By Curt Peterson RUTLAND—Rep. Peter Welch met with several area business people at the Rutland Region Chamber of Commerce offices on Merchants Row, Monday, Feb. 4. Welch’s first topic was immigration, and the related recent shutdown, which Welch called “avoidable.” “Last year a bipartisan budget bill providing some funding for President Trump’s wall and ‘Dreamer’…

By Rep. Jim Harrison Entering the fifth week of the 2019 session the pace is picking up. Committees have had a chance to review and dissect some of the proposals before them and are starting to push bills out to the House or Senate floors for action. Early bills in the House seeing action thus…

By Sen. Dick McCormack Under our federal and state constitution, the United States is a republic. Each state is governed by republican principles as well. I suggest that for a republic to be a republic its citizens must be republican citizens, knowledgeable about republican principles, familiar with republican structures, committed to their duty as citizens…

By Rep. Jim Harrison At the beginning of every legislative session, governors give a State of the State address or as in the case of a new biennium like this year, an inaugural speech. Such talks generally offer little in terms of detail, but rather talk about a governor’s vision for the upcoming session and…

By Sen. Alison Clarkson The Legislature’s 2019 session is now in full swing.  Each committee in the House and the Senate is getting updated by the agencies and departments in their areas of jurisdiction.  The various reports and studies which have been requested are being presented and the executive branch is in the process of…

By Sen. Dick McCormack In this bitter time in Washington, Vermont is a light of hope simply because we get along with one another.  Democrats and Progressives are a united team. Our Republican friends are true to their ideals, but they are not obstructionists. We negotiate agreements that all sides can live with. Both the…

By Rep. Jim Harrison By the end of the second week of the 2019 Legislative session, we are beginning to get a better picture of some of the issues likely to be considered this year. Some are repeats from last year, while others may be new. Increasing the smoking age to 21, banning or taxing…

By Rep. Jim Harrison Last Wednesday, Jan 9, marked the beginning of the new legislative biennium. Voters returned all statewide office holders, including Gov. Phil Scott, and the Legislature voted to have House Speaker Johnson and Senator Ashe head up their respective chambers again. What is different is the overall makeup of Legislators with majority…

By Sen. Alison Clarkson It is always exciting to begin a new biennium in the Vermont State House. And, the 2019 launch of the first year of that two year legislative period was no exception.  While our leadership remained unchanged – returning Gov. Phil Scott; Lt. Gov. David Zuckerman; Senate President Pro Tempore Tim Ashe…

Courtesy Vermont Fish and Wildlife Jason Lewis of Randolph with the nice 221 pound buck he took in Orleans County during Vermont’s 2018 November deer season. The Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department’s preliminary numbers show 18,845 deer were taken during Vermont’s 2018 deer hunting seasons, the highest total since 2000. Reports from big game check…

Vermonters filed 5,471 scam reports with the Attorney General’s Consumer Assistance Program in 2018 according to the Attorney General’s list of top 10 most commonly reported scams of the year. This amounts to a 4.55 percent increase in scams from 2017. As new scams emerged, old scams persisted. The IRS scam, which involves scammers claiming…

By Elizabeth Gribkoff/VTDigger Customers of Vermont’s largest electrical utility will see a slight rate decrease on their bills for the first nine months of next year. The rate case drew an unusual amount of public scrutiny last month due to an anonymous letter, and subsequent public comment from a former senior official, claiming that the state…

By Kit Norton/VTDigger As the Boy Scouts of America faces mounting legal battles, the organization has opened multiple scout programs to females and, since June, 95 girls have joined the Cub Scout program in Vermont. The Green Mountain Council, the Vermont chapter of the national organization, has currently enrolled 95 girls in the program that…

By Xander Landen/VTDigger Sen. President Pro Tem Tim Ashe wants to change Vermont’s Constitution. Among the Democratic Senate leader’s top priorities in upcoming legislative session is a push to pass four constitutional amendments. Ashe and other senators say they want to add an amendment expanding gubernatorial terms from two to four years and other amendments that would protect…

By Anne Wallace Allen/VTDigger As chief of the Vermont Department of Labor’s economic and labor market information section, Mathew Barewicz is in charge of collecting and interpreting federal and state employment data for policymakers, job-seekers and the public. Among other things, Barewicz is the researcher on a project partnering with the McClure Foundation aimed at…