The Deeper Dig: Recent Episodes
VTDigger
From Vermont's only member-supported digital news daily, VTDigger reporters go deep on the key story of the week.
For the past few years, Vermont has had the second highest per-capita rate of homelessness in the country. During the Covid-19 pandemic, the number of people counted as homeless more than doubled, and the numbers keep going up.
Lots of people are trying to grasp: Why is this happening? Why have we seen this huge, dramatic spike in the number of people experiencing homelessness here?
Carly Berlin was brought on by Vermont Public and VTDigger last year to report on Vermont’s housing crisis. She’s spent hundreds of hours talking to researchers, politicians, government officials and housing advocates to understand the situation here. And she’s spent a lot of time with people who don’t have a permanent home right now.
Her inbox is full of messages asking some version of this question: How many homeless people in Vermont are really from here?
And sometimes, the question is really more of an implied explanation — that Vermont’s recent rise in homelessness is driven by people crossing state lines.
Berlin worked with the Brave Little State team at Vermont Public to produce this podcast investigating that question, and its implications.
Updated: Sept. , 2024— We removed a caveat about data presented in this story to avoid repetition and the potential for misinterpretation.
For decades, Vermont Yankee, a nuclear power plant in Vernon, was the largest producer of electricity for the state.
The plant has been shut down since 2014, and the company that now owns it is in the process of deconstructing it. That company, NorthStar, has recently submitted a plan that describes in detail the final steps of decommissioning, which is projected to be completed ahead of schedule, by 2026.
However, national developments mean that radioactive spent fuel on the site is likely to stay where it is for the foreseeable future.
Host Sam Gale Rosen spoke to VTDigger environmental reporter Emma Cotton, who has been covering the decommissioning process.
Edi Abeneto is food shelf supervisor at Feeding Chittenden, a Burlington-based nonprofit that focuses on hunger relief and serves more than 12,000 people every year.
Abeneto has worked at the organization for more than 17 years. He speaks six languages, and among other duties, he facilitates communication and provides interpretation for visitors from a wide range of backgrounds.
Over time, he said he’s built up trust with visitors that help him connect them to whatever help they need.
“I was able to break down the barriers to food access, you know, and while building trust and communication with the new Americans,” Abeneto said. “So every time they see me here, I can say, be more comfortable because I speak the languages, you know, I give them more information about what we're doing.
Host Sam Gale Rosen talked to Abeneto about some of what his work involves.
Managing big emotions is hard for adults, so what must it be like if you’re 3 feet tall and still in diapers? Anyone who’s been around kids knows how they can get overwhelmed by big emotional reactions. Those can run the gamut from despair to rage to laughing fits, sometimes within the same five-minute period.
So, how can you teach kids to manage emotions in a healthy way? Especially if you’re still figuring it out yourself?
Deeper Dig host Sam Gale Rosen talks about this with Alyssa Blask Campbell, a Burlington-based expert on parenting, education and child development. She’s the CEO of Seed & Sew, which serves parents, teachers and caregivers with tools for mental wellness and building emotional intelligence. She also hosts the podcast “Voices of Your Village.”
Her new book, written with Lauren Elizabeth Stauble, is called “Tiny Humans, Big Emotions: How to Navigate Tantrums, Meltdowns, and Defiance to Raise Emotionally Intelligent Children.”
Neshobe Island is a small island located on the Castleton side of Lake Bomoseen. It has two houses, a barn and some surrounding woods, and that’s about it.
In the 1920s and ‘30s, though, the island hosted a who’s who of celebrities and intellectuals most summers. These included Noël Coward, Thornton Wilder, Irving Berlin, Margaret Mitchell, Dorothy Parker, Laurence Olivier, Vivien Leigh, Walt Disney and Harpo Marx.
Host Sam Gale Rosen toured the island with its current owners and talked about some of its surprisingly star-studded history.
At the University of Vermont, the share of in-state students is dwindling, and it’s raising questions about the role and mission of the state’s flagship public university.
VTDigger education reporter Peter D’Auria — with the help of data reporter Erin Petenko — has been looking at the enrollment statistics over time, as well as how they compare with those of other large public universities across the country.
Here’s the short version: Peter writes: “over the past two decades, the number of undergraduate Vermonters at UVM has decreased by about 300. Meanwhile, the university’s student body has added roughly 3,800 out-of-state students.”
That means less than a quarter of the school’s undergrads are Vermonters, as of spring 2023. That rate is near the bottom of the list of every large public university in the U.S.
Host Sam Gale Rosen talked to Peter about what we should take from these numbers.
Vermont’s oldest synagogue has been sold — and its new owner plans to turn it into a food hall and apartments.
The nearly 140-year-old brick synagogue in Burlington’s Old North End served as an important center for the city’s Jewish community for decades. Now deteriorating physically, with its congregation mostly dwindled away, it has been sold to an entrepreneur who plans to redevelop the building.
Host Sam Gale Rosen toured the historic building with the new owner and visited the nearby, newer synagogue that has now acquired many of the historic artifacts from the older location.
On this episode of The Deeper Dig, we talk about the history at play, what’s planned for the building and what happens when a space for spirituality becomes something else.
Earlier this month, the Green Mountain Care Board made a decision that would affect most people and companies that get their health care through the state’s health insurance marketplace.
The board said that two companies that offer insurance through Vermont Health Connect would be able to increase premiums by double digits in 2024.
These increases will be less than insurers had asked for. Despite that, they’ll be among the highest annually since 2014, the first full year of the marketplace’s operation.
“We had double digit rate increases last year and, from the looks of it, we are going to have double digit rate increases again this year, for insurance, for hospitals, for pharmaceuticals, clearly there is a nexus between these three things,” Charles Becker, a lawyer with the Office of the Health Care Advocate, said at a recent Green Mountain Care Board meeting. “To Vermont consumers, the dynamics of this system seem like a wildfire burning out of control.”
To find out about these increases, what they mean and where they fit into the wider conversation about health insurance, host Sam Gale Rosen spoke with health care reporter Kristen Fountain on this episode of The Deeper Dig.
Vermonters are still coming to terms with the devastating toll of this summer’s flooding, which inundated downtowns, destroyed homes and businesses, and caused two confirmed deaths. Considered from almost any angle, the impact of this extreme weather on the state has been massive.
Among the issues that environmental reporter Emma Cotton has been looking into is how the floods affected wildlife and ecosystems — and in turn, how those ecosystems impact the way flooding affects humans and our infrastructure.
In this episode, host Sam Gale Rosen talks to Emma about fish, turtles, salamanders, birds, wetlands, water quality, river efficiency (it’s not a good thing), climate change and more. Plus they visit a swamp.
Early this month, heavy rains led to historic flooding in many parts of Vermont, causing massive — as yet uncounted — damage to homes, businesses and infrastructure. At the time of this recording, the state has confirmed that one person was killed by the floods.
Like in Tropical Storm Irene in 2011, many towns were under feet of water, and some were transformed into islands, with routes in and out cut off by floodwaters and damaged roads.
Against this backdrop, reporters and photographers from VTDigger fanned out, reporting from as many of the affected areas as they could reach. Today, we’ll hear from a few of them about what they found.
For months, Democratic lawmakers and Republican Gov. Phil Scott insisted that extending the Covid-19-era program providing people with vouchers to live in motels past this summer was a no-go. Federal money had run out, and, they said, the program was just too expensive to continue.
Then, at the end of June, lawmakers worked out a deal. The program would be extended, for at least some people, until April. The governor signed the bill.
This comes after about 800 people had already lost their housing earlier that month.
At every stage, the motel program has been at the center of fierce debate — among the state’s leaders and the public at large — over cost, efficacy, and what support is owed to some of Vermont’s poorest and most vulnerable residents.
So what changed to take this extension from out of the question to a done deal? To unpack this and other questions about homelessness, host Sam Gale Rosen talked to Lola Duffort. She covers politics for VTDigger and has been reporting extensively on the motel program and unhoused people in Vermont.
It’s not unusual for Vermont’s Department of Corrections to be at the center of debate. The department manages six prisons across Vermont, with more than 1,000 incarcerated people in the system.
The department is perpetually facing challenges, which only increased during the pressures of the Covid-19 pandemic. There are perennial discussions over the ethics of sending people to out-of-state prisons, the conditions that incarcerated people face and what working conditions are like for the department’s employees.
Since January 2022, 16 incarcerated people have died — 12 at one prison, the Southern State Correctional Facility in Springfield. That has focused even more attention on the Department of Corrections as well as the health care and conditions in Vermont’s prisons.
In this episode, host Sam Gale Rosen talks about some of these issues with reporter Ethan Weinstein. He covers southeastern Vermont for VTDigger, and much of his recent journalism has focused on the Department of Corrections.
If you follow this podcast, you’ve probably read a lot of the work of reporter Sarah Mearhoff. She covers politics for VTDigger, and, especially when the legislature is in session, is a close watcher of every aspect of state government.
That means that she spends a lot of time in the Vermont Statehouse, the home of the state legislature and the backdrop for an enormous amount of highly consequential sausage-making.
In this episode of Deeper Dig podcast, Sarah took host Sam Gale Rosen and photographer Glenn Russell — another Statehouse expert — on a tour of the capitol. We talked about architecture, operations, the job of a reporter and — most of all — carpet patterns.
There’s a story about forests that you’ve probably heard. Some environmentalists want to protect old trees, and leave the forests alone to sequester carbon. Others say there are good reasons for humans to actively manage forests. Those advocates include loggers and foresters, who earn their livelihoods from the land, but also scientists and other members of the environmental movement.
But amid a heated scientific debate about what is best for forests, and for people, some researchers warn against a false dichotomy. A bill is now working its way through the Vermont Legislature. It seeks a delicate, three-part balance, setting aside sections of forest with varied degrees of permanent protection. Some would become “forever wild.” Other tracts would allow some human intervention and sustainable forestry.
In this episode, VTDigger reporter Emma Cotton explains the different schools of thought in forest conservation. Bill Keeton, a professor of forest ecology and forestry at the University of Vermont, describes the benefits of mixed-method conservation. Sam Lincoln, formerly the deputy commissioner of Vermont’s Department of Forest, Parks and Recreation and owner of Lincoln Farm Timber Harvesting, discusses some of the ethical and economic challenges of permanent easements. Ecologist Shelby Perry guides us through “forever-wild” forest.
Several Vermont sheriff departments have come under scrutiny in the past year following drastic turnover, allegations of misconduct or unusual financial activity. Two sheriffs — one former, one recently sworn in — face criminal charges.
The Legislature is considering a constitutional amendment, as a long-term measure to increase oversight. Some lawmakers are also considering a bill that would bar sheriffs from pocketing fees off private contracts.
In this episode, VTDigger reporters Tiffany Tan, Alan Keays, Ethan Weinstein and Shaun Robinson recap their reporting on recent events in five Vermont sheriffs’ departments.
Despite Vermont parents’ overwhelming demand for spots in child care and preschools, the supply remains limited. Parents all over the state sit on waitlists for months or even years. If they do score a spot, tuition likely could cost them more than if they sent their toddler to an in-state college for the workday.
And yet, despite the tight market for early childhood services, the educators still usually make less than $20 an hour, and often don’t receive benefits such as health insurance.
Something in this economic system isn’t working for most Vermont families.
Child care is also shaping up to be one of the most significant policy issues state lawmakers tackle this legislative session. Gov. Phil Scott already has released a $50 million proposal to increase to state subsidies. Legislators are expected to release a child care funding bill in the coming days.
This episode, we go to the Orange County Parent Child Center in Tunbridge, where parents and educators discuss how they’re making it work. VTDigger politics reporter Lola Duffort explains how state funding for child care could change this year.
Noah Kahan remembers getting excited when a song he put on SoundCloud hit a thousand plays.
Now, his songs have been streamed more than one billion times.
Kahan’s metaphorical use of “stick season,” the time between Vermont foliage and proper snow, went viral on TikTok last year and sparked covers by Zach Bryan, Chelsea Cutler, Maisie Peters and countless fans who recorded themselves strumming in their bedrooms.
The album that followed, recorded in Guilford, debuted at #14 on the Billboard 200 Chart and has been Kahan’s most successful to date. He performed on Jimmy Kimmel Live and the Kelly Clarkson Show and sold out venues coast to coast.
And then, after the first leg of his tour, he returned home to the Upper Valley and the isolated, between-villages places he crystallized on his third full-length album, Stick Season. With lyrics that describe “dirt roads named after high school friends’ grandfathers,” the record is, in Kahan’s words, “a love letter to New England.”
Turns out returning to a place you’ve described so candidly can feel a bit strange. He’s had to reconcile his romanticized version of Vermont with the reality: He’s just home, and it's cold, and he has to go outside and clean up after the dog.
There’s a “weirdness of existing in a place that you've just written about,” he said.
Kahan is going back on tour later this month. He’ll return to Vermont this summer, for two sold-out shows on the Burlington waterfront.
He joined VTDigger on Zoom earlier this month.
As Vermont’s Legislature opened its 2023 session and Republican Gov. Phil Scott was inaugurated to his fourth term, one theme got an early spotlight in the Statehouse: Vermont’s urban-rural divide.
Much of Vermont’s state population is concentrated in Chittenden County, clustered around the metropolitan center of Burlington, which is Vermont’s largest city with a population of nearly 45,000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. And while smaller cities offer smaller pockets of density — such as Montpelier, Middlebury, Rutland or Brattleboro — much of Vermont’s population is spread thin across the rural state.
Scott focused on this dynamic in his Jan. 5 inaugural address and how Vermont communities’ needs differ whether they’re smaller or larger.
Specifically, Scott floated an idea to the Legislature: Let’s take a page from the playbook of retired U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy, who, as the powerful chair of the Senate’s Appropriations Committee, instituted a rule called the small state minimum. The small state minimum guarantees small states like Vermont receive a minimum amount of funding with every major federal government allocation to states. The rule is designed so states with small populations would not be dwarfed by high population states when the feds dole out money.
By taking a page from Leahy, Scott proposed, the Legislature could prioritize Vermont’s smallest communities to receive funding from the state to tackle expensive local projects they could otherwise never cover themselves with their small tax bases.
“Now, it’s not about turning Canaan into Burlington,” Scott said in his address. “And no offense to Burlington, but I’m not sure anyone in Canaan wants that.”
Some lawmakers viewed Scott’s rhetoric as unnecessarily divisive. But others, especially lawmakers from rural regions, expressed gratitude that small towns, and the challenges they face, were getting some extra attention.
In this episode, various legislators — Rep. Emma Mulvaney-Stanak, P/D-Burlington; Rep. Taylor Small, P/D-Winooski; Rep. Lisa Hango, R-Berkshire; Sen. Russ Ingalls, R-Essex; Rep. Katherine Sims, D-Craftsbury; Rep. Laura Sibilia, I-Dover — respond to the governor’s proposal and weigh in on Vermont’s infrastructure needs.
A 97-acre parcel of undeveloped land off Mountainview Road in Williston is home to a wetland, views of Camel’s Hump and Mount Mansfield, and most days, some horses out to pasture from a neighboring farm.
It is also the site of a conflict that is forcing one of Vermont’s fastest growing municipalities to reckon with the challenges of building new housing at a time of heightened demand and inadequate supply.
Jack and Caitlin Glaser have owned the land for the past 20 years, and they’re now looking to sell. But they want a buyer to strike a certain balance. They hope to retain what neighbors appreciate about the land — the view, the horse pasture — but also to build 93 units of sorely needed new housing.
Some in the community have pushed back on the proposal, arguing that it would lead to overcrowding and traffic. But Jack Glaser said that leaving the entire parcel undeveloped in a zone that’s designated for residential growth would be a missed opportunity.
“We think we have, in a sense, a responsibility to see that that property gets developed responsibly,” he said.
Because the Glasers say their plan would provide what’s known as a “substantial public benefit,” their proposal is subject to an unusual and lengthy review process. Discussions have surfaced questions about how the land should be used, and how quickly it should be allowed to change. If the proposal is scuttled, the end result could mean an even larger, denser development takes its place.
On this week’s podcast, Glaser, his neighbors and the town’s planners discuss the outlook for the Mountainview Road proposal — and what it means for Williston.
Montpelier residents put up with an unusually high number of water main breaks, which, in recent years, have led to boil water notices, expensive emergency repairs and school and business closures.
The city’s aging pipe system, some of it nearly a century old, is straining under unusually high water pressure — which in some locations is more than double the state standard. This is due to the system's unusual design, which relies on the force of gravity, rather than pumps, to push water through Montpelier’s downtown and back uphill to the city’s outskirts.
This year, state regulators instructed city officials to take a more robust, system-wide look at how to prevent pipes from bursting, starting with the water pressure. But local officials disagreed with this approach, arguing it was too expensive and ignored what they saw as more feasible solutions. City Manager Bill Fraser, and Kurt Motyka, who leads Montpelier’s Department of Public Works, have argued that the city should focus instead on replacing weak, corroded pipes with more resilient ones that can withstand the pressure.
After a back-and-forth over the city’s water permit, state regulators relaxed their request for a system-wide overhaul. But the question still looms: How will the city address its water infrastructure going forward, and what will it cost to do so?
Data from 21 billion Facebook friendships shows that when you know more high-income people, your income is more likely to rise over time, according to an analysis from Opportunity Insights, a nonprofit based out of Harvard University. The data puts numbers to something that’s pretty intuitive: Social connections, even just acquaintances, can pass along job openings and other opportunities.
The study found that certain regions were far more likely to foster those types of connections than others. Vermont has a relatively high degree of “economic connectedness” compared to other states.
But those friendships are still relatively rare. People are far more likely to be friends with others within a similar social class. There’s two main causes for this, according to researchers: Within groups, people tend to draw toward others like them. But the built environment — schools, stores, local zoning — also plays a big role.
In this episode, data reporter Erin Petenko looks for community ties that connect Vermonters across class. She interviews Jana Smart and Emily Maclure of the Craftsbury General Store; Brian Lowe, executive director of the Vermont Council on Rural Development;
Belan Antensaye, a board member of the Vermont Professionals of Color Network; and Cheryl Morse, a social geographer at the University of Vermont.
Next week, Vermont voters could write abortion protections into the state constitution. But 50 years ago, Vermont was a state where most people went elsewhere to end a pregnancy.
The Vermont Supreme Court had legalized abortion in 1972, with its decision in Beecham v. Leahy. But while elective abortion was allowed, it remained elusive: The University of Vermont’s hospital, which came from a Catholic tradition, said it wouldn’t offer the procedure. Vermont hospitals did fewer than 20 abortions per year, and more than 1,000 patients traveled out-of-state annually to terminate a pregnancy.
So in just three months, in the short window between the Beecham judgment and the Roe decision, hundreds of people in the Burlington area — activists, faith leaders, hippies, bankers, lawyers — organized and created the Vermont Women’s Health Center. It was the first women-run health center of its kind in the United States.
The Health Center also created a unique apprenticeship program that enabled women to become physician assistants and to provide abortions. It trained UVM medical students and OB-GYN residents at a time when it was rare for medical schools to train students in abortion. It was written about in major medical journals. It survived a ballot referendum, a fire and an onslaught of out-of-state protesters.
The Women’s Health Center operated as a worker’s collective for years, and this episode includes just some of the women who worked and trained there over its nearly-thirty-year run. Rachel Atkins, Sue Burton, Berta Geller, Cate Nicholas and Janet, all physician assistants, discuss their work at the Health Center, and reflect on this post-Roe era. Allie Stickney, former CEO of Planned Parenthood of Northern New England, describes the first call she answered on a pre-Roe abortion hotline.
For the past two years, Reps. Katherine Sims, D-Craftsbury, and Vicki Strong, R-Albany, have served alongside each other in the Vermont House, jointly representing seven towns in the Northeast Kingdom.
But this year, due to redistricting, Sims and Strong are competing for a single seat. It is the only race in the state where an incumbent is guaranteed to lose.
Along stretches of Route 14 in Craftsbury, nearly every driveway sports a campaign lawn sign, alternately supporting each candidate: Sims, Strong, Sims, Strong. Past election results suggest this could be a tight race, won by just a handful of votes.
“I don't want to wake up the day after and wish that I had talked to one more voter,” Sims said. “And so I'm trying to do everything that I can.”
Sims was first elected in 2020, after campaigning almost entirely online due to the Covid-19 pandemic. This year, she’s been knocking on voters’ doors for hours at a time, three to four days a week. With help from Democratic volunteers, her campaign has knocked on more than a thousand doors, she said.
Strong, who described herself as “very much a homebody,” said she’s focused much of her campaigning at community events, such as farmers markets and town parades. Her husband is a local pastor, and their last name is well-known in the local community.
“I hope they’ll look at my 12 years representing them and say, you know, Vicki’s been faithful,” Strong said. “She answers my emails, she cares. She’s not, like, a political activist. She’s really there to represent me in Montpelier. I hope they’ll look at that and vote for me.”
Over the summer, and into the first few months of the school year, school districts across the state scrambled to fill not just teaching positions, but also support staff roles, such as custodians, bus drivers and paraprofessionals.
Earlier this week, two Vermont schools — U-32 in East Montpelier and Spaulding High School in Barre — canceled classes due to staffing shortages, amid a spate of absences from Covid-19 and other illness.
Teachers and administrators cite a range of reasons why educators have left the field: pandemic burnout, political clashes over curricula and Covid response, uncertainty about pensions and the potential for higher wages in other fields. Anecdotally, many of these departures are early retirements.
In the years preceding the Covid-19 pandemic, about 360 to 370 Vermont teachers retired each year, according to data from the state treasurer’s office. In the 2020 fiscal year, that number spiked, to more than 460 retirements. It remained high, above 400, in 2021, the most recent year of available data.
In this week’s podcast, two former Vermont teachers describe their decisions to take other jobs. Don Tinney, president of the Vermont-NEA, explains why staffing needs don’t always sync up with enrollment numbers. And James Nagle, chair of the education department at St. Michael’s College, describes how the pandemic impacted teacher training.
At first, the Shapovalov family thought they’d be able to avoid the worst of the fighting. Their village, Skelky, along the Dnipro River in Ukraine, was close to a large nuclear power plant. They didn’t think the invading Russian army would dare to shoot anywhere nearby.
But the tanks rolled in. They could hear explosions from the bomb shelter some nights.
They spent nearly 40 days living under Russian occupation before they were able to escape.
Now, they’re living in Derby, in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom, just miles from the Canadian border. They were the first family to arrive at the “House of Mercy,” a former nursing home recently transformed into housing for more than 30 Ukrainian refugees.
House of Mercy is a project of Agape Ministries, an Albany-based Christian nonprofit led by Scott and Theresa Cianciolo that works with developmentally disabled children and adults. This summer, the organization purchased the 10,000-square-foot shuttered nursing home in Derby from North Country Hospital.
Many of the Ukrainian families who arrived throughout the month of August have children with disabilities. People with a range of skills — from plumbing to painting to physical therapy — have shown up at the house in recent weeks to volunteer their time, to support arriving families and help convert the building into accessible and comfortable housing.
In this episode, Sasha, Dmytro, Oleksandra and Yakov Shapovalov describe their journey out of Russian occupation and their transition to life in Vermont. Theresa and Scott Cianciolo walk reporter Ethan Weinstein through the house in Derby, and discuss how a community quickly came together to build a place of refuge.
The Vermont Agency of Transportation has an internal word for when a tractor trailer wedges itself on the windy mountain road between Stowe and Jeffersonville: a “stuckage.”
And while they’re working on a handful of ways to prevent stuck trucks, it remains a persistent, vaguely goofy, problem. Earlier this summer, not too long after the Notch road reopened from its annual winter hibernation, two trucks got stuck in the Notch in less than two weeks.
From 2009 to 2021, an average of 8.6 trucks have gotten stuck in the Notch each year, according to data from the Vermont Agency of Transportation. That number has decreased in recent years, with only five stuckages in 2021.
The agency isn’t exactly sure what’s behind the trend, said Todd Sears, the agency’s deputy bureau chief of operations and safety. They have increased the number of warning signs on surrounding roads, and gotten some GPS services — specific to commercial truckers — to exclude the Notch on their programs.
A stuckage can shut down the road for hours. It takes careful choreography to get a truck back down off the mountain.
Buzz Ferver is on a mission. The proprietor of Perfect Circle Farm in Berlin wants to find a persimmon that will grow well in central Vermont. So far, he’s planted more than 15,000 seeds. Last winter, just one plant survived.
But Ferver is working on something bigger, too. He is cultivating a whole collection of perennial crops — mostly fruits and nuts — that can thrive in Vermont as the climate warms. He envisions a future where farming has shifted away from annual planting and fertilizing, to a method that keeps the soil more intact.
“Climate change is in nobody’s favor, including trees. Because that kind of change, that's disaster — that's like meteor-hitting-the-planet kind of change,” Ferver said. “But because of climate change, I may have better luck growing plants here that historically wouldn't grow here.”
His work is also a sort of history project — and scavenger hunt. Ferver combs through historical records and Facebook groups to track down plants cultivated by previous generations of growers.
In this week’s podcast, Ferver talks persimmons, pawpaws and pecans. Plus, Vern Grubinger, a vegetable and berry expert at the University of Vermont Extension, explains some of the challenges and promises of cultivating perennial crops.
Last week, Vermont shut down its Covid-19 testing sites. These sites operated for more than two years and accounted for most of the 3.6 million results recorded by the state Department of Health over the course of the pandemic.
State officials have pointed to the increased use of antigen tests as one reason for this shift. As take-home testing has become more common, public health agencies have adjusted their tools for measuring the virus’s risk. But each of these metrics — whether scattered PCR tests, hospitalizations or wastewater sampling — offers an incomplete picture.
With this change, Covid infrastructure that has been offered at no up-front cost to individuals is increasingly absorbed into the normal healthcare system. And Congress appears unlikely to re-up federal Covid funding, meaning individuals will likely have to pay for future tests, vaccines and treatment either through insurance or out-of-pocket.
On this week’s podcast, VTDigger data reporter Erin Petenko and Dr. Trey Dobson, chief medical officer at Southwestern Vermont Medical Center, assess what the end of widespread PCR testing means at this stage of the pandemic, and what data sources they’re looking to now.
A recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling struck down state-level rules that barred public money from going to schools that teach religious beliefs. According to some legal scholars, that decision has unique consequences for Vermont — and could require the state to rethink how it funds K-12 education.
The case, Carson v. Makin, started in Maine. Like Vermont, Maine uses a tuition system in towns that are too small to have their own public schools. Students in those towns get money from the state to be educated somewhere else: either a public school in another town, or a private school.
Maine did not allow families to use this tuition money at religious schools, where faith was a significant part of the curriculum. Parents sued, arguing it violated their freedom of religion. Last week, justices sided with the parents and struck down Maine’s restriction as unconstitutional.
That means Vermont’s system will likely also have to change. Yet Vermont has its own constitutional provisions addressing religious liberty — and now lawmakers have to find a way to navigate between the state and federal constitutions.
On this week’s podcast, Peter D’Auria, who covers education for VTDigger, and Peter Teachout, a professor at Vermont Law School with expertise in constitutional law, discuss the ramifications of the ruling.
After two years of pandemic-related supply chain issues, Vermont businesses are facing a new wave of price increases on everything ranging from seitan deliveries to two-by-fours. Now, they're cutting costs, raising their own prices and wondering how long the trend can continue.
Sandy Sumner became a reluctant advocate for efforts to hold an international plastics company accountable for PFOA contamination in Bennington. Now, months after his death from an aggressive cancer that he believed was caused by his exposure to toxic chemicals, legislators are making their third attempt at a bill to empower pollution victims. Sandy's wife, Marie-Pierre Huguet, wants to see it pass.
For some, the long-term effects of a coronavirus infection can be debilitating. And while clinical understanding of the disease evolves, many worry that Vermont's rural health system is ill-equipped to treat it.
Nursing homes reopened their doors to visitors last November, but advocates still worry that another Covid-19 spike could once again lock family members out from seeing and caring for their relatives. What have we learned from nursing home lockdowns? And what does it mean for the future of long-term care?
Recent trends in Vermont’s Covid-19 case counts have officials and experts feeling optimistic about the course of the pandemic — but all warn it would be premature to brush off the Omicron threat just yet.
As of Friday, the state’s seven-day average for daily new cases had fallen by more than half since its peak on Jan. 9, a sign that the worst of the past month’s surge may have passed.
Many of the most drastic effects of the Omicron variant are still being felt. Hospitals remain under serious strain, with elevated numbers of Covid patients continuing to stress a diminished workforce. Schools and families are still contending with the disruptions of widespread staff and student absences due to Covid infections. And fatalities in Vermont continue to climb, with 54 Covid deaths — the third-highest monthly total of the pandemic — reported so far in January, as of Friday.
But the apparent decline in transmission is significant, according to a range of experts. The nation is likely weeks away from a new, transitional phase of the pandemic, and the shift toward managing Covid as “endemic” rather than epidemic may finally be in sight.
Students are back in school for their third week of the new year. Or at least, some of them are. The Omicron variant has caused a massive spike in Covid-19 cases and a massive spike in absences among students, teachers and school staff. As a result, dozens of schools across the state have already canceled classes for at least a day this month, and some for longer stretches.
State officials have prioritized keeping schools open during the current surge, citing the drawbacks of remote learning. But with this many people impacted by Covid, how much schooling is actually happening right now?
Vermont hospitals are feeling the strain from the recent surge of Covid-19 cases — and so are patients. Doctors and nurses are caring for an overwhelming number of people. Many are sick with severe Covid, and even more are crowding facilities after delaying care earlier in the pandemic. That’s caused some hospitals to call in federal reinforcements, and it’s forced some patients to delay procedures they see as essential.
Opponents of hound hunting in Vermont have spent this fall ramping up their calls for the state to restrict the practice. And while it’s too soon to tell if they’ll be successful, their tactics have brought statewide attention to what was once a niche hunting technique.
A new 300-page report represents Vermont’s first comprehensive strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and prepare for the effects of climate change. The Climate Action Plan outlines more than 230 steps toward meeting an ambitious set of emissions reductions goals. How will those proposals now be put into action?
Elementary and middle schools in the Granite City have had more total Covid-19 cases than in any other community. Parents and administrators alike are concerned about the long-term impacts.
If the Legislature passes a law to allow municipal mask mandates during a special session next week, town and city officials will find themselves at the center of a policy debate that’s escalated for months. Gov. Phil Scott has repeatedly said he doesn’t believe a statewide mask mandate would be effective — and that instituting one now would be an abuse of his authority. Democratic leaders have argued that a data-driven masking policy could help tamp down a surge that’s strained the state’s schools and hospitals for months.
While Scott has said he’s skeptical that detractors would comply with new mandates at this stage of the pandemic, some public health experts argue that there’s ample data to prove that mandates boost compliance — and that that in turn suppresses infection.
Guest: Julia Raifman (Boston University School of Public Health)
In the first 10 days of eligibility, about 15,500 Vermont children ages 5-11 had either been signed up for appointments or received their first dose of the Pfizer Covid vaccine. That's about 35% of the eligible population. But despite the early rush, experts have warned that there may be more hesitancy around this group than other age groups. National survey data has shown that about two-thirds of parents of young children are not planning to sign their kids up right away.
Dr. Judy Orton, a veteran Vermont pediatrician, says it's understandable for parents to have concerns — but that the kids' vaccine is both safe and effective. She responded to a range of reader-submitted questions in a live VTDigger Q&A this week.
“This has probably been the most well studied and most followed-up vaccine in the history of vaccines, and probably the most public too,” Orton said. “So we have a lot of data to go by.”
Recorded at a live storytelling event in Burlington, VTDigger’s Fred Thys and Audi Guha talk about reporting in uncertain situations.
Vermont’s three members of Congress have served a combined 93 years in the U.S. House and Senate. They’ve accrued an unusual amount of power and influence for one small-state delegation. But they won’t remain in Washington, D.C., forever. Whenever the next vacancy occurs, it could represent a once-in-a-generation chance to reshape Vermont’s congressional representation.
Recorded live at a VTDigger virtual event this week, veteran political professionals Liz Bankowski, Dennise Casey and Julia Barnes, as well as VTDigger political reporter Lola Duffort and managing editor Paul Heintz, discuss the future of the state’s delegation.
A state program to house Vermonters who would otherwise be homeless in vacant motel rooms during the pandemic is in limbo — again. More than 500 families who would have been kicked out in late September got a 30-day reprieve. But with a new deadline just weeks away and few options available for affordable apartments or shelter beds, where are people exiting the program going to go?
What’s it like attending high school in a converted department store? Five years of Burlington High School students are finding out.
The longtime leader of the Vermont Council on Rural Development is stepping down September 30. For 21 years, Paul Costello has helped towns and cities across Vermont envision how to build stronger communities. Looking back on that work today, he still can’t stop talking about the future.
“We have to be committed in new ways at this point in our history,” Costello said last week. Facing big-picture challenges like climate change and entrenched racial injustice will require even more individual participation, he said. “The only thing we can envision is a better Vermont — and us putting ourselves on the line for it.”
Students in some districts are returning to school buildings as soon as this week. Meanwhile, Covid-19 cases across the state are still surging due to the highly contagious Delta variant.
School leaders across the state say their number one job is to keep kids safe this fall. But what exactly that means could look different from school to school.
Guests: Brian Ricca (St. Johnsbury School District), Libby Bonesteel (Montpelier-Roxbury School District), Jeanne Collins (Rutland Northeast Supervisory Union), John Castle (North Country Supervisory Union)
While an ongoing conversation about police reform plays out both nationally and locally, Covid-19 has led to its own pandemic of mental health issues. In response, some central Vermont police departments have been trying a new method of integrating mental health services into law enforcement. Is it working?
The Delta variant of the coronavirus is driving a new surge in Covid-19 cases across the country — and a much smaller increase in cases throughout Vermont. Health authorities say the Delta variant is far more contagious than previous strains of the virus, but that vaccines are still effective at preventing severe illness and death. But with case numbers rising both nationally and locally, how concerned should Vermonters be?
Since last year, realtors have described unprecedented home-buying, driving up prices and competition. What’s less clear is how the pandemic has affected the state’s rental market. But one family’s story backs up the word on the street: People are scrambling for apartments that aren’t there.
Connecting Vermont’s most rural homes to high-speed internet has been a challenge for decades. Christine Hallquist, the incoming executive director of the state’s new community broadband board, hopes to finish the job within seven years.
A series of court rulings over the past year has chipped away at Vermont’s long-standing ban on sending public tuition dollars to religious schools. Now, the state has to resolve major questions about how to regulate private schools that get taxpayer money — with a new school year only two months away.
It’s still too soon to know what the long-term effects of Covid-related migration might be. But many families who found their way to Vermont last year say they’re not going anywhere.
The Covid-19 state of emergency gave the Scott administration the authority to maintain a vast social safety net during the pandemic. Landlords were barred from evicting renters, homeless Vermonters were housed free of charge in motels around the state, and a series of meal distribution programs ensured families access to food.
Now that the emergency declaration has ended, advocates are nervous that the boost in social services over the past 15 months will be coming to an end too.
Guests: Anore Horton (Hunger Free Vermont), Xander Landen (VTDigger)
In Vermont’s idyllic small towns, injustice can lurk below the surface.
At a live storytelling event last week, VTDigger’s Katie Jickling and Kevin O’Connor spoke about Vermonters whose experiences remained invisible to their communities for years at a time — and about the process of bringing those stories to light.
For Jickling, a Facebook message from a former schoolmate this January led to five months of conversations with Sam McPhetres and Rose Earl, two women who came forward to report abuse by former Randolph Union Middle/High School vice principal David Barnett. How did the close-knit school community overlook the abuse, she wondered?
O’Connor met the Providence family in 2009 for a story about the optimism of a multiracial family during the inauguration of President Barack Obama. Eleven years later, amid a national reckoning over racial injustice after the murder of George Floyd, they had a different conversation. Rohan, Aaron and Justin Providence detailed their treatment as young Black men at the hands of Brattleboro police, surprising even their mother with what they had silently endured.
Local Live(s) was produced by Back Pocket Media and sponsored by Vermont Glove.
Benjy Renton, who just completed his undergraduate studies, has spent a year and a half earning accolades for his work tracking the pandemic. “It’s been quite nuts,” he said.
It’s been one year since George Floyd was killed by police in Minneapolis, sparking rallies for racial justice across the country. In Vermont, these events were mostly led by young, Black organizers, who brought the movement to towns throughout the second whitest state in the country.
A year later, we asked some of these activists: What’s changed? And what hasn’t?
Guests: Noel Riby-Williams, Maroni Minter, David Phair
While the pandemic demanded the attention of the public last year, preliminary data shows that at least 157 Vermonters died in 2020 due to opioid-related overdoses — an average of about three people per week. That’s even more than the state lost to Covid.
Advocates say that number is alarming. They also point out that the crisis has been worsening for years.
Guests: Kyle Burditt (Turning Point Center of Rutland), Emma Cotton (VTDigger)
The front line for difficult conversations about vaccines is often the exam table at your local health clinic. We asked doctors around the state how they’re talking to patients about the Covid vaccine — and what lessons others can use when talking to the people in their lives.
Guests: Alison Landrey (Northern Counties Health Care), Heather Stein (Community Health Centers of Burlington), Jill Blumberg (White River Family Practice)
Local business leaders have said expanded unemployment benefits are making recipients less interested in rejoining the workforce. But talk to Vermonters who have been out of work for a year, and you'll hear a different story.
Conversations around the impacts of Covid in schools tend to revolve around the risk of an education gap, framing the pandemic as “lost year” for students. But some experts are pushing back on that narrative, arguing that the adaptations schools have made this year could provide a road map to a more inclusive education system.
Recorded live with Amanda Garces of the Vermont Human Rights Commission and founder of the Education Justice Coalition of Vermont; Deborah Lisi-Baker, formerly of UVM’s Center for Disability and Community Inclusion; Michael Martin, Director of Learning for the South Burlington School District; Celilo Bauman-Swain, a junior at Champlain Valley Union High School; and Bruce Pandya, a senior at U-32 High School.
The state has unveiled a plan to lift most Covid-19 restrictions by July 4th. And while public health experts say there’s value in giving people an incentive to get vaccinated, there’s still a need for flexibility and caution over the next several weeks.
Essex County has the lowest Covid vaccination rate in Vermont, revealing the challenge of reaching the state’s most isolated residents. And while skepticism about the vaccine might play a role, local advocates say that access to doses for people who want them is still lagging compared to the rest of the state.
The state’s effort to vaccinate the remaining adult population is underway, with new age groups becoming eligible every week. Gov. Phil Scott has echoed President Joe Biden in saying life will be back to normal around the Fourth of July. But there’s a sizable population that’s not going to be vaccinated anytime soon: Vermonters under 16. And it’s not totally clear how that will affect the state’s reopening process.
Guests: Elizabeth Townsend, Patsy Kelso (Vermont state epidemiologist), Erin Petenko (VTDigger)
The state is currently housing about 2,700 people who would otherwise be homeless in 75 motels around Vermont. VTDigger reporter Katie Jickling booked a stay in one.
The Covid-19 vaccine gives hope that some kind of normal life will start again soon. But it won’t bring back everything we’ve lost over the past year.
In Part 2 of a two-part series, four people from VTDigger's Virus in Vermont project talk about trauma.
When the Covid-19 pandemic hit, Vermont saw a massive outpouring of community support. Those who helped respond to the crisis now say they never expected we would still be facing the same challenges a year later.
Part 1 of a two-part series. Read more from VTDigger's Virus in Vermont project.
While most of Vermont's schools have maintained in-person or hybrid models since the fall, a recent push to fully reopen classrooms this spring has renewed the debate over how much in-person education is safe — and how much more the state should ask of educators.
Guests: Bibba Kahn (Main Street Middle School), Lola Duffort (VTDigger)
In a new report, Vermont's director of racial equity discusses how people of color in Vermont, like in the rest of the country, face disproportionate health impacts from the Covid-19 pandemic. But the global crisis has also deepened what she describes as “out-of-state ‘xenophobia,’” a problematic notion of who is a “real Vermonter” that remains a key barrier to achieving equity.
After years of delays, how will one of Burlington’s most ambitious development projects move forward? And why did things go so wrong? It depends on who you ask.
Federal Covid relief funding has helped the state avoid a major budget crunch. In fact, it’s allowed Gov. Phil Scott to propose a spending plan that puts about $210 million dollars towards one-time investments. Now, key lawmakers are wondering whether the governor’s plan is too thrifty, considering there’s likely even more federal money on the way.
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Back in May 2020, we traveled to Fletcher, a Franklin County town that dodged the 1918 flu pandemic, to see if it held clues for keeping out Covid-19. This month, Vermont Public Radio's 'Brave Little State' podcast took a listener question about how the town is faring now, about ten months into the pandemic. They invited us on to talk about what we learned from our reporting — and found that the town hasn't exactly stayed Covid-free.
Here's the full episode from Brave Little State.
Martin Luther King Day marks one of the biggest ski weekends in Vermont in a typical year. But this is not a typical year. Travelers to Vermont are subject to universal quarantine requirements — and while there’s anxiety about how that will impact the tourism economy, resort communities are also worried about what happens when travelers break the rules.
Guests: Heather Hebert (Jacksonville General Store), Todd Wright (St. Michael's College), Tracy Dolan (Vermont Department of Health), Emma Cotton (VTDigger)
Vermont officials were unanimous in holding President Trump responsible for the violence in Washington this week. What should the storming of the U.S. Capitol mean for Vermonters — and how does our Republican governor fit in?
Guests: Kemi Fuentes-George (Middlebury College), Linda Fowler (Dartmouth College)
The Deeper Dig will be back next week. This week: a guest post from The Vermont Conversation with David Goodman, a twice-weekly VTDigger podcast that features in-depth interviews on local and national issues with politicians, activists, artists, changemakers and citizens who are making a difference. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts or Spotify to hear more.
When Steve Goodman first appeared on the Vermont Conversation in March, he described the coronavirus as a tsunami about to overwhelm us. Steve Goodman, MD, MHS, PhD, is an associate dean at Stanford Medical School, where he is also a professor of epidemiology and population health and of medicine. His words were prescient: nine months later, over 340,000 Americans have died from Covid-19 and at least 20 million people have been infected. Vermont, once an outlier with few Covid deaths and infections, now has daily averages of over 80 new cases and two deaths.
Steve returns to the podcast this week to share his thoughts on this Year of the Pandemic: where we are, how we got here, and how it ends.
The Covid-19 vaccine is here: 5,850 doses of the Pfizer vaccine arrived in Vermont this week, and frontline health care workers have already begun receiving the shots. And while there are still unanswered questions about how the next phase of the rollout will go, medical workers are already hailing the vaccine as the beginning of the end of the pandemic.
Proposed cuts to the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Vermont have sparked a backlash from thousands of faculty members and students. But with the university facing a budget shortfall of almost $28 million over the next three years, administrators have signaled that they’re unlikely to change course before those cuts become final. What happens now?
Guests: Katherine Brennan (UVM religion major), Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst (UVM Humanities Center), Katya Schwenk (VTDigger)
While Burlington Progressives this week voted to put a member of their younger, more activist wing on the ballot, the party’s caucus revealed a split that could have ramifications for next year’s race.
"We will get vaccine," says Chris Finley, the immunization program director at the Vermont Department of Health. "When it will be here is the million dollar question." The state is making preparations in case doses are available as soon as early December. But how will that rollout actually work? And who will receive a vaccine first?
Finley joined our weekly live Covid-19 interview series on Wednesday, Nov. 18, to answer readers' questions about the Covid vaccine.
As Covid-19 cases surge in Vermont, officials have been reminding well-intentioned Vermonters to take the state’s health guidelines seriously. But they’ve also begun addressing another group of people: skeptics, who believe the government response to Covid-19 is overblown. How pervasive have these opinions become? And how dangerous are they to public health?
Guest: Dr. Turner Osler (UVM Larner College of Medicine)
A growing number of Vermonters are experiencing Covid-19 symptoms for months after contracting the disease, a phenomenon that’s being observed across the globe. Researchers are calling these patients “long haulers.” But with little known about the syndrome they’re experiencing, these long haulers are still looking for answers - and support.
Guests: Kathy Warren, Nicole Racicot, Katie Jickling (VTDigger)
A militia training site in West Pawlet is terrifying its neighbors. Men from the site have harassed locals online and in person. They also appear to be stockpiling weapons and ammunition, and they’ve promoted symbols of far-right anti-government groups at a time when tensions over political violence are running high. But state authorities say that without evidence of criminal activity, there’s no way for them to intervene.
Guests: Joe Young (American University, Political Violence at a Glance)
As the Covid-19 pandemic exacerbates Vermont’s affordable housing crisis, new research on flexible housing models suggests that the state could benefit from rethinking how to build homes. But advocates wonder whether creativity is enough to help the people who need housing now.
Nearly 200,000 Vermonters have already voted in the general election after the state mailed ballots to every registered active voter for the first time ever. The shift to mail-in voting has some people concerned about the integrity of the results — but both election experts and local officials on the frontlines say the proper safeguards are in place.
Guests: Stacy Jewell (St. Johnsbury town clerk), Garrett Graff (Aspen Institute)
Antigen tests, which give Covid-19 results in a matter of hours, are increasingly becoming available in Vermont. But the state has hesitated to make these rapid tests a major part of its health strategy. Why?
As nursing home visitation rules begin to relax, some residents’ family members worry that they still won't be involved in caring for their loved ones as long as Covid-19 remains a risk. And for elderly patients with dementia, some say the damage caused by physical separation has already been done.
Guests: Rebecca Whittemore-Arsenault, Monica Hutt (Vermont Department of Disabilities, Aging and Independent Living)
In their first in-person debate of the 2020 election season, Vermont’s candidates for governor laid out divergent views of how the state should raise and spend its money — and used some conflicting numbers in the process. VTDigger's Kit Norton breaks down two key claims from Tuesday’s debate between Governor Phil Scott and Lieutenant Governor David Zuckerman.
Vermont has maintained the lowest Covid-19 infection rate of any U.S. state for most of this summer. And while some have speculated that’s because of the state’s small population, the country’s leading infectious disease expert says the reasons aren’t so simple. Appearing at a press briefing this week, Dr. Anthony Fauci said a number of factors — including Vermonters’ collective vigilance — has led to its success.
Students across Vermont returned to school on Tuesday for the first time since the onset of the coronavirus in March. It took months of preparation for schools to be able to open their doors again. Now, educators and families are waiting to see what happens next.
Guests: Barbara Pennington (West Rutland School), Steven Dellinger-Pate (U-32), Renée DeVore (Montpelier High School), Lola Duffort (VTDigger)
Many essential workers who stayed in high-risk jobs during the early months of the pandemic were cut out of an earlier plan by the state to provide hazard pay. Now, it’s unclear whether lawmakers will be able to include those workers in the next round of Covid relief.
Guests: Kristi Theise, Karen Messing (University of Québec, Montréal), Anne Wallace Allen (VTDigger)
State economists warned earlier this month that because of the pandemic, Vermont's revenue projections were "off the charts bad." So how are leaders advancing a budget that largely maintains the status quo?
The University of Vermont is undertaking what it calls the most extensive college reopening plan in the country. But with schools across the state and the nation reopening within weeks, the Department of Health is actively planning for fall outbreaks that could strain the state's testing and tracing systems.
Guests: Kelly Dougherty (Vermont Department of Health), Sawyer Loftus (VTDigger/Vermont Cynic)
New research shows that remote workers have been flocking to Vermont during the Covid-19 pandemic, potentially easing the struggle to reverse the state's population decline. What’s less clear is whether those workers will stay when the crisis is over.
Guests: Richard Watts (Center for Research on Vermont), Anne Wallace Allen (VTDigger)
The Vermont Conversation with David Goodman is now a VTDigger podcast. Goodman's show, which has aired on WDEV Radio since 2013, features in-depth interviews on local and national issues with politicians, activists, artists, changemakers and citizens who are making a difference. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts or Spotify to hear more.
This week: For 25 years, Stuart Stevens was a leading strategist and media consultant to top Republican politicians, helping to elect presidents, senators, congressmen, and governors. He was top strategist for 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, and he worked on both of George W. Bush’s presidential campaigns. Stevens, who lives in Vermont, has just written a book, It Was All a Lie: How the Republican Party Became Donald Trump. He argues that Trump did not hijack the Republican Party, he is the natural outcome of five decades of the party’s hypocrisy, racism and self delusion.
Tens of thousands of Vermonters have already cast their ballots for the August 11 primary. Here’s what VTDigger’s politics team will be watching when the results come in.
Guests: Grace Elletson, Xander Landen, Kit Norton
Advocates say the state’s stabilization effort should temporarily stave off mass evictions, but it won’t solve the affordable housing crisis Vermont faced before the pandemic.
Guests: Jean Murray (Vermont Legal Aid), Sandrine Kibuey and Jess Hyman (Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity)
As schools in Vermont and across the country prepare to reopen, it’s clear that children who do get the coronavirus are far less likely than adults to get severely ill. Now, a growing body of evidence suggests younger children are unlikely to be the culprits in spreading Covid-19 to others — children or adults — even if the reasons why aren't totally clear.
Guests: Dr. Benjamin Lee (UVM Larner College of Medicine), Lola Duffort (VTDigger education reporter)
Covid-19 cases are surging in regions across the United States, while Vermont continues to see relatively low rates of infection. But there are still plenty of unknowns about the long-term trajectory of the coronavirus. Could Vermont see a "second wave"? How are recent reopening measures affecting the spread? And what exactly are the state's health care systems, businesses and government officials preparing for?
Guest: Dr. Richard Hopkins (epidemiologist/former public health official)
More than half of Vermont’s high schools use armed school resource officers, or SROs, to ensure school safety. Skeptics are casting doubt on whether those officers are effective — and drawing attention to persistent disparities in how they treat students.
Twenty people who attended the March 10 UVM basketball game reported that they later tested positive for Covid-19, according to a VTDigger survey. An additional 34 people who responded said they experienced flu-like symptoms, but couldn’t get a test. Three attendees later died from Covid-19. Here's what we've learned after weeks of tracking the spread.
Guests: Rae Rappold, Katie Jickling (VTDigger)
The national protest movement following the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis has coalesced around a policy goal: defunding police departments nationwide. Now, constituents of Vermont’s largest municipal police force are bringing that fight to Burlington.
A national protest movement touched off by a string of high-profile killings of black Americans has reached Vermont. Advocates say it’s a long overdue conversation about structural racism — but that the response is also about grief.
Guests: Bishop Shannon MacVean-Brown (The Episcopal Church in Vermont), Grace Elletson (VTDigger)
Fletcher, Vermont, is one of the 116 towns in the state that haven’t registered any Covid-19 cases so far. But public health researchers have singled it out for another reason: it was one of just a handful of communities in the country that avoided the deadly flu pandemic of 1918. And they want to know whether it holds lessons for today.
Guests: Alex Navarro (University of Michigan Center for the History of Medicine)
Long lines at food distribution events have become a powerful symbol of the need faced by tens of thousands of Vermontersduring the Covid-19 pandemic. But those on the frontlines of hunger relief say that feeding the massive number of people in need is going to require more than just meal giveaways.
As more sectors of the economy reopen for business, the downturn caused by Covid-19 is already having an outsized impact on low-wage workers. And while state and federal lawmakers have advanced some short-term relief measures, analysts wonder whether the pandemic could trigger a long overdue conversation about inequality.
Guests: Bram Kleppner (Danforth), Stephanie Yu (Public Assets Institute), Anne Wallace Allen (VTDigger)
With Vermonters living under new guidelines about physical distancing and wearing masks, state agencies — and news outlets like VTDigger — have seen an uptick in reports about people who aren’t following the rules. And while we can’t do much to resolve those complaints, researchers say there’s a reason people feel an impulse to tell on each other in trying times.
Guests: Liz Pinel (University of Vermont), Colin Meyn (VTDigger), Jens VonBulow, Faye Hilliker
Michael Akey discovered he tested positive for Covid-19 one day after he was released from the Northwest State Correctional Facility in St. Albans. He says the outbreak there — the first in the state to trigger facility-wide testing — could have been prevented.
Guests: Michael Akey, Alan Keays (VTDigger)
The Scott administration has loosened restrictions on some workplaces for the second week in a row as part of a plan to slowly reopen Vermont’s economy. To prevent another wave of infections, public health officials are getting a second chance to try a containment strategy that wasn't possible the first time around.
Guests: Mark Levine (Vermont Health Commissioner), Katie Jickling (VTDigger health care reporter)
Hospitals across the state are transforming their facilities to get ready for a potential surge of coronavirus patients. But they’re preparing without knowing exactly when that surge might hit — or how severe it could be.
New models show social distancing measures could help COVID-19 cases in Vermont peak as early as this month. But officials and experts warn that those restrictions will need to stay in place long after the worst has passed.
Skyrocketing unemployment claims show that nearly 15,000 Vermonters have already lost their jobs due to business cutbacks during the coronavirus outbreak. What happens next for those workers — and for the state's economy?
Guests: Brennan Neill, Art Woolf (VTDigger columnist), Elaine McCrate (UVM economist)
Vermont’s senior senator has been in Washington for negotiations over the federal response to the coronavirus outbreak. Two bills have passed with broad bipartisan support — but the third, a trillion-dollar stimulus proposal, could see a bigger fight.
Guests: U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.
Dr. Joshua White, the chief medical officer at Gifford Medical Center in Randolph, says the COVID-19 outbreak may become even wider than many Vermonters are expecting. But that’s still not a reason to panic about its potential effects.
Tuesday’s election brought victories for newcomers Zoraya Hightower and Jane Stromberg, effectively giving the Progressives a majority on the governing body of Vermont’s largest city. But the party is already looking ahead to next year’s races — when they see the mayor’s office up for grabs.
Support for a “Vermont Green New Deal” appears to be waning among lawmakers, while another climate bill — the Global Warming Solutions Act — gains momentum. That could leave the state with a strict new set of mandates — but it’s not likely to end the push to raise new revenue for climate action.
Guests: Jennifer Rushlow (Vermont Law School), Elizabeth Gribkoff (VTDigger)
Fatal police encounters are on the rise in Vermont, according to a new analysis of fifty years of law enforcement data. Now, lawmakers, advocates and police themselves are looking at how to curb the trend of rising deaths.
Guests: Chief Tony Facos (Montpelier Police), Allen Gilbert (former ACLU-VT), Rep. Anne Donahue (R-Northfield), Erin Petenko (VTDigger)
Bernie Sanders’ victory in the New Hampshire primary gives the Vermont senator a boost in his push to win the Democratic nomination for president. Now, some voters are wondering not only whether he’ll make it onto the ballot — but what the general election will look like if he does.
As Bernie Sanders looks ahead to the first primary elections of 2020, the Vermont senator sees a plausible path to the Democratic nomination and maybe the presidency. How Sanders’ first campaign for public office foreshadowed the sprawling political operation he runs today.
Produced by Eliza Giles for Mudseason, a podcast from the UVM Center for Research on Vermont.
The Scott administration is formalizing its plan to close the state's only juvenile detention facility. But it’s not up to them whether Woodside will close — and the legislators who will make the final call are just beginning to consider the plan.
VTDigger's Alan Keays reports on the administration's latest moves. Plus, hear from Woodside employees, who have their own proposals for the Essex campus.
A paid family leave plan that’s been in the works for more than two years has finally passed the Legislature. But its path forward largely depends not on the lawmakers who think it’s too expensive — but on the ones who say it doesn’t go far enough.
As Vermont lawmakers returned for the 2020 legislative session, election updates overshadowed the policy agenda. But that wasn't the only disruption at the Statehouse this week.
Guests: VTDigger's Xander Landen, John Walters, and Grace Elletson.
Independent doctors across Vermont are closing their practices, while major hospital systems take over a growing share of the state’s patients. What does that mean for Vermonters seeking care?
Guests: Dr. Joe Nasca (pediatrician), Katie Jickling (VTDigger)
Water quality advocates are hailing a Vermont Supreme Court decision on dam permits as a new standard for upholding environmental rules. But the case also reveals the tensions behind the state’s ongoing push to get more energy from local renewable resources.
Guests: Elizabeth Gribkoff (VTDigger), Jon Groveman (Vermont Natural Resources Council), Ken Nolan (Vermont Public Power Supply Authority).
If you’re feeling lonely, you’re not alone: data shows that a wide range of Vermonters report feeling socially isolated, particularly the elderly. Advocates for Vermont seniors are working on localized solutions — but they also say a broader cultural shift is due.
Guests: Beth Hammond (Heineberg Senior Center), Marichel Vaught (Council on Vermont Elders), Erin Petenko (VTDigger)
The Vermont Department of Motor Vehicles makes millions of dollars every year selling drivers' personal data to private companies. Officials and others argue that the practice is legal, regulated, and necessary. But privacy advocates say there's evidence that giving DMVs this much discretion can lead to abuse.
Guests: Mike Smith (Vermont DMV), Joseph Cox (Motherboard/VICE), Susan Randall (VTPrivateye/Vermont Association of Investigative & Security Services), Xander Landen (VTDigger)
We sent our politics reporter Kit Norton to D.C. for the first public impeachment hearing in the House Democrats' case against President Donald Trump. Here's what he saw.
Vermont cities and towns are deciding whether to join broad-ranging national litigation against companies accused of fueling the opioid crisis. But as Vermonters weigh their options alongside towns across the country, the stakes for local governments aren’t totally clear.
Guests: Mark Latham (Vermont Law School), TJ Donovan (Vermont Attorney General), Stuart Hurd (Bennington Town Manager), David Allaire (Rutland City Mayor)
A legislative task force is thinking about how Vermont should regulate the development of artificial intelligence. But no matter what they decide, groups around the state are already integrating the technology into what they do.
Guests: Bruce Duncan (Terasem Movement Foundation), Grace Elletson (VTDigger), Bina48
While Vermont leaders tie themselves in knots trying to draw new people to the state, a group of Amish families has quietly left Pennsylvania and Ohio to build a new community in the Northeast Kingdom.
Guests: Molly Veysey (Old Stone House Museum), Dan McClure (Century 21 Farm & Forest), Anne Wallace Allen (VTDigger)
[First published 10/26/18. We'll be back with a run of new episodes starting next week.]
The Trump administration has announced a tentative deal with China that would delay new tariffs on imported goods. But one Vermont customs broker estimates that by the end of this year, businesses across the state will have already lost half a billion dollars due to the trade war.
Guests: Ben Clark (Ann Clark Cookie Cutters), Jake Holzscheiter (A.N. Deringer), Anne Wallace Allen (VTDigger).
The former U.S. diplomat and Vermont politician, who's worked with Kurdish populations for decades, says he’s perplexed by President Trump’s motivation to greenlight Turkish strikes in northern Syria.
We’ve known for a while that the state’s population is stagnating. But new data compiled by VTDigger shows us exactly where Vermonters are going — whether they’re leaving the state or migrating within its borders. Their reasons for moving, though, are harder to pin down.
Guests: Nate Hibler, Jill Mudgett (historian/researcher), Paul Costello (Vermont Council on Rural Development), Erin Petenko (VTDigger)
Cyber weaponry has dramatically changed the national security landscape, New York Times correspondent David Sanger said last week during a live interview in Manchester with VTDigger editor Anne Galloway. "We have decided that it is so useful that like the drone, it will be used all the time," he said. "But we don't really have a real sense yet of how we're going to use it."
Listen to the full program, courtesy of GNAT-TV.
As news of the dealings between President Trump and the Ukraine developed this week, Vermont's members of Congress — and its Republican governor — all spoke out in favor of an impeachment inquiry. What happens next is less clear.
The Ripton-based author and activist, whose organization is helping to plan this week's Global Climate Strike, says much has changed since his landmark debut,The End of Nature, was first published in 1989: “What was then a series of warnings is now a series of bulletins from the front lines of what feels more and more like a kind of war."
The first two F-35s in the Vermont Air National Guard’s new fleet of fighter jets are scheduled to arrive in Burlington by next Friday. But a coalition of protesters who have fought the basing for years continue to press the military to change course.
Federal officials billed the Opportunity Zone program, a vehicle for huge capital gains tax breaks, as a way to drive economic development in low-income communities. It holds potential for Vermont towns — but critics question whether the benefits will mostly go to the wealthy.
Guests: Lola Duffort (VTDigger), Brady Meixell (The Urban Institute)
More than three years after PFOA contamination was discovered in Bennington, and four months after the state finished negotiating with the company responsible, residents are still dealing with the long-term impacts. Now, their grievances are at the center of a class action lawsuit in federal court.
Vermont’s Catholic Church has acknowledged seven decades of allegations of child sexual abuse by clergy — and the church’s role in covering up those accusations. What happens now?
Our 100th episode: James Adomian got national attention for his outrageous Bernie Sanders impression during the senator’s first presidential run. With a new podcast and tour, he’s gearing up for round two.
When VTDigger reported last month on FirstLight’s use of banned Huawei equipment, the telecommunications company promptly retaliated by canceling an underwriting contract with the organization. But FirstLight has also taken action against a competitor, VTel, for its role in the story — a move state regulators are now questioning.
This week’s merger with Dairy Farmers of America will keep the doors open at the St. Albans Co-op, but observers say the industry’s struggles will continue.
The author breaks down his manifesto on why Vermont needs an activist government — and an activist public.
Prosecutor Sarah George's decision to dismiss three high-profile cases tipped off a debate about gaps in the state's mental health and criminal justice systems. Will it lead to real reforms?
Locals, researchers and state officials are optimistic that a new aeration system will curb the toxic algae blooms that have plagued Vermont's fourth-largest lake. But it may take years to find out.
Guests: John Tucci (Everblue Lake Solutions), Peter Benevento (Lake Carmi Campers Association), Larry Myott (Lake Carmi Campers Association), Elizabeth Gribkoff (VTDigger)
The road to 2020 starts in Vermont’s backyard — and with the first primary debate coming up, some candidates appear farther down that road than others.
Researchers say tick density in Vermont this year is going from bad to worse. But patients fighting tick-borne illnesses say they're not getting much help from the state's medical establishment.
Guests: Ellie French (VTDigger), Rachel Nevitt (Full Moon Farm), Bill Landesman (Green Mountain College)
Student activists around the state are leading conversations about racism — whether or not their communities are ready to talk about it.
AnC Bio Vermont was supposed to bring Korean biotech expertise to the Northeast Kingdom. But according to new federal fraud charges, the developers knew all along that the project wasn't meant to be.
Over thirteen days in a Burlington courtroom, jurors weighed graphic accounts of the crash that killed five teenagers against a case that the driver was experiencing psychosis. VTDigger's Alan Keays and Aidan Quigley recap the trial.
Even though lawmakers are coming back next week, the action on some key bills this week revealed a lot about the dynamics we’ve seen in the Statehouse all year. On this week’s podcast, VTDigger political reporters Kit Norton and Xander Landen break down two key days of movement in Montpelier.
Conditions at Vermont's only women's prison have been a concern since inmates were first moved there. But a new wave of complaints has lawmakers and advocates debating how to move beyond the aging facility.
Guests: Amanda Sorrell (former Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility inmate), Liz Swavola (Vera Institute for Justice), Kit Norton (VTDigger)
More participation by Brookfield Properties was supposed to bring the $220 million development to a spring groundbreaking. What happened? VTDigger's Aidan Quigley explains.
A Vermont Supreme Court case and a wave of recent police investigations revolve around the use of body camera footage. All together, they reveal that bodycam use can raise more questions than it answers.
Schools across the state are ditching A-through-F report cards and letting students retake tests to emphasize learning over seat time. But each district’s interpretation of proficiency-based learning looks different.
Guests: Mike McRaith (Montpelier High School), Kevin Coen (Springfield High School), Eva Jessup (U-32 Chronicle), Andrew Crompton (U-32 Chronicle), Elizabeth Hewitt (VTDigger/Hechinger Report)
“If we failed, we were going to fail history,” then-House Speaker Shap Smith says about the climactic vote in 2009 that legalized same-sex marriage in Vermont.
Guests: Shap Smith, Beth Robinson (Vermont Supreme Court Justice), Rep. Bill Lippert (D-Hinesburg), Patti Komline (former representative, R-Dorset)
There’s no single reason for the $150 million the state has to pay each year, on average, until 2038. But the decision to ignore financial advice in the 1990s plays a major part.
Guests: Sen. Jane Kitchel (Appropriations Committee), Beth Pearce (State Treasurer), Gov. Howard Dean, Gov. Jim Douglas, Colin Meyn (VTDigger)
Vermont lawmakers want to limit the involvement of large, out-of-state companies in a proposed retail marijuana market. But recent reporting by the Boston Globe shows that similar efforts in Massachusetts are falling short.
Guests: Beth Healy, Boston Globe Spotlight team
As mayor of Denver and as a two-term governor, John Hickenlooper oversaw and managed a major period of sustained growth in Colorado. This month he announced he's running for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination. On Saturday he sat down at the Flynn Center in Burlington for a conversation with Jen Kimmich, the co-founder of The Alchemist brewery, about economic development, retail marijuana, the presidential race, and lots more.
State officials say mismanagement played a major role in Springfield Hospital's financial collapse. But broader trends are putting pressure on hospital finances across the state.
Guests: Kevin Mullin (Green Mountain Care Board), Al Gobeille (Agency of Human Services), Mike Faher and Katy Savage (VTDigger)
Senate leader Tim Ashe, House Speaker Mitzi Johnson, and Gov. Phil Scott have all predicted that there will be friction over the details of some policy and budget proposals before the end of the legislative session. But they’re in agreement that the dynamic has changed this year.
Guests: VTDigger political reporter Xander Landen, Senate President Pro Tem Tim Ashe, and House Speaker Mitzi Johnson.
Southern Vermont College is only the most recent in a wave of troubled New England Colleges planning to close. Some observers say it won’t be the last.
Guests:
Tom Greene, president of the Vermont College of Fine Arts
Lola Duffort, VTDigger education reporter
State officials broadly recognize that buprenorphine is a critical tool for reducing opioid-related deaths. But they're split on how far to expand access of a treatment drug that is itself an opiate.
Vermont's proposed abortion protections would solidify the role of the state's medical establishment in deciding where to draw ethical lines on terminating pregnancies. The head OB-GYN at Vermont's largest hospital says that's how it should be.
Mohamed Jafar is facing calls to drop out of his city council race over misogynistic tweets revealed this week. But the candidate's defenders say his past indiscretions shouldn't disqualify him.
One year after a contentious public debate led to historic gun reforms in Vermont, lawmakers are proposing new bills that would make more changes to the state's firearm restrictions. The governor has already said he doesn't believe gun bills should be a priority. But legislators believe these changes would address urgent issues — regardless of last year's efforts.
A Congolese asylum seeker named Bienfait fled death threats in his home country. But his journey to Canada was cut off in Vermont due to a 9/11-era border security agreement. Now, some Canadian politicians are wondering whether that policy is sending refugees into a hostile U.S. immigration system, while Bienfait wonders whether he'll be sent back to Africa.
Gov. Scott's budget proposal released this week marks a major change in approach from his first two years in office. Will it make for a smoother session? VTDigger's political team — Anne Galloway, Xander Landen, and Colin Meyn — breaks it down.
Regional waste management giant Casella is taking one of the final steps towards state approval to expand Vermont's only open landfill by about 40%. A growing number of local opponents are working to stop the project. But the company says that without it, there soon won't be anywhere for Vermonters to put their trash.
Rep. Becca White says that if state government is focused on reversing Vermont’s demographic decline, it’s necessary to have young people at the table. The new House roster takes a step in that direction: White is one of four legislators under the age of 25 who were sworn in this week.
With medical hospitals around the state overwhelmed with mental health patients, officials see no obvious solutions in sight. This week: Phoebe Sparrow Wagner describes her experience being forcibly held in emergency rooms. Mourning Fox, the state's interim mental health commissioner, discusses the challenges ahead. And VTDigger's Mike Faher recaps his reporting on widespread failures in patient safety.
Vermont's sole member of the U.S. House of Representatives says the incoming Democratic majority has big decisions to make on leadership, legislation and oversight of the Trump administration.
Vermont's Catholic Diocese is taking a turn towards transparency following a wave of national stories about clergy misconduct. But survivors and officials still have different ideas of what justice looks like.
Next month’s elections give Democrats a shot at a veto-proof majority in the Vermont House. But candidates aren’t campaigning on a state-level “blue wave.”
While Vermont leaders tie themselves in knots trying to draw new people to the state, a group of Amish families has quietly left Pennsylvania and Ohio to settle in the Northeast Kingdom.
Holland, Vermont is anchored by its elementary school. But this week, residents voted decisively to close it. And it's not the only town considering drastic measures to head off a forced merger.
Spoiler alert: fans of modern TV dramas may be getting more of their political views from those sources than they think. Shows like “Game of Thrones” and “Battlestar Galactica” are densely plotted serials that immerse viewers in fantasy worlds.
Derby, Vermont, and Stanstead, Quebec, have historically been tight knit communities despite the international boundary between them. But heightened border security measures have frustrated residents, driving the two towns farther apart.
Sen. Patrick Leahy was one of Sen. John McCain’s closest colleagues during the decades the two served together in the U.S. Senate. But their positions were often far apart. “Were we ideological soulmates? Of course not,” Leahy said.
Throughout the summer, heavy rains have caused sewer overflows in most of Vermont’s largest cities. In late July, 9.7 million gallons of stormwater and wastewater spilled from Rutland’s sewers into the East and Otter creeks.
Christine Hallquist, the Democratic nominee for Vermont governor, said Friday that she and the governor have similar positions on raising new revenue. “I’m going to say we have the same general position on taxes and fees. However,
Bradford Broyles, a filmmaker and GOP operative, has spent the last year and a half quietly publishing a video series lampooning Republican Gov. Phil Scott for drifting towards the political center. Now, Broyles is training his lens beyond Vermont.
Daniel Jones was 22 when he shot and killed a drug dealer in a Burlington alley in 2002. He was an addict, he says, and the killing was an accident. Now 16 years into his 25-year sentence at the Northern State Correctional Facility in Newport,
Ahead of Vermont’s August 14th primary elections, lesser-known candidates hoping to unseat Gov. Phil Scott have used recent debates to distance themselves from the incumbent. “He’s been running [the state] on division," says Christine Hallquist. "That’s.
Two candidates on the ballot in Vermont's gubernatorial primaries have notably nontraditional backgrounds. Keith Stern, who runs a produce market in White River Junction, has little prior political experience.
The two latest steps in the fallout from Vermont's EB-5 scandal have been a mixed bag for the state. Last week, the federal government notified officials that ...
For three months, nurses at the UVM Medical Center have been negotiating with hospital administrators for higher wages and better staffing ratios. When the two ...
As the Trump administration's immigration enforcement policies continue to spark backlash around the U.S., Vermonters are examining how one of the country's northernmost states relates to policies affecting ...
July 1st marks the first date that Vermonters will be allowed to possess and grow marijuana under state law. According to Tim Fair, a Burlington ...
As the budget standoff in Montpelier reaches into the summer, a common refrain among analysts is that it’s the closest Vermont has come to a ...
As schools around Vermont go quiet for the year, the effects of the state's 2015 consolidation law are increasingly visible.Earlier this month, the Agency of Education kicked off phase two of Act ...
In the coming week, state’s attorneys in two counties will hold "Expungement Days," offering assistance to Vermonters looking to clear their records of misdemeanor marijuana convictions.The ...
A VTDigger investigation published in April revealed a pattern of unlikely lottery wins by retailers and their relatives. Total payoffs for some individuals have reached into ...
The apparent murder of Anako Lumumba, a 33-year-old South Burlington nurse who was allegedly killed by her boyfriend Leroy Headley, has set off an interstate manhunt. It's ...
Before adjourning last weekend, the Vermont Legislature passed a budget for the 2019 fiscal year. Gov. Phil Scott says he’ll veto it over a disagreement ...
Two policies aimed at lifting up low-income Vermonters took unusual paths to passage this week. Bills to raise the state’s minimum wage and provide workers ...
The state's case against a teen accused of plotting a school shooting hinges on over a century of legal precedent. But revisions to the state’s attempt laws, which are now under consideration in both chambers of the Legislature, could set a new standard for how cases like Sawyer’s are handled.
South Burlington’s Chamberlin neighborhood sits just west of the Burlington International Airport and the Vermont Air National Guard base.
In the fall of 2019, the Air Force plans to station 18 F-35 fighter jets at the base. Residents are concerned about how the jets will affect their neighborhood, which has already seen decades of changes related to the airport’s expansion. The decision to move forward with the project set off years of intense public debate.
In this podcast, hear from people who have been a part of that debate: members of organized campaigns opposing the F-35, neighbors concerned about future home buyouts, and vocal supporters of the basing. Many have differing views on the planes — but all expect that within a few years, the airport neighborhood will look very different from today.