Lyndon State College's former president, Carol Moore, has been chosen to serve as Burlington College's next interim president.  

Burlington College's previous leader, Christine Plunkett, resigned unexpectedly in late July when students surrounded her car demanding that she step down.  Extreme financial pressures at the college exacerbated her relationships with faculty, staff and the student body.  

Moore is replacing Mike Smith, who agreed to lead the college temporarily in September along with Jane Knodell and David Coates, who were advising him on academic and financial decisions. 

Moore has 40 years of experience in education, according to press release issued by the college. She was a professor and an academic dean before becoming Lyndon's president. In 2011, she left after 13 years as president, citing personal reasons. Prior to that, she served as provost and vice president of academic affairs at Mercy College in New York City.

During Smith's brief tenure at Burlington College, he signed a memorandum of understanding with Eric Farrell, agreeing to sell 25 acres of the school's 32-acre campus to the local developer, who plans to build a number of housing units on the land. The deal is expected to be finalized in January unless a conservation group can beat Farrell's offer. 

Finding bipartisan agreement in Congress is a pretty sticky endeavor these days, but there’s apparently one thing our elected leaders can agree on: maple syrup.

At least, that's the message of a video clip posted to Congressman Peter Welch’s (D-Vt.) Facebook page Thursday.

On Thanksgiving, U.S. House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) shared his turkey brine recipe with the public, noting that “the real secret is 16 ounces of pure maple syrup."

Updated at 6:38 p.m.

As he prepares for a challenging legislative session, Gov. Peter Shumlin filled two key administration positions Thursday afternoon.

Shumlin promoted Deputy Secretary of Natural Resources Justin Johnson to the post of secretary of administration, a powerful position with authority over all areas of state government and its budget.

"He's the right man for this job right now," Shumlin said during a press conference Thursday afternoon in the governor’s ceremonial Statehouse office. “He knows how to get tough things done. He’s an honest broker with a history of bipartisanship and he has extraordinarily great, sound judgment.”

Updated at 1:56 p.m. with more from Scott Milne.

A month after his second-place finish in Vermont's gubernatorial campaign, Republican Scott Milne has again delayed his decision to contest the election in front of the legislature.

But the Pomfret businessman now says he’s “leaning” toward staying in the race until January.

“All options are on the table, but I’m leaning toward staying in,” Milne said Thursday afternoon.

Since no candidate won 50 percent of the vote, Vermont's constitution calls on the legislature to pick a governor from among the top three vote-getters. Typically, those who fail to win a plurality concede the race shortly after the election, but Milne says he may ask legislators to vote him in, despite the fact that he came in 2,434 votes short of Democratic Gov. Peter Shumlin.

The day after the election, Milne scheduled and then canceled a press conference to announce his intentions. A week later, he said he would not seek a recount, but would take a week to decide whether to actively contest the race before the legislature. When that deadline passed, he said he would deliberate over the Thanksgiving holiday and announce his intentions this week.

On Thursday morning, he told Seven Days by text message that the announcement was "sliding into next week."

Nearly two years after deadline, Gov. Peter Shumlin will present the legislature with a plan to pay for his universal health care proposal on December 29 or 30, he revealed Wednesday. But he swears he's not trying to bury the news in the lull of the holiday season.

"That's exactly why I wanted to give you the date now," Shumlin said during a wide-ranging discussion with reporters at Burlington's Hotel Vermont. "Because I didn't want to wake up on December 31 and [read], 'It was a late-night news dump.'"

So why make such an important announcement when so many Vermonters are tuned out?

"My team is working really hard to get this together. And we believe we will have it together — we know we will — on December 29 or 30," he said. "We wanted to get it to the legislators before they're sworn in, just shortly — several days later."

Chittenden County State's Attorney T.J. Donovan announced today that he dropped felony charges in three drug cases reliant on evidence that a former Colchester police officer allegedly stole from a storage room.

In total, Donovan has dropped five cases this week as a result of the arrest of Colchester Detective Cpl. Tyler Kinney, who faces federal charges for allegedly stealing a gun and drugs from the evidence locker to support his heroin habit.

And there will likely be many more cases dismissed in the next several weeks, Donovan said. He declined to give an estimate.

"It hurts public safety, there's no doubt about it," Donovan said. "The community suffers. There is a real consequence to his alleged behavior."

State workers on government holiday initially overlooked an alert from FairPoint Communications after the 911 system failed last Friday, the first in a series of communications lapses that exacerbated the crisis, a state official told Seven Days.

Enhanced 911 Board Executive Director David Tucker said in an interview that his agency is responsible for many failures that left Vermont emergency workers unaware for hours that residents could not use 911 to reach them.

"Those notifications didn't get to everybody that should have seen them," Tucker said. "We can't have people out there with no idea it's down. You know what people say about the fog of war? It got very confusing very quickly."

Additionally, Tucker said, the number of 911 calls that did not make it through to dispatchers during the outage is almost twice as high as has been widely reported. In total, 83 people tried to call 911 but couldn't get through, Tucker said. The earlier tally of 45 calls was based on information gleaned from FairPoint Communications, only one of the two private companies with that information. The other company, Intrado, reported their missing calls later, Tucker said.

As of this morning, the state finished checking back with most callers, and none had suffered ill effects, Tucker said.

Around 3 p.m. on Friday, network problems caused by a fiber cut in key FairPoint infrastructure prevented many Vermonters from being able to place outbound calls, including to 911. FairPoint provides the fiber infrastructure for Vermont's 911 system, which is run by Colorado-based Intrado.

One hour later, FairPoint, following protocol for outages affecting more than 25 customers, sent an email to state Enhanced 911 staffers notifying them of the outage, Tucker said. (Intrado did not notify the state, Tucker said.)

Until that moment, the 911 system had been down without any emergency official in Vermont being made aware of it.

But for the next 45 minutes, nothing happened. Friday was a government holiday. No one was in the Enhanced 911 office and no one was required to check email, Tucker said.

At 4:45 p.m., Tucker said, he happened to check his email, and saw a message from dispatcher in St. Albans, who was beginning to detect that something was amiss. The dispatcher hadn't  been receiving any 911 calls, which he found alarming. "He said, 'I think we've got a problem,'" Tucker said.

That email prompted Tucker to scroll through his inbox and see the earlier alert from FairPoint, he said.

"There was a 45-minute period between when we got the first notice and when we were aware of it," Tucker said. "We missed it. It's our fault. There were few people looking at email because it's a day off. We made mistakes in the communications process."

The outage alerts sent by FairPoint are usually for small events — a car knocking over a telephone pole — that knock out 911 and other services to 25 customers or more, Tucker said.  FairPoint should have done more to underscore the severity of this outage, he said. "This wasn't a typical outage," Tucker said. "I can make an argument the notice should have been clearer, or [there should have been] a follow-up phone call."

Information belatedly in hand, the Enhanced 911 Office set about calling Vermont's eight regional dispatch sites, which serve as hubs for their local areas across the state.

But there was one big problem with that plan — the phones were down. The protocols apparently didn't factor that in.

"We couldn't get through to them," he said. "That plan doesn't survive when you can't pick up the phone and call somebody."

Tucker's office was reduced to sending e-mails to those dispatchers, and hoping amidst the chaos that they would be read promptly. Like the dispatcher in St. Albans, many were beginning to suspect something was wrong. 

Additionally, Tucker said his office reached out to the Vermont Emergency Management Center, which can send out alerts that run on the bottom of residents' televisions, and, in extreme cases, via cell phone. They were planning to send the alert when suddenly, around 5:45 p.m., FairPoint sent Enhanced 911 a new email —the problem had been fixed. Officials dropped the planned alert.

"We thought it was done," Tucker said.

It wasn't.

An hour later, Tucker said, FairPoint reversed course, and announced the 911 system was still down. It wasn't until 8:45 p.m. that the system was finally fixed.

Tucker acknowledged that some emergency departments never learned that 911 was down. Regional dispatchers used radios to contact agencies within range. Tucker said that some police and fire departments learned off the outage via television reports.

Updated at 1:45 p.m. to include FairPoint statement.

Days after a statewide 911 outage, the Vermont Department of Public Service has asked the Vermont Public Service Board to investigate the "adequacy,' of FairPoint Communications' service, following through on a previously issued threat to the struggling company.

The DPS said it had long planned to pursue action if customer complaints about FairPoint's service, which have spiked in recent months, did not subside by the end of November. Last Friday's phone outage, during which 45 calls to 911 did not go through, only heightened the concern, the agency said.

"The number of complaints we have received regarding FairPoint service outages and length of time for repair has remained unacceptably high for too many months, and spiked precipitously in the last two months,” Public Service Commissioner Christopher Recchia said in a prepared statement. “Last Friday's network outage, which resulted in Vermonters’ inability to reach 911 for a period of 5-1/2 hours, endangered public safety and welfare."

The DPS said that, while it can seek financial penalties against FairPoint if the PSB finds wrongdoing, its "primary purpose" in filing the petition is to determine the root cause of outages and delays in repair, and to find a solution. The PSB, comprised of three members appointed by the governor, is a quasi-judicial body that presides over a range of issues related to utilities, telecommunications, cable television, electric, gas and water service.

FairPoint has pledged to cooperate with a PSB inquiry.

"We have received the Department's request for the board to open a service quality investigation. If the board opens an investigation, we will fully cooperate with them," the company said.

Roughly 1,700 FairPoint workers, including 370 in Vermont, went on strike on October 17 after negotiations broke down over issues including a pension freeze, eliminating health insurance for retirees and requiring workers to contribute to their health insurance premiums.

Adjunct faculty at Saint Michael's College voted to join the Service Employees International Union, following the lead of adjuncts at Champlain College and Burlington College. 

The U.S. Labor Relations Board released the vote tally Monday.

This semester, 101 adjuncts are teaching at St. Mike’s, according to the administration, which said it took a neutral stance on the organization effort. Forty-six faculty voted in favor of the union and 26 voted against it. On average, 20 percent of courses at St. Mike's are taught by adjuncts. 

College dean Jeffrey Ayres released a brief statement saying that the college encouraged its adjunct faculty to vote and describing them as "an important part of the college in providing an excellent educational experience."

Sharyn Layfied, who teaches a first-year English seminar at St. Mike's, said she doesn't expect to benefit much — she is 65 and isn't sure how much longer she'll teach — but she's excited for her colleagues. 

"I’ve been teaching since I was in my twenties and I have no retirement, no medical insurance, no nothing. I live pretty close to the earth. Whatever happens, it means people who are younger than me will have support of something bigger," Layfield said. "When you’re an adjunct, you’re always alone, and you have no way of knowing what the next six months will look like."

Seven Days wrote about the effort to unionize at all three colleges in October. 

SEIU has notched a number of successes recently when it comes to organizing adjuncts. According to a press release issued Monday, it represents 22,000 faculty. Professors at roughly 12 schools have joined their ranks within the last year.

Advocates for Vermont inmates housed in private out-of-state prisons told lawmakers today that they have little access to the facilities and limited ability to respond to inmates' concerns and conduct investigations.

Defender General Matt Valerio and Prisoners' Rights Office supervising attorney Seth Lipschutz said that they rarely visit prisons in Kentucky and Arizona that are owned by Corrections Corporation of America and house nearly 500 Vermont inmates. 

Whereas investigators from the Defender General's Office are inside Vermont prisons daily, they visit CCA's prison in Beattyville, Ky., where most of CCA's Vermont inmates are held, two or three times a year, usually in response to assaults or other critical incidents.

"They’re constantly visiting [Vermont] facilities, talking to inmates, talking to the staff, kind of being the watchdog," Lipschutz said. "We don’t have that in Kentucky. We don’t go down there often and it’s harder to solve problems. That is a legitimate issue that I have tossed and turned in bed over. The place is 1,000 miles away. It’s really hard to keep tabs on it.”