Emmons, Forguites challenged by write-in candidate Jokinen

Voters have a pretty stark choice in two weeks when they vote for two state representatives to be their voice in Montpelier.
http://rutlandherald.com/article/20141023/NEWS02/710239962

Robert Forguites is retiring after 16 years as Springfield's town manager. Photo: Susan Smallheer / Staff Photo Published October 23, 2014 in the Rutland Herald Emmons, Forguites challenged by write-in candidate Jokinen By SUSAN SMALLHEER Staff Writer SPRINGFIELD — Voters have a pretty stark choice in two weeks when they vote for two state representatives to be their voice in Montpelier. They can pick a woman who has represented the town for 32 years, and is the current dean of the Vermont House, or they can pick the man who has been their town manager for the past 16 years. Or they can write in the name of a recent Springfield High School graduate, who has nothing good to say about the other two. Rep. Alice Emmons, D-Springfield, 59, is the current chairwoman of the House Corrections and Institutions Committee. “We’re the ‘credit card committee,’” she said, which oversees state spending on capital projects via the state’s borrowing capacity. And she’s held the coveted honorary title of dean of the House, which goes to the longest serving House member, for the past four years. She is the first woman to hold the title. With the retirement of Rep. Cynthia Martin, D-Springfield, Springfield’s all-but-retired Town Manager Robert Forguites, 75, is seeking the other House district’s seat. Forguites, a Democrat, and Emmons are facing a challenge from Tyler Jokinen, 23, an independent who espouses the goals and values of Ayn Rand. He graduated from Springfield High School in 2009, and is a respiratory therapist at Rutland Regional Medical Center. Jokinen, who failed in a write-in campaign during the August primary to garner the Republican nomination, is again waging a quixotic write-in campaign against two well known, longtime Springfield public servants. Emmons and Forguites list health care reform and property tax reform as the top issues facing the state of Vermont, and by extension, the town of Springfield. Springfield receives about half of its $22 million school budget from state coffers, thanks to Act 60, so any changes to the state funding formula must be carefully considered, both said. Emmons said any proposed cap on the statewide property tax would hurt Springfield. “It will put more pressure on the local property tax,” she said. “We don’t have the capacity to raise any more money.” “Springfield is one of the top ‘receiving towns,’” Forguites said. “I’m in favor of what is best for Springfield.” The town of Springfield spends about $1.3 million a year for the health insurance for its 90 to 95 employees. A payroll tax of 12 percent, which is one proposal, would raise $650,000, he said. “Where does the other $650,000 come from?” he asked. Forguites, who spent his first career in banking before coming to work for the town 20 years ago, said he had wanted to run for the Legislature ever since he was a kid growing up in Brandon. “I’ve wanted to do it for 50 years,” said Forguites, who traced his political roots back to 1960, when he cast his first presidential vote for John F. Kennedy. “I had just turned 21, and it was very exciting back then,” Forguites said. Forguites served in the Pentagon during the Vietnam War for two years, and quickly came back to Brandon and got into banking on the ground floor. He eventually moved to Springfield in 1978 to work for the now-defunct First National Bank of Vermont. Forguites said for the past 20 years, if not longer, his jobs had forced him to be very circumspect about his political leanings. “I’m a Democrat, but I’m probably more of a conservative Democrat,” he said, saying social issues such as gay marriage and abortion rights would create a conflict for him between his personal beliefs and the beliefs of his constituents. “I have to represent the district,” he said. Springfield, he said, is getting more liberal, as more people move into the 9,300 population town, which has turned into a bedroom community where 30 years ago it was an economic engine in the southeastern part of the state. Emmons is the third generation of her family to live in Springfield and in the same house on Summer Street. She graduated from Springfield High School, attended Johnson State, and graduated from the University of New Hampshire. After graduation, she worked on organic farms in Vermont and Massachusetts, and came back to Springfield and worked at Fellows Corp., only to be laid off in the great wave of layoffs in the machine tool industry in Springfield in the early 1980s. Former Rep. Edgar May, D-Springfield, was leaving the House to run for the state Senate, and Emmons was urged to run. She’s been in Montpelier ever since. “I’m very comfortable representing Springfield,” she said, noting she was never interested in running for the Senate or other office. “I didn’t want to lose that one-on-one contact with people in the community.” Not surprisingly, Emmons sees her experience as a major asset to the town. One-third of the House changes every election, she said, and institutional memory on the Institutions Committee is very important, she said. She spent her first 10 years on the Natural Resources Committee. “After 32 years, I take it two years at a time,” said Emmons, who said that another big issue facing the 2015 Legislature is a looming state deficit, and a shrinking state bonding capacity. “It’s going to put a squeeze on our needs,” she said. Jokinen sees the taxation system in place as “corrupt” and “immoral.” He thinks Springfield should not accept the $11 million in state aid to education, and fund its schools strictly based on what it can raise from its own citizens regardless of the impact on schools or the taxpayer. He said that people, towns, cities and states have to learn to live within their means and their personal choices, whether it is public education, special education, welfare or health care. Jokinen said despite working in the health care field for three years, he regrets his career choice because the system is inherently flawed. He said he was “absolutely” against a single-payer health-care system. Jokinen even goes so far as to call both Emmons and Forguites, and their decades of service to Springfield, as “pure evil.” “There can be no middle ground,” said Jokinen, who said that Emmons had voted a “straight party line her entire life,” and that Forguites had been a “yes man.” When pressed, he defined “evil” as “worship of the weak and a life devoted to death.” “I don’t want a single vote cast for me if they don’t understand what I believe in,” he said.