Current News

Vermont Business Magazine Top leaders on the Senate and House Judiciary Committees led by Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) on Thursday introduced legislation Tuesday to combat anticompetitive practices used by some brand-name pharmaceutical and biologic companies to block entry of lower-cost generic drugs. The Creating and Restoring Equal Access to Equivalent Samples (CREATES) Act would deter pharmaceutical companies from blocking cheaper generic alternatives from entering the marketplace.

Vermont Business MagazineSugarbush Resort will reopen this weekend Saturday, April 29th– Monday, May 1st, weather permitting. Available terrain includes Stein’s Run, Snowball, Spring Fling and Coffee Run. The Valley House Quad will run9 AM – 5 PMon SaturdayandSundayand10 AM – 5 PMon Monday.The Sugarbush Resort Golf Club is also slated open daily starting this weekend with its first day of operation on Saturday, April 29th.

A $50 ticket will be valid at both the golf course and the mountain each day. Sugarbush winter season pass holders can enjoy golf for just $25 over the weekend. Golf fees include cart. The Golf Shop will also be open8 AM – 5 PM.

The weekend will mark the 152nd, 153rd, and 154thdays the mountain has been open for skiing and riding, one of the longest seasons on the east coast. Season passes for next season remain on sale at their lowest prices throughMay 4th.

Vermont Business Magazine Michele Resnick Cohen, UVM ’72, and her husband Martin Cohen have donated $5 million to renovate and transform the Elihu B Taft School – located at the corner of South Williams and Pearl streets on the edge of campus – to become UVM’s first integrated center for the creative arts. Work already has commenced on the former elementary school, which served Burlington students from 1938 until 1980, to create a nexus for arts on campus that brings together multiple disciplines and fosters creative collaboration. Designed as a center for the arts, the space will include galleries, studios, classrooms, and exhibition and performance spaces that will encompass the disciplines of art, art history, dance, theatre, music, film and television studies and more.

by Governor Phil Scott We have an opportunity to save up to $26 million a year – up to $100 million over five years, adjusting for inflation – in our education system, without program cuts or asking teachers to pay more for benefits. But the Legislature must act now. The federal Affordable Care Act signed by President Obama put high valued health plans at risk of a Cadillac tax. The Vermont Education Health Initiative (VEHI) is transitioning to new plans, which are projected to cost substantially less than existing plans and will not be subjected to the federal penalty.

That’s why I’ve put forward a proposal – developed with the Vermont School Boards Association and the Vermont Superintendents Association – that creates a statewide health benefit where the state bargains with employee unions, maximizing the savings of these new plans. This approach would save up to $26 million each year.

Vermont Business Magazine Green Mountain Power was just named as part of a select group in the country that connected the most storage to the grid in 2016, earning a spot on the annual Top 10 lists compiled by the Smart Electric Power Alliance (SEPA). GMP ranked Number 10 on the Energy Storage Rankings for the most storage installed in the country, with 2 megawatts in 2016. GMP also scored the Number9 spot on the energy storage list for most watts per customers in 2016.

Vermont Business MagazineVermont Attorney General TJDonovan announced today that he has joined a coalition of 16 attorneys general urging Congress to reject the rollback of critical protective ozone air quality standards.In letters sent tothe chairmen and ranking members of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works and the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, the attorneys general detailed their opposition to the Ozone Standards Implementation Act of 2017. This legislation would substantially delay the ozone standards promulgated by the Environmental Protection Agency in 2015 and mark a major step backwards in efforts to combat pollution and its negative impact on public health.

Vermont Business Magazine The Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department is looking for volunteers to monitor colonies of endangered bats this summer. The department is seeking volunteers willing to help count state-endangered little brown bats as they emerge at dusk at locations throughout the Champlain Valley. Vermont's little brown bats suffered massive declines due to the deadly disease white-nose syndrome. An estimated 90 percent of the state's bat population has been lost to this disease. Although some bats still die from the disease each winter, others continue to survive and reproduce. By counting bats at their summer colonies each summer, the Fish & Wildlife Department can track population changes over time and the bats' long-term response to white-nose syndrome.

by Annette Smith Prospective neighbors of wind turbines heard all the promises:“Quiet as a library.”“Like a baby’s breath.”“The same decibel level as a refrigerator.”The more brazen wind developers claimed “you will not hear them.” Then the four hundred and fifty foot wind towers with their bus-size nacelles and three-bladed fans were built.Sixteen in Sheffield, four on Georgia Mountain, twenty-one in Lowell.Andneighbors learned the truth.Yes, you can hear them.They sound like “a jet plane that never lands,” or “sneakers in a drier,” or there is a “thump thump thump” or a “whoosh whoosh whoosh” as the blade passes the tower, causing something called amplitude modulation.

“If the noise was the same all the time, maybe we could get used to it,” say some exasperated neighbors.

by Guy Page Vermont’s regulatory system works best when it expertly and promptly considers a project’s economic benefits and environmental impacts. I have confidence the Vermont Public Service Board will act in this fine tradition in Docket 8880, NorthStar’s proposed decommissioning of Vermont Yankee. In this spirit, I am concerned by two significant misunderstandings expressed at public meetings and in the press: that the project is underfunded, and that it has no set completion date. Both positions are incorrect, according to a January 24 report to the Nuclear Decommissioning Citizens Advisory Panel and an April 6 document submitted by NorthStar to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Vermont Business Magazine Community Bank System, Inc (NYSE: CBU) and Merchants Bancshares, Inc (NASDAQ: MBVT) announced Wednesday that they have received, as expected, regulatory approvals from the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency for their proposed merger. As previously reported by VBM, Community Bank System and Merchants also announced they have set Friday, May 12, 2017, as the closing date for the $304 million merger, subject to the satisfaction of customary closing conditions. The election process that is currently underway to permit the Merchants stockholders to elect the form of their merger consideration is being extended to May 9, 2017.

Vermont Business Magazine In a recent letter, a group of 19 state attorneys general are urging members of Congress and the President to adequately fund drug treatment in any plan to replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA, or commonly known as ObamaCare). The initial ACA replacement plan would have cut federal funding for drug treatment by an estimated $5.5 billion.

Vermont Business Magazine New England is expected to have enough energy to meet consumer demand for electricity this summer, according to ISO New England Inc, but margins will be tighter as about 2,200 megawatts of power will not be available due to either delays or plant retirements. Tight supply margins could develop if forecasted peak system conditions occur. If this happens, ISONE said it will take steps to manage New England’s electricity supply and demand in real time and maintain power system reliability. However, ISONE estimates that current supply will still be well ahead of the historic peak load hit during the summer of 2006.