Current News

Vermont Business Magazine Senators Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass), along with Reps Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill) and Val Hoyle (D-Ore) in the US House of Representatives, introduced legislation that would expand Social Security benefits by $2,400 a year and ensure Social Security is fully funded for the next 75 years – all without raising taxes by one penny on over 93 percent of American households that make $250,000 or less. These estimates reflect an analysis of the legislation conducted by the Social Security Administration at the request of Sanders.

Vermont Business Magazine Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont), chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, tonight will host a town hall at the US Capitol to discuss the pay crisis teachers are facing throughout the United States. Longtime Vermont educator, Alison Sylvester, will be joining Sanders for the town hall entitled, “Respecting Our Teachers: A Town Hall on the Teacher Pay Crisis in America.” Sylvester has been a public school teacher for over 20 years and was named the 2020 K-5 Teacher of the Year by the Vermont Veterans of Foreign Wars. Currently, she teaches middle school Social Studies in Springfield and is the Secretary-Treasurer of the Vermont-National Education Association (NEA).

Vermont Business Magazine Baker Hill, the leading financial technology provider in delivering solutions for loan origination, risk management, and analytics, today announces an expanded partnership with Union Bank of Vermont and New Hampshire. The bank has upgraded to Baker Hill NextGen, a unified solution that streamlines loan origination and portfolio monitoring. Founded in 1891 and based in Vermont, Union Bank provides personal, corporate and municipal banking services to customers and businesses across Northern Vermont and Northern New Hampshire. For more than a century, Union Bank has proudly invested in its communities and supported the growth of job-generating local businesses.

Vermont Agency of Agriculture Food & Markets In 2012, the Vermont Legislature passed Act 142, creating the Vermont Working Lands Enterprise Initiative, and the structure for investment of state dollars into agricultural and forestry-based businesses. Over the last 10 years, farm and forest businesses from all 14 Vermont counties have accessed $13.6 million from the Working Lands Enterprise Fund (WLEF) and leveraged $22.5 million in matching funds. With growth supported by WLEF grants these farm and forest businesses have generated tens of millions in new economic activity, helped strengthen local supply chains, and invested in the future of Vermont’s working lands.

by Joyce Marcel, Vermont Business Magazine Bennington County hugs the New York State line so closely that it has, in the past, sort of suffered an identity crisis: Is it part of Vermont or a suburb of Albany? Perhaps this is no longer a question. Post-COVID, Bennington appears to be flourishing. And flourishing with it is the Southwestern Vermont Chamber of Commerce, in no small part because of its executive director, the extremely young and popular Matt Harrington. Since he was hired to run the organization — originally called the Bennington Chamber of Commerce — in 2016, at the surprising age of 30, Harrington, now 37, has expanded it from covering one town to encompassing 17. Not all those 17 towns are the same, of course.

Vermont Business Magazine Shelburne Museum has announced its slate of exhibitions for the 2023 season. This year, the museum will feature a variety of special exhibitions focused on creative play, whimsy, and beautiful masterworks of Native American pottery. Toys, woodblock prints, sculpture, children’s printed textiles, and outdoor inflatable sculptures, along with a significant exhibition of pottery from the Southwest are all featured in the exhibition lineup for the coming season.

by Jake Claro, Farm to Plate Director, Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund The ability to not only withstand large systemic shocks, but to bounce back from them, is the hallmark of resiliency. But bouncing back does not necessarily mean that everything looks the same as it was before. Among the many things the COVID-19 pandemic has forcefully taught us is that normalcy is a relative condition.

Vermont Business Magazine As students and graduates explore the job market this spring, Vermont’s colleges remind them they don’t have to look far to find life-changing career opportunities. On Thursday, February 23, the Vermont Department of Labor, the University of Vermont and Saint Michael’s College will collaborate with Champlain College, Middlebury College, Norwich University and Bennington College to host the inaugural Vermont Virtual Job Fair to connect job seekers with some of the top employers in the state.

Vermont Business Magazine University of Vermont trustees voted at their winter meeting today to approve the formation of the School of World Languages and Cultures, and the Institute for Agroecology, further enriching the academic offerings at Vermont’s flagship land grant university. The mission of the School of World Languages and Cultures (SWLC) in the College of Arts and Sciences is to prepare students to engage with a diverse, globalizing, and ever-changing world. The new school follows the very successful formation of the School of the Arts in 2022 and brings together four departments — Asian Languages and Literatures, Classics, German and Russian, and Romance Languages and Cultures — under the same roof, providing increased opportunities for students and faculty to learn and understand not just the languages themselves but also the cultural context — through literature, film, politics, and social history — in which they exist

Vermont State Police Emergency crews received a report at about 7:10 a.m. that an enclosed side-by-side UTV was operating on Keeler Bay when the vehicle broke through the ice. First responders learned that two people were in the UTV at the time. One individual, a 71-year-old man from Williamstown, was pulled from the water, brought to shore by the South Hero Fire Department, received emergency medical care and was taken by ambulance to UVMMC. The second individual, an 88-year-old man from East Montpelier, was subsequently located inside the UTV by a diver from Colchester Technical Rescue and was pronounced deceased on scene. The second victim in this incident, a 71-year-old resident of Williamstown, has died at the University of Vermont Medical Center in Burlington.