Of the newspapers and maine public. Questions will be asked by the maine public key Political Correspondent and a portland rest reporter, another po overton. The four candidates for governor are governor janet mills, a democrat elected in 2018. She served as maine attorney general and District Attorney for androscoggin, franklin and anderson counties. Paul lepage was elected in 2010 and served two terms as governor. Before elected governor, he served as the mayor of waterville. Sam hunkler, an independent, has never served in political office. He is a family physician and served in the peace corps. This debate will last approximately an hour and a half. In the interest of fairness, we will rotate which candidate answers first. We will be addressing topics that you the voters have told us are most important to you. Each candidate has one minute to answer question posed by reporters. When reporters ask a followup question, candidates have 30 seconds to answer. When a candidate needs to get a rebuttal, we allow 30 seconds for that. An Important Note this debate is challenging to schedule. We acknowledge it falls on an important high holiday on the jewish calendar. To the jewish people in our audience who have begun observance of young kapoor, the day of atonement, we wish you a belated happy new year and an easy fast. The beginning and ending order was chosen by random drawing. Governor mills will go first and Steve Mistler will ask the first question. Government efforts to control inflation have economists warning over session. What do you plan to do cut programs, increase taxes, and please be specific . Revenue remains high as it is right now, what would you do with the surplus . Sec. Fudge thanks, stephen thank you to maine public and to you journalists out this evenings debate. It is good to be back in lewiston, where i worked for 15 years and married my husband up the street at st. Josephs church and made many friends. To answer your question will take longer than a minute, but we have economists and revenue forecast was on board to make sure we dont overspend, that we dont under budget or over budget. I know global inflation is hitting everybody right now. Maine has done a good job working across the aisle to enact a budget that reserves 900 Million Dollars for the Rainy Day Fund. That is first and foremost. We are saving for the Rainy Day Fund higher than it has ever been, and we provided inflation relief checks to 800 thousand people in maine. That is just the beginning of our approach to inflation. Mr. Lepage the first thing i would have done on inflation is coming instead of giving 850,000 to mainers to body election, i would have taken 250 Million Dollars in gone to all the oil and gas police in maine oil and Gas Producers in maine and ask them to lower prices. Last march, i put 150 million into the hands of livestock growers, Vegetable Growers and fishermen and asked them to flood the market because we have the fourthhighest food cost than america because most of our food comes in by truck. It is very costly. And they go back empty. And i put a holiday on the diesel tax from november until april. You initially proposed a gas tax holiday. Mr. Lepage for food costs, i would definitely go with diesel. And not during the summer months of tourism. But i would look at all taxes and suspend all taxes put in place since the pandemic. I would suspend them until you reach an inflation rate of 2 . Mr. Hunkler steve, i believe i need to give context my answers tonight. These two need no introduction. Most people in maine dont even know there is a third person on the ballot, so in order for me to have context in my answers, i need to introduce myself. I was the eighth of nine children, the seventh of eight boys and in my family, i learned the frugal, welcoming and practical. I have served people for most of my adult life. Upper college, i went to the peace corps in kenya and east africa, i was an english and science teacher. I met a volunteer in South Portland to became a mother of my chit became the mother of my children. 37 use ago today, i married her. 37 years ago today, i married her. She is supporting me here tonight. Steve, would you like to ask a followup . This is directed at governor mills. Your administration got behind the idea of providing relief checks to meiners to deal mainers to deal with inflation, but some economists say such moves might contribute to inflation putting money in peoples pockets at a time when demand for goods is high. What do you say . Sec. Fudge the fifthhighest food prices in the indicted states were under governor mills tenure as well governor mills tenure as well. We are boosting sustainability of our farms and fisheries. On the 850 check, this is a widely bipartisan move supported by republicans, who enhanced it to 850. If you dont think it is a good idea, talk to the people who have written me. Every day, i get karzai letters, a woman wrote me the other day that she could finally put snow tires on the car before winter weather. Every day, i get crazy letters, a woman wrote me the other day that she could finally put snow tires on the car before winter weather. People wrote me to tell me it was the right move. Governor lepage, you talked about an income tax cut, which was also criticized for potentially worsening inflation. How would you pay for the income tax cut . Gov. Mills first of all, putting more money in a heated economy is inflationary. The governor may have gone to law school, but she didnt go to an economic school. A tax cut can be done by savings. When i took over in 2011, we had 14,900 employees. I left at 11,900. It is now 13,005 hundred. We are growing government again. We were running at 12,000 people. Nobody was complaining. Our phones were being answered, which they are not today. What about paying for the tax cut . Mr. Lepage you pay through the savings. I will give another example. We have 260 thousand Public School seats in our Public School system. Why dont we look at how we can consolidate . I will give an example, two high schools, 50 graduates combined this year. There were class a high schools at one time. Why dont we fix that . Another thing that we can save money on is electricity. In 2019, we were 11th in the country. Electricity costs right now in maine are number four. And i respond to those statements . Yes. Gov. Mills the last income tax cut in his administration was paid for by increasing property taxes. It took four years to repair the damage of his administration. We are rebuilding the infrastructure of may, ive infrastructure of maine, hiring back Public Health nurses and paying revenuesharing to fund police and Emergency Responders and firefighters across our state. Mr. Lepage governor, you need a pinocchio. We did not raise the sales tax when i was governor. It was 5. 5 and we did not broaden it. It was raised under the reviews governor. Under the previous governor. We gave the first increase to state employees over eight years, so you need to get your facts straight. Steve, do you have a followup for sam consular sam huntsler . Mr. Hunkler can i speak . Go ahead. Mr. Hunkler my first child was born in cleveland. After that, i came to maine to live and we bought a house. I went to my Residency Program just down the street here at the central maine medical center. My next two children, corey and jake, were born here. We went to alaska and i served in the Indian Health service. I returned here to maine, we moved to beals, and i have been there since. We are now going to discuss the maine workforce. This question comes to us from eric in cape elizabeth. Maine is the oldest state in the nation with the averaging with the average age of 45 years , which contributes to unemployment. How would you keep young people here and attract new people here from out of state . Mr. Lepage there are nine states without income tax right now in 10 working to remove it we need to face it up the long haul. Number two, and 2019 when i left, work participation in maine was tied with New Hampshire at 65 . The National Average was 61 . Today, the National Average is 62 , New Hampshire is 65 , maine is 59 . We have lost significantly. We lose every year, thousands of people, to other states that do not have income tax. They take their entrepreneurial talent sent take their capital and shortly thereafter, the kids start moving away to these places. We need to keep them here by lower taxes. We need to help our students with lower cost education. And i believe the technical and vocational should go back to the middle schools. This time, could you please answer the question she asked, do you need that repeated, about the workforce . We want to find out how you would persuade more young mainers to stay here after they finish school, and attract new young people from out of state . Mr. Lepage we need to provide adequate wages so maine students can stay here. To do that, we have to build the economy and we have to do that in conjunction with our environment. Environmental stewardship goes handinhand with the economy. Many people come to maine because of the environment. We need to be stewards of the environment. But we also need to be able to offer good jobs and day care for children, and good schools. It is a combination of a lot of things to do that. Thank you. Governor mills . Gov. Mills we have done a number of things to address the workforce issue. It is a national issue. Maine has the seventhhighest migration rate of any state in the country. People are coming here. At list at least 16,000 moved here in recent months. For the past four years, we have been working on workforce issues, a problem i inherited their you know the headlines before i took over and then some. And it is not an issue i am going to wish my grandchildren will solve it we are doing a number of things in partnership with republicans, democrats and independents in the legislature, free College Commission for committed to colleges for two years for recent high school grads, opportunities for tax credits, would have you majored in, come to maine and we will pay up to 25,000 of your student loan debt. And people are coming here, young families here. The Labor Participation rate is 32 for working age people 2454. They are coming back. Maine suffered from early retirement like other states, more acutely because we are an older state. You have a followup question . This comes from muriel in palermo. I will start with governor lepage. Child care professionals are grossly underpaid. There are not enough programs in maine, nor the workers available to staff existing programs. How will you address these needs to help parents rejoin the workforce and ensure a stable economy . Mr. Lepage kindergarten through eighth grade, i would have afterschool care until 5 00. I would encourage parents and grandparents who are not in the workforce and to not want to go or cant go to join that and get paid to do after school care. During the pandemic, we lost significant ground with education. I would give stipends to teachers to tutor kids from 2 00 until 5 00 after school so that we can have the kids taken care of after school and allow parents to go into the work force. Thank you. Sam hunkler one thing i would mr. Hunkler i would like us to consider is putting day is putting day cares and middle schools and have staff for that. One thing we need to do is be able to monitor children to see what they need at a very young a. Putting them into the schools, they can interact with other children. It is something we knew that something we need to think about doing. Gov. Mills people all over are talking about childcare. A lot of women left the workforce during the pandemic, for good reasons. Many found childcare a challenge. We have put a lot of American Rescue plan funds from my maine jobs and Recovery Program approving approved by the legislature to give them slots, to increase training at Community Colleges into pay stipends there and we are paying stipends right upper childcare workers. We are doing all that. Entering during the pandemic, we paid for after school care at the boy and girl boys and girls clubs and the ymcas. This questioner was to know what you will do to make it easier for mainers to join the workforce . Mr. Lepage the governor of the state of maine should have been parked in washington and telling the president to let these people go to work. If you send them to maine, put them to work. And if we need to give them a maine id until the government catches up, we will do that. Mainers will be put to work as soon as i get in there. Mr. Hunkler it is a huge problem because people who come here want to work at they cant because of federal laws. The other problem is, once they start working, they get a work permit and when it runs out, they have to stop working. Then they renew it and sometimes, our government is so slow it is a real problem. I dont know what we can do but go to washington and have our federal representatives help us in that. Gov. Mills under the previous president , our immigration policies were completely sidetracked. For a lot of reasons, and i know that mr. Lepage joined the Trump Administration effort to band people of the muslim faith to come to states like maine or anywhere in the country. He joined the administration in that regard. I believe senator collins at the rest of the congressional delegation, that we need to lower out jeweled debility that we need to lower eligibility to 30 days. Mr. Lepage janet mills, you are a liar. I have not joined and prevented the muslims from going to work, ever. I did not join the Trump Administration in any immigration. I have a son that we brought from jamaica. It took 11 years to get him a green card. The immigration and th the immigration policy in the u. S. Is broken and Congress Needs to fix it. But they refuse to. Gov. Mills mr. Lepage joined the trump muslim travel ban. He was very clear on that as governor. I opposed him. This time, we are going to focus on housing. Goahead. This is a question from joseph. Soaring rents and home prices are key issues for maine voters. We lack thousands of Housing Units but few local communities want to build Affordable Housing in their borders. What role should the state play in addressing the housing shortage . Should it be investing more money in public housing, for example . One of biggest problems is that housing is taken up by people from out of state who buy summer homes, which jack stop the price. For residential homes, i would like to see us greatly increase the rate on Residential Property taxes end up the same time, greatly increase homestead exemption so that people who have primary homes, taxes go down, but people who come from away, their taxes go up mainers go up. Mainers pay income taxes, summer people dont. We support the summer people with our income tax which they dont pay. One way to make up for that is for the people who come to pay more taxes on residential properties. Gov. Mills he is right. We should expand the homestead extension at we have. The legislature and i and acted measures to expand the homestead extension to 25,000 and increase the property tax credit so people can stay in their homes. One of the first things i did as governor was to issue the 50 million Senior Housing bond that had our you housing bond that had already been passed by the people and sat on the previous governors desk for two years. We have a generous package of reforms, biggest in the history of maine. With the help of the legislature, we enacted historic affordable tax credits and put 50 million of that federal money towards housing, 20 million of it towards rural rental housing. And we are moving forward on emergency housing measures and helping people find housing. Mr. Lepage there is no question that we need housing in the state of maine. The governor is absolutely correct. There were housing bonds that i did not issue. Because they were giving them money to developers. They build housing and then go to market rates. It is not affordable. We were not helping the affordability. That is the problem. We do not have Affordable Housing. We need to look at our older buildings and schools and convert them to Affordable Housing and consolidate our schools to lower the property tax. The school portion, we would lower that. We would have Affordable Housing and we would get these older buildings that are low protective. I could name you dozens of schools that could be converted into Affordable Housing. We did gov. Mills that exactly what we did with a tax credit, take old buildings, that is what we are doing continuously. We reenacted that tax credit. Developers are developing these Housing Units. I have had the pleasure meeting with Senior Citizens living in those units created by that 50 million bond issue passed by the voters and signed, issued by me. They are comfortable in their Affordable Housing. Mr. Lepage then why is the budget this year 259 one million in rent assistance . Gov. Mills im talking about the Senior Housing bond. Mr. Lepage im talking about housing. I believe you have a followup. In the same order. This is a question for all three of you. The number of people homeless in maine has skyrocketed. The 2022 survey counted 4400 people experiencing homelessness in maine, double the number in 2021. How much priority is this for you, and what do you plan to do about it . That is a good question, it h