Vermont Legislature

A special legislative committee met in Montpelier Wednesday to hear from a number of key players on child safety issues.

State police officials, local police chiefs and prosecutors were all represented at today’s hearings, which were spurred by two toddler deaths earlier this year that resulted from abuse. Dave Yacovone is the Commissioner of the Department for Children and Families. He says that despite recent problems, today’s hearings show the state’s commitment to child safety.

Two state representatives have launched a new political action committee that will try to play a decisive role in local House and Senate races this fall.

Stowe Republican Heidi Scheuermann and Middlebury Democrat Paul Ralston say their group, called Vision to Action Vermont, will lend financial support to the campaigns of candidates who vow to push for economic development initiatives in Montpelier.

As Vermont heads down the path toward a single-payer health care system, lawmakers want to make sure the options are affordable for taxpayers and consumers. And the economic analysis about to be launched by the Legislature may duplicate similar work being performed for the Shumlin Administration.

Ask any working parent: Child care can be expensive. While some low-income families qualify for subsidies, many middle-class families pay full tuition.

Between 2003 and 2012, rates have risen, on average, about 43 percent, from $140 to $200 per week. That’s one reason many public schools have started free half-day preschool programs, like the one at Lyndon Town School.

Charma Whitchurch, who has a master's degree in early childhood education, is the lead teacher.

Research shows that the young brain is developing at a faster rate than we previously thought, and that there are good and bad strategies to help children acquire language and the love of learning.

So Vermont’s child care providers are learning the best way to introduce books into a child’s daily routine.

One of those early literacy training sessions takes place at the Springfield Area Parent and Child Center. The teacher is Laura Lawson Tucker, an outreach specialist for the Vermont Humanities Council.

Beginning in 2015, every public school district in Vermont will have to subsidize at least 10 hours of pre-kindergarten per week for 3 and 4-year-olds.

The biennial legislative session adjourned a month ago, and it’s a good time to review the results.

The 2015 General Fund budget grew by 5.6% over the 2014 budget approved a year ago. That means that state spending is increasing about twice as fast as state revenues.

An often-forgotten backdrop to the current focus on Gov. Peter Shumlin’s single-payer health care reform plan is that we have been through this exercise once already.

The first legislative effort to install a single-payer system came in January of 1991 when Sen. Cheryl Rivers, a Democrat from Stockbridge, introduced S-127, a Canadian-style single-payer plan for Vermont. Canadian style means that it would cover everybody in the state, it would be financed entirely by taxes and it would leave the delivery system – the doctors and hospitals – in the private sector.

Prosecutors across the state hope to implement a new program that offers treatment and not jail to some people charged with a drug offense, under a new law signed Tuesday by Gov. Peter  Shumlin.

Vermont’s new law is patterned after a successful program that’s been in place in Chittenden County for the past four years.

The basic idea is to screen people who have been charged with the possession of opiates or heroin and offer them a strict treatment option as an alternative to being incarcerated. At the same time, the new law also imposes tougher penalties on drug dealers.

For months now, the one question dominating the 2014 election cycle was, ‘Will Vermont Republicans have a candidate for governor?’

The answer finally arrived Thursday morning, when Republican Scott Milne announced his challenge to incumbent Democrat Peter Shumlin.

“I think there’s a lot of people that feel like I do, that are paying attention, that Vermont is either headed in the wrong direction, or least not headed in the right direction,” Milne said in an interview Thursday.