Biography
I’ve been lucky enough to hold leadership roles in business, in public policy, and in non-profits. I recently finished 13 years as CEO of Danforth Pewter, and before that was at Ben & Jerry’s for 10 years, leading international business development. I currently serve on the VT Climate Council, representing Vermont manufacturers, and previously served on the VT Tax Structure Commission, as Co-Chair of the VT Medicaid & Exchange Advisory Board, and on the Governor’s Business Advisory Council on Health Care Financing. At Danforth, I introduced company-wide profit sharing, partially paid maternity leave, and an employee seat on the Board of Directors. I also moved the company toward zero fossil fuel use. On the personal side, Burlington Electric believes my family’s home was the first historic structure in Burlington to get to zero emissions. My wife and I have four children — the three older kids all graduated from Burlington High School and went on to various Vermont colleges, and the youngest just finished her first year at Downtown BHS. We’ve got a lot of big, complicated issues in front of us, and I truly believe that working together, we can address them.
Candidate occupation
CEO/Board member
Why are you running for office?
I believe my particular background in business and public policy will be helpful as the legislature grapples with the interconnected issues of health care costs, education spending, property taxes, affordable housing, opioid addiction, crime, climate change, and social justice.
Issues in brief
Do you believe Vermonters are better off now than they were 10 years ago?
No
Do you believe Vermont needs a new education funding formula?
Yes
Do you support imposing new taxes on the wealthiest Vermonters?
No answer
Do you support the establishment of overdose prevention centers?
Yes
Do you support a ban on flavored tobacco products?
Yes
Do you support increasing penalties for property crimes such as shoplifting?
No answer
Do you believe Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election?
Yes
Issues in depth
What would you do to help grow Vermont’s economy?
Address health care costs and move to universal health care. If we reduce costs and remove the burden of paying for health care from small businesses, and liberate all the people who are staying in a job they don’t love because they need the health coverage for themselves or their families, we will see a blossoming of entrepreneurial creativity. I would also work to make it easier to build affordable housing and to build clean energy generation, both solar and wind. I’d work to make sure we have great neighborhood elementary schools, and would work to rationalize middle schools, high schools, and school districts. I’d continue to work on universal broadband connectivity and cell service. And much more, including tax reform.
What changes, if any, would you make to the way Vermont funds its schools?
We need to address the underlying issue of education costs, including the costs of having 120+ school districts in a tiny state, the cost of health care for education workers, the cost of special education, the costs of maintaining and staffing a lot of schools in the face of declining enrollment, among others. Separately, we should move the statewide education tax from the current complex hybrid of property value and income, and move to a purely income-based system for residents, and a purely property-value based system for vacation homes and commercial properties.
Is Vermont doing enough, too much or not enough to address climate change? Please explain.
As a member of the Climate Council, I’d say Vermont is doing a lot of good work, and could be doing more. I think we’re moving to electrify our transportation and heating sectors about as fast as we can, but we could certainly be building more solar, more wind, and more battery storage. I also believe we are doing a lot of good work on making our towns, our rural areas, our agriculture, and our natural areas more resilient to the worsening violent and extreme weather we are and will be experiencing, but it’s also probably not enough.
Is Vermont doing enough, too much or not enough to regulate gun ownership? Please explain.
We could be doing more to keep guns out of the hands of criminals, and to ensure that all guns that are owned by law-abiding citizens are stored securely when not in use.
What would you do to help ease Vermont’s housing crisis?
I don’t have deep experience in housing policy, but based on what I know now, I’d work to remove the hurdles to building affordable housing in town centers, draw federal money to build affordable housing, increase the percentage of private new housing construction that is affordable, make it easy for home owners and landowners to add affordable units to their homes and property, and develop a program to put make abandoned houses available to new owners.
How would you address rising homelessness in Vermont?
The data strongly suggests that homelessness is a housing problem (see book of the same title). To solve homelessness, we need to build more affordable housing. Housing makes it a great deal easier to provide mental health and addiction services to those who need, but while mental health issues, addiction, and poverty make people more vulnerable to becoming homeless, they don’t cause homelessness — lack of affordable apartments does. And indeed, the research shows that sometimes, homeless causes mental illness, addiction, and poverty, not the other way around.
What would you do to increase access to health care services for Vermonters?
Work toward universal health care, decoupling health coverage from employment.
Financial disclosure
Candidates for state and legislative offices are required to submit a financial disclosure when filing to run. These disclosures include each source, but not the amount, of personal income of each candidate, and of their spouse or domestic partner, that singly or jointly totals more than $5,000 for the previous 12 months. The information provided is an opportunity for voters to learn about candidates’ potential conflicts of interest.
You can find Kleppner’s financial disclosure here.
Disclaimer
We emailed a questionnaire to every candidate with a valid email address. The responses provided by candidates are in their own words. VTDigger has not edited or fact-checked information provided.
If this is your candidacy and you’d like to fill out the questionnaire or report an error, please contact us at voterguide@vtdigger.org.
