Vermont State News

Then Again: Vermont suffered the 1st polio epidemic in the US

Sun, 06 Jul 2025 11:08:00 +0000

Starting in the 1920s, people stricken with the most severe form of polio were placed in artificial respirators, called iron lungs, to keep them alive. Photo via the World Health Organization

Doctors knew when the outbreak had started — June 17, 1894 — but they didn’t know what had broken out.

The symptoms of the many cases erupting in Rutland County that summer varied so much that they made doctors unsure of the diagnosis. A three-year-old boy, labeled Case 1, was a previously healthy, active child who developed a moderate fever and appeared to have indigestion. After three days, his fever broke, but he could no longer walk. After 10 days, he started to move about by holding onto chairs. Then, after three weeks, he regained full use of his legs.

Another child, a six-year-old boy, Case 64, had also been in good health when he developed a high fever, accompanied by vomiting. On the sixth day, he suffered paralysis in his right arm; the next day he could no longer move his left leg. Ten weeks later, he was no better — both extremities were still paralyzed and the muscles were weakening.

But he was more fortunate than a six-year-old boy, Case 4, who suddenly began convulsing while playing in the street. The convulsions lasted hours. He also exhibited a moderate fever, rapid pulse and vomiting. The muscles in the boy’s neck and back became rigid and his arms and legs became extremely sensitive to the touch. On the sixth day, he died.

The alarming news surely spread more quickly than the disease itself. Newspapers carried brief reports about Vermonters who doctors believed had contracted meningitis. While the papers also covered a number of active epidemics, including smallpox, typhoid and measles, it wasn’t until late August that they connected the dots and reported that these suspected meningitis cases also represented an epidemic.

On Aug. 27, the Rutland Daily Herald reported that doctors believed an epidemic of cerebral meningitis, spinal meningitis and cerebro-spinal meningitis had hit the city and surrounding area. Over the past five weeks, the paper wrote, the outbreak had “been rapidly gaining headway until it has attained serious proportions.”

Dr. Charles Caverly, president of the Vermont State Board of Health, was the first to identify polio as the disease that struck Vermont in 1894. Photo via Wikimedia Commons

Fatal cases or ones leading to total paralysis were relatively rare, doctors told the newspaper. However, they noted that many of the infected patients suffered paralysis in at least one limb and “the recovery of the patients (was) doubtful and slow.” Most cases seemed to be spinal meningitis “or a disease closely resembling it,” the Herald stated.

In the same article where it reported that the probable cause was meningitis, the Herald relayed a conflicting theory: “From information gained from physicians in the city yesterday it has been learned that polio-myelitis anterior [commonly known as polio]…seems to be the disease of the epidemic.”

This second diagnosis ultimately proved correct. Although it was buried in an article that was itself buried on Page 4 of the newspaper, the news was earth shattering: Vermont was suffering the first polio epidemic ever in the United States. In fact, this was the largest outbreak yet recorded anywhere. Although few people at the time had heard of polio, the disease would soon become a global terror.

News that it was polio that had broken out in Vermont came from Charles Caverly, a 37-year-old Rutland doctor. Caverly, who was educated at Brandon High School, Kimbell Union Academy and Dartmouth College before attending medical school at the University of Vermont, had recently become president of the Vermont State Board of Health. As such, Vermont doctors were required to send Caverly detailed reports of any cases they encountered of this perplexing and disturbing disease. Those descriptions enabled Caverly to diagnose the disease correctly as polio, rather than a form of meningitis, making him the first person to identify a polio epidemic. He communicated his findings to the American medical community

“Early in the summer just passed,” he wrote in the November issue of the Yale Medical Journal, “physicians in certain parts of Rutland County, Vermont, noticed that an acute nervous disease, which was almost invariably attended with some paralysis, was epidemic.”

Otter Creek passes through Rutland Center in this late 1800s photograph. The Otter Creek Valley, especially the Rutland area, was the focus of a polio epidemic in 1894. Photo via the Silver Special Collections Library, University of Vermont

Tracking the disease, Caverly wondered if geography might hold clues as to the source. The first cases were observed in the city of Rutland and the town of Wallingford. While most cases continued to arise in Rutland, they soon also emerged in other area towns. All but six of the reported cases occurred in the Otter Creek Valley, an area measuring roughly 30 miles long and 15 wide. The creek, contaminated with sewage and running at a particularly low level that summer, was a possible source. But Caverly believed he could rule it out. Most people who contracted the disease got their water from wells or mountain streams and springs. Similarly, “general sanitary conditions did not seem to have any influence on the epidemic,” he wrote.

Caverly considered whether animals were the source of the disease. He wrote that that summer, domesticated animals, including horses, dogs and fowl, had been dying of an “acute nervous disease, paralytic in its nature.” It was an intriguing idea. Subsequent research, however, has shown that polio only affects humans.

Polio didn’t appear to be contagious, Caverly wrote. He had received only one report where more than one family member had contracted the disease. But appearances were deceiving. It turns out that most people infected with polio are asymptomatic. (In later years, after studying more cases, Caverly came to accept that polio was contagious.)

Caverly and his fellow doctors faced a massive obstacle in understanding polio. At the time of Vermont’s epidemic, virology was in its infancy. The poliovirus wouldn’t be isolated for another 15 years. Researchers eventually determined that the virus is typically transmitted through contact with an infected person’s feces or through droplets from their sneezes or coughs.

Although Caverly failed to determine the cause of the outbreak, he provided helpful demographic information that showed the disease, which is sometimes called infantile paralysis, doesn’t only afflict the very young. In fact, he found that 15 cases were reported in people over age 14, including one case involving a 70-year-old. His statistics also showed that males were more prone to the disease; females only represented one-third of the Vermont cases. Research has since shown that both sexes are equally susceptible to contracting polio, but males are at higher risk of suffering paralysis.

After the 1894 epidemic, Vermont experienced a respite, with few cases emerging. Then in the summer of 1910, the state recorded 72 cases. Caverly, who remained in his role as president of the Vermont State Board of Health, was again on the case. A leading authority on polio, Caverly investigated a large outbreak in Vermont in 1916, which saw 64 cases. That year, more than 27,000 cases were reported in the United States, including 2,000 deaths.

In later outbreaks, public health officials tried to combat polio by quarantining people with confirmed cases. During an epidemic in 1916, New York’s health department put placards on houses to identify where families were quarantining. Photo via March of Dimes

In 1918, Caverly faced a new challenge: charting an epidemic of another frightening disease, a deadly influenza strain. Doctors had little recourse against the outbreak. No vaccine existed. They counseled bedrest and isolation, when possible, to limit its spread. That year, the new influenza killed an estimated 675,000 Americans. Among them was Charles Caverly, who died in October at the age of 62.

He only lived long enough to see the start of the enormous damage polio would inflict, and he didn’t get to witness the medical miracle that all but eradicated the disease. Each summer, parents braced for the arrival of polio season, when the disease always hit some part of the United States and spread overseas. Adults were also susceptible, including future president Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who contracted polio in 1921 at the age of 39.

Fear of polio was part of everyday life. Public officials closed beaches, swimming pools and amusement parks in an effort to stop the spread. Parents warned their children not to drink from water fountains.

Doctors found that roughly one out of 200 polio infections led to irreversible paralysis and roughly 5 to 10 percent of those cases proved fatal.

In the late 1920s, an artificial ventilator called an iron lung was invented, offering hope to patients who could not breath on their own because their chest muscles were paralyzed. The iron lung became the image many people associated with polio. Patients were slid into these cumbersome, sarcophagus-like machines with only their heads sticking out. Some polio patients required weeks or months inside an iron lung to recover use of their own lungs; others remained in an iron lung for life. The machines soon populated hospital polio wards — as well as the nightmares of parents and children.

With an increase in political violence across the nation, one worries what could happen in Vermont. Do our legislators need more security? Are our public officials at risk of attack?

The impulse is to focus on safety measures alone. But that strategy doesn’t address the root cause of the problem. Partisan leaders are quick to denounce the violence on the other side while staying quiet when faced with violence from their side. As long as leaders continue to dehumanize their opponents and excuse their allies, political violence will persist.

Support for political violence has recently surged amongst Democrats. A recent op-ed in the New York Times reported that “About 40 percent of Democrats supported the use of force to remove Mr. Trump from presidency and about 25 percent of Republicans supported the use of military to stop protests against Trump’s agenda.”

Robert A. Pape, the political scientist at the University of Chicago who conducted the survey, urged leaders to do more. “American political leaders need to cross their political divides and make joint statements (and ideally joint appearances).” It’s not enough to hold your own press conference. You need to hold one with your opponent.

After the shootings in Minnesota, both the Democratic governor and the Republican president decried the actions of the gunman. Each condemned the use of violence in no uncertain terms. But together they did not stand. Had the governor and the president stood in front of the same podium and treated each other with basic courtesy, partisans on both sides would have seen that there could be an alternative to violence.

Convincing leaders that it is in everyone’s best interest to share the spotlight is a big ask. Politicians in both parties score big dollars when they denounce their opponent as Marxist or Fascist or some other variant of Evil.

“If my opponent wins,” says one side, “you won’t have a country anymore.” “If he gets back in office,” says the other side, “you won’t have a democracy.” If the goal is raking in donations, these are profitable sentences. But if the goal is reducing political violence, those statements are as effective as using a chainsaw to slice butter.

The good news is that people don’t actually like violence. Assassinations and kidnapping tend to sour the stomach. Indeed, there have been cases in which a horrific attack was just what it took to get leaders to cross the political divide.

After two women were killed by an assassin at two Boston abortion clinics in 1994, leaders from three pro-choice and three pro-life groups agreed to meet. The mediators set the bar very low: meet four times, in private, with no expectation of resolving the abortion debate.

The only goal was to better understand the reasoning of their opponent. Each leader assumed that at the end of the year they would go their separate ways.

But that’s not what happened. Instead, one year turned into five and an entirely new predicament emerged. The longer they met, the harder it became to explain why they were meeting. How could they justify spending so much time talking with their opponents? Didn’t their donors count on them to condemn the other side?

Eventually they issued a joint statement, entitled “Talking with the Enemy,” published in the Boston Globe on the 28th anniversary of Roe v. Wade. In it they described their initial concerns, their enduring disputes, and the fruits of their conversations.

These clandestine conversations, they explained, “made our thinking sharper and our language more precise.” Through listening and disputing, they became “wiser and more effective leaders.” By avoiding “being overreactive and disparaging to the other side,” they became better at self-control.

And most interestingly of all, these deep deliberations did not change anyone’s mind. “While learning to treat each other with dignity and respect, we have all become firmer in our views about abortion.” What changed is how they thought about their opponents.

In the 1990s, leaders could afford to take five years to bridge the political divide. With the current levels of support for political violence, we don’t have that kind of time.

To our Vermont leaders in Washington and Montpelier, if you are concerned about your personal safety, consider making friends with your enemy. Find a topic that you both care about, such as providing for foster children or fighting malaria abroad

Schedule a press conference and let your defenses drop. Laugh with each other as you disagree about policy differences. Let the disagreements be the glue that binds your friendship. Show the world that politicians can have very strong differences about public policy and still treat each other with respect.

Epilogue:

After their essay was published in the Globe, the pro-choice and pro-life leaders held a joint press conference. Assuming that only one or two journalists would show up, they were met with a room filled with reporters.

The reporters had lots of questions about the process, how they learned to trust one another, and how they dealt with their disagreements. The leaders were honest about their enduring differences and their newfound respect for each other.

At the end of the press conference, they received a standing ovation.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Meg Mott: Want to end political violence? Try friendship..

Nancy Harkins: Vermont’s secure storage law is a proactive step to keep kids safe and more people need to know about it

Sun, 06 Jul 2025 11:04:00 +0000

Dear Editor,

One of the new laws that went into effect July 1 has to do with school safety protocols. The safety of Vermont’s school children is of the utmost importance.

These new protocols ought to include regularly reminding parents and caregivers of Vermont’s law which requires secure firearm storage in homes and vehicles if “a child or prohibited person is likely to gain access to the firearm.”

The law, which went into effect two years ago, is still not widely known. A study published in JAMA Pediatrics has determined that about 42% of adolescent school shooters obtained the gun from a family member, mostly through theft.

It’s not just an issue at school. Firearm injuries are the leading cause of death for U.S. children and teens. As you are traveling over the summer it’s important to ask how firearms are secured in any camps or homes you may be visiting.

Vermont’s secure storage law is a proactive step we can all take to keep kids safe and more people need to know about it. More resources on secure storage can be found at besmartforkids.org.

Nancy Harkins

Burlington

Read the story on VTDigger here: Nancy Harkins: Vermont’s secure storage law is a proactive step to keep kids safe and more people need to know about it.

Dorrine Dorfman and Charlene Webster: A provision in the miscellaneous education bill expands a Vermont reading law for the better

Sun, 06 Jul 2025 11:02:00 +0000

This commentary is by Charlene Webster of Arlington and Dorinne Dorfman of Plainfield. Charlene has taught grades 3-6, special education and structured literacy in southwestern Vermont over her 40-year career. Dorinne teaches reading to grades 5-8 at Barre Town Middle and Elementary School, and has served as principal of Leland and Gray Union High School in Townshend and Champlain Elementary School in Burlington.

Although debate about transforming Vermont’s educational system has filled our news headlines for months, we are pleased to share that a small, but mighty provision in H.480 has expanded Vermont reading law for the better, effective immediately.

With its passage, now all students in any grade level (K-12) who significantly struggle in reading can receive supplementary reading instruction. This includes both public and approved independent schools. The revised Sec. 10. 16 V.S.A. § 2903, or “foundation for literacy,” guarantees additional instruction to all students significantly below proficiency in reading or whose poor reading skills impede school progress.

In May 2024, Act 139 — an act relating to supporting Vermont’s young readers through evidence-based literacy instruction — fundamentally changed K-3 classroom instruction, intervention, assessment, and teacher training. Act 139 marks the moment Vermont abandoned unfounded instructional approaches that taught children to guess and invent instead of directly decoding and spelling the English language.

The law requires K-3 students to be assessed and receive instruction in the five components of reading: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension. Assessments must be valid and reliable, and administered following the test’s technical specifications at least once a year. In addition, the parents/guardians of students found significantly below proficient must be notified. Some schools have chosen to inform all parents/guardians of their students’ progress.

Although H.480 does not require schools to assess reading in grades 4-12, many schools do assess these grades. For students found significantly below in reading, H.480 requires schools to inform parents/guardians of the results and provide supplemental instruction in reading.

Parents/guardians are often well aware of their children’s reading deficits. Schools screening the five reading components in grades 4-12 makes the best sense, since struggling readers can have these deficits no matter what age.

Only an education professional who is highly trained in evidence-aligned reading practices, such as in an Orton-Gillingham-based program, should administer screeners and interpret student performance. Parents/guardians can request all results of reading assessments the school has conducted over the years. This is especially helpful for monitoring progress and determining if reading gaps have narrowed or grown over time.

We commend the Vermont State Legislature for a job well done on H.480, guaranteeing supplementary reading instruction in all grades for those with significant reading deficits.

Parents/guardians with concerns about their children’s progress should contact their schools for reading data, learn what supplementary reading instruction is offered, and confirm that evidence-aligned teaching and testing practices are in place. Advocacy from parents/guardians can help speed up the process, from assessing the five components of reading to starting the supplemental instruction their children need to achieve reading proficiency.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Dorrine Dorfman and Charlene Webster: A provision in the miscellaneous education bill expands a Vermont reading law for the better.

Morristown sculptor settles over damage to roadside attraction

Sun, 06 Jul 2025 10:57:00 +0000

The new helix is there thanks to a small army of stonemasons, well-wishers and pizza makers. Photo by Tommy Gardner

This story by Aaron Calvin was first published in News & Citizen on July 3.

A Morristown sculptor whose roadside artwork was destroyed when a commercial truck hit it three years ago has reached a settlement with the insurance company over the value of the destroyed stones.

In April 2022, the driver of an Isuzu street sweeper fell asleep at the wheel on Route 100 near Morrisville, crashing through the Phoenix Helix, a swirling stone sculpture built at the roadside of MyEarthwork, the home gallery of Morrisville artist Thea Alvin.

Alvin told the News & Citizen at the time that the driver had been working all night and was tired, was not injured and sincerely apologized, but emphasized the loss she had suffered in the incident.

“It was a very important part of my identity as a sculptor, as an inventor — defiant and strong and a little insecure, a little imperfect, beautiful and steady and heavy and profound but also carefree,” she said at the time. “When it was crashed into, it felt like my identity was broken.”

Stonemason friends ended up coming to her aid and a new Phoenix Helix rose from the ashes, but a battle with the insurer of her work was more protracted. Three years after the sculpture was destroyed, Alvin said she has finally reached a settlement over the value of the artwork and concluded a disagreement over how the piece should be assessed.

Prior to the final mediation session, she posted on social media that she was close to settling with the insurance company over whether the destroyed sculpture should be considered art or just a stone wall.

“I have stood my ground that art is art, even if it is, especially, if it is, made of stone,” Alvin said.

The settlement was reached in mid-June, but Alvin — after conferring with legal counsel — declined to share the specific terms, prior to leaving to teach stone wall restoration on a private island in Brittany, France.

Alvin confirmed that a monetary compensation was reached, though not for the full appraised value of the work. She also confirmed that the insurer acknowledged that the Phoenix Helix’s value was due to its status as a work of art and not just a wall.

The destruction of the stone wall hasn’t been the only time a driver has veered onto her property off the busy nearby highway; Alvin said an errant driver recently took out her apple tree.

Alvin is well-recognized for her art both locally and internationally, though she’s made more headlines recently for her efforts to preserve open space along the Route 100 corridor. She’s led an effort to oppose the approval of a sprawling new industrial park planned across from the Morrisville-Stowe Airport under Vermont’s environmental regulatory law and put her skills to use in the effort by building handmade dioramas to illustrate the potential impact the development would have on the land.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Morristown sculptor settles over damage to roadside attraction.

4th seizure of horses from Townshend farm highlights animal welfare system’s ongoing gaps

Sun, 06 Jul 2025 10:51:00 +0000

One of 39 horses seized from Friesians of Majesty on Tuesday, June 17, 2025. Photo Courtesy of Jen Straub, executive director of Dorset Equine Rescue

Two weeks after the state confiscated 39 horses from a horse farm in Townshend, all the horses are stable, but some have a longer “road to recovery” than others, according to Jen Straub, executive director of Dorset Equine Rescue.

The two horses with critical condition when seized from Friseians of Majesty are still in a veterinary hospital as of Wednesday — a gelding with severe dental issues due to lack of routine dental care and a mare with an acute hoof abscess, Straub said.

The majority of horses are healing from some combination of lice, mites, roundworm infection and a skin fungus called rain rot.

“That’s all just due to neglect, not getting proper grooming and bathing, not getting regular care,” Straub said.

After the fourth and largest seizure of horses from the Friesians of Majesty horse farm in two years, Windham County State’s Attorney Steven Brown said the ongoing animal cruelty investigation is a “fairly unique case.”

The horse farm’s owner, Rober Labrie, pleaded not guilty to criminal charges of animal cruelty and violations of conditions of release on June 18.

The state is exploring options including a permanent or temporary order barring Labrie from possessing horses, Brown said. The state attempted to request that Labrie turn over the horses still on his property to a third party as a condition of his release at an arraignment hearing, but that motion was denied by the judge due to lack of authority to issue the order, he said.

The first seizure in July 2023 has been adjudicated, and those 13 horses have been forfeited to be rehomed, Brown said. The second forfeiture request by the state, after 20 horses were seized in September 2024, is also still pending. The state also seized two horses from the farm in June of 2024. In the second forfeiture case, the state filed 16 misdemeanor animal cruelty charges under Vermont’s animal cruelty statute related to the condition of the 20 horses.

The state will file another forfeiture order for the most recent seizure to begin the process of finding permanent homes for the 39 horses, according to Brown. He expressed gratitude for the rescue agencies that have assisted the Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department and taken in horses.

Since the most recent seizure, 25 of the 39 horses have been relocated from their first stop at Dorset Equine Rescue to the Gentle Giants horse farm in Maryland. They are “visibly looking better in even just a week,” said Lorin Grey, the director of growth at Gentle Giants.

“They’re starting to gain weight,” Grey said. “They’re out on pasture and have access to hay, feed, grain, so they are all doing well and settling in, and we’re starting to address any specific medical issues.”

Grey said the organization was contacted by Vermont’s animal welfare partners for help because some stallions needed “specialized housing and individualized turnout,” a practice of allowing horses to graze in a pasture or paddock.

Gentle Giants horse farm is “one of the only rescues on the Eastern Seaboard that are equipped to house a large number of stallions and a large number of horses in general,” she said.

The Maryland horse farm also took in seven stallions after the seizure from Friesians of Majesty in September 2024. Those horses have all now recovered, but Grey said they were “several hundred pounds underweight” and many had “ongoing, longtime skin issues that hadn’t been addressed.”

The Maine State Society for the Protection of Animals took in six horses on June 20 after they were originally transferred to Dorset Equine Rescue. Peg Keyser, the society’s advancement director, said the horses’ body condition scores were between 1 and 2 — the low end of the scale. Keyser said the horses’ feet and teeth were neglected and their skin was riddled with ticks and parasites, and in at least one case “raging dermatitis.”

The horses have already seen improvement since arriving and are going through veterinary evaluations and refeeding processes tailored to the horses’ individual challenges, Keyser said. But, the neglect and malnourishment the horses experienced for an unknown amount of time has caused compounded stress and chronic health conditions that will likely have lasting effects, she said.

A more efficient and effective system

Rep. Chea Waters Evans, D-Charlotte, said the previous seizures at the Townshend horse farm, along with the death of goats within her district in 2023, drew attention to the shortcomings of the state’s animal welfare system.

Those two cases prompted Waters Evans to cosponsor H.626, which was signed into law in June 2024. The law created a Division of Animal Welfare, a new governmental arm tasked with creating a more efficient and effective animal welfare system, she said.

“There are a lot of people who were trying to solve similar problems in a parallel fashion, instead of collaborating together,” Waters Evans said. “Hopefully if we have a more streamlined system, we’ll be able to stop some of these problems before they start.”

Lisa Milot, the state’s newly appointed division director, said she does not have a formal role in the active animal cruelty investigation, but is tasked with creating a comprehensive plan to improve the state’s animal welfare system in the coming months.

Milot said Vermont has lacked uniformity and a clear process for law enforcement entities in different parts of the state. There is a need to strengthen and simplify the process of reporting, investigating and seeking recourse through the courts in animal cruelty cases, she said.

“There’s no real consistency in how the cases are handled,” Milot said. “There’s some large cases that have come up in recent years, and (the state) wants both a better approach to investigating and prosecuting them, but also to, long term, preventing these sorts of cases.”

Milot said animal owners accused of animal cruelty are still allowed to own and breed animals while cases are pending because of the presumption of innocence unless proven guilty.

Along with a general backlog of cases in the Vermont courts since the Covid-19 pandemic, Milot said animal cruelty cases can take years to complete because crimes against humans are prioritized over property related crimes.

Horses and other animals are considered by the state to be “special property,” so animal cruelty cases are litigated before crimes related to inanimate objects. Milot said the “biggest thing that would help with rescues, with the state expense on these cases is speeding up the rate at which the animal can be rehomed.”

Milot said there is no state-run impound center to house animals during animal cruelty cases in Vermont, and that would be very expensive to create. Partner rescue groups must foot the bill to house, feed, care and treat medical conditions of seized horses before they are forfeited and can be adopted, she said.

Milot said she has been reviewing the animal welfare laws in other states, such as legislation to expedite animal cruelty cases and reduce some of the cost burden on rescue agencies. Her goal is to “come up with a plan and procedures that can help alleviate those sorts of strains, but without causing extra strains on taxpayers,” she said.

Straub, of Dorset Rescue, said there has been productive collaboration between her rescue and the state investigators at the Fish & Wildlife Department and law enforcement. But, she said would like to see more attention and investment in the state’s animal welfare system overall.

“There’s a lack of resources for implementing the laws. There needs to be more people that have time to go do welfare checks and follow through on these neglect cases,” Straub said. “There are a lot of animals suffering across the state, and it’s not being dealt with as timely as it should be.”

The Fish & Wildlife Department, the Agency of Agriculture Food & Markets and the Vermont State Police all declined to comment due to the ongoing animal cruelty investigation.

Labrie’s attorney also said she could not comment while the case is active, and Labrie did not respond to requests for comment.

Read the story on VTDigger here: 4th seizure of horses from Townshend farm highlights animal welfare system’s ongoing gaps.

On the eve of his sophomore release, Vermont singer-songwriter Greg Freeman’s star is rising higher

Sat, 05 Jul 2025 10:51:00 +0000

Musician Greg Freeman at home in Burlington on Monday, June 30. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger

It took a little time for Greg Freeman’s debut record to really make its mark.

The Burlington-based singer-songwriter released “I Looked Out” in July 2022 on the tiny Oregon label Bud Tapes to little fanfare and sparse reviews. About five months later, Freeman and his band took the record on tour outside of Vermont.

By then, the album had begun to develop a following, an authentic word-of-mouth success that has gradually picked up steam, making Freeman something of a cult figure among those in the know.

“The reception was pretty slow building, I guess,” Freeman said recently, reclining on the porch of his Burlington home, one of the many faded clapboard houses that line the city’s downtown streets.

Just a few weeks prior, the Vermont musician had returned from his first extended tour in Europe, where he was pleasantly surprised by the turnout he generated.

“People came to the Paris show,” Freeman said, nodding happily. “The England shows that we did were really great too.”

Last fall, Freeman was signed to Canvasback, an imprint of Transgressive Records, which promptly reissued “I Looked Out” on vinyl.

In August, the label is releasing Freeman’s second LP, “Burnover,” which is poised to be a career defining success, the kind of thing you could hear blasting in dorm rooms and dive bars alike for the rest of the year.

Musician Greg Freeeman. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger

It’s a sprawling, dreamlike collection of elegant indie gems and hard rock epics, anchored by razor sharp guitar riffs and the distinctly airy voice that has earned Freeman comparisons to Neil Young and Jason Molina, of Songs: Ohia fame.

Freeman said he wrote a good portion of the album in a single sprint, a month long period after his first tour for “I Looked Out” that he spent hunkering down with his guitar back in Vermont.

“I just woke up in this house every day, and everyone was at work, and I played music and watched movies all day long,” Freeman said, looking across his porch. “I think once you do that for long enough, things start flowing better.”

Shortly thereafter, a steady stream of retrospective praise for his debut and raucous live performances began to lay a long runway for the new album’s arrival.

Last spring, he and his band appeared at South by Southwest and were singled out in subsequent coverage of the Texas music festival.

Write ups in Paste, Stereogum and Rolling Stone have since followed, with some heralding Freeman as the next MJ Lenderman — the 26-year old Asheville-based musician and current golden boy of indie rock.

Freeman has also been getting invitations to share the stage with larger names. Prior to his jaunt in Europe, he supported Walkmen singer Hamilton Leithausser for a stretch of his solo tour, and in the Fall he’ll be opening for the iconic indie band Grandaddy for a series of shows in the Northeast.

Freeman grew up in Bethesda, Maryland, playing guitar in his room while nursing an obsession with traditional blues greats like Robert Johnson and Blind Lemon Jefferson from an early age.

The White Stripes, with their Son House covers and blues-inflected garage jams, served as a gateway drug from the early masters to the classic rock and contemporary indie records that Freeman began to favor more throughout high school and college. “That was the first, like, contemporary band that I was super into,” he said.

Before attending the University of Vermont, he took a gap year and played alone at open mics across the country, often sleeping in his car as he hopped from town to town.

When Freeman finally arrived in Burlington in 2017, he was bowled over by the vitality of the local music scene. “I came here and everyone was in bands, and there was so much music everywhere,” Freeman said. “That was really a first for me.”

Freeman joined the fray, playing basement shows before moving up to venues like Radio Bean and Artsriot, where he mostly performed as a solo artist backed by many of the musicians that remain in his band today.

Musician Greg Freeman. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger

In the years since, Freeman has stayed around the Queen City, becoming a mainstay in the city’s burgeoning indie scene alongside friends and contemporaries like the band Robber Robber and singer-songwriter Lily Seabird, who played with Freeman’s band for several years.

With its tight-knit social scene and sprawling bucolic surroundings, Burlington is, for Freeman, a city of contradictions that has given him much of his material. Scraps of overheard dialogue make it into his work, as do shades of the more complicated social dynamics that come with living in such a small city.

“There’s kind of like a suffocating social environment here sometimes,” he said, grinning. “But then there’s also, you know, so much green, beautiful space.”

The odd contrast is something Freeman said he tried to evoke in Burnover. For all its catchy hooks and colorful guitars, the record is a study in the peculiar feeling of loneliness that you get from never quite being alone.

“My thoughts die out slowly on the blood swept plains / where I see you every night,” Freeman sings on “Curtain,” one of the singles from the record.

Rejecting the term “concept album,” Freeman said that “Burnover” was more intentionally cohesive than his last, with sonic motifs and language that recur throughout.

Musician Greg Freeman at home in Burlington on Monday. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger

“I want you to be able to visualize a certain place when you listen to the whole thing,” he said.

The place isn’t Vermont or New England exactly, he said, but something similar, something green, gothic, weird.

“I’m always kind of trying to write about the places where I live — the spaces around me and the people around me,” he said.

Accordingly, whatever comes after “Burnover” could represent a change of pace for the Vermont musician.

Before he accompanied Leithauser on tour, he headed to New Mexico, where he

Brissia Hernandez and Heidi Perez: Students like us will finally be able to go to college in the state

Fri, 04 Jul 2025 11:07:00 +0000

This commentary is by Brissia Hernandez of Enosburg and Heidi Perez of Milton, members of Migrant Justice who have recently graduated from high school. Heidi Perez is currently in immigration detention after being detained by Border Patrol.

Going to high school in Vermont is really hard when you don’t speak English. We both moved here a couple of years ago to be with our families. We had to leave behind everything that we knew and start completely over: new classes, new friends, new language, new country.

Everything here is very different. People judge you for being an immigrant. We both got lost on the way to class at first, and it was really hard to ask for help. It all makes you feel so alone. At first, they don’t even put you in classes with other students.

But finally, with an interpreter to help, we could start going to normal classes, although it was only in Spanish class that we could talk normally. And now that a few more immigrant students are coming to our schools, we at least have some other classmates who understand.

When we first moved to Vermont, there was basically no hope for students like us to go to college, even though we have been dreaming of it since we were little. College helps you grow as a person and learn so many new things. It gets you ready to help other people and support your community. It helps you get over your fears and be a better person. It helps you become someone important.

Our parents came to this country and work hard every day to fight for a better life for us. But college is really expensive. It wasn’t until last year that we could really hope to make our dreams of going to college come true. Last January, a group of immigrant activists called Migrant Justice started going to the Statehouse to talk with legislators about making college more accessible for students like us.

We both got involved because our moms are community leaders with Migrant Justice. It was weird at first to be there. From the outside, the Statehouse looks like a big castle. But we knew how important it was to be there.

Together, we explained the discrimination that we face and also the dreams that we have. We even talked to reporters and gave interviews that got played on TV. Even though it made us nervous to be in front of so many cameras, we shared our stories because it’s important that our community and our voices are heard.

And we won! Last May, the bill that we fought so hard to pass got signed into law by Gov. Phil Scott. On July 1, 2025, it finally went into effect.

Students like us will finally be able to go to college in the state. We’ll be treated like any other Vermonter and pay the same in-state tuition rates. We will be able to get the same scholarships to help pay for college. These changes will let us go to college in Vermont, close to our families, instead of being separated again.

We still don’t know what we want to be when we grow up. Maybe a dentist. Maybe an architect. Maybe organizers like our moms. Or maybe a plastic surgeon like on Brissia’s favorite TV show. But now we have the chance to find out.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Brissia Hernandez and Heidi Perez: Students like us will finally be able to go to college in the state.

Nancy Zimny: Recreational trails affect nature and wildlife

Fri, 04 Jul 2025 11:04:00 +0000

This commentary is by Nancy Zimny of Richmond.

What Vermonter has not enjoyed the thrill of a fast downhill ski run, the adrenalin of a mountain bike turn, the wonderful exhaustion after a long hike or cross-country ski, the quiet pleasure of a walk in the woods or the “awesomeness” of the view from a mountaintop? Outdoor recreation feeds our spirit, strengthens our bodies, often supports the local economy, and therefore has exploded in popularity.

Consequently, Vermont communities face pressure to provide more access to more land to accommodate more outdoor recreation opportunities. And providing human access for outdoor recreation usually means trails.

Because the effects of recreation trail traffic on wildlife and nature are often more subtle and indirect, and not as immediately visible to the human eye as other activities like housing, logging or road construction, recreational trails may seem to have relatively little environmental impact, promoting conservation over development — a “win-win” situation: good for us and good for nature.

Is our human use of recreational trails as benign or beneficial as many outdoor recreationists, the public and even some land stewards seem to believe? This attractive premise is accepted readily as true, and the underlying “win-win” assumption is so ubiquitous that few question its validity.

But scientific concerns about the impact of recreational trails on wildlife and natural habits have existed since the 1980s. Trails essentially provide a gateway for what are called cumulative effects to occur. These are persistent, repetitive, seemingly inconsequential — but ultimately negative — stresses on wildlife and nature caused by a high volume of recreational traffic. And these effects can occur well beyond the physical trail itself — in zones of influence that surround the trail.

Trails have various possible effects. Habitats fragmented by recreational activity can disturb key animal movement patterns. Human presence alone can affect where and how wildlife live, forage and procreate by inducing repetitive flushing and flight behaviors. This imposes an increase in energy demands that increases animals’ stress and mortality — especially if it occurs during winter or other periods of limited food — and may decrease nest fidelity, or drive habitat abandonment.

Behavioral alterations associated with breeding and prey-predator relationships in plant and animal species can occur. Ultimately, species fitness, sustainability and diversity are compromised.

We use recreational trails in a variety of ways — walking, running, hiking, skiing or biking. Some behaviors. such as having dogs on or off leash, loud sounds, hikers cutting switchbacks, or bikers creating rogue trails, are likely to exacerbate problems. But even well-behaved trail recreationists can’t negate the conservation impact of repetitive high-volume use, and newer recreation technology that may further stress wildlife and nature.

No type of outdoor recreation can escape its responsibility in producing trail-based effects on conservation. However, the exponential rise in mountain biking draws particular attention to its role. Its popularity alone drives an intensive push for more trails to accommodate growing numbers of participants, and since bicycles allow people to go farther into the land’s interior, any negative effects on conservation are spread more broadly, potentially extending into areas that used to otherwise provide safe refuge for wildlife from human activity.

Furthermore, characteristics that humans consider highly desirable in mountain biking, such as separate trails for ascent and descent, loops, maximizing variety and technical challenges, and inter-connectivity of trails to form extensive networks, are all ancillary features that expand the human footprint and its effects on wildlife and habitat.

The call for “sustainable” trail-building within the mountain biking community is directed primarily at issues of soil erosion and water drainage — a laudable nod to conservation of the trails themselves — but these efforts alone do little to minimize the human impact on wildlife and habitat that more “sustainable” trails still invoke.

Many outdoor recreationists likely consider themselves conservationists. However, given the constellation of positive health, pleasure and economic factors that drive the popularity of outdoor recreation today, it is not surprising that any recreation trail-based concerns about impact on wildlife and habitat — even though known for many years — have gained little traction in the minds of outdoor recreationists or the public.

Attention to human impact of recreation trails on wildlife and habitat is growing. Studying it presents some logistical and scientific challenges. Still, just because we don’t know everything, doesn’t mean we know nothing.

In systematic literature reviews of the impact of recreation on wildlife, most show a generally negative effect that includes impact not only on well-recognized mammals, but also insects, herpetofauna, and birds.

Other studies reveal the negative effect of human presence on wildlife is potentially stronger, more widespread, or serious than humans are aware of or are willing to believe, and that human interpretation of wildlife behavior can be fraught with inaccuracy. Certainly, enough information already exists to warrant significant skepticism that trail-based recreation is either innocuous or benign.

Trail-based recreation benefits humans. But when land management decisions about trail development are being made in our towns, we humans need to choose reality over wishful thinking. We need to be mindful of the potential impact our personal outdoor recreational activities have on nature and wildlife habitats, and stay wary of the power of our anthropocentric beliefs that may lead us to ignore or dismiss scientific knowledge about what nature truly needs.

If we cannot be honest, humble or smart enough to do so, we risk making a dangerous Faustian bargain that may have enormous human appeal in the short term, but over time, will inevitably reveal itself as a very bad deal for nature and us.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Nancy Zimny: Recreational trails affect nature and wildlife.

8 Vermonters: A plea from rural Vermont — our education system Is not the enemy

Fri, 04 Jul 2025 11:01:00 +0000

This commentary is by Seth and Kate Leach of Pawlet, Hanna Fay of Pawlet, Shawn and Sara Gingue of Waterford, Jeremy Russo of Rupert, and Christopher Smid and Hilary Solomon of Middletown Springs.

For the past year (and more), we have watched while Vermonters concerned about the cost and quality of education have debated the knotty issue of education finance reform. We have been saddened to see various groups (such as the Friends of Vermont Public Education) leverage this important public debate as an opportunity to attack our unique education system and our local independent schools. These efforts do nothing other than take educational opportunities away from our kids in rural communities like ours.

With the passage of H.454, we hope that all Vermonters — including those of us in the communities historically served by independent schools—can recognize that our leaders in Montpelier may have come up with a cure that isn’t worse than the disease. One that encourages efficiencies that don’t come at the cost of excellence and equity, and that does not “fix” our state’s education affordability crisis by requiring areas like ours to spend money we don’t have on new schools we don’t need.

In a line that runs diagonally from Bennington County in the southwest all the way up to the Northeast Kingdom, independent schools have stepped in, not to compete with public schools, but to fill gaps in the public system.

These independent schools have pioneered programs to support students living in poverty, and offer alternative paths to graduation for kids who might otherwise drop out. They have strong anti-discrimination policies, restorative justice practices that keep kids in school and high academic standards that prepare students for the futures they want to build.

All that for kids, like ours, from families who wouldn’t dream of trying to find five figures a year to pay elementary or high school tuition. Our children have incredible learning opportunities — nurturing teachers, AP classes, internships, travel opportunities, International Baccalaureate classes — because our tax dollars go to these independent schools, most of which raise money themselves to make up the difference and pay for the buildings and tools they need to teach.

To be clear, we’re not talking about a “voucher” system, taking dollars from existing public schools — we’re talking about town tuition going to approved independent schools where public school grades don’t exist.

We literally didn’t build the public schools that our independent schools are supposedly competing with unfairly; we didn’t need to. We don’t want to now. Why spend tens of millions of dollars duplicating resources we already have, especially when the crisis Vermont education is facing is a fiscal one?

There is no question that Vermont’s school funding model has been in dire need of reform, and we support the notion of more efficient administration, and even the painful truth that some schools may have to close. But there is no reason to target independent schools that have stepped in to fill an educational void for our students in rural Vermont, and have done so cost-effectively and incredibly well.

The framework agreed upon is a starting point, and the devil is always in the details; clearly, the process of designing the new districts will be yet another opportunity for those who don’t understand these independent schools to try to eliminate them. But in this moment, we are incredibly grateful to all those in the state house who stayed focused on the real financial issues facing our entire system, and were unwilling to scapegoat the incredible schools that serve our kids with misinformation and rhetoric that simply does not align with the facts.

To everyone who’ll have a hand in this process going forward, please just remember the immortal advice of the great teacher Hippoccrates: first, do no harm.

Read the story on VTDigger here: 8 Vermonters: A plea from rural Vermont — our education system Is not the enemy.

Residents opposed to South Burlington housing development file petition and appeal to City Council

Fri, 04 Jul 2025 10:57:00 +0000

Photo via the Other Paper

Neighbors who have long opposed a proposed housing project adjacent to the 110-acre Wheeler Nature Park in South Burlington are now appealing to the city’s elected board.

After their latest arguments opposing a 32-unit mixed housing project were dismissed by the Vermont Supreme Court last month, more than 290 residents have signed a petition calling on the City Council to buy back the 7-acre parcel or encourage landowner JAM Golf, LLC, to donate it back to the city.

The council has not discussed the project since the parcel at the intersection of Dorset Street and Park Road was created as part of a settlement with JAM Golf in 2015, according to James Marc Leas, an appellant and neighbor who has fought against development there.

“But now things have really changed in South Burlington because there wasn’t even a glimmer of thought that we would fill up CityCenter. … It was just a dirt road then,” he said, arguing the project would be better situated farther away from the nature park that has the “last remaining views of the Green Mountains from anywhere along Dorset Street in South Burlington.”

The project aims to build a mix of duplexes, single-story carriage homes and two-story single-family homes with roadway and utility access on the undeveloped 6.9-acre parcel, Benjamin Avery, president of construction and development at BlackRock Construction LLC, said at the time.

BlackRock Construction won development review board approval to build on the land in 2021 and cleared the state’s Act 250 permit in 2022, but the state permit was soon appealed by a group of 125 neighbors and the Neighbors Committee to Stop Neighborhood Blasting.

It has been tied up in environmental court since, with more than 26 competing motions entered and ruled upon by the court. Last month, the Vermont Supreme Court ruled in favor of the developer.

The site of the proposed development at 550 Park Road. Map via Google

The petition filed by residents last week claims the proposed development will destroy the wide trail, obscure the last remaining views of the hills, endanger park wildlife, and, most notably, lead to disruptive drilling and blasting of the rock ledge.

“JAM Golf is a private company and should not be allowed to develop on preserved Nature Park Land for such destructive private purposes. It is morally wrong for it to do so, and it sets a dangerous precedent for all developers who see green spaces as potential sources of private income that can be taken from the public,” the petition stated.

The developer did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The city acquired the 110-acre nature park in 1992. It consists of mixed forest, grasslands, shrublands, wetlands, about 2 miles of walking trails, a tree nursery and a 14-acre Wheeler Homestead area that includes community garden plots for rent. City planning documents have referred to it as “the green lungs of the City Center.”

Kitty Cameron, one of many South Burlington residents opposed to the proposed development adjacent to the nature park, speaks at a city council meeting on June 27, 2025. Screenshot

The Wheeler parcel at 550 Park Road was created in 2017 as part of a settlement agreement between the city and James McDonald, who still owns the property through a limited liability corporation called JAM Golf. It is one of several developments approved in the original master plan for the Vermont National Country Club and golf course over 434 acres.

“Overpriced apartment complexes,” such as the proposed, can be particularly detrimental where there is a real need for affordable housing, said Kitty Cameron, one of a handful of residents who shared her views at the June 27 City Council meeting.

She said the impact would be devastating to the beauty and wildlife of the adjoining park that she and her partner visit daily. She is also concerned about how construction runoff could affect the fragile ecosystem there.

“There’s just so much to treasure in that space,” she said, urging the council to take a pause and really assess the long-term impact of the project.

Jeanne Zagursky, who presented the petition, said residents want to avoid creating a precedent of cutting up and developing portions of a nature park that’s supposed to be preserved in perpetuity.

The council accepted the petition last week and is considering an executive session July 7 “for the purposes of discussing the negotiation or securing of real estate purchase or lease options, and specifically the JAM Golf parcel,” according to the posted agenda.

With approvals in place for 550 Park Road, the property owner is now free to seek a zoning permit for site work, such as building the road and then building the homes, according to Paul Connor, director of planning and zoning for the city.

“We’ve not received any of those yet, so I don’t have a timeline,” he said. “But they could come whenever they’re ready.”

As City Center grows so does the need for this parkland to be preserved, said Leas, who likened the spot to New York City’s Central Park.

“Hundreds of residents think it’s worth a try,” he wrote in an email.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Residents opposed to South Burlington housing development file petition and appeal to City Council.

Federal lawsuit alleges warrant error led to pregnant Vermont woman’s unconstitutional arrest

Fri, 04 Jul 2025 10:55:00 +0000

A Brattleboro police cruiser. Photo by Kevin O’Connor/VTDigger

A federal lawsuit filed on Sunday alleges that a mistake in a warrant caused the unconstitutional arrest of a pregnant Vermont woman who shared the same name as the suspect in a case involving a death from heroin overdose.

Court documents allege that on July 13, 2022, Alicia Kelley, the plaintiff in the case, was arrested at her home in front of her children and parents by Orleans County Sheriff Jennifer Harlow and a deputy, based on a warrant incorrectly filed by the defendant, Brattleboro Det. Lt. Greg Eaton.

Kelley “became distraught, panicked, and was brought to tears,” according to the lawsuit filed by her attorney, Brian Marsicovetere, in the U.S. District Court of Vermont on June 30. “Her parents and children were home and observed the arrest,” becoming “very upset.”

Kelley was then held overnight in Northern State Correctional Facility in Newport, Vermont on a $25,000 bond. The Orleans County Sheriff’s department then “posted a statement containing the details of the arrest on social media, which was viewed by members of (Kelley’s) community,” according to the lawsuit.

The circumstances leading to Kelley’s arrest began over four years earlier.

On June 8, 2018, Brianna Radcliffe, 21, overdosed on heroin in the bathroom of a Dunkin’ Donuts in Brattleboro, dying a few days later in the hospital.

Following Radcliffe’s death, Detective Greg Eaton began investigating the circumstances of her overdose. With the manager of the Dunkin’, Eaton reviewed the surveillance tapes of the heroin deal that would end Radcliffe’s life. According to court filing, the manager recognized the dealer in the footage as a former employee of his: Alicia Kelley.

On May 20, 2019, almost a year after Radcliffe’s death, Eaton applied for a warrant, charging Kelley with selling narcotics that resulted in death.

But according to the lawsuit, Eaton allegedly identified the wrong Kelley in the warrant.

Court documents reveal that while the women share the same full name — Alicia Kelley — the two were born about half a year apart in 1988. The date of birth of the plaintiff is in the fall while the date of birth of the former Dunkin’ employee who allegedly sold the heroin is in the spring.

When the Vermont Superior Court issued the warrant, plaintiff Kelley’s birth date was written on it, despite never having met Brianna Radcliffe, according to the complaint.

In the complaint, her lawyer, Marsicovetere, alleges Eaton had access to information that would have clearly differentiated the women.

“No attempt was made to compare physical attributes based on Vermont DMV or other available state databases. The Defendant did not take any steps to confirm he correctly identified Alicia M. Kelley in the arrest warrant application,” court documents read.

Eaton, who is being represented by McNeil, Leddy & Sheahan, P.C. of Burlington, declined to comment on the allegations in the lawsuit.

At her arraignment, plaintiff Kelley pleaded not guilty. The judge reduced her bail to $10,000, which her parents paid with the help of a bondsman, according to the complaint.

According to court documents, after the State of Vermont learned that the warrant contained the wrong birth date, the state “filed a motion in the Vermont Superior Court to vacate all of Plaintiff’s bail conditions,” and amended the warrant to contain the birth date for the Kelley who is actually suspected of plying Radcliffe with the fatal heroin dose.

Plaintiff Kelley’s case against Eaton accuses him of unlawful seizure under the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. She is seeking compensatory and punitive damages, as well as attorney’s fees.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Federal lawsuit alleges warrant error led to pregnant Vermont woman’s unconstitutional arrest.

Who will lead Rutland’s Rec Department? Mayor’s move sparks ongoing controversy.

Fri, 04 Jul 2025 10:53:00 +0000

Heather Brouillard joins a group of protesters demonstrating their support for Kim Peters, the recently fired superintendent of Rutland’s Parks and Recreation Department, on Friday, June 27. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger

RUTLAND — On Friday afternoon, a woman in a red sedan waved and honked her horn as she pulled up to a stoplight in front of city hall, exciting a woman who held a sign reading “Honk 4 Kim.” The people gathered there were supporters of Kim Peters — and they were still making noise three months after the mayor put the longtime director of the city’s rec department on paid leave.

Alaura McClallen, organizer of the group, recognized the driver as a fellow parent. She, like McClallen, sent her kids to a summer camp run by the recreation department. When the light turned green, other drivers sounded their horns, some pumping their fists out the window.

It was the second demonstration of the week for the small group, and the most recent event in a long saga of controversy over the ousting of Kim Peters.

After Rutland Mayor Mike Doenges’s reelection, he announced that he would not reappoint Peters as the city’s recreation superintendent this year, prompting a public outcry and confusion that has lasted for months.

In private, Doenges explained his decision to the city’s Board of Aldermen with claims that Peters didn’t do proper background checks of recreation department volunteers and employees, according to public records obtained by VTDigger. But Doenges hasn’t been forthcoming about that reason publicly.

His statements to residents broadly cite his lack of trust in Peters, leaving many skeptical that he has a legitimate reason for forcing her out of the position. Now she remains on paid leave until the role is filled.

With public disapproval simmering since March, the city’s Board of Aldermen recently sidestepped Doenges and voted to reappoint Peters on June 16. But soon after the city attorney said the vote was invalid — and officials are not on the same page about what happens next.

Protestors demonstrate their support for Kim Peters, the recently fired superintendent of Rutland’s Parks and Recreation Department, on Friday, June 27. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger

Background Checks

Back in January, the Rutland Herald published a story that revealed two volunteers for the rec department have criminal records. In the article, Peters said she conducts background checks on all employees and volunteers in the department, but admitted she was unaware of one criminal charge before being informed by the newspaper.

Doenges sent a letter to Peters on March 18 stating she was “placed on administrative leave effective immediately,” according to public records obtained by VTDigger. She would be barred from city buildings and unable to discuss her leave, but would remain on the city’s payroll until the position was permanently filled, records show.

Members of the Board of Aldermen were notified of her leave that day but not offered any explanation, according to city emails obtained by VTDigger. Many board members said they were struck by the decision and caught off guard. Shortly after, Doenges appointed April Cioffi as acting superintendent of the city’s recreation department.

“This has been a very difficult time for Kim Peters,” said Larry Cupoli, a member of the Board of Aldermen and part of the search committee to fill Peters’ role. “Frankly, she’s probably the best thing that’s ever happened to the city,” he added.

Peters declined to comment.

Doenges also declined to comment on his interactions with Peters. He said city attorney Megan LaChance advised him not to speak publicly about personnel matters.

“There was a trust relationship that was broken between myself and the superintendent,” Doenges said in an interview.

But in a March executive session, a meeting closed to the public, Doenges explained his reasoning to board members. He wrote a speech for that meeting in which, public records show, he alleged Peters lied about the department’s practice of running background checks. Doenges read the speech to board members, he said.

“I was directly and intentionally deceived,” wrote Doenges in bold, with “deceived” underlined.

In that written speech, Doenges said that after reading the Rutland Herald article in January, he dug into the city’s records and found out Peters hadn’t been doing proper background checks. Doenges claims Peters lied both to the newspaper and to him a number of times, then tried to cover it up afterward.

“That’s not following procedure — that’s scrambling to fix the appearance of one,” Doenges wrote.

“Imagine your child is coached by someone who seems perfectly fine. But we, as a city, skipped a critical step; and didn’t run a proper background check. // That coach hurts your child. And then you find out it could have been prevented,” he wrote later on.

The city is an institution that must keep children safe — and without background checks, children are at risk, Doenges said. In his speech, Doenges cited the oversight lapses of the Boy Scouts and the Catholic Church, both institutions notorious for sexual abuse claims.

VTDigger asked Doenges why he drew connections between those institutions and Rutland City. “It’s not based on anything,” Doenges said. The city is a trusted organization and officials have to “do our part at all times to make sure that we are taking care of the citizens that are in our care,” he said.

In his written speech, Doenges said he refuses to be someone who looks the other way when child safety is neglected. “I imagined the worst-case scenarios — because that’s what the job requires,” Doenges wrote in his speech.

‘It still did not make any sense’

Even after Doenges’ explanation, many city officials said they couldn’t get behind his decision.

“Some of us — most of us — didn’t buy it,” said Sharon Davis, who also sits on the Board of Aldermen, in a recent interview. “It still did not make any sense knowing Kim and the reputation she had.”

On April 8, Peters reached out to Doenges and formally asked to be reappointed to her position, public records show. Then, on April 11, Peters emailed the city attorney to ask if she could communicate with city officials and recreation department employees — LaChance, the attorney, sent her a cease-and-desist letter, records show.

That same day, Doenges published an op-ed in the Rutland Herald, stating that he didn’t reappoint Peters because he lacked trust in her. The op-ed never mentioned a specific concern related to background checks.

McClallen, who organized the recent city hall demonstrations, thinks the whole dispute between Doenges and Peters feels personal. “It makes me sad,” she said.

“I never ever mistrusted her,” even after hearing Doenges’ concerns about background checks, McClallen said.

If McClallen had known Doenges wasn’t going to reappoint Peters, she said, she wouldn’t have voted for him. Dozens of other people have emailed city officials in the last few months urging them to reappoint Peters, according to public records obtained by VTDigger.

In emails, some residents complain Doenges wasn’t more transparent with residents. Doenges thinks people are upset because they don’t have all the information about the situation, and advice from legal counsel has stopped him from sharing more, he said.

A contested vote

Near the end of a June 16 Board of Aldermen meeting, member Paul Clifford made a motion to reappoint Kim Peters as recreation superintendent. He cited a section of the city charter that allows the board to make an appointment if the mayor doesn’t within 90 days.

The council unanimously voted to suspend the rules to allow the motion, since it wasn’t on the agenda. After taking a short recess to review voting rules and talk to LaChance, the city’s attorney, the board members voted 7-3 in favor of reappointing Peters. Board President David Allaire was the last member to vote, casting his in favor of Peters’ reappointment.

Doenges said that after the vote he called Peters and offered her the position. Then on June 18 LaChance sent board members a memo outlining a number of missteps in the voting procedure.

Two of those missteps made the vote invalid, LaChance wrote.

As board president, Allaire should’ve made the motion for reappointment and “since the nomination was not properly made, the vote is invalid,” LaChance wrote. The president also should not have voted, and “the vote was invalid because President Allaire could not vote on the motion,” she wrote.

After receiving the memo from LaChance, Doenges called Peters and revoked the job offer, he said.

Now some board members think the vote still stands.

“The mayor can accept the fact that Kim Peters has been reappointed by seven members of the Board of Aldermen and move on,” said Davis, who voted to reappoint Peters. Otherwise, the mayor will have to take legal action, she said.

Doenges said he was unsure what taking legal action might look like. “I’m proceeding as if the vote was invalid because that’s what my legal counsel has told us,” he said.

Others have accepted LaChance’s legal interpretation and plan on working with Doenges to move forward. It would be possible for the Board of Aldermen to vote on the matter again, but some members think that move is unlikely.

The search committee to find a new superintendent is still active and ongoing, Doenges said. Clifford told VTDigger he decided to step down from the committee given all the fallout.

Some have gotten sick of the controversy. “It’s not good for Rutland,” said Michael Talbott, a member of the Board of Aldermen who voted against Peters’ reappointment.

City emails obtained by VTDigger show employees scrambling within the recreation department to fill Peters’ shoes, struggling with logistics and to find needed resources without contacting Kim.

McClallen said that while she doesn’t like to be political, she thinks the majority of the town still supports Peters.

The recreation department “needs a leader,” said McClallen that Friday in June in front of City Hall.

“The only person equipped is Kim,” she said.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Who will lead Rutland’s Rec Department? Mayor’s move sparks ongoing controversy..

Prolific children’s book author Katherine Paterson finds tragedy and redemption across Vermont

Fri, 04 Jul 2025 10:51:00 +0000

Author Katherine Paterson speaking at the Kellogg-Hubbard Library on March 27, 2025. Photo by John Lazenby

This story by Tom Mckone was first published in The Bridge on June 18.

Katherine Paterson is sitting in her Montpelier living room, doing what she does best — telling stories. Unlike the fiction she writes for children and young people, she recalls a true story about a furious woman who confronted her at a meeting.

“These books are not for children,” the woman said. “They’re too intense.”

But intensity and her refusal to write down to children are two qualities that have made Paterson a great writer. She has published more than 40 books, and she’s won even more awards than that, including two National Book Awards and two Newberry Medals. The Library of Congress named her a living legend, and she is one of only six Americans who have won the Hans Christian Andersen Award, the highest international recognition given to an author or illustrator of children’s books.

In awarding Paterson the Children’s Literature Legacy Award, and in citing “Bridge to Terabithia” in particular, the American Library Association said, “Paterson’s unflinching yet redemptive treatment of tragedy and loss helped pave the way for ever more realistic writing for young people.”

“I received a letter from a teacher who enclosed the book report of ‘the bad boy’ in her class, who had read ‘The Great Gilly Hopkins,’” Paterson says. “He said, ‘This book is a miracle.’ Miss Paterson knows exactly how children feel.”

“I carry my child self around with me all the time,” she says. “A lot of people don’t remember how intensely they felt as children.”

Peter Gill holds his daughter, Vivienne, as he and his son, Everett, talk with author Katherine Paterson, who was signing books after speaking at Montpelier’s Kellogg-Hubbard Library on Thursday, March 27. Vivienne is taking a look at Paterson’s novel “Lyddie,” which she brought to be signed. Photo by John Lazenby

Asked about her favorite Paterson book, Jane Knight, children’s book buyer at Bear Pond Books, selected the same book that the challenging student wrote about.

“Gilly was the first character in whom I could recognize myself — both my inner and outer selves,” Knight said, “someone who could be mean and crabby and full of great sorrow and longing, and also someone who could grow and change. Gilly gave me the agency and permission to be a whole human, warts and all.”

“The Day of the Pelican” and “Bread and Roses, Too,” are past Vermont Humanities Vermont Reads selections, and “Lyddie” and “Jacob Have I Loved” are perpetual favorites. However, the most popular remains, hands-down, “Bridge to Terabithia,” Paterson’s 1977 novel about two best friends, the imaginary world they create, and the tragedy one of them has to deal with.

The book has been translated into more than 25 languages, and the publishers have lost track of how many copies have been sold; Paterson says it’s “in the millions.” A 50th anniversary special edition is scheduled to come out in 2027.

During a talk at the Kellogg-Hubbard Library in March, Paterson shared how the death of her son’s friend, who was killed by lightning, sparked the story.

“I was supposed to explain to my kid why his best friend had died,” she said. “I couldn’t explain it to myself — how such a terrible tragedy could happen to this bright, funny child. But I know a story has to make sense. I began to write this story to try to make sense out of something that made no sense to me.”

A crowd gathered to hear author Katherine Paterson speak at the Kellogg-Hubbard Library in Montpelier on March 27. Photo by John Lazenby

From China to Japan, and eventually to Vermont

Paterson’s parents — George Raymond Womeldorf and Mary Elizabeth (Goetchius) Womeldorf — were missionaries in China, and that’s where she was born, in 1932. Living in China for most of her first 8 ½ years and growing up bilingual, she was reading in English by the time she was four. She went to two seminaries and did missionary work in Japan.

During a stretch back in the United States, she met her future husband, John Paterson, a minister. Years later he would take a position at a Barre church, and in 1986 they would become Vermonters. After his death in 2013, Paterson moved from the large house they had needed while raising their four children into a smaller place in Montpelier.

Paterson’s Christian faith has always been important to her and to her writing.

“If you’re a person of faith, it’s going to come out in your books somehow or other,” she says during our conversation in her living room. “You don’t put it in. It’s who you are that comes out on the page.”

Katherine Paterson, one of only six Americans to win the prestigious Hans Christian Andersen Award — the highest international recognition given to an author or illustrator of children’s books — sits in her living room in front of a desk with copies of some of her books. Photo by Tom McKone

For many years, “Bridge to Terabithia” was one of the most-often banned books. Those challenging the book objected to Paterson’s treatment of death, religion, and fantasy. Some said the portrayal of some religious families was disrespectful and that the use of the word, “lord,” outside of prayer was sacrilegious. She was accused of promoting secular humanism and atheism.

“People who banned my books were all my Christian brothers and sisters,” she says. “The problem is that they think what I should be doing is writing propaganda, and not a story. Stories are open-ended and there for the reader to interpret if there’s a lesson.”

She says banning her books is no longer a priority, since she is “straight and white,” and book banners now focus on people of color and the LGBTQ+ community.

Life experiences inspire stories

During our interview, she shares many stories, like how seeing a black-and-white photograph on the wall at the Old Labor Hall in Barre led to “Bread and Roses, Too,” the story of the 1912 Bread and Roses strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts, during which children were sent out of harm’s way to temporarily live with foster families in Barre.

She says that “Jacob Have I Loved,” which she wrote at a very difficult time in her life, is the book she is most proud of. She wrote it while her mother was dying, her husband was busy with a new job, and their four children were unhappy about a family move. They lived in a small house, so her writing space was an enclosed front porch which was “freezing in winter and boiling in summer.”

While she is grateful for the “richness” of having had loving parents, when she was growing up, she experienced “what it feels like to not have enough money to do the things many people around me were doing.”

Never speechless

At the beginning of Paterson’s memoir, “Stories of My Life,” her fellow writer and longtime friend Nancy Price Graff (who is also a regular columnist for The Bridge) wrote an introduction in which she tells how for many years she and Paterson had weekly lunches at the Wayside on the Barre-Montpelier Road.

“Over the course of our friendship,” she writes, “I have seen Katherine whoop with laughter and I have seen her cry. I have seen her playful, sad, wistful, tired, thoughtful, and most often hopeful and happy, which seems to be her natural disposition. But I have never seen her speechless. Every week there are more stories.”

During Paterson’s talk at the library, she said, “Writers now are much more in touch with children’s feelings, and much more appreciative of the intelligence of children.” What she didn’t mention is that worldwide, she is credited as one of the writers who made that happen.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Prolific children’s book author Katherine Paterson finds tragedy and redemption across Vermont.

Vermont officials estimate 45,000 people to lose health insurance under Trump’s tax bill

Fri, 04 Jul 2025 00:13:40 +0000

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., seated, surrounded by Republican members of Congress, prepares to sign President Donald Trump’s signature bill of tax breaks and spending cuts at the Capitol in Washington on Thursday, July 3 Photo by Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP

The sweeping Republican tax and spending bill that cleared the U.S. House Thursday could cause about 45,000 people in Vermont to lose health insurance in the coming years, state officials say. The bill is now heading to President Donald Trump for a sign-off.

In order to pay for key parts of Trump’s domestic agenda included in the legislation, called the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” GOP budget-writers are counting on proposed cuts to Medicaid, the shared federal and state program that funds insurance for people with low incomes.

Meanwhile, the bill has sparked concern among hospital leaders in Vermont over a provision that would limit how much state governments can tax health care providers such as hospitals to, ultimately, access more federal Medicaid funding. Vermont, like most other states, relies on these taxes to fund expanded benefits for Medicaid recipients, which is a practice that helps support providers, too.

“The ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ is deeply concerning. I don’t think it’s beautiful, and I think it’s super harmful to Vermont,” said Mike Del Trecco, the president and CEO of the Vermont Association of Hospitals and Health Systems, in an interview earlier this week.

President Donald Trump and his GOP allies in Congress have said the legislation would target waste, fraud and abuse in Medicaid funding and have pointed to how the cuts would pay for policies such as breaks on taxes for tips and overtime pay. However, critics point to a Congressional Budget Office analysis showing the bill would boost the incomes of the country’s wealthiest households while costing the country’s poorest households more.

The legislation would result in about 12 million people across the country losing their health care coverage over the next decade across Medicaid and the commercial insurance marketplace, according to the Congressional Budget Office, which is a nonpartisan agency that scores the fiscal impacts of federal legislation.

One key provision in the bill would impose new requirements that certain people on Medicaid demonstrate that they are working in order to receive coverage. States will also be required to determine a participant’s eligibility for Medicaid every six months rather than every year, as they do now.

The fact that more people will have to fill out additional paperwork will lead some to fall off of coverage, according to Ashley Berliner, director of Medicaid policy for the state Agency of Human Services.

Berliner, in an interview, estimated that about 30,000 Vermonters will lose coverage because of that greater administrative burden. That makes up roughly half of the adults in Vermont who currently receive health insurance coverage under the expansion of Medicaid provided by the Affordable Care Act. That act, commonly called Obamacare, has significantly increased the number of people able to access health insurance.

Federal spending for those 30,000 people would equate to $205 million annually that would, as a result of the bill, no longer be coming into the state, Berliner said.

Meanwhile, she said, Vermont health officials believe an additional 15,000 people who purchase coverage on the commercial marketplace created by the Affordable Care Act will also lose coverage, at least in part because signing up for it will become more difficult. The budget bill doesn’t allow people to automatically reenroll in their current health care plan and shrinks the sign-up period for coverage by a month.

Historically, only about half of people respond to the agency when it requests additional information to verify people’s eligibility to be enrolled in Medicaid, Berliner said.

“When you ask people for additional information, they don’t fill it out and they fall off — the burden becomes too high and coverage is lost,” she said, adding that the picture is similar across the country, and GOP leaders are relying on the dropoff to help facilitate their proposed cuts.

Officials are also concerned about the impacts of a measure in the bill that would whittle down a long-standing mechanism states use to raise additional funds for Medicaid services by taxing health care providers. The rate of Vermont’s so-called provider tax, which is the name for that mechanism, would be reduced by 2.5% between 2028 and 2032. Vermont’s rate is currently set at the highest level allowed under existing law.

Cumulatively, over the period ending in 2032, Vermont is set to lose around $211 million from this change, counting both a loss of state dollars and additional federal Medicaid funding those dollars would allow the state to bring in, according to Berliner.

Hospitals will also feel pain from lost funding under these reductions, Del Trecco said.

Berliner added that she’s concerned by a measure in the bill that would ban state Medicaid payments for at least one year to health care nonprofits that offer abortions. This would include, notably, Planned Parenthood, which has clinics throughout Vermont.

One additional fallout, she said, could be shifting the costs of the reproductive healthcare those nonprofits provide in Vermont onto other providers.

All three members of Vermont’s congressional delegation have criticized the impacts of the budget bill and voted against it.

Last week, before the Senate approved a version of the bill, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., released a report that his office said showed the bill would increase the number of uninsured people in every state in the country. In some states, the rate of uninsured people would nearly double.

The legislation would “devastate rural hospitals, community health centers and nursing homes throughout our country and cause a massive spike in uninsured rates in red states and blue states alike,” Sanders said in a press release last week.

Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vt., speaking on the Senate floor earlier this week, derided the potential impacts the bill would have on states with all political leanings.

“I want to repeat here: this is the bipartisan infliction of pain. This is real. This is real. And is the tax cut — largely directed to the very wealthy people — is it worth inflicting that kind of pain on so many, when the tax cut benefits so few?” he said.

Rep. Becca Balint, D-Vt., voted against the bill Thursday when it was up for final approval.

“This Republican budget is far and away the cruelest piece of legislation I’ve seen in my career,” she said in a statement Thursday afternoon. “It’s an utter moral failure.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Vermont officials estimate 45,000 people to lose health insurance under Trump’s tax bill.

Montpelier cancels July 3rd evening festivities due to inclement weather

Thu, 03 Jul 2025 23:46:04 +0000

Festival-goers in Montpelier were advised to evacuate after a severe thunderstorm prompted the city to cancel the event on Thursday, July 3. Photo by Natalie Williams/VTDigger

Updated at 8:28 p.m.

The City of Montpelier canceled festivities Thursday evening because of severe thunderstorms in the area. People are advised to safely clear the area and follow lightning safety and all traffic rules while leaving the city, according to a brief from Evelyn Prim, Montpelier’s communications director.

Just after 7 p.m., the National Weather Service in Burlington issued a “Severe Thunderstorm Warning” for seven counties, including: Southern Lamoille County, Northeastern Orange County, Caledonia County, Southern Orleans County, Southern Essex County, East central Chittenden County and Washington County.

In Burlington, festival-goers along the waterfront were also advised to evacuate while the storm passed. Fireworks were still expected to go on as planned at 9:30 p.m., according to a tweet by ABC/FOX anchor Lauren Maloney.

The warning is in effect until 8:30 p.m.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Montpelier cancels July 3rd evening festivities due to inclement weather.

Former prison medical provider to pay $1.5 million to estate of Black man who died in custody

Thu, 03 Jul 2025 22:35:38 +0000

The Northern State Correctional Facility in Newport. Photo courtesy Vermont Department of Corrections

The estate of a Black man who died in a Vermont prison more than five years ago has agreed to accept $1.5 million to resolve a lawsuit brought against the state’s former medical provider alleging that racism, medical malpractice and negligence led to the man’s death.

Details of the proposed resolution were included in recent court filings in the case in U.S. District Court in Burlington arising from the December 2019 death of 60-year-old Kenneth Johnson at the Northern State Correctional Facility in Newport.

A court filing by attorneys in the case, titled a “Stipulated Order of Judgment,” still needs the approval of Judge Christina Reiss, who has presided over the case.

The filing seeking the order of judgment to resolve the claims differs from a straight out settlement.

“It’s a judgment, and that’s an important distinction,” said James Valente, an attorney representing Johnson’s estate.

Confidentiality provisions are often part of settlements resolving litigation between private parties. A judgment, on the other hand, is a matter of public record.

“Our client had reservations about a settlement that would include a confidentiality provision,” Valente said Thursday. Olynthea Johnson, Kenneth Johnson’s sister, is the administrator of his estate.

Shap Smith, an attorney for Centurion Health, the state’s contracted medical provider for prisons at the time of Johnson’s death, declined to comment Thursday.

The lawsuit filed in December 2021 alleged that Johnson died in the prison infirmary after workers for Virginia-based Centurion Health failed to diagnose and treat a tumor that led to Johnson’s death by asphyxiation.

The wrongful death and medical malpractice lawsuit also alleged Centurion Health discriminated against Johnson, a Black man, due to his race.

According to the suit, Johnson endured “extreme pain and suffering” and “extreme psychological distress” in the hours before he died. The suit accuses guards and medical staff of ignoring his pleas for medical help.

Initial reports from the Vermont Department of Corrections at the time said it appeared Johnson died from natural causes. A person who was incarcerated with Johnson told Seven Days a week after Johnson’s death that he had been having difficulty breathing and begging for medical care before he died.

Later, investigations, including the one by the Vermont Defender’s General’s Office, blasted the corrections department and Centurion medical staff over the care provided to Johnson.

A court filing by Centurion’s attorneys stated that the health care provider has made an offer of $1.5 million to the estate. “This offer of judgment includes all amounts that might be recovered by the estate for any damages, costs, attorneys’ fees, and pre-judgment interest,” the filing said.

The offer of judgment, the filing added, was “not to be construed as an admission of liability by any defendants, or any official, employee or agent of Centurion of Vermont.”

In a separate court filing this week, the estate accepted the offer. As of Thursday afternoon, the judge had yet to sign off on the proposed order of judgment, according to court filings.

Valente, speaking Thursday afternoon, said he believed that the judge would sign off on the order. If the judge does so, the lawsuit would be resolved.

Johnson’s estate had previously reached a settlement with the Vermont Department of Corrections, which had also been named as a defendant in the lawsuit, for $150,000, according to Valente and a corrections department spokesperson.

That $150,000 payment is in addition to the $1.5 million the estate would receive from Centurion.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Former prison medical provider to pay $1.5 million to estate of Black man who died in custody.

Burlington abruptly halts plans for overnight parking for unhoused people

Thu, 03 Jul 2025 22:25:21 +0000

About a dozen tents form an encampment on the Burlington waterfront. Seen on Nov. 15, 2024. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger

This story, by Report for America corps member Carly Berlin, was produced through a partnership between VTDigger and Vermont Public.

The city of Burlington decided on Thursday to “indefinitely pause” a sanctioned parking area for people experiencing homelessness before the initiative had even begun.

The “Safe Overnight Parking pilot project” at Perkins Pier along the city’s waterfront was slated to begin on Friday, July 4. City officials announced its creation on Tuesday, as a response to a round of evictions from the state’s motel voucher program that has primarily impacted families with children and individuals with severe medical needs.

But on Thursday afternoon, city officials decided to halt the project, in response to “substantial community feedback, and out of concern for the safety of program participants based on threatening comments made by members of the public on various online platforms,” according to a city press release.

Joe Magee, deputy chief of staff for Burlington Mayor Emma Mulvaney-Stanak, said city officials received a significant number of concerned messages from “residents, and businesses, and folks who have boats docked” near the Maple Street lot.

Social media posts expressing hostile sentiments about the project also led city officials to worry about the safety of unhoused people staying there, Magee said. The police department planned to do additional patrols of the area, Magee said, but the parking lot would not have had a “stationary overnight security presence.”

The city had received two inquiries from people who had wanted to park overnight in the lot, which was supposed to have space for twelve vehicles, Magee said. Officials had not yet approved any registrations for it.

Between June 23 and July 1, state officials anticipated 140 adults and 61 children would lose access to the motel voucher program in the Burlington area. The current wave of evictions from the program is in large part the result of an executive order expiring that had protected families with children and people with acute medical needs, like those who are homebound or receiving cancer treatment.

Burlington officials estimate that hundreds of people are already sleeping outdoors or in vehicles in the city, with tents tucked along the waterfront bike path an increasingly common sight.

“The city does not have the resources or staff to be able to … address the shortage of shelter alone,” Magee said. “We really need state partnership to come up with more tangible solutions.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Burlington abruptly halts plans for overnight parking for unhoused people.

Burlington airport leaders face questions from advocates over ICE transports

Thu, 03 Jul 2025 21:28:12 +0000

Nic Longo, director of aviation at the Patrick Leahy Burlington International Airport, speaks during a meeting of the Burlington Airport Commission in South Burlington on Wednesday, July 2. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger

A loose group of advocates is urging the panel that oversees operations at Patrick Leahy Burlington International Airport to issue a statement describing — and, some said, condemning — how federal immigration agents have repeatedly used Vermont’s largest air hub to transport people detained in the state and possibly facing deportation to other parts of the country.

Speaking at the Burlington Airport Commission’s monthly meeting Wednesday evening, two advocates also presented data they said showed federal immigration agents are flying far more people out of the airport, which is run by the City of Burlington, than is widely known.

Leif Taranta of Burlington and Brian Clifford of Essex said their findings, which they’ve compiled into a public chart online, suggest at least 450 people detained by federal law enforcement in immigration cases have been transferred through the Burlington airport since the start of January. That includes transfers by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.

VTDigger has not independently verified Taranta and Clifford’s work, though a representative from the Vermont Asylum Assistance Project, which is one of the state’s few networks offering pro bono legal aid to non-U.S. citizens, endorsed the advocates’ effort at Wednesday’s meeting.

“The airport, at a minimum, has a responsibility to let the public know what’s happening inside these walls, and on the tarmac,” Julie Macuga of Burlington, another advocate who spoke at the meeting, told the airport commissioners.

The panel did not develop a statement at its meeting, though the body’s chair, Tim George, said in an interview afterward that he and the other commissioners would continue to discuss the request, including what, specifically, his counterparts would be willing to say.

“I think we’ll have some conversations about that and see how we want to proceed,” he said.

People listen as Nic Longo, director of aviation at the Patrick Leahy Burlington International Airport, left, speaks during a meeting of the Burlington Airport Commission where members discussed how federal immigration agents have transported detainees through the facility in South Burlington on Wednesday, July 2. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger

Wednesday’s meeting comes as Vermont officials’ interactions with immigration authorities have drawn increased scrutiny following the high-profile arrests of Columbia University student and Palestinian rights activist Mohsen Mahdawi and Tufts University student Rümeysa Öztürk. Both students were in the country legally but have been targeted by President Donald Trump’s administration for deportation. Mahdawi is a Vermont resident, while Öztürk’s detention was challenged in federal court in Vermont.

Federal officials have shuffled detainees from other states into and out of Vermont, and used commercial flights out of the airport, which is in South Burlington, to facilitate deportations, VTDigger has reported. Those jailed in Vermont’s prisons include people with established lives in the state, like farmworkers. Vermont’s prisons have also held people from other New England states, including Kseniia Petrova, a Russian scientist working at Harvard University.

Öztürk was shuttled from Massachusetts, where she was arrested, to an ICE field office in St. Albans before being flown out of the Burlington airport early the following morning to Louisiana. She spent weeks in detention there before a judge in Vermont ordered her release. Meanwhile, agents attempted to fly Mahdawi out of the airport to Louisiana, as well, after he was arrested while attending a U.S. citizenship interview in Colchester, the student’s lawyers have said.

That a public body as minor as the airport commission — which is only advisory by design and consists of residents from Burlington, South Burlington and Winooski — was facing questions about the actions of federal immigration agents is evidence of just how focused public scrutiny of immigration enforcement in the state has become.

One commissioner, Helen Riehle, a former longtime state legislator from South Burlington, called the use of the airport for transporting ICE detainees “abhorrent.”

Still, it’s not clear there is much — if anything — the commission, or the staff who run the day-to-day operations at the airport, could do to impact how the federal government chooses to use the facility to transport detainees, said Nic Longo, the airport’s director. He said the airport administration generally is not privy to information about immigration operations there.

“We don’t know when these are happening,” he said, referring to when people are transferred through the airport by federal immigration agents. “We don’t get advised. We don’t get any communication.”

He added, too, that the airport could risk losing access to federal grants and other funding assurances by impeding or refusing to comply with immigration enforcement — a point U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy made publicly earlier this year. (That threat has since been temporarily blocked by a federal judge after a coalition of 20 states, including Vermont, sued to challenge its legality.)

Brian Clifford speaks during public comment as the Burlington Airport Commission considers how federal immigration agents have transported detainees through the facility during a meeting in South Burlington on Wednesday, July 2. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger

A man in the foreground gestures with his hand while a woman in glasses listens intently; a blurred presentation screen is visible in the background.

Search team recovers body from Kennedy Pond in Windsor

Thu, 03 Jul 2025 12:30:28 +0000

Windsor Fire Chief Kevin McAllister searches Kennedy Pond from above, while a lifeguard searches the water from a dock on Wednesday, July 2, 2025 in Windsor. On Wednesday evening, the Vermont State Police dive team recovered a body believed to be that of a 14-year-old girl who drowned while swimming at the pond Wednesday afternoon. Photo by Jennifer Hauck/Valley News

This story by Emma Roth-Wells was first published in the Valley News on July 2.

WINDSOR — First responders recovered what is believed to be the body of a missing 14-year-old girl from Kennedy Pond on Wednesday evening.

An investigation into the death is ongoing, Windsor Police Chief Bill Daniels said.

The girl is from the Burlington area, according to Lt. Charles Winn from the Vermont State Police dive team. Further information about the girl’s identity was not immediately available.

Windsor police and firefighters and the Hanover Fire Department dive team search for a missing swimmer at Kennedy Pond in Windsor, on Wednesday, July 2, 2025. Photo by James M. Patterson/Valley News

The girl is believed to have been at the pond with “friends of the family,” Daniels said while on the scene.

The VSP team recovered the body less than 100 feet offshore between the docks and a yellow floating raft at about 5:30 p.m., after 45 minutes of searching.

In addition to the VSP team, the Hanover dive team responded to the call at about 12:15 p.m. for a water rescue, as did Windsor fire and police departments.

Emma McCumber, who grew up in Windsor but now lives in Massachusetts, was swimming at the pond with her kids when she heard screams from the beach from those who noticed the girl was missing.

“Immediately the lifeguards hopped into action,” McCumber said when she returned to the pond hours later to check for updates.

Windsor Police Cpl. Jered Condon. Windsor police and firefighter and the Hanover Fire Department dive team search for a missing swimmer at Kennedy Pond in Windsor on Wednesday, July 2, 2025. Photo by James M. Patterson/Valley News

Before police cleared the water of all swimmers, McCumber, along with some dozen other bystanders, searched for the girl herself for about 45 minutes.

“It was an amazing community effort,” she said.

Without any diving equipment besides goggles, the bystanders attempted to do a grid search. “We went down as deep as we could but it was pretty useless. There’s really long weeds in that area. You can’t see your hands in front of your face.”

Told the girl had pink hair, the bystanders searched for the distinctive feature in the water.

“We just kept looking for pink hair,” McCumber said.

Members of the Vermont State Police dive team and Windsor police officers watch as VSP divers search a section of Kennedy Pond in Windsor for a 14-year-old girl on Wednesday, July, 2, 2025. Photo by Jennifer Hauck/Valley News

Wednesday’s incident was the latest water-related death in Vermont this summer.

Late last month, there were three drownings in Vermont in the span of five days, VTDigger reported.

An 18-year-old Burlington High School student died after jumping into the water at Bartlett Falls in Bristol on June 21.

A 30-year-old employee of Basin Harbor Club in Ferrisburgh drowned in Lake Champlain on June 24.

Another man was found dead further north in Lake Champlain near Red Rocks Park in South Burlington on June 25.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Search team recovers body from Kennedy Pond in Windsor.

Beth Stern: Recognizing the power and promise of Social Security at 90

Thu, 03 Jul 2025 11:03:00 +0000

This commentary is by Beth Stern of Marshfield, volunteer state president for AARP Vermont.

The vital lifeline for tens of millions of Americans everywhere — including 161,841 people in Vermont — used for housing, groceries, gas, and other everyday necessities is about to mark its 90th birthday.

And with that anniversary comes a responsibility to strengthen the program — and find ways to help it age in the healthiest way. As the foundation of retirement in America, our financial future depends on protecting Social Security for decades to come.

Social Security will face challenges in the years ahead, but it’s our responsibility to make sure the program continues to serve the 67 million Americans who depend on it.

The history of the program shows how vital it is for Americans’ secure retirement. On Aug. 14, 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act, and in January 1935, Ida May Fuller, the first person to receive Social Security (and a Vermonter!), collected a monthly check of $22.54 — that’s $518.58 in inflation-adjusted dollars.

From that start, the program now provides $1.4 trillion in retirement security. It is the only inflation-adjusted retirement program, giving Americans confidence to plan their retirements. That’s nationwide.

Nearly one in four (161,841) Vermont residents collect Social Security benefits, and 42,000 Vermonters are lifted out of poverty every month. Social Security helps Vermonters live and retire with dignity, offers crucial support to those with disabilities, and serves as a financial lifeline for families navigating the loss of a loved one.

Social Security will never “go broke.” That’s a fact. Social Security operates as a pay-as-you-go system. As long as workers continue to contribute, there will be Social Security for those collecting.

Funded by payroll taxes, the program will keep paying beneficiaries. However, it does face funding challenges. The latest Social Security Trustees’ Report indicates that the surplus will be exhausted by 2035. To prevent that shortfall, Congress must again take action — just as it did during the 1983 reform — before millions of Americans are left with less than they’ve earned.

Customer service is another area where Social Security is facing challenges. Administrative chaos at the Social Security Administration this year has contributed to a customer service crisis that has been ongoing for years.

SSA has struggled with call wait times, hold times, customer service resolutions and staffing issues, according to SSA’s own data. Many Americans who need access to the program face hours on the phone or in line at their local offices. And budget and staffing levels have strained SSA’s ability to provide vital services.

This year, wait times are increasing, fewer people can reach a Social Security representative to get assistance, and this issue arises just as about 10,000 people retire every day.

The new Social Security Commissioner would be well served by re-committing the Social Security Administration to providing timely, efficient and effective customer service. SSA needs to be clear when communicating any possible changes and what effects lower staffing levels will have. And Congress needs to provide oversight to ensure that customer service is prioritized at an agency that has struggled to serve Americans everywhere.

Throughout our history at AARP, we have worked with every Administration and Congress, regardless of party, to protect and strengthen Social Security. More than 67 million Americans rely on this vital program, and for 90 years, Social Security has been the foundation of retirement in the United States.

It’s imperative to ensure the strength of this Social Security not just for another 90 years, but for generations upon generations to come.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Beth Stern: Recognizing the power and promise of Social Security at 90.

John Bossange: Moving forward in Vermont after June 14

Thu, 03 Jul 2025 11:01:00 +0000

This commentary is by John Bossange of South Burlington. He is a retired middle school principal and a board member of Better (not bigger) Vermont.

Like many Vermonters, I’ve been waving my American flag and holding signs at various locations in demonstrations against the authoritarian rule of President Trump. I’ve been at the Statehouse in Montpelier, at City Hall in Burlington and most recently along Route 7 in South Burlington to show my resistance to the president, and his MAGA cabinet, close advisors and supporters.

My friends and I were encouraged by the large turnout for the June 14 rally held at Waterfront Park in Burlington but left the demonstration with mixed feelings and confusion over the focus and purpose of this important demonstration.

When we first arrived there were mostly American flags flying with a variety of signs expressing what the “No Kings” meant to them. That was expected and good to see.

But once the rally began there were as many Mexican flags as there were American flags. After the welcoming introductions, speeches and protest songs were sung in Spanish with dancing and Mexican flags waving on the stage. For 45 minutes I felt I was in Mexico or at a migrant justice rally. That was unexpected!

From there, the presenters on stage turned the demonstration into a Palestinian rights rally with Palestinian flags and speakers who have experienced the brutality of ICE, and the oppressive violation of our First, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments. I began to wonder when there would be Ukrainian speakers on stage also using this platform to rally the crowd around their specific concerns.

These and many others are all important causes, and it was good to see people voicing their opinions and demanding their rights. I am in support of all of them.

But the rally was billed as “No Kings” to focus on Trump, who wants to rule like an authoritarian. For too much of the time, the demonstration did not feel like that, and for me and my friends, the rally lost its intended focus. We left early.

There are so many issues which impact most citizens that the “king” is taking away from all of us like Medicare, Social Security, public education, a free press, free speech, not addressing the climate crisis, or budgeting that does not include a fair tax policy. Speakers, no matter their cause, should have been instructed to address these topics to unify each group under one common cause: Trump’s assault on the Bill of Rights, and his attempt to rule like a king and change the face of America.

Instead, the day felt like an identity protest rally. Just as the big-tent Democrats have become a floundering and splintered identity party with no focused lens for action, the small tent Progressives have become an ideological party who see the world primarily through their own narrow lens. Both are failing to unite the country, and here in Vermont where our Progressive Party is often as strong as the Democratic Party, the division is even more evident. In Burlington on June 14, indivisible we were not.

The June 14 rally at Waterfront Park, organized primarily by Indivisible Burlington, was symbolic of the lack of unity between legitimate causes and unfortunately illustrated our ineffectiveness in dissent, resistance and protest when measured against a unified, stronger and much more focused MAGA party. Indivisible, they are.

In comparison, I had friends who attended rallies in Boston, New York City and Philadelphia, and the photos they sent me showed mostly American flags. They said the speeches were centered on President Trump, his executive orders, and his authoritarian rule. There were flags representing multiple causes, but the focus was on the president and his king-like behavior.

I fear the Waterfront Park rally could easily make Burlington a poster city and Vermont a poster state for the MAGA party to use against us, and for their dominant media networks that are always busy looking for ways to distract others from our “No Kings” message.

At the same time, they will have an easier time trashing our collective resistance by only focusing on our failed identity politics and splintered individual group causes, and not on the most important issue of a dictator wannabe.

Organizers at Indivisible Burlington and elsewhere need to put on their “political smart hat,” and be sure that future rallies stay focused on what’s happening in D.C. that will eventually impact all of us, not just identity groups. We need leadership to keep all of us in the same lane.

Those with specific issues, no matter how passionate they feel, now more than ever, need to see the big picture. To have a real impact moving forward, indivisible we must be.

Read the story on VTDigger here: John Bossange: Moving forward in Vermont after June 14.

Vermont Conversation: ‘Don’t back down’ — Vermont’s marriage equality revolution at 25

Wed, 02 Jul 2025 22:15:13 +0000

Then (2000) and Now (2024): Stacy Jolles, left, Nina Beck, right, with their son, Seth Jolles, center. Photos courtesy of Stacy Jolles and Nina Beck

The Vermont Conversation with David Goodman is a VTDigger podcast that features in-depth interviews on local and national issues. Listen below and subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get podcasts.

This week marks the 25^th anniversary of civil unions, which were the most sweeping grant of rights to gay couples in the nation when they became law on July 1, 2000.

Civil unions grew out of a lawsuit filed by three gay and lesbian couples who had been denied marriage licenses in Vermont. The lawsuit was known as Baker v. Vermont. In December 1999, the Vermont Supreme Court ruled unanimously that gay and lesbian couples were entitled to the same benefits of marriage as heterosexual couples. The court ordered the Vermont legislature to craft a law that would satisfy the ruling, either by legalizing same-sex marriage or by creating an equivalent partnership structure.

Vermont Supreme Court Chief Justice Jeffrey Amestoy wrote that the decision, “is simply a recognition of our common humanity.”

It would take until 2009 for Vermont to legalize same-sex marriage.

To mark the milestone, I spoke with four of the key participants behind civil unions. Stacy Jolles and Nina Beck were two of the six plaintiffs in Baker v. Vermont. Chief Justice Amestoy wrote the decision. Gov. Howard Dean signed civil unions into law. (Rep. Bill Lippert recounted how the Vermont legislature passed the historic law on The Vermont Conversation in an interview in April.)

The following transcript has been edited for length and clarity. The unabridged audio version of this interview can be heard by clicking the audio bar above.

THE PLAINTIFFS

I first met Stacy Jolles and Nina Beck in their South Burlington home in 2000 when I covered the civil unions debate for Mother Jones. In my article, I described them cooing over their newborn son. Seth Jolles has since graduated from college and graduate school. Nina and Stacy had a civil union and were married as each of those opportunities became legal.

Stacy, now 67, a psychologist, and Nina, 69, a physical therapist, are now “semi-retired.” They have been familiar faces as the owners of the popular Burlington tea house, Dobra Tea, which they owned for 11 years and sold in 2021.

Stacy and Nina joined me on the Vermont Conversation in 2015 to talk about the US Supreme Court decision that legalized same-sex marriage nationally, known as the Obergefell decision.

This week, I asked them how it felt to be marking the 25^th anniversary of civil unions.

Stacy Jolles

I can’t believe it’s been 25 years. That seemed like such a time of great hope and such a different time than it feels right now. So it is nice to go back and remember that times were better but it’s a little scary to realize that we made it 25 years. We may not make it 26.

Nina Beck

It’s an odd juxtaposition to be celebrating something that happened what feels like a very long time ago but really is only the lifetime of our son, and yet wondering what the future holds or if we’re going to lose those rights that we gained.

David Goodman

You were one of the three couples that were part of this landmark lawsuit. Tell us a little of your personal story as a couple and then what brought you to sue the state of Vermont?

Stacy Jolles

Stacy prior to our son Seth, who’s 25 now, we had a son, Noah. We were living in North Carolina and we knew at the time that in order to protect me as the non-biological parent, we needed to do a lot of legal paperwork. And so we did that. When Nina was giving birth, we tried to have a home birth but we ended up going to the hospital. And there was another pregnant couple, actually, that went in, and they didn’t ask the gentleman of the couple anything about paperwork, and they literally stopped me at the door and asked for my paperwork and what allowed me to be there. Who was I? Nina was struggling to give birth and Noah was in trouble in utero and I had to come up with the paperwork that allowed me to be there. So for me, that was a very pivotal moment in our lives and it laid the groundwork that marriage is really a legal contract primarily to protect the children. I don’t need the state to sanction my relationship. I don’t need any public validation other than I need legal protection for my kids. So when the opportunity came along, that was what was in my mind.

Nina Beck

Stacy and I were living in California before we moved to North Carolina and Vermont. In 1992, we had our big Jewish wedding, which was for our friends and family. That was of course not legally meaningful at all. At the time, we’d heard about a lawsuit brought by three couples in Hawaii and they tried to get marriage. They were the first state, and they failed. But that totally put the idea in my mind that this was a fight. This was this was maybe possible.

We decided together that if we live somewhere where it was possible to be involved in the work for legal civil marriage, that we wanted to do it. That was 1992, and we showed up in Vermont in 1996 in April and found the Vermont Freedom to Marry movement. We said, how can we be involved? We want to do this.

David Goodman

Talk about the Vermont Freedom to Marry Task Force and the marriage equality movement in Vermont that you were part of.

Stacy Jolles

Well, the movement was really Beth and Susan.

David Goodman

This was Beth Robinson, now a federal judge, and Susan Murray, your attorneys at the time.

Stacy Jolles

Exactly. A lot can be done with just two people who are dedicated. And they were absolutely phenomenal.

Nina Beck

It was a very grassroots movement in terms of trying to lift people’s awareness of what is civil marriage (and) why would we want it? Many people traveled all over the state to speak at events to try and gain public support for this.

David Goodman

What kind of responses did you get when you were out there tabling and at county fairs?

Stacy Jolles

Surprisingly we got mostly positive feedback. Both Nina and I were activists our whole lives and we had nothing to lose. It was our obligation since we were both lucky: our families weren’t going to disown us. We weren’t going to lose our jobs. We had so many privileges in so many ways that so many gay and lesbian people didn’t have then and still don’t have. It felt like an obligation to be the person that came forward when so many others couldn’t.

We experienced very little backlash. We got only one letter that was from someone who said they were going to pray for us. And I’m always happy to have somebody pray for me (laughs).

David Goodman

I remember being in the Vermont State House when civil unions was being debated in the winter in early 2000. It was intense. There were busloads of people, many from out of state and many with very noticeable southern accents who were from evangelical churches in the South. It felt very volatile. How did it feel to you?

Stacy Jolles

Well, we’re both martial artists. Not that we were going to get into any kind of physical altercation.

It was a different time. If I was in that situation now, I would feel very differently. Political violence has become much more normalized. It was moving times, emotional times, but I didn’t feel in danger.

Nina Beck

I feel like there was a difference between the way Vermont people who lived here reacted to us, even when they didn’t agree with us, as opposed to the people who came up from the south and came from other states. Those people were much more threatening. And also the Vermont folks, even those who were not on our side, didn’t want help. They told those people basically go away. We’re going to keep it local.

Later when we’d drive through the countryside and see the barns printed with Take Back Vermont, it wasn’t warm and welcoming, but I honestly didn’t feel in danger.

David Goodman

The Baker decision was a win for advancing LGBTQ rights, but Stacy, you’ve told me that you felt it was a loss. Explain how it could be both.

Stacy Jolles

When the decision came down and the (Vermont) Supreme Court basically punted (same-sex partnership) to the legislature, I felt like we lost. The Supreme Court did not rule for marriage. Intellectually, I recognize that you take two steps forward, one step back. I get that it was progress, but I felt like we lost. I felt like the Supreme Court said, No, we’re not going to give you marriage. (Civil unions) wasn’t going to protect my kids in the way I needed them protected. At the time I was working full time and staying home with Seth, and it wasn’t going to protect his rights with the over 2000 federal advantages from marriage.

Nina Beck

We live on Lake Champlain, and if we traveled across that lake to New York State, our civil union wouldn’t necessarily be recognized there. What if we went across the lake for the day and got in trouble and needed medical care? There were many, many important protections that marriage has, that civil unions left out. It was separate but unequal.

David Goodman

It took another decade for Vermont to pass same-sex marriage in 2009 over the veto of Governor Jim Douglas. How did that feel?

Stacy Jolles

That was awesome. That felt like a step in the right direction towards federal marriage being legal in all states. That was uplifting.

David Goodman

Did you get a civil union and then get married?

Nina Beck

Yes, we had a civil union ceremony, which included our local representative coming to our house, acting as Justice of the Peace, sitting in our living room and signing a piece of paper. We were not very excited about it, but we wanted it legally in place. When we won marriage, we had a great party in the boathouse at the Burlington waterfront. We recreated our big Jewish wedding, and Beth (Robinson) officiated. That was a great party.

David Goodman

Twenty-five years after civil unions in Vermont, there is intense blowback against LGBTQ rights. The U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled against LGBTQ rights in several cases, allowing parents to opt-out their children from school classes that include LGBTQ-themed books, and banning gender-affirming health care for transgender youth. How fearful are you that the rights that you won could be undone?

Stacy Jolles

I think they will be undone.

I am the daughter of a Holocaust survivor, as is Nina. So we were raised to view governments like the one we’re experiencing now in a very different way than most Americans might view it. I think it’s going to get very bad and I’m just going to be active until the very last minute. I can be active trying to protect young LGBTQ people’s rights, particularly young transgender people. And I think we’re going to have to fight harder than we have before.

Nina Beck

Not to make too many parallels, but the Jews of Europe became extremely assimilated, particularly Austria and Germany, and kind of forgot that antisemitism was real. And there’s a way in which I think young people today who have grown up in the last 25 years without knowledge of homophobia in the way that we who grew up in the 60s and 70s felt it. So it’s a shock to them. It’s not surprising to me, but it is scary in a way that we haven’t seen in a long time.

Every day some more rights are lost. I don’t want to go back to living that way, but I know how to and we’ll just keep fighting. We’ll just have to keep fighting and not be shocked and horrif

The 2025 Climate Action Plan grapples with the costs of climate programs

Wed, 02 Jul 2025 21:18:33 +0000

Traffic travels along Pine Street under hazy skies in Burlington on Wednesday, June 4. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger

On Tuesday, as the federal government continued its unprecedented attack on clean energy and climate funding, Vermont’s Climate Council published its 2025 Climate Action Plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and promote resiliency in the state.

The plan is a requirement set by the 2020 Global Warming Solutions Act to publish a new framework every four years for tackling the climate crisis. The 2025 plan could guide legislative action on helping Vermonters, especially those with low or moderate incomes, adopt more efficient and less polluting sources of home heat and transportation, the two highest-emitting sectors in the state.

Other priorities included mitigating future climate hazards, building a climate-ready workforce, weatherizing an additional 79,000 homes, reducing or sequestering emissions on farmland and finding funding to implement all these ideas.

While Vermont files its second Climate Action Plan to try and meet legally-binding emissions reductions, federal funding programs that made possible climate initiatives in small states like this one are on the chopping block. Now, as the state looks for other sources of revenue and support to achieve its climate goals, the new plan lays out what Vermonters might see prioritized in the coming years. But with reduced political will in the last legislative session to proactively deal with climate change, it remains to be seen whether those plans are fiscally realistic under a governor who prioritizes short-term affordability over long-term resiliency.

“Before focusing too much on a new, shiny thing, we should really be thinking about how we maintain the current pace and level of effort,” said Julie Moore, Agency of Natural Resources secretary and a member of the Climate Council who voted for the plan. “Maintaining our current pace is far from certain in this moment.”

The state’s initial Climate Action Plan preceded devastating floods that wrecked homes and businesses along Vermont’s river valleys in 2023 and 2024. As the atmosphere warms, holding more moisture, precipitation in Vermont has become heavier and more frequent, causing deluges that can lead to deadly floods.

Climate change, largely driven by the burning of fossil fuels, has also brought increased high heat days that most homes in Vermont are ill-equipped to handle. Wildland fires have become more common and air quality has diminished in the warmer months as enormous wildfires burn elsewhere, according to the plan.

But even with the tangible effects of climate change in Vermont, state lawmakers’ attempts to significantly reduce emissions along outlines from the 2021 Climate Action Plan have failed to meet state emissions targets. Big proposals like the clean heat standard were shelved during the spring legislative session, and the state likely missed its 2025 emissions-reduction target required by the Global Warming Solutions Act. A court case currently playing out in Montpelier could help determine whether the state missed that target.

Now, as the state looks for more guidance on how to lower its emissions, the federal government could squeeze Vermont further as the Trump administration eviscerates clean energy funding and advances in climate science prioritized under President Biden. The 2025 Climate Action Plan recognized the impact of federal cuts, noting that the work to combat climate change was not about to get easier.

Julie Moore, secretary of the Agency of Natural Resources, speaks about flooding in the state during a press conference in Berlin on Dec. 18, 2023. File photo by Natalie Williams/VTDigger

What’s in the plan?

The Global Warming Solutions Act binds the state to lower greenhouse gas emissions by milestones set in state statute: 26% below 2005 emissions levels by 2025, 40% below 1990 levels by 2030, and 80% below 1990 levels by 2050.

The Climate Action Plan outlines pathways to reach those goals every four years, through Climate Council planning meetings, technical analysis with consultants, and community input. More than 1,000 Vermonters and Vermont-based organizations participated in creating the plan, including 850 who joined virtual and in-person meetings and 250 who submitted public comments, according to the plan.

But even with four years of planning, Vermont is still behind its legally-binding goals. While the state initially claimed that it reached that first milestone on Jan. 1, 2025, a report by the Energy Action Network, a Vermont-based nonprofit that conducts energy and emissions analysis, instead found Vermont to have fallen up to 39% short of the emissions reduction required by law.

Moore’s agency reviewed the report and has agreed that the state was unlikely to achieve the 2025 goal, but final datasets to assess emissions won’t be available until 2027.

Previous ambitious reductions programs like the clean heat standard were shelved after a campaign by out-of-state fuel lobbyists along with Gov. Phil Scott’s rejection of the plan as unaffordable. State regulators found costs associated with the program were too high, but some members of the Climate Council disagree with those fiscal priorities.

“When we have a conversation on benefits and costs, we can’t lose sight of the cost of the status quo, which is already too high,” said Jared Duval, one of the 23 state-appointed members of the Climate Council. He quoted numbers from the state tax department that found about $2 billion a year was spent on fossil fuels for transportation and heating in 2024. An economic analysis done for the Climate Action Plan identified a potential $6 billion in costs that could be avoided by 2050 if the state pursued emissions reductions recommendations, Duval said.

With the lapse in federal funding, Duval said that in order to reduce emissions, the state would need to return to the polluter-pays principle, where fossil fuel corporations are responsible for paying for climate damages and resiliency efforts. This principle doesn’t only apply to the state’s legal battle with fossil fuel corporations in the climate superfund law, Duval said. It also stands as the rationale behind ambitious programs like the clean heat standard and the cap-and-invest model, which the climate action plan asked the state to research this year.

“The cost of those policies has always been designed to apply to importers of fossil fuels to Vermont,” Duval said. While fuel companies have said those costs will be passed onto customers, Duval said a key difference between the clean heat standard, pursued through the 2021 climate action plan, and the cap-and-invest model, again pushed forward by the 2025 plan, is that cap-and-invest can provide direct payments to Vermonters through rebates, based on their income.

Duval, along with 15 others, voted for the 2025 plan. Two councillors were not present to vote, and five voted against it, including Sarah Clark, the Agency of Administration secretary; Anson Tebbetts, the Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets secretary; Michele Boomhower on behalf of Joe Flynn, the Agency of Transportation secretary; Lindsay Kurrle, Agency of Commerce and Community Development secretary; and Matt Cota, owner of Meadow Hill Consulting and representing the fuel sector. All except for Cota are in Gov. Scott’s administration and report to the governor, who has worked to overturn the legal requirements in the Global Warming Solutions Act.

Others were reluctant with their yes votes. While Moore, secretary of the Agency of Natural Resources,, voted for the plan, she said that decision was mainly a reflection of her appreciation of the work of state government staff. Moore said she continues to have “some real concerns.”

“Specifically, I’m concerned about what it will take to operationalize the plan’s vision,” Moore said. “It’s sort of left up to interpretation.”

The Conservation Law Foundation, which sued the state last year claiming the Agency of Natural Resources failed to properly prepare to meet the 2025 emissions goal, called the 2025 Climate Action Plan “toothless” in a statement on Tuesday.

“The Council has worked hard to come to a consensus and deliver recommendations that include financial incentives to drive down emissions,” said Elena Mihaly, the foundation’s vice president for Vermont. “But it has failed to put in place real, enforceable policies that demand major polluters do their part too.”

The return of cap-and-invest

Much of the council’s attention this last year has been on a cap-and-invest program to reduce climate pollution. Cap-and-invest programs place a declining cap on greenhouse gas emissions, according to the state, while reinvesting the proceeds to climate-friendly projects like energy efficiency and weatherization. In March, Mike Pieciak, Vermont state treasurer, spoke to the council during a special session on cap-and-invest, reminding members that of the billions the state spends on fossil fuels, “over 75% of those dollars flow out of the state.”

But a cap-and-invest model could keep more money in the state and create up to 810 jobs, according to Pieciak, especially if the state were to partner with cap-and-invest initiatives already underway such as the Western Climate Initiative, which includes California, Quebec and Washington, and the cap-and-invest program in New York state. A modified clean heat standard could complement this program, according to the 2025 Climate Action Plan, focusing on the electrification of air and water heating in low- and moderate-income households.

Such a partnership could avoid problems that Vermont encountered while pursuing a clean heat standard, the council’s previous plan to reduce thermal emissions. In a January report, the Public Utility Commission, which studied the clean heat program, told lawmakers that it would likely be too expensive for the state to take on a first-of-its-kind credit market on its own.

But this isn’t the first time cap-and-invest has been studied. Over the last four years, the Legislature asked

New merch: Our love letter to a Vermont summer

Wed, 02 Jul 2025 19:35:38 +0000

We just launched three fresh designs for summer, and every purchase helps fund the independent journalism you rely on.

Shop the new styles

Whether you’re heading to the farmers market, planning a hike or just enjoying your morning coffee, these styles are designed with love and say what we all believe: Local news is worth supporting.

Happy place

Vermont is our happy place and we’re showing it with a smile and a state that says it all.

Field notes

Our illustrated ode to summer in Vermont, drawn from a few of our favorite things.

Reader supported

Wear what you believe in: Local news should be free, trusted and powered by the people it serves.

Our summer collection includes T-shirts, tote bags, hats and mugs in warm hues designed by our resident artist, Taylor Haynes (aka our audience & product director). Don’t forget, you can always shop our staff favorites and best sellers too.

Summer shop

Read the story on VTDigger here: New merch: Our love letter to a Vermont summer.

US Department of Education withholds millions in funding for Vermont school districts

Wed, 02 Jul 2025 17:09:39 +0000

Education Secretary Linda McMahon arrives for a House Committee on Education and Workforce hearing, Wednesday, June 4, 2025, on Capitol Hill in Washington. Photo by Jacquelyn Martin/Associated Press

The Trump administration announced this week it was withholding $26 million in federal grant funding to Vermont’s public schools, part of a broader freeze of more than $6 billion nationwide for after-school and summer programs and English language instruction.

Funds for these programs were supposed to be distributed on July 1. But the U.S. Department of Education alerted the state Agency of Education they were holding the funds back “on the evening of June 30,” according to a press release by the Agency of Education.

The federal department told state education officials they will conduct a review of the programs, but did not provide a timeline for when that would be completed, according to the agency’s press release.

The abrupt pause in funding will likely disrupt local school districts’ operations. Those federal funds are built into local districts’ budgets for the 2025-26 school year, according to the release.

Vermont Secretary of Education Zoie Saunders said in the release the decision to withhold these funds, “disrupts districts’ ability to staff critical positions and provide a wide range of programming, including efforts to reduce chronic absenteeism and improve literacy outcomes.”

“This decision also contributes to a culture of uncertainty that takes away from the important work our schools need to focus on to support our students,” Saunders said.

Six federal grant programs were affected by the funding pause, according to the Agency of Education, including programs to provide instructional and support services to migrant children and their families.

The funds supported the University of Vermont-run Vermont Migrant Education Program that serves children who have relocated alone or with their families to obtain seasonal or temporary employment in agriculture, the Agency of Education release said.

Another program has supported instructional services and supports within school districts for English language learners. Those grant dollars were used to fund multilingual liaisons to help families integrate into their schools and communities through summer school and after-school English language services.

Other federally funded programs helped finance mentoring programs and professional development for teachers. The state agency said in its release the programs were “essential to improving academic outcomes as well as supporting the retention of effective educators.”

Another program supported programming for mental health services, which the state agency said was critical to reducing chronic absenteeism.

The Agency of Education said it was “actively working with districts to mitigate the impact of this decision by conducting outreach and providing one-on-one intensive support to the field.”

“The Agency is proud of the critical investments that Vermont public schools have made using these federal funds and will continue to support districts in navigating the uncertainty in the federal funding landscape,” the agency said in its release.

Read the story on VTDigger here: US Department of Education withholds millions in funding for Vermont school districts.

Paul Fleckenstein: What the struggle for freedom in Palestine means to the movement against authoritarianism in the U.S.

Wed, 02 Jul 2025 11:03:00 +0000

Dear VTDigger,

No surprise that supporters of Israel object to Palestinian flags. The flags represent the 100-year struggle for the liberation of the country of Palestine from Zionist colonization and apartheid.

This colonization was sponsored first by Britain (No Kings!) and then by the U.S. But for the growing movement against President Donald Trump and authoritarianism in the U.S., the struggle for freedom and equality in Palestine means much more.

Listen to the message from Palestinian-American student Hisham Awartani at the Burlington No Kings rally: “As we stand here today, unified in common cause, we must realize that no struggle stands in isolation. The migrant camps of El Salvador are modeled after the prisons of Israel, and ICE has been unleashed to suppress Palestinian and undocumented alike. We are facing a seething force of hatred and division, and we must stand in lockstep to fight it.”

Awartani, a target of a shooting in Burlington, knows about the violence of occupation and genocide boomeranging back to the U.S., fueling the far right and being used to attack our free speech, dissent and aspirations for justice and dignity for everyone.

No movement accepting apartheid and genocide will succeed in defeating authoritarianism.

Paul Fleckenstein

Burlington

Read the story on VTDigger here: Paul Fleckenstein: What the struggle for freedom in Palestine means to the movement against authoritarianism in the U.S..

Pam Reed: The quiet moments that matter

Wed, 02 Jul 2025 11:01:00 +0000

This commentary is by Pam Reed, incoming superintendent of Rutland City Public Schools.

In my years working in education, here’s something I’ve learned along the way: the most impactful moments usually happen quietly.

It’s a student finally mastering a skill after weeks of struggle. It’s a teacher staying late to find the right way to help someone who is having a tough time. It’s a quick exchange with a bus driver that brightens a student’s entire outlook.

These moments aren’t flashy, and they can be fleeting. But they are the moments that really shape who we become, both individually and as a community.

As I step into the role of superintendent, I’m mindful that one of my greatest responsibilities is to preserve and strengthen our ability to create those moments. My job is not to have every answer or to impose big ideas from above. It’s to ensure our schools have the resources and support they need to thrive. To create an environment that allows students, teachers and all of our staff to flourish.

I am sincerely thankful to Superintendent Bill Olsen for his leadership during some of the most tumultuous years in the recent history of education. Since 2020, Bill’s steady guidance and thoughtful decision-making have helped Rutland City Public Schools navigate enormous challenges: from the initial days of the pandemic to ongoing pressures around staffing and shifting models of learning, to his work on securing a more equitable education funding formula in Vermont.

His example has set a clear foundation that I’m committed to building upon. He did far more than simply keep our district afloat; his leadership strengthened our schools and positioned us for continued growth and excellence.

I am also grateful to our school commissioners. Their service is made up of quietly important moments. They aren’t driven by the need for recognition but by genuine care and a commitment to our schools. Their work exemplifies the unsung dedication that keeps our district moving forward.

As someone raised in Rutland, who has spent the majority of my career here and has served in a range of roles across this district, I’ve seen firsthand how our schools are sustained by the steady, collective effort of people who really care. Each role matters, and each contribution makes a difference, creating a community where students know they truly belong.

There will certainly be difficult decisions ahead, as there always are. But when I look at Rutland City Public Schools, I see tremendous reason for optimism and pride. I see resilience and kindness from students every day. I see educators and educational support professionals who go the extra mile without expecting praise. I see a community consistently willing to show up for one another and engage.

It’s these quiet but powerful realities that drive my commitment as superintendent and my love for public education, particularly in Rutland.

From teachers in classrooms to custodians and coaches, from bus drivers to kitchen staff, and everyone else who quietly cares for our students. Every person contributes something meaningful and essential to our school community.

Together, deliberately and thoughtfully, we’ll build on the strong foundation we already have, ensuring that impactful moments continue to happen for our students every day. I am honored to step into this role, and I look forward to the work ahead.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Pam Reed: The quiet moments that matter.

Eric Peterson: Gov. Phil Scott’s big beautiful bill

Wed, 02 Jul 2025 11:01:00 +0000

This commentary is by Eric Peterson of Bennington. He was a longtime columnist for the Bennington Banner and Berkshire Eagle and has also written columns for the Albany Times Union.

As the landmark education bill struggled mightily to be born in the Legislature, the question became whether it could be Phil Scott’s crowning achievement.

Gov. Scott is serving his fifth two-year term as governor of Vermont. Only in New Hampshire and Vermont do governors serve two-year terms, the other 48 states are all four years. It means a Vermont governor only has one year in which to enact his/her major program before having to run yet again for reelection.

A comprehensive bill can take the full two years. Vermont’s legislators work part-time. A session lasts five or six months. There will continue to be meetings during the summer but the whole legislature won’t return to Montpelier until the new year.

The myriad problems of Vermont’s schools have worried governors, legislators, teachers and parents for many years. This year there was finally a serious attempt to vault the state’s education system into the 21st century.

Scott has been a successful and popular governor. His style is often to respond to the legislature. He softens the Democratic majority’s policy prescriptions to make them semi-palatable to the Legislature’s Republicans and to Vermont’s conservative voters.

Scott has been a “make no waves” kind of chief executive. He rarely leads with proposals with his personal vision of a Vermont of the future. The two-year terms are an encumbrance to serious, thoughtful planning for the future. But so is Scott’s seeming reticence to lead.

This is not entirely the governor’s fault. Democrats have been Vermont’s majority party for years, although they did lose their supermajority in the state senate last year. Scott is also a member of a vanishing breed, a moderate Republican. The national party has moved not so much rightward as Trumpward.

There was a time when Green Mountain State Republicans such as Aiken, Stafford and Snelling (More Dick than Barbara) were not entirely out of step with other Republican officeholders throughout the country. The Vermonters were often more cordial and less dogmatic while remaining small-government conservatives. In today’s political world Governor Scott continues the Vermont Republican traditions and finds himself basically adrift in sensible Vermont.

The work is not complete, and both the legislators and the governor admit that. Work is expected to continue through the next session. Vermont parents and school board members will have their say over the next several months as they read about the plan and talk to your representatives and their neighbors.

Rep. Jonathan Cooper is a bright, impressive young first-term member of the Vermont House representing Pownal, Readsboro, Searsburg, Stamford and Woodford. Cooper, a Democrat, is a regional planner with two master’s degrees. He is the father of a young student.

In an email exchange with Rep. Cooper, I asked him about his first session as a representative and questioned him about issues including the education bill. Representing several small towns, he is alert to the many problems facing rural communities with dwindling numbers of students.

In Rep. Cooper’s district there are two schools with a warm place in my heart: Pownal Elementary School and Woodford Hollow Elementary School.

The theatre arts high school class I co-taught in Bennington created a program at Woodford Hollow in which our students worked with their students. I also directed the school play, an after-school program, at Pownal School for several years.

The faculty at both schools were dedicated and their students were bright and enthusiastic. It made me a strong proponent of bringing high school and elementary school students to work together and an admirer of the close bonds students make in small schools.

Mr. Cooper voted in favor of the education bill saying, “I voted for the fairness and accountability within the bill: fairness in how Vermont’s kids benefit from our education resources, and accountability in how Vermont’s education system meets our students’ needs … We have lost almost 50 percent of our public-school population in the last 40 years, but the administrative presence is even larger than it was back then.”

Rep. Cooper is correct and that, in a nutshell, is the problem. Fewer students, larger expenses.

Cooper referenced the Vermont Supreme Court Brigham ruling that it was unfair and unconstitutional to let each town or school district decide how much it wanted to spend on its own. “At that time, “Cooper wrote, “a student in the highest spending town received 2.5 times the education funding of a student in the lowest spending town.”

But by 2025, Cooper wrote, “A student in Vermont’s highest-spending town received more than three times the education funding of a student in the lowest-spending town.”

Cooper wrote that legislators were “clear-eyed” that more work remained to be done, and that Gov. Scott’s team was involved “every step of the way” and that the number of Republican senators and representatives is proof of that.

Jonathan Cooper is a young man with a bright future. One can hope he continues his legislative career well beyond his first term.

It might also be beneficial if Gov. Scott decides that getting the education bill right and finished will be his goal. That may take sacrifice.

Announcing before or early in the next legislative session that all his attention will be on preparing the Vermont education system for the next 30 years will be his overriding concern. Therefore, he will not seek a sixth term as governor.

That would allow him to go out a winner and to be long remembered as the governor who greatly improved the state’s education model. It will also allow Vermont to acquire new eyes and fresh thinking for other challenges facing the Green Mountain State.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Eric Peterson: Gov. Phil Scott’s big beautiful bill.

Bennington FD turns ladder truck into cooling station

Tue, 24 Jun 2025 23:25:07 +0000

BENNINGTON, Vt. (NEWS10) -- The town of Bennington provided a variety of different cooling stations and outdoor cooling sites to help local residents beat the heat. The Bennington Fire Department used everything in its arsenal to help kids cool down.

The department's ladder truck transformed into a cooling station for kids to enjoy being sprayed by water. Parked behind the firehouse, residents stopped by on Monday and Tuesday to enjoy the make-your-own spray pad.

Deputy Fire Chief Scott Richmond said the department started doing it about five years ago when there were limited cooling options in the area. Since then, it's become a tradition.

"The community loves it, and we get some people show up for five or 10 minutes, some people stay for the whole event," he said. "People constantly flowing in and out the whole time we're doing it."

He also said the department works hard to not just do firefighting but to be an extension of what the community needs.

Read the latest from NEWS10:

NEWS10 is the Capital Region's local news leader!

Verdict reached for suspect in Vermont manhunt

Wed, 18 Jun 2025 02:30:21 +0000

BENNINGTON, Vt. (NEWS10) -- A jury returned two guilty verdicts and one acquittal for a Bennington man who led police on a chase for over a week.

The manhunt for Zachary Dumas started on September 8, 2023. Bennington police said Dumas managed to evade them despite help from the Vermont State Police and New York State Police.

In court on Tuesday, Dumas was found guilty of aggravated assault and assault and robbery with injury resulting. He was acquitted on an attempted murder charge.

The jury will reconvene on Wednesday to decide if he is a habitual offender. If yes, then he would face life in prison.

Read the latest from NEWS10:

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3 in serious condition after rollover in Pownal, Vt.

Thu, 05 Jun 2025 09:21:16 +0000

POWNAL, Vt. (NEWS10)-- On Tuesday, Vermont State Police and the Bennington Police Department responded to a roll-over crash on Strohmaier Road in the town of Pownal. According to the state police, the three passengers were found with life-threatening injuries.

Around 7:45 p.m. on Tuesday, troopers responded to Strohmaier Road for reports of a serious crash. When troopers arrived on scene, it was determined a 2004 Nissan Pathfinder left the roadway, for an unknown reason, and rolled.

The driver, an 18-year-old, and two passengers were found in serious condition, according to state police. All three occupants were airlifted to Albany Medical Center for emergency treatment.

NEWS10 reached out to Vermont State Police for an update on the passengers.

According to troopers, the Pownal Rescue Squad and the Bennington Rescue Squad also responded to the crash. As of Thursday, no tickets have been issued.

Anyone with information regarding the crash is asked to call state police at (802)442-5421 and reference case number 25B3002160.

Stay with NEWS10 for updates.

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GlobalFoundries invests $16B into NY, VT chip facilities

Wed, 04 Jun 2025 22:53:36 +0000

MALTA, N.Y. (NEWS10) -- GlobalFoundries will be investing $16 billion to expand its chip manufacturing operations throughout its New York and Vermont facilities, the company announced on Wednesday. The investment comes as technology companies move to boost the domestic semiconductor manufacturing industry.

GlobalFoundries will reportedly support the semiconductor production and advanced packaging of companies like Apple, SpaceX, General Motors, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. and more. The tech industry is aiming to onshore components of its supply chain due to the rapid rise of artificial intelligence, which has increased demand for more advanced semiconductors, GlobalFoundries said.

"At GlobalFoundries, we are proud to partner with pioneering technology leaders to manufacture their chips in the United States — advancing innovation while strengthening economic and supply chain resiliency," said Tim Breen, CEO of GlobalFoundries. "The AI revolution is driving strong, durable demand for GF’s technologies that enable tomorrow’s datacenters."

According to GlobalFoundries, $13 billion of the investment will go toward the expansion and modernization of the company's New York and Vermont facilities, as well as funding for the recently launched New York Packaging and Photonics Center in Malta. The remaining $3 billion will be allocated towards advanced research and development initiatives.

"GlobalFoundries is writing the future of American chipmaking right here in the Capital Region," said U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer, a longtime advocate for domestic chip manufacturing and a lead supporter of the CHIPS and Science Act. "Soon, America’s AI future, and the next generation of the top chips that power everything from cell phones to cars will be made in Upstate New York from start to finish!"

The company extended credit to President Donald Trump, who has taken steps to impose tariffs on computer chip imports in an effort to curb the US's reliance on products from China, Taiwan and South Korea. The president has also, however, called for the repeal of the CHIPS Act, which provided $52 billion for the domestic semiconductor manufacturing industry.

"Today’s announcement is a direct result of President Trump’s leadership and his vision to bring back high-paying manufacturing jobs and reestablish secure, domestic supply chains for critical technologies," said Thomas Caulfield, executive chairman of GlobalFoundries. "We look forward to continuing to work with the U.S. government to help create the conditions for industry and government to work together and drive meaningful, long-term impact."

The Capital Region has been making strides to become a national hub for semiconductor manufacturing. In addition to GlobalFoundries' investment and new Malta center, Albany NanoTech has finalized an agreement to become the first flagship facility of the National Semiconductor Technology Center.

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Hoosick Falls man accused of going 142 mph in a 55 mph zone

Mon, 02 Jun 2025 10:22:05 +0000

BENNINGTON, Vt. (NEWS10)-- A Hoosick Falls man was arrested Friday for allegedly driving 87 miles per hour over the speed limit, on Vermont Route 279 in Bennington. According to the Bennington Police, 23-year-old Dylan Durand, was charged with excessive speed and gross negligent operation of a motor vehicle.

Police say a 2021 Audi S4, driven by Durand, was seen traveling westbound on Vermont Route 279 at a high rate of speed. According to police, the car was going 142 miles per hour, in a 55 miles per hour zone.

Upon a traffic stop, Durand was arrested and transported to the Bennington Police Department for processing. In addition to his charges, he was issued a Vermont Civil Violation Complaint for speeding.

Durand was released under the conditions to appear in Vermont Superior Court-Bennington Criminal Division on Monday at 12:30 p.m. According to police, the investigation remains ongoing and anyone with information is asked to contact the Bennington Police Department at (802) 442-1030 or through their website, www.BenningtonPolice.com.

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Burlington community weighs in as Champlain Parkway project enters final stage

Thu, 01 Aug 2024 03:23:21 +0000

BURLINGTON, Vt. (WCAX) - The Champlain Parkway project is entering its final stage. Community members, curious and concerned about construction, faced Burlington’s Department of Public Works today.

Abby O’Donnell lives in downtown Burlington and is worried for the safety of cyclists. After navigating construction on her street almost all summer, she’s seeing the final plans and is feeling frustrated.

“It’s a little too late in the process to make any changes. That’s how [these things are], they’re so long and drawn out,” said O’Donnell.

It’s a concern shared with many of the two dozen people in attendance at the Parkway Open House at the King Street Center in Burlington on Wednesday. They say construction is taking too long and disturbing daily life.

“I worry about my safety every time I cross the street,” said South End resident Lena Greenberg.

Officials explained that the project is entering a new phase: neighborhood restoration of Pine Street between Kilburn Street and Main Street and throughout the surrounding neighborhoods.

“New curbs, replacing the sidewalks, and then the big upgrade is the signalized intersections that are going in at Maple and King,” said Corey Mims, an engineer with the Burlington Department of Public Works.

The city is asking contractors to bid on the restoration project, and for the other part of the ‘final contract’, the connection between I-189 and the Champlain Parkway. They’re alerting the community of the next phase before the parkway is complete.

“It still has line striping that needs to be completed, some signal, signage that needs to be installed, and there’s some punch list items the contractor needs to complete in advance of it being capable to be taking of traffic,” said Mims.

Mims says in about a month, the parkway will be ready for a 30-day trial, the last step before it opens.

For now, neighbors will wait for the city to approve a contractor, arrange logistics, and hopefully start construction in the fall.

“I’m really excited for most of this project, though, again I’m not the most excited about the area closest to downtown, but, we’ll see,” said O’Donnell.

So until 2026, when the city expects the completion of the final phase, look out for detours on Pine Street.

WATCH: Democratic candidates for Vt. lieutenant governor debate on WCAX

Thu, 01 Aug 2024 03:18:48 +0000

BURLINGTON, Vt. (WCAX) - The Democratic candidates for lieutenant governor of Vermont faced off in a debate on WCAX Wednesday.

Incumbent Lt. Gov. David Zuckerman and challenger Thomas Renner are both seeking the Democratic nomination for lieutenant governor.

Watch the debate:

Originally from Massachusetts, Zuckerman attended the University of Vermont and was inspired by Bernie Sanders before serving in the Statehouse. He’s currently in his second stint as lieutenant governor after an unsuccessful run for governor four years ago.

The Progressive-Democrat says he wants another term in office to amplify the voices of Vermonters and focus on housing, climate change mitigation, and issues of intellectual freedom typified by book bans.

His opponent is Winooski Deputy Mayor Thomas Renner. Renner has worked for Congresswoman Becca Balint and former Senator Patrick Leahy, and is the more moderate of the two candidates.

He says change is needed in Montpelier and his top priority is building more housing of all types so the next generation of Vermonters can stay in the state.

Watch our Primary Preview coverage of the two candidates in the player below.

The debate between Zuckerman and Renner was the second of the WCAX News primary debates this election season, and the second of three debates planned for this week on WCAX.

On Monday, the Republican candidates for lieutenant governor faced off.

There is still another debate to come this week. The Democrats for governor will debate on WCAX on Thursday.

The primary is on Aug. 13 and more information on voting can be obtained from the Vermont secretary of state’s website or your local town clerk.

WCAX's Gary Sadowsky honored with Seven Daysies award

Wed, 31 Jul 2024 23:18:49 +0000

BURLINGTON, Vt. (WCAX) - Seven Days readers made their pick for Best Local TV Personality, and it’s our very own Gary Sadowsky!

This is Gary’s first Seven Daysies win in his 33-year career at WCAX-TV.

He beat out four others for the honor, including our own Darren Perron.

Gary thanks Seven Days readers for their votes!

How can Vermont communities prepare for surprise storms?

Wed, 31 Jul 2024 23:10:37 +0000

ST. JOHNSBURY, Vt. (WCAX) - Towns in the Northeast Kingdom still reeling from this week’s destructive flash flooding are preparing for another round of potentially damaging storms.

St. Johnsbury saw a historic amount of rain, more than 8 inches in just a few hours. Some parts of town saw big washouts and damage to culverts and infrastructure.

The cleanup is now underway, but the record rainfall that brought on these floods was not expected, and it leaves a question of how Vermont can prepare for storms we can’t see coming.

The Northeast Kingdom is once again cleaning up from a damaging deluge.

“I heard the rain but I thought it would be similar to the last storm where there wasn’t much damage around here. I was surprised in the morning,” said one Lyndonville man.

Two days on, we’re beginning to get preliminary damage estimates from the floods, but no cost estimate yet.

So far, there are closures on six state highways, two wastewater plants took damage and 50 homes were damaged or destroyed.

“It’s simply demoralizing,” Gov. Phil Scott, R-Vermont, said at a news briefing on Wednesday.

Unlike last summer’s floods or the storms earlier this month, the torrential rains that caused the flooding popped up and caught the state by surprise. So with storms becoming more damaging and more common, how can Vermonters prepare for storms we can’t predict? State leaders don’t have that answer, but say they are ready to respond quickly.

“It’s because we have dedicated volunteers and career people in these communities that are ready to go the moment they hear the word that the water is rising,” Vt. Public Safety Commissioner Jennifer Morrison said.

Top law enforcement tells us they rely on local first responders getting eyes on the situation and relaying the message to specialized state resources, like swift-water rescue teams, that then spring into action.

But local officials say this storm caught them by surprise, too.

“This was never a troubled area, this area through here has never overly flooded. We are doing what we can to track it and support our people,” Lyndonville Police Chief Jack Harris said.

But paying for surprise damages remains an open question. Towns hit earlier this month are still waiting on FEMA to reimburse emergency repairs. With state dollars limited and FEMA taking time to reimburse towns, Vermont Chief Recovery Officer Doug Farnham says towns will need more reimbursements.

“It will be important as we go into the legislative session that it’s a serious part of the discussion of how we adapt in the long run,” Farnham said.

And an update on the floods from three weeks ago-- FEMA has finished assessing the state, and while they haven’t yet made a determination, the governor says there’s a strong possibility the state will be eligible for both public and individual assistance. There’s no timeline yet on when a major disaster declaration would be issued, though.

Vt. police say man purposely drove wrong way on interstate

Wed, 31 Jul 2024 22:31:51 +0000

WILLISTON, Vt. (WCAX) - Police say a man intentionally drove the wrong way on Interstate 89 on Tuesday.

Vermont State Police say troopers responded to what was believed to be a two-car crash on the highway in Williston at about 3:15 p.m.

They say there was no crash, but they say James Welles, 55, of Middlebury, drove through the median into oncoming traffic. Police say he did it on purpose and that mental health may have been a factor.

Welles was cited for negligent operation and is due in court in September.

Scott calls latest flooding ‘demoralizing’ but says Vermonters can’t give up

Wed, 31 Jul 2024 22:30:18 +0000

BERLIN, Vt. (WCAX) - As Vermonters work to recover from yet another round of devastating flooding, the governor and other state officials gave a news briefing on Wednesday detailing the state’s ongoing response.

Gov. Phil Scott called this latest round of devastating flooding in the state demoralizing but said Vermonters can’t give up.

“This time, it’s especially bad after workers spent the past three weeks working furiously to recover from the last flooding,” said Scott, R-Vermont. “It feels much worse than a punch or a kick. It’s simply demoralizing. But we can’t give up. We’ve got to stick together and fight back against the feeling of defeat.”

The latest flooding hit hardest in the Northeast Kingdom, washing out roads and prompting evacuations after some communities got as much as 8 inches of rain, breaking all previous records. The National Weather Service called it a one-in-1,000-year event.

It came just three weeks after the last round of flooding ripped through our region, and just over a year after the previous flooding.

State officials reported that swift-water rescue teams were out until 9 p.m. Tuesday helping people. Altogether, they performed 12 rescues and 15 home evacuations.

Officials say they don’t have official numbers yet, but preliminary data indicates 50 or more homes were completely destroyed or have major damage. However, they say some residences are still inaccessible to assess the damage.

“I get more apprehensive with every storm. All of us are watching the weather,” Scott said. With already-saturated soils and already-damaged infrastructure, “this just adds insult to injury.”

State officials on Wednesday again urged Vermonters to report all damage to their homes and businesses to 211-- from both this latest flooding and the floods earlier this month-- in an effort to help the state trigger the release of funds from FEMA.

MORE RAIN ON THE WAY

With more rain and possibly heavy rain in the forecast Wednesday, Vermont Public Safety Commissioner Jennifer Morrison urged all communities to clear culverts, storm drains and any other place water may flow. Click here for the latest forecast.

State officials also stressed that the public should be wary of landslides. They say already saturated land with more rain can cause potentially dangerous slides.

FEMA FINISHES DAMAGE ASSESSMENT OF PREVIOUS FLOODING

Meanwhile, as people start to tally up the damage from this week’s storm, state officials say FEMA finished its assessment from flooding earlier this month.

Officials from FEMA are now determining whether the damage meets the threshold for public and individual assistance.

We’re told nearly 2,500 reports have been made about damage to homes and 270 businesses reported damage.

Gov. Phil Scott expects a disaster declaration is warranted and plans to make the formal request this week.

To those affected by both rounds of flooding this month, the governor urges Vermonters to stay strong.

“I know this may seem never-ending. But we’ll get through it, continue to build back, increase our resiliency and put ourselves in better position to withstand future storms,” Scott said.

ROAD CLOSURES

The only road still closed from the flooding three weeks ago is Route 5 in Barnet.

There are numerous new road closures now, though, primarily in the Northeast Kingdom. For the latest updates, you can visit New England 511. Keep in mind that 511 only lists state road closures, there may be other local road closures.

Share your photos and videos with us, but please don’t put your safety at risk to get them.

OFFICIALS URGE SAFETY PRECAUTIONS

Vermont officials are urging those in flood-impacted areas to take basic safety precautions.

That includes turning off electrical power when there is standing water or fallen power lines. Don’t attempt to walk or drive through water, even if it seems safe. Move to higher ground as soon as you see water rising near your house. Dial 211 to find a shelter near you. And after water levels go down, make sure to test your water for contamination.

Click here for a list of state flood resources.

Click here for information on how you can help.

FEMA finishes damage assessment of previous round of flooding

Wed, 31 Jul 2024 22:27:54 +0000

BERLIN, Vt. (WCAX) - While people tally up the damage from this week’s storm, state officials say FEMA finished its assessment from flooding earlier this month.

Officials from FEMA are now determining whether the damage meets the threshold for public and individual assistance.

We’re told nearly 2,500 reports have been made about damage to homes and 270 businesses reported damage.

Gov. Phil Scott expects a disaster declaration is warranted and plans to make the formal request this week.

To those affected by both rounds of flooding this month, the governor urges Vermonters to stay strong.

“I know this may seem never-ending. But we’ll get through it, continue to build back, increase our resiliency and put ourselves in a better position to withstand future storms,” said Gov. Phil Scott, R-Vermont.

The only road still closed from the flooding three weeks ago is Route 5 in Barnet.

Green Mountain Care Board talks hospital sustainability amid Vt. health care system struggles

Wed, 31 Jul 2024 21:53:17 +0000

MIDDLEBURY, Vt. (WCAX) - Time is running out to keep Vermont hospitals afloat. That’s according to research presented in a community hospital transformation meeting in Middlebury on Tuesday.

Since Springfield Hospital declared bankruptcy in 2019, the Green Mountain Care Board has been looking into hospital sustainability. Now, with nine of Vermont’s 14 hospitals in the red, there’s even more concern.

“I do not think it is an exaggeration to say we are at a true inflection point,” said Owen Foster, the chair of the Green Mountain Care Board.

Community members were squeezing in to make room for their neighbors in the Isley Library in Middlebury. Everyone was there for an answer to how Vermont will save its impoverished hospital system.

“Their reserves are reaching levels that are alarmingly low,” said Dr. Bruce Hamory, a health care reform consultant.

It was one of 14 community meetings that took place this summer throughout the state. They derive from a 2022 law attempting to find a way to reform Vermont’s health care system. Residents listened to a presentation and offered their own suggestions and concerns.

The Green Mountain Care Board and the Agency of Human Services, in conjunction with Hamory, spoke in depth about a myriad of parasitic problems facing Vermont’s health care system-- highlighting Vermont’s changing demographics, housing crisis and health care accessibility and affordability.

“Primary care is one of the most important things we can improve in this state,” said Foster.

Reducing costs for primary care medical students, modernizing technology, increasing telehealth usage alongside primary care hours, and reducing administrative positions are just some of the solutions offered.

“We need to address it and fix it now, there’s not time to do anything else,” said Foster.

After the meetings, the Green Mountain Care Board and Agency of Human Services can suggest changes. While the health care reform law dictates a necessity for change, it has no requirement for hospitals to listen to those suggestions.

“The way the statute was set up is that it will be local boards and local hospitals making decisions,” said Foster.

A final meeting will be online and virtual on Monday, and a complete report of findings from almost 2,000 Vermonters and over 100 organizations will be released this fall.

Flooding wreaks havoc on Kingdom Trails during peak tourism season

Wed, 31 Jul 2024 21:48:52 +0000

BURKE, Vt. (WCAX) - One of Vermont’s biggest tourism spots has taken a big hit again. The heavy rain and flooding forced closures at Kingdom Trails, a major economic driver in the Northeast Kingdom. And it hit during peak season.

The small town of Burke was hit once again with flooding, wiping out the community’s largest economic driver.

“We have experienced complete trail washout. We have had culverts rise up out of the ground, bridges disappear,” said Abby Long, the executive director of Kingdom Trails.

Long says they have never been hit with flooding like this before. The organization spent more than $20,000 following the flooding three weeks ago, and now, officials expect to spend double that in recovery over the next few weeks.

“We also see the loss. On a day like today, there would be trail users swarming us with bikes and runners, people getting ice cream across the street, getting their lunch at the market. That is not the case today,” Long said.

Bikers who haven’t left the area who had plans to explore the Kingdom on the trails have been forced to spend their time on the gravel roads. Like Deborah Leedale Brown of the National Interscholastic Cycling Association, who came all the way from Philadelphia just to be rained out.

“Monday was a great day, we did some skills in the morning. We all got out on the trails in the afternoon. Then, obviously, the storms came. And yesterday, was, yeah, it was tragic. This was an area that was hit so hard,” Leedale Brown said.

Officials with Kingdom Trails say more than 100 miles of the trail network have been affected, and it has a huge trickle effect on businesses in Burke.

“I think the Kingdom Trails being shut down is probably affecting us more. By not having some people in town, with the trails being affected, getting the tourism dollars in here. I mean, that’s how we pay our bills, from Kingdom Trails,” said Burton Hinton of the East Burke Market.

The Kingdom Trails network should be opening slowly over this week. Officials say they hope to have full trail access by the weekend.

Vt. man charged with shooting Palestinian college students wants new lawyer

Wed, 31 Jul 2024 21:44:55 +0000

BURLINGTON, Vt. (WCAX) - The man accused of shooting three college students of Palestinian descent in Burlington wants a new lawyer.

Jason Eaton has been in jail for the last eight months after police say he shot three young men as they walked on the sidewalk by his apartment. The crime took place just after the start of the war in Gaza. All three survived, but one was seriously injured.

Eaton is not facing a hate crime charge right now, but he is facing attempted murder charges. And now, he wants a new lawyer.

Derek Brouwer wrote the story for Seven Days this week. He told our Darren Perron what he learned about the case. Watch the video to see their full conversation.

Click here to read Derek Brouwer’s story in Seven Days.

Sanders working with FEMA to get aid for Vermont flood victims

Wed, 31 Jul 2024 21:18:48 +0000

WASHINGTON (WCAX) - As people begin to tally up the damage from this latest round of flooding, officials say there have been 105 residential damage reports and six business damage reports to Vermont 211.

If you haven’t reported your damage, state leaders say you should so Vermont can be considered for more federal aid.

Meanwhile, Sen. Bernie Sanders says his office is working with FEMA to get as much assistance as possible to Vermont communities hit by flooding.

He says climate change is making these weather events more devastating and more frequent.

To my fellow Vermonters, on the devastating floods that have hit our communities this week, this month, and last year: pic.twitter.com/ejXgLZG5tE
— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) July 31, 2024

“I wish from the bottom of my heart that I could tell you that this type of extreme weather is not going to happen again. But I can’t. It could happen tomorrow, next month, or five years from now. That is a somber reality we’ve got to address,” said Sanders, I-Vermont.

Vermont Community Foundation offering flood relief

Wed, 31 Jul 2024 20:50:53 +0000

BURLINGTON, Vt. (WCAX) - The Vermont Community Foundation is working to help those hit hardest by yet another round of devastating flooding.

The Vermont Flood Response & Recovery Fund was established following last year’s floods. They continue to work with nonprofit organizations and the state to identify how to help.

Right now, they are assessing areas with the most acute needs, such as destroyed homes, people in need of food and shelter, and disrupted businesses.

“It’s figuring out how people are going to get from place to place at some of the remote, most remote corners of our state. I think the challenge of this set of flooding is that it is really affecting people on the furthest reaches, and so we have to work really hard to make sure that those experiences don’t go away, so many other experiences in rural Vermont have remained invisible,” said Dan Smith, the CEO of the Vermont Community Foundation.

They ask anyone who needs help to call 211 and encourage Vermonters to look out for one another and give where they can. Click here to find out how you can help.

Waterbury crash injures truck driver, closes down 1 lane of I-89

Wed, 31 Jul 2024 20:49:20 +0000

WATERBURY, Vt. (WCAX) - A crash on Interstate 89 in Waterbury on Wednesday left a driver seriously injured and closed down one lane of traffic.

It happened just before 8:30 a.m. near the Waterbury exit.

Vermont DMV investigators say an S.D. Ireland dump truck was headed south when it hit a tire left by a tractor-trailer in the right lane. They say the dump truck driver lost control, and the truck rolled, losing its load of stone and trapping driver Savion Thibou, 19, of Burlington, inside.

Crews used saws to get Thibou out. He was rushed to the UVM Medical Center in Burlington with significant injuries.

The lane remained closed while crews worked to investigate the crash and clean up the wreckage.

Anyone with information regarding a commercial vehicle losing a tire on I-89 Wednesday morning is asked to contact the DMV Enforcement and Safety Division.

Giant pine cone-like egg statue coming to new Williston art park

Wed, 31 Jul 2024 20:19:20 +0000

WILLISTON, Vt. (WCAX) - It looks like an ordinary construction zone, but something giant, round and magical is coming to Williston.

“We have the wooden egg, which some people are calling the pine cone, but I kind of don’t mind because the two things are very similar,” said artist and sculptor Clay Mohrman.

About 300 logs stacked along a metal frame are smoothed out at the top, erasing the sculpture’s pine cone beginnings and perfecting it into a round egg.

“The idea behind the piece, the wooden egg, was to really represent the idea of rebirth,” said Mohrman.

With the desperate need for more housing in Vermont, forests and wetlands are forced to be developed. It’s a story Mohrman hopes to tell through the pine cone-like egg, which will sit outside one of Williston’s newest housing developments.

“So the idea was to kind of create a piece that was an homage to that redevelopment of the land,” said Mohrman.

Two more sculptures will join the egg in what will be a new public park—a wood stack and a rock cairn. Plans for the new park behind the VSECU on Essex Road also include an interactive play area and giant stone boulders.

“As Williston grows and is developed, I think this is a cool way to kind of maintain some green spaces for people to explore and see different art and kind of connect with the land,” said Mohrman.

Construction of the park and its opening to the public is planned for September.

Vt. man accused of sexually assaulting child

Wed, 31 Jul 2024 18:22:33 +0000

BETHEL, Vt. (WCAX) - Police say a Bethel man sexually assaulted a child.

Vermont State Police arrested Cameron Gray, 21, last week.

They say Gray sexually assaulted the child in Bethel in May and the incident was reported to the police in June.

Gray pleaded not guilty to charges of aggravated sexual assault, luring a child, and lewd and lascivious conduct with a child. He was ordered held without bail.

Troopers say Gray was also arrested last month for an alleged domestic assault and trying to sexually assault someone he knew.

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Search team recovers body from Kennedy Pond in Windsor

Beth Stern: Recognizing the power and promise of Social Security at 90

John Bossange: Moving forward in Vermont after June 14

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Vermont Conversation: ‘Don’t back down’ — Vermont’s marriage equality revolution at 25

The 2025 Climate Action Plan grapples with the costs of climate programs

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What’s in the plan?

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The return of cap-and-invest

New merch: Our love letter to a Vermont summer

Happy place

Field notes

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US Department of Education withholds millions in funding for Vermont school districts

Paul Fleckenstein: What the struggle for freedom in Palestine means to the movement against authoritarianism in the U.S.

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Pam Reed: The quiet moments that matter

Eric Peterson: Gov. Phil Scott’s big beautiful bill

Bennington FD turns ladder truck into cooling station

Verdict reached for suspect in Vermont manhunt

3 in serious condition after rollover in Pownal, Vt.

GlobalFoundries invests $16B into NY, VT chip facilities

Hoosick Falls man accused of going 142 mph in a 55 mph zone

Burlington community weighs in as Champlain Parkway project enters final stage

WATCH: Democratic candidates for Vt. lieutenant governor debate on WCAX

WCAX's Gary Sadowsky honored with Seven Daysies award

How can Vermont communities prepare for surprise storms?

Vt. police say man purposely drove wrong way on interstate

Scott calls latest flooding ‘demoralizing’ but says Vermonters can’t give up

FEMA finishes damage assessment of previous round of flooding

Green Mountain Care Board talks hospital sustainability amid Vt. health care system struggles

Flooding wreaks havoc on Kingdom Trails during peak tourism season

Vt. man charged with shooting Palestinian college students wants new lawyer

Sanders working with FEMA to get aid for Vermont flood victims

Vermont Community Foundation offering flood relief

Waterbury crash injures truck driver, closes down 1 lane of I-89

Giant pine cone-like egg statue coming to new Williston art park

Vt. man accused of sexually assaulting child