Current News

Public Assets Institute Vermont closed 2016 with the first year-over-year increase in the labor force in six years. The state’s labor force—people employed and those actively looking for work—grew after the official end of the Great Recession in 2009, then shrank for five straight years. Last month, however, the labor force rose to nearly 345,000, approximately 1,800 more workers than at the end of 2015.

Vermont Business MagazineGovernor Phil Scotton Tuesday afternoon presented his proposed budget in a joint assembly of the Legislature at the Vermont State House, while reiterating his no new tax or fee campaign pledge. The governor invited lawmakers and advocates to work with him on bold solutions to our state’s toughest challenges. These include extending "cradle-to-career" education, freezing public education budgets, closing the Windsor prison, moving to direct Vermont Health Connect enrollment and money for housing.

Vermont Business Magazine Several Vermont organizations responded to Governor Phil Scott's budget address on Tuesday. All those who offered remarks had a positive take on the new governor's balanced budget, which promised no-new-taxes, but offered more money for some educational strategies and affordable housing proposals.

Vermont Business Magazine Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) and Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) joined Senate Democratic leaders Tuesday to announce a 10-year, $1 trillion proposal to rebuild our nation’s crumbling infrastructure and create 15 million middle-class jobs. The proposal, “Blueprint to Rebuild America’s Infrastructure,” would rebuild roads, bridges, railways, water systems, broadband networks, VA hospitals, schools and airports throughout the United States.

“Look, this is kind of a ‘no-brainer.’ Whether you are in the state of Vermont or the state of California, you understand that our infrastructure is crumbling: our roads, our bridges, our water systems, our wastewater plants, our airports, our levies and our dams,” Sanders told a Capitol news conference.

Vermont Business Magazine Last night the House unanimously passed Representative Peter Welch’s (D-Vermont) bipartisan Improving Rural Call Quality and Reliability Act. It will now be sent to the Senate where it is expected to pass and go to President Trump’s desk for signature into law. Welch two weeks ago introduced the bipartisan legislation to improve rural call completion. Persistent phone call completion problems in rural communities are creating major inconveniences for families, hurting businesses, and threatening public safety.

The Improving Rural Call Quality and Reliability Act would direct the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to establish basic quality standards for providers that transmit voice calls to help ensure businesses, families, and emergency responders can count on phone calls being completed.

Vermont Business Magazine The Boys and Girls Club of Burlington will receive $33,000 as the Comcast Foundation announced today that it has awarded nearly $740,000 in grants to 23 nonprofit organizations in New England in 2016. The grants help grow the impact of programs aimed at the Comcast Foundation’s three areas of focus – expanding digital literacy, promoting service, and building tomorrow’s leaders.

by Jeffrey R WakefieldUVMStretching between Votey Hall, home to the University of Vermont’sCollege of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences, and theLarner College of Medicine’s Medical Education Centeris a jumble of chain link fences, construction equipment and hulking, partially built structures – ground zero of an ambitious construction program, about half done, being undertaken by the university and its teaching hospital, the UVM Medical Center.

Vermont Business MagazineJames Fallows, one of the nation’s preeminent journalists, will give the commencement address at the University of Vermont, the university’s president, Tom Sullivan, announced in an email to campuson Mondayafternoon. Fallows will deliver his address onMay 21, the second day of UVM’s commencement weekend.

“We couldn’t be more thrilled that James Fallows will be our commencement speaker,” Sullivan said. “His many years as a keen observer of national and international affairs, along with his experience covering a range of topics for our most prominent media, give him just the kind of perspective and judgment that graduates are looking for as they contemplate life after college. It will be an honor to welcome him to the speaker’s platform.”

Vermont Business MagazineTed Mable, EdD, the Executive Director of Northwestern Counseling & Support Services (NCSS) has announced his retirement for June 2017. His near 20 year role at NCSS is the culmination of a career spent in service to the people of Vermont. Mable took the helm of the Franklin-Grand Isle Mental Health Agency in late 1997. At that time, the Agency had fewer than 100 staff and limited outreach. Since then, Mable has transformed the Agency into Northwestern Counseling & Support Services, a dynamic, innovative institution that emphasizes quality services and measures its success by the outcomes it achieves.

Vermont Business Magazine Bradford Psychiatric Associates (BPA) has assumed management of the former Green Mountain Family Medicine Clinic in White River Junction and Rutland. The two locations join the BPA office in Bradford providing office-based outpatient treatment (OBOT) services in three key geographical Vermont locations. The BPA OBOT clinic provides medication-assisted treatment (MAT) for patients seeking recovery from opioid use disorder. The BPA clinic currently has more than 100 slots available for patients seeking recovery from opioid use disorder with the help of buprenorphine, naltrexone or Vivitrol MAT services between its Rutland and White River Junction offices.

Coinciding with the assumption of management, BPA is pleased to announce that Fred Hesse, MD, an American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM) board-certified physician, has joined BPA as medical director.

Vermont Business MagazineThe YMCA’s Diabetes Prevention Program helps adults at high risk of developing type 2 diabetes reduce their risk for developing the disease by taking steps that will improve their overall health and well-being. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Prevention evidence-based program is delivered over a 12-month period in a supportive small group classroom setting.Sixteen weekly one-hour sessions are followed by eight monthly sessions. Facilitated by trained lifestyle coach Elisha Underwood, the class is scheduled to begin onFebruary 2, 2017and will be held Thursdays at Brattleboro Memorial Hospital in conference room B, located off of the cafeteria from5:30pm – 6:30PM.

Through a partnership with the Greater Burlington YMCA and Vermont Blueprint for Health (Department of Vermont Health Access), this program is being offered to Vermonters free of charge.

Vermont Business MagazineThe Vermont Coalition to End Homelessness (Balance of State) and the Chittenden County Homeless Alliance Continua of Care are again joining efforts for the eleventh statewide Point in Time Count on Tuesday, January 24.The Continua are comprised of local homeless, housing & human service organizations that strive to make homelessness in our communities rare and brief. These efforts will be supported by the Agency of Human Services and the Vermont State Housing Authority.

The eleventh coordinated Point-in-Time Count will collect data to be used by the Balance of State, Chittenden County, and local continuums in their funding applications to the USDepartment of Housing and Urban Development, as well as to provide a statewide baseline for measuring the success of housing and supportive services used to reduce the number of people who are homeless in Vermont.