Here's what's happening in Vermont news and politics this week. Got a newsworthy event for next week's calendar? Email by Friday to submit.

Monday, January 21

• President Barack Obama is sworn in for a second term today. Watch all the action starting at 11 a.m. live on Vermont Public Television.

Tuesday, January 22

• At noon, Vermont education secretary Armando Vilaseca will discuss the governor's education reform plans on Vermont Public Radio's "Vermont Edition." Listen live.
• At 2:30, three House committees will hold a joint hearing in Montpelier on rising gas prices, at which U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and archnemesis, gasoline mogul Skip Vallee, are both set to testify.
• At 4 p.m., Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. delivers the keynote speech for UVM's Martin Luther King Day festivities. At Ira Allen Chapel. No word on a postspeech beer summit.
• At 7:30, Middlebury College hosts a panel discussion on whether social concerns should influence how colleges invest endowments. 

Four years after she gave up her seat to focus on her day job, former Burlington city councilor and University of Vermont provost Jane Knodell is staging a political comeback.

The Ward 2 Progressive said Sunday night she's planning to run this March for an Old North End council seat being vacated by Democrat Bram Kranichfeld. 

"I continue to be really passionate about the city of Burlington — about my ward," Knodell says. "I think I've got a lot of experience and also some new ideas to help us move forward."

The first candidate to enter the race for the open seat, Knodell brings with her some serious credentials. 

She represented Ward 2 on the council from 1993 to 1997 and from 1999 to 2009, and served two years as council president. An economics professor at UVM, Knodell stepped down as the university's provost last November after more than three years in the post.

"I think I learned a lot about how you make large organizations work," Knodell says of her time at the top of UVM. "The city is a large organization. I think I've got some new insights to bring."

She says she'll also bring a longer view to city government.

"There's been a lot of turnover in the council — a lot of relatively new councilors. That was part of my thinking: I could offer the historical perspective," she says. "Obviously, we have a brand-new mayor, a new administration, great people with good ideas."

This just in from Senate Majority Leader Philip Baruth (D-Chittenden): He's abandoning an attempt to ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines in Vermont.

In a statement emailed to Seven Days Sunday evening, Baruth says he's planning to withdraw a gun control bill he introduced in the Senate just last Tuesday. 

The move comes a day after roughly 250 gun rights activists rallied at the Statehouse in opposition to Baruth's bill and other measures to restrict access to firearms.

In a three-paragraph statement, Baruth wrote that it's "painfully clear to me now that little support exists in the Vermont Statehouse for this sort of bill" and that he feared the legislation "may already be overshadowing measures with greater consensus."

"Would a Progressive Burlington, Vermont, mayor partner with the Koch brothers? Obviously not." That's what local left-wing agitator Jonathan Leavitt wrote in a 2011 blog post to illustrate the irony of Progressive Mayor Bob Kiss partnering with defense contractor Lockheed Martin on climate change initiatives.

How silly to think, Leavitt was suggesting, that the People's Republic of Burlington would ever do business with the billionaire Koch (pronounced "Coke") brothers, notorious among leftists for their bankrolling of numerous right-wing groups and causes.

Guess what?

Kiss' equally Proggy predecessor, Peter Clavelle, did do a deal with the Koch brothers (pictured) — and quite a momentous one, at that.

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"I have reservations about it — and they're pretty strong," Smith said. 

The proposal, which Shumlin first outlined in his second inaugural address last Thursday, was panned earlier this week by a group of Progressive and Democratic lawmakers. But until now, Smith has kept quiet about his reaction.

"The governor and I are in agreement that it's important to put more money into child care subsidies and that it certainly will help young families — particularly single moms — in their effort to get into the workforce," Smith said. "My question is should it be taken away from a program that encourages people to go back to work and makes work make more sense for a lot of people."

Shumlin and his Secretary of Human Services, Doug Racine, have proposed spending $17 million to expand the availability of child-care subsidies and raise the rates the state pays to child-care providers. The program currently serves 5900 families and 8400 children and could reach 900 additional families if its funding is increased, VTDigger.org reported Thursday.

That's a goal Smith and other lawmakers share — but they're concerned about Shumlin's plan to finance it: namely to cut the state's match to the federal Earned Income Tax Credit by $17 million. That $25 million program provides a tax break — and often a lump-sum payment — to some 44,000 low-income Vermonters. The average tax credit recipient could lose $376 a year, the Barre-Montpelier Times Argus reported earlier this week.

Updated with comment from Gov. Peter Shumlin

Former representative Eldred French of Shrewsbury has been selected to replace Bill Carris in the Vermont Senate, Seven Days has learned.

First elected to the House in 2008, French lost a close reelection race last year to fellow incumbent Rep. Dennis Devereux (R-Mount Holly) after decennial redistricting merged portions of their two House districts into one.

"One window closes and another door opens," French, a Democrat, said Friday morning. "I did not want to go out the way I did, so this opportunity is great for me."

A month after winning reelection to a two-year term representing Rutland County, former Democratic majority leader Bill Carris announced his resignation from the Senate in December, citing health reasons. Two weeks ago, Rutland County Democrats selected a list of three potential replacements — French, former senator Cheryl Hooker and former senate candidate Bob Baird — from which Gov. Peter Shumlin could choose.

Shumlin informed French of his decision Thursday and plans to make a formal announcement later Friday. A Shumlin spokesperson could not immediately be reached for comment.

The legislature is still busy playing getting-to-know-you games in committee (we've witnessed no trust falls yet), but that doesn't mean it was a slow week in Vermont news and politics. As always, we're here to present its winners and losers.

So, without further ado, here they are for the week ending Friday, January 18.

Winners:

House Republicans — In a savvy political move, Reps. Kurt Wright (R-Burlington), Tom Koch (R-Barre) and Don Turner (R-Milton) got out ahead of their liberal counterparts Thursday to offer a set of campaign finance reforms meant to increase super PAC disclosure. Runner-up losers: Vermont Democrats, for sounding pedantic and partisan in their response, instead of embracing the proposals and one-upping the Rs.

Vermont cat ladies — Turns out we're the top pet-owning state (70.8 percent of households have a furry friend) and the top cat-owning state (49.5 percent). Almost enough to make us choke on a hairball.

Sen. Patrick Leahy and Rep. Peter Welch — A month after Seven Days started asking to interview them about their positions on gun control, the two D.C. Dems finally called us Wednesday. Runner-up losers: Bernie Sanders, who still won't call us back, and Gov. Peter Shumlin, who declined interview requests Wednesday after President Obama announced his new gun proposals, issuing only a written statement.

Montpelier's revolving door — With Shumlin telecom czar's defection to VTel, yet another insider takes a job at a company she helped out. Legislators may be peeved, but we'll bet a year's salary at Green Mountain Power that they won't change the rules.

Burlington Progressives — Democratic City Councilor Bram Kranichfeld's decision to nix his reelection plans gives the Progs a prime pick-up opportunity in the Old North End. Last year, they held just two seats on the 14-member council. After March, they could hold four. When you add in Progressive-leaning independent Sharon Bushor, that's a sizable Proggy caucus with which Mayor Miro Weinberger might have to deal.

Shumlin's Wal-Mart dance — With his announcement Tuesday of a new Wal-Mart planned for Derby, Shummy got a good press hit up in the Kingdom, where Wal-Mart's pretty popular. But his press office was mighty mum about it outside the Kingdom — perhaps fearing blow-back from anti-Wal-Mart liberals. Like this one.

Losers after the break...

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Thanks to a disruption in the space-time continuum, the Cedar Creek Room of the Statehouse was briefly transported to Bizarro World Thursday morning.

At the podium stood a crew of mostly House Republicans calling for new campaign finance disclosure rules meant to make it easier for voters to know who's funding political campaigns, political action committees and so-called "super PACs."

Their recommendations closely mirrored those offered up in recent months by several liberal groups, including the Vermont Public Interest Research Group and Vermont Priorities.

"This is all about transparency and disclosure. Disclosure, disclosure, disclosure," said Rep. Tom Koch (R-Barre). "The people of this state have a right to know who was contributing to campaigns — how much, how the money is being spent. What they do with that information is their business."

Republican candidates, you'll remember, benefited from a million dollars in campaign expenditures made by the conservative Vermonters First super PAC during the 2012 election.

After a public backlash that may have contributed to many of those candidates losing, the GOP appears to be trying to get out in front of the issue.

Bill Sorrell and Allen Gilbert found themselves in familiar territory Thursday morning: disagreeing about how much access the public should have to police records.

As the Senate Judiciary Committee began work on a bill to increase access to law enforcement records, the attorney general and head of the American Civil Liberties Union of Vermont gave conflicting advice about how far to extend the public's right to know.

Vermont's public records laws are among the country's weakest, allowing some 250 exemptions. But a string of reports about actual and alleged police misconduct have spurred calls for greater police transparency.

Gilbert urged the committee to adopt the federal Freedom of Information standard, which presumes public access to criminal investigative records absent a specific harm that might be caused by their release. He noted that 21 other states and the District of Columbia have already adopted that standard. He said some Vermont police agencies have become "overzealous" in their secrecy, giving the impression that they have something to hide. And that, he said, has eroded trust in police overall.

"How can people trust what police are doing if they can’t even the see the records of something they did five, 10, 25 years ago?" Gilbert asked. "That's really extreme."

The Shumlin administration has also proposed adopting the federal open-records standard, but wants an exemption for any records that could "reasonably be expected to constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy" — a provision that could leave law enforcment agencies with broad discretion.

Sorrell (pictured) countered with a less sweeping proposal: He wants the law to say criminal case files become public only when they involve alleged wrongdoing by a police officer while on duty. Files relating to investigations of private citizens should remain off-limits, he said.

News and politics stories in this week's issue of Seven Days...

• In this week's cover story, Ken Picard takes a deep dive into the state auditor's race between Republican Vince Illuzzi and Democrat/Progressive Doug Hoffer — a battle between the "King of the Kingdom" and the "Data Man."
• What's up with Burlington Telecom? Three years after its troubles first surfaced, the municipally-owned, deep-in-debt utility is still stuck on pause, writes Kevin J. Kelley.
• Kathryn Flagg writes about Burlington's big plans for its King Street neighborhood — without leaving its low-income residents behind.
• This week in Fair Game: Gov. Peter Shumlin talks a big game against corporate money in politics, but he's lining his campaign coffers with cash from special-interest groups. Plus, updates on super PAC backer Lenore Broughton, an Obama fundraiser with James Taylor in Vermont and more changes for the Burlington Free Press.