The SNAP-Ed program — which focuses on nutrition education and overall wellness for people on food stamps — will end Sept. 30, cutting off hundreds of thousands of dollars in annual grants that supported programming across all Vermont counties, including recipe demonstrations, meal kits and active-living guides.

The program’s elimination was part of President Donald Trump’s sweeping budget adjustments that passed on July 4 in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. As the state’s food assistance network finds its way through a new landscape of shortfalls, officials worry more residents will fall through the cracks.

SNAP-Ed is an extension of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which has experienced a number of cuts across the board. Instead of providing funds for individuals to purchase food, SNAP-Ed’s much smaller grants focus on community education and initiatives to improve eligible households’ engagement with 3SquaresVT — Vermont’s name for the larger body of resources under SNAP. 

“Just providing food for people is not the whole answer to food security,” said Suzanne Kelly, who was the SNAP-Ed coordinator at the Vermont Department of Health for a decade until last month. Her former position, and another related role, will soon be discontinued.

“SNAP-Ed is sort of that extra bit of information to really make sure that people can access the food, can use the food, and can enjoy it over time,” Kelly said.

The program is deeply focused on health outcomes, she said, including prevention of chronic conditions and disease, and promoting wellness through nutrition and exercise.

Kelly is concerned about the immediate impact on Vermonters. 

“These are decisions that trickle down to the most vulnerable people in our communities,” she said.

Kelly referenced a SNAP-Ed needs assessment earlier this year that identified certain populations in the state with a disproportionately high need for food assistance, including rural Vermonters and people with disabilities. Outreach programs that meet people where they are geographically will be an especially big loss, Kelly said.

The end of SNAP-Ed has already had tangible effects in recent weeks, causing the imminent shutdown of a food pantry in Holland and contributing to the Vermont Foodbank’s recent staff cuts. Of the seven employees the food bank let go, three were specifically operating SNAP-Ed programs, according to Chris Meehan, the company’s chief impact officer.

Vermont residents received over $147 million in SNAP aid last year. The projected allocation for Vermont’s SNAP-Ed budget in 2026, which the Department of Health received May 30, was less than half a million. Five weeks later, Kelly learned that the program was canceled.

‘We’ll have to be really creative’

Meehan said the SNAP-Ed cuts will effectively end the Vermont Foodbank’s VTFresh program, which has reached every county in the state with initiatives to increase access and understanding around nutrition. The program provided a space for people to exchange knowledge about cooking, recipes and budgeting, and was often particularly useful for families, she said.

While the food bank employees who ran the initiative are no longer with the organization, the program’s existing resources will remain on the Vermont Foodbank website. VTFresh’s continuing presence, Meehan said, will be “more passive than active.”

Meehan is grateful for the infrastructure that VTFresh has left behind — it has been “transformational” for the food assistance network in the state, she said. 

Denise Walton, a Concord resident who is a lead volunteer at Sid’s Pantry in town, said VTFresh recipe materials had been invaluable in allowing her community to make better use of fresh foods. It’s common, she said, for people to ask questions about how to prepare food as they’re taking it.

“I think people want to cook,” said Walton, who herself is on food stamps. “They may not have learned, or been taught, or had the time.”

Walton said she would keep trying to provide resources to help people fully use the food they’re receiving — but that it will be more challenging going forward. 

“We’ll have to be really creative,” Walton said.

Vermont Foodbank’s situation is par for the course statewide at smaller food assistance providers.

The Vermont Garden Network will lose its dedicated nutrition educator, according to executive director T Hanson, one of only five staff at the organization. Come Alive Outside, a nonprofit which used SNAP-Ed funds to reach thousands of school-age kids in Rutland County with tips on how to stay active, has told its staff it may not have sufficient funds to pay everyone in six months, according to Executive Director Arwen Turner. 

Meanwhile, in Burlington, the People’s Farmstand will continue as a purely volunteer effort, according to founding Director Nour El-Naboulsi. There hadn’t been salaried roles, he clarified, but they had previously been able to offer staff — primarily farmers — a stipend for their time. The organization offers free fresh produce (both self-grown and donated) at weekly open events but has also been conducting educational outreach through its Veggie of the Month program. 

El-Naboulsi said the initiative features a combination of staple Vermont crops and “culturally relevant produce — things from Nepal, Somalia, Iraq (and) other places in the Middle East and East Africa.” The organization serves a relatively large proportion of immigrant and refugee populations, he said, and the program is designed to combine familiar food with information about how to prepare local produce.

With the loss of SNAP-Ed funding to the People’s Farmstand and sister organization Village Hydroponics, El-Naboulsi said he has had to reprioritize.

“We kind of lose the capacity to do supplementary education, recipe preparation, outreach,” he said.

‘A great return on investment’

Keith Robinson, a pediatric pulmonologist at UVM Children’s Hospital, emphasized a connection between SNAP-Ed and health outcomes for families. He’s the hospital’s vice chair for Quality Improvement and Population Health and built the provider’s screening platform for food insecurity.

“We are trying to go deeper and further upstream to make sure that we’re solving the root causes of food insecurity in Vermont,” Robinson said.

For him, nutrition education has been a big part of that work — that’s why the end of SNAP-Ed is such a blow, despite the small scale of previous funding.

“It’s gonna make communities potentially less healthy, and it’s also gonna create gaps in the systems that we need to have around families,” he said. “While the dollar value may not be great, the impact of those dollars is extraordinary.”

Robinson referenced a state report on SNAP-Ed last year, calling survey data that indicated diet and exercise changes for participants “a big deal.” Roughly a third of people who received direct nutrition education reported they ate more fruits and vegetables each day, and 20% said they exercised more, according to the report.

“That’s a great return on investment,” Robinson said.

Modifications and cuts to the SNAP program at large have been made in the name of eliminating “waste, fraud, and abuse” — a narrative that Kelly disputed. 

“The strategies that are used (in SNAP-Ed) have shown outcomes — real outcomes,” she said.

A page addressing cost concerns on the USDA website references studies showing that for every dollar spent on SNAP-Ed and similar programs, 10 times that can be saved in future health care costs. The total nationwide cost of the program would have been $550 million in the 2026 fiscal year.

“It’s probably not the best idea to be cutting programs that are going to eventually help reduce costs way further down the line,” Kelly said.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture did not respond to requests for comment.

A document briefly detailing SNAP overhaul from the U.S. House Committee on Agriculture called SNAP-Ed a program that has wrought “no meaningful change” for its target population. The committee cited a 2019 report from the Government Accountability Office that appears to primarily conclude that the effectiveness of the program is difficult to properly evaluate due to uneven standards of reporting from state agencies and a lack of coordination at the federal level. 

“When federal benefits get cut like this, we need to think about how to bolster connections in our community, and think differently about how to fill those gaps,” Robinson said. 

Jeanne Montross, executive director of Helping Overcome Poverty’s Effects, or HOPE, in Middlebury, said her organization has been seeing the effects of staff and program cuts elsewhere in the state’s assistance networks. Montross’ nonprofit is primarily funded by private contributions.

“It always ends up flowing down to HOPE,” she said of increased need in her local community.

Anore Horton, executive director at Hunger Free Vermont, said the state’s food assistance network “cannot in any way mitigate the loss of all of these different sources of funding.”

Any solution to a problem of this scale must be “collective,” Horton said, but must also involve significant new assistance from the state government. But in a situation this urgent, Horton said it wouldn’t necessarily make sense for the state to replace nutrition education funding.

Walton said Sid’s Pantry has also been increasingly relying on community support and donations.

“We’re very fortunate to have a little buffering like that,” she said, “especially for an aging community that needs healthy food and needs access to things out in the rural areas.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Loss of SNAP-Ed program leaves gaps in Vermont’s food assistance network.

A federal judge has granted an injunction against the Vermont judiciary in a legal action brought by news outlets aimed at curbing delays when seeking newly filed civil lawsuits.

The ruling issued this month by Judge Christina Reiss is the latest turn in the lawsuit brought by news outlets and other First Amendment advocates more than four years ago.

The judge added in the ruling that she would now consider whether to grant attorneys fees to cover the expenses of the lawyers who argued the case on behalf of the organizations, a figure that is expected to total more than $1 million. 

Reiss, in the four-page order, wrote that the process the judiciary had used to screen lawsuits for potential confidential materials before making them publicly available delayed the release of the records and violated the First Amendment rights of the news outlets. 

According to the legal action, the timely access to the filings allows for the public to understand what’s happening in the court system, provides for accountability and informs people about matters of public concern.

“Plaintiffs have a presumptive right First Amendment right of access to newly filed complaints, which attaches upon the court’s receipt of such complaints,” Reiss wrote in the ruling.

Courthouse News Service, a Pasadena, California-based company, was joined by news outlets across Vermont in its lawsuit filed in May 2021 in federal court in Burlington. 

Courthouse News Service, according to its website, “covers news, both national and international, that moves society and its many elements in one direction or another.”

Jonathan G. Fetterly, a California attorney who argued the case on behalf of parties bringing the action, said in a statement this week that Reiss’ ruling was a “great victory for public access” following years of “hard fought litigation.” 

The parties joining in the legal action were the Vermont Press Association and the New England First Amendment Coalition, as well as the parent entities of VTDigger.org, Seven Days, the Burlington Free Press and WCAX-TV. 

Other participants signing onto the case were the Vermont Community Newspaper Group, which operates weekly newspapers in several communities including Stowe, Morristown, Shelburne, South Burlington and Charlotte, and the parent company of the Rutland Herald/Barre-Montpelier Times Argus.

“This is another important victory for the public when it comes to transparency at the courts all across Vermont,” Mike Donoghue, executive director of the Vermont Press Association, said Friday of the ruling.

Teri Corsones, Vermont’s state court administrator, said in a text message Friday, “The Judiciary certainly values the public’s right to access to court filings, while also taking important steps to protect sensitive information.”

Corsones referred specific questions related to the ruling to the Vermont Attorney General’s Office, which represented the judiciary in the lawsuit. In turn, the Attorney General’s Office, later Friday, referred specific questions about the ruling to judiciary officials. Leda Moloff, general counsel for the Vermont judiciary, wrote in a text late Friday that judiciary officials had no further comment.

The lawsuit has been working its way through the court system for years, including a stop at the U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals before landing back in federal district court in Vermont earlier this year. 

Courthouse News Service, in a filing more than two years ago, stated that the attorneys’ fees and costs associated with bringing the action already totaled more than $1 million. 

Reiss, the judge, asked the parties to submit a briefing schedule related to attorneys’ fees by later this month regarding the issue. 

Read the story on VTDigger here: Federal judge rules in favor of news outlets in dispute with judiciary over access to newly filed lawsuits.

As drought conditions worsen in Vermont, state officials are asking residents to report the impacts.

On Thursday, the Agency of Natural Resources encouraged Vermonters to communicate information on dry wells and water supplies, farm losses, crop damage, low water levels in rivers, lakes and recreational areas, and other issues related to water quality or availability.

These reports help the state assess the severity of the drought, identify where and what type of assistance is needed, and make plans to address drought impacts.

The U.S. Drought Monitor shows that almost 60% of Vermont is in severe drought conditions, up from 34% last week. When people report drought impacts to state officials, the data also informs the drought severity to the U.S. Drought Monitor, which can trigger action from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Internal Revenue Service to support Vermonters who may be significantly affected.

“There are actually six types of droughts, and we’re in all of them right now,” said state climatologist Lesley-Ann Dupigny-Giroux, a geography professor at the University of Vermont and chair of the Vermont Drought Task Force.

“The one that is particularly concerning right now is the hydrological drought, which is when we look at how dry the lakes, ponds, streams, and wells and groundwater supplies are because that’s the one that had been at these record low levels even going back to last fall,” she said. The state is now experiencing both short- and long-term hydrological drought, she added.

According to the National Integrated Drought Information System, this past August has been the driest on record in Vermont since 1895.

Occasional rains or thunderstorms won’t be sufficient to reverse the current conditions, as some areas of Vermont have seen nearly 8 inches less rain than usual in the past four months, and the soil moisture level is 60% to 80% below average, Thursday’s press release by the Agency of Natural Resources states.

The drought task force, composed of state and federal representatives, continues to meet regularly to monitor the situation and provide new recommendations.

People can consult the agency’s drought resources for a list of contacts to report drought conditions. The task force also recommends reducing water consumption at home.

“Any sort of drought-related impact, I think it’s important for us to hear about so that we can start deploying the resources that need to be deployed as a response,” Dupigny-Giroux said.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Vermont officials ask residents to report drought impacts.

Vermonters enjoyed carnival rides, comfort food favorites, farm animal displays, live music and more at the Tunbridge World’s Fair on Thursday. The annual event, which has been held since 1867, is taking place until Sunday in the Orange County town it’s named after. Scroll down for more photos of the festivities.

Read the story on VTDigger here: PHOTOS: The Tunbridge World’s Fair kicks off in central Vermont.

Updated at 6:27 p.m.

MONTPELIER — The U.S. Department of Justice this week asked Vermont to hand over sensitive personal information on all of the state’s registered voters, Secretary of State Sarah Copeland Hanzas said Friday.

The secretary also said she intends to reject the justice department’s request. That’s in line with public statements she made last month, after her office received a separate but related inquiry from the feds about the possibility of information-sharing.

The justice department sent Copeland Hanzas’ office a letter Monday asking her to furnish voters’ full names, home addresses, birthdays and driver’s license numbers, as well as the last four digits of their social security numbers. All of this is to allow federal officials to inspect the data, the letter said, asking for a response from the state within two weeks. 

“My gut is, there’s no way we’re releasing this information to the federal government,” Copeland Hanzas said Friday.

The secretary said she believes her office has firm legal backing to reject the request, which was signed by Harmeet Dhillon, President Donald Trump’s assistant attorney general for civil rights. Existing Vermont law specifically prohibits the state and municipal governments from sharing voters’ personal details with the federal government for certain uses, Copeland Hanzas noted. This includes handing over voters’ information so federal agencies can compare it to “personally identifying information contained in other federal or state databases.”

However, the justice department letter, which was reviewed by VTDigger, contends that the federal government does, in fact, have the authority to ask for voters’ personal details, if it wants. The letter states that the justice department is interested in reviewing Vermont’s voter data to ensure the state is complying with two federal laws related to voting. 

The first, the National Voter Registration Act, requires election officials to remove from state voter rolls those who are ineligible to vote because they move or die, according to Votebeat. The second, the Help America Vote Act, requires states to maintain a digital list of registered voters and assign them a unique identifying number. The act also requires states to remove duplicate names. 

Copeland Hanzas said she sees no reason why the federal government needs to verify that information because, in her view, Vermont already has a robust system of local officials, working in conjunction with her office, to keep voter rolls up-to-date.

“In Vermont, that means 247 duly-sworn town and city clerks working alongside thousands of boards of civil authority members from those towns across the state,” she said. “We have a lot of eyes on our voter registration rolls, and we know that they are working very hard.”

At least two dozen states have received requests from the Trump administration for voters’ information in recent months. Trump has promised the effort will root out fraud and keep non-U.S. citizens from voting in federal and state elections, which is illegal. (Three cities in Vermont allow non-citizens to vote in their communities’ local elections, such as a city council race.) Some states have complied, even as others have refused. 

There is no evidence, Copeland Hanzas said, that non-citizens illegally vote in state or federal elections in significant numbers. She compared plans to scour voter data for cases where the practice happens to looking for a “needle in a haystack.” She also questioned why non-citizens would risk breaking the law to vote because they could be more likely to face deportation proceedings if caught. 

The letter sent to Vermont does not explicitly mention checks for people’s citizenship or immigration status. But this week, the Trump administration confirmed the justice department is sharing states’ voter roll information with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in a search for non-citizens, according to Stateline.

Vermont has until Sept. 22 to respond to the justice department’s letter. Copeland Hanzas said her office is working with the Vermont Attorney General’s Office to draft a formal reply, which she expects to send by that deadline.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Trump’s Department of Justice asks Vermont for sensitive voter information.

Chris Winters, commissioner of the Vermont Department for Children and Families, plans to step down. 

Instead, he is set to become deputy commissioner of the Department of Labor on Sept. 22, Gov. Phil Scott announced Friday in a press release. 

Scott also appointed Rick Hildebrant to lead the Department of Health. Hildebrant works as the chief medical information officer and medical director of hospital medicine at Rutland Regional Medical Center. His appointment takes effect Oct. 13. 

Hildebrant replaces Mark Levine, the face of Vermont’s Covid-19 response, who retired in March. 

“Even as public health leadership faces challenges nationally, Vermont has consistently demonstrated that collaboration, science, and community can chart a different course,” Hildebrant said in the release. 

Winters, who previously served as deputy secretary of state, took over DCF in 2023 after an unsuccessful bid to become secretary of state. Sandi Hoffman, deputy commissioner of the Department of Vermont Health Access, is slated to take over for Winters in an interim capacity at the department, which, among other responsibilities, oversees economic benefits, some social services and child welfare. 

In the release, Scott thanked Winters for his “steady leadership.” 

DCF’s top position is widely considered one of the most difficult in state government, and Winters has faced challenges during his tenure. 

The department oversees Vermont’s motel voucher program, which puts unhoused residents in motel rooms across the state. The program is a lightning rod for lawmakers and Scott, and as it’s downsized, Winters’ department has taken flak for the waves of motel evictions that pushed people to live outside. 

In January, the ACLU of Vermont sued DCF for allegedly tracking the pregnancies of Vermonters deemed “high-risk” and seeking custody of an unborn child. That litigation remains ongoing. 

At the Department of Labor, Winters will work under Kendal Smith, who previously served as deputy commissioner and interim commissioner, and whom Scott appointed in an official capacity Friday.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Chris Winters leaves Department for Children and Families, new Department of Health leader chosen.

This story by Randolph T. Holhut and Jeff Potter was first published in The Commons on Sept. 9, 2025.

BRATTLEBORO — The Windham County Heat Fund, with the help of a $20,000 matching grant, is kicking off a major fundraising campaign and a benefit concert to support people who have relied on federal fuel assistance that will no longer be available.

The Heat Fund — founded in 2005 by Brattleboro residents Richard Davis and Daryl Pillsbury — was intended to help county residents who fell between the cracks of this social safety net, and the two friends have prided themselves on keeping the organization small and nimble over the years.

In a typical year, Davis said, the heat fund raises about $50,000, and he and Pillsbury have handled its administration the old-fashioned way — by looking the people in need in the eye, talking with them and connecting them with fuel.

But with federal funding for the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program on the chopping block, the Windham County Heat Fund — which has been a supplemental source of local aid sustained by two volunteers and their force of will — faces the pressure of becoming the primary source of relief for people who can’t afford heat this winter.

“My fear is that people are going to try and sign up for heat assistance, and they won’t get it,” Davis said. And if this happens, he said, “people are going to die.”

He said the match will be used toward the organization’s newest initiative: to launch a GoFundMe page with a goal of $100,000. Every dollar of the first $20,000 donated will be matched by the trust, doubling donors’ contributions.

The heat fund will also hold a concert, “Save a Life,” to kick off the start of the fall fundraising effort on Sunday, Sept. 14, at 7 p.m. at the Heart Rose Club (the former Shriners Building), 11 Green St.

Performers will include Daniel Kasnitz, Jennie Reichman, Stan Davis, Duane Young and the trio of Patty Carpenter, Jeremy Gold and Verandah Porche.

A looming crisis

This year the need is greater because the Trump administration has cut off the ability for the federal government to provide fuel assistance, with LIHEAP caught in the cuts of the first months of Trump’s term.

Congress approved $25 million for the program, despite the administration’s cutting the funding entirely from the Trump budget.

Instead, the federal Department of Health and Human Services, under the leadership of HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., fired all the employees in the Division of Energy Assistance, which administered the LIHEAP program.

“The money has been allocated (by Congress), but there’s no one to give it out, and no one in the administration seems to be concerned about that,” Davis told The Commons.

Last year, the state of Vermont received $20 million and, according to U.S. Sen. Peter Welch’s office, that funding will most likely not be available this year. Welch, along with U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders and U.S. Rep. Becca Balint, have been pressing unsuccessfully for reinstating the employees.

The program is administered by the state through its Department of Children and Families, which work with regional community action organizations like Southeastern Vermont Community Action (SEVCA) in Westminster and with local fuel vendors. Davis has found no sense of urgency at the local or state level.

“Nobody seems to know that there’s a problem,” Davis said. “Normally, the money is released at the end of November. The local fuel companies like Cota & Cota and Dead River say many of their customers are on fuel assistance, and they don’t know what’s happening.”

Davis said he is grateful that the Thompson Trust is stepping up with the matching money for the crowdfunding drive.

The charitable foundation distributes income from the fortune of 19th-century philanthropist and art dealer Thomas Thompson, who established it to help “poor seamstresses, needle-women and shop girls” in Windham County and in Dutchess County, New York.

Courts have loosened those constraints, and the trust more generally funds causes in the two regions, with a special emphasis on health-related projects.

But Davis said that philanthropy can’t fully make up for the loss of federal funding.
“There’s no way we can make up for this loss,” Davis said. “I really don’t know why more people aren’t worried about this.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Windham County Heat Fund braces for loss of federal fuel aid.

The Vermont Agency of Transportation released a plan this week to cut $7.5 million from its 2026 fiscal year budget — including more than $2 million in “position management savings” — after state economists lowered revenue projections in July by the same amount.

On Wednesday, the agency sent what’s known as a rescission plan to two Vermont legislative committees tasked with overseeing state spending when lawmakers aren’t in session. Those are the Joint Transportation Oversight Committee and the Joint Fiscal Committee. The latter must approve the agency’s plan before it goes into effect.

The committees are scheduled to meet Sept. 17 and 18, respectively, during which they are set to discuss the plan and hold public hearings on it. The agency was obligated to come up with budget cuts after state economists, at a July meeting with top lawmakers, downgraded previous estimates for how much money the state could expect to bring in to support its transportation system.

At that meeting, economists pointed to lower-than-expected recent revenue from taxes on motor vehicle purchases and from fees collected by the Department of Motor Vehicles. Over the 2025 fiscal year, which ended in June, those receipts saw a sharp drop-off from the state’s initial projections. In the first month of the current fiscal year, this past July, tax revenue from vehicle purchases again underperformed against economists’ expectations, according to the latest state data.

Meanwhile, the state has long faced a decline in gasoline tax revenue as cars have become more fuel-efficient, and as more people purchase electric vehicles. Lawmakers added a new annual fee on electric vehicles last year aimed at curbing some of the impact.

On Wednesday, the transportation agency listed about a dozen line items from its 2026 budget it is looking to cut. 

The largest, according to the list, is $2,254,000 in projected “position management savings,” though the agency did not elaborate. Another $2 million would be saved by delaying a garage project in Springfield, while reductions in tree trimming, mowing and culvert maintenance would together save $915,000, the list states. 

Delaying a rail platform project in Rutland would save another $500,000, while another $230,000 in savings would come from suspending agency employees’ travel and participation in conferences, the list states.

Joe Flynn, the state’s transportation secretary, declined to provide more detail about the plan before it is presented to lawmakers, he said through a spokesperson Thursday.

One of the legislators who will weigh in on the plan next week is Rep. Matt Walker, R-Swanton, chair of the House Transportation Committee. Walker said Thursday the fact that budget cuts are on the table highlights a need for major changes to how the state’s transportation system is paid for.

He said he does not like the idea of cutting any costs lawmakers have already deemed important enough to budget for, such as maintenance to keep roads safe. With transportation revenues failing to keep pace with expenses, lawmakers need to have serious conversations about new ways to pay for key infrastructure, Walker said.

This year, for instance, legislators agreed to halt an annual transfer of about $20 million from the state’s transportation coffers to its general fund for use by the Vermont State Police. But that’s not going to be enough, he warned.

“We’re going to have to close this gap, and all things need to be on the table to do that,” Walker said.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Vermont eyes imminent transportation budget cuts as revenues slow.

The Green River Reservoir in Hyde Park has long offered a true wilderness experience, with its undeveloped shorelines and remote campsites reachable only by paddling. But after years of back and forth between state officials and the owners of the dam that creates the reservoir, the future of this site still looks uncertain.

Before the state could consider acquiring the facility, it needed a comprehensive picture of the conditions of the Green River Dam and dike and the operational and maintenance costs. A long-awaited study commissioned by lawmakers provided those answers when it was released two weeks ago.

The hydro facility was built in 1947, which raised concerns about whether it would need expensive structural updates. The report finds that the hydro facility is largely safe and performs well and provides estimates for the initial project costs and annual maintenance costs. 

But Gov. Phil Scott made clear last week during a press conference that the state doesn’t have the resources to take over the dam.

The Green River Reservoir’s dam is owned and operated by Morrisville Water & Light, but the utility has been seeking a new owner for the dam, saying they can no longer make a profit operating the facility. The utility argues the state should take it because the state benefits when people visit the Green River Reservoir State Park.

In 2010, Morrisville Water & Light started the process of relicensing the dam with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, a step required every few decades. During that process, the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources issued new water quality regulations, which establish how the facility can be operated to align with the federal Clean Water Act.

Morrisville Water & Light claimed that operating the facility under the new permit would limit their power generation capabilities, as the water level in the reservoir would need to be roughly stable, impacting the utility’s ability to do drawdowns and resulting in financial loss. After years of litigation, a Vermont Supreme Court decision ultimately determined the regulations were necessary to meet Vermont water quality standards.

Scott Johnstone, general manager of Morrisville Water & Light, said the utility would no longer be able to operate the hydro facility if it’s not producing revenue through power generation, and it has been exploring options to sell the facility, but no other company has been interested in buying it, for the same reason.

The recent legislative report also states that generating power at the facility with the new water quality permit would result in financial loss.

However, Jon Groveman, policy and water program director of the Vermont Natural Resources Council, took issue with that finding. “There’s no analysis that I was able to see,” he said. “Maybe that’s accurate, maybe it’s not.” 

“But even if that is correct,” Groveman added, “it doesn’t change what’s needed to meet the minimum water quality standards.” Groveman emphasized the importance of these standards in maintaining healthy waters and fish habitats.

Julie Moore, secretary of the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources, said some hydropower facilities have experienced a reduction in maximum power production, but not to the extent that they wouldn’t be able to generate power without a financial loss. “This is the only instance my staff are aware of where our regulatory framework produced a result that effectively would not allow power generation to continue, at least not cost effectively,” she said.

But Johnstone said there are two reasons the Green River Dam situation may differ from the others. “The Green River Dam was built to fluctuate and draw down water as all reservoir-based dams do, and essentially the state is no longer supportive of that sort of flow regime even where there’s a reservoir,” he said.

Johnstone added that there are a few other dams in the state that rely on drawdowns from reservoirs, but most of them have bigger rivers flowing into them, whereas the Green River Dam relies mostly on the reservoir because it doesn’t have a significant daily flow.

Secondly, the relicensing process may occur at different times for different facilities, and according to Johnstone, the regulations become stricter as the years pass, and some facilities could have different permits.

According to the study, the most cost-effective option would be to maintain the dam and dike to preserve the reservoir but decommission the hydroelectric facility and cease producing power. In that scenario, the report estimates, the reservoir would generate $32.7 million in visitor spending and $1.5 million in state sales tax revenue over the next 20 years. 

Yet Moore highlighted that the facility is particularly complex to operate, so taking ownership of it would be a significant obligation for the state. “We already are responsible for 100 dams; many of which have costly maintenance needs that we are struggling to keep up with,” she said.

Gov. Scott said during last week’s press conference that he was willing to collaborate with the parties involved to find a solution. But what that solution could look like is still unclear.

“We’re not fighting about the permit anymore. We’ve kind of given up on that,” Johnstone said. Morrisville Water & Light is still following the old regulations, but when federal regulators issue a new license, the utility will have to comply with the new water quality permit.

In the meantime, the utility has started the process to receive federal approval to stop producing power at the Green River Dam.

“We’re going to take care of the facility during this, what we hope is a transition period, but our view is that if we are not going to generate power at that facility anymore, then the use of the dam that is left is to support the state park,” Johnstone said. “So our position is that the state of Vermont should now own that dam because it supports that state park.”

The process of transition could take years, so nothing is expected to change at the Green River Reservoir in the immediate future, but now that the legislative report has been released, the ownership of the dam is likely to become a topic of discussion in the next legislative session.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Future of Green River Reservoir remains uncertain as state declines dam takeover.

Every September, communities and care providers across the nation,
including in the Northeast Kingdom (NEK) of Vermont, recognize National
Recovery Month, a time to celebrate the millions of Americans who are in
recovery from mental health and/or substance use disorders—and to
recommit to breaking down barriers to treatment.

This year’s theme, Recovery is REAL (Restoring Every Aspect of Life),
highlights the truth that recovery goes far beyond abstinence. It’s about
restoring health, a sense of purpose and overall wellbeing. But achieving
these goals often depends on one critical factor: access to recovery services.

Why Integrating Recovery Services into Primary Care Matters
Recovery begins with hope and the conviction that healing and change are
possible. Building on an individual’s strengths, readiness, and available
resources; recovery is a holistic process that extends beyond symptom
management to encompass the whole person.

For nearly 20 years, Northern Counties Health Care (NCHC) has embraced
holistic, patient-centered care through the integration of mental health and
substance use (behavioral health) services within their Primary Care
practices throughout Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom. Because of this,
NCHC’s Primary Care practices provide not only a medical entry point, but
also a cornerstone of recovery. NCHC’s Primary Care providers are often the
first and most consistent point of contact, ensuring whole-person care that
integrates physical health, mental health, social health, and substance use
support.

“I have heard for years, and from many patients, that it is reassuring to
know that we see them and care for them as entire beings, and not just as
patients with substance use disorder. And that it makes it comfortable and
convenient to receive all services in one place,” says Jeri Wohlberg, Family
Nurse Practitioner at Hardwick Area Health Center and NCHC’s Assistant
Medical Director.

“This program and the ones (who) run it, saved my life. I’ve never felt so
comfortable with a medical team before,” said a patient in recovery from
substance use disorder (SUD) with NCHC’s Hardwick Area Health Center.

Substance Use Disorder (SUD)
A substance use disorder (SUD) is a chronic but treatable medical condition.
It occurs when someone continues using alcohol, drugs, or other substances
despite harmful effects on their health, relationships, or daily life.

In 2022, more than 1 in 6 Americans aged 12 and older reported having a
SUD. SUDs can range from mild to severe and can affect anyone, regardless
of race, gender, income, or background.

Substances linked to SUDs include:

•  Alcohol
•  Cannabis
•  Hallucinogens
•  Inhalants
•  Opioids (prescription and illicit)
•  Sedatives, hypnotics, or anti-anxiety drugs
•  Stimulants (like cocaine or methamphetamine)
•  Tobacco/nicotine

Substance use disorders can happen to anyone. Some people begin using
substances to cope with trauma, stress, or mental health conditions. Others
develop SUD after being prescribed opioids for pain. Over time, substance
use can change the brain, creating strong cravings that drive continued use.

Treatment and Recovery
Recovery looks different for every person – there is no single “right way.” For
some, recovery may include counseling, medical treatment including medication, or peer groups; for others, it may involve faith, family support, or self-care practices. Often, it’s a combination.

Because SUD is complex and requires a personalized approach, NCHC
Primary Care teams provide a variety of options for patients including access
to compassionate and specialized staff to address many key components of
recovery:

• Behavioral health care and counseling staff, including psychiatry, for
  support with related mental health needs, understanding triggers and
  building coping skills, and encouraging patient participation in
  meaningful daily activities—like work, school, caring for loved ones,
  volunteering, or exploring creative outlets.
• Community Health Workers and Peer Support Workers to connect
  patients and families to community resources (housing, food,
  transportation), facilitate access to social services, self-management
  programs and peer support groups, and provide guidance and
  encouragement.
• Licensed medical Primary Care providers (Doctors, Nurse Practitioners,
  Physician Assistants) to maintain a schedule of ongoing checkups and
  treatment. Many are trained to prescribe medications that reduce
  cravings or ease withdrawal like those used for Medication for Opioid
  Use Disorder (MOUD) (formerly known as Medication Assisted
  Treatment or MAT), or to provide referrals to specialized care when it
  isn’t available right in the practice.
• MOUD specialists to coordinate medical care, use of medications,
  counseling and behavioral therapies, and support services to provide a
  whole-patient approach to the treatment of opioid use disorder.

Reducing Stigma
People with SUDs often struggle to stop using substances, even when they
understand the risks, and even when services like those at NCHC Primary
Care practices are available. Overcoming SUD almost always requires more
than “willpower.”

Addiction stigma, the negative and unfair belief that those who develop
SUDs are morally weak and that they should “just quit,” often keeps people
from seeking help. Over time, stigma may become internalized and lead
people to believe that they are of lesser value or unworthy of help because
they can’t tackle SUD on their own.

Understanding SUD as a health condition—and not a personal failure—can
make it easier for individuals and families to access life-saving treatment
and long-term recovery. This understanding and compassionate
environment is one that NCHC Primary Care practices seek to cultivate.

“The research shows us that the biggest reason people don’t reach out for
help with substance use is stigma, and anecdotally, this is what I hear from
patients. It is both heart-breaking and affirming when patients say, ‘I wish I’d
done this 20 years ago.’ We still have a long way to go, but when I hear that,
I know that we have provided a safe space where people feel heard and
supported –and I know we’re on the right track,” says Brook Marcotte, RN at
Hardwick Area Health Center and NCHC MOUD Program Coordinator.

When this type of care is available, recovery is not only possible—it is
happening every day. “My MAT RN is amazing and is so helpful and kind,
and I believe she actually cares about my recovery. She is always advocating
for me, listens to me and helps me in any way that I need,” says a patient at
NCHC’s Hardwick Area Health Center.

Ready When You Are
Seeking treatment for substance use disorders can be scary and
overwhelming. The journey is easier with the right people by your side. At
Northern Counties Health Care, our award-winning team is here to support
you — without judgment, pressure, or stigma. As your local Primary Care
provider, we offer confidential, comprehensive care — no one in the waiting
room will know the reason for your visit. We’re ready when you are to
create a plan that works for you. Take that first brave step and visit
www.nchcvt.org, or call your local Northern Counties clinic in Concord,
Danville, Hardwick, Island Pond, or St. Johnsbury.

About Northern Counties Health Care: 

Northern Counties Health Care (NCHC), Vermont’s first Federally Qualified
Health Center, was established in 1976. NCHC’s Mission is to provide high-
quality, accessible, patient-centered health care to the medically
underserved, 2,000+ square mile rural region of VT known as the Northeast
Kingdom (NEK). Annually, NCHC provides quality care to over 20,000
individuals; nearly one-third of the residents of the NEK. Over 64,000
encounters are made each year through a rural network of seven community
health centers – including two walk-in primary care clinics, three dental
centers, and a home health care and hospice division. All NCHC Health
Centers are Patient Centered Medical Homes, recognized by the National
Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA). From preventative care,
gynecological care, chronic disease management, and behavioral health
services to dental care, physical therapy, home care and hospice, we provide
complete, compassionate care for the whole family, in our home or yours.
Learn more at www.nchcvt.org

The Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) provided financial support for this article as part of the FY 2024 Behavioral Health Service Expansion (BHSE) grant. The award provided 76% of total BHSE program costs and totaled $600,000. The contents are those of the author. They may not reflect the policies of HRSA, HHS, or the U.S. Government.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Recovery is REAL in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom.

This story by Randolph T. Holhut was first published in The Commons on Sept. 9, 2025.

EAST DUMMERSTON — Read and Malah Miller have been running the Dwight Miller Orchard for more than three decades. Their succession plan was to start passing the operation on to his children this apple season.

“This was going be a transition year for us,” said Malah Miller. “We didn’t expect it to be this way.”

A three-alarm fire on Aug. 16 destroyed the orchard’s packing house building that was home to their cold storage and produce coolers, their cider press and apple packing facilities, their retail area and their maple evaporator and sugaring equipment.

“Everything went up in this building,” said Read. “Everything except for the orchard is gone. This building was the brain, heart, and soul of all our functions.”

Also lost were 25,000 gallons of apple cider vinegar, 1,000 gallons of maple syrup and 400 quart jars of pickles that they had just finished making for this season. “You could hear the pickle jars exploding in the fire,” said Read.

But within days of the fire, Malah began making another batch of pickles.

“When life gives you cucumbers, you make pickles,” she said. “You have to keep moving.”

When a fire destroys your business, you find a way to move forward. For the Miller family, they have an orchard full of apples to harvest, and they are finding a way to use this disaster not to mark the end of an eight-generation Vermont farm, but as a new chapter in its long history.

Dividing up a big task

Standing in front of the ruins of the packing house three weeks after the fire, Read talked about how his family has divided up rebuild.

His children, Will and Martha, are busy with running the business and shaping what it will be in future years. Read said he is busy with the difficult task of dealing with the insurance companies and government regulators, cleaning up the debris and documenting the damage.

“It’s huge, the emergency stuff,” Read said. “There are tractor-trailer loads of steel that need to be removed. I have to document and come up with the replacement value for every bit of the building, its contents, and what it was used for. And all that has to be perfect.”

Read said the orchard’s insurance will cover most, but not all, of the losses.

As for operations in the short term, Read said that “we’re going to stick with doing what we are comfortable with doing.”

That starts with the organic orchard’s pick-your-own operation on Miller Road, which began on Sept. 6. It will be open every day from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., throughout the autumn.

Apples will continue to show up at the Brattleboro Area Farmers Market, but it may be a while before the farm returns to making organic apple cider and apple cider vinegar.

Read said the family bought a complete cider making setup, which is expected to arrive at the farm this week.

The replacement for the destroyed packing building, which was built in 1962 by Read’s father, Dwight, using timber harvested from the family’s wood lots, will be constructed in a similar manner.

“We have a lot of resources here on the farm, and a lot of people who want to help us rebuild,” Read said. “We have the opportunity to stand on our forefathers’ shoulders to rebuild, but we will need the help of our neighbors to do so.”

Read said the family “has all been affected by the fire,” and the challenge is “finding ways to stay together and be positive. The most important job for us is to come together.”

Malah said that she and Read are making sure that the Miller children are being given “lots of room to make their own future.”

Gratitude for the help

The community stepped up for the Millers in a big way, donating nearly $97,000 to the orchard’s GoFundMe appeal that was started by Martha.

“That was the kids’ idea,” Read said. “Reaching out for help is something I’m not totally comfortable with, but I’m past the age to be embarrassed. But my father always said that when someone offers to help, it’s rude to not accept it.”

Assistance has also been offered by Green Mountain Orchards in Putney and other neighboring farms.

Read said the family is committed to keeping the community informed about the recovery process and will keep people up to date through social media.

And, next Aug. 16, Read said the family hopes to have a gathering to mark the first anniversary of the fire and the progress that the farm has made.

“We’re blown away by the support,” said Malah. “It has been very humbling, and I’m going to spend the rest of my life trying to pay all that support forward.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: With gratitude, Dummerston orchard begins rebuilding after fire.

As the chestnut-sided warbler flits about the quaking aspen trees under the shadow of Birdseye Mountain in Castleton, Vermonters can hunt, fish, trap, birdwatch and trek in perpetuity along the nearly 5,000 acres of land conserved by the state, thanks to a now-completed conservation plan, state officials say. 

After eight years, the Department of Fish & Wildlife finished drafting last month its long-term plan for the land in Castleton, comprising the Birdseye and Blueberry Hill Wildlife Management Areas, according to the department’s state and private lands biologist Travis Hart. Like a quilt, Hart said, the state aims to stitch together a “patchwork” of different habitats to ensure species diversity and connectivity through permanent conservation efforts. 

The wildlife management areas situated in the Taconic Mountains bring together a unique mixture of plant and animal species and landscape features, providing a “critical link for wildlife and ecological processes across Route 4” to the Green Mountain National Forest, said John Austin, director of wildlife for the department. 

Over the next 20 years, Hart said the department plans to manage 4% of the Castleton land for ephemeral young growth forests while actively promoting the development of old growth forests on 24% of the land. The state lost much of its old growth forest during European settlement and logging for agriculture in the 1800s, and now conservationists are taking varied approaches to grow back the old growth trees, knowing their work will not come to fruition for decades if not generations.

This is one of many conservation milestones in southern Vermont in recent months, guided by Fish & Wildlife’s Vermont Conservation Design, which plans out the landscape for ecological functions, said Robert Zaino, a natural community ecologist with the department.

The areas contribute to the state’s overall conservation goal outlined in Act 59, a 2023 law that aims to permanently conserve 30% of land in Vermont by 2030, said Rebecca Washburn, director of lands administration and recreation for the Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation.

The state had already conserved 27% of land as of last year, Washburn said. Looking to fill the 3% gap in the next five years, Washburn said that departments within the Agency of Natural Resources, alongside conservation groups and land acquisition partners, are looking to invest in tracts of land that promote species connectivity, biodiversity and ecological community resilience.

Rep. Amy Sheldon, D-Middlebury, the main sponsor of Act 59, said the legislative intent was to ensure that the range of nine biophysical regions in the state are all addressed through different conservation models, including improving biodiversity, engaging sustainable forestry and resource management and allowing some lands to grow wild without human interference. 

For Sheldon, Act 59 — the Community Resilience and Biodiversity Protection Act — was born out of a recognition that “we need to turn the ship in order to make sure we don’t miss opportunities to conserve all of our natural communities before it’s too late.”

Through Vermont Conservation Design’s statewide mapping tool, BioFinder, Zaino said the state identifies which forest blocks serve as the highest priority “stepping stones” that help species move across the regional landscape between the Berkshires in Massachusetts, the Adirondacks in New York, the White Mountains in New Hampshire and the Gaspé Peninsula across the national border in Quebec.

Vermont’s southern region has relatively little permanently conserved land other than the federal Green Mountain National Forest, Zaino said. The state’s work with conservation partners to acquire high-priority tracts for permanent conservation is an effort to “safeguarding places that we know have this very high ecological value into the future.”

Partners acquiring land for ‘connectivity pathways’  

One such effort the state and the Conservation Fund completed this summer focused on a patchwork of land in the Chateauguay Forest. 

In June, the state was awarded $2.9 million in federal Forest Legacy Program funds to purchase and manage five parcels, said Kate Sudhoff, land conservation program manager for the Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation.

This includes nearly 900 acres on Sable Mountain in Stockbridge, which will be added to the Les Newell Wildlife Management Area, and the Long Hill and Chase Corners parcels in Reading totalling nearly 800 acres that will be added to the Calvin Coolidge State Forest. Sudhoff said the state is still working to purchase two more conservation easement parcels in Bridgewater and Killington with the federal funding.

The three plots are situated within the state’s oldest regional conservation initiative, the Chateauguay No Town Conservation Project.

Will Duane, land acquisition coordinator for Fish & Wildlife, said the Sable Mountain, Long Hill and Chase Corners parcels are higher elevation areas that lead to a menagerie of biodiversity on the landscape. The three plots are also critical “puzzle pieces” to build out protected natural areas for species movement as the state manages the land for public recreation, wildlife habitat and as a working landscape, Duane said.  

“We’re creating these connectivity pathways and these corridors for species to move back and forth, and the Sable Mountain piece is in a huge critical core habitat block in Stockbridge right there in the heart of the Green Mountains,” Duane said.  

Sally Manikian, the New Hampshire and Vermont director of The Conservation Fund, said the “organizing force” behind permanently conserved tracts of land was expanding public access to outdoor recreation along the skinny and vulnerable corridor of the Appalachian Trail connecting the Green Mountain National Forest to the White Mountains.

Another state partner, the Trust for Public Land, has also made strides toward the state’s goals, permanently conserving 500 acres at the gateway of the Robert T. Stafford White Rocks National Recreation Area near the Appalachian Trail in Wallingford in March.

Shelby Semmes, the Vermont and New Hampshire state director of the trust, said the group is in the early stages of acquiring three parcels totaling over 300 acres in Dorset, which is a part of a partnership with the Vermont Huts & Trails to create a long-distance mountain biking “Velomont” trail. 

The project on the Dorset ridgeline is particularly valuable, Semmes said, because half the land is located across the Rich Northern Harwood Forest and it will conserve habitat around the northeast’s largest cave and bat hibernation site — the Dorset Bat Cave. 

In the small rural town of Jamaica, the Northeast Wilderness Trust is taking a different approach to permanent land conservation. 

In August, the trust bought 600 acres of land for the College Hill Wilderness Sanctuary near Stratton Mountain and the Green Mountain National Forest in Windham County, which will remain permanently conserved as a “forever wild,” Northeast Wilderness Trust President and CEO Jon Leibowitz said. 

“Forever-wild conservation is a commitment that people make to a particular piece of land where we allow nature to have the freedom to evolve in a way that it directs the ebb and flow of life rather than people managing or manipulating a forest,” Leibowitz said. 

Duane said that fragmentation across the landscape makes it more difficult for species to move about, so the work of the state and conservation groups is to strategically create throughways for wildlife. 

“We’re just day-by-day trying to chip away the gaps in these really important wildlife corridors,” Duane said.

Read the story on VTDigger here: ‘Patchwork’ of conservation projects advance state’s goals, helps build wildlife corridor in southern Vermont .

Federal policy changes are putting pressure on Vermont’s most vulnerable residents—and the nonprofits working to support them. At risk are the programs that form the backbone of survival for thousands of families, older adults, and people with disabilities.

“The proposed cuts don’t trim the fat off the budget—they sever the arteries of rural America,” said Paul Dragon, CVOEO Executive Director.

Among the most alarming developments:

• The FY25 Budget Reconciliation Bill includes cuts to Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)—stripping health coverage and food assistance from those who need it most.
• The proposed FY26 Budget threatens to eliminate the Community Services Block Grant (CSBG), along with other vital programs CVOEO administers.

For CVOEO, this means the potential loss of $1.2 million in CSBG funding, which directly supports hunger relief, housing and shelter, emergency assistance, and more across the Champlain Valley and beyond. These funds are not abstract line items—they are a lifeline.

“The proposed cuts don’t trim the fat off the budget—they sever the arteries of rural America,” said Paul Dragon, CVOEO Executive Director. “When CSBG and programs like LIHEAP and weatherization are eliminated, rural communities like ours are hit the hardest. These services are essential for older Vermonters, children, veterans, and people with disabilities.”

If passed, these cuts will gut vital community health, nutrition, fuel, and utility assistance programs—pushing millions into food insecurity, worsening health outcomes, and leaving homes cold during the winter months.

Despite these looming threats, CVOEO is not backing down. The organization is adapting, working harder, and digging deeper to continue meeting basic needs and empowering individuals to break the cycle of poverty.

To stay informed, visit cvoeo.org/updates for the latest developments and actions you can take.

How You Can Help

CVOEO recently launched the Community Action Journal, sharing stories from the frontlines of poverty relief in Vermont. Behind each story is a person striving for stability, dignity, and opportunity.

You can be part of that story. By joining the Community Action Circle as a monthly donor, you help sustain essential programs through uncertain times. Even small contributions provide crucial, flexible support when it’s needed most.

Donate today at cvoeo.org/donate
Because everyone deserves the chance to live with dignity, safety, and hope.

Read the story on VTDigger here: In crisis, community leads: CVOEO stands strong as ‘cuts sever the arteries of support’ .

Thursday, September 25
5–7:45 p.m.
St. Johnsbury Distillery, 74 Eastern Ave., St. Johnsbury, VT

Spend an evening of fun, conversation and community at St. Johnsbury Distillery’s trivia night! VTDigger’s Dirt Road News team will be there with prizes, swag and a chance to connect about the future of local news in Vermont.

This Northeast Kingdom pop-up is part of Dirt Road News, a VTDigger project designed to listen more closely to rural Vermonters. We’re especially eager to hear from younger residents, whose voices we don’t always reach, but all rural Vermonters are welcome to join in. Along with trivia night stops, Dirt Road News includes a survey and community ambassadors helping us understand how local news can serve Vermonters better.

Learn more about the project at vtdigger.org/dirt-road-news.

If you live in rural Vermont, take our short survey and share your perspective.

Trivia starts at 5 p.m. and wraps up by 7:45 p.m. No RSVP needed. Just come ready for some fun, good company and a little news with your night out.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Join us at St. Johnsbury Distillery for trivia night with the Dirt Road News project.

This commentary is by Zack Porter, of Montpelier. Porter is the executive director of Standing Trees, which works to protect and restore forests on New England’s public lands.

Whether you have enjoyed a hike to a summit in the Green or White mountains, an afternoon fishing on a cold-water trout stream, a postcard-perfect view from a highway overlook or a glass of clean water from your tap, there’s a good chance that a U.S. Forest Service “Inventoried Roadless Area” is to thank. 

On Aug. 29, the Trump administration put New England’s irreplaceable roadless areas in its crosshairs for logging and development by announcing its intent to rescind the “Roadless Rule.” More than one-fifth of the White and Green mountain national forests are at risk.

For a quarter century, the Roadless Rule has provided an essential layer of protection for 58.5 million acres of our national forests, or about a third of all lands managed by the U.S. Forest Service. 

Here in New England, the rule safeguards 260,000 acres of the White and Green mountain national forests, including iconic landscapes like New Hampshire’s Franconia Notch, Mt. Moosilauke, Mt. Chocorua and the presidential range. Portions of Vermont’s famous White Rocks National Recreation Area were only spared from road construction and clearcuts in an ongoing 14,000-acre logging project because of the Roadless Rule.

For an administration that has made big claims about improving government efficiency, rescinding the Roadless Rule may be among its most foolish stunts yet. The Forest Service has a $10.8 billion road maintenance backlog on its 370,000-mile road network, more miles of road than are managed by any other state or federal agency. Those roads — enough to circle the Earth 14 times — degrade water quality, worsen flooding, fragment important habitats and endanger communities by facilitating human ignitions of wildfires.

Recognizing the exceptional value of Inventoried Roadless Areas (totaling just 2% of the lower 48 states), the agency promoted the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule as “a down payment on the well-being of future generations,” in the words of former Forest Service Chief Mike Dombeck, who oversaw the rule’s development. 

More than 1.5 million Americans submitted comments in support of the rule, a record for public participation in federal rulemaking.

The irreplaceable landscapes protected by the Roadless Rule were central to the cultures and wellbeing of Indigenous people across North America prior to European colonization, and they remain important today. 

Vermonter Randy Kritkausky, a federally enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, wrote, “Repeal of the Roadless Area Conservation Rule would literally make permanent and devastating inroads into protected National Forests which are, for many Indigenous Peoples, our primary connection with unspoiled ancestral lands. This threat is not only ecological, it is profoundly spiritual.”

Only 3.3% of New England is protected from timber harvest and road construction, but scientists broadly agree the state must protect at least 10% of the region for the benefit of biodiversity, the climate and the well-being of our communities. Rescinding the Roadless Rule would set our region back, making our conservation goals harder to achieve than ever.

We have learned all too well what will happen to roadless lands if the Roadless Rule is rescinded. Over the past two decades, the Forest Service has systematically targeted roadless areas for logging that were inventoried after 2001 and lack the protections afforded by the Roadless Rule. 

In the Green Mountain National Forest, a single project approved in 2019 is set to cut 6,000 roadless acres, including more than 4,000 acres of clearcuts and similar “even-aged” harvests. A new White Mountain National Forest project proposes nearly 1,000 acres of roadless area logging, including about 200 acres of clearcuts.

Standing Trees is litigating to stop this reckless destruction, but a political solution is required in the long run. That’s why we’re grateful to members of Congress, including many here in New England, who have signed onto the Roadless Area Conservation Act of 2025, which would make the 2001 Roadless Rule permanent.

The act is an essential step to stopping President Donald Trump’s attacks and maintaining existing protections, but ultimately, our precious national forests deserve even stronger safeguards. New England’s state and federal public lands, spanning just 11% of the landscape, are worth far more to our regional economy when left intact. It’s time to reinvigorate the discussion of expanding congressionally designated wildlands across our two national forests, or even converting the forests to national parks.

In the short term, the clock is ticking to defend the Roadless Rule. Take a stand today by submitting a comment.

In the words of retired Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth, “The 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule was a landmark accomplishment of the USDA Forest Service. … The Roadless Rule is working for America’s National Forest System and it’s working for the American taxpayer. As we say, ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.’”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Zack Porter: America’s roadless areas are under attack. Speak up now..

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

Vermont’s Covid-era home-buying frenzy — marked by an extremely tight supply of available homes and sight-unseen offers — has now eased somewhat.

“I think that the balancing of the marketplace is kind of starting to occur,” said Peter Tucker, a lobbyist for the Vermont Association of Realtors.

An uptick in real estate listings and home sales show that the market has loosened. Fierce bidding wars are less common than they were just a few years ago, realtors say, and for-sale signs are a more common sight in many neighborhoods. Yet home prices continue to rise.

In 2024, the statewide median sale price for a primary home was about $353,000 — a 9% jump from the prior year. That’s according to state property transfer tax records collected by the Vermont Housing Finance Agency, which weeds out seasonal or occasional-use homes.

Preliminary data for the first half of 2025 shows that prices have continued to escalate this year. The median sale price had risen to about $370,000 as of June, according to Maura Collins, VHFA’s executive director.

That metric varies widely across the state. In 2024, the median sale price for a primary home in the state’s poorest and most rural county — Essex — was $200,000. In Chittenden County, Vermont’s population and job center, the median sale price reached $500,000 last year.

During the hot market of the pandemic years, home prices shot up while the number of homes sold plummeted. The rate of home sales now appears to have reversed course. In 2024, 9% more homes were sold than during the year prior, according to the state tax data.

The volume of sales appears to be stabilizing thus far in 2025, though different data sources paint slightly different pictures of the market. The state tax data shows a modest drop in the number of primary home sales during the first half of 2025 versus the first half of 2024. Slightly more current data on all single family home and condo sales collected by the Realtors’ association shows a 2.2% rise in homes sold as of August compared to the same period last year. The number of home listings has also jumped over 8% as of August, according to the Realtors’ association.

It’s still a seller’s market, and inventory remains well below pre-pandemic levels. But now, buyers have more options, said Brian Boardman, a real estate agent and co-owner of Burlington-based Coldwell Banker Hickok and Boardman. 

During the tight Covid years between 2021 and 2023, an agent could show a potential buyer maybe one or two homes within their given price range in Chittenden County, Boardman said. “Now, those buyers have, you know, maybe six or seven choices, or more — and so they can get more of their wish list.” 

A number of factors could be driving more people to sell their homes. Some homeowners may have been waiting for the pandemic to ease before retiring or moving closer to family, said Tucker, from the Realtors’ association. Some may have been waiting for interest rates to lower. The entrance of newly-constructed homes into the market has helped somewhat, said Boardman. 

There’s also a domino effect once inventory starts to open up, Boardman said. 

“The people that are in the family homes for 30 or 40 years are going to go to a retirement home, which opens up their house, which gets the young family out of a rental or maybe a two-bedroom condo,” which they can then put on the market, he said.

So why are home prices continuing to rise steeply even as more homes are selling? Collins, from the Vermont Housing Finance Agency, sees that as an indication that Vermont needs to continue building more homes to fill its deep deficit. The state is far from reaching a glut that would drag home values down, she said.

“Our goal is not to depress home values, but to slow the ever-increasing sales prices,” said Collins, who serves on the board of the pro-housing lobbying group Let’s Build Homes. “Even with more homes selling in 2024 than 2023 and even with more homes being listed for sale this summer than last summer, we don’t see that home prices are yet lowering,” she said.

Homes are also still selling quickly during the peak summer season, according to real estate data. That’s one sign that demand remains high.

Data on rentals in Vermont tends to be geographically patchy and outdated. But a recent survey of apartments in the state’s largest rental market — Chittenden County — shows that the razor-thin rental vacancy rate of the Covid-era years has begun to ease, according to Brad Minor, a partner at Allen, Brooks & Minor, a real estate appraisal and analytics firm in South Burlington.

As of June, the area’s rental vacancy rate had risen to 3% — up from under 1%, where it had hovered for over a year beginning in December 2021, Minor said. 

That easing is likely tied to the elimination of Covid-era eviction restrictions and rental assistance, but it is also likely the result of new apartments going online, Minor said. In 2024, his firm identified 824 new apartments built in Chittenden County — more than twice the annual rate of building in any given year for the past two decades.

The firm has yet to tabulate how much average rents have changed in the area in 2025, though Minor said that now some landlords of higher-priced rentals with more vacancies are considering making price cuts to attract tenants.

“It’s possible that we may see maybe less dramatic rent increases, because we’re appearing to move towards a state of balance,” he said.

Disclosure: Vermont Public’s April McCullum was a secondary editor on this article and has a family member employed by Coldwell Banker, of which Coldwell Banker Hickok and Boardman is an independent affiliate.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Even with more Vermont homes on the market, prices are still rising .

Colchester officials have given preliminary approval to a proposed $8 million lakefront lodging development — a move that has angered many residents who now plan to appeal the decision.

Hazelett Strip-Casting Corp. describes its development as a “20-room inn” with five “cottage-style” units built into the slope overlooking Malletts Bay to house a restaurant and event space, with almost 100 parking spots mainly on the opposite side of West Lakeshore Drive.

Opposed residents dispute that characterization of the development — called The H at Malletts Bay — and continue to raise concerns about its potential effect on water quality, increased traffic and pedestrian safety, and setting a precedent for large development along the scenic waterfront.

“We are disappointed with the decision, believe it misstates many of the facts and contains flawed analysis. The group is seriously considering taking an appeal,” said Brice Simon, a lawyer representing a group of town residents.

Residents have also objected to the board trying to reframe its own definition of what constitutes an inn, Simon said, because the town’s development regulations do not allow hotels or motels in the lakeshore district.

An inn, by the town’s rules, is an establishment containing at least six rooms but no more than 20 for living or sleeping purposes. No more than 40% of the rooms may contain apartment-type furnishings such as a kitchen, bath, living space and separate bedroom.

The project proposes 20 rooms, all or almost all of which contain typical apartment-type furnishings, according to an email shared by town officials. The floor plans submitted show such features in at least 10 of the 20 rooms, he further noted.

“There has never been a satisfactory explanation from the developer as to how the project meets the definition of an inn. Therefore, it is a hotel or motel, and is not an allowed or conditional use in the district. Therefore, the application should be denied as a matter of law,” Simon wrote in an email.

The town’s Development Review Board issued its 46-page decision on Sept. 3. Residents said they expect to discuss the matter at the board’s meeting Wednesday night. 

Development Review Board members did not respond to a request for comment.

The inn proposal is not on Wednesday meeting agenda, and the board does not plan to discuss it at the meeting, according to Cathyann LaRose, director of planning and zoning.

“The DRB, as a quasi-judicial board, is prohibited from discussing items which are not on an agenda or part of an active deliberative session. The Hazelett properties have no active applications and a decision has already been issued for the preliminary plat application. The Board will not and cannot discuss this property amongst themselves or with members of the public,” she wrote in an email Wednesday. 

The developers and their representatives did not respond Wednesday to a request from VTDigger to comment on the residents’ concerns.

‘Grossly negligent’

“This is one of the most egregious town decisions I have ever read,” resident Jack Scully said in an email.

“They’ve sold our souls for $8 million. Shame on them,” Jeanne Welch, another resident, said.

By rubber-stamping a large development that requires building into the slope right against the bay, the board is “ignoring” a town ordinance on what could be built there, what constitutes a traffic study, and its responsibility to uphold the state’s Shoreland Protection Act, said Lori Barg, a West Lakeshore Drive resident. 

“It seems like they look for every hole in their regulations and miss the heart of the regulations,” she wrote in an email.

It’s “grossly negligent of the DRB” to approve a plan that has severe environmental and ecological impacts on Malletts Bay and on Lake Champlain, said resident Julie Elmore, one of many who recently organized to oppose the project.

“Colchester is abdicating its responsibility for water quality in Malletts Bay,” said Marilyn Sowles, a former selectboard member and a member of the resident group Save the Bay, which has also pointed to possible environmental detriments the project poses, as well its inconsistency with the 2019 Town Plan that provides an outline for land use and town development.

In meetings this year, Sowles voiced her opposition to the town allowing developers to cut down many trees and combine the two small Hazelett lots to make way for an “inn,” restaurant, spa and event center that would connect to the new sewer being built on Lakeshore Drive, causing significant traffic delays.

“It appears that the $16.7 million Malletts Bay sewer, supposedly being built to protect water quality, is instead enabling additional development along the lakeshore with no consideration by either the town of Colchester or the Colchester Development Review Board for how this new development will impact water quality,” Sowles said. “There will be no stormwater treatment along the lakefront and 43% of the existing trees will be cut. Stormwater runoff will only be treated on the opposite side of West Lakeshore Drive.”

When the sewer project was discussed last year, many worried the town was investing in future development over environmental mitigation, but officials disputed those arguments. Town Manager Aaron Frank at the time said the new sewer line would not have the capacity to support excess development, citing limited roadway capacity and existing land use regulations on East and West Lakeshore drives.

Prior to that, the town reworked zoning for Lakeshore Drive in 2022, eliciting the same environmental and over-development concerns.

Hazelett, which has long owned the plots, demolished the vacant Beach and Boat Motel in 2017 and has contemplated rebuilding there since, according to the Colchester Sun.

Residents have a 30-day period to appeal the decision in the environmental division of the Vermont Superior Court. The preliminary plat approval is one step in the review process. The applicant has to apply for a final plat review, which will include at least another hearing and final decision, according to LaRose.

The environmental court is the last recourse for the concerned residents, Elmore said. It is tragic, she added, that they have to incur legal fees to fight a development the town should have rejected based on its own rules.

“To me, the decision is unconscionable,” Welch said. “It guarantees that West Lakeshore will be immeasurably more congested and unsafe for vehicles, pedestrians and cyclists than it already is. Not to mention the loss of that iconic view. All to provide a playground for the rich and line a developer’s pockets.”

Correction: A previous version of the story wrongly identified where the parking spots are proposed.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Colchester board approves plan for hotel. ‘Unconscionable’, say residents who plan to appeal..

Theo Wells-Spackman is a Report for America corps member who reports for VTDigger.org.

Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield launched a campaign Tuesday to “free” the ice cream company they founded from its current owner Unilever, claiming the larger corporation has stifled the Vermont-based outfit’s political messaging and actions.

The campaign includes two open letters authored by the Ben & Jerry’s founders, which address their concerns to the current owners and prospective investors. The move comes after years of conflict in and out of court between Ben & Jerry’s and the London-based Unilever, and seeks to mobilize public support to pressure the larger company to allow its subsidiary to regain independence. 

The letter to current board members is addressed to the Magnum Ice Cream Company, an emerging spin-off entity which will own a number of brands including Ben & Jerry’s, Unilever announced last year. In the statement, the founders argued that since Unilever purchased Ben & Jerry’s in 2000, “the commitments made to us, our employees, and our customers (have been) eroded.” 

In particular, the founders wrote, the company’s “freedom to pursue its social mission,” which the founders say was enshrined in the original sale, has been infringed on a number of occasions in relation to “issues such as Gaza, indigenous rights, the Trump administration, and DEI.”

Jerry Greenfield did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In a statement to VTDigger on Wednesday, a spokesperson for Unilever said, “Ben & Jerry’s is a proud part of The Magnum Ice Cream Company and is not for sale.” The spokesperson added that Unilever remains “committed to Ben & Jerry’s unique three-part mission — product, economic and social — and look(s) forward to building on its success as an iconic, much-loved business.” 

Ben & Jerry’s sued Unilever last year for allegedly trying to block the smaller company’s statements on Gaza, after turmoil over the company’s presence in Israel and the West Bank. Earlier this year, Ben & Jerry’s claimed in court that its parent company ousted longtime CEO David Stever over his support for progressive activism, sparking protests from employees.

“That is not the Ben & Jerry’s that we founded,” Cohen and Greenfield wrote in Tuesday’s open letter. “Ben & Jerry’s has become successful precisely because people know it stands for something deeper than ice cream.” 

The pair also addressed prospective investors, urging them to reconsider their involvement with Magnum and advising them that the founders, as well as many employees and customers, no longer support the direction of the company under current management.

“We intend to campaign for an independent Ben and Jerry’s, owned by values-aligned investors,” Cohen and Greenfield said.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Ben & Jerry’s founders launch campaign to ‘free’ ice cream operation from parent company.

The attorney for a former California man convicted of charges in a plot to kill a business partner in Vermont is asking a judge to delay his sentencing where he faces a mandatory sentence of life behind bars.

Prosecutors responded in their own filing that the hearing should go forward as scheduled.

Serhat Gumrukcu, 42, is set to be sentenced later this month in federal court in Burlington after a jury returned guilty verdicts against him in April for offenses including murder for hire, conspiracy to commit murder for hire and conspiracy to commit wire fraud.

The case against Gumrukcu stems from the fatal shooting of 49-year-old Gregory Davis of Danville. According to prosecutors, Gumrukcu ordered and paid for Davis to be killed over a failed oil trading deal between the two men. 

Susan Marcus, Gumrukcu’s attorney, filed a motion Wednesday morning seeking to delay that sentencing for at least 60 days.

Marcus wrote that a draft presentence report prepared by federal probation officers has raised issues that she wanted to address before her client’s sentencing.

While Gumrukcu faces a mandatory life sentence, Marcus wrote in the filing, “nonetheless issues like the amount of a fine, restitution, as well as factual assertions that we dispute are relevant to sentencing and warrant a response from Serhat Gumrukcu.”

Prosecutors, in a response filed later Wednesday afternoon, wrote that a delay was not warranted. 

“This Court must sentence the defendant to life,” the filing stated. “Sentencing is therefore not complex.”

The prosecution filing also included a statement from Melissa Davis, Gregory Davis’ widow. She wrote about the impact a delay would have on her and her family.

“For seven long years we have prayed and waited for justice in the death of my husband. We are deeply grateful for the jury’s verdict earlier this year, which finally brought us a measure of justice and peace,” Melissa Davis wrote.

“Your Honor, each postponement reopens wounds that have struggled to heal. We have endured years of extensions and delays with patience and grace, but the weight has been heavy,” Melissa Davis added. “My children and I long to take the next step forward in our lives, and that step cannot fully come until this process is complete.”  

Judge Christina Reiss, who has presided over the case, had not issued a ruling by late Wednesday afternoon.

Gumrukcu led the murder-to-hire plot to kill Davis over fears that the Vermont man was going to go to authorities and accuse him of fraud in a business deal between them regarding oil trading that had been ongoing for months. 

That would, prosecutors said during the trial, possibly have hindered a larger business deal Gumrukcu had in the works with a biomedical company with millions of dollars at stake. 

Gumrukcu was a Turkish national with permanent U.S. residency status at the time of Davis’ killing. Davis, who was 49 at the time of his death, was living in Vermont with his wife and six children, with a seventh on the way.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Attorney seeks sentencing delay for leader of murder-for-hire plot that killed Vermont man.

MONTPELIER — Gov. Phil Scott said his administration plans to present a slate of recommendations to Burlington leaders in the coming weeks to address what he called a “crisis” related to homelessness and public drug use in the state’s largest city.

Scott’s comments, during a press conference Wednesday, come several weeks after Burlington Mayor Emma Mulvaney-Stanak charged that the governor was not doing enough to help her city, or other municipalities around Vermont, respond to persistent social and economic challenges that have garnered significant statewide attention.

At the same time, Scott and leaders from his administration argued that the city isn’t doing enough on its own to enforce existing laws, including cracking down on illegal drug use and drug dealing as well as property crimes. A man’s death last month after he was assaulted near downtown’s City Hall Park has also inflamed local safety concerns.

“I look at this as like a crisis that they’re facing, much like a flood,” Scott told reporters, speaking in response to a question about the city’s economic vitality. “And the first thing that we need to do is respond to the flooding and help people — and then, the recovery part after. So, it’ll be a two-step process.”

The Republican governor said he met with a group of Burlington business owners Tuesday and plans to meet soon with residents and academic leaders, all of which would inform his recommendations. He would not share any specific policy changes he might propose. Scott said his administration would present its plan to Mulvaney-Stanak, who’s a Progressive, as well as the Democratic-controlled Burlington City Council. 

Late last month, the council overwhelmingly passed a resolution aimed at barring people from camping overnight in City Hall Park — something that is not allowed under local ordinances but has nevertheless become commonplace — and bolstering the presence of law enforcement officers in the area, among other measures. 

In the park, which is located just off the Church Street shopping hub, “acts of violence, drug trafficking, open drug use, the fencing of stolen goods, disorderly conduct, unlawful mischief, and similarly unacceptable incidents are far too commonplace,” the council resolution states.

Scott’s press secretary, Amanda Wheeler, said in an email Wednesday afternoon that the governor’s plan would focus on “public safety, holding service-resistant repeat offenders accountable, and connecting those in need of treatment to services.”

City leaders have not explicitly asked Scott to make policy recommendations, the governor said. But he contended that his goal was not to impose changes on the city that it would not want.

“We’re not going to force ourselves onto the city much like we’re seeing across the country with the current administration in Washington. That’s not our role,” Scott said. “If the city would like our help, we would lay out a plan to let them know what we can provide, and what we can’t.”

Mulvaney-Stanak wrote in an emailed statement Wednesday afternoon that she was “pleased to hear” the governor and his administration were considering ways to help Burlington.

The city is developing a list of specific requests for the state government that it believes would complement efforts already underway locally to address health and safety challenges, the mayor wrote. Her office is doing its own outreach to community members as part of that process, too.

“I look forward to meeting with the Governor to discuss our respective ideas and identify areas for deeper collaboration and coordination on both immediate and longer term solutions,” the mayor wrote.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Gov. Phil Scott says he’ll give Burlington a plan to tackle safety challenges.

In an appeal to state workers, Gov. Phil Scott released a video statement this week explaining his decision to institute a three-days-per-week return to office across state government. 

“Vermonters want and need to access their government. They need to see us in their communities. They need to know where and how we work,” he said, recording from his office desk. “Most importantly, they want and need us to be good stewards of their tax dollars.”

For its part, the Vermont State Employees’ Association, the union representing state workers, has strongly opposed the move, and its president released a video of her own in response. 

“You have excluded us from the conversation. You have shut us out of your secret committee that is meeting to work on a policy that will have devastating impacts on the delivery of vital services,” Aimee Bertrand said in her video message, referencing a cross-agency group Scott had empowered to plan the logistics of the switch. She recorded from her kitchen, where she said she works remotely every day. 

The dueling videos reveal the high stakes of the new policy decision, which sent shockwaves across state government when Scott first announced his intention last month. Starting Dec. 1, state employees will be expected to work from their offices at least three days per week, a pivot for many who have grown accustomed to almost total flexibility to work from home. 

Scott and his top deputies have said the decision is driven by a need to increase collaboration and transparency both between workers and with the public. The employees’ union has criticized the policy as arbitrary and running contrary to Vermont data indicating state employees highly value remote work and believe it positively impacts productivity. 

Addressing state workers directly in a video was a rare step for Scott, who used the speech to stress that his choice was not a slight at the quality or commitment of Vermont’s workforce. He also noted that many state workers haven’t been able to work remotely at all.  

“One of the things I’m most proud of as governor is the silos we’ve broken down between agencies and departments,” he said in his video statement released Monday. “But we’ve lost some of that camaraderie and collaboration because we don’t see each other in person.”

On Tuesday, Bertrand turned up the pressure, accusing Scott of “attempting to divide state workers and pit them against each other.”

She argued employees are safer when they don’t have to drive through storms or work in “poorly secured” state buildings, and that less travel time was an environmentally conscious decision. 

“Polished videos are nice, but how ‘bout a real conversation?” Bertrand posed to Scott.  

Scott’s administration has the power to alter employee telework agreements with two weeks notice, far less than the three month timeline laid out. Still, the three-month turnaround is a daunting logistical feat and questions linger about its rollout. Sarah Clark, Vermont’s administration secretary, said Wednesday that the hybrid return-to-office plan is taking up 99% of her focus. 

Across the country, both private business and the public sector have grappled with bringing employees back to the office since Covid-19 brought a halt to some in-person work. In many states, governors’ efforts to bring back state workers, either part-time or full-time, have  been met with aggressive union opposition — and mixed results. 

In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott first sought to end telework but then signed legislation bringing back the option. The Nebraska Supreme Court upheld the state governor’s return to work order after a state employees’ union challenged it. And in California, where Gov. Gavin Newsom has pushed for four days in office, his administration cut deals with employees’ unions to limit the mandate in exchange for salary concessions.  

Shaun Robinson contributed reporting. 

Read the story on VTDigger here: Gov. Phil Scott, union president release dueling videos on state employees’ return to office.

Dear Reader,

Before reporting for the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, I got my start at The Rutland Herald, where I learned what strong local journalism means for a community.

If you value reliable local reporting that cuts through the national noise, please consider a gift to help us reach our fall member goal today.

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Editor-in-chief, VTDigger

P.S. Make a gift during our Fall Member Drive and you’ll be entered to win one of two $250 gift cards to Johnson Woolen Mills. New monthly sustainers will also receive a VTDigger sustainer decal.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Fall Member Drive: Every gift informs and empowers.

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

As President Trump’s immigration crackdown intensifies, many immigrants who have lived, worked and paid taxes in the United States for years are getting snatched by masked agents and disappeared into a vast network of jails across the country.

In Vermont, a small but growing group of young attorneys have thrown themselves into the fight to defend the immigrants’ rights. Newly minted lawyers, including recent graduates of Vermont Law and Graduate School, are now going head to head with lawyers from Trump’s Justice Department.

The attorneys have been going into Vermont’s jails and encountering terrified immigrants, many of whom are being repeatedly shuffled between states in what appears to be a deliberate effort to frustrate their attempts to obtain effective legal representation. Some detainees do not even know where they are. 

Vermont Asylum Assistance Project  (VAAP), headed by immigration attorney Jill Martin Diaz, has been a driving force behind the effort to mobilize lawyers and defend immigrants. VAAP has grown from one staff member in 2024 to what will be a staff of eight by November, including four new attorneys who are part of the national Immigrant Justice Corps. VAAP recently received a $100,000 grant from the recently established Vermont Immigration Legal Defense Fund to hire staff, bring in attorneys and train Vermont lawyers to handle immigration cases.

Martin Diaz formerly taught immigration law at Vermont Law and Graduate School, directed its Center for Justice Reform Clinic and practiced at Vermont Legal Aid. They currently are a lecturer in the department of social work at the University of Vermont. In 2023, Martin Diaz was named by the LGBTQ+ Bar Association as one of the 40 best LGBTQ+ lawyers under 40.

I visited VAAP’s headquarters in Burlington, where I interviewed Martin Diaz, staff attorney Leah Brenner and volunteer staff attorney Andy Pelcher.

“I’m looking around at our office that’s not even unpacked and we barely have lights and WiFi. How are we holding our own against Trump’s Department of Justice that just got a big, beautiful raise?” marveled Martin Diaz, who described fighting the Trump administration as akin to David vs. Goliath.

Martin Diaz said that immigrants are “canaries in the coal mine.”

“People are really starting to look at what’s going on in the immigration system as a microcosm for what could happen to our democracy if left unchecked, not just for noncitizens, but for everyone.”

Pelcher, who graduated Vermont Law and Graduate School in 2018 and went on to get an LLM, or master of laws, described a recent visit to Northwest State Correctional Facility in St. Albans, where he encountered a Palestinian man who was a survivor of torture who “had been bounced around to a number of facilities during the 14 months that he had been detained.” Somehow he landed in a Vermont jail. 

“People are being frequently transferred from facility to facility, seemingly as a means to deny access to counsel, family, local networks of support, and any other means by which these individuals can meaningfully prepare for their defense against removal,” said Pelcher. VAAP, together with the Association of Africans Living in Vermont, took on the man’s case.

VAAP’s experience finding and aiding immigrants in Vermont’s jails has led Martin Diaz to oppose the idea of closing Vermont’s jails to ICE. “I would not advocate for more beds, but I would also strongly caution against a wholesale end to ICE’s ability to detain people in our state,” they said. “The truth is that there is no substitute for lawyers getting in their cars, going to a facility with our bodies and meeting one on one in private with our clients directly.”

“It’s really, really difficult to provide people with legal help telephonically, when the people who have your clients in custody have no respect for the rule of law and for individuals rights.”

Is America’s legal system up to the task of defending rights and institutions in the Trump era?

“I do have hope that the rule of law will prevail and that this horrible, horrible, tragic moment in our history, this painful moment for our community members who are being directly impacted, can also be a galvanizing opportunity for us to rethink what do we want our laws to say? What do we want due process to look like? What checks and balances do we want?” said Martin Diaz.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Vermont Conversation: Vermont Asylum Assistance Project confronts Trump’s assault on immigrant rights.

LUDLOW — Addiction specialist Melanie Gulde helped Phish frontman and guitarist Trey Anastasio after his 2006 arrest for driving under the influence and drug possession. More recently, she teamed with him to open this town’s 46-bed Divided Sky Residential Recovery Program.

Gulde knows the frontman for the Vermont-formed band isn’t the only person who needs some backup.

“Women recover from addictions differently and face more barriers to treatment, often leaving them feeling overwhelmed and discouraged,” she said.

That’s why the nonprofit retreat center is launching a new women’s scholarship fund to assist those dealing with substance use disorder.

“It is more than just financial aid,” Gulde said of a fund that’s already raised $300,000 toward its $500,000 goal. “It’s a statement that every woman is worthy of a sober life, and we are here to support them.”

Women are more likely than men to face traumatic life experiences that can lead to substance use disorder, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration reports. Yet because of a lack of money and support, they account for only one-third of admissions to recovery facilities.

Enter Divided Sky. Anastasio had become dependent on opioids after dental surgery before he began a court-mandated recovery program under Gulde, a licensed counselor who specializes in abstinence-based, 12-step work.

The musician went on to create a nonprofit foundation, collect more than $1 million through a 2020 series of online “Beacon Jams” concerts, and purchase Ludlow’s 18-acre Fox Run at Okemo property, which features a 20-room lodge with a commercial kitchen, meeting space and exercise facility.

“I started Divided Sky Foundation to offer people the same help that I was fortunate enough to receive,” Anastasio told Ludlow leaders during a 2021 review hearing. “I’ve talked to a lot of people in the incredible, progressive, forward-thinking Vermont recovery community and there’s one place that they all agree, and that’s that we don’t have enough beds.”

After some neighbors voiced concerns, Divided Sky dropped its plans to offer medical services and medication-assisted treatment to help with withdrawal (Vermont has three such providers: Recovery House in Wallingford, Sana at Stowe and Valley Vista in Bradford). Instead, it opened in 2023 as a “nonclinical program grounded in compassion, mindfulness and the 12 steps” for long-term wellness, according to its website.

The cost of a 30-day stay is listed at $7,500. Because Divided Sky isn’t a detox or rehab center but a next-step recovery retreat, it can’t bill Medicaid, Medicare or private insurance and instead relies on scholarships.

“We don’t turn people away for lack of funds,” said Gulde, who has welcomed 265 attendees in the past two years. “Our mentality is what do you have and let’s work together to get you in the door.”

Divided Sky is establishing the scholarship fund with the help of Tamara Holder, a women’s rights attorney and advocate who covered the cost of the program’s first female participant in 2023.

“I know it’s already working,” Holder said of the center’s efforts.

Several Phish fan groups are planning to collect money for the cause in advance of Anastasio performing a sold-out set of fifth-anniversary Beacon Jams concerts in November. The frontman has good words for the new fund.

“This program,” he said in a statement, “can give more women the chance to heal and start fresh.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Backed by Phish frontman, new recovery scholarship fund aims to help women.

Born March 19, 1960

Barre City Hospital

Died Sept. 5, 2025

McClure Miller Respite House Colchester

Details of services

A celebration of life will be held at East Cemetery in Williston on Wednesday, September 17th, at 2:00. In lieu of flowers, please consider a donation to the Green Mountain Club, https://www.greenmountainclub.org/.

David Michael Winter (1960 – 2025) Essex Jct.

Dave was born on March 19, 1960, in Barre City Hospital and died September 5, 2025, in the McClure Miller Respite House in Colchester, Vermont, after a long battle with cancer.

Dave was a lifelong hiker, climbing his first mountain, Camel’s Hump, at the age of 5; completing the Long Trail at 13 to become its youngest solo End-to-Ender; and continuing to climb Camel’s Hump and nearby mountains until the last year of his life. His appreciation of the wilderness made him a strong proponent of restoring and enhancing our environmental protections.

Overcoming many personal obstacles, he was a fierce advocate for the poor, homeless, mentally ill, and others he believed were ill-treated by society. He worked for many years at COTS, as well as helping people cope with jail release, substance abuse, and other problems.

For several years, Dave was a self-employed logger and snowplow contractor. In his last years, he was a bus driver for GMTA, a job he thoroughly enjoyed, and a proud member of the Teamsters Union, until their leadership supported Trump.

Dave was an avid writer and published several chapbooks of original poetry. He continued to pen new work until the last week of his life.

His many other interests included martial arts, both Tai Chi and Kempo Ju Jitsu, where he proudly achieved a purple belt. While opposed to most forms of consumerism, Dave was a lifelong coin collector; he also collected movies, tools, and Magic Cards.

Dave was a lover of all creatures on four legs, especially dogs. His childhood dog Schatzie was his constant hiking companion. As an adult, he was never in a position to keep a dog, but his family’s dogs (“puppies”) always gave him, and them, joy.

While Dave took his civic responsibilities seriously, working hard to support candidates who shared his views and letting his representatives know where he stood on issues, he may be remembered best for his generosity of spirit and willingness to lend a helping hand to friends, neighbors, and family. He showed a special level of care to his mom, claiming he “tortured that poor woman” as a teenager.

We wish to express our sincere thanks to all the staff and volunteers at McLure-Miller who took such good care of him in his final days. And we especially want to thank all his friends who visited him at both the hospitals and respite house – it did a lot to brighten his spirits. And your friendship is the best testament to the man Dave was.

Dave was predeceased by his mentor and his mother’s long-time partner, Alvin Gover. He is survived by his mother, Hazel Winter; sister, Monique “Moki” Fox; father, James Winter and his wife, Kelly Winter, who hand-knit Dave many beautiful hats; nephew Jesse Fox and wife, Eron, and their children, Irie, Morgan, Lyran, Quinten, Stella, Jacob and Adelaide; niece Lizzy Fox Lausier, her husband, Steve, and their daughter, Sylvia; and niece, Nurto Hassan.

Read the story on VTDigger here: David Michael Winter.

Born Aug. 30, 1951

Montpelier, Vermont

Died Aug. 15, 2025

Tampa, Florida

Timothy Joseph Perry died on August 15, 2025 at his home in Tampa, Florida. He was born on August 30, 1951 in Montpelier, VT. Tim is survived by his siblings Betty Tassie, Michael Perry, Ruby Perry, Dave Perry, Mary Patricia Perry and many nieces and nephews. He was predeceased by his parents Nelson and Kathryn Perry, his stepmother Gene Perry and his sister Dorothy Stewart O’Mara.

Tim grew up in Montpelier, the fourth of the seven Perry children. He made his way through St. Michael’s School, where the nuns tried – unsuccessfully – to tame his curly red hair and his freedom-loving spirit. He always loved animals, and opened his Florida home to an ever-changing array of feral cats, but he had two all-time favorite pets. One was Oscar the cat who was with him when he died and Black Dog who predeceased him.

Throughout Tim’s life, his best friend, fishing partner and drinking buddy was his brother Mike. He spent much of the Vermont portion of his adult life in his beloved Champlain Islands. Before moving south for warmer climes, he made his home in Grand Isle where his mother and maternal ancestors are buried. His ashes will be returned to the Islands and to Lake Champlain as he requested. We will remember him in his favorite job as a ferry captain for Lake Champlain ferries.

Tim was a self-taught thinker, a voracious reader, and a fixer of all things mechanical. In his Florida years, he smoked cigars and built electric bikes from parts ordered online. For years after his dad’s death in 1995, Tim helped his stepmother Gene with routine home repairs. He followed the news and had strong opinions about…well, everything. He lived every day of his life exactly as he chose.

His siblings started doing weekly Zoom calls at the beginning of the pandemic. Tim never skipped one until the day he died. We will all miss his gruff but attentive presence.

There is no memorial service planned, though the family will gather in the fall somewhere on the shores of Lake Champlain to spread his ashes.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Timothy Joseph Perry.

Born Nov. 13, 1951

Midland, Michigan

Died Aug. 17, 2025

Orleans, Massachusetts

Martha “Marty” Van Oot, a distinguished attorney and fierce advocate for justice who was deeply committed to her family and friends, died Sunday, Aug. 17 at her home in Orleans, Massachusetts. She was 73.

Marty was born on November 13, 1951, in Midland, Michigan, to Elizabeth Dawson Oot and Albert P. Oot Jr. She grew up in Westminster, Vermont, graduated magna cum laude from Middlebury College and earned her law degree from Northeastern University School of Law.

Marty served in the NH Attorney General’s Office before turning to private practice and building a distinguished career with several Granite State firms as an admired partner, top litigator, and valued mediator. In 2012, she joined Jackson Lewis in Portsmouth as a partner and practiced there until her retirement in 2021.

She received numerous honors throughout her four-decade career as a litigator, including the NH Campaign for Legal Services’ John R. Tobin Jr. Justice Award for her decades-long work advocating for access to justice, and the NH Women’s Bar Association’s Marilla M. Ricker Award. She was a dedicated supporter of Democratic and progressive candidates and served on numerous charitable and civic boards, including the Granite, Merrimack, and Greater Manchester United Ways; New Horizons, Inc; the New Hampshire Endowment for Health; and the Friends of Norris Cancer Center.

For those who were lucky enough to know her, Marty’s most important legacy will be as a devoted friend and fierce ally whose generosity knew no bounds. She was an anchor of her family, whom she loved beyond reason.

Marty is survived by her son Benjamin Van Oot, his wife Sarah Daly Van Oot, and their children Olivia Van Oot, and Jack, Avery, and Noah Diorio; her siblings Christopher Oot (Sara), Peter D. Van Oot, Laura Oot Sheridan (John), and Betsy Van Oot.

In lieu of flowers, Marty’s family asks friends to consider donations in her honor to the NH Campaign for Legal Services, the Family Pantry of Cape Cod or the Pan-Mass Challenge. Maybe the best way to honor her legacy is to live your life as she did: by trying to leave the world a better place than you found it.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Martha Van Oot.

Born Feb. 9, 1954

Brooklyn, New York

Died Aug. 22, 2025

Bradford, Vermont

Barbi Schreiber died peacefully in the early morning hours of August 22. Born in 1954 in Brooklyn, NY. Barbi earned her BFA at SUNY Fredonia, NY and MFA SF State University.

Barbi was a published photographer in the San Francisco Bay Area and her work is archived at the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Historical Society of Northern California. After relocating to Vermont in 2001, she devoted a majority of her time working with local advocacy groups promoting sustainable and organic farming practices including protecting farmers’ rights. She was co-publisher of Vermont’s Local Banquet Magazine.

She leaves behind her partner of 41 years, Meg, and her mountain of friends and caregivers across the country.

Barbi’s body was returned to the earth on August 24 in a joyful celebration at the Vermont Forest Cemetery where she will nourish the forests that she loved.

To honor her memory one can make a donation to The Margaret Pratt Community in Bradford, VT or the Vermont Forest Cemetery in Roxbury, VT. Barbi also invites you to take a walk in the woods and reflect on the wonder around you.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Barbi Schreiber.

Beth Hankes said her sex shop in Burlington was meant to be “the resource that I hadn’t had.” 

Struggling with sexual health issues and feeling trapped in the corporate world, she noticed a lack of modern, accessible and “joyful” stores selling sex products in the area. So in 2021, she opened Earth + Salt, the first women-owned sex shop in Burlington.

Now a certified sex educator, Hankes runs educational events at the store at least once a month. When Kell Arbor, health and wellness director at the Pride Center, approached the store to ask if they would sponsor Burlington’s first-ever Sex Week, she was so eager that she ended up becoming heavily involved in organizing it. 

The upcoming Sex Week, scheduled from Sept. 14 to 20, features 18 events and runs the gamut from educational panels to art shows and performances to how-to workshops. Earth + Salt plans to host two events, and others will take place at the Spiral House, the Karma Birdhouse, the Pride Center and the Burlington Waterfront Park.

Hankes and Arbor pulled together local sex educators as well as their connections in New York and elsewhere to offer the events, which vary in price from free to roughly $20.

Arbor said Sex Week was partly meant as a counterbalance to Burlington’s more “family-friendly” Pride event, which took place on Sunday. 

“I have been hearing from community members that we need more saucy, juicy, sexy things, not just within Pride, but within the community, centering queer and trans folks,” Arbor said. 

Arbor, whose pronouns are fae/faer, said the events were meant to be LGBTQ+ friendly by nature, but all are welcome. Only two events, mixers for BIPOC Vermonters and bisexual Vermonters, are restricted to people in each of those groups. 

“That’s what equity is about, right? Lifting up the perspectives of people most left out, that we might all see new ways forward,” fae said. 

Arbor said that as an HIV-positive Vermonter, fae have encountered ignorance around sexual health, even among health providers. “I’ve seen where the gaps were in my care with doctors saying women don’t get STIs,” or sexually transmitted infections. “That’s very inaccurate. One, I’m not a woman, and two, women get STIs,” fae said. 

Three events are aimed specifically at health practitioners, including one on sexual health for older adults and one on trans-inclusive practices in health care, according to the event website. 

At the same time, the organizers hope to draw people into the conversation by centering and celebrating pleasure in its workshops on kink and other sexual practices. “Pleasure is more of a sustainable invitation in. That’s why I like ‘edu-taining’ models,” Arbor said. 

Hankes said the event will feel like a release point for all the pressures and restrictions that have been building up this year regarding sexual health and marginalized communities. 

“We’re still going to be ourselves,” she said. “We’re still going to have this point of pleasure, education, community and give ourselves access to that, because obviously the government and the current cultural climate is not going to give us that.”

Arbor said events like these feel even more essential in the current political climate. The Pride Center was hit hard by federal funding cuts to HIV prevention earlier this year. 

“When we’re being attacked at our identities because of who and how we love, that’s all the more reason to invite people into education about how we might all free ourselves into more pleasure,” Arbor said. “I’m always like, ‘if we’re too busy having orgasms, we can’t bomb the world.’”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Burlington’s first-ever ‘sex week’ celebrates inclusivity in sex education.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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