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Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) Thursday joined the Lake Champlain Basin Program (LCBP) in announcing $650,000 in federal funding available to local watershed groups, towns and other organizations in Vermont and New York in the continued effort to implement a long-term management plan for Lake Champlain. The funding will play a key role in assisting local organizations respond to serious water quality and conservation concerns on the lake as well as working to enhance the region’s historic, cultural and recreational resources.

by Morgan True vtdigger.org The state took Vermont Health Connect offline because it was unable to meet a federal checklist of security requirements, officials said Thursday. Over the summer the federal government provided a timeline for reducing security risks, which expired 10 days ago, according to the commissioner of the Vermont Department of Information and Innovation. State officials interviewed for this story would not say what federal security requirements had not been met.

In testimony to lawmakers on Thursday, Lawrence Miller, chief of Health Care Reform, said the state had an agreement with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services on “mitigating risks.”

Income levels and poverty rates were not statistically different for most states from 2012 to 2013, according to statistics released today from the US Census Bureau's American Community Survey, the nation's most comprehensive data source on American households. Vermont remained above the US median for household income, but slipped 2 percent in one year. Poverty was up 1.2 percent in Vermont in 2013.

On his first day as mayor of the Queen City, Bernie Sanders shared a prediction with the alternative weekly Vanguard Press: “People will look back to Burlington, Vermont, 1981, and say: ‘It all started here.’” Sanders, who won the mayor’s seat by 10 votes, was likely envisioning some kind of populist revolution. Instead, what has turned out to be really popular is Bernie himself. Forty-three years and 18 elections after he first ran for US Senate on the Liberty Union ticket, Vermont’s outspoken independent is considering a run for president.

United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Secretary Tom Vilsack announced Thursday that four Vermont businesses and agricultural producers would receive $121,855 in grants to help them become more energy efficient or produce renewable energy. The grants will help sugar makers boil syrup more efficiently, help turn cow manure into electricity, and help a small firewood business switch to a renewable fuel source.

“This funding will help rural small businesses improve their bottom line and improve our environment with more energy efficient equipment,” said Vermont and New Hampshire State Director Ted Brady. “USDA Rural Development is helping to build sustainable rural communities one business at a time. These grants incentivize investment that helps businesses stay in the black and helps our country move towards energy independence.”

A Michigan-based company will pay the State of Vermont in excess of $73,500 to settle claims that it obtained payments from the Vermont Medicaid Program to which it was not entitled, according to Vermont Attorney General William H Sorrell. The provider, Physicians Toxicology, LLC offers laboratory services to clinicians. The civil settlement resolves an investigation conducted by the Medicaid Fraud and Residential Abuse Unit of the Office of the Attorney General into Medicaid claims for urinalysis drug testing made by Physicians Toxicology. The investigation identified five categories of billing improprieties and errors that resulted in the Vermont Medicaid program making overpayments to the company. Physicians Toxicology cooperated with the investigation.

Clayton LaFond, age 61, and Kim LaFond, age 54, of Milton, Vermont, were convicted on September 16, 2014, in Vermont District Court for Windsor County, on two misdemeanor counts of False Pretenses. The convictions stemmed from the LaFonds’ submission of false timesheets in order to obtain payment for services that were not provided to a child while they were employed as home-based health care workers under the Children’s Personal Care program, a Vermont Medicaid program.

The LaFonds were sentenced to one to two years in jail, all suspended, and placed on two years of probation. The Court also ordered Clayton LaFond to pay $3,687, and Kim LaFond to pay $1,877, in restitution to the Vermont Medicaid program.

The case was investigated and prosecuted by the Medicaid Fraud and Residential Abuse Unit within the Vermont Attorney General’s Office with assistance from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the Inspector General.

The University of Vermont Extension program has received two grants totaling over $650,000 for agricultural research. Senator Patrick Leahy (D), Senator Bernie Sanders (I) and Representative Peter Welch (D) made the announcement Wednesday. The grant announcement is the most recent step in implementing the 2014 Farm Bill. Leahy, the senior most member on the Senate Agriculture Committee, was a conferee on the bill. The grants will be used to study soil quality on Vermont farms, focusing on sustainable practices while preventing soil erosion and improving crop productivity. One study will focus on the impact of management practices, such as cover cropping and no-till farming, on reducing soil compaction. A second study will develop and study cover crop strategies for Vermont and northern climates to help maintain and improve soil productivity and reduce soil compaction.

The Public Service Department announced Wednesday that the inaugural meeting of the Nuclear Decommissioning Citizens Advisory Panel (NDCAP), created by the legislature in Act 179 to succeed the Vermont State Nuclear Advisory Panel, will be held on September 25, 2014, from 6 pm to 9 pm, in the multi-purpose room at Brattleboro Union High School, 131 Fairground Road in Brattleboro. The agenda for the September 25 meeting includes a discussion of the mission of NDCAP; an overview of the Settlement Agreement reached between the State of Vermont and Entergy Nuclear Vermont Yankee (ENVY) in December 2013; and Vermont Yankee decommissioning and stakeholder assessment findings. In addition, ENVY will present a summary of current decommissioning activities at Vermont Yankee. Vermont Yankee is scheduled to cease operating by the end of this year.

Vermont’s congressional delegation -- Senator Patrick Leahy (D), Senator Bernie Sanders (I) and Representative Peter Welch (D) – and Governor Peter Shumlin (D) Thursday announced that the state will receive $891,679 in Northern Border Regional Commission (NBRC) funds for economic development projects in Northern Vermont. This is a $400,000 increase over funds awarded in Vermont last year. The NBRC funds will be disbursed in five grants to five organizations in Northern Vermont, as recommended by Governor Shumlin, for targeted economic development and job creation by improving infrastructure and strengthening communities.

by John Herrick vtdigger.org A Vermont solar company is looking at a New Haven farm as the location for one of the state’s largest solar projects. The White River Junction based solar developer and installer, groSolar, told the New Haven Selectboard on Tuesday it hopes to build two 5-megawatt solar arrays in the town. One, at the Sawyer Farm north of Vermont 17, would be about 40 acres in size. Rod Viens, executive vice president for operations for groSolar, said the project would provide property tax revenue without putting any demands on municipal services, and preserve agricultural land until the project is decommissioned. And he said the project will generate renewable electricity for under 12 cents per kilowatt hour.

Viens said the company has not filed with state regulators for a certificate of public good or even spoken with its attorneys about the project.

Soltage-Greenwood, a joint venture between premier North American solar power provider Soltage, LLC, and Greenwood Energy, the North and Latin American clean energy division of the Libra Group, announced Wednesday the official commissioning of a 2.7-megawatt (MW) solar power system located on Casella Waste Systems’ Coventry, Vermont, landfill site. The array is the largest solar project built on a landfill site in Vermont, and is expected to generate 3 million kilowatt-hours of electricity annually from more than 9,000 solar panels. It was connected to the grid August 15. Energy will be sold through a 25-year power purchase agreement to Vermont Electric Power Producers Inc. (VEPP Inc), a purchasing agent appointed by the Vermont Public Service Board under Vermont’s Sustainably Priced Energy Enterprise Development (SPEED) Standard Offer Program.