Current News

Vermont Business Magazine Attorney General Charity Clark today sued Michael D. Lansky, LLC, which does business under the name Avid Telecom, for allegedly initiating and facilitating billions of illegal robocalls to millions of people and violating the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, the Telemarketing Sales Rule, and other federal and state telemarketing and consumer laws. Avid Telecom sent or transmitted more than 7.5 billion calls to telephone numbers on the National Do Not Call Registry between December 2018 and January 2023 – approximately 13 million of those calls were to numbers in Vermont.

Vermont Business Magazine Senator Peter Welch (D-Vermont) today addressed the New England Conference of Public Utilities Commissioners (NECPUC) in Stowe, Vermont and called for continued support for clean energy and decarbonization efforts nationwide. His remarks to NECPUC addressed the important work ahead on the 2023 Farm Bill to secure funding for initiatives to lower costs, advance clean energy, and support the implementation of the Inflation Reduction Act and Infrastructure, Investment, and Jobs Act. As chair of the Senate Agriculture Committee’s Rural Development and Energy Subcommittee, Welch plays a pivotal role in advancing clean energy, energy efficiency, and broadband deployment in the upcoming Farm Bill. NECPUC is a non-profit corporation that brings together public utilities commissions across New England to address challenges in the electricity, telecommunications, and water industries.

Vermont Business Magazine PurposeEnergy is proud to announce its commitment to build a new biogas processing plant in partnership with Unilever and Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream. The Saint Albans Industrial Treatment Center (“SAINT”) is a new biogas project designed to produce renewable energy through the responsible treatment of organic waste produced from food and beverage manufacturing. The project is located in St. Albans, Vermont and will serve a collection of Northern Vermont and Upstate New York-based food and beverage producers, including Unilever’s Ben & Jerry’s plant in St. Albans, which will be piped directly to the SAINT biogas plant. This latest project is an extension of the partnership struck between Ben & Jerry’s and PurposeEnergy over 5 years ago at the PurposeEnergy biogas facility in South Burlington.

Vermont Business Magazine The Vermont Agricultural Hall of Fame today announced the 2023 inductees. For more than 20 years, over 95 contributors of Vermont agricultural have been celebrated with the Vermont Agricultural Hall of Fame honor. A celebratory luncheon is scheduled during the Champlain Valley Fair on Wednesday, August 30, 2023, at 12pm.

Vermont Business Magazine Widespread frost across Vermont last week is suspected to have severely damaged thousands of acres of crops in Vermont and across the region. Temperatures dropped below freezing in many areas for a sustained time causing early spring crops to freeze. According to the US National Weather Service in Burlington, many below freezing temperatures were recorded overnight May 17th into the early morning hours of May 18th, including a record low of 25 degrees Fahrenheit in Montpelier while Burlington tied its record low of 28 degrees. The owners and operators of Shelburne Vineyard in Shelburne gave a tour of some of the damage to officials on Monday, highlighting that although some damage is obvious now, other impacts are a wait-and-see process.

Vermont State Police On May 22^nd, 2023, at approximately 1645 hours, Troopers from the Vermont State Police – St Albans Barracks were notified of a missing juvenile. Investigation revealed that the juvenile was last seen the night of Thursday May 18^th, before she went missing from her residence in the night. Anybody with information on the juvenile’s whereabouts is asked to contact Trooper Finley at the Vermont State Police St Albans Barracks at 802-524-5993. The Vermont State Police would like to remind the public that harboring a runaway juvenile is a criminal offense.

Vermont Business Magazine Yesterday, the Speaker of the House, Jill Krowinski, delivered the 2024 fiscal year state budget to Governor Scott to be signed, weeks ahead of the traditional timeline. Today, she called upon the governor to sign the budget to ensure funds allocated to assist the most vulnerable Vermonters are available as soon as possible. Anticipating that Scott might veto the budget, or some other bill, the Legislature has scheduled a "veto session" for late June. “I urge Governor Scott to sign the budget without delay,” said Speaker Krowinski.

The Vermont Progressive Party stands against the current iteration of the state budget for Fiscal Year 2024. A core principle of our platform is that housing is a human right. The current version of the budget would take that away from thousands of homeless Vermonters– pushing them out of temporary housing and onto the streets by removing support currently provided by the General Assistance program. As it stands, the version of H.494 that sits on Governor Phil Scott's desk would dramatically ramp down the state's housing program for our most vulnerable residents. By the end of July, roughly 3,000 Vermonters would be left without a place to live, and forced to seek out already critically limited shelter placements, sleep on streets, or in parks.

by John McClaughry One interest group fared extraordinarily well during the just-completed legislative session. That’s the interest group comprised of Representatives and Senators. Unlike other interest groups, who have to lobby legislators for the benefits they want, the legislators themselves get to vote on their own benefits. This was an opportunity not to be missed. This year’s legislative compensation bill (S.39) prescribes a 100% increase from today’s $14,616 per year salary to $29,766 in 2027. It also allows legislators to enjoy state employee health insurance. The state’s 80% contribution for a $27,300 family plan comes to $21,840.

Vermont Business Magazine May is National Foster Care Month. It is a time to acknowledge the role of foster and kinship care providers statewide. In Vermont, more than 1,000 children and youth are currently provided foster care. Most will successfully reunify with their birth families. When that is not possible, permanency is sought – often through adoption. This year, the State of Vermont is highlighting the need to take a holistic and culturally responsive approach to supporting the mental health needs of those involved with child welfare. This includes the mental health and wellbeing of children and youth, their caregivers, and of the staff within the many agencies and services involved with the care of children and youth in foster care.

Vermont Business Magazine The American Red Cross asks people to book a time to give blood or platelets now to address a recent drop in donation appointments that could lead to fewer transfusions for patients in the weeks ahead. Type O blood donors are especially needed to ensure a strong blood supply. The start of summer can shake up normal routines, but it’s important for donation appointments to stay on the calendar – especially as Memorial Day weekend approaches. More than 42 million Americans are expected to travel over the holiday, meaning fewer donors may be available to give.

by Amy Olson, Dartmouth College The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated fear of childbirth among pregnant people in the US, according to a new Dartmouth study. The researchers were particularly interested in understanding, from a US context, which factors predict childbirth fear and how the pandemic has affected this fear and birth outcomes. The findings are published in Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health. “Our results showed really high rates of childbirth fear in our sample,” says first author Zaneta Thayer ’08, an associate professor of anthropology. “Since there’s no pre-pandemic U.S. data, we cannot compare our data to that context but we know that the rates are very high compared to other international studies on the subject that have been published pre-pandemic.” The research team drew on data from their COVID-19 and Reproductive Effects Study, an online survey which examined how COVID-19 affected pregnant people’s well-being and health care experiences.