck in everybody's head, but that's the guy you wanted to link up with, I guess. Yeah. And so I ended up getting through an academic advisor, a connection to a connection, I ended up actually getting a job as a roadie for in Harry's band. And so I jumped on a 10 speed bicycle, that one in the picture, and left it, left everything I owned, which was, you know, fit into a backpack, essentially, with my girlfriend at the time who lived in San Antonio, Don, and started peddling to the, to New England to join up with Harry's band. And that was, I was actually three quarters of the way there when he had his tragic car accident and we lost him.  I ended up, I ended up traveling for upwards of a year. And funny thing happened, you know, people took me in as I was traveling, found a dog along the way that traveled with me, rode on the bike. And I stayed in more people's homes. And I came to the conclusion that this country is worth defending.  So on March 28, I called back to the academy and said, if you got a slot, I'll come back and went back and finished up. And they, they still are the heart of America. And I know there's a lot of pessimism and it's been a tough year. Every year is a tough year in its own way.  It's never easy, but people do make it tolerable. And you know, I had an opposite and similar experience when I rode my Harley around the four corners of the United States to see the country that I defended. And it was the people and they're wonderful. And they're wonderful regardless of any category you'd like to put them in. So, you know, it's important that we remember that. So you never met Harry Chapin, you still flew with his name on your shoulder. And I understood as I connected with you to talk about doing figments, the power of imagination and get a plug in there.  You know, I had, I had a, they just had a documentary on him that I happened to, somebody pushed to me and I got a chance to watch it. And his brother Tom and his son Jason were the architects of this documentary. And we lost Harry 40 years ago. So this guy still has this incredibly outsized impact on his passions, which were world hunger and poverty. And so I thought it would be important for the Chapin family to hear a story of how their brother, father inspired this knucklehead cadet who grew up to be chief of staff of the Air Force.   I always had Harry with me. You know, he was either in my head or in my headset and made a big difference. And I think in your heart too, fingers, and I didn't know much of it, the rest of his story till we connected. And I found out you talked to the family. I encourage all of our viewers, or both of our viewers, depending on how many we have today, to go to the Wikipedia page because he was an incredible philanthropist, not just a musician and really remarkable. And the way this man was, this man whom you never met, is a lot of the way you are. And I don't know if that's karma, serendipity. This is what his epitaph is on his tombstone from one of his songs written in 1975. And so that's the inspiration for me. You know, if you try to make a difference, improve what your life can be, you amazed what you can do and amazed how much it can change the world. And I know that you've done that with your life. And I'm honored to know you and call you a friend. So... Oh, we're same back at you. And I think the viewers should know that when it comes to combat leadership, it doesn't get better than fig leaf. And when I want to be, have a chance to lead my own wings, you know, I used to carry around this bracelet that says WWFD. That's all it said on it. And I would just look at it every once in a while and I said, what would fig do? Really? Well, that's touching. We had a great team. It was an incredible time. It always is. And it was the easiest job I ever had because of people like you and because of the cause. So I know you're going to do a lot for the world in your new life. I hope you'll enjoy it. I hope you get out to white. That is today's view back there. And we got about 28 more stories to share in detail, maybe, with the audience in seasons nine through 12 of pigments, the power of imagination. There's another plug for you. And fingers, I hope you'll tune in to some of the things we've got coming up. So you can see we're going to have some two survivors talk about recovery, of keeping the dream of recovery alive. And we've got a diplomat who will talk about dreaming of peace and dealing with North Korea. And then Susan Helms, who I'm sure you know is one of the most brilliant, wonderful people, what a great astronaut, and then good friends of mine who took figments to screen in Hollywood. So somewhere after that, we'll get you back on or maybe we'll just get you and Don and I and we can do our three part.  Yeah, great. Yeah. So we're about out of time for you. We've got a little more time for the show. Is there anything you'd like to close with one more story about your life where you took something to reality that you didn't expect? Because I know you got a million of them. Well, I would just say that, you know, of all the blessings of being chief of staff at the Air Force, the greatest blessing for me is I got to do it with my best friend. And my high school sweetheart for 37 years and 22 moves and four wars she sent. She was by my side, still there. And so this has been a team effort. And we're just so honored to have had a chance to really to serve and to serve in leaders. Well, Don is awesome. If you bring back the picture of the burnt tail and canopy of the S 16. And I'll tell my favorite done story, you know, this one already, we were standing on the ramp at Aviano, you've been rescued in a very hot, opposed rescue with the helicopter shot up and some beautifully brave, a pair of rescue protecting you from that. That's a whole nother story. And now you're going to be brought back to your wife and kids arms and back to us.  And I don't know why that's the image that stuck, but it was there was a nonchalance of, Okay, I've been shot down and rescued. And Don was next to me and she looked up to me. And that's one of the things I like most about on is very few people look up to me physically. And she did. And she said, Sir, what are they going to do with the airplane? Because the squadron flagship you dejected from in Atlanta, in Serbia. And I said, What do you mean? So are they going to leave it there? They're not are they? They're going to buy it? Are they going to go get it? Her husband's been shot down and rescued. But she's so committed that she wants to make sure the squadron flagship survives. And as I got ready to do this, I put some notices on Facebook. This talks to what you were saying about the strange nature of fighting from home.  Now. So apparently, you were telling him because he was sharing your squadron building with his F 15 squadron, right? Right at Aviano. And you told him kind of the summary tale of the missile and the ejection and the escape and the pickup. And when you finished it, and now I'm going to go home and do what every fighter pilot does after they've been shot down. And war dog said, What's that? He's you fingers said, I'm going to go more my lawn. Yeah. And that's you. And every man we believe in and a great exemplar for us. A great friend for me. And hopefully an inspiration for everybody who's watching Aloha fingers. God bless you. You too, Vic. Thanks. Thanks for watching, folks. Be sure you click like and do all that other stuff that gets us street cred on YouTube and be a meal. Aloha.


With the eighth pick and the 2023 NFL draft, the Atlanta Falcons select Bijan Robinson running back Texas. The Falcons did it. The Atlanta Falcons had a highly talented, high character individual from Texas sitting on the draft board who just happens to play running back in a league that's all about passing in the quarterback driven league. A league in which somebody like Austin Epler says, I'd like a new contract. And they say, go seek it. You scored a ton of touchdowns. Go seek it. And he's still in Los Angeles. A league in which we all know Derrick Henry might be sitting out there, who the heck knows. But you've got Bijan Robinson now, a top 10 drafted running back in the NFL. He's going to Atlanta.


Now we will look at some of the theories related to the hypothesis which are basically on language and culture the first theory is Related to speech that why speech is essential for thought so in the first theory we are going to cover is regarding speech as something an essential component a Requirement as far as to develop our thinking process is concerned and to develop a thought process Speech is essential for thought We must learn how to speak aloud Otherwise we cannot develop thinking so this is very interesting. We need to speak aloud Otherwise our thinking will be affected Reason is when you are speaking aloud you listen to your words you listen your tone and then your mental processes and Cognitive processes are also at work in parallel So they provide input to the mind in terms of what needs to be said Further how to maintain your tone how to focus on the intonations and all that the proponents Believe that thought is a kind of behavior So a thought is a behavior speech which originates from speech production, so they define thought as a behavior and speech is a kind of Something which actually generates from the speech production Be is that thought develops as a kind of speech By speaking aloud One starts into a process of talking internally. So sub vocally engagement or make internal articulation So that's why speech also becomes a kind of behavior in Collaboration with the thought so if thought is behavior then speech also reflects a kind or contributes into that behavior by Making internal articulations or having internal communication within the brain Now we will look at some of the points that are mentioned with regard to speech which is as According to the theories have been considered as essential for thought Now the question is why is speech production not necessary in order to think now? This is the inadequacies of the theory children having no speech production can Comprehend and think for example hearing persons who are born mute if a person can comprehend the meaning of Speech that person must have the ability to think second is speech comprehension which implies Thought develops from speech production in normal children This is the second point speech comprehension according to this point proceeds Speech production in other words speech comprehension is the basis for speech production for example children who could not or Rather who could only produce single word Atron says could understand Syntactic structures composed of more than one word so this shows that the children's level of speech Comprehension is well in advanced of their level of speech production which is an only one word production number three is Simultaneously speaking aloud while thinking about something different Thinking of something other than what we are saying that is something which is also known as wandering mind The fourth point is telling a lie saying one thing while thinking something quite different This means that we When we tell lies two distinct processes speaking aloud and speaking sub-vocally to yourself With different content occur at the same time So this can also be considered as a contributing factor as well as thought If it is to be considered as a behavior Meaning and thought occur without behavior People do not lose meaning of words when any part of their body are lost or removed for example paralysis A paralyzed person can still think clearly So this shows That thought was not dependent on body movement or movements of the speech Organs the last point is regarding the interpreting between languages can be done Now if you want to understand this point you have to consider the work of simultaneous interpreters They have to understand a process which is done in other minds So they have to understand the message told to them Which is told to them in one language and then transform That message to another language by speaking it aloud So this shows that a system of abstract thought to mediate between languages has made Simultaneous interpretation possible All of these six objections to the theory show that speech production is not necessary for thought All of these six Points and objections that we have just discussed they provide a quite contrary View with regards to these theories and they believe that speech production is not necessary for thoughts


Antonio Dominguez is an inspector in section 59-104. His birthplace is Havana, Cuba. He came to America in 1913. He has traveled extensively throughout South America. Mrs. Clarice Rush is a machine operator in jobbing 27C. She was born in Antigua, the British West Indies. Mrs. Rush came to this country in 1914 and her husband served in the U.S. Army in the First World War. Ray Mundo Coyote, inspector at the water shops, was born in Cebu, the Philippines. He is a disabled veteran, having served in the United States Coast Guard. Mrs. Mary Rocas is a machine operator in the bolt room job shop. She was born in Legadia, Greece and came to the USA in 1920. Hans Christensen is a machinist at the water shops. He was born in Plasequette, Norway. He came here when he was 16 years of age. Ernest Ravalliart is of Belgian ancestry. He was born in Rabeau, France. He came to this country in 1928 and is a machine woodworker on the sunset shift in the stock shop. Mrs. Sonja Eventov is a shop inspector on the sunset shift in Building 103. She was born in Zvinsk, Latvia and came to America in 1922. After World War I, she saw the fighting during the Russian Revolution. Thomas Tierer, junior superintendent of production, manufacturing activities, was born in Birmingham, England and came to this country in 1925. Mrs. Mae Llewellyn is employed in the job and shop on the sunset shift. She came to the US in 1912 and was born in Kauti Latrim in the west of Ireland. Cheshu Yip, formerly of the bolt room, is now in the apprentice school. He was born in Canton, China and came here in 1928. He did graduate work at the University of Chicago and for the China Institute. Mr. Yip expects to teach in China when the war is over. Andrew Fedora is employed in section 51 of the job shop. He came to this country in 1906 and was born in Sedlis, Czechoslovakia. Mr. Fedora has operated a taxi service in Westfield since 1921. Mohammed Mustafa, machine operator in section 59-104, came to this country in 1905 and was born in Alizez, Turkey. Peter Golashevsky was born in Karikki, Poland. He is a gang boss in the machine shop at the water shops and has a son Stanley also working here. Fred Zeder is employed in building 104. His birthplace is the Republic of Lebanon in Syria. Mr. Zeder has two sons at the armory. David is a principal draftsman at the water shops and Michael is a machine adjuster in receivers 104. Henry Hansen, steam-fitter in the service division came to the USA in 1919. He was born in Odesa, Denmark and says that he has not heard from his relatives over there for three years. Carl Carlson was born in Abild, Sweden. He is a foreman in the die room at the water shops. Mr. Carlson served in the US Army during World War I and has a son Arthur who is now in the quartermaster corps.