Current News

MIT’s Election Data & Science Lab Releases Its 2020 Elections Performance Index

Vermont Business Magazine Today Secretary of State Jim Condos announced that the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) Election Data & Science Lab has released its post 2020 Elections Performance Index (EPI), ranking Vermont 1^st overall nationally in elections administration for the 2020 election. This marks the second #1 ranking for Vermont following the last two Presidential elections.

The EPI is widely considered by state election administrators as the most reputable elections management index. It provides a non-partisan, data-driven measure of how well each state is performing in managing the conduct of elections, using a number of indicators ranging from voter turnout to the availability of online tools for voter accessibility.

Vermont Business Magazine In 2021, Vermont Humanities and the Vermont Arts Council gave $1.2 million in Covid-19 Cultural Recovery Grants to 146 cultural organizations, located in all 14 counties in Vermont. This collaborative grant program was made possible by American Rescue Plan Act funds from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts. Seventy-four percent of the applicants received grants, and the average grant was $8,114.

Vermont Business Magazine At a meeting on January 26, the Vermont Housing & Conservation Board Awarded $4.6 million in state funds and $5.82 million in federal funds to purchase, construct, and rehabilitate housing in Putney, Monkton, St Albans, Essex, Williston, St Johnsbury, and Bennington and to plan for housing development in West Brattleboro. These awards will advance the development of new rental housing for our workforce as well as for low-income and homeless households, seniors and citizens with disabilities, while also maintaining long-term affordability with necessary repairs and maintenance to properties.

by Timothy McQuiston, Vermont Business Magazine The seasonally-adjusted statewide unemployment rate in Vermont for January was 3.0 percent. This reflects a decrease of one-tenth from December. Adjusted population and labor force estimates have resulted in an overall increase in the number of unemployed in Vermont. The December 2021 rate was adjusted upward to 3.1 percent from the original estimate of 2.5 percent. At the beginning of each year the Vermont Department of Labor adjusts rates based on revised data from the US Census. This results in a lag in reporting of the January rate. This can also result in significant readjustments to the prior months, such as this year.

Vermont Business Magazine Starting TOMORROW, Tuesday, March 15, at 6:30 a.m., Locust Street will be closed to through traffic between Caroline and Shelburne Streets. Shelburne Street will be reduced to one lane with alternating one-way traffic at the intersection with Locust Street to facilitate waterline work beginning at 9 am. The closure of Locust Street at its intersection with Shelburne Street will take place during daytime hours. Locust Street will reopen in the evening of Tuesday, March 15. The closure will be in place again on Wednesday, March 16 for the daytime hours and re-opened in the evening. During the closure period, access to residences and businesses along Locust Street will be maintained.

Vermont Agency of Agriculture Food & Markets It’s been a busy few months for Vermont dairy, but there are some bright spots in these turbulent times. The Northeast Dairy Task Force, stimulated by Horizon Organic’s plan to end contracts with dozens of Northeast organic dairy farms, released recommendations that paved the way for a new infusion of dollars.

by Joyce Marcel, Vermont Business Magazine Talk about finding a niche and filling it! The married couple Lisa and Roland Groeneveld, both 49, started their computer company as Logic Supply in 2003 in a one-bedroom apartment in Boston. Now called OnLogic, it is based in South Burlington with facilities in Taiwan, the Netherlands, Malaysia and North Carolina. They employ 200 people and have just reached $100 million in sales. They are also in the permit process to build a new, $50 million,125,000-square-foot corporate headquarters, which will include a production facility for the assembly of their rugged computers as well as a warehouse and shipping component to handle the growing demand.

Vermont Business Magazine Shelburne Museum will open the 2022 season on Sunday, May 15 with a full slate of new exhibitions, programs, and refurbished historic buildings. Northern New England’s largest art and history museum will be open six days a week, Tuesdays through Sundays, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., including holiday Mondays, through October 16. Stagecoach Inn and Dana-Spencer Textile Galleries at Hat and Fragrance, where two of the museum’s most important collections reside—American Folk Art and quilts—will reopen this season after updates and conservation.

by Mark Stephenson Today, more than half of Vermonters heat their homes with fuel oil or propane. Aside from being polluting fossil fuels that are driving the climate crisis, they are two of the highest cost and most price volatile ways to heat homes and buildings. This fossil fuel dependence creates a major strain on Vermont consumers and a large drain on the Vermont economy. While current retail fuel prices – $4.64 a gallon for fuel oil and $3.54 a gallon for propane as of this writing, but likely higher by time of publication – are particularly high, remember that the high costs and price volatility of fossil fuels are a feature, not a bug, of global commodity markets controlled largely by oil cartels and oligarchs.

VermontBiz newsbriefs for February 2022: Scott appoints Nancy Waples to the Vermont Supreme Court; State releases critical medical wait times report; NEFCU and VSECU, Vermont's two largest credit unions, to merge; Scott bans Russian liquor products, other sanctions coming; GlobalFoundries to continue effort to become independent utility despite PUC ruling; Vermont House passes Reproductive Liberty Amendment (Prop 5); and more.

We at VermontBiz are enjoying and celebrating our 50th anniversary this year. Think of everything that has happened in that time. Vermont Yankee has come, and gone. The state elected its first (and, so far, only) Democratic US Senator (Patrick Leahy) since the Civil War and its first woman governor ever (Madeleine Kunin). Civil unions and then same-sex marriage became law. A couple nice fellows from Long Island started an ice cream scoop shop in an abandoned filling station in Burlington and eponymously named it Ben & Jerry’s Homemade. Two snow sports innovators from southern Vermont changed the course of the winter Olympics by “looking around the corner” and essentially inventing freestyle skate skiing (Billy Koch) and snowboarding (Jake Carpenter), who named the company after his mom.

Leonine Public Affairs Friday was the crossover deadline for policy bills in the legislature. As a result, policy committees scrambled all week, and particularly Thursday and Friday, to get bills out. Those that do not impact the budget will go directly to the floor of their respective chambers. Bills affecting the budget will be reviewed by the appropriations committees next week so that they can be finalized by the crossover deadline for money bills, which is next Friday, March 18. Noteworthy bills that moved this week relate to workforce development, the implementation of the retail cannabis market, legislative redistricting, wildlife management, the expansion of community mental health services, energy sourcing, affordable housing, education funding reform, addiction treatment and recovery, pharmacy benefit managers and the creation of a task force to examine how to address current and historic systemic discrimination in Vermont.