GLOVER — To an outsider, Rodgers Road seems like one of hundreds of unremarkable dirt roads in Vermont. The road, which stretches for over a mile, is surrounded by towering green trees and sprawling farmland. It passes by a cemetery holding the gravestones of families that have called this small Northeast Kingdom town home for generations.

But the road is also at the center of an increasingly personal, yearslong ownership dispute between Vermont’s Lt. Gov. John Rodgers and the town of Glover’s leadership and employees. The town considers all of Rodgers Road to be a town highway — Town Highway 48, specifically. Meanwhile, Rodgers says a three-quarter mile portion along which he lives and farms is actually private and belongs to him. 

Rodgers Road — named after the lieutenant governor’s family, who have owned the property for close to two centuries — makes an almost 90 degree turn, creating a wonky square with the equally rural Andersonville Road and Daniels Pond Road. Both of those roads are Class 3, meaning that under Vermont law they must be maintained year-round. That classification continues past the intersection onto Rodgers Road for roughly one-third of a mile. The remainder of Rodgers Road is considered Class 4, which doesn’t require year-round maintenance. This is the contentious section, currently the subject of a lawsuit that Rodgers filed against the town last month.  

Rodgers says his family has always owned the road section. Glover, on the other hand, says the town has always owned the section. The legal dispute started in 2023. 

That was about a year before Rodgers announced his decision to run for the state’s second highest office and 18 months since he had last represented the region in the state Legislature. Elected in 2002 as a state representative for Glover and surrounding towns, Rodgers later also served as a state senator, in both offices as a Democrat. He changed parties before accepting the Republican nomination for lieutenant governor in 2024. 

On June 12, 2023, according to public records obtained by VTDigger, Rodgers emailed then-Glover Selectboard member Leanne Harple — now herself serving as the town’s state representative — requesting that no work be done on the Class 4 section of Rodgers Road, until the question of ownership is answered. 

Earlier that day, Rodgers had stopped Mike Pray, a member of the Glover road crew, from putting in a new culvert on that section of the road. 

“I would ask that until this legal issue has been resolved that No town action is taken on the class for [sic] section of the road,” Rodgers wrote in the email, obtained via the public records request.

Rodgers went on to say he was considering closing the road to through traffic once his right to do so was affirmed. “I could close the road and make the town higher [sic] a legal team to find evidence of their right of way if I decided to go that direction,” he wrote. “I would rather not.”

“My intention is that if my legal team is correct that I will eventually close the road to car and truck traffic but would leave it open to all pedestrian bicycle ATV in UTV used as a Trail,” Rodgers added.

When Harple forwarded Rodgers’ email to Pray and other Glover officials — asking if work could pause until the legal issue had been resolved — Pray shared his version of events.

“I was greeted with John [Rodgers] walking up to me in the excavator calling me a moron, and was told if I do any work on the Class 4 … that cops would be called,” Pray wrote. 

Later in the email thread, then-selectboard member David Simmons said he didn’t see a reason to give up the road. 

“Calling Mike a Fucking moron is nothing more than him being a bully,” he wrote.

The disagreement was just starting to heat up.

Town records and road crew

A few weeks later, on July 17, 2023, Rodgers found himself in front of the Glover Selectboard, arguing his case.

“I asked the town about giving [Rodger’s Road] up, they didn’t seem like they were going to negotiate,” Rodgers said at the meeting, according to audio obtained by VTDigger. “So I got a hold of a lawyer and a researcher. And from our preliminary research, there is no record of layout, no record of dedication and acceptance, two major hurdles for the town.”

In response, Nick Ecker-Racz, a former selectboard member who gained extensive knowledge about Glover roads and their history helping put together various maps for town use, disagreed, stating Rodgers’ researcher was “mistaken.” 

After some polite chatter, Rodgers brought up the conflict that had occurred between himself and Pray on June 12. Rodgers also accused Scott Pray, another member of the Glover road crew, of “coming at” him with a grader, and stated the town had made a “huge mistake” hiring the Prays to the road crew. 

The meeting then devolved into an argument between Rodgers and the road crew. 

Following the meeting, Glover Selectboard members sent Rodgers a letter stating: “Last night’s Select Board meeting was uncomfortable and upsetting … Somehow, we need to find a way to de-escalate the tension that exists now between you and our town employees.”

A key theme in the Rodgers Road dispute has been the strained relationship between Rodgers and Glover’s road crew, particularly  Scott and Mike Pray — who are father and son, respectively. Their clashes often got personal. 

Rodgers and his wife, Brenda Rodgers, both accused Glover road crew members of trying to run them off of the road multiple times according to letters written by the couple to the Glover selectboard. The letters were written following a request by Harple, who asked the couple via email on July 18 to write down their experiences with the road crew.

Brenda’s letter recounted a time she was driving home from work on July 13, 2023, and “had to almost come to a complete stop as the grader came slightly over the middle of the road onto my side,” she wrote. “I was sure he was going to hit me. I was scared for my life and hope nothing like that ever happens again. I feel unsafe driving these town roads.”

John’s letter accused the Prays of trying to run him off the road on the same day. Rodgers also accused Scott Pray of attempting to run him off the road in spring 2023 while the latter was doing maintenance on Parker Road.

“I came around the sharp corner and met Scott on the grader,” John Rodgers wrote. “At first he made a quick steer to the right to give the approaching vehicle more room but when he saw that it was me he made a quick steer back toward me and continue[d] to crowd me off the road.”

Mike and Scott Pray responded with their own letters, denying the Rodgers’ accusations.

“I have no recollection of ever swerving at anyone ever while operating the grader,” Scott Pray wrote. “As far as Brenda’s accusation I truly do not know what she drives or what she looks like.” 

Mike Pray wrote that he had “no recollection of myself, or any town employees swerving, veering or trying to run John Rodgers, Brenda Rodgers or anyone else [off the road] while maintaining and performing our duties, or for any other reason in the Town of Glover.”

On Dec. 5, 2023, after the road crew had plowed his road later than he expected following a snow storm, Rodgers wrote about the escalating frustration he felt with the road crew in an email to selectboard members Harple and Phil Young.

“My family has nearly 200 years of service to this town and a reputation for being honest, hard-working people that help everybody out,” he wrote. “I have over 20 years of public service serving this town and this area. To have these lowlifes discriminating against me, is a serious slap in the face.”

A complex controversy

Between January 2024 and April 2025, the road dispute cooled off from its prior fever pitch. During that time, Rodgers ran for lieutenant governor and won the race against a seated incumbent, a rarity in Vermont politics. He was formally sworn into that office in January 2025 after a vote by the full Legislature, required because neither candidate had won a majority in the fall race. 

But a number of actions in the spring — including a select board meeting and stories run by WCAX, one of Vermont’s local television news stations — brought the issue to the attention of Vermonters, some of them just getting to know their new lieutenant governor.

At a May 8 select board meeting, Rodgers, who joined via Zoom, again threatened legal action against the town and said he would shut the road to through traffic, according to reporting by WCAX.

“The reason I would like to be able to negotiate something that the town could support is because if we don’t, then we’re both gonna spend a ton more money on lawyers,” Rodgers said at that meeting according to audio obtained by VTDigger. “If I win, I’m going to shut the road down completely. There’ll be no access. If you win, you’re going to spend a whole bunch of money on lawyers and then have to spend money fixing up the road and maintaining it forever.”

At least one select board member sympathized with the lieutenant governor’s position. 

In a Facebook comment on the WCAX story, select board member Anne Eldridge defended Rodgers against others commenters who accused him of taking advantage of his statewide office to make a land grab against the town.

“Regardless of my position, I’m still just one voter and citizen in this town. I consider John a friend, and am absolutely sympathetic to his, and his family’s, concerns,” Eldridge wrote. 

The television segment “indeed showed a very limited view of a complex and long-standing controversy,” she said in the social media post. “I don’t personally agree with the comments saying this is any kind of abuse of power – he has every right to make his case as a resident, and we have an obligation to hear out and address the concerns of our constituents.”

At the May 8 meeting, select board members discussed getting input from others living on Rodgers Road. In response, some Glover residents began organizing a petition to keep all of Rodgers Road a town highway.

Twelve Glover residents, most of whom live or own property on or near the road, signed the petition. Two notable names on the list were Jim and Nancy Rodgers — John Rodgers’ uncle and aunt, who lived in Rodgers’ current home for decades until they sold it to him in 2019. The couple still live on the road, in a home nearby. Prior to the sale, Rodgers lived on a road next to Rodgers Road.

In a May 19 letter to the Glover Select Board, resident Elizabeth Nelson argued that if the Class 4 section of the road “ceases to be a public through highway, it will make access for agricultural or residential use impossible to my property. It will also significantly affect my property value.”

Nella and James Coe, two longtime Glover residents who run an architecture firm and whose property touches Rodgers Road, were lead circulators of the petition.

“Currently, a corner of our property adjoins Rodgers Road. If it was all privatized, we’d lose access,” James Coe told VTDigger.

The petition was presented at a May 22 select board meeting, attended by over 40 people.

Jim Rodgers, John Rodgers’ uncle, came to the meeting to voice his opposition at the idea of his nephew owning the road.

“We’re against it. We’re living on a Class 4 road, and we would be land-locked if that was shut off,” Jim Rodgers said. “To put it bluntly, it’s silly. It’s plain stupid. That’s my opinion.”

At the meeting, the select board unanimously voted to officially keep all of Rodgers Road part of Town Highway 48, allowing the road crew to continue to work on and maintain the road.

“Now, the war begins,” one select board member said moments after the vote.

On June 4, select board member Glenn Gage emailed Mike Pray, alleging that when Gage went to visit Rodgers Road to check on the work the road crew did, the lieutenant governor was “confrontational about what was going on, mainly about WCAX being involved. He says it was an inside job that got this story leaked. I assured him that it was not, but he has made his mind up over that part.”

On June 11, John and Brenda Rodgers filed suit against the town, requesting a preliminary injunction to prevent Glover from performing planned work on the disputed section of Rodgers Road. They also asked the court to determine who owns the Class 4 section of the road. A hearing for the case is scheduled for October.

To bolster the lawsuit, the lieutenant governor hired a surveyor, who in an affidavit stated that there has never been a record that establishes the town’s ownership of the disputed section of Rodgers Road.

Ecker-Racz, the former select board member, disputed that conclusion, providing VTDigger with a 19th-century document that he says shows maintenance work was done on the road by a town road worker before it was owned by the Rodgers family. 

James Ehlers, Rodgers’ chief of staff, declined to comment on the Rodgers Road dispute because the matter was making its way through the court, and referred all questions to the lieutenant governor’s legal representation.

“We assert that the Town never lawfully established the disputed section of Rodgers Road as a legal town highway,” Michael Tarrant, one of Rodgers’ lawyers told VTDigger this week. “We believe that a segment that runs through their property has always been and remains their private property.”

Tarrant also rebuked the idea of Rodgers shuttering the road to public access.

“If we prevail in this case, the result would not be that the Rodgers will have ‘taken back’ or ‘privatized’ this disputed segment,” Tarrant wrote. “Rather, the Court would confirm that this portion of the road never belonged to the Town to begin with — and public access has and will remain within the discretion of the Rodgers.”

The Coes, who are co-chairs of the Glover Planning Commission, said the lawsuit has put a strain on town resources.

“We are on the planning commission, and we have had to stop pursuing some projects because this is happening,” Nella said. “Anything that is raised, that we’d like to do, we are being told … there is no money and it’s not an option to even ask for it, because that would just cause stress to the town.”

Despite the friction the road dispute has caused between Rodgers and town officials, Nella said it has also had a surprisingly positive effect on Glover residents.

“Its kind of brought people together. It’s been cool in that way,” she said. “… I’m sorry to say this, but they’re kind of laughing about it.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: How a dirt road became a small-town spectacle involving Vermont’s lieutenant governor.

Workers at two United Parcel Service package centers in Vermont are accusing their employer of violating state family and medical leave laws by using their paid time off without their knowledge or consent.

UPS workers at package centers in Brattleboro and Wilder shared documents with VTDigger showing that their previously approved unpaid family and medical leave had been switched with their paid time off. In making the switch, the UPS locations effectively reduced the amount of paid days workers can take off.

The federal Family and Medical Leave Act, passed in 1993, entitles workers up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave in a one-year period for certain family or medical needs. Vermont law has continually expanded those rights since the 1990s, including giving workers up to four hours of unpaid short-term leave every 30 days for purposes such as taking children to medical appointments or school activities and taking family members to appointments related to their well-being.

Vermont law also states that employees can use accrued paid leave, including vacation and personal leave, in lieu of unpaid family and medical leave “at the employee’s discretion.” However, the UPS workers claim management used their paid leave without their permission.

This accusation has prompted action from the International Brotherhood of Teamsters — a labor union that represents 1.3 million workers globally — and a potential incoming response by the Vermont attorney general’s office.

A UPS spokesperson told VTDigger in a statement on Friday that the company is “aware of the issue,” and is taking “necessary steps to quickly correct the situation and ensure this is not an issue in the future.”

Issues for package center workers in Wilder began in February, after Driver Supervisor Nick Webster allegedly expressed his frustration over drivers using FMLA during a snowstorm in a way he thought was improper, according to a June 9 complaint filed with the Vermont attorney general’s office.

Webster said that after a meeting with the UPS’s labor department, it was decided that anyone attempting to use FMLA would have that unpaid leave swapped with their paid time off, the complaint alleges. It also says  that a union steward told Webster this would be illegal, but that Webster did not seem to care. 

Webster declined comment for this story, and two UPS labor managers covering the Vermont area did not reply to requests for comment. 

Two workers at the Wilder package center who spoke to VTDigger described being confused about how the situation around the FMLA unfolded. Despite the issue being discussed in February, the workers said, it took until late May for them to see their previously approved family and medical leave swapped with paid time off. One worker at the Brattleboro package center also said that the issue began for them in May.

One of the Wilder package center workers, David Kendall, a driver, said that by changing his leave from FMLA to personal and sick days, management left him with fewer days available to spend with his teenage nephew, Jerimiah. Kendall has had full custody of Jerimiah since 2014.

Kendall, who has been with UPS for almost a decade, said he enjoys his route that regularly weaves through the backroads of Springfield and Eastman, a journey so rural that when he’s driving he often doesn’t have cellphone service. 

“When I’m out on the road, I’m essentially my own boss. I enjoy the freedom of not having somebody looking over my shoulder every five minutes, like if I was in an office setting,” Kendall told VTDigger. “I enjoy when I’m delivering a parcel to someone and they’re like, ‘Oh my gosh, we were hoping for you to be here on time for so-and-so’s birthday or an important event,’ and they’re like, ‘We weren’t expecting you so soon!’ and have a huge smile on their face.”

Kendall said, in interviews with VTDigger, that he first noticed the issue after a previously approved FMLA full-day leave on May 27 was switched to an option day. This is a form of paid time off earned by UPS workers. This switch was made by Webster without Kendall’s knowledge or consent, he said. Since May, Kendall said, he has had six days of paid time off taken without his permission: four of his five sick days and two of his three option days. 

“Now I have no sick days. So if I’m sick, I still have to go to work,” he said. “And, they took the option days I would use to spend more time with my nephew … to attend school events that he wanted me to attend, and stuff like that, ’cause he plays basketball for the youth basketball team.”

Kendall said that until May, he had been allowed to use family and medical leave to take Jerimiah to medical appointments. Jerimiah has developmental and cognitive challenges, as well as mental health issues, Kendall said.

“Whenever we took FMLA, it wasn’t an issue,” he said. “I would go into work and I’d work like four, five, six hours, and then I would take the rest of the day off to get him to his appointments.”

Payroll and insurance documents obtained and reviewed by VTDigger show that six of Kendall’s previously approved family and medical leave days were switched with sick and option days by various members of UPS package center management. 

Kendall is not the only worker alleging that their unpaid family and medical leave was switched without their consent. 

Justin Doubleday, an employee at the UPS package center in Brattleboro, said that in one instance this issue led to a workplace confrontation. He  said he took his 10-year-old son to a medical visit using previously approved short-term family leave. When he attempted to return to work at the Brattleboro package center, he said, he found his truck wasn’t loaded. He said he discovered that management had put him in for a sick day.

“I put in for four hours of short term FMLA … instead they put me in for a sick day. They put in the system that I called out sick, even though I gave them a week in advance a short-term family medical leave form and let them know that I would be into work after. … Everybody there, other management included, were like ‘This is fucked up. This isn’t right. You put in for FMLA.’”

Doubleday said he confronted the supervisor who had put in the sick day without Doubleday’s consent. After an argument and pressure from other members of management, the supervisor reversed the decision, Doubleday said. The supervisor gave Doubleday back his sick day and paid him for the 33 minutes he had spent arguing in the facility that day before going home.

“This is the shit that they do and that we put up with. Isn’t that ridiculous?” Doubleday said. 

Documents obtained by VTDigger show that one of Doubleday’s previously approved short-term family and medical leave was replaced with an option day. 

UPS did not respond to a request for comment Monday on the specific allegations made by the workers. 

Union action

After learning his paid time off had been used, Kendall said, he alerted the union — Teamsters Local 597, a chapter of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. Kendall filed multiple grievances with the union, and union officials communicated the FMLA issue directly with UPS management, according to the June 9 complaint filed with the Vermont attorney general. 

On June 26, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters sent a letter to UPS’s counsel, demanding they “immediately cease and desist from requiring our members in Vermont use their accrued paid leave during FMLA-qualifying leave,” further stating that they were prepared to take legal action if they did not hear from UPS by July 4.

“They’re not just violating the law, they’re violating the collective bargaining agreement. So it’s not just a law enforcement issue, it’s also an issue for the international union,” said Curtis Clough, president of Local 597.

The union’s contract with UPS states that the company, “may require the employee to substitute accrued paid vacation or other paid leave,” when a worker is taking FMLA, but that workers are permitted two weeks of paid vacation that cannot be substituted for FMLA. 

However, the contract goes on to say that these provisions, “shall not supersede any state or local law, which provides for greater employee rights,” meaning Vermont’s family leave law supersedes the contract.

Clough, who worked his way up from a seasonal helper at UPS to a full-time driver before leaving to take a position at the union, said the paid time theft is an escalation in what has become a fractious relationship between management and workers. The union does not know why UPS has stood so firmly behind what he sees is a clear violation of the law, he said.

“UPS is pretty antagonistic. … UPS routinely harasses drivers, so it’s hard to pick out a reason why,” he said. “There is no longer a culture where the driver supervisors come up through the ranks.”

According to communications obtained by VTDigger, at least one of the attorney general’s senior investigators has reviewed the alleged violations at the package centers. A representative from the attorney general’s office told VTDigger that the office could not comment on what cases they are investigating.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Vermont workers allege UPS violated family leave law.

Max Misch, a Bennington white supremacist, was sentenced Monday to two weeks in jail on charges of possessing high-capacity gun magazines. The court also made incremental progress toward his upcoming court dates involving kidnapping and assault charges.

Misch’s sentencing took all of 10 minutes, with the state’s co-counsel Franklin Paulino requesting that Misch receive 14 to 15 days in jail. Misch’s lawyer, Frederick C. Bragdon did not push back, stating that he and his client agreed to the state’s terms. 

The case, which has been ongoing for roughly six years, tested a 2018 state law regulating high capacity magazines. 

When Judge Jennifer Barrett gave Misch the opportunity to address the court following his sentencing, Misch appeared relatively at peace with the decision.

“I think it’s a fair punishment for the crime. I think it fits the crime,” Misch said, though adding that he didn’t think his actions were a crime. “… I don’t agree with this law, but it is what it is. One day, I will be vindicated and that’s that. That’s all I have to say.”

Misch first gained state and national attention following his racial harassment of Kiah Morris, a former state representative for Bennington, who is Black.

Barrett stated that Misch would have to be held without bail on the remaining kidnapping and assault charges until the defense had an actionable release plan. Barett also scheduled a check-in on Misch’s upcoming case for Sept. 10.

Correction: A previous version of this story mischaracterized the racial identity of Kiah Morris within Vermont’s House of Representatives.

Read the story on VTDigger here: White supremacist Max Misch sentenced to 2 weeks in jail for gun magazine possession.

When Gardener’s Supply filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in late June, it owed its vendor Green Mountain Mulch over $81,000. Over a month later, Daniel St. Onge, the owner of the mulch dealer, said he nor most of Gardener’s vendors are likely to fully recoup what they’re owed.

“It ain’t looking good. I think it’s gonna be cents on the dollar, if anything,” St. Onge said. “It’s definitely a hurt and that’s for sure. … It was quite a shock actually. I do a lot of business with them and didn’t really know nothing until the day of.” 

As of July 31, the popular employee-owned Vermont gardening business was acquired by Indiana-based competitor, Gardens Alive!. And in the wake of the sale, along with hundreds of thousands of dollars that Gardener’s still owes its international, national and local vendors, it’s the company’s employees now bracing for layoffs and suppliers calculating their losses.

St. Onge said Gardens Alive! has begun the process of restarting business with Gardener’s former vendors. But according to court documents, Gardens Alive! will not be liable for any debt, legal claims or liens against Gardener’s related to its bankruptcy.

“I’m in the process of speaking on that with them,” St. Onge said on Monday. “Had a little email chatter today about it and they’re supposed to talk to me tomorrow.”

Alongside vendors, workers at Gardener’s Supply are also facing upcoming layoffs following the sale, as first reported by Courtney Lamdin of Seven Days.

The Vermont Department of Labor confirmed the layoffs, which will primarily hit Gardener’s  Milton warehouse location and call center. Vermont Department of Labor spokesperson Rachel Dumeny told VTDigger that the department could not yet specify how many workers are set to be laid off, citing pending legal approval of the company’s layoff notice.

Dumeny wrote in an email that the department will be providing a free information session for laid off workers on Wednesday at Gardener’s Milton warehouse to discuss unemployment benefits, health insurance and re-employment opportunities.

Gardener’s employee stock ownership plan also doesn’t appear to be in good standing after it lost its independent trustee — the Washington-based ESOP Trust Company.

Court documents show that the trust company, once meant to “navigate the ESOP through the pending bankruptcy and corresponding asset sale,” has resigned, citing “persistent post-petition breaches” of its agreement with Gardener’s.

The breaches include failures by Gardener’s to pay legal fees and comply with various fiduciary and reporting obligations, according to court filings.

Gardener’s bankruptcy counsel said it would not pay the trust company $100,000 it had previously agreed to pay to steward the ESOP during the bankruptcy process.

Unless Gardener’s has enough money left over after the sale, workers in the ESOP plan may not see a dime, according to Matt Cropp, executive director of the Vermont Employee Ownership Center.

“So in a situation like this, the company’s got a bunch of outstanding debts and obligations — payroll, the trade invoices, secured debt, unsecured debt, all of those things, right? Then equity is usually at the bottom of the stack,” he said. “So the question for this sort of thing would be is there a residual amount and, if so, then there’s some fraction of it that would be distributed pro rata amongst folks depending on their shares.”

Gardener’s Supply declined to comment.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Following bankruptcy and sale, Gardener’s Supply workers are laid off and vendors are shortchanged.

Northeastern Vermont Regional Hospital in St. Johnsbury announced upcoming cuts to staff and two hospital programs on Tuesday, joining other medical facilities across the state making similar announcements.

The cuts, which will take effect Sept. 30, include five positions: three in occupational medicine and one each in community health coordination and physical therapy, the hospital said in a press release this week. These staffing cuts come on top of three administrative positions cut earlier this year.

The hospital will be shuttering its occupational medicine office — that works “onboarding new employees with physicals and immunizations” — transferring partial services to Northern Express Care, which operates three walk-in clinics in northeastern Vermont. Northeastern Vermont Regional Hospital will also be ending its partnership for ear, nose and throat care with Littleton Regional Healthcare, transitioning patients to the hospital’s own providers.

“I want to emphasize that these reductions are in no way a reflection of performance or dedication — they’re about ensuring that our organization remains strong and resilient for the communities we serve,” the hospital’s CEO Shawn Tester said in the release.

Northeastern Vermont Regional Hospital is one of the Northeast Kingdom’s largest providers of health care. According to regulator Green Mountain Care Board, the hospital is in the mid-range of its peer facilities across the state, with over $120 million patient revenue, the sixth highest in fiscal year 2024. 

In the Thursday release, Northeastern Vermont Regional Hospital officials said more may be needed to ensure the hospital’s financial future, including adjustments made to employees schedules like reductions in overtime, “efficiency improvements” for hospital technology, and a review of certain employee benefits for “identify potential savings with minimal impact, including early retirement options for those who qualify.”

“In order to assist in lowering the cost of health care for Vermonters, while keeping essential services local, we must find savings,” Tester said. “These difficult decisions are necessary to …  preserve our ability to serve the Northeast Kingdom well into the future.”

In the release, the hospital blamed “rising labor and supply costs, reduced reimbursement rates and regulatory budget requirements,” for the cuts. 

Northeastern Vermont Regional Hospital is not the only hospital or medical system facing similar issues. 

In June, Brattleboro Hospital laid off hospital leaders to address a $4 million hole in its budget. The University of Vermont Health Network announced it would be cutting 77 positions in the same week Northeastern Vermont Regional Hospital announced its cuts. 

These layoffs come as Vermont’s health care leaders look to address the systemic challenges — an aging population and a large number financially challenged hospitals — of a “badly broken” health care system that have resulted in increasingly high health insurance costs. The cuts also come as hospitals brace for the impacts of the Trump administration’s incoming cuts to Medicaid insurance.

“NVRH isn’t going anywhere. We’re here for the long haul and we’re deeply grateful to our entire team for their commitment,” Tester said. 

Read the story on VTDigger here: Citing rising costs, St. Johnsbury hospital joins other Vermont hospitals in announcing cuts.

Melissa Bounty, the executive director of a nonprofit dedicated to supporting local businesses in central Vermont, was put on paid leave Monday pending the “outcome of an investigation.” It is unknown what the organization is investigating.

The Central Vermont Economic Development Corporation is one of a dozen regional economic development corporations around the state dedicated to supporting local business. Close to all of the nonprofit’s revenue stems from state and federal dollars.  

The administrative leave letter, signed by the corporation’s Board Chair Ed Larson, Vice Chair Jody Emerson and Treasurer Reuben Stone, was obtained by VTDigger.

In the letter, directors told Bounty she was being placed on paid leave for the length of the inquiry. They wrote that Bounty being removed from the workplace was necessary to “allow for a thorough and impartial investigation.” The board also said placing Bounty on administrative leave was “not intended to imply wrongdoing or to prejudge the results of the investigation.

When asked about the investigation into Bounty, Emerson said she could not speak about any part of the investigation because the board cannot comment on “personnel matters.”

“I stand by my work and my integrity,” Bounty wrote in a statement to VTDigger on Thursday. “I care so deeply for the Central Vermont business community and have been honored to learn more about the wonderful work happening in this vibrant region every day.”

Bounty also noted the vague nature of the investigation.

“I have not received any information about the concerns of my board or the reason for my administrative leave,” she wrote. “And I am fully committed to supporting a process that brings transparency about any questions in the work and output of the organization.”

Bounty said she could not comment further.

A police dispatcher at the Montpelier Police Department told VTDigger there was an “active investigation” into Bounty that did not allow for the retrieval of any records related to the matter.

Washington County State Attorney Michelle Donnelly said her office had not yet been alerted to any investigation related to Bounty.

According to Bounty’s yearly review, obtained by VTDigger through a source familiar with the matter, multiple business owners praised her for her work at the nonprofit.

“Her abilities, experience and skills never cease to amaze me,” one business owner wrote.

Another owner wrote that Bounty saved their business.

“Without the support Melissa provided to our entire organization after the flooding in 2023 … [t]here would be 18 less good paying jobs in Central VT.”

After VTDigger reached out to board members with questions about Bounty’s leave, the board’s lawyer John Valsangiacomo asked VTDigger to stop contacting board members.

“We don’t have any comment,” the lawyer said Thursday. 

Read the story on VTDigger here: Central Vermont business nonprofit leader put on leave pending investigation.

The Department of Corrections is working to create a public dashboard with data on detained immigrants in Vermont after months of meetings with concerned activists — some who say the dashboard is a good first step, but doesn’t meet the most pressing needs of detained immigrants.

The dashboard will include information such as the number of immigrants in custody in Vermont at any given moment, as well as the average length of stay for immigrants in DOC facilities. Demographic data is being considered, though it’s unknown whether it will be in the end product. The dashboard will not list the names of specific detainees because of privacy concerns, according to a Corrections official.

“The dashboard was originated so that we could better understand trends in this population,” said Haley Sommer, Communications and Legislative Affairs Unit director for the DOC. “They have some unique needs, that population, because there’s a lot of transfer. They’re typically in our facilities only for a few days.”

Immigrants detained by federal authorities in Vermont are typically held at Northwest State Correctional Facility in St. Albans and Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility in South Burlington.

The department’s strong data-tracking capabilities and desire for transparency with the public were motivations for the dashboard,  Sommer said. The Corrections Department runs other public dashboards, including the Incarcerated Population Interactive Dashboard that provides point-in-time data for incarcerated people at state facilities. 

The dashboard comes as U.S. Immigration Customs and Enforcement has faced criticism for its lack of transparency nation- and statewide.

“It’s a clear tactic to instill fear in all of us so that we will be intimidated into submission … ICE agents, without any visible IDs, without any official markings on them, with masks, they’re acting more like vigilantes than agents of our government. ” U.S. Rep. Becca Balint, D-Vt., said June 26 during House floor remarks regarding ICE agents wearing face coverings to obscure their identities as they work. 

A VTDigger investigation also revealed emails from Vermont Corrections officials who criticized ICE for its lack of transparency in their operations with the state.

Despite the charitable intentions behind the dashboard, advocates said the department is moving too slowly at a time when immigrants are being detained and deported at an unprecedented pace.

“The time now isn’t just for data. It’s about action,” said Jill Martin Diaz, executive director of the Vermont Asylum Assistance Project. “There are detainees being filtered through the Vermont DOC system every week who are not getting access to any legal counsel but for DOC’s inability to come to the table and make some really low-hanging fruit decisions.”

Martin Diaz and the asylum project have pushed for block scheduling at state facilities that hold detained immigrants. This would be routine scheduling for lawyers to meet with detained immigrants so they could receive legal services.

In emails provided to VTDigger, Martin Diaz proposed a “recurring weekly legal visit … during which VAAP can mobilize volunteer attorneys to conduct timely in-facility legal screenings for ICE detainees in need.”

“We’re coming to them with the solution and they’re saying, ‘No, how about this other thing that you didn’t ask for?’ So like, now we get a dashboard which is lovely, but what we actually need is block scheduling,” Martin Diaz said.

“We are working closely with the advocates to ensure that they do have access to their clients,” Sommer said, but declined to comment on specific complaints, citing ongoing discussion between DOC and immigration advocates.

Sommer said the department will release the dashboard when it is ready, but that the department does not have a confirmed release date yet.

Clarification: This story has been updated to use the correct last name for Jill Martin Diaz on second reference.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Vermont DOC moves to publicly display data on detained immigrants; advocates pleased but pushing for more.

Vermont Lt. Gov. John Rodgers and his wife, Brenda Rodgers, have sued the Town of Glover, bringing to court a longrunning debate over control of a section of the road where they live and run multiple businesses.

The lawsuit asks the court to rule that a roughly three-quarter mile stretch of Rodgers Road that runs through the couple’s property is not a town highway, but rather a private stretch of road connected to a town highway on both ends. Town officials consider this stretch of road to be part of a town highway and, therefore, town property. 

The road was named after the lieutenant governor’s ancestors and the section in dispute has been part of the family’s property since approximately 1838, according to the filing in Orleans County Superior Court.

“It has been my understanding, based on personal knowledge and experience living here for my entire life, that so-called ‘Rodgers Road,’ named for my family, exists as two segments of a town highway, separated in the middle by a private traveled way,” Rodgers wrote in an affidavit filed on June 11. “It has never been a through public road.”

The couple also filed a request for a preliminary injunction, which would prevent the town from performing upcoming planned work on the disputed section of Rodgers Road.

Rodgers asserts he and his family have “kept and maintained” this disputed segment of the road since its existence. He cites his own work in the disputed area, including allegedly repairing a culvert and laying gravel. Rodgers stated that the road, even portions not included in the disputed segment, has been “extremely poorly maintained.”

The lawsuit includes a map of Rodgers Road prepared by Rebecca Gilson, a land surveyor licensed in Vermont. Gilson told the court in an affidavit that, in her professional opinion, no record existed that establishes the town’s ownership of the disputed section of Rodgers Road.

The town claims the road section is a Class 4 town highway. Vermont law does not require towns to maintain Class 4 highways for year-round travel, unlike Class 1, 2 and 3 highways.

In his affidavit, Rodgers also alleged town officials told him they “have found no evidence that the disputed segment is a town highway,” and that a former selectboard member told him a portion of the road had been surrendered by the selectboard, though Rodgers admitted he could not find documentation of that.

According to the lawsuit, town officials have said that there is proof that the disputed section is part of Town Highway 48. Also, they point to documents that Rodgers filed when giving a portion of his property to his son and daughter-in-law. The documents show the property is served by Town Highway 48, which officials took as an effective acknowledgement of the town’s ownership.

Rodgers’ lawyers refuted this idea, writing that the reference to the document “is simply one of perpetuating wrong information supplied by the Town and is not reflective of their [The Rodgers’] intent.”

Rodgers claimed that if the road is upgraded as planned, the influx in traffic could hurt the interests of the several businesses operating on his property, as well as endanger his family.

Rodgers’ lawyers said the privacy of the road was important to those businesses. The farm grows cannabis as one of its crops, which can attract “unwanted attention,” the lawsuit states. Rodgers also stated in his affidavit that guests at the Rodgers Country Inn are attracted by the inn’s relative seclusion and that more traffic would cause guests to stop visiting.

He added that the road runs within approximately 20 feet of his front door, and that making this section of the road public “would cause safety and security risks to my family.”

This dispute has been ongoing for years, and garnered public attention after Rodgers made comments about the matter — originally reported by Laura Ullman of WCAX — on May 8 at a Glover selectboard meeting. In his comments, Rodgers threatened legal action against the town and said he would shut the road to through traffic.

“The reason I would like to be able to negotiate something that the town could support is because if we don’t, then we’re both gonna spend a ton more money on lawyers,” Rodgers said at that meeting. “And if I win, I’m going to shut the road down completely. There’ll be no access. If you win, you’re going to spend a whole bunch of money on lawyers and then have to spend money fixing up the road and maintaining it forever. And so I just don’t see how the town wins.”

Following the meeting, a number of Glover residents signed a petition requesting that the road remain open to the public. Elizabeth Nelson, a Glover resident, wrote a letter to the Glover selectboard requesting that the road stay open. 

“If this road ceases to be a public through highway, it will make access for agricultural or residential use impossible to my property. It will also significantly affect my property value,” Nelson’s letter read. 

The board subsequently voted on May 22 to keep the entirety of Rodgers Road as a town highway under its current mixed Class 3 and 4 designations.

“We look forward to the court’s decision,” Rodgers told VTDigger on Tuesday, adding that he would keep the road open to permitted individuals if he and his wife won the case. 

Glover town officials could not be reached for comment regarding the lawsuit. 

Read the story on VTDigger here: Vermont lieutenant governor sues his town over longstanding road dispute.

Attorney General Charity Clark joined a 24-state lawsuit against the Trump administration for allegedly “unlawfully freezing” $26 million in federal education funding for Vermont schools, and over $6 billion nationwide, according to a press release Monday.

The lawsuit, which includes Vermont as a plaintiff alongside 23 other states and Washington D.C., accuses the Trump administration of illegally halting funds for six federal education funding programs previously approved by Congress.

The six grants in question vary in scope and mission. They include supporting after school and summer programs, educating children of legal migrants, training teachers to work with working class students and students of color, school conditions and drug-prevention for low-income and inner-city schools, adult literacy and education and instruction for English language learners.

The lawsuit states that funding for the six programs must be made available to schools on July 1 so they are able “to staff, to supply materials for, and to prepare facilities for the imminent school year.” The lawsuit alleges the Trump administration sent a “boilerplate three-sentence e-mail,” on June 30 that halted funding, citing a review of this year’s awards to ensure the money spent on these programs is “In accordance with the President’s priorities and the Department’s statutory responsibilities.”

This marks the 22nd lawsuit Clark has filed against the Trump administration. Clark has been one of several attorney generals to file visible, cross-state lawsuits in order to preserve federal funding for their respective states.

“Once again, the President wishes to unconstitutionally undo appropriations made by Congress,” Clark said in the release. “The President does not have the power to freeze these funds – funds that Vermont schools are counting on.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Vermont joins multi-state lawsuit after Trump freezes $26 million in education funding.

A home ripped from its foundation, cars turned over in driveways, dozens of uprooted trees and a bridge split by floodwaters.

These were the scenes in the Northeast Kingdom on Friday morning, after a flash flood tore through parts of small towns like West Burke, Lyndon and Sutton on Thursday night

This is the third year in a row that Vermont has experienced major flooding on July 10, causing Northeast Kingdom residents to question what the state can do to prevent what is becoming an annual tragedy. 

‘We’ve lost everything’

Michael Fix was having a great Thursday afternoon at his home in Sutton — the smoker was cooking, the canopy was up, the weather was nice, and his wife was preparing for a job interview. Shortly after returning from putting gas in their car, the downpour began and didn’t stop.

A car drove by his house, backed up 8 feet and hauled out of the neighborhood. When Fix stepped outside to investigate, he said he was met with heavy winds against his head and water rising from his ankles to his shins within seconds. He pushed himself against the garage as he struggled to make it back inside. The wind blew open his front door, and water began to enter the home. 

An hour later, Fix would squeeze onto the roof with his wife and dog, rain beating down on them as a water rescue team fought to bring the couple to safety.

“It was just running through the house. I got the door shut, my wife and my dog were in here, so she called 911,” he said.

Their neighbors from across the way, fire chief Kyle Seymour and his wife, rushed down to the Fixes’ home, standing across the street from the quickly flooding scene. 

“Even though it was so hard to hear, they came down the hill and were like, ‘We know you’re here. Help is coming,’” Fix said.

It was only when state and Lyndon police arrived to help that the Fixes learned their home had come off its foundation. 

“They told us to get out of the house and get on the roof and just get as far away from the main structure as possible,” Fix said.

Following the rescue, the Fixes were brought to the Lyndon Fire Department, where they reunited with their son. They spent Thursday night in their son’s new apartment. 

“We moved in December 2001 and we loved it here, and in 2003 we got blessed with our son Evan and we raised him here,” Fix said through tears. “It was just a great place to raise my son, and we could walk to school, it was right up the hill.”

The Fixes said they don’t know what’s next for them. Their home is gone, and the two cars that once sat in their driveway — a new white Chevrolet Trailblazer and a green Subaru their son fixed up, sat tilted and wrecked in the driveway Friday.

“Insurance has told us they’re not gonna cover anything of the house damage. We’re just hoping they’ll cover the cars,” Fix said. “We got some other friends that might be able to help us out after that. … They said there might be some housing help available, so right now it’s just trying to save what we can from the house.”

Fix, a self-employed painter and carpenter, turned to his garage.

“All my ladders are gone. Can’t even get into the garage to see what’s up with the tools. I know it’s just filled up to my belly in mud, and I can’t even get the door open,” he said.

For now, Fix said he intends to clear out what remains of his son’s belongings and bring them back to the apartment.

“It’s just baby steps right now. Try to help get his stuff out and then, come back and then, do the next piece,” Fix said, looking back at his house. “We’ve lost everything.”

‘Holy smokes’

In Lyndon on Friday morning, Josh Robinson, a car parts salesman, walked past television reporters to stare down at a bridge cleaved in half.

“Holy smokes,” he muttered to himself.

A bridge on Lynburke Road that typically sits over the Passumpsic River had been split by floodwaters the night before. Around 8 feet of the bridge was gone, some of it laying in the new hole in the middle of the bridge, some of it washing away down the Passumpic.

A swirling mass of pink, blue and yellow flowed on top of the river nearby — the result of fuel mixing with the water below. 

“We’re not 100% sure where it’s coming from. State natural resources and myself have been monitoring it. There’s a car crushing company and an old junkyard just up the stream there,” Lyndon Health Officer Patrick McLaughlin said. “We have these large floods that flooded the complete junkyard, and so any oils that are left in the vehicles sometimes leach into the water. … All those cars were underwater when the river flooded.”

Robinson, who has lived in Vermont for 39 years, reflected on last year’s flood destruction.

“There was a military vehicle, and it was tipped on the side and the water was right up almost to the motor,” he said. “It took me two and a half hours to make a 45-minute trip. They’re still working on flood damage from last year. … They’re getting worse and worse every year. Seems like more and more devastation.”

Robinson couldn’t think of a solution to the problem. 

“Other than going through and making every single bridge three times bigger than they already are, what can you do about the water?” he said.

In Sutton, localized rainfall washed away road surfaces and beds around town, leaving only exposed rock underneath. Calendar Brook Road, which crosses over its namesake, was especially hard hit, Seymour, the Sutton fire chief, said. 

Around 10 households still lack road access to their homes, Seymour said. Right now, their first priority is getting those people single-lane road access. On Thursday night first-responders made a number of rescue efforts.

After seeing the destruction of the Fixes’ home, Seymour doesn’t think it can be repaired.

“How do we get them a new place to live? How do we get them money for that property that now has no value?” Seymour asked. “I don’t know the answers to those questions.” 

Charlotte Oliver contributed reporting.

Read the story on VTDigger here: ‘We’ve lost everything’: Northeast Kingdom residents react and rebuild after a 3rd year of July flooding.

The Howard Center, a nonprofit in Chittenden County and Vermont’s largest health care provider dedicated to supporting people with substance use disorder, mental health issues and developmental needs, announced plans to cut 27 staff roles and will not fill 30 currently vacant roles. The center will also cut certain programming and services starting in September.

The cuts follow “three years of multimillion-dollar operating deficits driven by rising health care costs and rising program costs,” where “at times, Howard Center has had only single-digit days of operating cash on hand,” according to a July 8 press release from the center. 

90% of the Howard Center’s budget goes toward the salaries and benefits of its staff.

The Howard Center has a self-funded health care plan, but this has not spared it from rising health costs across Vermont, according to Howard Center CEO Sandra McGuire.

“What we have experienced in the cost increase is the same thing that is driving the increase across the board, across the state, which is increased utilization, increased hospital costs and increased prescription costs. … Early on, we were shielded from those increases and it was positive for us. But in recent years, as our costs have more than doubled in the past five years, it is really the same trends and themes that I read about all across the state,” McGuire told VTDigger.

Since 2021, health care prices have increased for the center by 100%. In response to these increases, the Howard Center must reduce costs by almost $2.5 million in fiscal year 2026 — which started July 1 — and reach $3.6 million in savings annually to “stabilize operations,” according to the center’s press release.

As a result, the center will slash 27 filled jobs and eliminate 30 vacant positions. To minimize cuts, “impacted employees will be offered existing positions” at the center, according to the release. 

“We currently have over 150 vacant positions for programs and services that will be continuing,” McGuire said. “Hopefully we can have a pretty comparable position for folks, but not always. … So staff make that choice themselves, right? Whether or not they wanna stay with us in a different position or not.”

When asked why there were over 150 vacant positions, McGuire pointed to the demographics of an aging state.

“Certainly over the years of the pandemic, like many others we lost staffing and that staffing has never recovered to the same level. … So we have worked hard to adjust programming and positions to be able to adapt to a new status quo,” she said. “… But in the more immediate term, ourselves, like many businesses, have not been able to staff at the levels that we were able to  eight to 10 years ago.”

The organization also plans to shut down day programming of Westview House, a home for adults with mental illnesses to socialize with one another during the day. The center also plans to consolidate substance use disorder services in Grand Isle, Franklin and Chittenden counties, however, mobile services in those areas are expected to continue.

“We are actively working on conversations with other community providers with all of these changes to see what gaps could be filled in different ways. We’ve been having those conversations with providers for a while, and we will continue to, particularly as most organizations’ resources are getting a bit slimmer in the near term, hopefully not in the long term,” McGuire said. 

Between fiscal year 2022 and 2023, the center’s cash fell from $18.7 million to $8.2 million, followed by an over $2 million drop that left the center with just $6 million in fiscal year 2024.

State grants and contracts between 2023 and 2024 also decreased from $10.1 million to $8.3 million during this time. Federal grants took an even larger hit, dropping from $4.7 million to $1.3 million.

As of June 30, 2024, the Howard Center had over $7 million in investments and a $6 million line of credit with TD Bank. McGuire said she doesn’t want to touch those to fix current financial woes, as they would be short-term solutions to an institution with a daily operational cost of $400,000.

McGuire said the current cuts are unrelated to Medicaid cuts at the federal level, but that the center is monitoring those as they come.

“Our budget is about 90% Medicaid overall. [The cuts] are really in response to our ongoing funding, and what we have for the dollars for this year and what our projected expenses are. We don’t know the impact yet. We are working to understand that as is everyone else what the impact of the federal dollars will be,” McGuire said. 

Read the story on VTDigger here: Howard Center announces layoffs and cuts, citing rising health care and programming costs.

Updated at 12:06 a.m.

Severe thunderstorms on Thursday caused flash flooding across parts of Vermont, particularly in the Northeast Kingdom and Addison County.

The deluge marks the third year in a row that the state has experienced a major flooding event on July 10. The disasters of the past two years caused tens of millions of dollars in damage across Vermont, which towns are still recovering from.

Just after 6:30 p.m., 5.07 inches of rain had already fallen in West Burke, 4.32 inches had fallen in New Haven and Sutton saw 4.92 inches, according to Matthew Clay, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Burlington office.

In Sutton, one water rescue team was dispatched to “assist the residents of one home cut off by floodwater,” according to a press release from the Vermont Emergency Operations Center.

No injuries or deaths have been reported, as of late Thursday evening.

Other rescue teams were staged in Lyndon, Burke, Woodbury, Stowe, Johnson, Middlebury, Vergennes and Colchester, according to Mark Bosma, a spokesperson for Vermont Emergency Management, and Lyndonville Deputy Fire Chief Greg Hopkins.

“They’ll be there until the threat passes or they move to another area under threat,” Hopkins said.  

In the Northeast Kingdom, the east branch of the Passumpsic River at East Haven rose more than 4.5 feet in just over two hours to reach a “minor” flood level and began to recede by 5:30 p.m., according to the National Water Prediction Service.

The flooding washed out part of Route 114, according to a post by NBC5 meteorologist Ben Frechette, threatening the low-lying Northeast Kingdom Mobile Home Park, located on the northern side of Lyndonville. 

Burke Town Administrator Jim Sullivan said most of Thursday evening’s flooding took place in West Burke. 

“We also had a culvert that overflowed on Old Farm Road that washed out the road,” Sullivan said. “Other than our washout areas, those are the areas that people should pay attention to.”

Sullivan also said a 100-foot section of Newark Street got washed out, and one of the lanes collapsed. “As it is right now, that road is closed,” he said.

Any affected residents should visit the Burke Community Center on 212 School St. or call the clerk’s office, Sullivan said.

In the Addison County town of New Haven, no rescue teams were deployed as of Thursday evening, but town officials said they were keeping their eyes peeled. 

“I’m on Field Days Road just past the fairgrounds. We have the road closed. It’s flooded,” said Becky Hutchins, the town’s emergency manager .  

Trees and branches had come down in town, Hutchins said, and Green Mountain Power was addressing some downed power lines in the area. 

“We had two rain cells that came in: One that came in from the west and one that came in from the south, and they both hit at the same time,” she said.

She also urged New Haven residents to avoid the Otter Creek.

“Otter Creek is very high and rushing right now. I suggest that people stay off from any of the waterways and if you see water, turn around. Do not drive through it cause the roads have gotten some damage to them,” she said.

People should avoid floodwaters and seek shelter in impacted areas, Bosma said.

“All of our fatalities last year were on flooded roads. There’s often an undercurrent and/or washouts you can’t see, and even a car can be swept away,” Bosma wrote in an email. “This is fast-moving, so people should get inside if a storm approaches, monitor rivers and streams, and get to higher ground if there is a rise in the waterway. The last two years storms just stopped and dumped a ton of rain over a long period, so this is different.” 

Read the story on VTDigger here: Flash flooding hits towns in Vermont for the 3rd year in a row.

Eyes widening and darting. A stiffened body. Hands clenched on the steering wheel. No smile or wave. Plain clothing. 

These are the observations Border Patrol Agent Brandon Parent made to justify pulling over a gray Ford Transit van on Route 105 in Richford on June 14. In an affidavit written by Parent’s colleague, Parent would later state that behind the driver and passenger, he believed he saw more people in the back seats through the van’s tinted windows. Those people would turn out not to exist.

The driver of the van, 29-year-old Jose Ignacio “Nacho” De La Cruz, was returning from delivering groceries at a farm near the border with Canada that Saturday morning, according to a declaration De La Cruz filed on July 6 in support of his bail proceedings. His stepdaughter, 18-year-old Heidi Perez, was in the passenger seat. 

Both are from Mexico, but De La Cruz moved to Vermont in 2016 to establish his life as a dairy worker. Perez followed in 2023 and became a student at Milton High School, where she graduated a week earlier, according to court documents.

For more than three weeks since the traffic stop, both have been detained in Vermont jails by Immigration and Customs Enforcement awaiting deportation proceedings. In declarations filed this week, De La Cruz and Perez allege they were physically injured by Border Patrol agents, and that the agents threatened further harm if they did not cooperate. 

Both are arguing to be released on bail, but their proceedings have been delayed.

As De La Cruz’s and Perez’s cases continue to unfold, their experience, illustrated largely through court documents, shows some of the tactics U.S. Customs and Border Protection uses on non-citizens amid ballooning deportation quotas mandated for the Department of Homeland Security by the Trump administration.

De La Cruz and Perez are part of a record of ICE detentions that reached more than 56,000 in mid-June, according to data collected by TRAC Reports, a nonpartisan group that gathers and analyzes immigration data. More than half of those people were booked into ICE detention centers in May, according to the data clearinghouse. Less than 30% have a criminal record, and those that do often have minor offenses like traffic violations, according to TRAC. 

On Monday, during Perez’s bail hearing, Vermont District Court Judge Christina Reiss delayed Perez’s potential release, requesting more information from her attorneys and the federal government, who argued her bail should be denied. 

On Tuesday, De La Cruz’s bail hearing was postponed in response to a request by Brett Stokes, an attorney at the Center for Justice Reform at Vermont Law and Graduate School who represents De La Cruz and Perez.

Criminal accusations sometimes surface after apprehensions, like in the high-profile case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was deported to El Salvador after a routine traffic stop and now faces charges of human smuggling connected to a 2022 traffic stop. 

De La Cruz faces a similar accusation. After his apprehension, Border Patrol agents began a criminal investigation into his possible connection to an individual who illegally crossed the U.S.-Canada border into Vermont in April. He has not been charged.

“There’s somewhat of a trend nationally that in these high-profile cases, the charges and allegations come after the fact,” Stokes said. “It’s not uncommon to see subsequent charges like this.”

While most immigrants in ICE detainment are transferred to bigger facilities outside Vermont in states like Louisiana and Texas, which together hold more than a third of ICE detainees, De La Cruz and Perez remain in the state’s detention system largely because their own immigration advocacy work meant they knew their legal rights and an attorney was quickly contacted on their behalf. Their attorney helped them file petitions alleging their arrest was unlawful and each received a temporary restraining order to remain in Vermont instead of being transferred out of state. 

Those transfers, common during the second Trump administration, can limit an immigrant’s access to both legal representation and the moral support of their communities, and can serve as a quicker route to deportation, according to advocates and legal experts.

Though De La Cruz’s encounter with Border Patrol agents appeared to be by chance, the situation soon escalated. After De La Cruz was taken to the Richford Border Patrol Station, a Border Patrol investigator noted similarities between De La Cruz’s name, location, and phone number with an individual who allegedly helped a Mexican citizen enter Vermont from Canada in April. 

The government filed a search warrant for his cellphone, and his black Samsung has been in federal possession since, but no criminal charges have been filed.

“Border Patrol’s recent allegations do not change the essential fact that Nacho and Heidi were detained without cause while delivering food to farmworkers,” Will Lambek, a spokesperson for Migrant Justice, a Vermont-based advocacy organization for immigrant workers, said in a statement on the search warrant.

“Border Patrol claims that Nacho had previously made a plan to give a ride to a woman who was planning on immigrating to the United States without authorization. If true, this incident is wholly unrelated to the actual circumstances of their violent detainment,” Lambek said.

The legal obligation of U.S. Customs and Border Protection to protect a porous border with Canada overlaps with the escalating demands on ICE. While both agencies are under the Department of Homeland Security, ICE recently became the country’s largest federally-funded law enforcement  program after the passage of President Donald Trump’s omnibus budget bill last week.

While ICE operations have expanded under the Trump administration, U.S. Customs and Border Protection said the operations of Border Patrol have remained the same. In both De La Cruz’s search warrant and Garcia’s case, ICE is not a party in the investigation or legal case, though the agency holds the detainees while their deportation proceedings play out.

In response to a detailed list of questions from VTDigger, U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesperson Michael Niezgoda wrote in an emailed statement that because the matters “all relate to an ongoing criminal prosecution, court proceeding, or immigration hearing currently being litigated in the District of Vermont District Court or Immigration Court,” it is his agency’s policy not to comment. 

Stokes said neither De La Cruz nor Perez are being criminally prosecuted.

The traffic stop

Border Agent Brandon Parent was parked on Drew Road, a rural lane in Franklin County that dead ends at a dairy farm split in half by the international border with Canada. 

Agents like Parent monitor the border with Canada in uniform from marked vehicles under the mission of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, an agency in the Department of Homeland Security established after the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001. The main mission of the agency is to stop terrorists from entering the country, according to Ryan Brissette, a public affairs specialist for the New England region of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which includes Vermont.

Legally, individuals can only enter the U.S. through a port of entry. If they enter by another means, they must report directly to Border Patrol and could be subject to arrest until they do so. Those individuals can then be transferred to ICE jurisdiction if the U.S. government determines they need to go through deportation proceedings. 

“The only time we really engage with ICE is when we have someone being removed,” Brissette said in a phone call unrelated to this case. Enforcement and Removal Operations, an agency under ICE, can apprehend the individual if they do not have legal status in the U.S. 

But in order to pull over a vehicle in Vermont with Vermont plates, like the one De La Cruz was driving on June 14, an agent must have reasonable suspicion that the driver or passengers in the vehicle have committed an immigration violation or federal crime. If they don’t have probable cause, both the driver and passenger have the right to remain silent and not answer questions about their immigration status, according to the American Civil Liberties Union, a nonprofit civil rights organization with a chapter in Vermont.

In an affidavit filed by Border Patrol after the encounter, Parent said he observed that De La Cruz’s “arms and hands appeared clenched and rigid on the steering wheel.” He declared he hadn’t previously seen the car on Drew Road, where residents were “generally friendly and supportive” of agents like himself, and he was typically acknowledged “with a smile, head nod, or a wave.” De La Cruz and Perez were wearing plain clothing and didn’t appear to be local farm workers, Parent noted. They didn’t make a full stop when exiting Drew Road.

Parent observed that these behaviors were “often seen in subjects engaged in suspicious behavior upon noticing law enforcement.” When he began tailing the vehicle, he said he thought he saw people in the back through the van’s tinted windows.

Stokes determined these observations could amount to racial profiling. He laid out this argument in a writ of habeas corpus, a petition asking the court to review their unlawful detention, filed two days after their apprehension.

Parent contacted Swanton Sector Dispatch and matched the license plate to Jose Ignacio De La Cruz, a 29-year-old who lived in Milton. Parent stated in the affidavit filed by his colleague, David T. Palczewski, that he believed “alien smugglers were possibly using vehicles with Vermont license plates to blend in with the local population.”

He pulled the van over at 12:07 p.m. He quickly saw that there were no additional people in the back, as he had previously believed.

De La Cruz asked why he was stopped, but Parent did not give a reason and requested his driver’s license, according to the Border Patrol affidavit and declarations filed this week by De La Cruz and Perez.

“The officer then said, in broken Spanish, that the fact that I spoke Spanish and did not understand English was enough for the stop,” De La Cruz wrote in his declaration. He said Parent tried to open the driver’s door but it was locked.

Two additional supervisory Border Patrol agents appeared on scene — Thomas Blaser and William Haffley — who ordered De La Cruz to step out of the car. 

De La Cruz then called the Migrant Justice emergency hotline, and handed the phone to Perez, according to his declaration. In the Border Patrol affidavit, Parent reported that the two refused to effectively communicate and called others on their cellphones.

Marita Canedo, a Migrant Justice spokesperson, was on the line with Perez. During a rally protesting the detainment of De La Cruz and Perez in June, she said, “Nacho did everything that he knew to defend his rights.”

The American Civil Liberties Union recommends that if police, ICE, or Border Patrol pull over an individual while in transit that they stay calm, open the window part way, and if they don’t have immigration papers, tell the official they want to remain silent. 

De La Cruz stated in his declaration that he rolled his window down just enough to hear the officer, and then asked why they were detained and if they were free to go four separate times. After the fourth time, Border Patrol agent Blaser used a duty-issued baton to break the driver side window and remove him. De La Cruz stated that “glass shattered and hit the left side of my face, causing an injury to my head and left ear.”

After agents pulled De La Cruz from the car, Perez left voluntarily from the passenger seat, Perez wrote in her declaration. De La Cruz shook his head at Perez, warning her not to speak, according to the Border Patrol affidavit. 

They took the pair to the Richford Border Patrol Station, according to the Border Patrol affidavit. There, De La Cruz and Perez note in their declarations that they asked to make phone calls and were denied. De La Cruz was told to sign documents, according to his declaration, and when he refused, he said one of the officers said in Spanish, “You are going back to fucking Mexico, you don’t have any documents, you don’t have the right to make a phone call.”

When Perez refused to give personal information, an officer “grabbed her arm and twisted it behind her back, causing her visible pain and injuring her nails,” De La Cruz wrote. “He only stopped when another officer told him to.” He was told through an interpreter that he needed to convince his stepdaughter to cooperate and “that if she continued to refuse, they would hurt her until she complied,” De La Cruz declared in court records.

“The interpreter added that they did not want to hurt her again but would do so if it became necessary. He also said that they had children and would not want anyone to harm their own children,” De La Cruz wrote.

The two were separated and placed in different cells. De La Cruz agreed to give fingerprints and DNA when he was told that, if he cooperated, he could be reunited with Perez, he noted in his declaration.

While they were apprehended, David T. Palczewski, the prosecution agent for Richford, received an email noting the apprehension of two subjects during a traffic stop with a vehicle registered to De La Cruz out of Milton. 

He thought he recognized the name. In the affidavit he filed a week later, Palczewski wrote that he advised agents that De La Cruz was a possible match to a phone number noted in a deportation case where a woman communicated with someone named “Nacho” for assistance in crossing the U.S.-Canada border. Agents seized De La Cruz’s cellphone and kept it at the Richford station after he was transferred to Northwest State Correctional Facility in St. Albans.

Two days later, Palczewski said he used his government-issued cellphone to call the number associated with that case and De La Cruz’s cellphone rang. A day later, Palczewski wrote that through “open-source reporting” he learned De La Cruz goes by “Nacho.”

“By the agent’s own admission, Border Patrol did not connect the alleged incident to Nacho until after he was stopped and detained without cause,” Lambek said. Lambek noted that the stated reasons for the traffic stop “only strengthen our belief that this was an act of racial profiling, pure and simple, in violation of Heidi and Nacho’s constitutional rights.”

Neither De La Cruz nor Perez have a criminal history, but a criminal investigation into De La Cruz began. 

The phone number

A week after the traffic stop, Palczewski filed a search warrant for De La Cruz’s cellphone. 

The warrant and attached affidavit alleged that De La Cruz was the same person as an individual called “Nacho” who tried helping Yoselin Gonzalez-Flores, a Mexican citizen, cross the border from Canada into northern Vermont between April 9 and 11. Nacho intended to pick up Gonzalez around midnight on April 11 at a Mobil Gas Station in Saratoga Springs, New York, and bring her to a house in Burlington, according to the affidavit. 

But by 3:44 a.m. on April 11, according to the affidavit, Gonzalez texted the number associated with a person named Nacho and said she would not be crossing near Saratoga Springs. Instead, she would travel to Montreal and cross through the woods.

Gonzalez crossed the border on the night of April 18, according to the affidavit. Around 10 p.m., the crossing activated cameras near Berry Road in Franklin County. A few hours later, on April 19, she was apprehended with three others, along with two people in a minivan who intended to pick up the individuals after crossing, according to a criminal complaint that details Gonzalez’s apprehension. None of those people were De La Cruz.

Gonzalez waived her Miranda rights and turned over her cellphone to Border Patrol agents, according to the criminal complaint. Her phone showed WhatsApp messages in Spanish between herself and the person called Nacho, according to the affidavit.

Stokes called the warrant a “fishing expedition” in line with what’s happened in other cases of detainees being retaliated against by the Department of Homeland Security. 

“The fact remains that all this is is a warrant to search his phone for evidence of something that may or may not be there,” Stokes said of the search warrant. “I don’t know where the allegations and charges are coming from, but the fact remains that we stand with Nacho, and we believe Nacho.”

But three days later, Gonzalez was deported, along with another individual who crossed, according to the complaint. VTDigger contacted the lawyers associated with the Gonzalez case, but Gonzalez’s location was unknown at the time of publication. 

Agents may have focused on the area surrounding Berry Road, near where Gonzalez was apprehended on Richford Road, because, according to the criminal complaint, it has “recently experienced a significant uptick in illicit cross-border activity.” 

But northern border crossings overall have plummeted in 2025, according to data collected by U.S. Customs and Border Protection. In May, the agency encountered 5,063 people at the northern border, less than a third of the 18,663 people border officials encountered in May 2024. 

While crossings have dropped, border officials still detain people crossing illegally. U.S. Border Patrol’s Swanton Sector apprehended hundreds of people between Feb. 1 and May 31, 2025, according to a social media post made by Robert Garcia, the sector’s chief patrol agent.

“Despite the significant decrease in cross border apprehensions, Swanton Sector has apprehended over 300 individuals from 45 different countries,” Garcia wrote, noting the majority were from India, Mexico, and Ecuador.

Gonzalez was arrested near Pleasant Valley Farms, according to a map depicting the encounter in the criminal complaint.

Two days later, border agents entered that farm, the largest dairy in Vermont, and arrested eight immigrant farm workers who lived and worked on site after a report from concerned citizens of two individuals leaving the woods near the U.S.-Canada border, according to a U.S. Customs and Border Protection statement.

“We’re still catching a lot of questions about targeting migrant workers on dairy farmers,” Brissette said in a phone call unrelated to De La Cruz’s case. “If we come across someone who is here illegally they’ll get arrested. But we’re not targeting those individuals.” 

All eight farm workers were from Mexico, according to Migrant Justice, and at least four have since been deported. Two were released on bail and returned to Vermont. At least one, Jesus Mendez Hernandez, remains at the Karnes County Immigration Processing Center in Texas. 

The location of the eighth, Adrian Zunun-Joachin, was not available in a locator system provided by ICE. But Stokes, his attorney, said Zunun had told him in previous conversations that he was considering abandoning the fight to stay in the U.S. and instead return to Mexico. Stokes said he was likely deported. 

The hearings

On Tuesday, roughly a hundred protesters gathered in front of a federal courthouse in Burlington at a rally hosted by Migrant Justice to support De La Cruz. This was the second rally in two days, after protestors gathered to support the bail hearing for Perez on Monday. 

Perez spent roughly three weeks at Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility before her bail was deferred. A new court date was not set by Wednesday morning. Perez has been in Vermont since she crossed into the U.S. in February 2023 when she was 16 years old. De La Cruz, who also has a 3-year-old son — a U.S. citizen born in Vermont — entered the U.S. without crossing a legal port of entry in 2016, and again in 2022 after briefly returning to Mexico. 

Wuendy Bernardo, an undocumented farmer and immigrant advocate, attended the rally on Tuesday and reflected on a time when she was detained with her children.

“I was detained too, along with my children, and it’s not easy being locked up in jail,” Bernardo said. “It’s not fair because we come here to work, we contribute here, to this state, to this country, and it’s not fair that they’re locked up.”

De La Cruz and Perez remain in Vermont because they and their attorney alleged that Border Patrol agents lacked reasonable suspicion for the traffic stop, violating their constitutional rights. De La Cruz is being punished “for his Mexican-descent and disfavored speech,” Stokes wrote in court documents.

A judge recently extended a temporary restraining order to keep De La Cruz and Perez in Vermont. It now lasts until July 31. 

While De La Cruz’s cellphone remains in the hands of Border Patrol, according to Stokes, the agency hadn’t pressed criminal charges in the weeks since searching the cellphone’s emails, texts, maps, photos, videos, Internet browsing and search history, geolocations, contact lists and financial transactions.

“I don’t know where it’s going to end up,” Stokes said. “But ultimately, it’s directly out of the authoritarian playbook.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: ‘Fishing expedition’: How one Vermont traffic stop raises questions about racial profiling and illegal border crossings.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A New York federal judge issued a nationwide preliminary injunction last week that allows Job Corps centers, like the Northlands Job Corps Center in Vergennes, to remain open while the legal battle to determine their fate continues.

In issuing the order, Judge Andrew Lamar Carter, a federal judge for the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, stated that the arguments by lawyers for National Job Corps Association and a litany of fellow defendants — ranging from Education and Training Resources, the contractor who operates the Job Corps in Vergennes, to current Job Corps students — were largely likely to succeed. The plaintiffs all sued the U.S. Department of Labor to stop its attempt to shut down the program.

In late May, the Department of Labor told Job Corps centers across the country to “pause” all of their operations. This order would have forced Job Corps center to shut down a program that provides room, food and a vocational education to low income 16 to 24 year olds by Monday, June 30. 

Instead, the department’s order would have instated what the administration characterized as a “cost-effective” $2.9 billion “Make America Skilled Again” grant program that shifts from federal programs like Job Corps to state-led registered apprenticeships, intended to train workers and provide an alternative to college.

The Job Corps centers had already been funded from July 1, 2025 to June 30, 2026 by Congress, which previously approved $1.7 billion for the program. 

The plaintiffs in the case argued that the Department of Labor “effectively prevented new enrollment” by ending background checks starting in March, court documents show. Students attending Job Corps need to be background-checked to attend the program, but it is unclear now whether or not the government intends to resume background checks, or if they can be legally compelled to do so.

The Department of Labor claimed that they had only temporarily halted Job Corps operations. However, Carter wrote in his order that the “way that the DOL is shuttering operations and the context in which the shuttering is taking place make it clear that the DOL is actually attempting to close the centers.”

Carter also found that the Department of Labor did not have the power to end the program, writing that the department must “concede that, as part of the executive branch, they do not have the authority to unilaterally eliminate a congressionally mandated program like Job Corps.”

Carter also stated that there were clear harms in ending the programs, citing the circumstances of a plaintiff who is a student with the Job Corps program who was previously homeless.

The plaintiff “will immediately be plunged into homelessness, and she will lose all of the progress she has made in her culinary program. She would be forced to leave a stable residence and placed in a homeless shelter,” he wrote. It is “undisputed,” he wrote, that she was being harmed by the department’s actions.

“The Department of Labor is working closely with the Department of Justice to evaluate the injunction. We remain confident that our actions are consistent with the law,” Ryan L. Honick, a spokesperson for the Department of Labor wrote in an email.

A student enrolled at Northlands said the injunction is “a relief.” 

“We were all kind of scrambling to figure out a plan in less than two weeks of finding a job and trying not to be homeless,” she said in an interview. VTDigger is not naming the student because of potential retaliation by the federal government. 

She said that Northlands is the first place “I’ve ever had three meals a day, and a lot of emotional support, and it’s the first place that I think a lot of kids have a safe environment to explore themselves as a person and [have] the ability to grow.”

The student, who is enrolled in an associate’s degree information technology dual-program between Northlands and the Community College of Vermont, said the opportunities provided by the program were unprecedented for her. 

“I would be the first woman in my family to get a degree,” she said. “I would probably stay in Vermont. I love it… I’d get a job in programming or software development after this. And I’d probably pursue my bachelor’s degree.”

The injunction was also cause for political celebration among Vermont’s Democratic state and federal officials. 

Vermont Attorney General Charity Clark also joined 18 other attorneys general to file an amicus brief in support of the program.

Noting that she was “pleased, and not surprised,” by the court’s order, Clark added that “this order will allow Northlands Jobs Corps Center in Vergennes to continue serving young Vermonters in their journey to achieve their career goals and access stable housing.”

In an emailed statement, U.S. Rep. Becca Balint, D-Vt. called the Job Corps “a critical training ground and opportunity pipeline for so many Vermonters.”

“I was pleased to see it remain open and operating for the time being,” she wrote. “But the Trump administration remains adamant in ripping away these programs that give Americans a fair shot at success – while training the exact trades workers that Vermont so desperately needs. I’ll keep fighting every step of the way to keep these funds going to the programs just as Congress mandated.”

U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. and U.S. Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vt. signed a letter with thirty eight other Senators urging the Department of Labor “to immediately reverse this decision to prevent a lapse in education and services for Job Corps students.”

The injunction comes at a time where the Trump administration is butting heads with the judicial branch, as many of President Donald Trump’s sweeping executive actions have been repelled by various federal judges through nationwide injunctions.

On June 27, Carter ordered parties involved in the Job Corps battle to file motions arguing whether or not the recent Supreme Court decision — which limited federal judges’ power to issue nationwide injunctions — would impact the injunction he filed by June 30. The Department of Labor requested an extension that may push the filing date to July 11.

Carter also denied any order to stay the case, meaning the battle for the future of the Job Corps seems poised to continue. 

Read the story on VTDigger here: Federal judge’s order means Vermont Job Corps center stays open, for now.

Court filings in Gardener’s Supply Co.’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy case reveal how a combination of its employee-ownership model and ill-timed investments following a surge in Covid-19-era profits ultimately led to the company’s financial collapse. They also paint an uncertain picture for the future of its employee ownership and ability to repay mounting debts.

The documents trace the decline of Gardener’s to what had once been a banner period for the Vermont-based gardening company — the pandemic. Like many companies in the home and garden sector, Gardener’s saw a dramatic boost in sales as Americans took up gardening during lockdown. The company reported “significant sales and growth” in 2020, 2021 and 2022, with revenues hitting $110.3 million in 2021 and $105.4 million in 2022. The boom benefited the business and employees, whose stock values “skyrocketed,” according to the court filings. 

However, Gardener’s was unable to maintain this financial bloom. The company’s revenue dropped to $89.6 million in 2023 and $71.5 million in 2024 as the gardening trend wilted. These losses in revenue were compounded by several factors.

Firstly, longtime employees who had enjoyed lengthy tenures at Gardener’s retired and cashed out their employee stock. This meant the company had to pay out a five-year retirement plan for the employees who had left when stock values hit record highs, causing “significant liquidity issues” and damaging its “future projections to pay out the retirement obligations in coming years,” the filings stated. Gardener’s employee stock ownership plan is also expensive to maintain — it’s managed by an outside trust, and incurs “higher than typical annual reporting, compliance, valuation and audit costs.”

Secondly, the company made a series of poor investments. Gardener’s spent heavily on  “numerous one-time systems and process improvement(s),” including a $500,000 enterprise resource system — a software suite designed to streamline business operations. But the implementation did “not go smoothly,” court records indicate. Issues with the system ended up costing the company between $5 million and $10 million in revenue.

Gardener’s also invested in a new Warehouse Management System that led to significantly delayed deliveries during the company’s peak spring season. More than 60% of customer orders in May 2024 were delayed by 15 to 30 days, according to the filings.

These problems lead to Gardener’s falling out of compliance with its lender, Bank of America, which provided the company’s credit line. Gardener’s entered an agreement with the bank to delay loan payments until the second quarter of 2024, and reshuffled leadership in an effort to stay afloat.

But the changes were unsuccessful. Bank of America offered a final loan extension set to expire on June 29, and ultimately ended its relationship with the company. According to court documents, the bank’s analysts noted that “cash generated during the Pandemic surge—when AGR’s (America’s Gardening Resource) ESOP-fueled share price tripled—was primarily paid out as equity to shareholders,” in reference to Gardener’s employee stock ownership plan.

The company then launched a “series of strategic actions” to stabilize operations, including staff layoffs, hiring a new marketing firm and making changes to its shipping partnerships. These actions failed as well, and it “became clear” to Gardener’s leadership that the way forward “was to engage in a sale process,” the bankruptcy filing states. Gardener’s engaged the investment bank Tower Partners, which reached out to 1,115 potential buyers.

Competitor Gardens Alive Inc. is now poised to purchase the Gardener’s assets for $9 million. Notably absent from the deal, however, is the employee stock ownership plan.

Gardener’s ESOP trust owns the company’s stock, with employees as the beneficiaries. Since filing for bankruptcy, Gardener’s has stopped making contributions to the trust, citing its “current financial condition.” It remains unclear whether there will be any money left in the trust for current or retired employees after the deal closes.

“If the company is sold … (the ESOP) is basically a plan that has no assets and gets wound down,” said Matt Cropp, executive director of the Vermont Employee Ownership Center.

It’s also unclear whether Gardener’s has the money to repay most of its creditors. As it stands, the company owes over $4.5 million to 30 unsecured creditors — creditors without collateral — including four Vermont vendors. 

A Gardener’s spokesperson declined to comment Thursday on the future of the ESOP and whether the company would be able to pay back its creditors.

“It goes secured debt, administrative debt, and then unsecured debt. So, (unsecured creditors) get whatever’s left over,” said Christopher M. Condon, an adjunct bankruptcy and corporate law professor at Vermont Law and Graduate School.

Gardener’s currently has just $4.2 million on hand and owes $8.2 million to banks, according to court documents.

Condon said there’s a chance the unsecured creditors could recoup their money if it is found  Gardener’s owes less than anticipated as the bankruptcy case continues.

“The numbers aren’t necessarily accurate on day one because the books and records change all the time. It depends on when you get the invoice, what the billing cycle is, all that stuff,” he said.

Another buyer could also emerge and submit a higher bid for the company’s assets, increasing the pool of money available to pay back creditors.

“It’s theoretically possible that somebody else bids and the purchase price goes up,” Condon said.

However, bankruptcy documents indicate that Gardener’s wants to expedite the sale process, which may limit other bids.

“(Gardener’s Supply Co.) believe that expediting approval of the Bid Procedures is unlikely to prejudice any party in interest or impair the competitiveness of the sale process,” Gardener’s lawyers wrote.

“They don’t really wanna get into a bidding war… The buyers want to be in as much control as possible,” Condon said. 

Read the story on VTDigger here: Pandemic boom and costly missteps led to Gardener’s Supply bankruptcy, court filings show.

An Indiana-based gardening retailer has submitted a $9 million bid to purchase Gardener’s Supply Company, a popular employee-owned Vermont business that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Friday. 

Gardens Alive, Inc., is currently the sole bidder ahead of a potential auction on July 18, according to court documents. The auction will only take place if additional bidders emerge. 

Gardener’s Supply, known for its wide range of quality gardening products, disclosed in its bankruptcy filing last week that it owes more than $4.5 million to 30 creditors, including two international companies and four based in Vermont. These debts, which are not backed by collateral, have left some small suppliers questioning whether they will ever recoup the money they’re owed. 

Among them is River Berry Farm in Fairfax that sold Gardener’s Supply vegetable and herb transplants this season. Co-owner David Marchant said the bankruptcy came as a surprise — and with it, a financial blow. Gardener’s Supply owes the farm about $64,000, or about 10% of the business’s gross profit for the year, he said.

“It’s a significant hit. It’s not gonna put us out of business, but it’s gonna certainly drastically change the outcome of the year for us and our employees,” he said. 

“I know the buyer who’s bought from us real well and I wish we had gotten hints earlier,” Marchant added. “It’s too bad they didn’t let everybody know that they were in trouble.”

Hannah Decker, co-owner of Fairfax Perennial Farm Inc., which has done business with Gardener’s Supply for 17 years and sells to four of its locations, is “cautiously optimistic” she will receive the $50,000 she is owed, which she estimates is almost a quarter of the farm’s yearly business.

“The timing of this really sucks …  June is for perennials,” she said. “If I don’t have their business going forward with those locations, that’s a quarter of my business right there.”

Gardener’s Supply, founded in 1983, has long been considered a staple Vermont brand. Its employee-ownership model and 20-year streak winning Seven Days’ “Best garden center award” have made it a fixture in the state’s business community.

But in recent years, the company struggled to recover from what it described as the “post-COVID downturn in business,” according to a statement from a company spokesperson. Rising shipping costs, increased competition, tariffs and steep marketing costs were cited as contributing factors.

The company has “partnered with external professionals to strategically restructure its operations,” the spokesperson wrote. “… As a result, AGR [America’s Gardening Resource] has made the decision to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy as part of a planned move to facilitate a transaction with a potential buyer.” 

Gardener’s Supply is being represented in the filing by Patrick J. Reilly, who previously represented Tupperware in its bankruptcy filing and subsequent sale. The bankruptcy announcement was first reported by WCAX. 

Julie Elmore, a customer who has been shopping at Gardener’s Supply since it opened, said she has valued the company’s dependability.

“They’ve really got an excellent reputation. I know people all over that love to order stuff from Gardener’s Supply cause they have good quality, they have good return policies. … I really respect companies that take care of their workers and that have employees who have ownership in it,” she said.

Morgan Brown, a manager at Gardener’s Williston location, said news of the bankruptcy was sad but that employees were sticking together.

“I would say this is the most Vermont place I’ve ever worked,” she said. “Everybody’s kind of taking [the bankruptcy] together. We’re a community business, everybody knows each other. We’re all very close, so we’re kind of just leaning on our coworkers to make everything, to keep going, we’re business as usual and we’re happy to be here,” she said.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Gardener’s Supply draws $9M bid as Vermont vendors await payment.

As he prepares to leave his role next month, Vermont Progressive Party Executive Director John Wronski is reflecting on nearly a decade spent growing the state’s third-largest party — the work, the wins and the challenges that defined his tenure. 

Wronski announced last month he would leave his position on July 4 and join the staff of the Vermont State Employees’ Association, “one of the most impactful unions in our state,” he said. 

“I have a 2-year-old at home and am hoping to have another kid fairly soon, and it felt like a good time to make that switch,” Wronski told VTDigger this week. “It’s been a really good ride, but it was time to change things up a little bit. I’ve accomplished most of what I set out to do, I believe.”

Wronski said he got his start in the Progressive Party while studying at Saint Michael’s College in Colchester, where he received a grant to do research on the party.

“I was really fascinated by the work that the party was doing in Vermont,” he said.

Wronski did several stints at larger unions across the country before returning to Vermont to take a position with the party, which would later turn into the executive director role.

“I was, like, living out of a suitcase, traveling all over the state and the country … and I really wanted to kind of settle down permanently in Vermont. I was looking for work, and the elections director position opened up with the Vermont Progressive Party.”

That role soon turned into an executive director position, making Wronski the only staff member for the Vermont Progressive Party until two years ago, when fundraising allowed for the hiring of a second.

Wronski said his successes during his tenure included the election of Progressives into notable roles like former Lt. Gov. David Zuckerman and Burlington Mayor Emma Mulvaney-Stanak, building a Progressive presence in Barre and making notable fundraising gains.

But he noted that every win was part of a larger, shared effort.

“Our movement is very much a collective effort, and anything that I’ve done has been with a huge team of people supporting that work,” he said.

Reaching across the aisle is key for the party’s success, according to Wronski. He cited the death of a bill pushed by Vermont Democrats to end “fusion” candidates — candidates nominated by two parties — as an example, as Progressives worked with Republicans to stop it.

Wronski also spoke about the party’s failures during his time as director, the largest one being fundraising. The Progressives pride themselves on their grassroots fundraising, he said, but that can make larger monetary windfalls difficult.

“It’s perpetually a struggle, never figuring out how to grow our finances to the level where we could even compete on a two-to-one level with Democrats in most races,” Wronski said. “Our annual budget that was approved for this year is $120,000, which is like a pittance for a statewide organization.”

Long term, the party needs an annual budget of $200,000 or $300,000 to be sustainable, he said.

Wronski declined to say who would take over his position once he’s gone, but he did comment on who had the potential to be larger political players.

“We have a few people on the city council level who are in their first terms in Burlington. Carter Neubieser, Marek Broderick … there’s a lot of potential for them to run for higher office in the near future,” he said. “Tanya Vyhovsky, who’s in the State Senate, is obviously a known entity at this point. But I could definitely see her making a jump for statewide office. We have people like Jane Stromberg, who was a city councilor at one point and had to step back. I could see her either running again or taking on a leadership position within the party.”

Wronski also had advice for the party’s next director.

“You have to surrender your ego,” he said. “That’s the best way I can say it. … You have to be willing and even excited to talk to folks both internally within the party and externally, like in the broader political sphere, who have different views on the way things should be.”

Correction: An editing error in a previous version of this story misspelled the last name of Carter Neubieser and misstated the location of Saint Michael’s College.

Read the story on VTDigger here: As leadership change looms, Vermont’s Progressive Party head reflects on tenure   .

MONTPELIER — Bill Fraser attended his final City Council meeting as the capital’s longest-serving city manager on Wednesday night. 

Fraser was voted out by the City Council in February and plans to exit the role at the end of the month. Fraser’s ousting followed a potential 24% tax increase that the city decided to prevent by cutting municipal staff, a decision he pushed back on. Councilors also cited a desire for new leadership as a reason to prematurely end Fraser’s contract. 

Fraser’s exit entitled him to a severance package of almost a quarter of a million dollars after the council triggered the involuntary nonrenewal clause in his contract. Kelly Murphy, the assistant city manager, plans to take over the role until a replacement is hired.

“You’re always juggling something,” Fraser said. “We have police, fire, public works, rec, parks, finance, I’m sure I’m forgetting something. There’s just a constant information barrage and push and pull for priorities. Sorting that and keeping yourself on an even keel while facing these pressures, and criticisms.” 

Fraser got involved in local government thanks to his family — his parents were both public educators and his grandfather, Emile Fraser, was a state legislator in Maine — and the Watergate scandal. 

“I was in junior high during the Watergate era,” Fraser said. “We all watched the hearings on television and politics and government just kind of became a thing. So I got interested in it.”

He officially got his start in politics working an internship in the town manager’s office in Brunswick, Maine. 

“You see the people that you help right in front of you,” Fraser said. “You see the results right in front of you every day as opposed to working in state or federal government where you can work on something and it’s hundreds of miles away.” 

After four jobs in local government, including a stint as town manager in Ogunquit, Maine, and a master’s degree in public administration from the Harvard Kennedy School, Fraser became Montpelier’s city manager in 1995.

“One of the reasons I stayed here and my family stayed here for as long as we did is that it was a great place to live and raise a family,” Fraser said. “Also the work has just been really challenging and interesting for a small little city like this. We have ambitious goals and we have people with a lot of values and it’s really never been a dull place to work.”

One of the toughest, and most meaningful moments for Fraser was leading Montpelier through the floods that hit the capital in 2023. Fraser led the city through the flood, which put downtown Montpelier under several feet of water, and cost the city’s businesses more than $20 million in damages. Despite all the devastation, Fraser said residents “showed real resiliency” during that time, noting that 2,000 people signed up on the city’s volunteer list despite only having 8,000 residents.

“They care about the community. They care about their downtown. They care about their neighbor,” Fraser said. “There are differences of opinion about policy and about taxes and budgets and all those things, but when it comes to the health and welfare of the community and each other, people are right there, and that’s one of the great things about Montpelier.”

At the end of Wednesday’s meeting, Fraser said he was not going to miss the late nights and was looking forward to the next chapter in his life. 

“I want to be retired,” he said. “I’m going to vacation, play in a band. Maybe do some part-time consulting or whatever, helping communities, but I don’t really want to work full time anymore.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Longtime Montpelier city manager to exit after 30 years.

BURLINGTON — Vermonters turned out in force around the state Saturday as part of the nationwide “No Kings Day” protests, championing myriad causes but generally united behind opposing President Donald Trump.

As Washington, D.C., geared up for a military parade to commemorate the 250^th anniversary of the Army and celebrate Trump’s 79th birthday, 1,800 events unfolded across the country to protest the Trump administration as part of the “No Kings Day” of national mobilization.

Burlington saw one of its biggest protests in recent years. Geri Peterson, lead organizer with the activist network 50501, said 8,000 people signed up to participate in the rally on the Burlington waterfront. But as everyone gathered in front of the stage set up for the event, she said the crowd grew to more than 16,000 people, based on the group’s drone footage.

People showed up for different reasons: protecting democracy, standing up for immigrants, protesting the Trump administration’s budget and program cuts, showing solidarity with Palestinians, upholding LGBTQ+ and reproductive rights, and more.

“I’m scared that we’re going to lose democracy and we’re going to be under an authoritarian regime, and I don’t get scared easily,” said Brant Dinkin from Williston.

“I have a pent-up sadness about what’s going on in the country and taking action is the antidote to sadness, so I get up, I stand up and I show up, and that’s what we’re all doing here today,” Dinkin said.

Jennifer Overton from West Berlin said she is worried about potential cuts to Medicaid, a government program providing health insurance for people with limited resources, as both her personal health and work as a therapist depend on it. 

“I’m on Medicaid, and I will most certainly lose it, and that could be a death sentence for me,” Overton said. She said she’s diabetic and most of her clients are on Medicaid, so she would lose a big part of her income if the program was cut.

“I fear for my country. I deeply fear. I fear for her,” said Lorraine Zaloom, a resident of Essex, pointing to her niece. “She’s adopted. She’s done everything right. She has to carry her documents around.”

The protest in Burlington unfolded peacefully Saturday. Around noon, more people marched to the waterfront holding Palestinian flags and chanting “from Palestine to Mexico, those border walls have got to go.” As the lawn filled with people, speakers began taking the stage.

Mohsen Mahdawi, a Palestinian activist and Columbia University student previously arrested by ICE during an interview to obtain U.S. citizenship, shared his experience growing up in a refugee camp under the Israeli government and witnessing the killing of his best friend. He said the solidarity and love of Vermonters helped him heal from the trauma he experienced.

“We see the fires in California and the violence, and it’s like a spark, and if we don’t put it down, any spark of violence here, the fire will spread,” Mahdawi said. “We have to put it down with love and care. We have to keep guarding our communities.”

Rep. Becca Balint, D-Vt., Vermont’s lone member in the U.S. House of Representatives, also spoke to the crowd: “Today is an urgent call for every American, no matter who you voted for, no matter if you voted at all,” she said.

Balint referenced how Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., was recently taken to the ground and zip-tied by Homeland Security agents after interrupting a press conference hosted by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.

“He was doing his work — his responsibility to do oversight over Homeland Security,” Balint said. “If they will do that to a man with that much power, what are they doing to the least among us?”

Balint denounced the threats and harassment faced by students, residents and migrant workers and encouraged people to continue organizing and resisting. 

“We, today, are creating community by doing this important work together” she said, “and we will use it to push back against policies that don’t serve us, against politicians who divide us, against people who want to keep us down. That’s why we are out here today.”

Meanwhile, in Montpelier, the Statehouse lawn was teeming with more than a thousand people attending the capital’s “No Kings” protest.

Organizers from Montpelier Strong Indivisible and Calais Indivisible substituted speakers for singers and asked the crowd to sing along to protest songs and religious hymns performed by Solidarity Singers, a political music group.

The rally remained peaceful throughout as organizers urged the crowd to remain nonviolent and to not engage with any potential hecklers or counter-protesters.

Ron Dufresne, a veteran, said attending the rally was part of his military duty.

“I came to the protest today because we have to reclaim our country,” Dufresne said. “I took an oath to support and defend the Constitution as a U.S. Army officer, and I take that oath very seriously. I see this administration trampling on the Constitution. Our country will only be strong if we, the people, reclaim our devotion to the Constitution and rule of law.”

Toward the back of the protest, Mackenzie Kovaka had a small easel set up in front of her as she painted a miniature watercolor portrait of the day’s events. 

“I paint a lot. It’s part of being present and here, and it’s the way that I like to experience things,” Kovaka said. “I’m really concerned about the direction of the country.”

For Kim Rae, protesting was personal. Her son Ash has used a wheelchair since he was 8 years old. Ash relies on Medicaid dollars to provide a home health aid to help him in his daily life. Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” now making its way through Congress, would cut an estimated $600 billion from Medicaid, according to PBS.

“If Medicaid gets cut he won’t be able to survive independently in his own home,” Rae said.

The rally ended with organizers leading a large march toward downtown Montpelier, calling for people to join them later on at the Burlington protest if they could.

More than 40 events were held around the state Saturday, including a border-to-border anti-Trump flag parade that traveled up Route 7 from Massachusetts to Canada. Vermonters honked and waved along the route as the parade passed by. At least 15 communities outside of the parade route held their own anti-Trump protests.

Read the story on VTDigger here: ‘No Kings Day’ draws more than 16,000 to Burlington to protest Trump and authoritarianism.

MONTPELIER — A Republican Flag Day gathering in front of the Vermont Statehouse ended in a frosting fiasco Saturday after a cake was destroyed and a man was shoved.

The intention of the gathering was to celebrate “Flag Day, the 250th Anniversary of the U.S. Army, (and) President Donald Trump’s 79th Birthday!” according to the Vermont Republican Party’s online calendar. The celebration was scheduled to start just an hour after the anti-Trump “No Kings” protest hosted in the same location. 

The event was hosted by Gregory Thayer, a notable Republican voice in Vermont politics who ran against Lt. Gov. John Rodgers in last year’s Republican primary.

The violence began when Matthew Baker came up to the table as Thayer was speaking and smushed his water bottle into the cake that read “Happy Birthday U.S Flag, U.S. Army + President Trump.” Thayer then turned and shoved the man, as other pro-Trump attendees rushed to Thayer’s aid. Thayer then threw the water bottle, which struck Baker’s chest.

“He smashed the cake with a water bottle. I grabbed him to push him away, and then I walked away ’cause other people converged on him. Then, the water bottle was sitting in the middle of the cake and I gave him back his water bottle. That’s pretty much it,” Thayer said.

“I just dipped this in their cake, and then they grabbed the bottom and threw it at me, in the chest,” Baker said. “I wanted to see how they would react, and I got what I expected, violence. I got this bottle thrown at me.”

Security officers separated the men, and police officers showed up promptly after the initial cake-clash.

Despite the bottle, the cake was still served, though the event ended about 10 minutes early.

The event started peacefully enough, with Thayer and around 30 pro-Trump supporters in attendance gathered around a table with a microphone and the cake.

The peace was short-lived, however, as minutes into the event the first arguments started. A young woman in a pink shirt and a man in a fireman’s jacket holding a Trump 2024 flag began to argue about immigration.

Then, a woman holding a “Chinga La Migra” poster who was a stayover from the prior “No Kings” rally ran around to distract pro-Trump speakers, who returned with chants like “Becca Balint get in line, learn to wipe your own behind!”

Arguments between event attendees and anti-Trump protesters punctuated the entirety of the event.

As tensions escalated between the pro and anti-Trump groups, Thayer made a move toward civility by calling up an older, liberal woman to the microphone. 

The woman asked attendees to find someone with whom they disagreed but could have a reasonable conversation with. It appeared neither crowd was listening, though, as both sides shouted over the woman — at one point while she was speaking, someone let off an airhorn — when she asked attendees to put their hands on their head if they thought her proposition was a good idea. Only she and Thayer did so. 

Tonya Cicio attended the event to celebrate President Trump’s birthday and the 250th anniversary of the U.S. army, as her son is in the Navy. 

“We’ve been supporting Trump since before the election … There’ll never be another president like him again — never,” Cicio said.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Pro-Trump gathering at Vermont Statehouse ends in frosting fiasco.

MONTPELIER — Amid President Donald Trump’s push for mass deportations, the City Council voted unanimously Wednesday to form a committee that will develop a strategy for navigating U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity within Montpelier and improve how the city communicates residents’ rights.

The proposal was introduced by Councilor Pelin Kohn, who was born in Turkey and moved to the United States with her American husband in 2017. She became a citizen in 2020 and is a board member for the Central Vermont Refugee Action Network.

“Sometimes, ICE-related things are like news for people. … But for people I know, support and work with, it is their reality, and they live in fear,” she said. “For me, as an immigrant American, it is a very, very real fear. I’ve been approached by different community members, different groups, and I thought maybe our city can just review all the policies we have.”

Kohn’s proposal seeks to strengthen Montpelier’s already progressive immigration policy by having the ad hoc committee develop a community strategy for responding to “any ICE activity within city limits,” and improve “public communication, including the development of a dedicated, accessible city web page outlining resident rights, city policy, and emergency resources.”

Montpelier became Vermont’s third sanctuary city — a municipality that limits its cooperation with federal authorities to protect undocumented immigrants — in 2016. Since then, the city has adopted strategies like the “fair and impartial policing” policy, which sets strict guidelines for how Montpelier police can enforce immigration law, and restricts police cooperation with federal immigration authorities.

Sanctuary cities have come under fire by Trump, who tried to pull federal and FEMA funding from sanctuary cities and recently listed them online. The administration later pulled this list down after it mislabeled multiple locations.

Councilor Ben Doyle expressed concerns about potential backlash from the federal government to any further pro-immigrant moves by the city.

“I think the motive here is really good, it’s to keep our neighbors safe,” Doyle said. “[But] when I read the description of the purpose of the committee, I did get nervous about potential unintended consequences.” 

The creation of the committee follows a statewide push for institutions addressing immigration. Gov. Phil Scott recently signed a bill establishing a committee to study whether the state should create an Office of New Americans to support people who entered Vermont from outside the country, and another putting restrictions on state agencies and local governments from entering into agreements with federal immigration officials.

Correction: An earlier version of this story misspelled Pelin Kohn’s name.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Montpelier council approves committee to bolster sanctuary city policies.

On a warm summer day, about a dozen seniors found themselves enjoying what may be one of their last meals at the Center of Recreation and Education, as Burlington’s senior center programming may end Sept. 30 following a serious round of city budget cuts.

Senior programming for Burlington is held in the Center of Recreation and Education, which is inside the Old North End Community Center on Allen Street. Mayor Emma Mulvaney-Stanak’s budget for fiscal year 2026 seeks to end the lease the city has with the center and cut positions in the Burlington Parks, Recreation & Waterfront Department in an attempt to balance the budget; several of those cut positions are held by those working in the CORE program. 

The program includes activities for those 55 and older, including art classes, crochet and a “bone building” exercise program. Some activities  are taught by community members and nonprofits, like Age Well, which also provides daily lunches.

“I love the exercise programs,” Aloyse Rowley, a regular CORE attendee, said Wednesday. “But it’s gonna be ending, all of it, and I’m really worried about what I’m gonna do.” 

The plan is to transition seniors to the Heineberg Community Senior Center, a nonprofit in Burlington, however it is unclear how planned that transition will be.

Rowley is one of multiple seniors attending CORE who use walkers or other mobility aids. The city pays for seniors to receive rides to and from the center from the Special Services Transportation Agency — a nonprofit dedicated to transportation for Vermonters with transportation challenges. But with the budget cuts, seniors like Rowley will no longer receive free transportation from the city.

“I have trouble walking … and there are some ladies who have it worse than me,” she said. “What they’re doing is just leaving us on our own, which means we’re not gonna be able to go anywhere, which is very bad for our mental health, not to mention our physical health.”

Andrea Viets, executive director of the Heineberg Community Senior Center, said she is unsure whether the city will reinstate SSTA benefits for seniors transitioning to her center.

“That’s a great question, one that I have raised that I do not have an answer for,” she said.

When asked if the city planned to continue paying for the rides of seniors, Burlington Deputy Chief of Staff Joe Magee said he couldn’t “speak to any specifics of what the transition looks like,” but that “we’re certainly focusing on what the needs are that folks have and how the city can assist with that transition and making sure that folks’ needs are being met.” 

SSTA is $4 each way, meaning seniors who take the bus to and from their home will pay $8 a day in transportation costs. This adds up to around $40 a week, and up to $2,080 a year.

The city’s transition plan relies heavily on the Heineberg center, to which it provides approximately $85,000 — half their yearly budget — annually. “We’re working on a plan involving the Heinenberg center to figure out where folks can access other services,” Magee said. 

The Heineberg center currently serves around 425 seniors, with an additional 100 coming for yearly services like AARP tax aid and vaccination clinics for the flu and Covid-19.

When asked if Heineberg had the capacity for the influx of seniors from CORE programming, Viet said, “Yes and no. The yes part is that we’re not gonna turn people away. The challenging part is that there are some services that folks are accessing currently at CORE, like transportation and daily meals, that we can’t offer.” 

Heineberg is currently staffed with three part-time employees.

Daily nutritious meals are crucial to seniors like Rowley, who often struggle with the effort needed to maintain a good diet. Age Well’s meals are vetted by a nutritionist.

“I think meals are very critical to seniors,” Rowley said. “Being one person, it’s very hard to cook and go get all those ingredients at this age. Some gentlemen at the center seem to never have dinner.”

Sarah Carpenter, one of the city councilors who will end up voting on whether to pass Mulvaney-Stanak’s budget, said she was surprised by the cuts. 

“The city just received an in-depth report from the council on aging about trying to increase awareness of the needs of our older citizens, including activities. So I was sort of surprised that this was the choice to eliminate as opposed to maybe [a] restructure,” she said

Carpenter is also concerned about the city not fully committing to a transition plan for seniors.

“We didn’t have a lot of transition time, and I think there needs to be a really solid sit-down and get a transition,” she said. “There really wasn’t, and really isn’t at the minute a real transition plan for the older adult activities in the city.”

Magee said the city is working on a transition plan, “and that will include meeting with the seniors who currently access programming through the core center, and figuring out what those next steps look like and how the city can be supportive in that.”

Jen Williams, a senior who has been attending CORE senior programming for years, said the activities help with her mental health. 

“My son-in-law told me I couldn’t stay at home all day, all night. So I had to find some place to go,” she said. “Before I came here, I was in and out of the hospital a lot for my mental health. And since I’ve been here, I haven’t been in the hospital.”

“My favorite part of being here is the sewing and the socializing,” she added. “I’ve met a lot of people since I’ve been coming. I’ll miss everybody.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Burlington budget cuts could end city-run programming for seniors.

Bennington College has finalized its collective bargaining agreements with the three groups that make up the college’s union, according to a June 5 press release.

The agreements come after a unionization process that began in 2023, after 150 faculty, staff and campus safety workers formed Bennington College United. The union — which is backed by AFT Vermont, an umbrella labor union for higher education and health care workers — cited concerns about high staff turnover, a lack of policy surrounding raises and a lack of transparency about the college’s finances. 

The agreements, sent to VTDigger by AFT Vermont, detail improved working conditions for union members, including increased wages and bonuses, guaranteed tuition exchange and benefits for family of staff and transparency on the finances of bargaining unit employees.

The Bennington College United bargaining team wrote in a statement that they were proud of the improvements they gained in negotiations, and that their next step was to “fight for a better retirement contribution,” on July 1, 2026.

“This agreement reflects what is possible when institutions and labor come together with mutual respect and a commitment to mission,” Bennington College President Laura Walker said in a press release. “I am grateful to the members of BCU for their dedication to Bennington, and to the College’s negotiating teams for their tireless and thoughtful work.”

“We’re stronger together, always have been and always will be,” Bennington faculty and union member David Bond told VTDigger in a written statement. “With DC missives attacking the public purpose of higher education and many university administrators bending to the bully, it is more important than ever to secure faculty and staff a seat at the table.”

Bennington College United originally planned to negotiate as a collective whole but after discussions with the administration, organizers agreed to split into three different bargaining units. In exchange, the university voluntarily acknowledged the union. 

Although this is Bennington College’s first official union, the school’s dining hall workers are already unionized under the Service Employees International Union, and a “faculty forum” once served as an informal union for faculty members, according to Bennington’s student newspaper, the Bennington Lens.

The collective bargaining agreements come amid a wave of unionization in higher education. The number of unionized faculty in the United States grew by 7.5% between 2012 and 2024, according to research from The City University of New York. 

Read the story on VTDigger here: Bennington College finalizes collective bargaining agreements with union .

A parking company with more than two dozen private lots in the Burlington area has agreed to pay a hefty fine after the Vermont attorney general found it was using deceptive ticketing practices.

Unified Parking Partners — a New England parking company acquired by hospitality and parking giant Towne Park in 2024 — is set to pay the state $150,000, according to a June 5 press release from Vermont Attorney General Charity Clark’s office.

The attorney general’s investigation found that the company violated the Vermont Consumer Protection Act by using government-style language like “citations” and “fines” on notices sent to drivers for violations made in its private lots. 

The company’s notices also mischaracterized the penalties for not paying fees, suggesting that it could impact someone’s credit rating, vehicle registration, license renewal and ability to rent a car.

In the settlement, Clark wrote that Unified Parking Partners is a “private commercial entity with no governmental authority.”

“Companies have a right to charge for services rendered, but not to trick consumers into paying out of fear that disputing a charge could come with consequences the company has no power to impose,” Clark said.

Clark mandated that the parking company stop “making any representation that may cause a reasonable consumer to believe that a notice of violation is issued by a municipality or governmental authority.”

The settlement between the attorney general and Unified Parking Partners is enforced through an Assurance of Discontinuance, a common way for attorneys general to resolve conflicts. The company plans to pay the $150,000 fine by June 20.

Clark is not the first attorney general to go after the company. Last summer, Rhode Island Attorney General Peter F. Neronha filed a complaint against UPP Global LLC — Unified Parking Partners’ parent company — accusing it of “a pattern of unfair and deceptive conduct including charging customers fees disguised as a ‘tax,’ charging junk ‘service fees,’ failing to disclose parking rates until customers have already parked, and issuing ‘citations’ that mimic government-issued parking tickets and falsely threaten consequences from the Division of Motor Vehicles.”

United Parking Partners has faced criticism from Vermonters for years. In 2017, Seven Days wrote a column about the company’s potentially deceptive ticketing practices.

When reached for comment, United Parking Partners spokesperson Bev Drivin said, “UPP is committed to complying with all applicable local laws and regulations. All practices, policies, signage, and enforcement notices are fully compliant with applicable laws.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Vermont attorney general settles with private parking company after they ‘trick consumers’ into paying fines.

A Vernon-based subsidiary of the demolition titan NorthStar is making history as the first commercial entity to ever dismantle a nuclear aircraft carrier.

NorthStar Maritime Dismantlement Services received a U.S. Department of Defense contract on Friday for more than $500 million for the “dismantling, recycling, and disposal” of the USS Enterprise CVN-65 aircraft carrier, according to a department press release issued last week.

NorthStar is also in the process of dismantling the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant, which once served as the state’s preeminent producer of electricity.

The USS Enterprise is slated to be the first nuclear aircraft carrier to ever be commercially dismantled, according to the The Naval Sea Systems Command. If all goes to plan, the project — which is expected to be based in Mobile, Alabama — should be finished by 2029. 

The carrier made headlines in its day for being the first-ever aircraft carrier powered by nuclear energy, being propelled by eight Westinghouse A2W nuclear reactors, according to Naval History and Heritage Command. 

The USS Enterprise was awarded the title of Nuclear Historic Landmark by the American Nuclear Society in 2021. It was in use for more than 50 years, participating in military activities like Operation Desert Fox and Operation Iraqi Freedom before its deactivation in 2012. 

The USS Enterprise was originally docked in Virginia before being sponsored and launched by Bertha Irene Ready, who was married to William Birrell Franke, the former secretary of the Navy under President Dwight D. Eisenhower. The Franke family split their time between Washington, D.C., and Rutland.

The military plans to recycle around 35,000 tons of steel from the CVN-65 Enterprise into the new CVN-80 USS Enterprise carrier, according to Naval News.

Correction: An earlier version of this story contained an error about the inspiration for the name “Enterprise” in the television show “Star Trek.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Vermont company to dismantle former USS Enterprise aircraft carrier.

Natalie Edwards found a sense of security at the Northlands Job Corps Center — but now that lifeline is set to close its doors along with dozens of other job centers across the country. 

After a childhood marked by abuse and addiction in the home, Edwards spent years trying to pull herself out of the cycle of instability. At 15, she entered rehab for substance use disorder for the first time. That same year, she was removed from the care of her mother, thrust into Missouri’s foster care system, and later tried — but then dropped out of — community college in Maine.

“I just didn’t really have stability,” Edwards said. “I didn’t have the type of lifestyle around me at that time to feel safe.” 

It wasn’t until her aunt suggested she move to Vermont that things began to shift.

“I messaged my aunt, and she told me I could move up to Vermont with her, and she suggested I come to Northlands,” she said. 

This is how Edwards became one of about 150 students now living on Northland’s flat, stately green campus, located just north of Vermont’s iconic Vergennes Falls.

The Vergennes-based chapter of the Job Corps, a nationwide network of vocational schools, could cease to exist at the end of June, following a recent order by the U.S. Department of Labor to “pause” all ongoing operations across the country. However, the department’s order is not going unchallenged, with contractors who run Job Corps programs suing to keep the program alive.

The order coincides with President Donald Trump’s “Make America Skilled Again” plan, which seeks to replace the program with a “cost-effective” alternative — a $2.6 billion grant program that emphasizes registered apprenticeships over federal programming. 

Since its inception in 1964, the Job Corps has been dedicated to training low-income young people ages 16 to 24 in a medley of primarily blue-collar professions like welding and urban forestry. The program provides room and board and an education to its participants for free.

As part of the tentative ending of the program, Job Corps staff are mandated to return students safely to their “home of record.” However, Northlands Director Michael Dooley said not all Northlands students have a home to return to. 

“There’s about two dozen students that are unhoused. … Sadly, some of them we may actually be just taking to a homeless shelter.” 

Dooley said he’s scared his students — all working class young adults — are losing a lifeline. 

“The impact of providing a safe, stable environment on somebody who hasn’t had one is enormous,” he said. “A lot of our students are going back to pretty terrible home lives and home situations.” 

Northlands is the top Job Corps center in job placement outcomes in the country, according to a paper copy of the rankings provided by Dooley. The Department of Labor has redirected a rankings webpage — alongside several other informational webpages — to a resource page for existing Job Corps graduates. 

Part of Northland’s strategy for readying students for the job market is its work-based learning programs, where students work directly for local businesses across Vermont. Several of these students work in Vergennes, and if the Job Corps program ends, Vermont’s smallest city is poised to lose one of its biggest employers.

Susan Magill has lived in Vergennes for over 40 years, arriving a few months before Northlands first opened in June 1979. She serves as a career technical manager for Northlands, and says the school has brought positive change to the city.

“We have students that are always out in the community doing something,” she said, noting students’ welding and tree removal work for Vergennes as examples of the harmony between the city and Northlands.

Ron Redmond, Vergennes’ city manager, agreed. 

“It’s a very well-run organization, in my experience,” Redmond said. “I think the tough part for us is that we have students who have contributed to the downtown. There’s a welding program that we worked with, they’ve built bike racks, and an art project.” 

The art project is “Flower Stop,” a sculpture built around a bus stop made by artist Kat Clear in collaboration with Northlands welding students. 

For Redmond, one uncertainty is how Northlands’ closure is going to impact Vergennes. 

“There is gonna be an economic impact, we’ll have to wait and see,” he said.

Dooley estimated that Northlands contributes around $2.5 million to the local economy, and said he’s worried that its closing could have a big effect. 

“You’ve got the money the center is spending and putting into the local economy, the program itself, plus the students and local staff that are buying gas, buying coffee, buying lunch. I don’t think anybody’s thought that through, really,” he said.

Despite the economic uncertainty, the impact Northlands has had on the lives of students like Edwards is clearer. 

Edwards recently started working at Vergennes Grand Senior Living, and was looking forward to renting her own apartment after completing Northlands’ certified medical assistance program. 

“Helping people. I think that’s what draws me towards it,” she said.  

At Northlands, Edwards said she’s found “a lot of stability. … It’s like a big family here. We all look out for each other.”

But she said the feeling of Northlands shutting down and her aspirations being curbed is “heartbreaking. It’s absolutely horrible.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: ‘It’s absolutely horrible’: Federal shutdown of Northlands Job Corps leaves students and city reeling.