Current News

Vermont Business Magaazine The Paramount Theatre and Castleton University present a broadcast of the First Presidential Debate as part of the 14-month series, Project 240: Celebrating the American Experience, on Monday, September 26 at the Paramount Theatre. Doors open at 7:30 pm, with the event set for an 8 pm. start. Hosted by Linda Fowler, Professor of Government and Frank J. Reagan Chair in Policy Studies, Emerita, at Dartmouth College, the evening kicks off with introductory remarks and analysis by Fowler, followed by a town hall style questions and answer period immediately before the debate commences at 9 pm. 

Audience members will watch the debate, hosted by NBC Nightly News anchor Lester Holt, live on the Paramount Theatre’s HD large-screen projection system. The debate will be broadcast live from Hofstra University.

Vermont Business Magazine Vermont Electric Power Company (VELCO) will hold a celebration on Thursday, October 27 from 5:30 pm to 7:30 pm at the Vermont Farmers Food Center in Rutland. VELCO will commemorate the company's 60th anniversary serving as the nation's first collaborative, transmission-only utility with an event to help launch the Greater Rutland Makerspace. 

"VELCO is a Rutland-based company that has reliably served and delivered value to the entire state. Our best, most innovative work has been and continues to be through collaboration. So rather than simply holding a party for ourselves, our employees wanted to find a way to celebrate that gives back to our community, that reinvests in Rutland. That's why helping to launch the Greater Rutland Makerspace fits perfectly," said Kerrick Johnson, VELCO's Vice President of Strategy and Communications. 

Vermont Business Magazine The Addison County Chamber of Commerce and the Addison Independent are co-hosting three legislative candidate forums. These are non-partisan events in which candidates from all parties will be participating. The first forum will be held on Monday, October 3^rd at 6 p.m. Candidates vying for the two Addison-3 district seats are Fritz Langrock (D), Diane Lanpher (D), Monique Thurston (R), and Warren Van Wyck (R). Addison-3 represents the towns of Addison, Ferrisburgh, Panton, Vergennes, and Waltham. This forum will be held at Kennedy Brothers, 11 Main Street, Vergennes.

Vermont Business Magazine The state’s top tech firms will be hiring at Seven Days’ Vermont Tech Jam, which takes place Friday and Saturday, October 21 and 22, 2016, at the Champlain Valley Expo in Essex Junction. Vermont’s fastest-growing and most-innovative companies will gather under one roof at this rockin' career and tech expo. Attendees can learn about exciting new Vermont-made apps, see drone and robotics demonstrations, find out about colleges and training programs, and meet reps from dozens of local companies in healthcare, aerospace, energy efficiency and IT that are hiring. 

Vermont Business Magazine Weekly unemployment claims fell last week to hold at a seasonally low level last week. Overall, claims have been been static and are running slightly higher in 2016 than in 2015. For the week of September 17, 2016, there were 350 claims, down 29 from the previous week's total and 41 more than they were a year ago. By industry, claims were nearly unchanged from last week, as Services, the usual leader, led the way with 50 percent of all claims. 

Altogether 3,013 new and continuing claims were filed, a decrease of 197 from a week ago, and 133 fewer than a year ago.

The Department processed 0 First Tier claims for benefits under Emergency Unemployment Compensation, 2008 (EUC08).

Vermont Business Magazine GreenScale Technologies, of South Burlington, a research and development company with ties to UVM focused on the small satellite market, was honored Tuesday in Washington, DC, by the National Council of Entrepreneurial Tech Transfer as one of the nation’s top 36 university-spawned start-up companies. The company was selected for its miniaturized propulsion system for small satellites. The technology was created by GreenScale Technology’s co-founder and lead engineer, Ryan McDevitt, who earned a doctorate in mechanical engineering at UVM in 2014, in partnership with his former PhD advisor, Darren Hitt, a professor of Mechanical Engineering in the College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences. GreenScale holds an option to license the technology from UVM. 

by Timothy McQuiston Vermont Business Magazine To know University of Vermont President Tom Sullivan is to appreciate what a cool customer he is. But even he got emotional in announcing the university's largest ever gift and the largest single gift to any public university in New England. The gift is an estate commitment with an estimated current market value of $66 million from UVM dual-degree alum and Vermont native Robert Larner ’39, MD’42, and his wife, Helen. The commitment to donate caps decades of philanthropic support from the Larners, whose lifetime giving now will likely reach $100 million. Much of the money the Larners have donated has gone to low interest loans, grants and scholarships to provide financial aid to about a third of the 4,500 medical school graduates. Many of the current class of students attended the announcement under a big tent adjacent to the medical school in Burlington.

Vermont Business Magazine The Vermont congressional delegation announced Friday a $2 million grant to Housing Vermont to help provide affordable housing to low-income families in the state. Housing Vermont is a Burlington-based nonprofit founded in 1988, which creates permanently affordable rental housing and enables investments in economic and community development to benefit Vermonters through partnerships with local organizations, public agencies and the private sector. Housing Vermont has built 5,120 affordable apartments in 171 developments throughout the state.

Vermont Business Magazine Attorney General Bill Sorrell on Thursday joined 35 other state attorneys general in a lawsuit filed in federal court in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania against Indivior — the maker of Suboxone, a brand name prescription drug used to treat opioid addiction — and MonoSol Rx.The attorneys general alleged that the companies engaged in a scheme to block generic competition for Suboxone and have caused purchasers to pay artificially high prices since 2009, in violation of state and federal antitrust laws.

“When a brand drug company illegally blocks generic competitors from entering the market, it violates both state and federal law. Vermont intends to vigorously enforce the law, and seeks injunctive relief, penalties and disgorgement for this wrongful conduct,” said Sorrell.

Vermont Business Magazine Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) and Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) spoke back-to-back on the Senate Floor Thursday morning, as the EB-5 reform issue goes down to the wire.  The program’s authorization expires on September 30.  Some in Congress are pushing for a simple extension of the program. Leahy and Grassley are insisting on reforms, if the program is to go forward at all. Leahy originally had been a major supporter and architect of the foreign investor program going back to the 1990s. But alleged fraud cases in Vermont and elsewhere and the gerrymandering of EB-5 zones has led him to be a reformer of the program. EB-5 zones are intended for poorer parts of the country, but are now turning up in Manhattan and Miami Beach. In their tandem remarks on the Senate Floor, the senators said they will not support a simple extension of EB-5 without reform. Leahy has made this clear many times earlier this year.

Vermont Business Magazine The GMCB announced their hospital budget decisions today for Vermont’s 14 community hospitals. The FY 2017 budgets are effective October 1. The Hospitals initially requested a 5 percent or roughly $114-million-dollar increase to health care costs within the state. After a thorough review, the Board approved a 3.9 percent Net Patient Revenue increase. The Board made reductions to budgets for volume overages and bad debt and free care estimates, and adjusted for the hospitals’ physician acquisition dollars.

Vermont Business Magazine US Department of Agriculture officials from across the country visited the Center for an Agricultural Economy in Hardwick Thursday to announce grant funding to two farms connected with the Center: Snug Valley Farm of Hardwick and Sweet Rowen Farmstead of Glover. Both farms received Value Added Producer Grants from the USDA to strengthen their businesses through product development, distribution and marketing. Snug Valley Farm will get nearly $200,000 and Sweet Rowen Farmstead will get nearly $50,000.