Vermont Business Magazine Employees of Centerpoint School-Northeastern Family Institute Vermont today voted 14-0 to unionize, the latest organizing victory in a wave of unionization efforts in Vermont and throughout the country. The new union – the Centerpoint Education Association – will become part of the 13,000-member Vermont-NEA. Staff at the Community Health Centers of Burlington recently won a union, and bus drivers for the South Burlington School District voted to unionize several months ago.

Department seeks bids for comprehensive health services at the state’s six correctional facilities

Vermont Business Magazine On Friday, the Vermont Department of Corrections issued a Request for Proposals (RFP) from parties seeking to provide health services to the state’s incarcerated population. This is the latest development in the Department’s continued effort to best align internal health services with the community standard of care and adapt to the changing healthcare landscape.

Senate President Pro Tem Becca Balint The Senate voted (Thursday) to amend S.226, our omnibus affordable housing bill, to include permitting and land use regulation reforms that will make it easier to develop new housing where we most want to see it, in vibrant, walkable downtowns and villages. Making it easier for people to live affordably in our towns and cities is also key to our environmental goals: reducing pollution from transportation and preserving our rural countryside.

​Vermont Business Magazine The annual “98.9 WOKO’s Big Change Roundup for Kids” to support The University of Vermont Children’s Hospital raised a total of $347,029.03, thanks to more than 1,000 donations from patients and families, community members and businesses. This year’s success would not have been possible without our bandits (individual fundraisers), posses (fundraising teams), schools, community groups and volunteers from throughout the region. Also essential were longtime supporters Maplefields (more than $45,000), New England Federal Credit Union (NEFCU) (more than $31,000) and Med Associates (more than $30,000). In addition, NEFCU in Vermont and SeaComm in New York served as collection points for bandits and posses to turn in their loot.

by Jack Hoffman, Public Assets Institute Twenty years ago, Vermont lost a valuable tool that let the state easily adjust state revenues to respond to fluctuating demands for public services. It’s time to find a replacement. In 2002, the state ended the simple, straightforward system for assessing personal income taxes that had been in place for more than 30 years. Vermont stopped using the “piggyback,” whereby the amount of income tax a person owed to Montpelier was calculated from the amount owed to Uncle Sam. Typically, the rate was about 25 percent of a person’s federal tax liability. But it varied, which was the beauty of that system. The strength of the piggyback system—being tied to federal tax policy—was also its weakness.