Current News

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.

Vermont Business Magazine The Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity (CVOEO), based in Burlington with programs throughout northwest Vermont, and Green Mountain Solar, out of South Burlington, have teamed up to support the community while lowering harmful greenhouse emissions. To power its mobile truck's many services in an environmentally friendly way, Green Mountain Solar equipped it with a custom-designed battery backup system. Instead of idling for hours on end, the truck can sit peacefully and only run its engine when it physically needs to move from place to place.

Vermont Business Magazine The Okemo Valley Regional Chamber of Commerce is excited to announce the dates for the second annual Best of Vermont Summer Festival! This two-day event is scheduled for Saturday, August 20 from 12 noon - 7 pm and Sunday, August 21 from 10 am - 4 pm in Ludlow, Vermont. The event will take place at Okemo Field on Route 103 the use of which is generously donated again by Lead Sponsor Okemo Mountain/Vail Resorts.

Vermont Business Magazine GlobalFoundries Inc today notified the Vermont Public Utilities Commission that it would continue to pursue becoming an independent electric utility in Vermont. It would also follow the state's clean energy goals. The PUC, the state regulator, last month issued a decision that if GF continued to seek such designation, it would still have to follow the state's renewable energy goals. GF is seeking independent utility status in an effort to lower its electric bill. In its original petition, it asked that it not be held to the clean energy standard. The PUC stated that it must, but could still seek to become its own utility.

by Timothy McQuiston, Vermont Business Magazine The Vermont Department of Health today is reporting 174 cases of COVID-19, up from 98 Wednesday (Tuesday 195; Monday, 48; Sunday 57, Saturday 95 and Friday 131). The 7-day case average is 140 (see modeling update below). Hospitalizations and ICU stays have fallen dramatically the last few weeks. There has been only one COVID-related death since last Friday.

Vermont Business Magazine Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) on Friday applauded the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s recent announcement that, this year, a record $740 million will be released to the National Housing Trust Fund (HTF) to build, preserve and rehabilitate affordable rental housing for low-income families – $29 million more than was allocated in 2021. The National Housing Trust Fund, which Sanders helped create in 2008, delivered $3.1 million to Vermont last year.

Vermont Business Magazine The US Senate overnight Thursday/Friday passed the comprehensive government funding bill negotiated by Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee. Leahy has listed more than $167 million in funding for specific Vermont projects across the state that are the fiscal year 2022 Omnibus Appropriations bill, which funds the federal government for the rest of this fiscal year. Leahy has headed the arduous Senate negotiations on the Omnibus Appropriations bill for the last several months. The bill now goes to President Biden, who will sign it.

by Roxanne Vought of Weybridge, executive director of Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility Talk to any business owner today and you’ll likely hear the same refrain: they’re struggling to find workers. They’ve tried everything: raising wages, sign-on bonuses, creative recruitment strategies, and they still can’t fill their openings. Some are eliminating product lines or reducing their manufacturing runs, others are cutting back hours. How did we get here?