Current News

The US Senate today confirmed the nomination of Geoffrey Crawford to the US District Court in Vermont by a vote of 95-0. Crawford is stepping down as a Vermont Supreme Court justice to take the position on the federal bench. US Senator Patrick Leahy, who chairs the Judiciary Committee, steered the nomination through the committee and through the Senate. Crawford was confirmed in less time than any judicial nominee in many years. Leahy, who also is President Pro Tempore of the Senate, presided over the Senate for the vote and announced the outcome.

“Justice Crawford came highly recommended, well qualified, and broadly experienced," Leahy said in a statement. "He’s a well-grounded Vermonter and a good fit for Vermont and our federal court. I appreciate the bipartisan cooperation that has helped me steer his nomination through this intricate process in pretty much record time. His prompt confirmation will ease the transition.”

by Morgan True vtdigger.org A new state health care law will require the administration to report on whether Vermont should prohibit insurers from paying independent physician practices less than hospitals for the same services. Lawmakers framed the need for the report as a discussion of whether Vermont should protect its private physician practices or encourage the current trend toward hospital employment. The number of full-time physician equivalents employed by Vermont’s hospitals grew 22 percent between 2007 and 2012, from 947 to 1,207, according to figures from the Green Mountain Care Board.

That’s a good thing according to the CEOs of the two largest hospital networks serving the region.

Governor Peter Shumlin today signed multifaceted legislation providing support for start-up, expansion and retention to high tech companies that offer good wages and a bright future in Vermont. In addition, the law creates the Vermont Strong Scholars Program to help families afford a college education for their children in the cutting edge employment fields. The law adds $500,000 in State General Funds to the $1 million in federal funds available to VEDA’s Vermont Entrepreneurial Lending Program. The program creates a loan-loss reserve to reduce the risk of lending to start-up tech and other companies in Vermont promoting high value jobs. The program is intended to help foster the next generation of successful, home-grown companies.

Vermont Public Radio has launched Traces, a statewide crowdsourcing project that aims to catalog how drug addiction affects us all. “Traces isn’t a project about statistics, policy, or crime – it’s about people,” said Digital Reporter Taylor Dobbs. “Whether they are addicts, parents, victims, or bystanders, many Vermonters have stories of addiction that go deeper than the speeches and treatment strategies that often make the news. The impacts of addiction are many, and Traces is an effort to explore those impacts and the way addiction shapes our communities.”

The project began with a story about a family struggling to move forward after losing one of its members to a heroin overdose. The Dekeersgieter family memorialized Brennan, their son and brother, with a bench at Oakledge Park in Burlington.

The leadership of Lund’s 50 Joy Drive Capital Campaign - Governor Jim Douglas, Commissioner Melinda Moulton, and State’s Attorney for Chittenden County TJ Donovan - will welcome guests Thursday to Lund’s new building at 50 Joy Drive in South Burlington for a ribbon cutting and official dedication of the facility as The Hoehl Family Building. The capital campaign facilitated the purchase and renovation of the building. Lieutenant Governor Phil Scott will also be present.

The 50 Joy Drive building is now home to Lund’s 5 STAR Early Childhood Program, New Horizons education program for pregnant and parenting teens, adoption department, parent child center services and business office. Governor Howard Dean who, with Governor Douglas, was an honorary co-chair of the campaign, refers to the new building as, “a huge step forward in making essential services more comprehensive, well organized, and more broadly available.”

The Stern Center for Language and Learning is celebrating 30 years of helping students with learning style differences reach their full potential. Over the past three decades the Stern Center has supported more than 20,000 children and adults in overcoming their struggles with dyslexia, learning disabilities, autism, language disorders and other learning style differences, including giftedness.

“I know so many parents who have read to their children since they were in the womb and yet see sad faces on these same children who later hate reading- because they don’t know how,” said Stern Center president and founder, Dr. Blanche Podhajski. “If your child has trouble with sounds, reading words, spelling or understanding vocabulary and text, she or he may need more explicit teaching.”

by Laura Krantz vtdigger.org Lynne Klamm, who has been tapped to straighten out the Rutland office of the Department for Children and Families is married to the county’s top juvenile prosecutor, but that connection is not a conflict of interest, the state’s attorney said Monday. In addition to being the lead juvenile prosecutor in Rutland County, Kevin Klamm last year prosecuted Sandra Eastman, the mother of a Poultney 2-year-old who died in February, on a charge of child cruelty, according to court records. It is impossible to know whether Kevin Klamm was involved in Dezirae Sheldon’s reunification case because the name of the attorney is redacted in a damning report about that case issued a week ago.

by John McClaughry The mounting VA hospital scandals have now moved Sen. Bernie Sanders’s cherished “socialized medicine” to center stage. For Vermonters, it’s worth understanding clearly how the Veterans Health Administration works, and how it compares with “single payer” Canadian Medicare and Vermont’s coming Green Mountain Care.

The VHA has 288,000 employees (two thirds of them unionized) serving 8.3 million veterans in 150 VHA hospitals and 1,400 affiliated centers. VHA is funded almost entirely by Congressional appropriations. The scandals have arisen because at least 42 VHA hospitals (so far) regularly miss waiting time benchmarks for patient appointments, and their staffs are fudging the data base to make it look like the benchmarks were met.

Dartmouth researchers have found that early exposure to the ultraviolet radiation lamps used for indoor tanning is related to an increased risk of developing basal cell carcinomas (BCC) at a young age. Their findings are reported in “Early-Onset Basal Cell Carcinoma and Indoor Tanning: A Population-Based Study,” a study that will be published in the July 2014 issue of Pediatrics. Since indoor tanning has become increasingly popular among adolescents and young adults, this research calls attention to the importance of counseling young people about the risk of indoor tanning.

Judith Van Houten, George H Perkins Professor of Biology, has been named the inaugural recipient of the President’s Distinguished University Citizenship and Service Award for her consistent and outstanding record of service over time to the university community. Since her arrival in 1980, Van Houten has provided countless hours of service to the university, State of Vermont and the nation in her role as a University Distinguished Professor, state director of the Vermont Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR), and director of the Vermont Genetics Network INBRE program. Her efforts have had a significant impact on UVM’s research mission through the building of cyber infrastructure, establishment of core facilities, hiring of faculty across five colleges, mentoring of students and colleagues, and the support of entrepreneurial ventures by UVM faculty.

During a news conference in Chester Monday, United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) officials announced eight organizations across the state will share $430,326 in USDA Rural Development Community Facility grants, loans and loan guarantees to purchase, improve or construct essential community assets. The federal funds provide rural communities with an incentive to invest in facilities and equipment that improve the quality of life across Vermont’s rural communities. The Brighton Fire Department, the Burke Town School District, Chester’s Whiting Library, Hancock’s Town Clerk’s Office, Heartbeet Lifesharing Corporation of Hardwick, the Paramount Theatre of Rutland, the Sheffield-Wheelock Volunteer Fire Department, and Turning Point of Windham County in Brattleboro each received a portion of the funding.

Governor Peter Shumlin today kicked off his ‘Solar Summer Tour,’ the first in a series of stops around the state in the coming months to highlight the strength of Vermont’s solar and renewable energy sector and its growing impact on job creation, the state’s economy and the environment. Joined by Public Service Department Commissioner Christopher Recchia, the Governor released the "2014 Vermont Clean Energy Industry Report", the first effort in the state to survey and describe the status and characteristics of Vermont’s clean energy industry. Among the findings, Vermont’s clean energy industry employs 15,286 workers at 2,684 locations, and has seen a growth of 3.4 percent in the last 12 months.