Vermont’s 14 hospitals have submitted budgets for the fiscal year starting Oct. 1 that increase by just 2.6 percent over the current year’s budgets, the smallest annual increase for the Vermont health care delivery system in four decades.

Proposed spending for fiscal year 2015 came in at $2.229 billion, compared to the $2.172 billion approved by the Green Mountain Care Board for the current fiscal year. The 2.6 percent increase amounts to just under $57 million in new money.

If you live and drive in rural Vermont, you probably already know that some roads are in disrepair, and may even be unsafe.  Take heed — but take comfort, too, because a new report shows that Vermont’s rural byways are not the worst in the northeast. 

The report was released by a national transportation research group called TRIP:

You may have grown up eating Wonderbread, but if you’re inclined to expand your bread horizons, there are a LOT of bakers here in Vermont making loaves by hand. And it’s not just Vermont. Artisinal bread baking has taken off in cities like Seattle, New York, and San Francisco.

This summer, several local communities are answering Gov. Peter Shumlin’s call of alarm about the growing opioid epidemic. About a dozen regional committees are now meeting throughout Vermont to craft specific action plans.

In the Northeast Kingdom, a group of concerned citizens call themselves “The Drug Abuse Resistance Team,” or DART 2.0. They meet once a month in a St. Johnsbury church basement. Members include social service providers, recovering addicts, drug and alcohol abuse counselors, a restorative justice director, even a hospital president.

The Rutland district office of the Department for Children and Families has come under intense scrutiny following the death of a Poultney toddler in February.

The office now has a new interim director, Lynne Klamm, who says keeping kids in the community safe is her number one priority. 

But with several investigations pending, she says providing stability to her staff and rebuilding trust within the community are also vital in moving the troubled agency forward. 

Four weeks after officially entering the Republican race for governor,  Pomfret businessman Scott Milne is beginning to put together the basic elements of his campaign.

Milne has hired the political director of the Vermont Republican Party, Brent Burns, to be his campaign manager and he says he’ll add several more staff positions in the weeks ahead.

On a table in the front room of the milking barn here at Nordic Farms in Charlotte, you can hear the murky liquids bubbling inside a series of foot-tall Erlenmeyer flasks.

The scene seems more like a 1970s-era chemistry set than a cutting edge research facility. And in fact the set-up here is mostly for show – a larger version of the experiment is being run out of a high-tech laboratory in Burlington.

The state Health Department is reporting an increase in whooping cough cases in Windham County.

The department has alerted health care providers in the area that the number of confirmed cases of whooping cough, also known as pertussis, rose to 11 in June. Ten were among children age 3 to 17, while one was an adult. The cases occurred as schools were closing or after they had closed for the summer.

So far in July, the department says there are five more suspected cases. All but one of the confirmed and suspected cases are from Brattleboro.

What might start out as simple collecting or the inability to throw something out, can eventually lead to overloading a home or apartment with stacks of unwanted junk. And that can eventually result in isolation, unsafe conditions and even squalor.

Vermont's law against human trafficking went into effect in 2011, and the Task Force that's implementing it is still working to understand the scope of the problem here, and raise public awareness about how vulnerable young women can become victims of sex traffickers in Vermont.