Current News

Governor Jim Douglas has announced that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has established a critical grant partnership with the Vermont Department of Libraries and the Vermont Telecommunications Authority (VTA) to help public libraries compete for federal broadband stimulus funds made available through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. VTA, in collaboration with the Department of Libraries, plans to submit an application to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration’s (NTIA) Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP) in early 2010.

ION HoldCo, LLC, a partnership majority owned by Sovernet Communications (a subsidiary of Atlantic Tele-Network, Inc. (NASDAQ: ATNI)) along with twelve independent rural telephone companies in New York, announced it has received a federal broadband stimulus grant of $39.7 million to augment its existing 2200 mile fiber network with 1,300 miles of additional fiber-optic middle-mile broadband network.The project, the ION Upstate New York Rural Broadband Initiative, will be completed in partnership with the Development Authority of the North Country (DANC) and will enable high speed Internet access to underserved communities throughout upstate New York, along with parts of Vermont and Pennsylvania. An additional $9.9 million will be invested in the project by ION and DANC.“This is great news for our great state,” said ION CEO James Becker.

Green Mountain Power, based in Colchester, has filed with the Vermont Public Services Board a new alternative regulation plan that continues the benefits of the existing plan for another three years, and introduces new measures to encourage additional efficiency. The plan is the result of months of negotiations with the Department of Public Service.
The new alternative regulation plan includes a mechanism by which Green Mountain Power will be compared to other utilities from around the country. Currently the company operates in one of the top tiers of performance and strives to make it to the very top of the list of performance benchmarked against utilities from all over the country.

With snow falling, the Lake Champlain Bridge connecting Addison, Vermont, with Crown Point, New York, was demolished in the blink of an eye at 10:02 this morning. The sequence of charges appeared to go off as planned and the superstructure of the bridge debris fell straight down into lake. Reporters at the scene were caught off guard as a one-minute warning alarm went off just a handful of second before the bridge was detonated. Smoke and snow obscured what was left of the bridge for several minutes. Replays of the demolition can be found at the local network affiliates and at NYSDOT (CLICK HERE FOR VIDEO). Construction (PICTURES) of the new bridge is expected to start this spring. A temporary ferry is expected to start running soon very near the site of the now former Champlain Bridge.

Plasan, a global leader in the field of combat-proven survivability and armor solutions for vehicles, airborne platforms and personal protection, today announced it has won an additional contract for the delivery of 400 M-ATV armor kits as sub-contractor to Oshkosh Defense. Plasan has already delivered 3,200 M-ATV armor kits for the $3.3 billion contract awarded by U.S. Department of Defense to a team led by Wisconsin-based Oshkosh Corporation and Plasan North America to produce 6,619 M-ATVs for deployment in Afghanistan.

Vermont’s aging housing stock is inadequate, causing low-income households to spend more of their money on housing than they can afford, according to a report released today. The 2010 Vermont Housing Needs Assessment estimates that the pace of new home construction needs to double to meet demand in coming years and push down prices.
“Families across Vermont are struggling to pay the bills,” Governor Jim Douglas said. “As legislators return to Montpelier, the focus must be on helping Vermonters rebound from the recession, whether it’s finding a good job or purchasing an affordable home.”
“This report is a wake-up call for policy-makers, reminding them that we must literally re-double our efforts to build more homes for Vermont families,” said Tayt Brooks, Commissioner of the Vermont Department of Economic, Housing and Community Development.

Gardener’s Supply, the Burlington, Vermont-based garden products retailer, became 100 percent employee-owned as of Monday. Founder and majority owner Will Raap began selling shares to employees through an Employee Stock Ownership Program (ESOP) in 1987. An ESOP allows all employees to earn stock and share in company profits.
Selling Gardener’s Supply to the employees keeps the business in Vermont, and gives employees the opportunity to become owners of a business they helped build, something Will Raap felt was critical when he started the company in 1983.
“I’m delighted the work we started 27 years ago will continue. Our founding mission statement was to ‘spread the joys and rewards of gardening’, said Raap. “Gardening is even more relevant today than it was when we started.”

The Vermont Agency of Transportation (VTrans) and the New York State Department of Transportation (NYSDOT) today announced that the Lake Champlain Bridge demolition has been rescheduled to Monday, December 28, 2009 at 10 am. due to ice formation on Lake Champlain and severely cold temperatures which have significantly delayed work to prepare the bridge for demolition.
Safety issues associated with the bitter cold and high winds, as well as icing around the bridge have caused the delay, according to NYSDOT’s blast subcontractor Advanced Explosives Demolition (AED). Therefore, the bridge will not be sufficiently prepared for demolition on the originally scheduled date, December 23.

Burlington, Vermont, attorney Robert D Rachlin, senior director of the law firm Downs Rachlin Martin PLLC, celebrated his 50th anniversary this month with the law firm that bears his name. He was honored at the firm’s annual holiday dinner, held at the Stoweflake Resort and Conference Center.
Rachlin holds a bachelor’s degree from Yale University and a law degree from the University of Chicago Law School. Over the decades, he has represented the state of Vermont in achieving one of the largest state court verdicts in Vermont history and has attained, in a trade secret misappropriation suit, the largest federal award in Vermont history.
He successfully represented the United States Olympic Committee (USOC) in establishing U.S. license primacy over licenses granted by the International Olympic Committee, considered by the USOC to be a major stride in the protection of its control over Olympic-related designations.

A fully-integrated electronic medical record and enterprise-wide computer system will be installed at Northwestern Medical Center following approval of the hospital’s application for a Certificate of Need (CON). Paulette Thabault, the Commissioner of the Banking, Insurance, Securities, and Health Care Administration, approved the application on December 17 following a unanimous vote to recommend NMC’s project by the Public Oversight Commission on December 2.
“With an integrated clinical record, information can be shared by all who are involved in the care of a patient, at any time and in any location,” said Sandy Robinson, NMC’s Chief Nursing Officer and Director of Clinical Services. “We can ‘build in’ our standards of care and improve our ability to provide exceptional care for our patients.”

Green Mountain Capital LP, a Vermont Small Business Investment Company founded 16 years ago as part of the Dean administration's efforts to stimulate investment in Vermont's small businesses, announced that it will be winding down in 2010 after making a year-end 2009 cash distribution to its partners. With this distribution, the investors will have received more than double the capital they contributed to the Fund. Over the course of its operations, GMC created and/or saved more than 700 jobs in Vermont and provided $13 million in essential financing to 14 Vermont companies plus 14 other firms in northern New England.

The USDA Department of Labor is currently reviewing a rule concerning Temporary Agricultural Employment of H-2A workers in the United States. In response, Vermont Secretary of Agriculture Roger Allbee, in collaboration with his counterparts in numerous Northeastern states, has submitted written testimony to urge the Department of Labor to review the proposed regulations so that dairy farmers are not excluded from utilizing the benefits of the H-2A program. Senator Leahy has also strongly urged the Department of Labor to exercise its discretion under the special procedures provision to allow dairy farmers to be eligible for the H-2A program.