Keeping your community covered. We're committed to producing high-quality, fact-based news and information that gives you the facts in this community we call home. If our work has helped you stay informed, take action, or feel more connected to Windham County – please give now to help us reach our goal of raising $150,000 by December 31st.
Keeping your community covered. We're committed to producing high-quality, fact-based news and information that gives you the facts in this community we call home. If our work has helped you stay informed, take action, or feel more connected to Windham County – please give now to help us reach our goal of raising $150,000 by December 31st.
In rural Vermont, connecting patients with doctors - and especially with medical specialists - can be a major challenge.
Now, state lawmakers have approved a bill that could help bridge that gap without building new medical offices or hiring more doctors.
Instead, S.50 aims to expand the use of telemedicine, defined as health care services delivered via a live, interactive audio and video connection. The bill also mandates that all insurers reimburse for such services.
The bill's broadening of telemedicine practices could benefit hospitals like the Brattleboro Retreat, which recently launched three separate projects intended to connect patients and doctors remotely.
In late January, the Vermont Commission on Women celebrated a milestone - the 100th signer of the state's equal pay compact. Recently, Brattleboro-based Windham Regional Commission became the compact's 127th signatory. That kind of growth - a 25 percent boost in roughly four months - is a positive sign...
For some who are lobbying for legislative changes, approval of a bill that creates a task force might not be much to cheer about. But Rick Fleming sees it as real progress in his years-long push to overhaul Vermont's alimony statute. The Legislature has approved a bill, S.112, that...
The state's review of the proposed sale of Vermont Yankee is a public process, with thousands of pages of documents filed and posted online. Now, the company that wants to buy the shut-down Vernon nuclear plant wants the state Public Service Board to restrict access to two “highly confidential” documents that contain detailed financial plans for cleaning up the site. NorthStar Group Services notes that it already has turned over about 1,500 public documents related to Vermont Yankee. But the...
After 18 months of Act 46-related strife, Vernon may have gotten some relief from the Vermont Legislature. Within an omnibus education bill approved by the House and Senate is language that allows Vernon Town School District to vote itself out of the regional educational union, known as BUHS No. 6. Officials say the legislative language was carefully crafted to apply only to Vernon. And it could have a powerful effect in Windham Southeast Supervisory Union by breaking up a logjam...
In the debate over Vermont Yankee decommissioning, there's been a common theme: The plant's spent fuel has got to go, and as soon as possible. Recently, however, a small but vocal group has been raising concerns about where that radioactive material will end up and whether it's fair for Vermont to make that waste someone else's problem. That movement may be best personified by Rose Gardner, a New Mexico resident who lives near two proposed high-level nuclear waste disposal areas.
Four representatives of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission will travel to the region next week to discuss the proposed sale of Vermont Yankee. The NRC officials are scheduled to appear at a Vermont Nuclear Decommissioning Citizens Advisory Panel meeting scheduled for 6 p.m. on Thursday, May 25 in the Brattleboro Area Middle School multipurpose room. The appearance is expected to draw a larger-than-usual crowd, since the commission is considering whether Vermont Yankee suitor NorthStar Group Services is qualified to undertake the...
For many, the jury's still out on whether a New York company can or should decommission Vermont Yankee. But Vernon's elected leaders have made up their minds. The town's Selectboard recently voted unanimously to urge the state Public Service Board to approve the former nuclear plant's sale to NorthStar Group Services. Officials also sent a letter to the state to formalize the support of the plant's host town. Town officials wrote that they are “confident in the company's ability to...
