Current News

Vermont Business Magazine The Green Mountain Council Eagle Scout and Summit Award Recognition Day is on Thursday, April 27, in Montpelier. This event will recognize 46 Vermont youth who have earned Scouting's highest ranks, including the inaugural class of female Eagle Scouts. The event will commence with Scouting's Report to the State and a reading of the official proclamation recognizing the 2022 Class at 11:30 am in the Cedar Room of the Statehouse. This will be followed by a lunch program at the Capital Plaza where Lt. Governor David Zuckerman will provide the keynote address.

by Department of Economic Development Commissioner Joan Goldstein It’s fair to say we are living in an unusual economic environment. Historically high interest rates and inflation are creating challenging conditions for businesses large and small, and impacting the wallets of individual Vermonters. You don't have to work in economic development to see how squeezed folks are feeling — just go grocery shopping. These new challenges come after a lengthy pandemic wreaked havoc on health care, hospitality, education, arts and cultural institutions, and the small business community. This exacerbated our pre-existing labor shortage, housing shortage and added supply chain disruptions that persist across all sectors of the economy.

Vermont Business Magazine Today the Vermont House of Representatives passed S.73, an act relating to workers’ compensation coverage for firefighters with cancer, in a unanimous vote. The legislation expands workers’ compensation benefits for firefighters including the cancers that are covered to provide greater parity for women in the firefighter profession. The Vermont Speaker of the House, Rep. Jill Krowinski, and the President of Professional Firefighters of Vermont, Christopher Dube, issued a joint statement on the passage of the bill.

Vermont Business Magazine Today, US Senators Peter Welch (D-Vermont) and Cory Booker (D-NJ), both members of the Senate Agriculture Committee, introduced the bicameral Child Labor Exploitation Accountability Act, legislation aimed at holding corporations accountable for the exploitation of children and workers in the food industry. The bill prohibits the Department of Agriculture (USDA) from contracting with companies that have committed egregious labor law violations and/or have contracted with vendors that have incurred, and failed to rectify, serious worker or labor infractions. U.S. Representative Greg Casar (D-TX) introduced companion legislation in the House.  

Vermont Business Magazine Northern Vermont University has announced the Class of 2023 Commencement will be held Saturday, May 13 at 4 pm at the Johnson campus and Sunday, May 14 at 10 am at the Lyndon campus. Graduation details are available at NorthernVermont.edu/Commencement2023. This will be NVU's final commencement before it is merged into Vermont State University. To mark this momentous occasion, NVU will welcome US Representative Becca Balint (D-Vermont) as this year’s guest speaker for both the Johnson and Lyndon commencements.

Vermont Business Magazine On Tuesday, April 18, the National Pollution Prevention Roundtable (NPPR) visited GlobalFoundries in Essex Junction to present Fab 9 in Essex Junction, Vermont, with the Most Valuable Pollution Prevention (MVP2) award. The NPPR is a nonprofit forum that promotes the development, implementation, and evaluation of efforts to avoid, eliminate, or reduce waste generated to air, land, and water. This national award focuses on resource conservation-focused projects (source reduction) to reduce pollution. Resource conservation is about becoming more efficient and reducing our environmental footprint. Resource conservation projects reduce pollution and have positive financial impacts on the business.

Vermont Business Magazine Carly Berlin will join Vermont Public and VTDigger as a Report For America corps member in an effort to expand coverage of housing and infrastructure in Vermont, the organizations announced Wednesday. In an unprecedented collaboration between two of Vermont’s leading news outlets, Berlin will cover two of the most vexing challenges facing the state: the availability, affordability and condition of housing, as well as aging infrastructure that is no longer serving its residents.

Vermont Business Magazine Through collaboration from numerous utilities and state agencies, Jay Peak Resort will execute one of the largest standalone carbon reduction projects in Vermont’s history, and one of the largest recent standalone carbon reduction projects in the U.S. ski industry. The project will realize the installation of a 3-megawatt electric boiler to take over the entire heat demand for the 176-room Hotel Jay & Conference Center during times when heating with electricity is more cost efficient. The boiler would assume responsibility for providing 100% of the heat load to the Hotel, Conference Center, Pump House Indoor Waterpark, numerous restaurants, and retail spaces. Once completed, an estimated carbon reduction of 2500 tons per year can be expected.

Vermont Business Magazine Shelburne Museum has endowed its curatorship of American Decorative Arts in honor of its long-time trustee Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen, herself a senior curator of American Decorative Arts at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen Curatorship in American Decorative Arts is devoted to creating intellectually rigorous exhibitions that engage the public and advance scholarship around the museum’s collections that include 18^th- and 19^th-century American ceramics, glass, metalwork, furniture, and textiles and ensures that the decorative arts will forever remain an important institutional priority. Katie Wood Kirchhoff, who joined the museum in 2016, will be the first Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen Curator of American Decorative Arts.