Despite new federal limits on who can get a Covid-19 vaccine and the arrival of the cold and flu season, many Vermonters can still get a booster, though details surrounding Medicare reimbursement and federal recommendations remain uncertain.

In a late August post on X, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced the Food and Drug Administration approved Covid-19 booster shots, but only for those 65 and above or with existing health risks. 

Vermont state officials are now awaiting a recommendation from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which typically guides public health directives and insurers’ coverage, for those who want to get a fall booster shot.  

“Really the best thing that I can recommend is either to go online and see if you can set up an online appointment (for a vaccine), or call pharmacies in your area to see if they’re available,” said Julie Arel, the state’s interim commissioner of health.

In Vermont, pharmacies are moving forward with administering the vaccine. Kinney Drugs and CVS have the updated Covid vaccines in stock. Pharmacies order directly from the manufacturer. Providers — doctors’ offices and other clinics — often get vaccines through the state, which is not yet able to order the vaccines from the CDC. 

Kinney Drugs’ spokesperson Alice Maggiore confirmed that the stores can administer the 2025-26 vaccines to people above 65 and individuals between 12 and 64 who attest to having one of the qualifying conditions, as outlined by the CDC. 

CVS is able to vaccinate anyone over 5 years old, who attests to eligibility under the same CDC’s preexisting conditions list, or anyone older than 65, according to a company executive, Amy Thibault. 

The underlying risks outlined by the CDC range from asthma or a smoking history to mental health disorders, like depression obesity, or physical inactivity. Patients do not need a doctor’s prescription to confirm the underlying condition at Kinney or CVS, both spokespeople said.

Typically, insurers cover vaccines received in a pharmacy. Whether some private and government insurers will be able to cover the vaccines remains uncertain. Even if people can get the vaccine by walking into a pharmacy, it’s unclear if they will have to pay for it:  “It’s a little bit mind boggling,” Arel said. 

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Vermont, the state’s largest private insurer, plans to continue to cover the vaccine for any member, at no cost and with no prior approval, said Andrew Garland, a vice president and spokesperson for the insurer. Blue Cross Blue Shield of VT intends to do so through 2026, as well. MVP, the state’s other private insurer selling plans on the marketplace, also does not anticipate changes in its vaccine coverage policy, said Elizabeth Boody, a spokesperson for the company. 

What employer-sponsored insurers and providers like Tricare, the military health system, might be able to cover, is still unclear.

Since the FDA has already approved the vaccine for those over 65, it is likely that Medicare, which covers the same age group, will cover the vaccines. Dorit Reiss, a vaccine policy expert at the University of California Law, San Francisco, told NBC News that once the FDA approves a vaccine, Medicare has the authority to cover it.

Generally a Covid vaccine undergoes three steps for approval: First the FDA authorizes the new vaccines — which it did in August. Then a panel within the CDC called ACIP (short for Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices) issues a recommendation on the vaccine. It is scheduled to meet Sept. 18-19, to do so. This year many are holding their breath ahead of ACIP’s announcement, since Kennedy gutted the panel and replaced it with many vaccine skeptics. 

The state is weighing whether and how it will need to break from that typical process, and is currently exploring what Vermont statute allows for breaking with that process.

While it is quite common for providers to prescribe a drug outside of what the FDA has authorized them for, it’s not typical, however, for that to happen with vaccines. The FDA’s lack of formal guidance on what qualifies as an underlying condition leaves room for interpretation surrounding who qualifies for the vaccine.

“There’s some flexibility in there, but because it’s not as clear as usual, there is going to be hesitancy, in all likelihood,” said Arel. “And anytime there’s hesitancy, anytime there’s confusion, it’s going to lead to lower immunization rates. We really want to try to avoid that.”

The Department of Health is also looking to Vermont’s neighbors in the Northeast for direction, Arel said. In August, the department joined with other state health departments in the region to build a coalition ready to respond to shifts in federal guidance. Though the group has no unified recommendation, she says it’s something they are considering to help mediate the current disjunctive state of vaccine recommendations and approvals. 

“If as a region, we can become more aligned, it helps people across the whole Northeast region to feel a level of confidence in their state public health department’s decisions and how we’re moving forward,” she said.

In Massachusetts, Gov. Maura Healy required in-state insurance carriers to cover the vaccines recommended by the state’s Department of Public Health, even if they are outside of the federal recommendations. The state’s commissioner of public health also issued a standing order that allows pharmacists to issue Covid shots to anyone over the age of 5. 

In response, Arel said Vermont is watching its neighbors and looking into where state statute might allow for potential action. 

“Getting clarity and having a message be clear and simple, is going to be the most important thing we do,” Arel said. “Unfortunately, we are still working through all of that, but we are committed to finding our way through it and making it as simple and easy as possible.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: As feds tighten Covid vaccine rules, Vermont works to maintain access .

Vermont’s Department of Health confirmed the state’s first-known human case of the mosquito-borne Jamestown Canyon virus. The disease has relatively mild symptoms, especially for young people who do not have underlying health conditions.

The state began monitoring mosquitoes for Jamestown Canyon Virus this year, after it was found in nearby states. The monitoring showed insects in Rutland, Marshfield and Whitingham all carried the disease. This human case, which was confirmed in a Sept. 8 lab test in a Windsor County patient, further confirms the presence of the virus in Vermont, according to Natalie Kwit, the state’s public health veterinarian.

“It is a good indicator and reminder, just like anytime we find the virus in mosquitoes, to continue to take precautions against mosquito bites,” Kwit said.

Mosquitoes become infected when they bite animals — particularly deer — carrying the virus. They then spread it to other animals and people when they bite them. Humans are “dead end hosts,” meaning that the viral load people receive from an infected mosquito bite is too low to spread to other people.

It also means that many people with the virus never experience symptoms, while others can develop flu-like symptoms, such as fevers, headaches, chills and aches. People with compromised immune systems and older people are more at risk for more severe symptoms — for some, more serious disease could escalate to confusion and discoordination, stiffness and seizure. About half of people who do become symptomatic get hospitalized, according to the Department of Health. 

The best way to prevent infection is to prevent mosquito bites in the first place. The Department of Health recommends limiting time outside during dusk and dawn when the insects are most active, wearing long sleeves and insect repellent, and covering windows, doors, playpens and strollers with tight mosquito nets or screens. The department also advises people to clear any standing water that may accumulate in things like pots, buckets or children’s outdoor toys.

In late summer, the risk for mosquito-borne illnesses increases, Kwit said, since there has been more time for the virus to circulate in hosts and mosquitoes. The risk remains — and the state plans to continue monitoring mosquitoes — until the first fall frost. 

The state also tests the collected mosquito samples for West Nile virus and Eastern equine encephalitis — or EEE — virus, as it has in years past. There have been no confirmed cases of either in a human this year.

“We’re just learning about this virus, too,” Kwit said of Jamestown Canyon virus. “We’ve only just started actively testing for it in mosquitoes we collect in Vermont, so over time, we’ll get an understanding of where we’re finding it, as we’re gathering more evidence.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Vermont confirms state’s 1st case of Jamestown Canyon virus in humans .

For the fourth year in a row, the number of black bears in Vermont far outpaced what the state considers an ideal population size. 

Last year, the state had an estimated 6,800 to 8,000 bears, nearly double the objective of 3,500 to 5,500 bears, outlined by a Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department population model. The state calculates its goal for Vermont’s bear population based on a range of variables, including what is healthy for the bears and ecosystem, as well as humans’ attitudes toward the risk of conflict with the animals.

Why is the population doing so well? There are two big factors that determine population size, said Jaclyn Comeau, the Black Bear Project leader at the state Fish & Wildlife Department: mortality rates and reproduction rates.

The state has a pretty good sense of what is influencing bear mortality, she said. Hunters are responsible for most premature bear deaths, followed by vehicle collisions. Freak accidents, like a bear chewing an electrical wire, can also cause a bear’s early death. Still, populations are continuing to “grow and grow,” Comeau said. 

Looking at reproduction is “kind of that missing piece of information that we don’t have” when it comes to understanding what drives that trend, according to Comeau. A new study launched this summer aims to tackle that question and better pinpoint what type of habitat and food availability supports healthy bear birth rates.

Since the 1980s, the “backbone” to steady population growth has been the wider recovery of suitable habitat for bears, Comeau said, as forest grew back across a landscape previously dominated by deforestation and farm land. The agricultural Vermont of the 1940s and 1950s left bears confined to the spine of the Green Mountains, she said. In those days, killing bears was far more common, without the hunting regulations and restricted season Vermont has today.

Still, the Fish & Wildlife Department would like to better understand how availability of different food sources might influence where the bears go and how successful they are in reproduction, especially as they spread down from the mountains. 

In the mountains, beechnuts are bears’ primary fall food source, but the trees’ nut production pulses every two or three years. Historically, bear populations have risen and fallen with these cycles.  

In the valleys, oak trees — and thus, acorns — are more abundant and more consistent.

“We’re wondering if now that the bear population has moved out of the mountains, if they’re accessing higher-quality habitat where food is more consistent,” Comeau said. “Now that they’re in the valleys, potentially, the habitat might be more productive and allowing their populations to grow.” 

To answer that, the department’s study follows 18 adult female bears fitted with GPS tracking collars that allow biologists to see where the bears are, presumably getting food. The study aims to isolate these two distinct habitat areas by looking at nine bears in the Connecticut River Valley and nine others in the southern Green Mountains. In the winter, the scientists will visit the bears’ dens to confirm how many cubs the mother has, with the intent of following the family and cub survival through their first year of life. Fish & Wildlife anticipates letting the survey run for six years in order to collect enough data to draw conclusions.

Better understanding the conditions in which bears are thriving will allow the department to better protect and manage their habitat, Comeau said. 

The prosperity of Vermont’s black bears is a rare success, as many species decline due to habitat loss, changes in food availability and environmental shifts, among a range of other environmental shifts brought on by climate change. 

Black bears are especially flexible when it comes to habitat and food. As omnivores, they can survive off multiple food sources, and their wide range, from Florida and Mexico to Canada, shows they can adapt to a variety of habitats and temperatures.

Still it does not mean that a changing climate will leave the bears unaffected, Comeau said. 

Comeau worries what the encroachment of beech leaf disease in Vermont’s forests will mean for the bear population over the next decade. 

And as Vermont’s winter season shrinks, people should expect bears to enter hibernation later in the year and emerge earlier in the spring. That, plus a growing population spreading beyond the mountains, makes bears more likely to encounter humans. For Comeau, this underscores a need to figure out how to foster the best coexistence.

The department added that Vermont’s bear hunting season started Monday and runs through Nov. 14. Hunters are allowed to kill collared bears, but Fish & Wildlife asks that they avoid killing bears accompanied by cubs and that they return any collars.

Correction: An earlier version of this story mischaracterized how the state calculates the bear population.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Why is Vermont’s bear population booming?.

Vermont’s independent health care regulator, the Green Mountain Care Board, is considering a set of recommendations that would place tighter guardrails on expenses run rampant across the University of Vermont Health Network. The board’s staff presented the recommendations at its Wednesday meeting, a precursor to the board’s annual hospital budget decisions due Sept. 15. 

New laws passed this legislative session bolstered the care board’s ability to specifically tackle compensation for health care executives and the structure of network health operations, like UVM Health Network. Gov. Phil Scott, who signed these laws, released a statement Thursday commending the care board’s efforts to lower the overall cost of health care in the state. 

“In recent years, GMCB regulatory review has identified concerns with University of Vermont Health Network operations, and lack of alignment between executive compensation and State healthcare goals,” board chair Owen Foster told VTDigger in a statement following the hearing.  “This budget cycle GMCB’s staff has accordingly conducted a deeper dive and analysis of these issues and yesterday made recommendations to the Board.” 

Specifically, during its Wednesday presentation the care board staff illustrated the extreme income disparities between the UVM Medical Center and other hospitals owned by its parent company, the UVM Health Network. The network owns three hospitals in Vermont (UVM, Porter, and Central Vermont Medical Centers), three in New York, and a number of additional health care facilities in the region. 

UVMMC is the largest hospital in the network. Its budgeted revenue for 2026 is $2.4 billion, while Central Vermont’s is $318 million and Porter’s $142 million. 

In 2020-24, losses across the UVM Network reached $12.8 million, according to the board staff’s presentation. Still, the UVM Medical Center alone contributed more than $138 million in profit to the network during this period, the report also showed. Two of the three  New York hospitals in the network operated at a deficit. Of its proposed budgets for next fiscal year, UVMMC accounts for nearly 95% of the systemwide operating income. 

“The Health Network has made excess revenue margin here in Vermont, and the Health Network has needed to contribute those dollars to the New York Hospitals. Vermonters are paying for keeping those New York hospitals afloat,” explained Mike Fisher, the state’s health care advocate, in an interview with VTDigger after the budget hearing.

Exactly what can the board do to curb that disparity? “I’m not exactly sure,” Fisher said, but he was heartened to see the board make strides to pull hospital costs down, to be closer in line with what insurers will be able to pay them. 

To understand the hospital budgets, it’s important to understand the insurance rate review. The two are deeply interconnected. In August, as part of this review process, the Green Mountain Care Board, approved moderate premium increases for health insurers selling plans on the state’s Affordable Care Act marketplace. These rates influence how much hospitals can bill insurers for their services. 

Insurance rate review and hospital budgets are two sides of one equation, Fisher explained. “Insurance rate review is ‘how much money do you have to spend?’ Hospital budget [review] is analogous to ‘Where are you going to spend those dollars?’” he said.

“In years past those two sides of the equation haven’t added up. The board has allowed for more spending than it raised (through insurance payments),” he added.

For the coming fiscal year, the board recommended a commercial reimbursement rate reduction of 7.3% for UVMMC, as well as reductions to net patient revenue and expenses. It also recommended rate increases for Porter and Central Vermont Medical Centers of 2.9% (down, for both, from a proposed 3%) and budget reductions commensurate with reductions in net patient revenue.

The staff recommendations came after Mike Smith, who leads an independent liaison team,  delivered a scathing letter to the UVMHN Board, UVMMC Board and Green Mountain Care Board on Aug. 29, calling out the network’s proposed budget narrative. He outlined that UVMNH’s claims that it is working to improve affordability grossly conflict with the numbers on the page. While the network put forth lower rates, it outlined increases in use and type of services that more than offset that reduction.

Because of this, commercial insurers will see a nearly $46 million increase in what they pay the UVMMC in 2026, Smith writes, despite the $76 million reduction in rates. 

Smith’s letter also raised the concern that the care board outlined, stating that the medical center “was paying more than its fair share of network costs,” especially by lending money to the network’s New York hospitals. The network has made a net $68.9 million in loans to the New York hospitals between 2015 and 2013, Smith cites, adding that UVMMC and UVMHN invested an additional $20 million as part of an affiliation agreement, population health initiatives and capital investments. 

In response to the letter, UVM Health Network spokesperson Annie Mackin wrote that the “University of Vermont Health Network worked hard to submit budgets for FY ’26 that complied with GMCB guidance, and which took into account the increasing need of our patients for health care services and the increased expenses involved in providing care. However, much work remains, and we and our partners will need to continue taking steps to improve affordability not just in this budget cycle, but in the months and years ahead. We look forward to further digging into the questions and ideas the liaison team have raised.”

Regarding the concerns about the cost burden of the network’s New York hospitals, she said, “Our health care partners in northern New York contribute real benefits to Vermonters – from the care they provide, to the positive economic impact when patients from Plattsburgh or Elizabethtown seek specialized treatment in Burlington,” adding that the two New York hospitals in the red are “making meaningful progress toward stability.”

The liaison’s letter and the care board staff both also looked critically at executive compensation in the UVM network. For 14 executive positions at the network, they budgeted an average 9% increase — nearly a $50,000 average increase from fiscal year 2025 to 2026, care board staff outlined. The liaison’s letter cited that rates of employee benefits have outpaced average cost growth in the past five years  across all three Vermont hospitals — nearly doubling at the medical center. In response, Mackin added that the health network compensates “all staff, regardless of their position, at market rates that help us recruit and retain the people we need to provide high quality care.”

Overall, expenses at the medical center have grown 9.8% annually between 2019 and 2024 — far outpacing the annual inflation rate for that same period.

“The UVMHN must focus on affordability both in its words and in its budget submissions.

Concrete steps must be taken to bring this budget and future ones in line with an agreed affordability metric that pertains to Vermont and Vermonters,” Smith wrote in the letter.

In the coming days the care board intends to deliberate and evaluate the proposed budgets and its staff recommendations, before beginning voting next week. The fiscal year for hospitals runs Oct. 1 through Sept. 30. The care board must establish a budget for each hospital by Sept. 15.

Read the story on VTDigger here: State health care regulator attempts to rein in hospital budgets as costs balloon.

Representatives from Vermont’s Department of Health and seven other Northeastern states met last week to form a regional public health coalition that can respond to challenges passed down from the federal government amid dramatic changes brought on by the administration of President Donald Trump, such as disparities in vaccine recommendations or losses in lab funding. 

Vermont’s interim health commissioner, Julie Arel, confirmed that she and her principal adviser went to the meeting in Providence, Rhode Island, as did the state epidemiologist, lab director and other senior staff members in the Department of Health. The meeting was first reported by the Boston Globe.

Arel described a collaboration in its preliminary stages: “The intent of that meeting in Rhode Island was to start to say, ‘What is this thing?’ We haven’t really defined it. We haven’t really decided what it is we’re doing with this.” 

Still, she sees an increasing need for interstate collaboration as the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention restricts funding for lab testing and departs from scientific consensus on its immunization messaging. 

“The biggest issue for public health right now is the uncertainty coming from the federal government,” Arel said. “That level of uncertainty is really hard for entities that are as heavily funded by federal grants as we are.” 

No more than a week after the regional meeting, the federal center’s director, Susan Monarez, was forced out of the position, reportedly due to her objections to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s efforts to change vaccine recommendations. On Wednesday, Monarez’s lawyers posted a letter on X that claimed her ouster was due to her refusal to “rubber-stamp unscientific, reckless directives and fire dedicated health experts.” 

The CDC’s chief medical officer, the director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, the director of the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases and the director of Office of Public Health Data, Surveillance and Technology all resigned that same day.

On Thursday, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders called for a bipartisan congressional investigation into Monarez’s firing, citing in his statement the dangers to public health posed by what he called a “reckless” and “dangerous” decision. 

The regional meeting last week centered on questions of infectious disease epidemiology, vaccines, laboratory sciences and emergency preparedness, Arel said. The coalition included all of the New England states except New Hampshire, as well as New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania.

“There may be times where we are looking to provide more information than maybe the CDC is. But every state is going to need to do its own thing,” she added, explaining that the idea is that the regional coalition could be a source of guidelines and resources for states to act on independently. 

Attendees were particularly interested in discussing how states might navigate a situation where the CDC’s vaccine recommendations split from state health officials’ scientific consensus, Arel described. 

On Wednesday, the FDA issued approvals for updated Covid vaccines and removed emergency authorizations for their use, which had broadened access to the shots. Kennedy posted on X that the current authorization makes the Moderna, Pfizer and Novavax vaccines available to patients over 12 years old after consulting with their doctors. Still, the end of the emergency designation is expected to make it more challenging for individuals to get the shots without that approval. 

In a Thursday email to VTDigger, Vermont Department of Health spokesperson Kyle Casteel added that what qualifies as an underlying condition to make someone eligible for the vaccine, and how it is proven to someone administering the vaccine, remains unclear. 

The CDC is still expected to issue a recommendation for who should receive those vaccines. In June, Kennedy replaced the vaccine panel at the CDC with vaccine skeptics, and many worry that the panel’s recommendation may further limit access to Covid immunization when it meets in mid-September. 

“The approval of this fall’s COVID vaccine has not followed the typical approval process, and we are still assessing recommendations and potential impacts so we can provide guidance to Vermonters about who can get the vaccine and where,” Casteel wrote. “We are working to reduce any access barriers as much as we can and will keep sharing information as it becomes available.”

He added that the state will continue to communicate with counterparts in other states to inform how to move forward with the confusion surrounding the federal directives. 

Officials at the coalition meeting discussed areas of collaboration in which states can find efficiencies by acting as a larger group — such as buying bulk lab supplies as a region, which would bring cost savings to Vermont as a small state. When the loss of federal funding reduces resources for the state Department of Health, those savings can make a big difference, Arel said. 

Other ideas for collaboration would leverage regional cooperation in less tangible ways — like brainstorming and coordinating messaging, public information campaigns or collectively  strategizing on how to overcome public health challenges as they arise. 

The collaboration Arel described is still at the stage of laying the groundwork and relationships for when the need to collectively act arises: “We don’t want to get out ahead of anything,” she said. “A lot of it has been making those relationships stronger.” 

Read the story on VTDigger here: With CDC in chaos, Vermont joins regional coalition to navigate public health challenges.

Northwestern Medical Center resumed some operations Monday after suspending all surgical procedures last week due to the persistent presence of small particulates in sterilized surgical trays, the hospital’s leader said. The St. Albans City hospital continued Tuesday to increase the number and type of surgeries it performs.  

During the temporary pause, first reported by WCAX-TV, which began August 18, the hospital installed a temporary reverse osmosis water filtering device to remove the particulates, hospital CEO Peter Wright said. The custom-made permanent reverse osmosis machine planned as a long-term solution will cost the hospital about $500,000, he said. 

Though the hospital uses municipal water, its staff is not aware of any issues with the city’s supply that could have caused this. They also are unsure why the issue became more prevalent this summer. 

The water standards needed for decontaminating surgical tools are stricter than what is required for clean drinking water, Wright said. The hospital’s particulate issue does not mean there is any danger in drinking or using city water for other purposes. 

“I fill up my water bottle; I drink city water every day,” he said.

Operating room staff started noticing tiny particles in the sterilized, plastic-wrapped trays of surgical tools in the spring. When found, those tools had to be replaced or re-sterilized, sometimes requiring surgeons to delay operations. The problem persisted and surgical delays became more frequent, which brought the issue to Wright’s attention in June, he said.

At that point, the hospital began efforts to remediate the problem, changing water pipes and filters more frequently, and reviewing HVAC systems and workstations, among other preventative checks, hospital spokesperson Kate Laddison said. Medical device company Steris has also worked with the hospital to remediate the issue, she added. 

Still, by late July, contamination in the trays became an even more frequent obstacle. 

“It got to the point where the team said, ‘Hey, we don’t know that we can reliably do surgery with the right equipment.’ The moment we thought it was a safety issue, we said, ‘stop,’” Wright said. 

Hospital leadership decided Friday, Aug. 15, to suspend surgeries the following Monday. 

The additional step of filtering water used to clean surgical equipment through the temporary reverse osmosis machine appears to be addressing the problem, according to Wright. Last week, early testing showed the trays and kits cleaned with water that passes through the reverse osmosis machine were free of particulates, he said. 

The hospital moved forward Monday with an incremental restart of surgeries and held four operations, all of which had trays free of particulates, Wright confirmed. They scaled up the number and type of surgeries Tuesday without any contamination. 

Still, Northwestern Medical Center’s administration plans to continue evaluating its decontamination and sterilization process to isolate other potential sources of contamination, according to Wright. The surgical tools and trays generally undergo a multi-part cleaning process. The tools are inspected and hand washed before going into a large dishwasher-like decontaminator. Then they are assembled into trays, wrapped in plastic, and sent through sterilization. The review will include examining the quality of the wrap the trays are covered with and interrogating how the sterilization room itself is cleaned, he said. 

“We do not think that [the water] is the only problem. We just think it’s the biggest bulk of the problem,” he said.

Some staff have expressed frustration with the ongoing nature of the problem.

Wright confirmed the administration received a letter from staff that expressed concerns about how long the contamination issues were allowed to go on and called for the removal of the person overseeing surgical processes. He declined to address the specific complaint, however.

“It would be inappropriate for me to comment about anything regarding any single member of our team,” he said of the letter, “but of course we will address it, absolutely.”

Christine Juaire, an operating room nurse and a member of the bargaining team for the newly-formed nurse’s union said in an emailed statement that “nurses don’t really know what is going on right now.” She did not address the letter or whether she signed it.

“Unfortunately, that is a trend with our current administration,” Juaire said in the statement. “There is often little transparency and little interest in involving staff who have years of experience in the processes and decisions.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Surgeries resume at Northwestern Medical Center after contamination forced pause .

Vermont’s top health care regulator ordered health insurers selling plans on the state’s Affordable Care Act marketplace to keep their premium price increases for next year much lower than the companies proposed in May.

On Friday, the Green Mountain Care Board released its final decision on the percentage increase that it would allow. The order impacts so-called Qualified Health Plans sold on Vermont Health Connect to both individuals and small groups. The regulatory board reviews proposed price increases for these plans annually.  

This year, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Vermont, which is one of only two insurers that sells plans on Vermont Health Connect, initially requested a 23.5% increase in rates for the individual insurance market and a 13.5% increase for its small group market plans. The care board ultimately approved a 9.6% and 4.4% increase, respectively. 

MVP Health Plan Inc., the other insurer selling plans on Vermont’s marketplace, initially requested a 6.2% increase for its individual market plans and an increase of 7.5% for its small group plans. Again, the care board approved rate increases that are far lower than those requested: 1.3% for individual plans and 2.5% for the small group plans.

The decision comes as Vermonters face higher insurance premiums than do residents of any other state and as Blue Cross Blue Shield of Vermont risks insolvency. 

The board-approved rates aim to balance keeping costs as low as possible for Vermonters, while also keeping the state’s largest insurer afloat, said Green Mountain Care Board chair Owen Foster during a Monday press briefing. 

“Blue Cross remains in a difficult position financially, but so too do Vermonters. The board’s responsibility is to balance those competing interests,” Foster said. “At the end of the day, we concluded that allowing these giant rate increases would be very detrimental to people’s ability to access care and that the status quo of double-digit rate increases was not acceptable.”

Whether these lower rates will be adequate to cover the cost of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Vermont’s claims in 2026 remains to be seen, said Andrew Garland, a vice president and spokesperson for the insurer. That depends on the board’s review of hospital budgets — also done annually — and the subsequent price negotiations between hospitals and insurers, he added 

However, Garland remained optimistic: “A lot has changed since we filed these rates back in early May.” 

Namely, in June Gov. Phil Scott signed a new law that will cap how much certain hospitals can bill in 2026 for outpatient pharmaceutical drugs, like IVs or certain cancer treatments. Garland said Blue Cross Blue Shield expects that law to save its members “many millions of dollars.” 

Additionally, Blue Cross Blue Shield plans to receive a larger risk-transfer payment from MVP than it had originally estimated, Garland said. To protect from insurers marketing plans only to healthy, low-cost patients, the Affordable Care Act stipulates that plans with lower-risk patients must redistribute funds to plans with higher-risk patients. For 2024, MVP had a larger portion of low-risk enrollees and thus will pay Blue Cross Blue Shield as part of this risk-transfer balance, which also helps mitigate some of the insurer’s concerns for the lower rate increases, he explained.

The regulatory board also sets how much each of the 14 hospitals it regulates can increase charges to insurers every year. Those hospitals were put on notice that their guideline for increases in prices for 2026 was just a 3% increase, though final decisions for each hospital are not expected until mid-September. 

At the same time, insurers are also bracing for a massive loss in marketplace customers due to the likely end of the Covid-19-era expanded federal insurance subsidies next year. Blue Cross Blue Shield estimates that 12.6% of its members on individual marketplace plans will drop their coverage. Those left on such plans, the insurer projects, will be the people who need and use it the most, meaning they expect an overall increase in costs. 

Board chair Foster added that Friday’s decision puts Vermont’s rate increases in line or lower than what many other states have approved or are expected to approve for next year’s marketplace premiums — about 15% on average. All across the country, individuals and insurers are likely to face this same loss of federal subsidies. 

MVP spokesperson Michelle Golden said Monday in an emailed statement that the board’s new rates “are a testament to collective efforts to responsibly manage costs while also ensuring access, high quality care, continued innovation, and overall community well-being.” 

During the Monday briefing, Foster said insurers often reported feeling powerless to negotiate with hospitals on fair rates. Recently the state’s Department of Financial Regulation weighed in to strengthen insurers’ stance in such negotiations, saying it will not approve any plans that do not protect the insurance companies’ solvency. 

Insurers can appeal the board’s decisions within 30 days, Foster said, though they have not confirmed any interest in doing so.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Vermont health care regulator approves lowest insurance premium increases since 2022.

Vermont’s insurance regulator has intervened to set significant guardrails on the contracts that hospitals and insurers are negotiating for the coming year in an effort to reduce health insurance costs for individuals, families and businesses in the state.

On Aug. 14, the Vermont Department of Financial Regulation — the state agency tasked with ensuring the solvency of insurance companies of all types — issued an order that escalated its involvement in what have largely been private negotiations between hospitals and commercial insurers over payment rates. Those negotiated prices — along with how much and what kind of health care hospitals provide to insured Vermonters — are a major factor determining the cost of monthly health insurance premiums for the year. 

The department’s order requires Vermont’s two largest insurers — Blue Cross Blue Shield of Vermont and MVP — to demonstrate in writing that any agreements the companies make with the state’s larger hospitals and hospital network will lead to a “material reduction” in commercial health insurance premiums. The order also requires any contract to contain “discount provisions and other cost containment provisions that reflect industry standards.”

“The point of the order is to be flexible but also hold the feet to the fire for all parties in the negotiations. There needs to be cost savings here. The status quo will not do,” said Kaj Samsom, the Department of Financial Regulation’s commissioner, who issued the order. 

This year, the average monthly premium for the benchmark plan on Vermont Health Connect, the state’s Affordable Care Act marketplace, hit $1,277 per month. That is the highest cost premium anywhere in the United States, 22% higher than a comparable plan sold in the next most expensive state, Alaska; more than twice as expensive as one sold in Maine; and almost four times the cost of one in neighboring New Hampshire, according to the health care data analysis nonprofit KFF. 

Although just a fraction of people covered by commercial health insurance in Vermont purchase plans through the marketplace, the cost of those plans are impacted by the same factors that drive other premiums — the cost of health care services and how often they are used. The marketplace plans are also standardized in their coverage, so they allow for an easier comparison across states.

The department’s order is explicitly aimed at shoring up the finances of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Vermont, which has lost nearly $152 million between 2021 and 2025 and faces insolvency without drastic changes in its costs and revenue. However, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Vermont (BCBSVT) and MVP Health Plan, Inc. (MVP) are the only two insurers who sell health insurance plans on the Vermont Health Connect marketplace, so the department extended the order to apply to MVP as well, in order “to assure reasonable competition,” as the order states. 

“There was a lot of hope by all parties that in the regular cadence of negotiation, Blue Cross and MVP could prevent some of the necessary insurance rate increases, through negotiated cost reductions with providers,” Samsom said. “All parties are trying to find common ground, but the fact is that they’ve failed.” 

The order only applies to contracts between the two insurers and certain hospitals, generally the state’s larger ones: University of Vermont Medical Center in the Burlington area; Rutland Regional Medical Center; Central Vermont Medical Center in Berlin; Southwestern Vermont Medical Center in Bennington; Northwestern Vermont Medical Center in St. Albans City; Brattleboro Memorial Hospital and Porter Medical Center in Middlebury — the latter because it is part of the University of Vermont Health Network. 

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Vermont sees this move from the department “as strongly supporting a more affordable healthcare system for Vermonters” as they work through negotiations with hospitals, Andrew Garland, a vice president and spokesperson for the insurer, wrote in an email.

Jordan Estey, an MVP vice president and spokesperson, also acknowledged the order’s significance in “addressing both affordability for Vermonters and long-term sustainability within the health care system,” in an email.

The Green Mountain Care Board, the state’s independent health care regulator, is tasked with setting guidelines for plans sold on the Vermont Health Connect marketplace and approving the annual premiums.

Due to a series of health care reforms signed into law this June, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Vermont has been able to lower its requested average premium increases — from 23.3% for individual plans and 13.7% for small group plans in May, to 15.1% for individual plans and 7.4% for small group plans. The care board expects to issue its guidelines for the 2026  marketplace rates on Friday.

While the department is pushing for even lower rates, it is unclear how the order will apply to the Green Mountain Care Board’s decisions on insurance rates. Regardless, the department is asking that board members give the move consideration as it makes hospital budgets decisions next month. 

The power of the department’s order is limited, because the agency only oversees insurers and cannot compel hospitals to make the same cost-cutting efforts in their negotiations, Samson, the department’s commissioner, explained in a letter to board Chair Owen Foster. The letter suggests that complementary action from the Green Mountain Care Board could secure the savings needed to reduce premiums. 

Foster acknowledged the letter but declined to indicate how the care board will act on the department’s action, citing its ongoing deliberations. But generally, “this all works better if we all work in alignment,” he said. “We work closely and very, very well with DFR every single day.”

Samsom said the care board could make a similar order, either by placing a revenue cap on major hospitals or ordering across-the-board unit cost reductions. 

“[The Care Board] are the experts and they hold the keys necessary to understanding to where cuts can be made,” he said.

Both insurers expect fewer plans will be sold in the individual marketplace for 2026.  With the likely end of federal subsidies at the end of this year, costs will increase dramatically for many purchasers. The expected disenrollment is one factor driving up the cost of premiums for those still insured.

“This is a crisis,” Samsom said of the end of the subsidies. “Those tax credits helped make things — I wouldn’t say affordable, but — more affordable and within reach for a lot of [individual marketplace] insurance buyers.” 

Still, insurers and hospitals must find a path to move forward. 

“At the end of the day, they have to come to an agreement,” Samsom said.  “We cannot have the UVM Health Network be an out-of-network provider. At some point, we have to have a contract between all parties and an agreement.”

The order essentially bolsters insurers in their negotiations as the department has to approve any contracts the hospitals and insurers enter into. Despite that, Samsom said he will be sparing with his veto power.

“At this point we are looking for a plan,” Samsom said. That could look like BCBSVT and MVP striking tentative agreements with major hospitals on certain service cost reductions, or some type of risk-sharing component that helps cap the maximum claims, he said. “That’s what it would take for me to endorse the findings of such a contract.”

“I’m putting my thumb on the scale here to say we need more cost reductions from the major hospitals,” he added.

Kristen Fountain contributed reporting. 

Read the story on VTDigger here: ‘Thumb on the scale’: Vermont’s insurance regulator brings heavier hand to hospital contract talks.

When rumors about closing the Copley Hospital Birthing Center started to circulate last year, Sarah Chouinard, the president of the hospital’s nurses union, and many of her colleagues thought they were just that: rumors.

“There have always been cycles of this threat of closure,” she said. “But we’ve been protected because of community public relations and the service we provide for the community.” 

Then, one of the hospital’s four midwives scaled back her hours to work on an as-needed basis. The hospital initially made no plan to hire a replacement, then posted the job, found a good candidate but never made the hire. The other three midwives grew suspicious. 

Chouinard also began emailing Copley President Joe Woodin, similarly seeking clarity: Were these just more rumors swirling around the birthing center? Would her nurses need to worry about being reassigned? 

She said she got no response.

“The more that was not said, the more we knew what was happening,” Chouinard said. 

In March 2025, the Morristown hospital announced it was launching a comprehensive review of the birthing center to explore closing or expanding its operations. Those were the options suggested by a landmark report published by a state-hired consulting firm last year that outlined radical changes needed to make the health care system in Vermont more accessible and affordable. 

Hospital leadership said it does not plan to make a decision until a consultant hired to do the review submits its recommendations, which are expected in mid-June. The hospital’s associated Women’s Center, which hosts gynecological and obstetric care, is slated to remain open, regardless of the hospital’s decision on the birthing center, according to hospital spokesperson Barbara Walls.

Still, the threat of losing such a beloved center has left the community incensed.

Supporters of the birthing center quickly created an online petition, which has garnered more than 2,500 signatures. Advocates hosted a Mother’s Day rally in support of the center, peppered their yards with lawn signs, and wrote countless letters to the hospital and public in hopes of underscoring just how great a loss the closure of the Copley Hospital Birthing Center would be for Lamoille County. 

The public outcry reached such a boiling point that Copley decided to postpone its annual Stowe Art Wine & Food Fundraiser over concerns about a planned protest at the event.

The midwife model

Advocates argue the closure of the birthing center would not only leave the community without a local place for delivery, but it would also jeopardize what patients and providers consider to be a model for midwife-driven care.

When a pregnant patient comes to the center, a midwife leads their prenatal visits and development of the birthing plan. The clinic’s two OB-GYNs are part of that broader care team but only become hands-on with a patient’s care if there is a need — like gestational diabetes or hemorrhaging in birth, Kopas said. 

“It’s a different approach that puts the pregnant person at the center of decision making,” said Mary Lou Kopas, one of Copley’s three full-time nurse midwives. “(The model) looks at pregnancy and birth and breastfeeding as normal physiologic processes and not medical emergencies waiting to happen.”

She said the approach also centers “shared decision making,” where the provider takes time to listen to the patient’s specific needs, lifestyle and circumstances in forming a birthing plan. “It’s not a one size fits all,” she said.

Patients believe that this approach is what’s made their experiences so positive.

“It’s such a special place. It’s the only time that I’ve had an interaction with the medical system where I left that interaction feeling like I was treated with dignity and respect,” said Eva Zaret, a public health specialist who had both her children — a 3-year-old and a 9-month-old — at Copley.

Zaret said she had a history of managing an eating disorder and had intense anxiety about gaining weight during pregnancy.

When Zaret began explaining her worries, the midwife walked her through the possible alternatives, and “then the midwife just put down everything,” Zaret said. “And she just looked at me, and said, ‘What do you need?’” 

Zaret told her she didn’t want to be weighed at her appointments, to which the midwife simply said “OK.” That was it. 

The birthing center also scores highly on one important marker of high-quality birthing care: Copley often cites that it has one of the lowest rates of C-section births in the state. 

At Copley 1 in about every 10 births is a C-section delivery, Kopas said, while nationally, that rate is closer to 1 in every 3. Part of that low rate, however, may be due to the fact that Copley is only able to accept low-risk pregnancies. 

Midwifery care has been associated with fewer preterm births, reduced labor interventions, and lower maternal and infant death and illness, as various control trials and observational studies have shown. 

“I think that Copley should be held up as a model — beyond just ‘you should have (this) many midwives on for this many hours.’ People should go shadow and see ‘how do I talk to a patient? What does it really mean to be trauma informed? Or, what does it really mean to be patient centered?’” Zaret said.

Paying for pregnancy 

When the consulting firm Oliver Wyman issued its report in September 2024, outlining ways to improve Vermont’s health care system, it recommended developing more regional “centers of excellence” for specialized care. 

For Copley, the report suggested scaling up to become a regional center of excellence for orthopedics. The report did not identify Copley as one of the four hospitals where major restructuring would be needed to stay afloat. 

The report, and thus Copley’s review, is part of a bigger push to scale back ballooning healthcare costs in the state.

“Our health system is experiencing an intense cost crisis, and also an access crisis,” said Brendan Krause, the director of health care reform at the state’s Agency of Human Services. “We’re seeing the cost crisis not just in hospitals, but also with our state regulated insurance market — which doesn’t just mean more, higher premiums for individuals and businesses. It also means it is more expensive to create jobs; property taxes go up.” 

“I would say this (review) is very much aligned with what a state has asked them to do. And, I would trust the hospital and the board to review the data and listen to their community and make the decision, according to the best information they have,” Krause added. 

Delivery nurses and midwives expressed frustration that there was little communication with their department about how to make the center more profitable. In late May, the board met with some of the midwives and providers to collect their input on how to close or expand, something providers had long been asking for. They and other stakeholder groups have been given an hour of time to share these ideas, observations and questions with the consultant.

Copley says the birthing center operates at a loss of $3 million to $5 million annually. Because commercial insurance rate increases are approved annually by the Green Mountain Care Board, a statewide health care regulator, Copley has been limited in what it can charge and how quickly it can increase those charges. As a result, currently, the hospital bills private insurers around $7,000 for a low-intervention, vaginal birth, while other large hospitals charge more than twice that number.

“Our costs are fixed. We do not have the ability to change those costs,” said Barbara Walls, the hospital’s spokesperson. 

When the Green Mountain Care Board set commercial insurance price increase rates in September, Copley pushed for an 11.8% increase in costs, Walls said. The board trimmed that request significantly to 3.4%, a rate increase that all hospitals were required to stay at or below. 

The board allowed Copley a total of 15% increase in commercial rates the previous fiscal year — 8% in September 2023 and an emergency additional 7% in April 2024.

Kopas and her colleagues see room for the program to draw in more money without raising costs: “I do think there is capacity to grow this program — could easily do 10% more births without increasing staffing,” Kopas added. 

One way of doing that, she and others suggested, would be to put a satellite prenatal clinic in Waterbury, where the hospital has recently expanded its orthopedic services. It would allow them to catch a larger array of patients right off Route 89, Kopas said.

Still, Walls said that an expansion and upgrade to the birthing facilities may not directly correlate with an increase in patients and revenue. Walls said 42% of the births in Lamoille County occur at the hospital.

“That’s 58% (of births) that are not happening at Copley,” she said. 

Part of that may be due to the fact that Copley can only accept low-risk pregnancies. Anyone who might need a Newborn Intensive Care Unit gets referred elsewhere, usually, to University of Vermont Medical Center in Burlington.

The hospital often cites low birth rates, which the Wyman report highlighted, as a reason to close the facility. The report identified a low volume of deliveries as a reason for the hospital either to “grow or shift birthing to other organizations.”

The report set a threshold of 240 births a year, as sufficient to offset the costs of running birthing operations. Copley has been well under that number since 2010, with birthing center deliveries landing between 160 to 200 a year. Since 2018, those levels have plateaued around 160 births a year. 

North Country Hospital in Newport and Northeastern Vermont Regional Hospital in St. Johnsbury, both of which draw from regions that overlap with Copley’s service area, also had birth volumes beneath the Wyman report threshold. 

Kopas interpreted the data differently, saying birth rates have remained steady and that this year’s due-dates are on track to keep the hospital in the same ballpark. Plus, Lamoille County is growing, she said.

Walls questioned whether that growth would make a difference.

“Yes, Lamoille County is growing, but is it growing with people who are planning on having additional children?” she said. “And would they be planning on having those children here?”

When Kim Horne and her husband were looking to buy a house in Morrisville in early 2020, their real estate agent highlighted the house’s proximity to Copley and its birthing center. 

“Like a lot of our friends who have also recently moved to the area, we were looking to start a family,” she said. In January 2024, she had her first child at Copley and is planning on giving birth to her second child there next month. 

Community care 

Many stress the importance of the fact that Copley is a community hospital as one of its great selling points — both because of the proximity it gives patients and the staff’s connection to the county. 

“It’s a community, and there’s even a family feel to it,” Chouinard said. “You realize you start taking care of generations of people – of babies’ babies.” 

Chouinard grew up in North Wolcott, went to Stowe High School and then the University of Vermont. She started her career at Copley before becoming a travel nurse, and in 2011 she returned to Copley and has stayed there ever since. 

“I was so excited to really take my skills and experience and do something here at home,” she said.

To patients, that community investment shows. 

“I think you could take any OB unit at a hospital, and you could staff it up with a 24/7 midwifery model, and you wouldn’t get what Copley has,” Zaret said. “They have worked very intentionally for a long time to create a culture there that really values their patients.” 

Moreover, many worry about what the absence of a local place to give birth will mean for patients. 

“That’s going to be a mess,” Chouinard said. “Ambulances don’t want to deliver babies, ERs don’t want to deliver babies. There are a lot of ‘what-ifs’ (to risks associated with birth) but we’re supposed to be here for the ‘what ifs.’”

Others worry that closing the birthing center would decrease prenatal visits — though Walls stressed that its Women’s Center will remain unaffected. Patients will still be able to access their pre and post natal care at Copley. 

Horne, who is eight months pregnant with her second child, worries about what any additional travel might mean for patients before they give birth. Her first baby was head down, but flipped, before she went into labor. 

“It was excruciating,” she said. “I couldn’t put any pressure on my pelvis or my lower back whatsoever. I couldn’t walk, I couldn’t sit, and when a contraction would happen, and I was seated in the car, even just for the tiniest commute, I was like lifting myself up in my seat,” she said, adding that having to make a longer drive “would have been dire.”

But to her, a community hospital represents more than just drivetimes. It’s about the investment a hospital has in its patients’ care, beyond profits.

“I’m not trying to be harsh or anything, but (if you close your birthing center), you can’t really call yourself a community hospital anymore because that’s such a vital pillar of a community,” she said. 

Walls said that the hospital knows that and is taking this to heart. 

“We understand that this is very emotional. It’s a deeply human process of birthing and creating new families, and we understand and respect that,” she said. “That being said, the temperature has gone up higher and higher, the more we have been forthcoming and transparent and acting from a place of integrity, the more we have received suspicion.”

For now, the hospital and its community members are in a holding pattern until the consultant’s report returns with recommended paths of action. 

Still, Kopas sees the low monetary value placed on midwifery care and birthing in general as part of a deeper systemic issue. 

“Why is care that is essential to people with a womb an expendable portion of care?” she asked. “I mean, this is primary care for women and other childbearing people. This is essential care. So why is it expendable? That just angers me. I see it in a bigger picture of misogyny in our culture. Why is this care not reimbursed at the value?” 

Read the story on VTDigger here: Copley Hospital weighs closing its birthing center amid statewide effort to curb health care costs.

For many Vermonters, summer’s return ushers in familiar fears of flooding. This year, that anxiety is complicated by a new concern surrounding federal changes to disaster relief programs that have helped the state in the recent past.

State and local leaders worry about how reductions in staff and funding for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or the loss of the system altogether, may be felt in Vermont, in the near and long term. 

Already, an estimated 20% of permanent staff have left the agency through buyouts or early retirement, and the agency ended a crucial door-knocking program, designed to reach people immediately after a disaster. All of this comes as President Donald Trump and his administration weigh even deeper cuts to the agency.

Still very much in the throes of recovery from the 2023 and 2024 floods, the state, municipalities and individuals have depended on these federal funds to cover the cost of rebuilding. These  recent disasters show just how much the state draws from FEMA.

“There’s a fear, too, of what happens if there’s flooding this summer,” said Sarah Henshaw, the coordinator for the Lamoille Area Recovery Network, or LeARN, a group created after the 2023 floods to help individuals navigate disaster recovery. 

“What are we going to do, as a community, when there is no FEMA?” she said. “The state has done (its) best to try to build out (its) systems, but the systems are reliant on FEMA.”

The fears surround the state’s capacity to manage short-term response and long-term recovery — things like repairing roads and houses — if more disasters hit the state in the future. Though some residents worry about how the federal shakeup may affect long-term recovery payouts from past disasters, state officials confirmed that those efforts are moving forward without significant changes. 

“I think the most accurate way to phrase it right now is that our interaction with FEMA and our progress on obligations and disbursements is functioning or behaving pretty much how it did under the previous administration,” said Doug Farnham, Vermont’s chief recovery officer. 

Still, statements by federal officials and actions are fueling anxiety about the future of the agency, even as day-to-day payouts progress.

During a May 20 congressional hearing, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem advocated for shifting the burden of disaster response onto states and away from FEMA, which is housed under her department. Her comments build on a sentiment Trump has advanced since the early days of his term to possibly eliminate FEMA.

Since then, he’s proposed a barrage of cuts to the agency’s budget and workforce, including the end of a $750 million grant program that his earlier administration designed. Also, FEMA administrators said they had no plan to address the projected $8 billion deficit in the agency’s emergency fund during a recent congressional hearing. The cuts leave emergency managers wondering how — and if — FEMA will be able to help communities rebuild after the next big disaster.

Experts also worry about the agency’s capacity for short-term response, given that FEMA has sharply reduced training for those tasked with on-the-ground response, as Reuters reported, and canceled its door-knocking program. 

“The whole point of federal assistance is to bring in more humans, to bring in more bodies than the state(s) can provide themselves, especially in small states,” Farnham said. “So we just can’t shift our population, our workforce that much. We need help.”

Federal support on past disasters

Federal aid has been crucial in rebuilding from the 2023 and 2024 floods.

FEMA’s disaster recovery payouts fall into two main categories: individual assistance and municipal assistance. The requests and reimbursements from federal disaster declarations in 2023 and 2024 in each category underscore how much the state, towns and individuals rely on federal support.

For the summer 2023 floods, FEMA dispersed $26.2 million to 3,616 Vermonters — that’s to provide support for things like reconstruction of homes, replacement of private roads or bridges lost, rental assistance, or even for more nuanced “other needs assistance” for things like kidney dialysis machines or space heaters that may have been damaged in a storm. 

The maximum amount an individual can receive from FEMA is $42,500, though many individuals saw damage in 2023 and 2024 that exceeded that amount.

The window to file requests for more aid from FEMA related to the 2023 floods has now closed. 

“That doesn’t mean work is done. It just means that work (and) resources need to be identified with non-FEMA sources,” said Jason Gosselin, who coordinates the individual assistance program through the state’s Agency of Human Services. He underscored how FEMA is one piece, though a large one, of the multiple sources people draw from to recover — like their insurance, savings accounts and community recovery groups. 

The appeals and payouts for last summer’s floods are still moving forward. For the first first major July 2024 flood, FEMA has provided $12.1 million in assistance to 1,686 Vermonters and more than $1.7 million to 225 Vermonters for the later July floods that year. For both 2024 disasters, FEMA has 230 appeals open, as of mid-May, according to the agency’s regional office.

The process for towns and cities to secure reimbursements is not unlike the process individuals take — but at the scale of municipal roads and bridges and multimillion dollar water treatment plants.

“It can be harder to see the role that FEMA plays in supporting cities, towns, states in doing things like cleaning up debris, paying for first responder over time, paying for mass sheltering, even things like helping cover the costs of rebuilding schools and courthouses and other public buildings,” said Sarah Labowitz, a researcher at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who focuses on disaster recovery data.   

Once FEMA obligates the funds, the money goes to the Vermont Department of Emergency Management, which has its own approval process prior to distributing the money to applicants. Applications can get held up at any phase of this process, but collecting the right paperwork is particularly sticky. 

“The issue many times is the issue of documentation: Many of these towns have a town administrator that is part time, works very few hours in the week and they may not have any background, or really working knowledge of how roads, culverts, ditches, embankments are constructed,” said Mark Johnson, the recovery section chief for Vermont Emergency Management. It’s part of why the expertise and continuity of FEMA assistance can be so crucial. 

For the 2023 disaster, FEMA has awarded more than $190.7 million to the state, to be dispersed across municipal and state projects, according to the agency’s regional office.

Many of those projects are still in the early phases of rebuilding. “They’re still being written or formulated or created in a way that will meet all the guidelines,” Johnson said. 

“These are not the low-hanging fruit,” Johnson said of the projects that remain. “In other words, these are the tough ones — these are wastewater treatment facilities, these are things that, for whatever reason, have required more complicated (attention).” 

Among those mega projects are the repairs to the wastewater treatment facilities in Johnson, Hardwick and Ludlow.

For the two major July 2024 floods, FEMA has committed around $13 million to the state for municipal recovery. 

State officials estimate that the total cost of damage to state and municipal property between 2023 and 2024 will total around $800 million — including the big summer floods and smaller, localized disasters.

“The total changes every day. Until we have final agreement and close out projects, the numbers are going to continue to shift and morph around for several years,” Farnham said. “The things that FEMA hasn’t obligated yet are always going to be subject to change and adjustment.”

Estimates for the total cost of the 2024 floods should stabilize sooner since those damages and repairs are less complicated than those of 2023, according to Farnham. 

“We didn’t have the major, major facility damage that we saw in 2023, so we don’t have the big wastewater treatment facility projects. Other than state highways, state (infrastructure) suffered minimal damage,” he said.

One of the biggest unknowns and largest expense from the 2023 flooding is the reconstruction of the state Capitol complex, a collection of state government buildings damaged by the 2023 floods. Instead of fixing each building individually, the state has decided to address the repairs collectively and hopes to finalize its proposal by July 14. 

A future without FEMA? 

As these state and municipal projects move forward, and as individuals rebuild, the shadow of impending changes to FEMA — and what that might mean for future disasters — hangs heavy.

The state, on its own, does not have the capacity to respond to the scale of future disasters without federal resources. Vermont received an average of $30.9 million in federal disaster funding over the past nine years. 

While that number may seem like a small share of the state’s operating budget — a little less than 1%, according to data from the Carnegie Endowment and interpreted by Axios —  it is one of the largest proportions in the country. Only six other states (including hurricane-prone Louisiana, Florida and Texas along with post-wildfire Hawaii) have higher shares of federal disaster funding compared with their overall state budget.

“There are all kinds of efficiencies that we gain from having a federal system for disaster recovery,” Labowitz said. “We spread around the risk. We spread around the workforce capacity. We spread around the cost.” 

“Does Vermont need to create a standing workforce to respond to disasters? Even though disasters are relatively infrequent, it still needs a workforce to help respond to (disasters) when they do happen. Particularly for smaller states, that’s going to be really hard,” she added.

However, the spate of disasters over the past two years has left Vermont relatively ready to react to extreme floods this summer, Farnham said. The danger, he said, is in the long term, if the state loses the institutional memory of preparedness, response and long-term recovery networks — especially if the federal structure changes.

While boots on the ground workers are essential in the immediate aftermath of a disaster, FEMA’s staff or programs are not to blame for the existing bottle neck that prevents smooth, speedy long-term recovery, Farnham said.  

The main barrier to FEMA working quickly is the accumulation of external regulations and environmental precautions that surround massive building projects. “Having fewer federal employees and the same regulations and policies is not going to be helpful,” Farnham said.

Labowitz is watching and waiting for what a summer with a hollowed out FEMA may hold. To her, “It feels like a train that you can see coming from a long way away.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: ‘We need help’: While tallying recent assistance, Vermont officials consider a future without FEMA.

The Rutland City teachers’ union and school board have ratified a new contract for the district’s teachers — the final end to a year-and-a-half of prolonged negotiations and tensions. 

The two groups had averted a strike, hours before it was set to begin May 14, when an eight-hour marathon meeting ended in a new contract agreement. On Thursday, the union voted to ratify it, and on Tuesday afternoon, the school board did the same.

“We’re collectively breathing a sigh of relief,” union President Sue Tanen said. “I think in the end, when we came together that last day, there was true collective bargaining, where we worked together and talked about what we needed.”

The contract includes teacher salary increases of 5.7% for the 2024-25 school year, which will be delivered in a retroactive lump sum; 5.8% for the 2025-26 school year; and 5.6% for 2026-27.

It includes an addition of 10 days of paid parental leave, which “for us, was huge,” Tanen said, since teachers otherwise used up paid sick days or took unpaid leave. The new contract also includes one additional sick day, for a total of 11 paid sick days. 

Teacher salary increases became the sticking point in the negotiations: The union sought increases that would keep their pay on par with that of other educators in the state, initially proposing annual increases of 15%, 10% and 10% across three years. 

The school board maintained that the district’s unique 10.3% pension plan should make up for lower salaries. The board also argued its salary proposals were confined by the city’s education budgets, which Rutland voters approve each year — $63.83 million for the 2024-25 school year and $67.18 million for the 2025-26 school year.

After a year of negotiations, the two sides worked with an independent fact-finder, who recommended a salary increase of 4.8% for 2024-25, 5% for 2025-26 and 5% for 2026-27. While the union accepted these terms, they disagreed with the board on whether that percentage increase was inclusive of or in addition to the annual step up in wages faculty members typically receive. The new salaries outlined in the contract include those annual increases. 

The district has now called back employees who received reduction in force notices earlier this spring, a preemptive move by the district in the case that it needed to make layoffs to keep salary increases balanced with the budget. However, it decided to not fill eight positions for the next school year to keep salary costs down, according to the district Superintendent Bill Olsen.

“We don’t think this is that painful in the sense that we’re not really cutting programming,” he said. Those reductions are set to be spread across the entire district in an effort to absorb the impacts of consolidation. 

The district is facing approximately $600,000 in cost reductions for next school year, according to the lead negotiator on the school board, Charlene Seward.

After such drawn-out negotiations, Seward said she hopes they begin contract talks earlier for the next round — which is set to begin in fall 2026, for the 2027-30 school years. That way, the board and teachers can have something prepared by the time voters go to the polls in March and can host negotiations in an open forum setting. 

“Finding ways to be transparent about the information is important,” she said. “Feel like if this is going to be an open forum, then everybody would understand where we’re coming from and know that we’re trying to be respectful and prudent with the community.” 

“I think the lack of understanding — of what’s on the table and of what the proposals were — created division that didn’t need to have to be there,” Seward said.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Rutland City school board and union ratify a teachers’ contract .

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., joined a group of state legislators, health care officials and advocates in Burlington Monday morning to raise the alarm on what they called Vermont’s health care affordability crisis.

“Everyone knows that our health care system, nationally and in the state of Vermont, is broken. It is dysfunctional, and it is wildly expensive,” Sanders said. 

The press conference at Patrick Leahy Burlington International Airport was set against the backdrop of Congress’s attempts to push through a mega spending bill that is expected to include work requirements for Medicaid recipients and limit the extent to which state governments can use health care provider taxes to cover their portion of Medicaid funding.

Back at home, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Vermont sits in financial jeopardy, having lost $152 million over the past three years. The nonprofit insurer has asked the Green Mountain Care Board to approve double-digit percentage increases to the premiums of plans sold in 2026 on the Vermont Health Connect — the state-run federal Affordable Care Act marketplace. 

“I’m not sure how anybody is going to be able to afford that,” Sanders said. 

While he did not touch on the specifics of how the state or federal governments can support the state’s only Vermont-based health insurer and protect it from insolvency, Sanders outlined areas where he thinks further investment can lead to lower health care costs for Vermont in the long term. Those included expansions of primary health care facilities and of nursing education programs that allow the state to rely less on traveling nurses, as well as increased support for home health care and nursing homes. He cited efforts to reduce the cost of prescription drugs as a key area that can lower costs for hospitals, and thus, reduce the costs that get passed onto insurers and individuals.

All of this falls under a need for a broader cultural change, Sanders said, from a health care system that is focused on profit to one that supports health care as a human right. 

“It’s a culture that says (if) we want people to stay in Vermont, we’re going to work day and night to lower the cost of health care, provide health care to all of our people. It’s a different culture,” Sanders said. “We’ve got to radically reorient our priorities.”

Lisa Ventriss, co-chair of the newly formed advocacy group Vermont Health Care 911, put a finer point on it at the press conference: She suggested that shifting spending to patient care, rather than to administration or management, would open up “ample room for savings in Vermont,” while curbing the “gobsmacking” premium rate hikes the state has seen.

Sen. Ginny Lyons, D-Chittenden Southeast, and Rep. Alyssa Black, D-Essex Town, who chair the health care committees in their respective chambers, also touted the bills that lawmakers are trying to pass this session to reduce health care costs in Vermont. 

Namely, the legislators highlighted S.162, which seeks to keep hospital charges in line with Medicare reimbursement rates (called “reference pricing”), and H.482, which would give the Green Mountain Care Board the ability to lower reimbursement rates paid to health care providers by an insurer in danger of insolvency. 

“We’re saving our Blue Cross and Blue Shield domestic insurer from insolvency. We’re stabilizing access to primary care, family medicine,” Lyons said. “We are now working to allow people to access food, rent and health care without having to make choices for one over the other.”

Still, progress at the state level is quickly dwarfed by the potential threat of federal changes to Medicaid. Most worrisome, Black added in an interview following the press conference, is the threats from President Donald Trump’s administration to undo the so-called 1115 waiver program. That waiver gives states the ability to cover services beyond what federal statute outlines as required coverage under Medicaid. Vermont has become a particular leader on finding innovative ways to use this waiver. 

“It’s a huge amount of our Medicaid spending,” Black said. 

Sanders said he and Senate Democrats are trying to do “everything that we possibly can, in every possible way, to defeat this awful piece of legislation,” with regard to the spending bill’s impact on Medicaid in Vermont.

He called the congressional bill a “Robin Hood proposal in reverse.”

“You take from the poor and you give to the very rich. This is a disastrous piece of legislation, we’ve got to defeat,” he explained. The real solution, he suggested, is guaranteed health care for all, but for now he lauded the state’s efforts in “trying to begin to address this crisis.”

“What we’re doing today is trying, at least to develop a sense of urgency in the state of Vermont. The status quo cannot continue. It is failing — failing small business. It’s failing patients. It’s failing everyone,” Sanders said.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Sen. Bernie Sanders raises alarm on cost of health care in Vermont and nationwide.

Vermont environmental officials are pausing to reevaluate a stricter state standard for certain harmful forever chemicals after a change in stance by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency earlier this week. 

Barely one year after the EPA passed historic rules to reduce the amounts of certain harmful forever chemicals in drinking water, the agency is now considering reversing some of those regulations and pushing back the timeline for drinking water systems to comply with others.

When the set of federal regulations passed under President Joe Biden, they set allowable levels of perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, known as PFAS, even lower than Vermont’s existing standards, which had been in place for five years. The stricter rules meant an additional 30 drinking water suppliers in the state needed to remove PFAS.  

Now, the state’s progress on formalizing those rules is on something of a pause, as officials wait to hear more information about the federal decision.

“The amount of information we have as a state, is about the same as what the public has been receiving,” said Bryan Redmond, the director of the Drinking Water and Groundwater Protection Division in the state Department of Environmental Conservation. “We are waiting to schedule some time with the EPA to learn what the details of this mean.” 

Wednesday’s announcement from the EPA keeps the Biden-area levels for two chemicals in the sprawling PFAS family. There can be only 4 parts per trillion or less of PFOA and PFOS chemicals detected in drinking water. 

However, the agency has now added two more years on the deadline for meeting those levels — meaning municipalities now have to comply by 2031, instead of 2029. The agency is also announcing a federal exemption framework for some communities struggling to remove the harmful chemicals from drinking water.

The existing rules had also set a limit of 10 parts per trillion of four other types of PFAS chemicals. The EPA announced it now intends to rescind and reconsider the regulations for those other four regulated chemicals. 

There are more than 12,000 chemicals in this class of compounds.

PFOA and PFOS are some of the most commonly occurring compounds in the PFAS family, and those are the two chemicals that typically drive the contamination issues in Vermont, according to Redmond. 

The chemicals in high doses are linked to a litany of harmful health effects, largely because they are suspected of interrupting hormone chemical signaling in the body, and thus can lead to a range of maladies, from cancers and reproductive health problems to cardiovascular challenges and weakened immune systems. 

Redmond said the next step for the state is to evaluate the EPA actions, taking thorough account of the science, the health impacts and technical details of PFAS removal. 

“It’s possible to move forward with the existing standards,” he said. “It’s possible that we adopt the EPA standards, or it’s possible we do a hybrid.”

Regardless, the language in the draft state rule surrounding this will have to change since it references and rests on the EPA’s standards, he said. The state is “mid-stream” in that rulemaking process, but it’s been paused due to all the uncertainty from the federal agency. 

This, at least, Redmond said, is a “push toward certainty,” so the state can figure out how it wants to act in response. 

What the federal change does not influence is the state’s progress toward remediating existing drinking water systems known to be contaminated by PFAS. 

“Regardless of regulation, we have been remediating down to the 4 (parts per trillion) level,” Redmond said 

Through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, Vermont was allocated five years of funding to carry out the remediation process for impacted systems. Money has been appropriated for the third year of work, Redmond said, and he expects the state will receive that soon. 

Disclosure: Bryan Redmond is married to VTDigger CEO Sky Barsch.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Vermont officials reevaluate new state standards for toxic forever chemicals as EPA eases stance.

Updated at 6:47 p.m.

Federal Judge William Sessions III held a telephone status conference Thursday to examine conditions of release for Rümeysa Öztürk, the Tufts University student formerly detained in Louisiana at a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center.

Sessions, presiding in the U.S. District Court of Vermont, ordered Öztürk’s release last week. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement imposed what it said are standard conditions of release in Öztürk’s case, except for a condition for a GPS ankle monitoring, which will not be included.

Öztürk’s lawyer contested a condition that she could be called upon for interviews at will. 

“This condition is an opportunity for ICE to impose any condition it wants and to call her in for as many interviews as it wants,” said Adriana Lafaille, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union representing Öztürk. Lafaille suggested instead that ICE have a monthly reporting requirement.

Additionally, the judge suggested the conditions include stipulations for Öztürk to alert the federal agency and the Burlington Community Justice Center about any plans to travel outside of New England or to change her address.

“I do not find Ms. Öztürk to be any sort of risk of flight in this case, but it does seem that ICE should be apprised of where she’s located,” Sessions said during the hearing. 

Proposed conditions also require that Öztürk cooperate with a potential final order of removal from ICE — only once all legal challenges have been exhausted — and that she not violate any state, local or federal law while under these release conditions. 

Lafaille opposed the requirements, arguing Öztürk’s is not facing criminal charges and she should not be subject to ICE detainment if she does face criminal charges separate from this case.

“None of that would be appropriate,” Lefaille said in an opening statement. “All of that would compound the First Amendment violation in this case.” 

Instead, to enforce the conditions, Lefaille argued, ICE should alert the court when it thinks Öztürk has violated these terms — “if anything.” 

The judge suggested striking a condition that Öztürk keep ICE informed about her doctor’s orders and compliance with taking medications, given that the terms of Öztürk’s detainment have nothing to do with substance use or other health concerns. “I don’t understand the purpose of requiring her to disclose medical status,” Sessions said. 

The hearing also contained details about the case’s progress and timeline. The judge ordered Öztürk’s attorneys to file a briefing on discovery within 30 days and the government’s lawyers to respond to that within 10 days. He also canceled a hearing scheduled for next week.

ACLU Vermont did not respond to a request for comment before publication. 

Read the story on VTDigger here: Federal judge in Vermont hears conditions for formerly detained Tufts students’ release .

Right now, the closest answer to the question of “What would catamounts in Vermont look like?” may be an AI-generated image of the large cat in a state forest, or perhaps it’s UVM’s felted Rally Cat mascot cheering from the sidelines of a hockey game.

But soon, the House Environment Committee hopes to flesh out that image a little further and launch a feasibility study for what reintroducing cougars to the Green Mountain State would entail. (Had to!)

Jed Murdoch, a wildlife biologist at UVM’s Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources, joined the committee Wednesday to explain the role of apex predators in an ecosystem and to walk through what would need to happen to reintroduce the animals to Vermont. (BTW, cougar = catamount = panther = mountain lion — and the list goes on. The Puma concolor holds the record for the mammal with the most English names) 

These big cats have been officially considered extinct in the state since 2018, though the last known cougar in Vermont was killed in 1881. You can see him at the Vermont History Museum.

Rep. Amy Sheldon, D-Middlebury, said she’s been interested in exploring cougar reintroduction as part of her broader mission toward a “connected and functioning landscape,” she said in an interview. Though the state’s Fish & Wildlife Department already has a full plate, Sheldon believes facilitating the cascade of ecological processes that can come from the introduction of a keystone species may actually lighten that load. 

“Mother nature will heal herself if we give her the tools to do so,” Sheldon said.

But that doesn’t mean you’ll be seeing cougars lurking near your favorite mountain trails next week, next month, or even next year. The committee is still figuring out what a feasibility study would need to contain and how to fund it. 

Murdoch said any study should include an assessment of the habitat across the state that would be suitable for the catamount and where they’d be likely to appear. He also suggested analyzing projected movement patterns with an approach called “circuit analysis” that maps potential pathways the animal might take from protected area to protected area. 

Food availability is another big factor to consider. Murdoch estimated that one mountain lion eats somewhere between 14-20 deer a year. Though deer populations in the state are booming now, would they be able to keep up with this top-down pressure after years of predation? A study should address that, he said. 

Also, it’s important people really understand what reintroduction could mean, and that there is support for reintroduction across the region for the reintroduction of animals that roam across wide areas, Murdoch said. 

“I think (for) a lot of our folks here, it’s a warm and fuzzy thing, but I don’t think they understand the reality of doing (a reintroduction). The first and foremost question should be, what’s in the best interest of the cougar?” said Rep. Chris Pritchard, R-Pawlet, during the hearing. “Is this really the right thing to do for the cougar?”

It’s a question, Sheldon expressed, that gets at the heart of the need for such a study.

— Olivia Gieger

In the know

For roughly 22 months, the former site of the Montpelier Post Office has sat vacant, a lonely looming presence at the corner of State and Elm streets. 

The building sustained significant damage from the July 2023 flood, when water inundated the streets of Vermont’s capital. It was so hastily vacated that federal employees’ items are still sitting on their desks, creating an “eerie” feeling, according to Jon Copans, executive director of the Montpelier Commission for Recovery and Resilience. 

Now, the city and state are considering whether it may be worth buying the property at 87 State St. from its owner, the U.S. General Services Administration. 

The General Services Administration announced it would begin the disposition process in December 2024. On April 21, it sent a letter to Montpelier and the state of Vermont about the possibility of a negotiated sale, similar to a “right of first refusal” for government actors before it becomes available to the general public, Copans said. 

Read more about how the state and city are weighing the purchase here. 

— Erin Petenko

On the move

A marquee infrastructure financing program that’s meant to spur housing in smaller towns has passed a key hurdle in the Legislature – but Gov. Phil Scott, senators and housing boosters say House lawmakers have added too many restrictions for the program to work.

“It’s just much too complicated for anyone to understand, and will not be utilized by small communities,” Scott said at his regular Wednesday press conference. “It’s taking a step backwards.”

The initiative, called the Community and Housing Infrastructure Program, would allow municipalities or developers to borrow money for infrastructure like water lines, roads and sidewalks for a particular housing project – and then use the increased tax revenue from the development to pay off the infrastructure debt.

Read more about the debate over the how to structure the new program here. 

— Carly Berlin

The Vermont House is reviewing a new version of a bill that would increase the licensing requirement threshold for cottage food producers which passed unanimously in the Vermont Senate on Tuesday.

Currently, only food producers with less than $10,000 in annual sales were exempt from licensing fees and health department inspections. The legislation would raise the sales threshold to $30,000.

The Senate’s revisions to H.401 introduce a comprehensive cottage food product category, defining low-risk foods that can be produced in home kitchens that will receive licensing exemptions. Eligible products include non-perishable baked goods, candies, jams, pickles and other non-refrigerated items.

Liz Wirsing, Director of Food and Lodging at the Vermont Department of Health expressed support for the amended version of the bill in testimony before the house agriculture committee on Wednesday. She called the bill a “compromise,” balancing food producers’ interests with public health concerns.

Producers must still file forms with the health department and follow strict guidelines for food preparation, including online food safety training. Canned goods, which were initially excluded from the bill, must meet specific pH and processing standards in order to be sold.

“People want to see support for small food enterprises,” Caroline Sherman-Gordon, Legislative Director of Rural Vermont, said in an interview. The cottage food bill would alleviate some of the “bureaucratic” costs many Vermonters see when starting a small business, she said. 

— Izzy Wagner

Visit our 2025 bill tracker for the latest updates on major legislation we are following.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Final Reading: What would it take to bring cougars back to Vermont?.

Updated at 10 p.m.

The Rutland school board moved Friday to impose a contract on Rutland City’s teachers, a day after an overwhelming majority of the union’s members voted to strike next week without a deal. The two sides have been negotiating a new teachers’ contract for 18 months. 

In a Friday afternoon meeting, the Rutland Board of School Commissioners decided to impose terms for this and the next school year on the teachers’ union, the board announced. 

“The board has a fiduciary responsibility to make a fair contract that is sustainable,” Board Commissioner Charlene Seward told VTDigger Friday morning. “We don’t want taxes to go up, and that’s what will happen. We don’t want to make layoffs. There is not a secret pile of money we are sitting on.”

The union’s leadership objected to the school board’s vote, saying in a press release that imposing terms for two years — and not just one — defies Vermont law. They cited a primer of labor law provided by the Vermont Labor Relations Board.

Seward said the board released two separate contracts (one for each year) to comply. She added that because Rutland’s voters approved an education budget for the 2025-26 school year, the board believes it can create a contract for that year.

The school board and union had been expecting to continue working through the details after school Friday. But the board now says the imposition of contract terms puts an end to those talks.

The teachers’ union’s statement said leaders still hope to negotiate and avoid a strike starting May 14. The union posted a photo of their negotiators waiting to begin Friday evening talks with the board, even though the board said the talks would no longer be happening. It is unclear when they will resume.

Seward said the board tabled Friday’s talks after not receiving a response from union representatives to an email about timing. However the union disputes this and provided VTDigger with emails from the lead negotiator to the district superintendent, saying “What we see that needs to happen is the parties need to negotiate, and the Board needs to send a team that is authorized to make a deal. We hope to see your team after school today.” 

“Today(‘s decision not to meet) was not on a contentious basis,” Seward said. “We definitely want to keep talking, hopefully soon.”

The negotiations have exhausted the tools for mediation set out in state law, which concluded with an independent fact finder whose report was delivered to each side last month. For the union, that meant the next step was deciding whether to strike. For the board, it was imposing contract terms for a period of one year. Each tactic is designed to force an agreement. 

The board’s new terms include a salary increase of 4.8% for the first year and 4% in the second year. It’s a step back down from the offer the board made earlier this week: 5% increases in base salaries for both school years, on the condition that a strike is avoided. They are also offering one additional sick day, rather than the fact finder’s recommended two.

The union is asking for larger salary increases to keep teachers’ pay in line with their peers across the state, and in line with a living wage for Rutland. The union has agreed to the terms outlined by the independent fact-finder. 

The primary dispute comes down to what those salary increases include. The union is asking for a percentage increase over and above the annual step up in wages that would occur each year. The board is offering a percentage increase that includes the step increases. The board’s terms also outline deeper restructuring to these salary grid steps for incoming teachers. 

“Our hope is that they reverse course,” union president Sue Tanen said in the press release. “Otherwise, we will do what we promised – begin our strike on Wednesday.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Rutland school board imposes contract as teachers prepare to strike.

Updated at 6:52 p.m.

The Rutland Education Association, the union representing Rutland teachers, voted to strike Thursday afternoon following 18 months of failed contract negotiations. They said their strike will begin May 14 if an agreement with the school board cannot be reached before then. 

The decision to strike passed with 93% of the union’s 250 members voting in favor, according to union president Sue Tanen.

“After 18 months of fruitless talks with a board that seems more eager to fight, manipulate, threaten, and walk away than reach a settlement with us, we have had enough and we’re not going to take it anymore,” Tanen said in a press release.

The Rutland City Board of School Commissioners is scheduled to meet Friday, and Tanen said the union set aside time for more talks with the board as soon as Friday.

“We’ll be there,” she said in the release. “We hope the board joins us, so we can avert a disruption of the school year.”

“As always, we are ready to go back to the table, we are ready to meet with the board, we are still hopeful we can reach an agreement,” Tanen said in a subsequent interview with VTDigger.

Tanen quipped that she’s grown weary of how many times she’s voiced the union’s readiness to talk with the board. “We’re teachers, we’re always hopeful,” she said. 

The teachers have been working without a contract since the previous one expired in July. Negotiations for a new contract between the Rutland City Board of School Commissioners and the union have been ongoing since January 2024.

The teachers’ union maintains it is seeking pay on par with other educators in the region. The school board has said it is bound by the city’s $63.83 million education budget for the 2024-25 school year, which residents approved on Town Meeting Day in 2024. This year, Rutland voters approved a $67.18 million education budget for the 2025-26 school year.

After Thursday’s strike announcement, Rutland City School District Superintendent Bill Olsen wrote in an email to VTDigger, “Despite the vote outcome, I still believe that the two sides can come to an agreement that offers a fair compensation package while staying within the voter-approved budget, and a contract that is fiscally responsible. I know the Board wants that, and it continues to work very hard to get there. All the other bargaining units in the district were able to achieve that same expectation. We can still achieve this with the teacher unit.”

Faced with an impasse after a year of negotiations, the two sides engaged with an independent fact finder. The fact finder, whose report was released to the parties April 7 and to the public April 18, recommended that salaries be increased by 4.8% for 2024-25, 5% for 2025-26, and 5% for 2026-27, in order to keep pace with other public employees in the region. The fact finder also recommended an increase in allowed sick days from 10 to 12. 

The union accepted those terms — though it had initially proposed annual increases of 15%, 10% and 10%, respectively, for each year under the contract.

The board, however, rejected the fact finder’s recommendations and instead offered increases of 4.5%, 4% and 3.5% — an increase from its initial offer of 3% each year. 

In a press release issued after publication of the fact finder’s report, Olsen wrote that the report “fails to consider” the existing town budget and did not “properly” account for the 10.3% pension benefit teachers receive.

Following release of the report, the district announced it would need to cut 18 positions and some programs next school year to stay in line with the budget and the suggested increases. 

The union has argued the current base teacher salary of $42,078 is well below the living wage for Rutland, which they calculate to be $47,133.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Rutland teachers vote to strike .

If the tulips lining the walkway to the Statehouse are any indication, summer is on its way, and with it, a season of boating on Vermont’s lakes and ponds.

That fast-approaching season is not lost on advocates for wake boat-free lakes. Alongside representatives from the Department of Environmental Conservation, they spent Tuesday morning in the Senate Natural Resources Committee discussing the presence of the contested craft in Vermont’s lakes.

Wake boats, it’s worth clarifying, are not just any old boat that creates a wake — waterskiing boats, pontoons or whalers don’t fall into this category. Rather, they are boats specifically designed to displace large amounts of water, with V-shaped hulls, special wave-shaping plates and — most notably — big ballast systems that can take on gallons of water to weigh the boat down to create even bigger waves for wakeboarders or surfers.

Though the committee does not intend to take action this year, advocates are concerned that even one more boating season under the current rules could spread invasive species across Vermont’s lakes.

Those rules, passed in April 2024, restrict wake boating to specific wake sports zones: areas with 50 contiguous acres of lake, 500 feet away from the shoreline on all sides and depths of at least 20 feet. Those rules are meant to prevent the large waves from crashing down on shore and from churning up lake-bottom sediments — and thus protect lake wildlife from too much disruption.

But, advocates say the current rules don’t go far enough in protecting Vermont’s precarious lake ecosystems from the encroachment of invasive species. Specifically, the ballasts of these boats can be carriers for insidious invaders like zebra mussel larvae or watermilfoil, Pat Suozzi, president of the Federation of Vermont Lakes and Ponds, said in her testimony. Though boaters empty most of their tanks when taking boats ashore, they still may hold up to 8.5 gallons of residual water, according to John Wildman, a member of Responsible Wakes for Vermont Lakes, who also testified. 

“It doesn’t take much. In fact, it only takes one boat,” Suozzi said, of the risk for invasive species spread. 

That’s why she and other advocates are urging legislators and the Department of Environmental Conservation to consider a “home lake rule” for this summer, meaning wake boaters must register in one lake for an entire season. 

Other attempts to prevent the transport of invasives through ballast tanks fall short, advocates said, since the visual inspection of hard-to-reach, under-boat tanks can be near impossible and the disinfecting washing equipment — with water hot enough to kill larvae — is expensive and doesn’t exist at most lakes. 

Still, others who testified expressed a desire to prohibit the presence of wake boats on Vermont’s inland lakes altogether. Waves that can reach up to 5 feet above the water can be an equally daunting prospect to a kayaker on the surface or a loon nesting not far off shore, according to advocates. 

“Why should our lakes be essentially off limits to those — the majority, by far — who want to fish, kayak, canoe, paddleboard, sail, swim, water ski, or use their normal motorboats or pontoon boats?” said Phil Dodd, a Montpelier resident, during testimony. 

Dlugolecki, with the Department of Environmental Conservation, said her office plans to engage residents this year through the summer on revising some of these rules to possibly take effect for 2026.

— Olivia Gieger

In the know

Advocates for unhoused Vermonters are calling on lawmakers to remove restrictions on the state’s motel voucher program in the coming year’s budget, including an 80-night limit on voucher stays and an 1,100 cap on available rooms during the warmer months.

“The caps are not grounded in any reality,” said Frank Knaack, executive director of the Housing and Homelessness Alliance of Vermont, at a Statehouse press conference on Tuesday. 

Lawmakers’ draft budget would continue the limits on the motel voucher program that were enacted last year, resulting in the evictions of hundreds of people — including young children — over the course of the fall. 

Many lawmakers lambasted the caps as their impacts became clear, and as recently as March, Democratic leaders in the Legislature attempted to lift the restrictions to avoid another wave of evictions. A heated disagreement with Republican Gov. Phil Scott over the extension tanked a midyear spending bill, which never passed.

This go-around, however, both the House and Senate have agreed to a budget containing the caps, at a price tag of about $38 million – matching what Scott’s administration recommended for the program earlier this year. 

Read more about the debate over the motel voucher program here. 

— Carly Berlin

On the move

The Vermont Senate advanced Montpelier’s annual property tax rate legislation, expected to increase the average education tax bill by 1.1%.

The relatively modest increase pales in comparison to last year’s average rise of 13.8%, but the legislation relies on about $118 million to buy down rates. 

While the state frequently uses surplus funds to lower property taxes, the practice creates additional upward pressure on rates the following year. Some lawmakers have criticized the process.

But legislative leaders — and Gov. Phil Scott — have said that after back-to-back years of higher-than-typical property tax increases, policymakers need to do all they can to flatten further spikes. 

Read more about the yield bill, H.491, bill here. 

— Ethan Weinstein

The Senate also passed H.494, the Capital Bill, which helps pay for state infrastructure. But later on Tuesday, the House voted against concurring with the Senate’s version, instead requesting a conference committee. That decision was endorsed by the House Corrections and Institutions Committee, which has jurisdiction over the bill. 

— Ethan Weinstein

Visit our 2025 bill tracker for the latest updates on major legislation we are following. 

Chill hang in Boston soon?

Gov. Phil Scott on Monday signed onto a letter with five other governors of Northeast states — all of whom, except him, are Democrats — inviting the leaders of six Canadian provinces to a forthcoming meeting in Boston to discuss the impacts of President Donald Trump’s tariffs.

The invitation was penned by Scott, Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey, Maine Gov. Janet Mills, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont and Rhode Island Gov. Daniel McKee. It was sent to the premiers of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Prince Edward Island, Québec, and Newfoundland and Labrador, per a press release from Healey’s office.

“We are keenly aware of the effects these tariffs have on citizens on both sides of the border,” the governors wrote. “Businesses small and large that employ citizens in the US and Canada are already facing severe consequences from the trade war as the tariffs make life increasingly more expensive for our people and our businesses.”

The letter proposed holding a meeting sometime “in the coming weeks.”

— Shaun Robinson

Department of corrections

The newsletter’s top story on Friday mischaracterized whether the motor vehicle bill must pass every year. Lawmakers generally take up a miscellaneous bill on that topic annually, but it’s not required to become law.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Final Reading: A year into Vermont’s wake boat regulations, Senate Natural Resources revisits the rules .

Twenty-four states have joined the American Petroleum Institute and U.S. Chamber of Commerce as plaintiffs in their lawsuit against Vermont’s climate superfund law. 

“It’s different parties making the same argument,” said Anthony Iarrapino, an attorney who lobbied for the law’s passage on behalf of Conservation Law Foundation. “We knew this was coming, and there are not any new legal points.”

The office of Vermont Attorney General Charity Clark did not comment because the addition of plaintiffs does not change the arguments that the American Petroleum Institute and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce originally outlined in the suit against the state in December, and the state does not need to adjust course.

West Virginia Attorney General John McCuskey leads the coalition of states involved in the suit, which includes Louisiana, Texas, Missouri and Wyoming, among other states with strong ties to the fossil fuel industry. A similar group of Republican attorneys general targeted New York’s own climate superfund law with a lawsuit in February. 

The group of attorneys general joined the suit right after the U.S. Department of Justice raised its own challenge against the Vermont climate law Thursday.

VTDigger reached out to representatives from all 24 state attorneys general’s offices, and none of the plaintiffs responded to a request for comment before publication. The legal counsel cited in the suit were unable to comment on the record, citing ongoing litigation.

It’s likely that the two suits could be consolidated, explained Pat Parentau, an emeritus professor at Vermont Law School’s Environmental Law Center, since they rely on such closely aligned arguments. The Department of Justice also argues that the state law clashes with the federal government’s power over foreign affairs, an argument unique to its case.

Both suits draw on arguments that the federal Clean Air Act preempts the state law and the federal government’s role in regulating commerce among states.

But that argument misses the point of what the law actually addresses, Iarrapino said. “The crux of the fight comes down to how you characterize this law,” he said. “Vermont’s legislators have been very clear about the purpose of this law from the very beginning. States who are joining the fossil fuel industry’s lawsuit are saying this is something very different. They’re trying to mischaracterize this law about controlling emissions going forward, and that’s not correct.”

The climate superfund, which became state law last year, places a retroactive, one-time fee on fossil fuel companies in accordance with their role in climate-driven damages, like floods or heat waves, experienced between 1995 and the end of 2024. The federal Clean Air Act attends to future emissions and air pollution.

In their challenge, the attorneys general argue that those “self-described retroactive fines on traditional energy producers for their purported past contributions to greenhouse-gas emissions, […] were lawful operations endorsed and even promoted by both federal and State authorities.”

Here, the case becomes “head spinning in the contradiction and hypocrisy,” Iarrapino said. The attorneys general argue that the “Clean Air Act gives the federal government the chief role in determining interstate emissions standards” — meaning federal policy preempts any state laws on emissions standards.

Yet, this suit is helmed by the same state that argued in a precedent-setting case for a significant limit in the scope of the Clean Air Act. In West Virginia v. EPA, the U.S. Supreme Court found that the federal law does not give the Environmental Protection Agency the ability to regulate sector-wide greenhouse gas emissions.

“Now (West Virginia is) turning around and saying that the state of Vermont has no room to regulate greenhouse gas emissions,” Iarrapino said.

He also questioned the plaintiffs’ claim that the law will raise prices on consumers of fossil fuels, in other states, citing research by economics professors at New York University’s Institute for Policy Integrity which outlined that oil companies are unable to pass on one-time fixed payments for past actions to consumers, leaving prices instead subject to production levels and economic competition.  

“These are just shameless arguments,” Parentau said of both West Virginia’s and the Department of Justice’s involvement. EPA Director Lee Zeldin announced he intends to repeal the Endangerment Finding — which is the basis for the Clean Air Act and many federal climate regulations— and the federal government has withdrawn the U.S. from the international Paris agreement to limit carbon emissions. 

“So how can you, with a straight face, say this is interfering with international relations?” Parentau asked.

The federal government’s filing of its own case is surreal to Parentau, who has been working in environmental law for nearly 50 years.  “Normally, what you would see is the state passes the law to impose costs on an industry, and the industry resists, and that’s it. So it’s two parties. But this has the feel of a Netflix movie,” he said. “I just have never seen anything quite like this.”

One claim the suits make that does hold merit, Parentau added, is what he called the “pot calling the kettle black argument.”

The suit notes that Vermont has high fossil fuel consumption and is seeking to offset that outside of itself: “Vermont seeks to have its cake and eat it too, by both reaping the benefits of affordable and reliable fuel, yet penalizing the entities that help produce such fuel billions of dollars for their trouble,” the attorneys general write in the suit. 

“Vermont has something to answer to,” Parentau said. “The state is having a hard time implementing its Global Warming Solutions Act, whether it’s already off track or not, it certainly isn’t in any shape to achieve those goals. So don’t get so up-high on your high horse, Vermont.”

The additional plaintiffs and the Department of Justice’s suit come as the state Agency of Natural Resources and Office of the State Treasurer, both of which are tasked with implementing the law, are in the middle of asking the Legislature for additional cash to hire top-of-the-field climate scientists to complete the damage assessments. That scientist should be prepared to testify in court, representatives from the offices added in April testimony to the Senate Natural Resources Committee. The Agency of Natural Resources also hopes to allocate additional funds to hire an attorney who can navigate the lawsuits. 

The real impact these additional plaintiffs and the Department of Justice suit will have on the state is one of scale, Parentau said. “Now they’re going to have teams of lawyers – there are 24 state attorneys general offices, and then you have the Department of Justice. The point is, there’s just no end to the number of lawyers creating mischief.” 

This is the consequence of the state being the first in the country to pass such legislation, Parentau said. 

“My grandfather, an old Irish farmer, had a great expression. He said, Patrick, just remember, the higher you climb on the flagpole, the more people can see your arse,” he said.

The Agency of Natural Resources, whose secretary Julie Moore and Climate Action Office director Jane Lazorchak are specifically named as defendants in this case, referred VTDigger to the state Attorney General’s Office for comment.

Correction: A previous version of this story misstated the change Environmental Protection Agency Director Lee Zeldin plans to make that would impact the Clean Air Act.

Read the story on VTDigger here: West Virginia and 23 other states join lawsuit targeting Vermont’s Climate Superfund Law.

The U.S. Department of Justice is challenging Vermont’s climate superfund law in court. 

A complaint filed Thursday afternoon in the U.S. District Court of Vermont targets the law, arguing that the federal Clean Air Act and federal government’s power over foreign affairs preempt the state law, making it unconstitutional. The Department is asking the federal court to stop the law from being enforced.

“I’m always proud to represent Vermont, and I look forward to doing so in this case,” Vermont Attorney General Charity Clark wrote in an email. She also noted that the Department Justice has yet to formally serve the state with the lawsuit.

Thursday’s complaint follows an April executive order from President Donald Trump that tasked the U.S. Attorney General with exploring ways to block Vermont, New York and California’s climate laws.

The climate superfund law, Act 122, applies a polluters-pay framework, like a federal hazardous waste superfund, to the costs of climate damages — like flood recovery. Vermont was the first state in the nation to adopt this framework for climate disasters. In December, New York followed and adopted its own climate superfund bill.

The Justice Department also filed lawsuits against three other states, targeting actions that hold oil and gas companies accountable for the costs of climate damages, specifically New York state’s climate superfund, and Hawaii and Michigan’s planned lawsuits against fossil fuel companies, according to a Justice Department press release.

In its release, the Justice Department argues that these state actions “unreasonably burden domestic energy development” and put the US in a “national energy emergency.”

“I will just note that there is no national energy emergency,” Clark told VTDigger in April, after Trump issued the executive order. “American energy is at an all time high, and state laws are not a threat to American energy,” she said.

Make Polluters Pay, a national campaign that promotes laws and lawsuits that hold fossil fuel companies responsible for the costs of climate damages, called the four federal lawsuits against the states as “political theater, plain and simple,” as Cassidy DiPaola, the communications director said in a press release.

“This is not a surprise,” Paul Burns, the executive director of Vermont Public Interest Research Group said in a press release. VPIRG was instrumental in the construction and passage of the climate superfund law. “This lawsuit is one more instance of our billionaire president holding the fossil fuel industry in a warm embrace by giving Vermonters the finger.”

When Trump first filed his executive order targeting the Vermont law, Pat Parenteau, an emeritus professor at Vermont Law School’s Environmental Law Center, explained to VTDigger that the government was likely to argue that the federal Clean Air Act preempts the state law. But those claims ring hollow, he explained, since the federal law deals with the source of emissions, not payments for past emissions. 

In April, Parentau explained that Vermont should be ready for a long legal battle, saying that the federal government and fossil fuel industry have deep pockets to prolong these lawsuits that aim to “bleed its opponents dry.”

Clarification: This article has been updated to clarify that Michigan and Hawaii had not yet filed respective lawsuits against fossil fuel companies at the time the federal government filed its own suits against the two states.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Trump takes Vermont’s climate superfund law to court.

As the Senate passed its “Big Bill” on the state’s 2026 budget today, Senate Republicans took a big swing on a suite of environmental rollbacks.

Minority leader Sen. Scott Beck, R-Caledonia proposed two amendments to H.493: one would have repealed both the clean heat standard and a clause in the Global Warming Solutions Act that opens the state up to lawsuits for failing to meet mandated emissions reductions. Beck’s second amendment proposed pushing back the timeline for adopting California’s electric vehicle standards, which would phase in widespread EV adoption starting next year.

Neither amendment got an up or down vote. Republican Lt. Gov. John Rodgers, who presides over the chamber, deemed each one “not germane” to the budget bill, in response to concerns raised by Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Baruth, D/P-Chittenden Central.

Both times, Beck called for suspending the Senate’s rules so the amendments could be taken up, regardless of their germaneness to the budget. But senators rejected those motions on mostly party-line, roll-call votes.

“I think he wanted to be able to have a roll call vote on it to have a political statement made,” said Sen. Becca White, D-Windsor, who sits on the Transportation Committee. 

The time for looking at pushing back adoption of the California standards would have been when the Senate approved its transportation bill, White said. “I think he essentially missed his opportunity and was trying at a second bite of the apple to bring it onto the budget.” 

Sen. Anne Watson, D/P-Washington, who chairs the Natural Resources & Energy Committee, disagreed with the floor amendment tactic too. “I think that trying to circumvent the committee process where you can properly vet ideas, where you can hear multiple perspectives, where you can tune language to be the best product is bad governance,” she said in an interview. 

Repealing the clean heat standard became a rallying point for Republicans last fall — though current law required the Public Utility Commission to report to the Legislature on how to put the framework in place, which happened in January. 

No further action has been proposed, but the lingering uncertainty surrounding whether lawmakers would implement the policy is an undue stress on Vermonters, Beck said in an interview. “Vermonters out there (are asking) ‘are you gonna put a 58 cent tax on me or not?’” 

As for the Global Warming Solutions Act and California vehicle standards, Beck said the state is not on track to meet the deadlines either one mandates. 

“There’s a whole lot of good that comes from shifting away from carbon, but we can only do that as fast as the technology and the affordability of the technology is,” he said. “We need to be more realistic about what that glide slope really looks like. Then, in three to five years, maybe there’s new technology, and maybe we have more resources, but we can’t bankrupt businesses and families to do this.” 

Senate Democrats agree that the state is not on track to meet the mandates of the Global Warming Solutions Act.

“By 2030, Governor Scott will have had a decade to have gotten on track, and he has not,” Watson said. “What I am most interested in is not letting up. If you change the deadline, if you take away the teeth of any of the aspects of it, that reduces the sense of urgency that I think this issue deserves.”

In the know

In a well-timed vote that coincided with International Workers’ Day, the Vermont House of Representatives on Thursday passed Proposal 3, an amendment to the Vermont Constitution that would affirm the right of employees to organize unions and collectively bargain. The Senate approved the amendment in March. Both chambers had previously approved the measure in 2024. 

The amendment states that “no law shall be adopted that interferes with, negates, or diminishes the right of employees to collectively bargain.” 

The proposal also includes a constitutional protection for workplace agreements that require workers to join a union as a condition for employment. That means the measure would prohibit a future legislature from passing so-called “right to work” laws, which have been enacted in 26 states and which functionally outlaw such agreements. 

Thursday’s vote was just the latest in a long series of steps in the state’s ratification process. The next hurdle will be the 2026 November election, when Vermont voters will weigh in. The amendment succeeds if the  ballot question receives a majority vote.

— Habib Sabet

On the move

The Senate on Thursday passed its proposed state budget for the 2026 fiscal year, which starts in July.

The plan includes more state spending than in the version approved by the House, or that was presented by Gov. Phil Scott, earlier this year — though Senate leaders say they expect their proposal to soon get whittled down. 

The budget bill, H.493, now heads to a joint committee of legislative leaders to hash out their differences, which include, among others, how the state should pay for certain child care subsidies. After that, the full House and Senate would vote on the joint panel’s changes, before a compromise budget bill would go to Scott for his consideration.

Sen. Andrew Perchlik, a Washington County Democrat who chairs the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee, said he wants to avoid a showdown with the governor over state spending in the final weeks of the legislative session, while lawmakers are also attempting to make sweeping changes to Vermont’s school governance and finance systems.

“We’re going to have a long session because of the education bill — we don’t want to, also, go longer because of a veto of the budget. So, we’re working with the governor’s folks to see how we can move closer in his direction,” Perchlik told reporters at the Statehouse on Wednesday. “We definitely want the governor to be supportive.”

The conference committee on the budget could convene as soon as Friday, according to Ashley Moore, chief of staff to Senate President Pro Tem Phil Baruth, D/P-Chittenden Central.

Read more about the Senate’s 2026 budget proposal here. 

— Shaun Robinson

The House Ways and Means Committee voted out S.51, a tax credit expansion bill, with bipartisan support. 

The bill includes many of Gov. Phil Scott’s tax credit ideas that have had broad support from all parties, including expanding Vermont’s earned income tax credit, child tax credit and social security income tax exemption. 

Lawmakers also found compromise on expanded tax benefits for veterans, military retirees and their survivors. The bill would fully exempt military retiree pensions and survivor benefits for people with incomes under $125,000 and create a partial exemption for those under $175,000. A refundable tax credit would be available to all veterans with incomes under $30,000. 

The bill passed committee in a vote of 10-0-1. 

— Ethan Weinstein

Visit our 2025 bill tracker for the latest updates on major legislation we are following.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Final Reading: A big swing at the Big Bill.

Gov. Phil Scott has announced Brandon Thrailkill as Caledonia County’s new sheriff, according to a Monday press release. 

Though county sheriff is an elected position, Scott appointed Thrailkill to fill the role following the death in March of Caledonia County Sheriff James Hemond, who was elected in 2022 to a four-year term. Caledonia County high bailiff Robert Gerrish held the position temporarily between Hemond’s death and Thrailkill’s appointment. Thraikill’s position is effective immediately, according to the release.

Before taking the role of sheriff, Thrailkill, a Lyndonville resident, served as Caledonia County’s state transport deputy and a captain in the Sheriff’s Department. He was previously a Lyndonville police officer. 

“It’s an absolute honor to have been appointed sheriff to serve the people of Caledonia County. I have big shoes to fill but I look forward to bringing open communication, integrity and continue building trust within the communities we serve,” Thrailkill said in the press release. 

Read the story on VTDigger here: Vermont Gov. Phil Scott appoints Brandon Thrailkill as Caledonia County Sheriff.

In 2023 and 2024, Linda Martin, chair of the Wolcott Selectboard, saw what happens when Flat Iron Road fills with water.

Where Route 15 crosses the Lamoille River, a bridge forces the wide flow of the river to narrow, bending its path around big abutments in the water. When the river surges from heavy rains, water spills over its banks, washing across the surrounding land and flooding the nearby Flat Iron Road.

Martin knows that the bridge abutments are the reason the road floods. The town hired engineers, who confirmed the problem and began designing alternatives to the bridge and its abutments that would help the water flow more easily.

To continue that work of designing an alternative bridge, Wolcott’s selectboard had applied for a $71,250 grant from a relatively new program, allocated through the Federal Emergency Management Agency, meant to help communities prepare for disasters before they strike.

Instead, on April 4, she — along with other municipal leaders and emergency managers around the country — learned that the Department of Homeland Security, under President Donald Trump, had ended the grant program altogether. 

The announcement put Wolcott’s project on hold and cut off $750 million for other projects nationwide, including $2 million in Vermont.

This funding stream, called the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program, or BRIC, was an annual funding opportunity for communities recently hit by disasters. It aimed to shift the federal response from reactive cleanup “toward research-supported, proactive investment in community resilience,” as FEMA’s website describes it. 

The program was guided by a philosophy captured in the oft-cited statistic that, on average, every dollar invested in preventing disasters can save $6 in disaster cleanup costs.

FEMA has a wide umbrella of hazard mitigation funds, which BRIC once fell under. The BRIC program was separate from individual and municipal post-disaster recovery assistance, and those payouts are ongoing. 

When the program was canceled, the state, and the communities it works with, had been in the final stages of completing applications for the 2024 round of funding, which would have been due on April 18. That process ground to a halt.

Most of the grants that communities had applied to last year, as part of the 2023 funding round, had been outlined and organized but had yet to be awarded — this is where Wolcott’s bridge project falls. 

“Those are gone. If it’s not awarded yet, it’s gone,” Stephanie Smith, Vermont Emergency Management’s head of hazard mitigation, said. It leaves $2 million in planned, proposed projects across the state suspended. 

The remaining three years of projects — applications submitted during the 2022, 2021 and 2020 rounds of funding — are what’s left. Since BRIC works by reimbursement, communities are now racing to complete projects already awarded and underway.

About a week after the announcement of cancellation, the FEMA regional office advised Smith that communities could continue work on the ongoing projects, though they must complete them by their deadline — FEMA does not plan to offer extensions.

‘We all collectively lose’

The city of Barre is among the many Vermont cities and towns left in the lurch of BRIC cancellations, as it tries to address key infrastructure pain points that made the extreme floods of 2023 and 2024 as damaging as they were. 

As part of a broad hazard mitigation plan, the city had plans to redesign and replace a protective grate — called a debris rack — on Gunner’s Brook near Harrington Avenue. That rack worked almost “too well” at keeping floating debris like tree branches, leaves, and trash from clogging a narrow bend in the brook, as City Manager Nicolas Storellicastro described it. 

It creates a kind of inadvertent dam, raising water levels in this part of the river. When heavy rains come — as was the case in the July 2023 and 2024 floods — water rushes into the neighborhood.

“It works very well on a day-to-day basis,” Storellicastro said, “but it may not have been designed for an event of the magnitude that we got.”

The BRIC funding would have helped the city complete much of the work necessary to design and build a better debris rack, and restore floodplain to help the surrounding neighborhood absorb water without damaging homes.

The need for this kind of flood-resilient infrastructure is likely to become more and more prevalent in the state, as scientists predict climate change only makes Vermont more vulnerable to more extreme precipitation and flooding. 

“These floods, they’re stronger, they’re bigger, and we’re seeing that our infrastructure is just not up to the task,” Storellicastro said.

Because of this, the city has not abandoned its plans to replace the debris rack that the BRIC grant could have covered. Instead, Barre is looking to a different hazard mitigation grant program under FEMA, which is funding a number of other flood-preparedness infrastructure work in the city, along with a $68 million federal long-term disaster recovery fund recently awarded to the state through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. For that, the competition for an award is expected to be much stiffer.

“I’m not willing to concede yet that the funding will disappear completely for this project,”  Storellicastro said. “We’re going to pivot, but that means that somebody else’s project, including maybe one of ours, doesn’t get funded. We all collectively lose when that happens. It just basically leads to another roll of the dice when the next storm inevitably comes.”

Filling a planning gap 

Part of why planners and municipal leaders found BRIC funding so valuable was because it helped fund scoping projects and pre-disaster planning work, which is essential to do before shovels hit the ground. 

Essentially, it’s funding to open up future funding, Smith said. 

“Most of them are projects to help communities identify future flood risk reduction projects,” she said. 

Take Wolcott for example: In order to stop the flooding of Flat Iron Road, the town first needs to know that the abutments under the bridge are causing it, find out what an alternative might look like and get a cost estimate before they can secure funding.

“That scoping funding is hard to find often. In order to do a big project, you need to have that work done in order to apply for funding to do that infrastructure project. So this helps (towns) get there,” Smith said. “It helps you get to being able to access funding to do the work.”

The other type of project the state funded through BRIC were updates to municipalities’ hazard mitigation plans. In order to get any funding through FEMA, each town or city in Vermont needs to have a local disaster prevention plan that the agency has approved. So, every year, Vermont Emergency Management has submitted a BRIC application on behalf of all the communities that don’t have plans that meet FEMA’s standards.

Like the scoping projects, it’s essential funding to open up more opportunities for funding. 

These local mitigation plans are particularly helpful because when disaster does strike, FEMA opens up a different stream of money — still under that bigger hazard mitigation umbrella — for future preparedness. The agency allocates 15% of total cost of the disaster’s damages for preventative projects — so the amount of money available, and the timing for when it becomes available, varies greatly. 

“We need to be able to apply immediately after the disaster,” said Smith. “We have to be ready to go with applications.”

BRIC offered a more consistent, annual opportunity for a set amount of money.  For now, the channel for post-disaster hazard mitigation funds remains. But the state is still trying to figure out how to cover the costs for writing the plans it was expecting to update with 2023 BRIC funding. 

Vermont Emergency Management’s hazard mitigation section does hold onto “a few million dollars” to fill any gaps left behind by FEMA prevention funds, Smith said. 

Finding ways to move forward

The state’s Department of Environmental Conservation is one of the few 2023 BRIC recipients that has been able to move forward with the most recent round of funding, since FEMA had already reviewed this grant by the end of 2024. 

The department’s $183,857 planning grant will go entirely toward modeling landslide risks, state geologist Ben DeJong said. Those models should ultimately save the state from needing to spend on buyouts and cleanups after disaster has already struck, DeJong said. 

“We have always been more reactive and are hoping, with this work, to take a more proactive stance,” he said.

Working with a seasoned modeler at Norwich University, the department plans to create a map that highlights the most landslide-prone areas. Illustrating where soil conditions and sloping terrains can combine with high, sudden precipitation to become particularly dangerous helps inform homebuyers and developers, and can keep them from even building on high-hazard areas in the first place.

“Even if we saved one parcel from being built, (this grant) would very quickly pay for itself,” DeJong added, explaining that most individual home buyouts cost the state over $200,000. The entirety of the $183,857 in the BRIC grant will cover the time of an expert modeler at Norwich and one state geological survey staffer who will support the effort to make the final map. 

In Rockingham, the town will be able to continue its plans to re-size a culvert under Route 121 and Ski Bowl Road without the $44,000 grant it was expecting from BRIC, by pulling from a state structures grant and local highway funds, Municipal Manager Scott Pickup said over email.

And, in Wolcott, the work to address Flat Iron Road’s flooding is intended to move forward, thanks to an alternative collaboration with the state Fish & Wildlife Department and other hazard mitigation grants that FEMA is still awarding, explained Linda Martin, the selectboard chair. 

“If those hazard mitigation grants got pulled, then I’d be really crushed,” Martin said. “So much work goes into one of these grants, hundreds of hours.”

Martin said that even if something changes with their backup plan, she hopes to preserve and repurpose the existing grant proposal. 

“If not, we will just have to be patient and we’ll find funding someday. I’m sure,” Martin said. 

But across the state, most of this preventative planning work will be left undone, Smith said. 

“These are not things that communities are required to do,” she said. “These are things that communities are opting in to do because they’re being proactive and because they want to reduce their future costs. I think the unfortunate reality is, without funding to do that, communities won’t do these projects, and then the next time we have a flood, it won’t be better, it’ll be worse.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: FEMA ended a grant program designed to help communities prevent disaster damages. Here’s where that leaves Vermont.  .

On the first Earth Day in 1970, pockets of student groups and activists organized more than 12,000 teach-ins and events across the country that marked the beginning of a new era of federal environmental regulations, like the Clean Air Act, and the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Fifty-five years later, the holiday has become more corporate than radical, but to Ethan Tapper, who gave the devotional address to the House of Representatives Tuesday morning, the day is still an important opportunity to recognize that past and all the work that lies ahead.

“I think of Earth Day as this ritual where we honor the people who have given us the legacies,  the good environmental legacies that we now stand on,” Tapper said in an interview. 

Tapper, a true Vermont multi-hyphenate is a forester and author who has amassed a social media following of more than 47,000 on Instagram and TikTok for his casual explainer videos about forest phenomena, from what makes a tree alive to mystery forest scat. He’s also in a ten-piece punk band, the Bubs. 

On Tuesday, Tapper read to legislators from a section of his first book, “How to Love a Forest,” that details a walk in the woods with a fellow forester, one who tends to the land as an “expression of care and compassion in a world of exploitation and short sightedness.” In the excerpt, Tapper describes the responsibility of managing a landscape as “building a better legacy for those who may someday follow, whoever they are.”

For Tapper, that includes a proactive, hands-on approach to forest management: actions like cutting down trees, moving plants around, and even spraying some herbicide every now and then. Leaving a forest totally untouched, is not an act of compassion, he says.

He foresees a new era of environmentalism in that vein on its way. 

“For a long time, a lot of these really powerful environmental movements have been basically just about stopping doing things,” Tapper said. “But this new era of environmentalism is about doing less of the bad stuff and also more of the good stuff, and being willing to actually step into our role as stewards of this planet.”

In the know

State leaders and environmental organizations used Earth Day as an opportunity to defend Vermont’s climate change initiatives in light of a suite of recent actions made by President Donald Trump.

Among other federal moves, an April 8 executive order from the Trump administration singles out Vermont for its efforts to hold energy producers financially responsible for contributions to greenhouse gas emissions. 

At a press conference at the Statehouse, Vermont Attorney General Charity Clark doubled down on her commitment to fight the executive order, which is aimed at state climate laws that the president believes threaten “American energy dominance.”

“We marked our calendar 60 days from April 8, because that’s when we expect that the (Department of Justice) is going to act in response to this executive order,” she said in an interview. “There’s probably a number of things they’re considering, and whatever it is, we will be ready. We will be ready to defend Vermont, we will be ready to defend the Climate Superfund Act.”

Read more about some of the Earth Day events at the Statehouse here. 

— Izzy Wagner

U.S. Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vt., visited Mohsen Mahdawi in a Vermont jail Monday, sharing a snippet of their conversation to social media.

And on Tuesday, more than 100 people rallied at the Statehouse to call for his release and what they characterized as the federal government’s circumvention of due process. 

Mahdawi, a Palestinian student organizer at Columbia University who lives in the Upper Valley, was arrested by federal agents in Colchester last week during an interview for U.S. citizenship. Masked federal officers ushered Mahdawi into a vehicle, and he was later detained at Northwest State Correctional Facility in St. Albans. 

Lawyers for Mahdawi quickly filed a lawsuit arguing his detention was unlawful, and a federal judge in Vermont ordered that he not be taken from the state. A hearing in his case is scheduled for Wednesday morning. 

Vermont House adopted a resolution Tuesday “objecting to the manner and circumstances” of Mahdawi’s detention and calling for him to be “released immediately.” 

Read more about the ongoing response to the detention here.

— Ethan Weinstein

On the move

Thousands of Vermonters could see their medical debt wiped away under a bill headed to the governor’s desk. 

The legislation, S. 27, would use $1 million in funds appropriated to the Treasurer’s Office to erase $100 million in Vermonters’ medical debt. It would also prohibit credit reporting agencies from taking into account Vermonters’ medical debt when determining their credit scores. 

“With medical debt, it often happens to you when you have no control,” Vermont Treasurer Mike Pieciak, who has spearheaded the proposal, told lawmakers this month. “You don’t have the ability to say, ‘I’m going to delay this care or delay this treatment.’ You don’t have the ability to shop around. You’re being taken by ambulance to a hospital and the procedure’s happening to you.”

The bill leverages the fact that medical debt can be purchased for pennies on the dollar — roughly one penny per dollar of debt, in fact. Thus, a $1 million investment could erase about $100 million of debt. 

The legislation has received unanimous support from both chambers of Vermont’s General Assembly. The bill passed the Senate last month, and House lawmakers voted it out Tuesday. 

The bill, now poised to become law, would place Vermont among roughly 20 states and cities that have used public funds to eliminate residents’ medical debts. 

Read more about the legislation here.

— Peter D’Auria

Visit our 2025 bill tracker for the latest updates on major legislation we are following. 

Read the story on VTDigger here: Final Reading: Local forester, TikTok-celeb and punk rocker opens Earth Day session at the Vermont House.

The University of Vermont’s Board of Trustees approved the collective bargaining agreement between the university and UVM Staff United, the non-faculty union, on Tuesday after more than a year of negotiations, ushering in a new three-year contract for the union.

The contract includes wage increases, small annual bonuses and other benefits — like a raise in the cap on the number of hours an employee can draw from a collectively held bank of sick days and an end to a six-month waiting period for new employees to enroll in dental insurance. It also sets a higher minimum wage for hourly workers, to $20.80 starting in the first pay period after ratification.

“We are relieved that this long struggle has concluded, and we will finally have the money we have earned in our pockets,” union co-president Ellen Kaye said in an interview.

The university and Staff United have been negotiating a new contract since February 2024, and the previous contract expired in July 2024. The new contract includes a provision for a 4% base salary increase that retroactively covers the period since that last contract expired. Base salaries will increase 3.75% starting July 2025, and 3.5% in July 2026. 

“This new contract demonstrates a sincere, mutual commitment to this important relationship and sets the stage for more shared success over the next three years of working together,” UVM Chief Human Resources Officer Chris Lehman wrote in a press release.

Kaye said that over the span of negotiations the union members — all of whom hold non-faculty and non-custodial jobs at the university, such as librarians, research assistants, administrative assistants — have used “every tool at our disposal” to achieve these gains.

The new contract opens up a pathway for the university to implement a career path structure that should make it easier for employees to move up, Lehman said in an interview.  He said he sees the ability to implement the program as one of the biggest gains in the new contract. 

Essentially, Kaye added, it gives union employees the right to bargain about why workers are placed in a certain job category, while preserving the right to negotiate.

Kaye said that wages have been the biggest sticking point for the union, given that about 70% of the union members still do not make a liveable wage in line with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s determination for the Burlington area — a household of one person would qualify as low income in 2024 if the annual income was less than $66,600.The median income among members before this raise was $55,000 annually, Kaye said.

To close the negotiations, the union had to make concessions on base salary — “I will say we came closer to (the university’s number) than they came to us on wages,” Kaye said — but the contract maintained all of the workers’ other demands. 

Lehman said university leaders made the salary decisions in accordance with the current job market, consulting against a range of industry platforms to understand what is appropriate.  

The ultimate agreed-upon salary increases are still not up to a livable wage for the Burlington area, Kaye said, but they’re a start.

“Now our focus is on the fact that we have a bigger fight on our hands, with the (federal government’s) attack on higher education. We are looking forward to working in concert with the university against the challenges to higher education,” Kaye said.

Read the story on VTDigger here: UVM Board and Staff Union ratify 3-year contract.

The Rutland City Public Schools and its teachers’ union have reached an impasse in contract negotiations ahead of an April 15 deadline, which the school district says could result in layoffs. 

Salaries proposed by the Rutland Education Association union pose “a significant difference” to those proposed by the city’s school board, according to a letter Superintendent Bill Olsen sent teachers and other staff Monday. To bring the union’s proposed salary in line with the school district’s voter-approved budgets, the district must issue staffing reductions, Olsen added in the letter.

Without clarity on what a final contract may be, Olsen wrote that the district must put out official notices for so-called reductions in force, or RIF, decisions by April 15, a deadline set in the teachers’ current contract. Such letters provide notice to teachers that their position is not secure for the coming school year. 

“Our teachers, our members are incredibly disappointed,” union President Sue Tanen said. “To tie the bargaining process to RIF notices while we’re still at the table, it’s incredibly disheartening, and members are clearly upset by it.” 

Those notices were scheduled to go out to some staff members Monday afternoon, according to the letter. Tanen declined to say if any union members had received such letters yet. Olsen wrote in his letter that notices would be recalled if the contract negotiations result in a salary increase in line with what district management believes its budget can support. 

However, the threat of reductions in force notices has not changed union members’ goals, Tanen said. 

“We just keep saying that we are coming to the table. We’re willing to come to the table,” Tanen said. “We have not really changed our stance — that is our stance, that we’re just going to keep coming to the table and advocating for our members.” 

The union is asking for equitable pay with other teachers in the region as well as sick time that accounts for the toll the Covid-19 pandemic took on many teachers, Tanen added. 

“We wish this was not happening, but we need to continue to operate in good faith consistent with all of the applicable rules required by the contract,” Olsen wrote in the letter. “Please know that we are fully committed to our great staff and will proceed with transparency, and more importantly, with compassion.”

The teachers’ contract with the district expired in July 2024. Their negotiations for a new one have been ongoing since January 2024, according to the Rutland Herald. 

“We’ve been without a new contract for close to the whole school year, and the effect that has on the morale of teachers going in every day, it’s incredibly difficult,” Tanen said. “They give every part of their being to make these kids’ days everything that they can be. And so it’s incredibly frustrating that we’re still here and that we’re not done.”

Neither Olsen nor the school board’s head of contract negotiations responded immediately to requests for comment.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Rutland school district contract negotiations lead to staff layoffs .

Updated at 6:54 p.m.

BURLINGTON — A federal judge in Burlington heard arguments Monday in the case of a Tufts University student who was arrested by federal agents in Massachusetts last month and later briefly detained at an immigration enforcement facility in St. Albans.

Judge William Sessions didn’t immediately rule during the hearing, which centered on whether the student, Rümeysa Öztürk, should remain in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention or not. Öztürk has been detained for weeks at an ICE facility in Basile, Louisiana, where she was taken after being lodged overnight in Vermont.

But the judge did appear open to ordering her brought back to Vermont while the case continues, a move Öztürk’s attorneys proposed, among others, in court filings. Sessions grilled the lawyers and the prosecutor representing the feds for more than two hours, before concluding by saying he’d take both sides’ arguments “under advisement.” 

Speaking to reporters outside the courthouse on Elmwood Avenue after the hearing, Jessie Rossman, from Öztürk’s legal team, said she wasn’t sure when the judge would decide on the case’s next steps, but added, “we know that the court has been moving expeditiously on this case, and we anticipate that he will continue to do so.” 

The graduate student’s attorneys have asked Sessions to order her released on bail as her case proceeds, or if not that, to have her held in custody in Vermont instead. 

The federal government has contested both of those requests, arguing that Öztürk’s case should instead be delegated entirely to the federal immigration court system. Öztürk has additional proceedings in that system already, stemming from the feds’ decision to revoke her student visa and order her to be deported from the U.S. 

A federal judge in Massachusetts, where Öztürk’s case was first filed before being moved, at least for the time being, to Vermont, ruled late last month that the student cannot be deported without a court order authorizing the government to do so.

Sessions said he is first weighing whether he agrees that the case should continue to be heard in Vermont. If he’s satisfied that his court has jurisdiction over the case, he said, he may then solicit more arguments from both sides at a later date — which he did not set — on whether it’s appropriate for Öztürk to be released from detention.

Öztürk, who is Turkish, was arrested by masked and plainclothes officers on a street near her apartment in Somerville, Massachusetts, on the evening of March 25. She was whisked north to Vermont via New Hampshire that night, before being flown out of Patrick Leahy Burlington International Airport early the following morning. 

“When the men approached me, my first thought was that they were not government officials but private individuals who wanted to harm me,” Öztürk wrote in an affidavit filed with the court last week, before going on to write, “I thought this was a strange situation and was sure they were going to kill me.”

Öztürk’s attorneys have argued that ICE wrongly targeted her for exercising her rights to free speech. The government appears to have targeted Öztürk for co-writing an op-ed in Tufts’ student newspaper that criticized university leaders for their response to demands that the school divest from companies with ties to Israel, her attorneys have said.

At Monday’s hearing, her lawyers also contended the feds have not charged her with a crime and that, by keeping her detained, the government is creating “a chilling effect” that will discourage other people from writing or speaking about similar issues. 

They pointed to Öztürk’s affidavit, too, which states that the 30-year-old has been “in pain and very scared” while in ICE custody. She has suffered four asthma attacks while detained but hasn’t received adequate care for her condition, the court filing states.

Acting U.S. Attorney for Vermont Michael Drescher, who is defending ICE and other federal agencies against Öztürk’s challenge, said the government did not dispute that the student could bring a case against it. But he argued that the challenge had to be confined to the federal immigration system, with its own distinct courts and judges.

If Sessions found that Vermont’s U.S. District Court has jurisdiction over even some of the proceedings, Drescher argued, the judge would be infringing on the executive branch of the federal government’s discretion to enforce U.S. immigration law.

Monday’s hearing was “neither the time, nor the forum” for the case to be litigated, Drescher told the judge.

Öztürk’s attorneys contended they were challenging the constitutionality of Öztürk’s arrest — an issue over which Sessions should have a say, they maintained. 

“There’s no discretion to violate the Constitution,” Noor Zafar, another of Öztürk’s lawyers, said during Monday’s arguments in the courtroom.

Sessions appeared to have some concern with the government’s argument that there was an insurmountable conflict between his court and the immigration system. If Öztürk “is right” that her constitutional rights were violated when she was arrested, but the government thinks Öztürk should be detained, regardless, “then we’re in a constitutional crisis,” the judge said.

Drescher responded that the government would comply with Sessions’ decision, even if they disagreed with it.

Öztürk’s case has drawn national attention as President Donald Trump’s administration has repeatedly taken aim at students and professors across the country in recent weeks, including revoking some academics’ permission to study and work in the U.S. 

Ahead of Monday’s hearing, hundreds of people lined the sidewalks outside the downtown Burlington courthouse, many of them waving Palestinian flags or holding handmade signs professing support for Öztürk and other students who have been detained.

The rally was organized by the Vermont Coalition for Palestinian Liberation and featured speakers from that organization, Vermonters for Justice in Palestine and University of Vermont Students for Justice in Palestine, among others. Crowds formed before the hearing started at 9:30 a.m., and many stayed for hours until the proceedings concluded around midday. 

“It’s incredibly important to show up in force and be loud and proud about what we believe, which is that the detention of Rümeysa is wrong. It is unjust, and she must be released immediately,” said James O’Malley, an organizer with UVM Students for Justice in Palestine, in an interview.

Others said they thought Öztürk’s detention represented an erosion of First Amendment protections in the country.  

“The most important thing that will come out of that room upstairs is the question, do we have the First Amendment right or not?” said Wafic Faour, a member of Vermonters for Justice in Palestine and of the Vermont Coalition for Palestinian Liberation who spoke at the rally.

“A lot of the people here came here because they are against Trump. We understand that. They are pro the First Amendment. We do understand that. But if they don’t understand that Palestine is the litmus test of the First Amendment, they are missing the point,” Faour said in an interview.  

Caitlin MacLeod-Bluver, a Winooski High School teacher, felt it was essential to show up and give voice to the concerns of her students, many of whom, she said, don’t share the same freedoms to speak up. 

“Many of my students are immigrants, with and without legal status,” she said in an interview. “I’m here because they want me to be here, (and) because I stand with my students, always.” 

“I think I see Rümeysa as a student first,” MacLeod-Bluver said, adding, “I think immigrants with or without legal status need our support now more than ever.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Vermont federal judge hears arguments in detained Tufts student’s case, makes no ruling.

A federal judge said Thursday she intends to issue a stay on the Department of Homeland Security’s order to end the humanitarian parole program, according to reporting from Reuters and other news sources.

Two Nicaraguan students at Champlain Valley Union High School, who have been living in Vermont under that program, were planning to leave the country by the end of the month to comply with the federal government’s order. 

The specifics of the situation are still unclear, and a Champlain Valley School District spokesperson declined to comment on how the two students and their family are reacting to the potential change.

Their pending departure sparked an outpouring of support and anger from the surrounding Champlain Valley community. For now, the early graduation ceremony the school had planned — so that the students would be able to have their diplomas before leaving — remains on the schedule.

U.S. District Court Judge Indira Talwani expressed her intention to halt the department’s revocation of the parole program during a hearing in Boston’s federal court on Thursday, according to Reuters. As of Friday afternoon, the judge had yet to issue a formal order. 

The CHNV parole program, as it is known, offers two years of legal residence and work eligibility to Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans. People in the program are typically able to seek asylum or other pathways to more permanent residence in the country. More than 500,000 people who are in the U.S. under the program would have to leave by April 24 under the Department of Homeland Security’s order. For most, that date falls before the span of their two-year stay will have expired.

According to Reuters, Talwani said she would quickly work to issue an order halting the premature end of the parole period for individuals already here, though she said she would not require the program to accept new applicants.

Talwani said the Department of Homeland Security’s decision to prematurely end the parole period for people already in the U.S. was an incorrect reading of the law, as Reuters reported.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Federal judge may reverse federal order that would force two Champlain Valley Union students to leave the country.

Updated at 10:04 p.m.

Two Champlain Valley Union High School students are being forced to leave the U.S., after an order from the Department of Homeland Security suspended a legal parole program for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans.

The two Champlain Valley teenagers are originally from Nicaragua and have been in the U.S. for less than a year under the program, which the Department of Homeland Security prematurely ended March 25, giving people 30 days to leave the U.S. The program is set up to allow for two years of legal residence in the U.S.

The students’ family plans to comply with the order and exit the country by the end of the month, according to Christina Daudelin, a student and community engagement facilitator for the Champlain Valley School District. Because the students are minors and the specter of returning to Nicaragua poses additional safety concerns, the school has not shared the students’ names or identifying details.   

Otherwise school has been “operating as normal” to preserve a sense of balance, Daudelin said. The school is planning an early graduation ceremony to take place next week so the students will have their diplomas before they have to leave.

“This is really personal for a lot of us. We have personal relationships with the students, and we are feeling helpless and caught up in something we can’t change,” she said.

Adam Bunting, the superintendent of the school district, shared the news with community members in an email Wednesday. 

“These students are not political operatives. They are not criminals. They are not threats,” Bunting wrote. “They are young people who have found safety and meaning in our community. They’ve made friends, joined clubs, and played in the snow here for the first time. They’ve done what all teenagers do: tried to figure out who they are, where they belong, what they care about.”

“Now, because of a shift in federal policy, their lives are being upended—again,” Bunting went on. “When we talk about immigration, we must remember that there are people behind every policy–in this case young people who dream of going to college.”

The humanitarian parole designation that allows the students to be here is not a legal status, rather a permission to enter the country, according to Brett Stokes, the director of the Center for Justice Reform Clinic at Vermont Law School. Essentially it’s a way for people to live in the U.S.  while they are looking for more permanent routes for residency and work eligibility.

“It doesn’t replace the need or eligibility for asylum or other programs,” Stokes said. Many people simultaneously apply for asylum while they are in the U.S. under humanitarian parole. Though he is not familiar with the specifics of the two students’ cases, those routes could be open to them in the future. 

“Do I think this termination of parole is legal? No, probably not,” Stokes said. “My interpretation is that the goal here, really, was to scare a lot of people into self-deporting.”

Though President Donald Trump’s administration has tried to expand expedited removals — that is deportations without due process — it flies in the face of existing statute, Stokes said. 

“I know that is illegal,” he said.

The school’s decision to broadcast the news of the students’ terminated parole and decision to leave was a fraught one, as the school hoped to protect the students’ safety and privacy, but administrators decided it was best to get the word out. 

“We wanted to give families an ability to make meaning of this situation,” Bunting said in an interview. “We think every family deserves a chance to have that discussion.”

He also stressed the importance of realizing that the impacts of federal action are being felt locally. 

“I think when people are thinking of federal policy, they’re thinking of headlines in universities and big cities, that this isn’t something that happens here. There are impacts in our community, to our kids and to the values of Vermont,” he said. “I was upset with myself and my own ignorance of what our colleagues are dealing with across the state and country.”

Bunting said Champlain Valley is coordinating with other districts in the state and working with the Vermont Superintendents Association as part of its response. He planned to meet with Education Secretary Zoie Saunders on Thursday afternoon. 

It’s not lost on Bunting that this news comes in the middle of an ongoing dispute over whether the state should certify its schools as complying with a federal nondiscrimination requirement, Title VI, following an April 3 letter from the U.S. Department of Education claiming noncompliance could result in the loss of some federal funding. 

“It’s hard to separate this from the ongoing stuff surrounding Title VI,” Bunting said. “We have some hard decisions to make about what we will do when our values are being compromised and challenged.” 

He sees this as a moment for the community to rearticulate and commit to its values of supporting one another. How exactly that will look is still being worked out.

“We’re still trying to find a meaningful way to respond that isn’t reactionary,” said Becky Gamble, the founder and co-leader of Champlain Valley Indivisible. “These moments do call for recognition of what really are our values and as a community, what we are willing to stand up for. We’re having a reckoning with what really matters to us.”  

Since the school district made the information public, it has received an outpouring of support and desire from community members to help. Daudelin has been sharing resources for people to call state and federal legislators to advocate for state-level deportation defense funding and to ask that Vermont’s delegation oppose the new deportation process.

She has also invited people to drop off cards at the school and said that she would soon have more information about a potential in-person show of support.

“It’s a human rights issue. Even if you can take politics out, we decide who the community is,” she said. “These students are our community, and they are us.”

Bunting said he wished people in decision making positions could sit with the students, as he did Wednesday. They’d see two highly motivated students who care deeply about their education and the state that they now call home, Bunting said. 

They are “nothing short of inspirational,” he added, but, like any teenager would be, they are scared of not knowing what’s awaiting them.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Champlain Valley Union High School students face expulsion from the US.

President Donald Trump singled out Vermont and New York state’s climate superfund laws in an executive order signed late Tuesday aimed at gutting them.

He called for U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi to “expeditiously” identify ways to halt the enforcement of laws, such as the climate superfunds, that he said have threatened “American energy dominance.” 

Though Trump specifically names Vermont’s and New York’s superfund laws, alongside California’s carbon cap-and-trade policy, the order gives leeway for Bondi to address other state laws that collect carbon penalties or carbon taxes or otherwise address climate change. 

The order gives Bondi 60 days to submit a report recommending action needed to block such laws.

Vermont officials don’t plan to change any of Vermont’s climate initiatives based on the order, as several told VTDigger.

The order doesn’t block the law’s ability to move forward, explained Vermont Attorney General Charity Clark, so the offices tasked with implementing the climate superfund and other climate initiatives can proceed.

“This executive order doesn’t do anything,” she said, explaining that as it stands, the order is basically an internal email, asking a member of his administration to file a report, dressed up as an executive action. 

“I think Donald Trump wants to have more power than he really has. And so he’s styling these memos and emails as executive orders,” she said.

The climate superfund law Trump targeted in the order, Act 122, takes the polluters-pay framework from the federal hazardous waste Superfund and applies it to the costs of climate damages, like flood recovery or harm from extreme heat. When it was passed in 2024, it was the first law in the nation to adopt this framework. It tasks the state treasurer and Agency of Natural Resources with calculating the total costs of climate-caused damages to Vermont and the responsible parties. 

The offices plan to continue that work, said Julie Moore, secretary of the Agency of Natural Resources. 

“I feel strongly that our job is to continue to move forward with the directives that have been provided at the state level until we are specifically and officially told to stop, and we’re not at that point yet,” Moore said.

Because so many of the Trump administration’s orders have been halted by courts, the need to continue the work as planned is crucial, she added. 

“We are not reacting to every action, because we would spend, frankly, all of our time reacting and then not have any capacity to do the work,” Moore said

Clark said that once there is an “actionable claim,” her office will be ready to respond, but for now, there is no claim to act upon. 

Conservation Law Foundation President Brad Campbell called the order “a screed devoid of legal argument” in a statement.

The executive order uses language similar to a lawsuit that the American Petroleum Institute and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce filed against Vermont’s law in December.

In the lawsuit, the plaintiffs argue that the federal Clean Air Act preempts Vermont’s law. They posit that the Clean Air Act already gives the federal Environmental Protection Agency jurisdiction over regulating greenhouse gas emissions, not just air pollution. 

Similarly, Trump’s order calls on the U.S. attorney general to identify any state law “burdening” domestic energy production that “may be” unconstitutional or preempted by federal law, such as the Clean Air Act.  

But, as for actual arguments, the order itself “doesn’t spell out anything,” said Patrick Parenteau, an emeritus professor at Vermont Law School’s Environmental Law Center and a former attorney for the federal Environmental Protection Agency who specialized in superfunds.

Parenteau said it’s likely the Trump administration would join the existing lawsuit against the state law or file an amicus brief in support of the oil industry’s argument. 

“Vermont better be damn sure it has the money and the manpower to defend itself, because they’re coming. They’re coming for (Vermont) and bringing all of the pressure to bear,” he said. “The Legislature better be ready to cut some serious money for that.”

Last week, Moore and others from the Agency of Natural Resources joined representatives from the Treasurer’s Office to ask the Legislature for additional funding to complete the reports required by the climate superfund law. They noted that the lawsuits demand an even higher level of expertise from attorneys and climate scientists, who will now need to be prepared to testify in court. Now, federal pressure is only increasing that need for expertise, and the associated expense, she said. 

“I think it buttresses the need for legal resources to defend the work,” Moore said. “Regardless of the outcome, every one of these (actions) takes time and effort to track and for us to continue to assess.”

Like the tobacco industry before it, Parenteau said, the fossil fuel industry’s approach to these lawsuits is to bleed its opponents dry in long legal battles. The costs — of depositions for federal and state courts, of contracting specialized, “high-powered” lawyers and of hiring expert witnesses who testify in court to explain the scientific link between climate damage in Vermont and emissions — are going to “add up exponentially,” he said. 

The order only heightens the scrutiny Vermont’s superfund law already faced from the oil industry, Parenteau said.

“The stakes were already high,” he said, “but now, boy oh boy, gird yourself.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Trump executive order targets Vermont’s first-in-the-nation ‘climate superfund’ .