Current News

There were 1,138 new regular benefit claims for Unemployment Insurance last week, a decrease of 86 from the week before, as filings fell for the first time since mid-September. The September Vermont unemployment rate was 6.7 percent, down one-tenth from August. However, economists believe that it will rise to over 7 percent by the end of this year. The current US rate is 9.8 percent, up one-tenth from August. Altogether 10,111 new and continuing claims were filed, an increase of 130 from a week ago and 2,566 more than a year earlier. The Department also processed 4,794 First Tier claims for benefits under Emergency Unemployment Compensation, 2008 (EUC08), 48 more than a week ago. In addition, there were 1,220 Second Tier claims for benefits processed under the EUC08 program, which is an increase of 49 from the week before. The Unemployment Weekly Report can be found at: http://www.vtlmi.info/.

There is an unfamiliar sound in the Mount Snow Valley, it’s the sound of silence. With Peak Resorts investing $9 million in state of the art fan guns, gone are the days of loud air-water equipment, in is the quiet hum of progress. Mount Snow’s veteran team of snowmakers hit the slopes Tuesday night putting North America’s finest fleet of snow making machines to work. Firing up a total of 111 guns Mount Snow is continuing their early season push, having already opened with lift service on October 17th, the earliest in its history.
With an early season window of cold temperatures the decision was made to begin an aggressive campaign with the intention of opening with top to bottom lift service the second week of November. Mount Snow plans to open with two of its mountain faces spinning lifts, both the Main Face and Carinthia. Carinthia will open with a full terrain park on Nitro featuring boxes, rails and jumps.

Level 3 Communications, Inc has announced that it has increased the capacity of its communications network in Vermont and has expanded the number of businesses that can take advantage of the company’s far-reaching fiber-optic backbone. Additionally, the company has named Tracy Guy-Davis as Level 3’s general manager for New England. In her position, Guy-Davis will focus on delivering an outstanding customer experience for customers in the region.
“Vermont is an important market for Level 3 and we have built strong relationships with businesses throughout the state,” said Guy-Davis. “Level 3 is dedicating itself to enhancing the customer experience throughout Vermont because now more than ever we are seeing increased customer demand for a competitive alternative in the marketplace.”

As Vermont families struggle to make ends meet, health care often is neglected due to inadequate health insurance or no insurance at all. In response to this health care crisis, the Vermont State Employees Credit Union (VSECU) recently donated $10,000 to the Vermont Coalition of Clinics for the Uninsured to give more Vermonters access to quality health care.
The coalition of clinics are a vital resource in Vermont s health care system by providing medical and dental services to over 5,000 Vermonters who cannot afford adequate health insurance, said Judy Rosenstreich, member of VSECU s Board of Directors and chair of its Charitable Contributions Committee. We are proud to support an effort that helps so many Vermonters obtain quality health care, regardless of their ability to pay.

General Dynamics Armament and Technical Products has been awarded a $17 million contract to produce gun systems for the Phalanx Block 1B Close-In Weapon System (CIWS) and the Centurion Land-Based Phalanx Weapon System by Raytheon Missile Systems (NYSE: RTN) of Louisville, KY. General Dynamics Armament and Technical Products is a business unit of General Dynamics (NYSE: GD). Project management for this contract will be performed in Burlington, Vermont, and product testing will be done at the General Dynamics firing range in Jericho. General Dynamics employs about 450 in Burlington. The company announced last month that it will move its Vermont operations to the IBM campus in Williston in 2010.

TPI, the largest sourcing data and advisory firm in the world and a unit of Information Services Group, Inc. (ISG) (Nasdaq: III, IIIIU, IIIIW), an industry-leading information-based services company, today announced it has been selected to advise the State of Vermont on using IT more efficiently and cost-effectively.
Under the contract, TPI will perform an independent assessment of the use of desktop, infrastructure and networking technologies in all state agencies and independent departments. Comparing internal costs and performance with data from the public and private sectors, TPI will identify options based on current best practices for reducing costs, improving service delivery and enhancing data security and IT governance.

Bruegger's Bakery-Cafe, based in Burlington, Vermont, is teaming up with the Marine Toys for Tots Foundation to meet the dramatic increase in requests for toys this holiday season and to brighten the lives of less fortunate children across the US. Through its "Kids Helping Kids" campaign, nearly 275 participating Bruegger's bakery locations across the country will become toy drop-off locations for Toys for Tots from now until December 15.
To teach children the joy of giving, families are encouraged to make a toy donation together at their neighborhood Bruegger's location. For each new, unwrapped toy donated, kids can choose a free meal from the bakery-cafe's new kids menu, launched in September 2009. All toys collected will be distributed locally to less fortunate children.

Citizens Bank, the Burlington Free Press, Vermont Lake Monsters, Campus Kitchen and City Market partnered for the fourth year in a Kids CAN Help food drive to help raise awareness about hunger in Vermont and the year-round struggle for many families in our communities. The campaign, which ran from October 12 to 16 at participating schools, was also a contest to see which school could collect the most non-perishable items.
Citizens Bank is proud of the Kids Can Help program and the awareness it brings to local school children and their parents, said Cathy Schmidt, president, Citizens Bank, Vermont. We thank our customers and the public in advance for supporting this worthwhile cause that benefits so many in need.
The winning school was Albert D. Lawton Middle School in Essex, Vt, where children collected 2,430 pounds of non-perishable items more than seven pounds per student.

The first year of the recession hit hard in Vermont's private sector, especially in construction and manufacturing. About 6 percent of private sector jobs have disappeared since the recession started nearly two years ago. But the losses have also spread to the public sector in 2009, as state government made cuts to reduce state spending. The administration is on track to reduce the number of state jobs by more than 8 percent by the end of the year — eliminating a total of over 700 positions.
A new report, State of Working Vermont 2009 , by Public Assets Institute in Montpelier, highlights these changes and their effects on Vermont’s workers and their families. It argues that cutting state jobs has worsened the recession for the state’s economy and its people.

The TD Charitable Foundation announced today the 56 winners of its annual Housing for Everyone grant competition. Award winners will receive a total of $2 million in grants to support affordable housing initiatives from Maine to Florida, a $500,000 increase in program awards from 2008. Among the awardees are three Vermont organizations which will receive a total of $60,000.
Now in its fifth year, the Housing for Everyone grant competition drew almost 500 proposals from housing non-profits for projects that help to stabilize the housing environment in communities where TD Bank does business. Grant awards ranged from $10,000 to $100,000.
The winning organizations, as well as the total grants per market, include:

The Williams Institute for Sexual Orientation Law and Public Policy at UCLA Law issued a report today analyzing newly released data from the US Census Bureau. The study examines data from the 2008 American Community Survey (ACS).
For the first time, the Census Bureau has released data in which same-sex couples who refer to one another as "husband" or "wife" are differentiated from those who refer to one another as "unmarried partners." This study is the first to examine the difference and similarities among same-sex couples and married different-sex couples in the ACS.
More than one-quarter of the estimated 565,000 same-sex couples in the United States designated themselves as spouses. Same-sex spouses were reported in every state.

Senate President Peter Shumlin and Speaker Shap Smith today sent a letter to Senator Cummings, Chair of Senate Finance, and Representative Klein, Chair of House Natural Resources and Energy, requesting that they hold a meeting to analyze Vermont's wholesale electricity market. The legislative leaders had set a deadline of November 1 for Entergy to offer a new power contract for Vermont Yankee. That deadline has now passed without a contract offer. Entergy was not expected to meet that deadline, nor was it clear what the repercussions were going to be if the Louisiana-based company did not meet it.