Current News

Vermont Business Magazine Law enforcement agencies including the Vermont State Police, Montpelier Police Department, Capitol Police Department and the Washington County Sheriff’s Department are continuing to plan for any potential protests, disruptions or other eventualities that might occur in the Capital Region of Vermont in the days ahead.

Police agencies are unaware of any specific, credible threats directed toward the Statehouse, Montpelier or elsewhere in Vermont. www.vtips.us

Vermont Business Magazine Christopher & Banks, on January 13, 2021, filed for Chapter 11 reorganization and authorized store closing sales to be conducted by Hilco Merchant Resources. The store closing process has begun at more than 400 stores nationally. These include the three Vermont stores at the Essex Outlets, at Rutland's Green Mountain Plaza and at the University Mall in South Burlington.

Vermont Business Magazine Vermont Army National Guard will support Operation Capitol Response in Washington, DC. According to the Guard, the time line is fluid, but soldiers will depart Vermont to arrive in Washington by Tuesday. Approximately 100 Vermont Army National Guard soldiers will support operations in Washington, DC, ahead of the Presidential Inauguration on Wednesday January 20. The Vermont Soldiers are predominantly from 1st Squadron, 172nd Cavalry, 86th Infantry Brigade Combat Team (Mountain).

Vermont Business Magazine Vermont is 19th lowest in mortality rate from COVID-19 in nursing homes in the US, according to AARP. Three New England states (Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts) have even lower rates. Midwest and Upper Midwest states have the highest death rates. Vermont otherwise has the fewest deaths from COVID-19 overall in the nation and the fewest total cases.

In most of the metrics provided by AARP, Vermont was also better than the US average in total nursing home resident and staff cases and total staffing, but worse for having a one-week supply of PPE (see tables below).

Vermont Business Magazine On Thursday, January 14 (today), at 11 am, Senator Patrick Leahy will host a virtual Q&A with NASA Astronaut Zena Cardman and Vermont middle school students, in coordination with the Vermont Space Grant Consortium. NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine will facilitate a live discussion between Astronaut Cardman and students from Danville School, Georgia Middle School, and Frederick H. Tuttle Middle School. Vermont students, teachers and members of the media are invited to watch the livestream of the event. The event can be accessed using the following link and login information.

The Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department has developed a new initiative to acquire and restore wetlands in response to funding from the United States Environmental Protection Agency and the Lake Champlain Basin Program.

“As Vermont Fish and Wildlife is the largest owner of wetlands in the state, this is a natural fit to expand and build upon some of our marquis Wildlife Management Areas (WMAs), such as Dead Creek WMA, and it will enable us to strategically enhance other WMAs,” said Fish and Wildlife’s Public Land Section Chief Jane Lazorchak.

The initiative is strategically focused on acquiring marginal agricultural farmland in the Lake Champlain Basin and working both independently and with conservation partners to restore wetlands and floodplains.

Vermont Business Magazine The Peck Company Holdings, Inc (Nasdaq: PECK) has announced it has closed a registered direct offering of 840,000 shares of its common stock at a purchase price of $12.50. The gross proceeds of the offering are approximately $10.5 million before deducting placement agent fees and other estimated offering expenses.

The Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department says the final tally will be around 18,000 deer, the second highest total since 2000. Those deer will provide approximately 3.6 million servings of local, nutritious venison.

Vermont Fish & Wildlife A preliminary report from Vermont Fish and Wildlife shows that hunters brought home 6,136 wild turkeys during 2020, including 627 turkeys taken during the April youth weekend hunt, a total of 4,791 gobblers taken during the regular spring season, and 718 birds during the fall.

Vermont Business Magazine Senator Leahy: Today’s decisive and bipartisan vote in the House of Representatives to impeach President Trump was nothing less than a vote to preserve our democracy. President Trump has not simply failed to uphold his oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution, which itself would be sufficient to warrant his impeachment and removal. He has emerged as the greatest threat to the Constitution and to American democracy in a generation.

Vermont Business Magazine The Vermont Department of Health today is reporting 118 new cases of COVID-19 statewide and, for the first time in several days, no deaths. The VDH is warning that the post-holiday period could push cases up to 300 a day by the beginning of February. VDH is urging that while we wait for vaccine to become more widely available to Vermonters, we must keep up our prevention practices, including physical distancing, mask-wearing, handwashing and staying home when we’re sick. This is still the best protection from getting and spreading COVID-19.

Vermont Business Magazine Legislation led in the Senate by Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) and Senator Steve Daines (R-Montana) that promotes lower health insurance costs to consumers by increasing transparency and enhancing consumer protections in the health insurance industry was signed into law Wednesday by the President. The “Competitive Health Insurance Reform Act” will ensure that health insurance issuers are subject to the same federal antitrust laws prohibiting unfair trade practices, such as price fixing and collusion, as virtually every other industry in our economy.