Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is returning to the early presidential primary state of South Carolina next week during a three-day tour of the South.

As he weighs whether to join the 2016 presidential race, Sanders will hold town hall meetings in Raleigh, N.C., Columbia, S.C., and Jackson, Miss., next Wednesday through Friday, according to South Forward, a Democratic super PAC that's co-sponsoring the forums.

Sanders, who chairs the Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs, will also accept the American Legion's Patriot Award next Wednesday in Charlotte, N.C., where the veteran service organization is holding its annual convention, according to Sanders spokesman Michael Briggs. Sanders will share the award with House Committee on Veterans' Affairs chairman Jeff Miller (R-Fl.), with whom Sanders negotiated a major overhaul of the Department of Veterans Affairs last month.

Does it matter that a self-described Democrat running for the Burlington School Board is getting bankrolled by conservative supporters? That question is fueling lively debate among residents in the New North End's Ward 7, where there’s a competitive, three-way race for a seat that opened up when Greg Jenkins resigned several months ago. 

Former school board member Linda Deliduka, who lost her seat last March to newcomer David Kirk, is facing off against Kevin Garrison and Ed McMahon. The election is Tuesday.

The candidates all live within a few blocks of one another in the Village Green neighborhood. The school board is considered a nonpartisan body, but Garrison's political affiliations are causing a stir. 

Lenore Broughton, who funneled more than $1 million into the conservative super PAC Vermonters First, gave Garrison $500, according to the August 18 campaign finance disclosures. Scot Shumski, a conservative and outspoken member of the school board who is also running for state representative, is acting as Garrison's campaign manager. He introduced Garrison to Broughton and also encouraged the Burlington Republicans to help out. The party chipped in $150. 

A self-described "Blue Dog Democrat," Garrison points out that he's got Democrats backing him, too, including City Councilors Tom Ayres, Dave Hartnett and Bianka Legrand. He sees his bipartisan backing as a good thing. "I come from humble roots, and I’ve been able to build a coalition of people that support me — Republicans, Democrats and independents. At the end of the day, I think that’s what we need to move forward with our schools." 

Garrison said Shumski's a good friend — they went to high school together — and they are both focused on reining in school spending while promoting "better outcomes for students." On other topics? "We agree to disagree, and we only talk about the things we agree on," he said. As for his meeting with Broughton, "She’s a sweet lady. I sat down and I talked to her and I look forward to talking to her again if I have the need to… and she was concerned about the outcomes for our students just as much as I was, and basically that’s what our conversation was based on."

Regardless of who gives him money and helps on his campaigns, Garrison insisted, "I’m a man of my own convictions, my own values, my own ideas."

Not everyone is convinced. "We are who we keep company with," said Jenkins, who's supporting Deliduka. "If Kevin really thinks that the company he keeps is going to have no bearing on the way he is going to govern on the school board, then he is very naïve."

Ayres said he's had to defend his endorsement of a candidate  who's also getting support from the far-right side of the aisle. "Quite frankly, people kind of freaked out when they saw the 'Kevin Garrison for School Board' on my lawn," he said.

The Democratic councilor continues to support Garrison but he actually shares some of his neighbors' concerns. In a post on Front Porch Forum, he wrote, "Those of us who have been elected to local and state office know that the financial, political, and logistical support of Scot Shumski, ultra-conservative funder Lenore Broughton, and others from the far-right fringe comes with expectations and a price tag."

Ayres said he and others are concerned that the national organization, American Majority — which trains conservatives to run for down-ballot offices — could make inroads on the Burlington School Board. Shumski participated in a training earlier this year before winning his election. "Much of this discussion has focused on Kevin’s association, to put it bluntly, with a skillful, well-organized, and well-funded group of far-right, ultra-conservative Tea Party activists seeking to gain a foothold in Burlington and communities in our region," Ayres wrote in a Front Porch Forum post.

In a Front Porch Forum post titled "The Real Scot Shumski," Shumski defended his intentions. "Whether it's my role on the Burlington School Board or my candidacy for the statehouse its about improving the community I live in ... Let me close by focusing NOT on the poisonous, negative attack launched by Tom Ayres (that really serves no purpose but to distract and divide our community) but rather on what is truly important, electing Kevin Garrison to the Burlington School Board from Ward 7. Knowing that my children will have another tireless advocate for them on the school board is what drives me in my support for Kevin Garrison."

According to Shumski, people like Ayres are the ones politicizing the school board race. "There a small minority of extreme radicals in the New North End who are making an issue of it," he said in an interview. "Do you think people as principled as Kevin and I are going to be swayed by someone who contributed to us?" During his door-knocking rounds, Garrison also said he's seen "no evidence" that people are concerned by his Republican supporters. 

Garrison added that he had to look up what American Majority was to figure out what people were alarmed about. "I'm going to accept the support from all parties and I think that's what we need to move forward," he said.

For Deliduka, there's a déjà vu quality to the situation. Last March, Kirk clobbered her on the fundraising front, and he too was helped along by a $1,000 donation from Broughton. (Kirk raised roughly $2,500 total while Deliduka brought in less than $500.) So far, Garrison has raised $1,500. Deliduka said she just recently crossed the $500 mark. 

Deliduka declined to weigh in on her opponent and his Republican supporters. " I don't want to put out anything that says I’m concerned about that. Where we should be putting our time and thoughts is on the schools."

McMahon couldn't be reached for comment. 

Interrupted repeatedly at a town hall meeting last weekend, an irate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) yelled at disruptive audience members: "Shut up!"

The meeting, at Cabot's Willey Building Auditorium on Saturday, grew so heated that Sanders' outreach director, Phil Fiermonte, called the cops, according to Vermont State Police spokeswoman Stephanie Dasaro. Four troopers arrived partway through the event, but took no action.

"They basically were just there as a presence," Dasaro said. "Other than that, we didn't get involved. There was no disorderly conduct. No one was arrested."

A seven-minute video of the meeting was posted to YouTube Sunday by Marie Countryman, a Montpelier activist:
  

A week before Republican voters go to the polls, Pomfret businessman Scott Milne became the first candidate in the 2014 gubernatorial race to air television advertising Tuesday morning.

Milne bought $18,731 in airtime from four local television networks, according to a report filed with the secretary of state's office, and said he would buy more before next Tuesday's primary.

"It's pretty much what we planned on doing as we got to the end of June and figured out what our strategy would be," Milne said.

The 30-second advertisement, narrated in part by former governor Jim Douglas, features footage of the former gov and the would-be gov at Milne's campaign announcement last month at Barre's Aldrich Public Library.

Here's what it looks like:

Updated at 4:53 p.m.

Former U.S. senator Jim Jeffords, an iconic independent and veteran Vermont politician, died Monday at age 80.

Near the end of his 40-year career in public office, the Rutland Republican stunned the nation in May 2001 when he left his party to become an independent. The move handed control of a closely divided Senate to the Democratic Party for the next 18 months and earned Jeffords a place in political history.

But according to his longtime chief of staff, Susan Boardman Russ, Jeffords’ most important contribution was not his defection from the GOP, but his decades of work fighting for education, the environment, dairy farmers and the disabled.

“That’s his legacy. That’s what mattered to him,” Boardman Russ said. “The publicity he got for switching parties I sometimes wish hadn’t happened because all those incredible things he did over those years got lost.”

Jeffords died Monday morning at the Knollwood Military Retirement Residence in Washington, D.C., where he had lived since the death of his wife, Liz, in 2007, according to former spokeswoman Diane Derby. 

For months, Gov. Peter Shumlin has assiduously avoided speculating publicly about the future of IBM's Essex Junction plant. 

But two weeks after he met with the company's top brass in his Montpelier office, the governor is now speaking out about the plant's prospects, which he believes are far brighter than the financial press have indicated.

In an interview with WCAX-TV on Wednesday and with Seven Days on Thursday, Shumlin said he left the July 29 confab with a new understanding of the facility's strengths, innovation and competitiveness. 

"I came out of this meeting feeling really optimistic about the plant, about the work they're doing right now and the over 4,000 hardworking Vermonters that are doing it," he told Seven Days. "We often hear about, you know, the downs, when they're laying people off. They informed me they were hiring, right now, dozens and dozens of people."

Shumlin conceded that the company's new hiring in Vermont does not make up for two rounds of layoffs last year that left hundreds unemployed — not to mention the thousands more who have lost their jobs at the plant over more than a decade. But he argued that in the "highly volatile" microelectronics business, "we read about the downsizings and we don't usually read about the upsizings — but that's exactly what they're going through at this moment."

"They've moved from contraction mode to hiring mode — to expansion mode," he said. "This is the nature of this business. There will be more contraction modes; there will be more expansion modes. All I'm saying is we tend to read about the contraction, not the expansion. They're in an expansion mode right now. That was very clear to me."

The Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation has declined the request by Citizens to Protect Berlin Pond to ban recreational use on the body of water that supplies Montpelier with drinking water.

"The Department found that these activities would not threaten Montpelier’s drinking water, and that proper enforcement and education regarding existing laws and rules adequately addresses potential for a conflict between recreation and other uses including wildlife viewing," says an announcement posted on the Agency of Natural Resources website this morning.

The state did, however, agree to a request from the city of Montpelier to restrict motor vehicles from Berlin Pond.

Updated at 5:02 p.m.

Gov. Peter Shumlin fired Doug Racine, his secretary of human services and a former political rival, Monday afternoon.

“As governor, these decisions are never easy, but I felt that it was time for a different kind of leadership,” Shumlin said at a press conference Tuesday afternoon at the Rutland Transfer Station.

Shumlin, whose office announced in a press release Tuesday morning that Racine was “stepping down,” declined to elaborate on the nature of his secretary’s departure.

“I’m not going to talk a lot about why now or look in the past,” the governor said. “What I’m saying is: I’m grateful to Sec. Racine for his service. I have to make a judgment as governor when I feel that an agency needs new leadership. I made that judgment.”

Asked what, specifically, prompted Racine’s exit, Shumlin said, “Specifically answering your question is exactly what I’m not going to do.”

A partnership of members of Burlington's Handy family has agreed to pay $70,000 to settle claims that hazardous materials spilled from an auto shop on Riverside Avenue near a drain that empties into the Winooski River, Attorney General Bill Sorrell announced today. 

Waste oil stored at the former M&H Auto building spilled in February 2012, necessitating a response from both state and local hazardous material teams. During follow-up inspections of the shuttered auto shop, the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources found several problems with the storage of hazardous materials, according to court documents, including large drums of waste that were rusted, uncovered, or left outside.

Additionally, several 55-gallon drums full of waste were not properly labeled and catalogued with federal regulators, the attorney general's office said. It was unclear from court papers whether any of the spilled oil reached the nearby river.

"Vermont businesses that generate and handle hazardous waste must follow the state's hazardous waste management rules," Sorrell said in a prepared statement. "Those rules protect the public health and the environment. We take violations of the rules seriously."

In court papers, the Handys, who run numerous Burlington businesses, admitted the attorney general's allegations, and said that several of the drums had been left by prior tenants. The family, operating under the Sisters and Brothers Investment Group LLP, implemented proper procedures for handling waste after the incident, the attorney general said.

A Washington County judge approved the settlement.

A $9 million, six years-in-the-making project to redevelop the northern part of Burlington's waterfront began Tuesday.

In March, Queen City voters approved a plan to use tax increment financing (TIF) to help fund six major projects on the waterfront. The "Waterfront Access North" construction — which includes building a new skatepark and doctoring a "decayed and disjointed" stretch of the bike path — is the first to get underway. 

Standing amidst the gravel and overgrown Queen Anne's lace next to the defunct Moran Plant (the subject of another of the projects), Mayor Miro Weinberger called the ground-breaking a "historic and long-awaited day" and described the project as the most significant waterfront development undertaken in the last two decades. 

In addition to the skatepark and the bike path renovations, the city will extend Lake Street, bury the nearby utility lines, install a new storm-water runoff system and do environmental remediation work.