Current News

Vermont Business Magazine The Burlington Electric Department is one of three municipal utilities to be presented with an E.F. Scattergood System Achievement Award at the national conference of the American Public Power Association (APPA) in New Orleans, LA, on Tuesday. The annual awards are presented to outstanding utilities and honor APPA members that have enhanced the prestige of public power utilities through sustained achievement and customer service.

Vermont Business Magazine The House today again failed to override Governor Phil Scott's budget veto. Needing 94 votes to override, the vote was 90-51, with nine absent. The roll call and comments by legislators are below. If a budget agreement is not resolved by July 1, state government will shut down. Governor Scott vetoed the new budget, H13, June 14.

Vermont Business Magazine Attorney General TJ Donovan and 20 other state attorneys general called on United States Attorney General Jeff Sessions to end the cruel and illegal attacks on children and families lawfully seeking asylum in the United States. These families are seeking protection from domestic, sexual, and gang violence. In recent weeks, the federal government has separated thousands of asylum-seeking children from their parents. It has also reclassified the protective status of international domestic violence survivors. By letter, General Donovan and 20 other state attorneys general demand that Attorney General Sessions immediately stop putting children in danger by separating them from their families.

“I know Vermonters join me in feeling heartbroken that the federal government is needlessly separating children from their parents,” Donovan said. “This policy is wrong and totally unnecessary and should stop immediately.”

Vermont Business Magazine A total of $23,165 was donated to the Vermont Foodbank as a result of Seven Days' 9th annual Vermont Restaurant Week — $1,785 more than last year. This popular annual event was presented by Vermont Federal Credit Union and organized by Seven Days.

Vermont Business Magazine Dartmouth-Hitchcock Health and Dartmouth-Hitchcock CEO and President Joanne M Conroy, MD, has been named one of the 50 “Most Influential Physician Executives and Leaders” by Modern Healthcare magazine.

Vermont Business Magazine As the opioid epidemic continues to spread throughout the country, America Works, Inc, and the Brattleboro Retreat have teamed up to offer important workforce development services to individuals who are seeking addiction treatment and who need help establishing a path to meaningful employment. America Works, one of the country’s leading workforce development services, recently opened its first Vermont office, which is located at the Brattleboro Retreat. The goal is to provide clients in recovery from opioid addiction with critical workforce development services including mock interviews, access to free professional attire, help with resume writing, skills to navigate the online job application process and make connections with local employers as well as ongoing post-hire guidance.

Vermont Business Magazine State Health and Agriculture officials want Vermonters to steer clear of a common weed often seen along Vermont roadsides. The so-called “poison parsnip” packs a punch that can leave you with the equivalent of a second-degree burn. Formally known as wild parsnip, these plants grow along roadsides and unmaintained areas throughout Vermont, with flowers that look like a yellow version of Queen Anne’s lace.

The plant produces a sap that contains chemicals called psoralens that react to sunlight. Skin that comes in contact with the sap becomes hyper-sensitive to ultraviolet light, and can result in redness, burns similar to a second-degree sunburn, painful rashes and raised blisters. Reactions to the sap and sunlight usually begin 24 to 48 hours after contact.

Vermont Business Magazine Vermont People's United Financial, Inc (NASDAQ: PBCT), the holding company for People's United Bank, NA, announced today an agreement to acquire First Connecticut Bancorp, Inc (NASDAQ: FBNK), of Farmington CT, the holding company for Farmington Bank, in a 100 percent stock transaction valued at approximately $544 million. Completion of the transaction is subject to customary closing conditions, including receipt of regulatory approvals and the approval of First Connecticut Bancorp, Inc. shareholders.

by Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger I am writing to update you on the City’s work to combat the opioid crisis that has made drug overdoses the leading cause of death for Americans under 50 years of age. A year and a half ago, the City of Burlington launched CommunityStat, a collaboration of dozens of State, law enforcement, and non-profit agencies to address the terrible toll of this crisis. That effort has inspired new, life-saving initiatives that I am hopeful will help us finally turn the tide of this crisis.

by Adam Greshin, Commissioner of Finance & Management Governor Scott believes we can make our education system the very best in the country, if we have the courage to rethink the current system, which is diverting valuable budget dollars away from kids and increasing the tax burden at an unsustainable rate. The K-12 system was built to educate more than 100,000 kids. Today, we’re educating about 76,000. For 20 years, we’ve been serving, on average, three fewer students every day. Our student-to-staff ratio has decreased from about seven kids for every one adult to four to one. And, property tax rates have increased almost every year.

Vermont Business Magazine Many patients who would benefit from supervised exercise therapy offered at cardiac rehabilitation programs, like the one at Southwestern Vermont Medical Center (SVMC), don’t know that Medicare covers the expense. Care was extended for stable yet chronic heart failure (CHF) patients in 2014 and for peripheral artery disease (PAD) patients last year.

“Exercise can be tremendously powerful for patients with these conditions,” said Scott Rogge, cardiologist with SVMC Cardiology. “And cardiac rehab, in particular, has been shown to reduce mortality. We’d like to encourage more patients to attend Cardiac Rehabilitation to reduce their cardiovascular risk factors and improve their quality of life.”

by John McClaughry What society owes to the poor has been a recurring question in this country since colonial times. The modern (post 1935) consensus has fostered the creation of an ever-growing panoply of government programs promising to lift, push, or draw people out of poverty and into an existence sufficiently life-sustaining and dignified to assuage the public conscience.

Peter Cove is a veteran of fifty years of struggle to alleviate or diminish poverty. His 2017 book “Poor No More: Rethinking Dependency and the War on Poverty” is an eye opening account of anti-poverty programs over those years, and how most of them went sadly wrong.