News

Nichols College in Dudley, MA, has told Saint Michael’s College in Colchester that it is withdrawing its masters programs that were to have begun at the Colchester campus this fall semester, Vermont Business Magazine learned today. Saint Michael’s said the dean of the program was leaving his position and that the central Massachusetts business school was re-evaluating the program.

For the week of July 17, 2010, there were 630 new regular benefit claims for Unemployment Insurance, a decrease of 103 from the week before. Altogether 9,889 new and continuing claims were filed, a decrease of 186 from a week ago and 3,665 fewer than a year earlier.

A group of municipal, regional and statewide planning and conservation organizations joined legislative leaders today in sharply criticizing a Douglas administration move to eliminate a position with the Department of Fish & Wildlife responsible for overseeing the Department’s Community Wildlife Program.

The State of Vermont’s captive insurance sector has had a good first half of 2010, licensing 17 new captive insurance companies as the state approaches the 900-license milestone, officials said. With 895 captive licenses, Vermont is the largest captive insurance domicile in the U.S. and the third largest in the world, with an excess of $77 billion in gross written premium in 2009.

Governor Jim Douglas applauded the work of the Vermont Department of Finance and Management for receiving the Certificate of Achievement for Excellence in Financial Reporting by the Government Finance Officers Association of the United States and Canada (GFOA) – the organizations highest form of recognition.

Senators Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Rep. Peter Welch (D-VT) this week introduced legislation in the US Senate and House of Representatives allowing the Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park to acquire Woodstock’s King Farm.

A 31-state consortium, including Vermont, submitted its application recently for a federal grant that would develop a student assessment system aligned to a common core of academic standards. The SMARTER Balanced Assessment Consortium, or SBAC, formed in December 2009, hopes to receive a Race to the Top assessment grant from the U.S. Department of Education.

The nomination of Solicitor General Elena Kagan to be an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court won approval by a bipartisan majority of the Senate Judiciary Committee during a business meeting Tuesday. The Committee, chaired by Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), held a confirmation hearing for Kagan’s nomination the week of June 28. The Committee vote was 13-6.

In January 2010, legislative leadership reconvened the Vermont Yankee Oversight Panel to re-evaluate its reliability assessment of Vermont Yankee because Entergy repeatedly provided incorrect information to the Panel, which called into question the Panel's original report.

The Vermont Department of Labor announced today the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate for June 2010 was 6.0 percent, down two tenths from the revised May rate and down 1.2 percent from a year ago.

The United States Tennis Association recently announced that ten finalists have been selected for its "Best Tennis Town" competition from an initial group of 82 cities that submitted entries. Manchester, Vermont has been selected as one of the finalists.

Northwestern Medical Center has received a generous estate gift, courtesy of the late Dr Martin Wennar. Dr. Wennar gifted $100,000 to the fund that bears his name, the Martin H Wennar, MD Health Education Scholarship Fund. Dr Wennar, a retired general surgeon, passed away in August of 2009 following a battle with pancreatic cancer.