The Vermont State Auditor of Accounts should be empowered to pump the brakes on climate change regulation, according to a bill sponsored by Rep. Linda Joy Sullivan (D-Dorset), who yesterday announced she will run for auditor against incumbent Doug Hoffer.
A bill giving cities and towns the power to exercise rent control will be discussed by lawmakers Friday morning. Other bills in committee this week address contraception, a homeless bill of rights, commercial cannabis, “good cause” for firing employees, a eugenics apology, and more.
In testimony given to lawmakers Thursday at the Statehouse, representatives of the Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department said the 30-megawatt, 15-turbine Deerfield Wind Farm on Green Mountain National Forest land has affected the habitat of black bears in that region.
New Gun Owners of Vermont president Eric Davis gave his first testimony Thursday at the Statehouse, and in it he told members of the House Judiciary Committee that forcing Vermonters to wait for lengthy background checks punishes law-abiding citizens.
S.182, sponsored by Senate Government Operations Committee Chair Jeanette White, D-Windham, creates a plan to elevate a new Agency of Public Safety to lead a new “hierarchical structure” over all state and county enforcement.
At the start of both a new year and a new decade, Vermont’s future looks uncertain as its resident population ages, young people scatter out of state, and few businesses of consequence are being lured to the Green Mountain State.
Vermont’s fourth celebration of School Choice Week came to the Statehouse on Wednesday, with students sharing stories about the benefits of choice and education policy leaders calling for more action.
In one sentence at a press conference Wednesday, Brad Ferland of St. Albans declared the goal of National School Choice Week: “School choice should be expanded, and not taken away.”
Lesbian feminist Peggy Luhrs and her group Gender Critical Vermont have been forced to cancel a discussion at the Fletcher Free Library about the clash between transgenderism and feminism, according to reports by WCAX and Seven Days.
Some ideas lawmakers heard during the hearing include the importance of pursuing policy changes even when “democratic consensus” might be absent, and how the state could use advanced communications technologies to turn off appliances in people’s homes.
About 100 years after the heyday of the Vermont eugenics movement led by UVM Professor Henry Perkins, the Vermont Legislature this week is preparing an official apology to Abenaki, French-Canadians and others forced into sterilization under laws promulgated by previous general assemblies.
Local voters are set to join Vermonters from four other communities across the state in seeking to create “Second Amendment sanctuaries” to protect gun owners from laws that erode longstanding state and federal gun rights.