Guy Page is the editor and publisher of the Vermont Daily Chronicle.
I think Rep. Till would be startled to learn that quite a few of his average constituents use tax preparation services and investment advice, and almost all of them use plumbers, electricians, lawn mowers, auto mechanics, driveway plowers, computer techies, tailors, accountants, taxi drivers, lawyers, tutors, music teachers, delivery drivers, loggers, excavators, barbers, cosmetologists, manicurists, day care operators, babysitters, gravediggers, and as many as 140 more service occupations.
The ACLU and the Disability Law Project of Vermont Legal Aid want the Vermont Agency of Education to stop letting school districts fund school police with Medicaid reimbursements.
S15, universal mailed ballots, passed the Vermont House 119-30 Tuesday.
Proposal 5, the proposed Vermont Constitutional amendment to establish unrestricted abortion, is meant to tie the hands of future legislatures who might want to build safeguards into Vermont abortion law.
The Essex – Westford School District views controversial Critical Race Theory as an “important aspect” in its racial equity program, Erin Maguire, the district’s Director of Equity and Inclusion, said at a May 4 school board meeting.
Norwich University, Bennington College, Champlain College, and St. Michaels College will require students to receive the Covid-19 vaccination as a condition of enrollment for the fall, 2021 semester.
Don’t miss breaking news! Vermont Daily Water Cooler is a roundup of important headlines from around the state.
Authorities are warning local businesses about counterfeit money being circulated in the Derby area.
Gov. Phil Scott isn’t worried about the lawsuit filed May 10 to prevent discrimination against people who decline Covid-19 vaccination.
Yesterday Gov. Phil Scott issued a Proclamation of Inclusion and declared May 9-15 Inclusion Week. For several years now Vermonters have been told incessantly about “Inclusion.” Now some are telling Gov. Scott and the Legislature, ‘you keep saying that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders – born-again budget hawk – has announced the Senate Budget Committee will hold a hearing tomorrow on “Waste, Fraud, Cost Overruns, and Auditing at the Pentagon.”
The Vermont Climate Council, the 23-member climate change task force whose numbers have swollen with the incorporation of a multitude of outside subcommittee members, want more money for themselves in their efforts to make your life less affordable.
The Vermont Senate Finance Committee included language repealing a provision of a law passed earlier this session that would have subjected forgiven 2021 PPP-Paycheck Protection Program loans to Vermont income tax.
The Burlington City Council last night ruled last night that all rental housing must meet “stringent” weatherization standards.
Don’t miss breaking news! Vermont Daily Water Cooler is a roundup of important headlines from around the state.
A Vermont state senator objects to a recent Vermont Dept. of Corrections ban on the ‘thin gray line’ flag meant to show support for corrections officers.
Vermont will receive $1 billion through the federal American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA). This funding presents a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to immediately accelerate “no regrets” climate action work. Governor Scott’s proposed ARPA budget calls for $200 millionover three years to facilitate direct, strategic, and measurable emissions reductions.
Vermont’s turtles will be on the move this spring, and the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department is asking for the public’s help in keeping them safe. Female turtles will be looking for places to deposit their eggs, sometimes choosing to lay them along the shoulders of roads, which can bring them into the path of motor vehicles.
Some of our present Vermont lawmakers have proposed and voted on two bills that will change the Vermont State Constitution. Rather than following the lawful process laid out to amend the State Constitution, they are flagrantly usurping The people of Vermont, those they are elected to represent.
Saturday, May. 15 at 2:30 pm 802 Freedom will be hosting an event at the Vermont State House in Montpelier.
You likely know that the Vermont House passed a bill (H.361) to allow 16-year-olds in Brattleboro to vote in municipal elections and to serve on town boards. Crazy?
Governor Phil Scott has appointed Riley Allen of Montpelier to serve as a member of the Public Utilities Commission (PUC).
The forced remote learning fiasco imposed on Vermont public school students this past year highlighted the lack of common benefits available from the state’s education system.
Removing 2020 from calculation of the Unemployment Insurance fund will help to hold employers harmless from certain costs related to the pandemic and government-mandated shutdowns, while also ensuring the unemployment trust fund remains solvent and UI claimants are not negatively impacted.
This is the first year in my adult life that I won’t be faced with a difficult, heartbreaking choice: picking out the perfect Mother’s Day card for my not-so-perfect mother.
Liberals and Progressives herald Black Lives Matter (BLM) with signature flags and lawn signs. How many really know their ideology and how it’s deluding a whole generation?
Not everyone’s happy with Charlotte Central School holding drive-through graduation ceremonies – again.
Don’t miss breaking news! Vermont Daily Water Cooler is a roundup of important headlines from around the state.
China – once the victim of foreign powers exporting opium – is now the biggest exporter of fentanyl, the synthetic opiate that killed about 130 Vermonters in 2020.
On March 2, Jim Hogue of Calais, Emily Peyton of Putney, Karen Eddings, Morningstar Porta, Kathleen Tarrant, and Deborah Dailey filed for an immediate emergency injunction in US Federal Court against Gov. Phil Scott, Attorney General TJ Donovan, and Health Commissioner Mark Levine “to halt orders, rules and enforcement regarding the lifting of quarantine solely for those who vaccinate” and other measures.
A $75/day home expense benefit created for the 2021 Zoom Legislature has resulted in $653,184 of claims through May 4, state officials say.
I think it is time to check in with a few of those RINOs. We need to ask folks like Mitt Romney, Governors and former Governors Charlie Baker, Larry Hogan, Phil Scott, John Kasich, Rick Snyder and others, like John Bolton, Jeb and George W. Bush, Carly Fiorina, Jeff Flake, Colin Powell and Cindy McCain if President Biden has been their kind of Republican.
The Vermont House yesterday passed S16, creation of the Task Force on School Exclusionary Discipline Reform. The goal of the task force is to reduce minority suspensions and expulsions from Vermont schools.
State police now know where it started, but they still don’t know what started the fire that destroyed a 250-year-old Williamstown church.
A Richford man is facing charges including attempted murder with a hate-crime enhancement following an incident that occurred Wednesday morning, May 5, outside a private residence in town.
“There is still more work to do to ensure all Vermonters, regardless of identity, feel safe and protected in our state,” Gov. Phil Scott said after signing the ‘gay panic defense’ bill.
As the Vermont Lake Monsters inaugural Futures Collegiate Baseball League season quickly approaches, the former Minor League New York–Penn League team’s roster is beginning to take shape and the team posted its first three players all with Vermont connections: pitchers Leif Bigelow of Guilford, Owen Kellington of Plainsfield, and Middlebury’s Evan Stewart.
Don’t miss breaking news! Vermont Daily Water Cooler is a roundup of important headlines from around the state.
The Chittenden County GOP will hold an Election Integrity Forum Tuesday, May 18 at 7 pm.
H363, a bill introduced into the Vermont House on Feb. 26, would “permit a candidate for statewide office to receive a salary from the candidate’s campaign funds.”
State Police say James Perry Jr., age 70, of Newbury, shot and killed his daughter Karina Rheaume, 38, of Newbury Monday afternoon, May 3.
Islanders have been catching fish with spears and guns since those tools have been around. And while that may sound unorthodox to some, learning about these fishing techniques and the techniques used around them is quite intriguing.
CORINTH–A man who fell approximately 150 feet down a mine shaft on Saturday night was injured and taken to the hospital after emergency responders performed a technical nighttime rescue.
At about 4:15 p.m. May 1, near the intersection of West Main Street and Canal Street in Vergennes, two unidentified males in a vehicle tried to abduct a 13-year-old girl as she was walking home.
Don’t miss breaking news! Vermont Daily Water Cooler is a roundup of important headlines from around the state.
H.361 would the Brattleboro charter to allow 16-17 years olds (and 15 years olds if they will turn 16 by election day) to vote in municipal elections and serve on town boards, such as the select board, according to an Ethan Allen Institute analysis.
None of this cliquey high school drama stuff mattered to Lefebvre, who saw Vermont electoral integrity at stake and realized that she was elected for such as time as this. Worn out by her insistence, and desperately seeking a unanimous vote, Hanzas blinked first.
Secretary of State’s Office: “This audit, like those before it, shows clearly that there is no underlying manipulation of the programming or systemic inaccuracy in the tabulators. They were, again, shown to be extremely accurate when the ballot is properly marked by the voters.”
Last week, the Vermont House killed the project-based “Tax Incremental Funding” (TIF), a funding source for small towns.
Everyone thought Vermonters would flock to these relatively high-paying, benefits-producing jobs. Compared to the long, irregular hours and low pay of farm labor and the service industry, these jobs were gold. But now, some employers who invested millions in Franklin County operations are looking elsewhere. There just aren’t enough workers.
U.S. Border Patrol agents in mid-April reported a large forest fire in Canada rapidly moving towards the town of Franklin, VT.
On a cold, cloudy Saturday May 1, a group of women spread out across Hardwick’s Main Street picking up trash and exchanging banter. All members of Teen Challenge Vermont, an addiction treatment center in Johnson, they were more than excited to be outside helping the community.
The House Government Operations Committee approved S15, the universal mailed ballot bill, by an 11-0 margin Friday after making changes meant to reduce potential for election fraud.
Event co-organizer Greg Thayer spoke on how America is a “Constitutional Republic, not a democracy.” Thayer equated his premises to the principle of equality and that our Constitution is a representative form of government and not by a king or mob rule. Thayer continued “that the government gets its authority from the People, who can take it away too.”
President Biden is under pressure to find a way to control a Supreme Court whose present majority may find constitutional limits to what the Democratic party’s left wing is urging him to do. He has created a 36-member Commission to cope with the explosive question of packing the Supreme Court with additional Justices in order to create a compliant 7-6 liberal majority to support his proposals.
The arrest of Poole was the conclusion of a Vermont Drug Task Force investigation that began in July 2020 in cooperation with the Franklin County Sheriff’s Department and South Burlington Police Department. The investigation revealed that Poole sold methamphetamine and heroin.
Upon arrival troopers met with the Fairfax Fire Department and observed a vehicle in the driveway that had sustained fire damage from what appeared to be a plastic bottle containing gasoline that had been poured on the windshield and hood before being ignited.
If you look at the list of bills the legislature has passed so far, you might be tempted to think they are focused on the pandemic. However, if you look a little closer, you can see that these bills are actually reactionary. They would direct federal funding to emergency housing, food banks, and childcare assistance; all worthy programs, but they serve the immediate need, not the future need six months to a year from now.
Received fom Vermont Liberty.net During COVID, well-recognized Constitutional rights have been repeatedly compromised, without adequate justification. Four events planned in May are designed to educate and encourage Vermonters to defend our Constitution […]
A Vermont man who is a former Obama White House advisor and a partner in the group that purchased Marlboro College this year has been charged with wire fraud, money laundering, and making false statements to a financial institution.
Don’t miss breaking news! Vermont Daily Water Cooler is a roundup of important headlines from around the state.
The Vermont House of Representatives Thursday voted 102-42 along party lines to give initial approval to amending the Brattleboro Town Charter to allow youth voters ages 16-18 to vote in local town elections.
Yesterday Vermont Secretary of State Jim Condos announced the completion of the 2020 Vermont General Election Audit, which was conducted on April 28 at the Pavilion Auditorium located in Montpelier. No significant abnormalities or discrepancies were found between the audit results and the Official Returns of Vote.
Too many Americans have allowed themselves to be defined as the enemy. This attack on our values starts with the majority party in Congress and includes our President. Their attacks are relentless as well as mindless. They lie shamelessly, they ignore the Constitution, they are re-writing American history to fit their false narrative, and they pursue an agenda that will end the society that has made our country the envy of the world.
Her list of superlatives is considerable: Jonas was the first commander of the Office of Fair & Impartial Policing and Community Affairs when it was established in 2016. She was the first woman in the Vermont State Police to lead the Internal Investigations Unit. And she was the first woman in the agency to attain the ranks of captain and major.
The Vermont Natural Resources Council (VNRC) and the Lake Champlain Committee (LCC) have appealed a permit issued by the Agency of Natural Resources (ANR) to allow the sinking of a 152-foot-long ferry near the Burlington waterfront.
Proponents argue that they are trying to “create a balance” between making it easy to vote and maintaining ballot security. That’s the rhetoric, but the truth is that should S.15 become law Vermont would have no effective security mechanisms to verify the validity of an absentee ballot, and the objective is to have everyone vote absentee (though that is not required). There is no balance, nor any attempt to create any.
The Oregon Secretary of State wants to tell Vermont legislators her state’s hard-won knowledge about vote integrity challenges in a universal vote-by-mail system. But that exchange of information won’t happen if Rep. Sarah Copeland-Hanzas, Chair of the House Government Operations Committee, holds a vote this afternoon on S15, Vermont’s universal, vote-by-mail bill.
An amendment added this week by the Vermont Senate to H18, a bill clarifying legal language about child sex abuse, would give immunity against prosecution for the crime of prostitution – a potential first step towards the legalization of prostitution in Vermont.
Green Up Day Vermont (GUV) invites Vermonters to participate in the annual pickup of trash alongside Vermont’s highways this Saturday, May 1. Click here for details about your town.
Don’t miss breaking news! Vermont Daily Water Cooler is a roundup of important headlines from around the state.
The Vermont Department of Labor announced today that the work search requirement for unemployment claimants will be reinstated beginning Sunday, May 9 for all claimants in regular UI and specific claimants in the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) program.
Catholic Democrat politicians are certainly devout, but I am not talking about their religion. Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Xavier Becerra, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Andrew Cuomo and others talk often about their Catholic faith. The supportive media regularly refers to them as Devout Catholics. But are they?
More than 150 Vermont downtowns and village centers are without a public wastewater system, which limits economic growth. Failed septic systems prevent the redevelopment of buildings; wastewater system limitations stop a general store from adding a market café; and a lack of public water and sewer is often a key limiting factor to a community’s ability to add new housing or businesses.
The climate craze has targeted Vermont dairy farms, as if getting rid of their methane emitting cows will make any detectable difference in the planet’s climate, while wrecking Vermont’s dairy industry.
Racism is a problem, it exists everywhere,” Kumulia “Case” Long told the House Human Services Committee Wednesday. “We are looking to tackle an issue that will never go away. The human race will always have something to fight over….however, If we can address economic inequality, we can help a much bigger group,” Long said. “We can help lift each other up.”
Don’t miss breaking news! Vermont Daily Water Cooler is a roundup of important headlines from around the state. Publication Headline Published NBC 5 Still on the fence about getting a COVID-19 vaccine? […]
The Vermont House of Representatives today is scheduled to consider H361, amending the Brattleboro Town Charter to allow youth voters ages 16-18 to vote in local town elections.
The US Department of Education (USDE) recently found that Vermont is one of only two states which “needs intervention in implementing the requirements of Part B Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).” This shatters the myth that Vermont offers disabled students a superior education.
A BACK THE BLUE Rally in support of local police will be held in Rutland on Saturday, MAY 1, beginning at 10:30 am along Rt 7 in front of the Rutland Main St Park.
Yesterday, Vermont Daily published a news story about the Burlington Police Commission urging the Barre Police Department to involve the FBI in the investigation of the year-long disappearance of a black man. The proposed resolution was couched in terms of doing more to provide justice for Vermont’s BIPOC community. Today, Barre Police Chief Tim Bombardier provided the following press release (issued April 13), in which he says “the Barre City Police have continued to exhaust all investigative avenues in our attempts to locate Ralph and to identify the individual(s) responsible for his disappearance.” He is considering a response to the Burlington Police Commission.
Game Warden Supervisor Arnold Magoon was killed by a poacher 43 Years ago today. The Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department is asking Vermonters to take a moment to honor the memory of State Game Warden Arnold Magoon of Brandon and all of Vermont’s fallen officers.
A recent rediscovery of a classic, 19th-century fossil site in northwestern Vermont is giving paleontologists a better understanding of Earth’s earliest lifeforms.
Research data linking marijuana use to people with suicidal ideation, attempts, and completed suicides are steadily increasing.
Don’t miss breaking news! Vermont Daily Water Cooler is a roundup of important headlines from around the state.
We often hear that the ethical principle of informed consent is the bedrock of modern medicine, but it is not commonly understood why. The Jacobson decision provided a precedent for other decisions, particularly the 1927 decision of Buck vs Bell, which upheld the primary tool of the worldwide eugenics movement: involuntary sterilization.
The Burlington Police Commission tonight will consider a resolution asking the Barre Police Department to seek Federal Bureau of Investigation assistance on finding Ralph Jean-Marie, a black man from Brockton, MA who has been missing since April 13, 2020.
Vermont does not have the building trade labor force to meet today’s demand for new construction, home repairs, and residential and commercial remodeling. If the ARPA comes to fruition, many of the projects Vermont needs to accomplish will, at best, be wishful thinking. The labor force is not here.
The minimal efforts towards repeal of old boards take on an even greater importance in light of the dozens and dozens of new boards proposed for creation this year. Vermont Daily has reviewed hundreds of pending bills in the Vermont Legislature and identified countless new boards that have been proposed.
t takes 1,680 average oxycontin pills (.269 grams) to make a pound. Some pills are heavier, some are lighter. Using the oxycontin pill standard, Vermonters turned in an estimated 12,037,200 pills.
Imagine if you were baking a birthday cake and you had the benefit of having the Vermont Senate Finance Committee helping you. That’s what it’s like as we debate how to extend broadband throughout Vermont.
Exempting electric bikes from the vehicular ‘purchase and use’ tax, expanding the sale of unpasteurized milk, creating another state commission, and requiring an economic impact study of closing the Ryegate biomass power plant are among the bills to be taken up Tuesday by the Vermont House of Representatives.
$5 million allocated in 2010 by the Vermont Legislature for economic development loans hasn’t been recouped as planned. The Senate Economic Development Committee wants to know why, according to a report from the Campaign for Vermont (CFV).
“It’s time for Vermonters to pull out the whole tick out of State Government,” T-shirt creator and model John Klar says on this VTLiberty.net video. Klar and the organization he founded have planned a series of events around the state during May.
After a year’s hiatus due to COVID-19 restrictions, demo derbies are set to return to the Orleans County Fairgrounds this year.
Act 9, a new state law, would collect state income taxes from Paycheck Protection Program loan funding provided to Vermont businesses in 2021. This unexpected taxation of an emergency benefit has the Vermont business community in an uproar.
After someone spent almost three weeks at the Randolph Village laundromat during the winter of 2019-2020, Charlie McMeekin knew there was a bigger issue at hand.
Vermont’s observation of the National Day of Prayer will take place in person and virtually May 6.
About $125 million of federal recovery funding will help the State acquire longterm housing for Vermont’s homeless, Gov. Phil Scott said at a press conference today.
by Attorney General TJ Donovan As Vermont and our nation continue to work toward a more fair and equitable criminal justice system, the Vermont Legislature is considering an important bill that can […]
