Current News

by John McClaughry The future of Obamacare is hanging by a legal thread, thanks to what its supporters have passed off as a mere “drafting error”. Now MIT professor Jonathan Gruber, selected by Gov. Shumlin to receive yet another juicy contract to try to make sense out of Green Mountain Care, finds himself uncomfortably in the spotlight of the legal issue.

The Affordable Care Act of 2010 (ObamaCare) contemplated the creation of health insurance exchanges in every state. An earlier version in the Senate mandated states to create such exchanges, through which federal tax credit subsidies would flow to persons buying government-approved insurance.

Brattleboro Memorial Hospital hosted a special art reception on July 31 to showcase more than two dozen pieces of original Vermont artwork, thanks to a generous donation by the Susan Sebastian Foundation of Williston, Vermont. The Foundation was established in April 2009 by Elise Braun of Waterbury, Vermont, following the death of her daughter, Susan Sebastian in 2008. Born at Brattleboro Memorial Hospital on July 31, 1956, Susan graduated from Stowe High School in 1975 and lived with her husband Jim in South Dartmouth, Massachusetts, until his death in 2004.

Susan suffered from a long illness before her own death and spent a good deal of time staring at hospital room walls with her mother by her side. She told her mother, "When I get out of here, I am going to sell my house to buy art for hospital patient rooms."

by Anne Galloway, vtdigger.org After months of pressuring CGI to repair the state’s dysfunctional health care exchange website, the state of Vermont is finally cutting ties with the IT firm. Lawrence Miller, chief of health care reform, announced Monday that the state has reached an exit agreement with the Canadian technology company and the remaining Web development work that needs to be finished will be carried out by Optum, a subsidiary of United HealthCare, a national insurance company.

Lawrence Miller and Gov. Peter Shumlin. VTDigger file photo

Over 294 Vermont businesses will benefit from a $200,000 settlement with a Texas company announced today by Vermont Attorney General William H Sorrell. The State of Vermont sued Enhanced Services Billing, Inc (ESBI) in May, alleging that the company violated a state law designed to protect Vermonters from unauthorized charges on their landline telephone bills (a practice known as “cramming”), and facilitated cramming by a seller of Web services called Localbizusa. The Stipulation and Consent Order requires ESBI, a “billing aggregator” based in San Antonio, Texas, to pay $75,000 in refunds to the businesses and $125,000 to the State.

Vermont Law School has lost another significant member of its community. Vermont Law today announced the death of Geoffrey “Jeff” Benson Shields, former Vermont Law School president and dean. Dean Shields, 68, passed away peacefully, in the company of his loving wife Genie, on Saturday, August 2, at their Guilford, Vermont, home.

Comcast today announced it will include up to six months of complimentary service for any new family nationwide that has not yet applied for Internet Essentials and is approved for the program between August 4 and September 20, 2014. The Internet Essentials program has connected more than 600 low-income families in Vermont to the Internet since 2011. The telecom company also announced an amnesty program for certain low-income families who could qualify for Internet Essentials, but have a past due balance. Customers who have an outstanding bill that is more than one year old are now eligible for the program. Comcast will offer amnesty for that debt for the purpose of connecting to Internet Essentials, so long as the customer meets all the other eligibility criteria. Nationwide, Internet Essentials has connected more than 350,000 families, or about 1.4 million low-income Americans, to the Internet. The program is available in 39 states and the District of Columbia.

The University of Vermont has successfully completed negotiations on a two-year contract with the Chauffeurs, Teamsters, Warehousemen and Helpers Union No. 597. The union represents full-time and regular part-time police officers, service officers, and dispatchers employed by the university. Terms of the new contract include across-the-board wage increases of 2 percent for the fiscal year that began on July 1 and 2.5 percent for the fiscal year that begins July 1, 2015. In addition, the new contract includes a 20-percent increase in the employee share of the cost of health insurance premiums in Fiscal Year 2015, but no additional cost share increase in Fiscal Year 2016.

Edson Hill Manor, a historic Stowe inn, listed by Vermont Country Properties Sotheby’s International Realty, was recently sold for $1.85 million. The transaction represents the highest Stowe real estate sale for both Lamoille County and the town of Stowe for the year to-date. The property is currently operated as an inn and restaurant with extensive grounds, which include the main inn building, four cottages, swimming and fishing ponds, a horse barn paddocks, and a network of trails. The new buyers plan to keep Edson Hill Manor as a full-service luxury inn and restaurant, while adding some of their own personal touches.

Vermont Business Magazine Non-current mortgages for June in Vermont are up one-tenth from May and down nearly 19 percent from a year ago to 7.2 percent of all mortgages. Non-current includes foreclosures (2.4 percent, same as May) and delinquent (4.8 percent, up one-tenth). The Data and Analytics division of Black Knight Financial Services has released its latest Mortgage Monitor Report, looking at data as of the end of June 2014. Nationally, delinquencies were 5.7 percent, foreclosures were 1.9 percent and non-current overall was 7.6 percent, up one-tenth from May and down 21.0 percent from last year.

The Champlain College Single Parents Program has received a $1 million gift from Bob and Christine Stiller through the Stiller Family Foundation to specifically offset childcare costs for single parent students. The gift to Champlain was announced at the Board of Trustees Dinner honoring retiring President David F Finney. The gift will be made to the College over the next four years. Incoming President Donald J Laackman said, “this gift from the Stillers is a wonderful honor for Dave Finney and yet another demonstration of the generosity of the Stiller family to our students and the College.” Champlain’s Single Parents Program is one of the College’s longest-standing programs, and “it is only one of 11 such programs across the country,” said Carol Moran-Brown, “offering single parents a support system covering students academically, financially, and personally.”

Contracts with unions representing approximately 1,700 of FairPoint’s 2,550 northern New England employees expired at midnight on August 2, according to a statement released Sunday by FairPoint. With no strike as yet called by the unions, for now work will continue under most terms of the expired contracts. The unions said that they could still strike at any moment and have put forward proposals that would save the company $180 million, while FairPoint maintains the unions have not addressed the key benefit changes that it needs.

“To date, the unions have rejected company proposals on most of the core issues in these negotiations,” said FairPoint spokeswoman Ange Amores Beaudry. “There has been little or no movement on pensions, retiree medical for active employees or subcontracting, issues which are key to reaching new contracts.”

Vermont Lieutenant Governor Phil Scott is serving on the leadership committee of the National Lieutenant Governors Association (NLGA). The NLGA is a professional association enabling regional and nationwide policy discussion and progress at the state level. “Through NLGA’s bipartisan nature, the priorities of lieutenant governors and their states and territories are united – not divided,” said NLGA Director Julia Hurst. Scott is serving as the Eastern Region-At-Large Republican of the NLGA Executive Committee. “The lieutenant governor was nominated to this position by a bipartisan group of his peers,” said Hurst. “His unanimous election among officials of both parties from every region of the country speaks to the high regard he is held in among his peers.”