Current News

Vermont Business Magazine Subcommittee Chairman Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) today announced that the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee’s Subcommittee on Primary Health and Retirement Security will hold a hearing Thursday, May 20 at 10 am on the health care workforce shortage facing our country titled, “A Dire Shortage and Getting Worse: Solving the Crisis in the Health Care Workforce.”

Vermont Business Magazine Throughout Vermont, more than 100,000 requests for Emergency Medical Service (EMS) response are answered on an annual basis. Add to that the unprecedented challenges required of the state’s individual emergency responders and 168 licensed ambulance and first responder services during the pandemic, and you come up with 2,800 of our fellow Vermonters who deserve every moment of the EMS Week recognition that started on Sunday. As of May 14, based on updated CDC guidance and Vermont’s progress in vaccination, Vermont has new guidance around mask-wearing, cross-state travel and gathering sizes. Also, the VDH is reporting 29 new cases of COVID-19 and no additional deaths since last week which are holding at 252 statewide. Over 70 percent of Vermont adults have received at least one dose of vaccine.

Vermont Business Magazine Today, Northern Vermont University President Elaine C. Collins announced she will be seeking new professional challenges and will be resigning from her presidency late this summer. President Collins said: “I will step down from my presidency in August of this year. With NVU’s future bright, the time is right for me to pursue new challenges. Building Northern Vermont University—with the dedicated faculty, staff, students, alumni, and community members—is one of the proudest accomplishments of my career. I am honored to have had the opportunity to create NVU. Our unification achieved its goals and the transformation of the Vermont State Colleges System has begun."

Vermont Business Magazine The Vermont Downtown Board has allocated $498,320 in grants to Brattleboro, Middlebury, Montpelier, Newport, Poultney, Springfield and St Albans. This funding will support projects to improve the safety, access, and comfort for people walking and riding bicycles in downtowns. Grants will support access improvements to trail stations in Brattleboro and Middlebury, new wayfinding signage in Springfield, enhanced lighting in Newport, new sidewalks in St Albans, and create new public spaces in Poultney and Montpelier.

Vermont Business Magazine As the response to the COVID-19 pandemic continues, The University of Vermont Health Network has seen some progress toward its financial recovery, thanks to state and federal provider relief funding, cost control measures, and an increase in patient visits for necessary health care services during the month of March 2021. The Network announced today financial results from the second quarter of Fiscal Year 2021 and for the year-to-date of the fiscal year – which runs from October 1, 2020 – September 30, 2021.

Vermont Business Magazine Governor Phil Scott proclaimed May 16-22 Emergency Medical Services (EMS) Week in Vermont, noting the extra importance in recognizing and thanking EMS workers for the broad range of work for Vermonters they have put in throughout the pandemic. EMS Week traditionally serves as an opportunity to thank the 2,800 dedicated individuals who make up Vermont’s EMS system, including open houses and other events across the state.

Vermont Business Magazine The Vermont Community Foundation has hired Molly Walsh as a Research and Insight Officer. Walsh joins the Community Foundation after more than thirty years covering Vermont as a newspaper reporter, spending the majority of that time at The Burlington Free Press, and most recently working for five years at the weekly newspaper Seven Days.

by Tom Evslin You’d think Progressives would be all in for a plan to use a fraction of federal Rescue funds to assure that every Vermont family regardless of income or location had a chance to get connected immediately to the broadband service they need to participate in the post-pandemic world. You’d be wrong! You’d think a plan to provide outreach, technical help, training, and subsidies when required to families whose children have to go to the McD parking lot to do their homework and who have to go to the emergency room rather than see a teledoc would sail through a Legislature with a huge Democrat majority despite conservative concern that a temporary subsidy program would become permanent. You’d be wrong!

Vermont Business Magazine A “necessities drive” for charities is being organized for this week by a group of National Life employees, part of the company’s commitment to Do Good in the communities where it operates. The drive has been organized by the Women’s Insight Network, which is a group of employees and agents that promotes women in leadership roles throughout the industry.

Vermont Business Magazine Castleton University recognized the class of 2021 at its 234th Commencement ceremony on Saturday, May 15. The Castleton community came together from across the country and around the world to celebrate this year's graduates virtually. The ceremony featured video remarks from student speakers, Castleton's president, chancellor of the Vermont State Colleges System, the Castleton Alumni Association, and several others. It also included heartfelt messages from faculty and staff, and conferring of degrees, with the graduating students' names being read.

Vermont Business Magazine The Vermont Department of Public Service invites applications from individual Communications Union Districts (CUDs), groups of Communications Union Districts or partners of Communications Union Districts for funds to facilitate the construction of broadband networks capable of speeds of at least 100 Mbps symmetrical. Round 1 Deadline is today: Monday, May 17.

by Joyce Marcel, Vermont Business Magazine If you had a laboratory and wanted to cook up the perfect public radio host, the results would probably come out looking a lot like Jane Lindholm. She has all the ingredients you would expect: child of academics, well-educated, well-traveled, curious as hell and unafraid to try new things. Lindholm even describes herself as a “back seat listener:” She was one of those little kids in the back of the car whose parents drove around listening to public radio; by default, she grew up hearing everything from “Car Talk” to discussions about the Holocaust.