Current News

Vermont furthered itself as the gold standard for financial services and insurance industries with the signing of H.719 into law on Thursday, May 17. This legislation allows for the creation of an “affiliate reinsurance company” and allows for a more favorable reinsurance alternative for U.S. companies who conduct business offshore.

This legislation capitalizes on an opportunity created by the recent changes to the Federal Tax Code, which created the Base Erosion Anti-Abuse Tax (BEAT) on reinsurance ceded to offshore affiliates. As a result, more than $35 billion previously in offshore jurisdictions will now be looking for a home in the U.S. to avoid this tax. Vermont acted quickly to ensure the state was able to support these businesses with the passing H.719, which creates the financial structures and regulatory environment to accommodate them in Vermont.

Vermont Business Magazine Mobius is excited to announce the start of the 2018-2019 Vermont Mentoring Grants application process. These annual grants are designed to support new and existing mentoring programs in Vermont that match adult volunteers as mentors for youth mentees (ages 5-22) in long-term, one-to-one, quality-based mentoring relationships.

The Vermont Mentoring Grants have traditionally been made possible through support from the A.D. Henderson Foundation, the Permanent Fund for Vermont’s Children, and the Vermont Department for Children and Families. During the 2017-2018 grant year, Mobius and its three funding partners awarded 31 grants, totaling more than $333,000, to support more than 100 new and existing mentoring program sites, and more than 1,800 adult-to-youth mentor pairs in communities across Vermont.

Vermont Business Magazine The Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation (FPR) assisted recently with the distribution of portable skidder bridges that were constructed at Fontaine Lumber in East Montpelier. Skidder bridges are portable structures logging operators use to minimize disturbance when transporting equipment and logs over streams. These bridges are being made available to logging contractors as part of the Department’s continued effort to protect water quality on timber harvest sites and to make it easier for logging contractors to do their work responsibly.

Vermont Business Magazine Hartland Elementary School will be celebrating their big Way to Go! School Challenge win from last fall, an AllEarth Renewables Solar Tracker, with a ribbon cutting on May 22 at 1:45. About 9,000 students, faculty and staff participated in last fall's Way to Go! School Challenge from 48 schools across the state. There was a 23% increase in school participation from 2016. Hartland Elementary was one of the schools that met the 50 percent participation criteria to be eligible to win the Solar Tracker.

Vermont Business Magazine Global Industrial PC company Logic Supply, in collaboration with Amazon Web Services (AWS), will begin offering their customers the option to pre-install AWS Greengrass with machine learning (ML) Inference on its ‘AWS Greengrass Compatible’ hardware platforms with an eye toward making Internet of Things (IoT) development easier, faster, and more efficient.

Vermont Business Magazine Burlington Parks, Recreation and Waterfront has reopened the Phase 2b portion of the Burlington Greenway, from North Beach to Shore Road, ahead of schedule. That means the entire Burlington section of the Island Line Trail is fully open to all users (please be advised to check the Town of Colchester and/or Local Motion for the most recent conditions on the Causeway, which sustained significant damage in a wind storm in early May). Final paving and most of the pavement markings, shoulder work, topsoil, seeding, landscaping, etc have been completed, with construction fencing and temporary access roads and bypasses currently being removed.

Vermont Business Magazine Vermonters talk a lot on the phone, and fast, but they're also pretty polite about it, except maybe for a bit of potty language, a new study reveals. Marchex (NASDAQ: MCHX), a leading provider of call analytics that drive, measure, and convert callers into customers, has released findings from a new speech pattern study based on more than 6.8 million calls placed by consumers to businesses across the United States. Marchex Institute insights reveal how conversation patterns vary and empower businesses to optimize valuable phone interactions with customers.

Vermont Business Magazine US Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) will hold a Veterans Town Hall and Resource Fair on Saturday at Norwich University. The event will highlight national, statewide and local resources for Vermont veterans and their families. The event will begin at 10 am with coffee, networking and a veterans’ resource fair. At 11 am, Sanders will address the attendees, touching on national veterans’ issues. He will be joined by Matthew Shuman, who is a US Army veteran and national legislative director for The American Legion. There will also be a panel discussion with Vermont representatives from the Veterans of Foreign Wars, Vietnam Veterans of America, The American Legion, Vermont Veterans Outreach Program and the VA.

Vermont Business Magazine Governor Phil Scott has appointed former Independent State Representative Oliver Olsen of Londonderry to the Vermont State Board of Education. As moderator of the Taconic and Green School District, Olsen also has first-hand experience with implementing statewide education laws at the local level.

TANGO AND CASH

Vermont Business Magazine Governor Phil Scott issued the following statement regarding Secretary of the Air Force Heather Wilson’s testimony before the US Senate Appropriations Committee on Thursday. “After a national search, Vermont’s Air National Guard was the third unit to be assigned to the F-35 mission, and the only National Guard unit. Vermont is very proud our National Guard would stand out in such a competent and crowded field."

Public Assets Institute Employment grew in April for the fourth straight month, adding more than 1,000 people to the ranks of working Vermonters. But from 2012 to 2017 the total number of people employed in the state shrank by nearly 3,000, or about one percent. The losses have not been evenly distributed. Only four counties—Addison, Chittenden, Lamoille, and Washington—saw employment gains, which totaled more than 2,000 over the five-year period.