Current News

Vermont Business Magazine On Sunday afternoon, March 24, over 120 CVMC nurses and technical staff, community members, and legislators rallied in Barre. Seven months after winning their union election, techs and nurses are pushing the CVMC administration to agree to terms that would create livable wages for all staff, reduce consistent staffing challenges and improve patient care as a result. 

by Olga Peters, Vermont Business Magazine Good. Solid. These are the two words used by many in Windsor County to describe the economy in 2024. Not the most exciting descriptors, to be sure. Yet, after the one-two punch of the coronavirus pandemic and last year’s summer floods, residents are all too willing to settle for “good” and “solid” nowadays. Jason Rasmussen, executive director of the Mount Ascutney Regional Commission, laughed when asked how he would characterize the county’s economy. “In the middle of the summer, I may have had a little different answer, but mostly good,” he said. “I mean ... you know ... interesting times, right?”Still, Windsor faces many of the same challenges plaguing other Vermont counties: the high cost of living; a lack of affordable housing and child care services; workforce shortages; and difficulty accessing public transportation.

by Olga Peters, Vermont Business Magazine “Springfield’s economy has evolved — and is evolving,” said Bob Flint, executive director of the Springfield Regional Development Corp., which serves 10 towns in southern Windsor County. The community had moved on from the machine tool industry by the time Goldman Industrial Group went bankrupt in 2002. He said the bulk of the layoffs happened in the late 1980s and 1990s. In his opinion, the Springfield region is similar to other Vermont communities.

by Olga Peters, Vermont Business Magazine Win Brown, interim CEO of Mount Ascutney Hospital and Health Center watches the MicroMOO from his office window. All day, the cow-print van ferries patients to and from the hospital. “I can look out at the front drive, and it drops and drops and drops all day,” he said. “It’s really a great thing.” The all-wheel van, decorated with a cow-print pattern, is part of a three-year pilot testing an on-demand public transportation service. Like a private car service, riders within the town limits can schedule a pick-up through a phone call or app, and within 30 minutes, the MicroMOO arrives.

Vermont Business Magazine What could a town do with 139 acres? Chester’s new Housing Commission seeks to answer that question. Surprise! Like many Vermont communities, Chester has a housing shortage and the municipality needs to act to attract more young families and middle-income workers. “I’m biased,” said Town Manager Julie Hance. “Chester is fabulous.” The Selectboard hired Hance as town manager in 2020. She has devoted more than 15 years to the town in various jobs, including assistant town manager, assistant town clerk, assistant town treasurer, and zoning administrator.

by Jules Older, Vermont Business Magazine Apple is being sued by the United States Justice Department along with 16 American states, including Vermont, and the District of Columbia. They charge that Apple has violated American antitrust laws by illegally keeping customers reliant on their iPhones and are thus, less likely to switch to a competing phone. The suit argues that Apple’s practices hurt both consumers and the smaller companies that compete with it. These are serious charges brought by serious entities. I take them seriously. But.

Vermont Business Magazine The Vermont House of Representatives achieved a historic milestone by unanimously passing H.121, an act relating to enhancing consumer privacy, with a resounding vote of 139-0. In a time where our every move, word, and heartbeat are incessantly documented by a myriad of devices, the urgency for comprehensive consumer data privacy laws has never been more critical. Vermont has a long history of prioritizing consumer privacy protections, and in the absence of federal legislation, we have a duty to protect our own. Consumer data privacy bills are incredibly complex and interconnected - definitions, consumer rights, business obligations, and exceptions exist in a delicate balance and even seemingly small changes in language can have cascading effects. 

Vermont Business Magazine US Senator Peter Welch (D-Vermont) voted early this morning to keep the government open and advance nearly $13 million of Congressionally Directed Spending for eight Vermont-based projects nominated by the Senator. This is in addition to nearly $30 million in federal funds passed in early March as part of the first tranche of government funding, which will support 19 Vermont projects nominated by Sen. Welch. The Congressionally Directed Spending was included in a bipartisan agreement that included appropriations for Defense; Financial Services and General Government; Homeland Security; Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies; Legislative Branch; and State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs. 

Leonine Public Affairs As the House Appropriations Committee works to wrap up the FY2025 budget, all eyes are on the House Ways and Means Committee as they churn out new tax proposals. As a reminder, some new taxes that have been on the table for years - sugar-sweetened beverages, candy, and software - are still on the table. But this week, the House Ways and Means Committee brought out three new tax increases. The committee approved proposals to double the property transfer tax on homes over $600,000 ($17.5 million), increase the top marginal income tax rate to 11.75 percent (a three percent increase that would raise $74.9 million), and increase corporate taxes from 8.5 to 10 percent and add back currently deductible Subpart F corporate income ($33 million). If approved, Vermont would have the highest corporate tax rate in the country.

Vermont Business Magazine GlobalFoundries gets $1.5 billion for Malta, NY, plant, Vermont to benefit; Keurig Dr Pepper will close Williston plant, consolidate in Essex Jct; Scott signs education financing bill H.850, no pay hike for lawmakers; Dr Levine takes heat from ACLU, Baruth over open meeting ‘violation’ in opioid funds; UnitedHealthcare agrees to contract with UVM Health Network; Scott to expedite over $100M in available mitigation project funding to communities impacted by flooding; State Medicaid pharmacy claims contractor experiences cyber attack and outages.

Vermont Business Magazine Ethan Tapper, the Chittenden County Forester with the Vermont Department of Forests, Parks, and Recreation has been named the American Tree Farm System’s 2024 National Tree Farm Inspector of the Year. The American Tree Farm System comprises a nationwide alliance of 74,000 family forest landowners dedicated to the sustainable management of 19 million acres. In Vermont, the Tree Farm System is sponsored by the Vermont Woodlands Association with 440 landowners and over 133,000 acres enrolled in the program. These landowners, known as "Tree Farmers," commit to managing their forests to prioritizes wildlife habitat, clean water, and recreation, while sustainably producing forest products.

Vermont Business Magazine Special Olympics Vermont (SOVT) hosted the 2024 Winter Games on Friday, March 15th at The Hermitage Club in Wilmington, Vermont. Over 125 delegates, including athletes and coaches from eight local programs trained and competed in alpine skiing and snowboarding. This was Special Olympics Vermont’s largest Winter Games since 2019. The delegations that competed included Addison, Central Vermont, Chittenden, Adaptive Sports at Mount Snow, Northshire, Randolph, Rutland and Smugglers’ Notch Adaptive.