Political Quotes

“Senator Leahy talked about the influence Governor Hoff had on the State. Let me give some examples of what he did. Senator Leahy will remember in the early 1960s we had the situation in Vermont where the Vermont State House of Representatives, people were represented by every town. I lived for a while in the town of Stannard, VT, which has maybe 100, 150 people, and they had the same vote in the legislature as Burlington, VT, the largest city in the State, which has 40,000 people. Under Phil Hoff, what we moved to in the State--and with the Supreme Court ruling dealing with proper apportionment--was person, one vote, so the house began to reflect the population locations of the State and not just every town. In addition to that, when Phil Hoff was Governor of the State, he successfully insisted on repealing Vermont's poll tax. Now we think that is ancient history. What the poll tax said is that in order to vote, you have to pay a certain amount of money, which, obviously, is discriminatory to lower income people. That was repealed under Hoff's era as Governor. He understood and his wife understood the importance of education. What Governor Hoff did was he quadrupled State aid to public schools and organized the three State teachers colleges into a new, revitalized State college system that better met the needs of Vermont's students. That system endures to this day. We have a very strong system of State colleges in Vermont, and that began under the Hoff era.…”