Current News

Vermont Business Magazine The Vermont Nuclear Decommissioning Citizens Advisory Panel (VT NDCAP) will hold its first regular meeting of 2024 on Monday evening, May 13th, from 6:00 PM to 8:15 PM.  At this meeting, NorthStar and Vermont State Agencies will provide updates on recent Vermont Yankee (VY) decommissioning activities.  The Vermont State Agencies reports will also discuss NorthStar’s March 31, 2024 required annual status report for the VY Decommissioning Project.  Recent activities of the Panel’s Federal Nuclear Waste Policy Committee will also be discussed.

Vermont Business Magazine The Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department and Vermont Fish and Wildlife Board will hold two more public hearings on May 6 and 8 to solicit input on deer and the department’s 2024 Antlerless Harvest and Youth/Novice Recommendation. The hearings are scheduled to start at 6:30 p.m. at the following locations: Monday, May 6 – Rutland High School, 22 Stratton Rd, Rutland, VT 05701; Wednesday, May 8 – Thetford Academy, 304 Academy Rd, Thetford, VT 05074.

Vermont Business Magazine Vermont’s popular fish and wildlife summer course for teachers and other educators will be held July 14-19, 2024. The interactive field course that gets educators out into Vermont’s streams, forests and wetlands with some of the state’s leading natural resource experts takes place at the Buck Lake Conservation Camp in Woodbury. Now in its 39th year, “Wildlife Management and Outdoor Education Techniques for Educators,” is a one-week course taught by Vermont Fish and Wildlife and other Agency of Natural Resources (ANR) staff through Vermont State University. 

Vermont Business Magazine Today the Vermont Senate gave initial approval to H.72, an act relating to a harm-reduction criminal justice response to drug use, on a tripartisan vote of 21-8. This bill will allow for the creation of an overdose prevention center pilot to prevent fatal overdoses, provide access to harm-reduction services (including sterile equipment, drug-checking, and naloxone), reduce pressures on emergency rooms and Emergency Medical Services (EMS), and to provide access to referrals for substance use disorder treatment. H.72 permits the creation of an overdose prevention center in Burlington, either at a fixed location or a mobile facility, supervised by health care professionals or other trained staff. It provides a person the ability to consume pre-obtained drugs and medication for substance use disorder with access to harm reduction supplies, drug-checking services, addiction treatment, medical services, and overdose reversal medications.

Vermont Business Magazine Governor Phil Scott has named award-winning Brandon poet and teacher Bianca Stone the next Vermont Poet Laureate. Stone is the author of five books, including the poetry collections, What is Otherwise Infinite (Tin House, 2022), winner of the 2022 Vermont Book Award; The Möbius Strip Club of Grief (Tin House, 2018); and Someone Else’s Wedding Vows (Octopus Books and Tin House, 2014). She collaborated with Anne Carson on the illuminated version of Antigonick (New Directions, 2012). Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Poets and Writers, The Nation, and elsewhere. She co-founded the poetry-based nonprofit Ruth Stone House, where she teaches classes on poetry and poetic study and hosts the Ode & Psyche Podcast, and is editor-at-large for ITERANT magazine.

Vermont Business Magazine Attorney General Charity Clark today announced that Vermont received $24,885,098.40 from tobacco manufacturers under the tobacco Master Settlement Agreement (MSA). Annually, Vermont receives monies from tobacco manufacturers from the MSA, which resolved the State’s lawsuit filed in the 1990’s. The settlement funds are credited to the State’s Tobacco Fund, and the legislature determines how they are spent. On November 23, 1998, Vermont’s Attorney General and 51 state and territory attorneys general signed the MSA with the four largest cigarette manufacturers in the United States, including Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds. As a leader in this effort, Vermont has received more than $794 million from the tobacco companies since 1998.

Vermont Business Magazine US Senator Peter Welch (D-Vermont) on Tuesday joined Public Knowledge, FCC Commissioners Anna Gomez and Geoffrey Starks, U.S. National Economic Council Deputy Director Jon Donenberg, and broadband access advocates at the Shaw Neighborhood Library in Washington, D.C., to rally support for the extension of the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP), which has helped 23.2 million households across the country get and stay connected to affordable high-speed internet. 

Vermont Business Magazine LaunchVT, a division of the Lake Champlain Chamber, has initiated a partnership with All Stage, a company based in Boston, MA. All Stage’s products connect the best investors with entrepreneurs, aiming to create a strong investing community that benefits all stakeholders. LaunchVT accelerates outstanding startups through its expertise and network to help Vermonters solve problems and build strong economic opportunities within their communities. LaunchVT’s new initiative with All Stage empowers startup founders to establish strategic relationships and utilize the toolkits they gain during the accelerator, helping them to raise investment so that they can scale and thrive. 

Vermont Business Magazine Chroma Technology, a leading manufacturer of high-performance optical filters, has launched a redesigned website to provide a best-in-class online experience for the optics and photonics community. The new Chroma.com features a range of enhancements to streamline the sourcing of optical filters and accessing in-depth technical resources. These improvements include an upgraded search engine to quickly find filters, specifications, and expert knowledge from Chroma's extensive Knowledge Center. The site architecture has also been optimized with intuitive navigation to easily locate product data, documentation, software tools, and support information.

Vermont Business Magazine ECFiber customers in danger of losing a $30 monthly credit on their bill as the federal Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) expires will receive a one-month extension directly from ECFiber. The decision was made by the executive committee in hopes that the ACP program funding will be replenished by congressional action in the coming weeks. ECFiber has also been enhancing the ACP benefit by providing a private $20 monthly credit through its internal affordability fund, which previously had been the source of donations totaling $270,000 to the now-inactive Equal Access to Broadband, Inc., a nonprofit that ECFiber leadership created to develop affordability programs prior to the advent of the ACP. The full governing board of ECFiber had previously voted to continue the $20 subsidy for the remainder of 2024.

Vermont Business Magazine The popular NPR program 1A will broadcast nationally live from Vermont Public studios on May 1-2 from 10 a.m. - noon. The program, which is produced by WAMU in Washington, D.C. and distributed by NPR, regularly visits member stations around the country, as part of their ongoing effort to elevate the stories, issues, and perspectives of Americans. The show will be live from the Colchester, Vermont studios on Wednesday and Thursday of this week. Traveling the country and broadcasting from local stations is a core part of 1A’s dedication to exploring the issues of our time through individual stories and voices. The show’s daily conversations bring together thoughtful guests and listeners from around the country. On Wednesday evening, May 1 at 7:30 p.m., 1A and Jenn White will host a live taping of the show at the Essex Cinemas.

by Jack Hoffman, Public Assets Institute The 1973 oil embargo prompted many energy-saving ideas—real and imaginary. Daylight savings was extended year-round, which was spoofed in a cartoon of President Richard Nixon demonstrating an energy-saving blanket. He was shown cutting a strip from one end of the blanket and sewing it back on to the other end. The current plan to reform the notorious CLA—common level of appraisal—looks a lot like Nixon’s blanket. It doesn’t actually change how things work, it just makes them look a little better to the public. The latest version of the yield bill now in the Senate changes the way the CLA is calculated but doesn’t actually change the way the CLA works or affects tax bills. The CLA is misunderstood to begin with. It affects school tax rates at the town level, but not school tax bills. The CLA is part of the process to ensure fairness in the property tax system. For taxes to be fair, property needs to be evaluated against a uniform standard—a “common level of appraisal.”