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2 weeks ago | 
vtdigger.org | Greta Solsaa |Kevin O'Connor
MONTPELIER — Thousands of people crowded the Statehouse green and overflowed onto the street below the golden dome on Saturday for the largest planned demonstration in Vermont against President Donald Trump since he took office again. Geri Peterson, an organizer of the Vermont rally with the decentralized activist network 50501, said the expected turnout for the rally in Montpelier was 6,000 people, but that crowd amassed to an estimated 10,000 people.
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Jan 16, 2025 | 
vtdigger.org | Kevin O'Connor
Rutland City officials are seeking the resignation of a local school board member who is continuing to serve after reportedly moving to a nearby town. “The city has found that you do not reside within the city as is required to be eligible to vote within the city and to have a seat on the city’s school board,” municipal attorney Megan LaChance wrote to board member Heather Hauke in a Dec. 24 letter.
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Jan 14, 2025 | 
vtdigger.org | Kevin O'Connor
When Vermont Democrats lacked a gubernatorial candidate the afternoon of the primary deadline in August 1972, Rockingham lawyer Tom Salmon, in the most last-minute of Hail Mary passes, threw his hat in the ring. “There could be a whale of a big surprise,” Salmon was quoted as saying by skeptical reporters who knew the former local legislator had been soundly beached in his first try for state office two years earlier.
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Jan 12, 2025 | 
vtdigger.org | Kevin O'Connor
BRATTLEBORO — Upon its start in 1937, the community-run Brattleboro Ski Hill was known as the old Clark farm before locals renamed it Living Memorial Park and celebrated its can-do spirit by coining the slogan “The Little Ski Hill That Could.”Until, with climate change minimizing and melting snowfall, it couldn’t.
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Jan 7, 2025 | 
vtdigger.org | Kevin O'Connor
A U.S. bankruptcy judge has set an April 4 deadline for people to report past clergy sexual abuse if they want compensation as part of the Vermont Roman Catholic Diocese’s court efforts to reorganize its depleting finances. The state’s largest religious denomination filed for Chapter 11 financial protection last fall after facing a new wave of lawsuits alleging priest misconduct as far back as 1950.
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Jan 2, 2025 | 
vtdigger.org | Kevin O'Connor
Facing a more than 20% municipal tax hike this coming fiscal year, town leaders in Brattleboro have suggested lowering expenses through everything from curbing office-supply purchases to closing the public pool. City government counterparts in Montpelier, wrestling with a similar spike, are considering cuts in funding for programs on housing, economic development, public transportation, the arts, and social equity and justice.
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Jan 1, 2025 | 
vtdigger.org | Kevin O'Connor
When 82-year-old George Aiken retired to his Putney home in 1975 after a lifelong political career as a state representative, speaker of the House, lieutenant governor, governor and U.S. senator, the man who chose green for the color of Vermont’s license plates and coined the term “Northeast Kingdom” dismissed all the accolades. “The nation will survive,” the now late officeholder dryly told the Rutland Herald upon his return that Jan. 3.
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Dec 25, 2024 | 
vtdigger.org | Kevin O'Connor
For Elaine Shield, the lightbulb — make that flashbulb — moment came when she first eyed a Christmas card picturing a cousin’s family in 1969. That’s when the now 90-year-old Vermonter and her husband, Paul, decided to set up a photo with their five squirming children and sent out the resulting black-and-white (pouting newborn front and center) for the holidays.
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Dec 13, 2024 | 
vtdigger.org | Kevin O'Connor
BRATTLEBORO — In a 76-55 vote Thursday night, a citizen-petitioned special Town Meeting rescinded new municipal rules that supporters said would help rehabilitate offenders through civil rather than criminal penalties for such acts as illegal drug use and dealing, physical threats and property damage. The local selectboard voted 3-2 in September for an “acceptable community conduct” ordinance after hearing complaints from residents about a 16% increase in police calls and serious crimes.
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Dec 10, 2024 | 
vtdigger.org | Kevin O'Connor
Richmond Town Manager Josh Arneson, like other municipal leaders in Vermont’s 247 cities and towns, annually celebrates the holidays not by writing cards, but instead by drafting a local government budget for the coming fiscal year. “We always start out with a wish list,” Arneson said in his community of 4,167 people. This season, however, leaders are dreaming less and dreading more.
