Biography
Tanya is a clinical social worker and owns a small practice in Essex where she works primarily with adolescents and young adults. Tanya won her first election for State Representative in 2020, and in 2022 won one of three Senate seats in the Chittenden Central district. She serves as Vice Chair of the Senate Government Operations Committee and Clerk of the Senate Committee on Judiciary. Tanya has spent her time in the General Assembly working diligently to expand Medicaid access, lower prescription drug prices, invest in creating community safety, expand and protect democracy, protect public education with a more just and sustainable funding model, and end victim blaming in civil sexual assault cases.
Tanya is a graduate of Essex High School and Northeastern University. She had a typical experience of being priced out of her hometown after college and for years commuted over an hour to get to her job in Burlington. She worked full-time while getting her masters in Social Work from UVM, and was finally able to move back to Essex in 2012. Tanya’s professional career has been spent working in area nonprofits, as a school counselor, and now in private practice.
Candidate occupation
Social worker
Why are you running for office?
I first ran for office because I knew what it was like to just barely get by and because every day I saw clients in crises that kept escalating with no relief in sight. I looked at our political leadership and didn’t see any of us represented. I heard us used as talking points but not brought into any policy-making process. As a working-class, self-employed person and one of only two renters in the Senate, I continue to find myself often the only person like me in committee rooms and on the Senate floor. I ran to get into those spaces and bring my perspective, and I’m running for re-election so that I can keep opening minds and opening doors for more marginalized Vermonters to get access to decision-making power. I’ve seen firsthand that the best policy is made when the people who are most impacted by an issue are the ones to come up with solutions and I want to continue to be part of that work.
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?
Yes
Do you support the establishment of overdose prevention centers?
Yes
Do you support a ban on flavored tobacco products?
No answer
Do you support increasing penalties for property crimes such as shoplifting?
No
Do you believe Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election?
Yes
Issues in depth
What would you do to help grow Vermont’s economy?
While there is no one simple solution to the growing economic challenges facing Vermonters, there are some important steps to take. We need to make investments directly in the community to meet the needs of all members of the community in order to create safety and belonging. This includes investments in housing, physical and mental healthcare, harm reduction and substance use treatment, paid family medical leave, and high-quality public education. Vermont’s economy can’t grow if we don’t have a safety net that actually catches people and keeps them in their homes and jobs and allows them the freedom to start businesses, further their education, and have families. It’s critical to set people up to thrive and make our communities places where young Vermonters want to stay and build their lives. We also need to revamp our tax system so that the Vermonters with the most ability to pay aren’t putting less into the network that funds that safety net than the people who can least afford it. Right now the burden is disproportionately on the backs of those who are at their breaking point and don’t have nearly as much representation in the legislature standing up for them as those with the means to fund political campaigns and lobbyists.
What changes, if any, would you make to the way Vermont funds its schools?
One of our highest priorities next session has to be to pursue new education funding models. What we’re doing is not just unaffordable, but unsustainable. We have over ten years of studies from national and local groups that demonstrate the benefits of switching to a progressive income-based system, along with the pitfalls we need to address to ensure that renters aren’t essentially paying twice, and those with significant wealth whose primary income is drawn down from investments are included. We also need to explore every avenue of cost containment. Right now public school dollars are being spent at a much higher rate per pupil through vouchers at private schools than they would be at local public schools. This is inequitable on several levels and we have hard conversations ahead of us. But as we continue to underfund our schools year after year, we have to examine all the ways we can keep our tax dollars within our public schools and make sure we can accommodate and support all of our students who are being left behind.
Is Vermont doing enough, too much or not enough to address climate change? Please explain.
Climate change is a crisis playing out now with increased severe weather, temperature instability, and natural disasters. Vermont can’t solve climate change alone but we have to do everything we can to stop this trajectory. This year we passed important laws moving us in that direction; a critical update to the renewable energy standard putting us on track for 100% renewable energy by 2035 and allowing us to use more federal money to get us there. We also led the nation in passing the climate superfund bill which will hold oil companies financially accountable for the damage they’ve knowingly caused. We have a lot more work to do to build more resiliency into everything we do, but that work has started. We did significant work to consider future extreme weather in the flood response bill and as we move forward I’ll keep pushing to make sure those most impacted by climate change are centered in our solutions. We need to revamp building codes, stop investing in fossil fuel infrastructure, make renewable energy affordable finding more inclusive incentives than tax breaks and reimbursements that require people to wait months for payouts. We need to invest in green jobs and support people as they transition into them.
Is Vermont doing enough, too much or not enough to regulate gun ownership? Please explain.
Most of Vermont’s regulations do more to add charges after a gun has been used illegally than it does to prevent gun-involved crimes and tragic accidents. While we have spent a considerable amount of time trying to craft legislation that reduces gun crime while respecting the Second Amendment, what we have is a patchwork of statutes and laws that don’t do what we need to in order to keep Vermonters safe. I firmly believe in the right to responsible gun ownership. I believe that gun owners should have background checks, education, safe storage, and carry insurance. Right now we regulate cars more than we regulate weapons that have the power to end human life and that has to change.
What would you do to help ease Vermont’s housing crisis?
Part of the work that we did to reform Act 250 was specifically to address the housing crisis. The final bill cleared hurdles for development in the places where we’re already building but have space for more density, while leaving the natural areas we need to have a healthy environment protected. This is just one piece of the puzzle, though. We need to consider funding sources like taxes on vacation homes and short-term rentals that go directly into a special fund for affordable housing. We need to update our building codes to consider innovative, modular building solutions that reduce the cost of constructing new housing. We need to continue to fund programs that rehabilitate derelict housing. We need to clear the path for more perpetually affordable cooperative housing where Vermonters have an opportunity to have a say in the future of where they live instead of just building more rentals. We need to attack this widespread problem from every angle. We can’t just create more incentives for developers to build large rental housing where tenants have no security once a lease ends. We need opportunities for ownership and equity.
How would you address rising homelessness in Vermont?
In addition to creating more permanently affordable housing options, we need to fully fund the supportive housing first programs that already exist so that people who need it have wrap-around support to get into housing and stay housed. These models work, but we can’t give them a fraction of the funding they need to do a monumental task and then discard them when we aren’t seeing the progress we hope for. We are already doing a lot of the right things to address homelessness. We’re just not doing enough of them. We have to reduce the administrative burden it takes to implement these programs and access benefits and increase cooperation across state agencies. No one should have to stay on the phone on hold for hours trying to get into housing for the night. What we offer in terms of funding and support is so rigid and bureaucratic that it’s almost impossible for unhoused people to determine what they need and get those needs met with dignity. A big piece of what we need to do is invest in the safety net that keeps people from losing housing in the first place. It’s so much more expensive and traumatic to get someone out of homelessness than it is to keep them from ever reaching that point.
What would you do to increase access to health care services for Vermonters?
There are so many reasons that healthcare is inaccessible. We have some of the highest wait times in the country to see specialists and too few primary care providers. We have insurance premiums and copays that are so unaffordable that the people who hold those policies avoid care. The solution to the rising cost and instability in our crumbling healthcare system is now and has always been to implement universal healthcare following the lead of every other developed nation in caring for their citizens. This has been something I have been advocating for and offering pathways to for well over a decade and I continue to believe that it is the only viable long-term solution. In the meantime, we are trying to bridge that gap with policies that reduce harm and expense. We just passed olicies regulating pharmacy benefit managers to lower prescription drug costs and expanding Medicaid to make more Vermonters eligible. I have also introduced bills and will again if I am re-elected that would provide co-pay-free access to life-saving medications like epi-pens and keep medical debt off of credit reports so that getting sick doesn’t mean you can no longer buy a house or rent an apartment.
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 Vyhovsky’s financial disclosure here.
Disclaimer
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