Current News

Vermont Business Magazine Southern Vermont Area Health Education Center has received a $520,000 grant from the Vermont Department of Health to advance health equity in Vermont by expanding and sustaining the Community Health Worker profession as integral to the health workforce. The grant was awarded in conjunction with a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) initiative to support local efforts to address COVID-19 related health disparities and disparities that persist in lower income communities and communities of color. This 18-month grant is the largest ever received by Southern Vermont AHEC, which said the grant funding will provide the opportunity to establish appropriate training and credentialing to create a career pipeline for expanding the community health worker (CHW) workforce into both clinical and community settings.

Vermont Business Magazine The Windham Regional Commission (WRC) is on tap to receive funding through Congressionally directed spending supported by Senator Bernie Sanders to help towns in southeast Vermont plan Resiliency Zones. This innovative work to increase resiliency in the face of climate change is a collaboration between WRC and Green Mountain Power (GMP). Resiliency Zones are a part of GMP’s proactive climate plan to work directly with partner communities to strengthen the grid, help prevent outages, and bounce back more quickly when severe weather hits.

Vermont Business Magazine Champlain College’s Leahy Center for Digital Forensics & Cybersecurity, a world-class laboratory providing digital forensics and cybersecurity services to community-based organizations, is set to receive more than $755,000 from the Omnibus Appropriations bill thanks to a congressionally directed spending request from Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont). The cybersecurity market—driven by rapidly expanding e-commerce, the internet of things, artificial intelligence, cloud security and more—is projected to grow from $156 billion in 2022 to $376 billion in 2029, a 13% compound annual growth rate.

Vermont Business Magazine At a candlelight vigil Tuesday, Governor Phil Scott signed H.717, An act relating to providing humanitarian assistance to the people of Ukraine and announced more than $640,000 of aid will go to Save the Children, a humanitarian organization dedicated to supporting children around the globe. Governor Scott signed the bipartisan bill, which passed unanimously, joined by Lieutenant Governor Molly Gray, Treasurer Beth Pearce, Attorney General TJ Donavan, Secretary of State Jim Condos, House Speaker Jill Krowinski, Senate Pro Tem Becca Balint, minority leaders Senator Randy Brock and Representative Pattie McCoy, legislators from all parties and the people of Vermont.

Vermont Business Magazine The Upper Valley MedTech Collaborative is hosting a MedTech Pitch Competition on April 27th at 5pm at the Lebanon Opera House in Lebanon, New Hampshire. The winner will receive $10,000 of non-dilutive funding. Applications are open to all Northern New England-based medtech start-ups that have raised less than $2 million through institutional investment.

by Timothy McQuiston, Vermont Business Magazine The Vermont Department of Health today is reporting 82 cases of COVID-19 for Monday, up from 23 on Sunday. Vermont is averaging 119 cases over the last 7 days. Cases are down 94% since the Omicron peak. An Omicron sub-variant is showing an increase in cases in Europe. And while it is already in Vermont and the US and appears to be more transmissible, cases have not increased nor does it appear to be more dangerous. Fatalities stand at 608 statewide. There have been no deaths since March 5 and hospitalizations have also come down. With low levels of severe disease and effective tools to prevent COVID-19, Vermont health officials announced that starting Monday, March 14, COVID-19 public health recommendations have been lessened to individual discretion.

​by Secretary of State Jim Condos and Deputy Secretary of State Chris Winters Every year we join with government transparency advocates from around the country to celebrate Sunshine Week, serving as a reminder that a well-functioning government is built upon the public’s right to know. Good government is open government! Government transparency, through open meetings and public records access, ensures ‘we the people’ have the tools necessary to verify our government officials are acting in our best interests, and to hold them accountable if we believe they are not.

Vermont Business Magazine Child care costs are crazy expensive — and they’re rising, according to a new report released today by the online financial services firm LendingTree. In 2020, child care costs for kids younger than 5 ate up between 17% and 20% of the average American worker’s yearly earnings. In some states, that percentage reached nearly 30%. Vermont families with toddlers and 4-year-olds pay the highest percent of income in the US on child care, 25.3% and 23.7% respectively.

Small Business Administration Vermont Today, Administrator Isabella Casillas Guzman, head of the US Small Business Administration and the voice for America’s 32.5 million small businesses in President Biden’s Cabinet, directed the Agency to provide additional deferment of principal and interest payments for existing COVID Economic Injury Disaster Loan program Borrowers for a total of 30 months deferment from inception on all approved COVID EIDL loans. The extended deferment period will provide additional flexibility to small business owners impacted by the pandemic, especially those in hard-hit sectors managing disruption with recent variants, as well as recent supply chain and inflation challenges amid a growing economic recovery.

Vermont Business Magazine Vermont’s receipt of its share of a national settlement with Purdue Pharma and its owners, the Sackler family, cleared its first hurdle when the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York determined that the settlement did not violate the Bankruptcy Code. Under the settlement agreement, Vermont is to receive $36.4 million and up to an additional $1.454 million if certain conditions are met. The settlement is conditioned on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals overturning an earlier District Court. The result will be a nearly three-fold increase over the $12.58 million allocated to Vermont in Purdue’s original bankruptcy plan—a plan that Attorney General T.J. Donovan objected to and appealed in December 2021.

Vermont Business Magazine Green Lantern Solar, based in Williston, has completed a solar array for Chroma Technology in Putney. Chroma is a Bellows Falls-based, certified B Corp and market leader in the precision optics industry. The 500-kilowatt ground-mount array will produce enough energy to offset a third of Chroma’s annual energy expenses. The virtual net-metered solar project was developed, constructed and is owned and operated by Green Lantern Solar and is the company’s most recently completed in its home state of Vermont. The energy produced by the 1,870 solar module array is approximately 958,200-kilowatt-hours (kWh) annually, offsetting the CO2 emissions from 82,602,601 smartphones charged and 123 homes’ electricity use for one year.

by Devon Green, VAHHS VP of Government Relations Last week was crossover week, where policy bills must get voted out of their committee of jurisdiction or perish. And, because this is the second year of the biennium, it means any bill that didn’t make it is dead and would have to be completely reintroduced next year. But, just to keep things exciting, nothing is ever truly dead before gaveling out the session—there is always the chance for language to sneak into other bills. Below are the policy bills that made it through crossover that we’re keeping an eye on. This week, all the action will be in the money committees and passing the budget out of House Appropriations.