Current News

Vermont Business Magazine The newly launched Vermont Small Business Training Center (vtsbtc.com) provides inexpensive, online, globally accessible, practical training modules that emphasize a philosophy and practices that highlight operational opportunities feasible only for small businesses. These competitively significant practices are unworkable in large corporations and thus are ignored by normal business training courses.

Contract Includes 10%-15% Wage Increase, Professional Development Fund, Improved Job Security

Vermont Business Magazine Adjunct faculty at St Michael’s College voted to ratify their first collective bargaining agreement between their union, Service Employees International Union (SEIU), Local 200United, and the Saint Michael’s Administration. Over a year ago, adjuncts at Saint Michael’s - along with their colleagues at Burlington and Champlain Colleges - voted overwhelmingly to join SEIU in order to address the growing crisis in higher education, which includes decreasing faculty salaries and rapidly increasing student debt and tuition prices. Today’s ratification is the first collective bargaining agreement reached at a private college in the Burlington region.

Vermont Business Magazine Vermont joins the nation in the “Drive Sober or Get Pulled Over” campaign beginning Friday, December 18, through January 3, 2016, with a strong law enforcement presence on Vermont highways. Law enforcement agencies across the state include the DUI Task Force, local police, sheriff’s departments, and the Vermont State Police Operation C.A.R.E (Combined Accident Reduction Effort) will be conducting extra patrols and sobriety checkpoints to detect impaired drivers. In addition, Vermont will utilize law enforcement Drug Recognition Experts (DRE) to evaluate any suspected drug impaired drivers.

In 2014, 38% percent of fatalities were impaired driving related which includes both drugs and alcohol. To date, there have been 52 people die in highway crashes and 10 of those involving a driver with a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) of .08 or higher which is illegal in every state.

Vermont Business Magazine Capitol Grounds Café and Roastery today announced a new, special edition coffee called Bernie’s Beans, named after Vermont’s U.S. Senator and presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. The coffee is a Central American Arabica roasted at a full city plus, and is being sold in one-pound bags with the likeness of Sanders on the label, a drawing by local artist and bookseller Rick Powell. A portion of the proceeds will be donated to the Vermont Veterans Fund.

Vermont Business Magazine Governor Peter Shumlin and his longtime partner, Katie Hunt, were married Tuesday night at a small ceremony at their home in East Montpelier, Vermont. The couple were married by the governor’s sister-in-law, Evie Lovett. Attending the ceremony were the Governor’s two daughters, Olivia and Becca, as well as the governor’s brother, Jeff Shumlin.

The governor and Vermont’s first lady stated:

“We are so fortunate to have such a beautiful partnership and to be able to spend the rest of our lives together.”

Hunt and Shumlin were engaged in June. The couple plan to live in Southern Vermont, where they both grew up, following the completion of the governor’s third term in office in January 2017.

Source: Governor's office. Courtesy photo. 12.16.2015

Vermont Business Magazine Green Mountain Power was joined today with Franklin County leaders and champions of Lake Champlain to announce an innovative new project called Clean Power, Cleaner Lake. The program is the most substantive effort launched in the Lake Champlain basin to reduce phosphorous while generating electricity. Working with area dairy farms, this effort will significantly reduce phosphorus runoff while generating clean, local baseload power. This exciting initiative alone will achieve about 1/3 of the EPA’s goal for phosphorous reduction by farms in the St Albans Bay. GMP’s community digester will use technology to extract phosphorus from the manure stream, while generating renewable energy locally for customers.

St Albans Bay. GMP photo.

Vermont Business Magazine A study released today by Champlain College’s Center for Financial Literacy (CFL) shows that the financial literacy skills of high school students improved dramatically when they were taught by teachers who received specialized training in a graduate-level course on how to teach personal finance to teenagers. The Champlain study, titled “Prepped for Success,” notes that high school students taught by trained teachers were way ahead of their peers in financial sophistication skills. Students even outpaced more life-experienced Millennials (ages 18 to 34) and performed nearly as well as older, financially savvy Generation X individuals ages 35 to 49.

Vermont Business Magazine As part of the comprehensive approach to fighting the heroin and opiate crisis in Vermont, Governor Peter Shumlin today outlined a number of steps to better control the prescribing of powerful opioid painkillers in an effort to prevent opioid dependence and addiction. The governor is also leading an effort of the six New England governors to urge Congress to expand the types of medical professionals who can prescribe the addiction treatment medication buprenorphine (Suboxone) so Vermont and other states can better meet the needs of those who are addicted and seeking treatment.

The moves come two weeks after the governor announced the addition of a new treatment medication option for those suffering from opiate addiction. The medication – naltrexone (Vivitrol) – works to block the ‘high’ individuals get from using opioid drugs like heroin or prescription painkillers.

by Carolyn Shapiro UVM It’s a formidable challenge to develop a syllabus for a college-level pharmacology course focused entirely on a drug that’s illegal to possess, use and even research under federal law. That’s the task that Wolfgang Dostmann, PhD, and Karen Lounsbury, PhD, have undertaken as they plan the University of Vermont’s first medical cannabis course in the College of Medicine’s Department of Pharmacology, scheduled for the spring 2016 semester. It’s possibly the first academic program of its kind nationwide, but clearly needed as acceptance of marijuana for medical and recreational use continues to gain legal backing in more states and physicians and scientists seek more information about how it acts in the body.

Vermont Business Magazine After years of operating in basement offices scattered throughout town, Royalton town officials celebrated the opening of their new office building Monday with local, state, and United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) officials. USDA Rural Business Cooperative Service Administrator Sam Rikkers used the occasion to announce a new USDA initiative that will set aside $300 million in USDA Rural Development grants and loans for regionally significant projects.

by Timothy McQuiston Vermont Business Magazine Saying that sole-source state contracts should be used rarely, but are instead used for more than 40 percent of all contracts he reviewed, Vermont State Auditor Doug Hoffer today released the findings of an investigation into the prevalence of noncompetitive state contracting practices. For more than two decades, the State of Vermont has had a policy of contracting for services and materials “in a cost effective manner through the use of an open and competitive contract solicitation process.” According to the policy, sole source contracts awarded to a vendor without a competitive bid ought to be reserved for “extraordinary circumstances.” He also identified legislative practices used to sometimes get around the bidding process.

Vermont Business Magazine The Vermont Manufacturing Extension Center (VMEC) has announced the results of its annual election of VMEC Advisory Board members held on December 8. The following Board members were re-elected to additional two-year terms: Dave Blittersdorf, President & CEO of All Earth Renewables, Inc. (Williston); Tommy Harmon, President of Sonnax Industries (Bellows Falls); Joe Perrotto, President & CEO of Country Home Products (Vergennes); Mike Rainville, President of Maple Landmark, Inc. (Middlebury) and Brenan Riehl, President & CEO of GW Plastics (Bethel).