Current News

According to a new statewide assessment, tobacco marketing remains prevalent and visible to Vermont youth. One in four stores selling tobacco products place the advertisements at eye-level for a child.

Youth and adult volunteers conducted the assessment of 767 of the approximately 1,000 tobacco retail stores in communities statewide during October through December 2014 as part of the CounterBalance campaign to help end tobacco’s influence on Vermont’s youth.

Although other types of tobacco marketing have been restricted, convenience stores and other retail outlets are still places where children and youth are certain to see tobacco products and ads. In many cases, they are exposed to tobacco marketing without even going inside the store.

According to the assessment findings, more than one in three retailers (41%) had tobacco marketing visible from outside the store, and 12 percent of these stores were within 1,000 feet of a school.

Bernie Bear officially enters the Presidential arena after formally announcing his campaign in Burlington, Vermont Tuesday at 5 pm. Drawing a non-politically charged parallel between the Bear and Senator Sanders, Vermont Teddy Bear refers to the Bear as "ready to hit the campaign trail" and "a passionate, blunt speaker." The look-a-like Bear has unruly white hair, glasses and arrives wearing a suit, tie, white shirt and campaign pin.

"We just couldn't resist," says Bill Shouldice, President and Chief Executive, Vermont Teddy Bear. "Given Senator Bernie Sanders' well-known affinity for President Theodore Roosevelt, and our products' tie to the former President of the United States, it seemed only natural. Teddy Roosevelt is where the Bear legacy began. He even carried one with him on the campaign trail! And, it was deemed cool."

Sally Hergenrader of Longboat Key, Fla., a member of the University of Vermont Class of 1955, has made a $250,000 pledge to the College of Nursing and Health Sciences (CNHS) in celebration of her 60th reunion year. The gift will be used to establish the Sally Jensen Hergenrader Endowed Fellowship in Advanced Practice Education in Primary Care Nursing. The fellowship will be providing tuition and stipend support for selected graduate students pursuing advanced practice education in nursing who want to earn a doctor of nursing practice degree (DNP) and engage in primary care in Vermont or other area of defined need for primary care providers.

As opiate drug abuse has become an increasing problem in many Vermont communities, two Mt. Ascutney Hospital doctors have created a project aimed at caring for mothers and infants who are addicted, or at-risk. Pediatricians Kimberly Aakre, MD and Mary Bender, MD, were recently awarded a $10,000 grant from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), in support of their project. The grant is part of AAP’s Community Access to Child Health (CATCH) program, which awards funding to individual pediatricians for community-based child health initiatives aimed at reaching children who may not have access to health care services in their community.

“Dr. Bender and I are working to develop a system of care and support for mothers who are in recovery from opiate addiction and their young children,” said Dr. Aakre. “Both of us have deep concerns about the rising incidence of opiate use in Vermont and the devastating effects we’ve seen on the families and children we serve.”

by John McClaughry Governor Peter Shumlin proclaimed this year’s legislative session to be “one of the most productive sessions that I can remember.” To others that appears as a new frontier in spin, possibly coupled with a bit of amnesia. Let’s review the report card.

Going into the session in January, the state’s General Fund for 2016 faced a projected $113 million deficit. The legislature cut $53 million out of the governor’s budget request. This was hailed as a new era of public frugality.

But as former Finance and Management Commissioner Tom Pelham has repeatedly pointed out, most of that $53 million represents cuts from the Governor’s wish list – not actual cuts from 2015 spending levels.

The 2015 Middlebury College Commencement on Sunday celebrated the conclusion of the undergraduate careers of 552 graduating seniors from 46 states and 32 foreign countries. It was the final Commencement presided over by Ronald D Liebowitz, who is stepping down from the presidency in five weeks’ time.

May 24, 2015, was also memorable for its sunny skies and warm breeze, for a student speech that captured perfectly the day’s rite of passage from the perspective of the graduates, and perhaps most of all for Julia Alvarez’s powerful Commencement Address that extended gratitude to others and probed what it means to be a soulful person.

The celebrated poet and novelist, daughter of the Dominican Republic and Middlebury College (Class of 1971), and beloved member of the faculty, Alvarez paraphrased John Keats when she said, "Life, not college, is the vale of soul-making, and the way to make a soul is by giving yourself to what you love."

The state of Vermont will be moving all of its out-of-state inmates to another private corrections firm in Michigan. The two-year, $30.4 million contract with The GEO Group Inc, will move all 319 inmates from private facilities in Kentucky and Arizona, which should save Vermont about $2,055 per inmate per year. The GEO Group (NYSE: GEO) announced Wednesday that the signing of a contract with the Vermont Department of Corrections for the out-of-state housing of up to 675 inmates at the company-owned North Lake Correctional Facility in Baldwin, Michigan. The state, however, is looking to move all inmates eventually back to Vermont.

Leaders from across the nation who are studying how communities source, grow, process, purchase, and contemplate food will soon arrive in the Green Mountain State for the inaugural three-week Vermont Food Systems Summer Study Tour, May 31 – June 20. One of the only study tours of its kind in the world, students will earn transferable credits while accessing a “movable feast” of Vermont food systems education.

by Amy Ash Nixon vtdigger.org All eyes were on the House Education Committee at the start of the 2015 legislative session as it took on the daunting task of trying to reconcile the shrinking number of students in Vermont’s schools with increases in school spending and property tax rates. In 2014, taxpayers voted down three dozen school budgets on Town Meeting Day. The issue permeated the 2014 campaign season, prodding lawmakers to take action.

Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve (ESGR), a Department of Defense (DoD) office, announced BioTek Instruments Inc of Winooski, Vermont as a finalist for the 2015 Secretary of Defense Employer Support Freedom Award. The award is the DoD’s highest recognition given to employers for exceptional support of National Guard and Reserve employees. The top 30 employers were selected from a pool of 2,960 nominations submitted earlier this year by National Guard and Reserve service members.

A board including Senior DoD and other officials and representatives of prior recipient organizations will now select up to 15 Freedom Award recipients to be honored at the 20th annual Secretary of Defense Employer Support Freedom Award ceremony in late summer.

A Rutland man who has devoted four decades to protecting birds and the environment was presented the GMP-Zetterstrom Environmental Award today. Roy Pilcher, who founded Rutland County Audubon and has served as president and in other lead roles for more than 40 years, was presented with the award during a ceremony at the West Rutland Marsh, an Audubon Important Bird Area, a designation Pilcher was instrumental in obtaining.

The annual award, named for famed osprey advocate Meeri Zetterstrom, comes with $2,500 to support Rutland County Audubon’s ongoing work.

“Roy is an example for all Vermonters to emulate,” said Mary Powell, president and CEO of Green Mountain Power. “He has devoted nearly half his life to creating and improving bird and other wildlife habitat, introduced hundreds of people to birds and nature, and created awareness of and the tools to ensure good stewardship of important ecological sites.”

by Public Assets Institute In addition to pushing up property taxes in many towns, the education reform bill passed in the closing days of the session violates a fundamental principle of fairness in Vermont’s education funding system: towns with the same education spending per pupil have the same homestead tax rates. Before Gov. Peter Shumlin decides to sign the bill into law, he might want to check whether the tax penalties it contains in Section 37 also violate the Vermont Constitution.