Health matters, especially during a pandemic. Yet, Rutland’s downtown and students’ homes are being outfitted with 4G/5G antennas by VTel. Other Vermont towns are also in line for telecom’s Trojan Horse.

The COVID-19 pandemic has created unprecedented public health and economic challenges for the people of Vermont. Vermonters have lost their lives, many have lost access to health care services, one in four are now unemployed and too many families are struggling with hunger because of food sh…

Vermont has received $1.25 billion in Coronavirus Relief Funds through the federal CARES Act, which have time constraints and restricted uses. One of the allowable uses is providing for the needs of the unhoused as a response to the public-health emergency created by COVID-19, and another is…

Regarding the proposed emergency broadband action plan, I’ve heard some say "everyone wants wireless- everyone wants 5G." This Vermonter strongly disagrees with this statement and I know many who feel as I do. There are ample reasons why the wireless approach is a bad idea but perhaps the st…

I am writing to implore Gov. Phil Scott to make masks mandatory for customers in retail establishments during your emergency order. While we have met in my role as a state representative for Rutland City, this concern originates with my other job as the manager of a bookstore in downtown Rutland.

In her commentary, Anna Vesely Pilette recommends “Planet of the Humans” as a source of information “about the efficacy of renewable energy ... worthy of a full and open debate.”

A major and depressing casualty of the COVID-19 economic lockdown is the calamitous effect it is having on small business, especially retail, entertainment and restaurant firms and the service market of electricians, plumbers and other skilled tradespeople. Massive federal aid spending, such…

The census mandated by the U.S. Constitution has been conducted nationwide every 10 years since 1790. The 2020 Census started April 1. And now we are seven weeks into the survey and Windham County has the second lowest county response rate in the whole state with a return rate of only 35% as…

Around this time last year as the legislative session was ending, I was reflecting on the meaning of politics and the politics of meaning. I wrote and published my thoughts and ended on this note, “If we pursue a legislative agenda committed to putting meaning at the center of our deliberati…

About a week ago, the state announced the ending of the Child Care Stabilization Program, giving permission and encouragement for child care programs to reopen June 1. Although initially excited, many providers were caught off guard as the conclusion of the stabilization program means child …

A week and a half ago, I sent the following email, regarding the recently released documentary “Planet of the Humans,” to our state representatives and senators. I sent a similar email to our congressional delegation, Representative Welch, and Sens. Leahy and Sanders. Not one of those seven …

In regards to the recently passed COVID-19 Essential Employees Hazard Grant Program, S.346, words cannot express my outrage.

Regular Vermonters are on the front line of the COVID-19 crisis and are our first line of defense. Health care and testing, as important as it is, is the second line of defense and contact tracing is the third line. Going forward with the COVID-19 recovery, it is important that all Vermonter…

By many accounts, the Scott administration’s response to the COVID-19 crisis has been transparent, measured and reasonable. But in at least one respect, it has been none of those things, and that is the administration’s continued failure to ensure people who live and work in our prisons are …

There is no hiding from COVID-19. This virus has no borders and travels at will, menacing people and businesses in every sector of society. The pandemic threatens agriculture and with it, our food security, as farmers work to produce the food on our tables. Our farmers, producers and those m…

‘Twas the night before Tuesday or Friday, I do not remember,

Seventy-five years ago, the United States, Great Britain, the USSR and Allies emerged victorious over fascism in Europe; Nazi Germany surrendered. While the price was high (hundreds of thousands of American soldiers dead, tens of millions more around the world), no one can rationally argue t…

The Vermont State Colleges System has been in serious financial straits for several years.

Aimee Stephenson, says in her commentary, the shutdown was put in place to prevent our hospitals from being overrun by a tidal wave of patients with COVID-19 viral infections. No, that is not why shutdown was put in place. It was not to flatten a curve. It was not to protect hospitals, but t…

As an educator of college business students and a consultant on strategic planning, I’m often asked for career advice — now more than ever. My bottom-line response: Regardless of how bleak the circumstances, don’t just sit there! Moving forward, despite difficult experiences in my life, has …

I wrote recently about the social experiment occurring now we are fully engaged with, the coronavirus pandemic. Looking at an historical perspective, we can see the challenges facing us have developed through a long period of time.

The image of Vice President Mike Pence visiting staff and patients at the Mayo Clinic and choosing to not wear a mask continues to haunt me. The reasons we should all be outraged by this behavior go far beyond the current pandemic.

I certainly hope the gentleman complaining about not being able to get a haircut because of coronavirus restrictions isn’t expecting the rest of us to be willing to die so he’ll be better coiffed. He can play with statistics as much as he wants, but the fact is this virus is way more dangero…

The Flexible Capital Fund, L3C (the “Flex Fund”), provides risk capital in the form of revenue-based financing to growing companies in Vermont’s food system, forestry and clean technology sectors. These businesses are critical to helping put food on our table, heat in our homes and businesse…

The COVID-19 pandemic is worldwide, but there are many more cases in some areas than others.

Staying connected with loved ones, friends and caregivers is crucial during these uncertain times, especially for older adults and anyone facing the possibility of social isolation.

Who would have thought the chronic financial status of Northern Vermont University (Lyndon and Johnson), exacerbated to a near fatal state by the COVID-19 virus, would have negative implications for Castleton University. But the forcing out of Karen Scolforo from the presidency of Castleton …

Vermont is broken. Don’t take my word for it. Just survey the policy failures in recent years.

With many people isolating at home to benefit public safety, and uncertainty the only certainty these days, it’s been inspiring to see how Rutland County has responded to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Homelessness has been stopped in its tracks in Brattleboro. As I write this, there is not a single person I am aware of who does not currently have shelter. This is an incredible achievement. What’s more incredible is that it was accomplished within the last 30 days.

After reading the piece by Alan Betts in the weekend edition of the Herald, I am upset and shocked that a piece of that tone would be sent for print and then approved by the editors later on.

Future health care premium increases will likely trigger educational excess spending threshold penalty.

The Rutland region has so much to offer us, but in reading the Rutland Herald on April 23, I can’t help but think the biggest challenge holding us back continues to be outdated thinking, frozen in the past and not seeing the opportunities within our reach that can lead us to a more vibrant a…

Imagine watching a grade B horror movie about an insidious virus killing thousands of people and shutting down civilization around the planet. There are shots of huge cities with eerily empty streets; scenes of people saying goodbye to dying loved ones over the phone. Cut to a commercial; a …

As America struggles to recover from the pandemic, can we fashion a “new normal” that addresses weaknesses and vulnerabilities in our society that have been glaringly exposed by COVID-19?

It’s too early to have a clear picture of how Vermont should allocate the $1.25 billion it received last week from the federal Coronavirus Relief Fund. But a fully funded, fully functioning public education system has to be a top priority.

You may have seen the recent news coverage regarding the challenges faced by the Vermont State Colleges System, many of which were highlighted last summer in the VSCS White Paper, Securing the Future of the Vermont State Colleges, and exacerbated by the novel coronavirus global pandemic this…

While I have been a supporter of Gov. Phil Scott, and think he and his team are doing an excellent job managing the COVID-19 crisis, I am concerned that mask wearing in public has not been made mandatory. It is a risky move, and it just isn’t safe.

While we recognize the 50th anniversary of Earth Day in Vermont, social distancing in nature, the world made a baseline mistake in developing environmental policy decades ago. It chose to treat nature as an unlimited resource for humans. This baseline allowed policies to fall short. It’s one…

Prompted by the article in Thursday’s Herald (April 23) about the draft Master Plan controversies, this column is offered to explain reasons the Planning Commission included language in support of a city bypass. Perhaps it would have been wiser to have called it a “limited access route to al…

This is the week when environmental activists around the world had planned huge actions in the streets, schools and lots of other creative ideas. While our well planned agenda of full expression of our sadness, rage and dreams about the future will need to be expressed in alternative words a…

I’ll listen to our governor as long as he continues his cautious approach to reopening the economy. At least, moderate Vermonters won’t threaten his life, as did the “protester” in Kentucky arrested for threatening the life of the Democratic governor on Facebook. (Anybody else notice all the…

To any Otter Valley, Rutland, Rutland Town, Mill River, Christ the King, Mount St. Joseph Academy or other student or their loved ones reading this — I know this is a trying time for all of us. Though this piece is centered on Otter Valley students, I am sure some of it will ring a bell with…

If people are paying close attention to the situation during this coronavirus, it should be vividly clear the capitalist free market system does not work for the average American and the highly touted robust economy was never more than smoke and mirrors.

Yesterday was an Earth Day unlike any other, as we manage the COVID-19 pandemic.