Tuesday, February 28, 2017
Money from 10 funding sources — including a $10 increase for the annual fee on motor vehicle registrations, a sales tax on marina slip rentals, and 1 percent increases in rooms, meals and alcohol taxes — would achieve that multimillion dollar figure, the Natural Resources, Fish and Wildlife Committee calculated.
The taxes would start in 2019 while the state figures out how to levy a “per-parcel fee” to be implemented in 2021. Such a fee would require property owners of all sizes, as well as tax-exempt organizations, to pay varying amounts annually.
Under the committee’s recommendation, that fee would become the long-term funding source as the state works to meet federally mandated goals to reduce phosphorus in Vermont’s rivers, streams and lakes. In the meantime, the state would rely on existing bonding capacity for the pollution reduction efforts.
Tags: Lake Champlain cleanup , David Deen , Phil Scott , Beth Pearce , Image , Web Only
Butler, who lives in Jericho, is recruiting residents across the state to vote in support of a requirement that presidential candidates disclose their tax returns in order to appear on Vermont ballots. He came up with the idea after Trump claimed in a January press conference that "the only ones that care about my tax returns are the reporters."
"That's when the light went on," Butler said. "I was like, 'I care.'"
Tags: Bill Butler , town meeting day , Donald Trump , Citizens United , Susan Harritt , Image , Web Only
The board members, Bailey Cummings and Timber Adamson, told Seven Days Tuesday that they wanted the Pride Center to issue a statement criticizing the name of the bar, which they view as an insult to trans women.
Instead, the board's executive committee decided to hold a town meeting-style forum on trans issues Thursday and get more feedback from the community. The resigning board members saw that as a cop-out.
"Basically the name of this bar is a transmisogynistic slur," Cummings said. "And I feel strongly as community leaders that the Pride Center is responsible for standing up for our trans community members, and coming out against a slur."
Tags: Mister Sister , Bailey Cummings , Timber Adamson , Pride Center of Vermont , Craig McGaughan , Image , Web Only
The candidate, Abdullah Sall, plans to file a lawsuit against George, who dismissed him shortly after she took office. Sall’s attorney, John Franco, said his client — a black Muslim immigrant from Liberia — “was subject to different treatment than other people in the office who did not share those qualities.”
“That’s just so absurd. Just absolutely absurd,” countered Stacy Graczyk, who served as a deputy state’s attorney from March 2013 until September 2016 and worked with both Sall and George. "If anything, I think all of those things are an asset. As you know, Vermont is ridiculously white. All those things were great to have in an office. You want diversity.”
Graczyk said Sall was not a good fit for the job, which is “sort of like the front line.” Her former colleagues gave Sall many chances, Graczyk said, but after a while, “it was becoming a concern."
Two other members of the Chittenden County legal community — who spoke on condition of anonymity — backed up Graczyk’s story, arguing that Sall’s job performance was lacking.
Tags: Abdullah Sall , Sarah George , John Franco , T.J. Donovan , Stacy Graczyk , Image , Web Only
Monday, February 27, 2017
The proposed name, Mister Sister, generated a raft of critical comments over the weekend from people on Facebook who said the name is a slur for trans women.
The debate opened a rift in the LGBTQ community partly because the owner of the proposed bar, Craig McGaughan, is a gay man who has so far refused to change the planned name or meet with the leader of the Pride Center.
McGaughan announced Friday on Facebook that he would close his wine bar at 45 Main Street, Oak45, on Tuesday and would then reopen soon as the area's only gay bar. Burlington's 135 Pearl closed in 2006.
Tags: Mister Sister , gay bar , Winooski , 135 Pearl , Josie Leavitt , Craig McGaughan , Pride Center of Vermont , Aspen Kobetitsch , Aedan Buchanan , vermont , transgender , Image , Web Only
“He was cordial to everyone,” Scott said of President Donald Trump, who hosted the nation’s governors at a state dinner.
Like the other governors and their spouses, Scott and his wife, Diana, were introduced to the president and first lady Melania Trump. She was making a rare White House appearance for the event.
“You had your picture taken and then you were shuffled off to another room,” Scott said Monday in a phone interview as he prepared to return to Vermont from a four-day National Governors Association meeting that included two White House events. “I never met him one-on-one.”
Tags: Phil Scott , Donald Trump , White House , National Governors Association , Image , Web Only
A number of Democratic congressmen are bringing immigrants and foreigners as their plus-ones to protest the president’s executive order on immigration.
Trump’s order — stayed by a federal judge — sought to bar refugees and residents of seven Muslim-majority countries, including Iraq, from entering the U.S. Initially, the ban applied to Iraqi interpreters, who sometimes receive what are known as Special Immigrant Visas, but the Trump administration later amended the order to exclude that particular program.
Alsaeedi came to the U.S. with a Special Immigrant Visa.
Tags: Peter Welch , Donald Trump , Vermont Refugee Resettlement Program , Image , Web Only
Friday, February 24, 2017
During the 30-minute recording, the woman, a former farmhand at his Highgate dairy farm, sobs as she recounts a painful encounter with McAllister involving anal sex and another sex act. She asks him to agree not to seek that kind of sex from her in the future.
"I know I was basically forcing you to do something you didn't want to do," McAllister allegedly tells the woman at one point in the recorded conversation.
Prosecutors played the recording at Vermont Superior Court in St. Albans as McAllister's new legal team attempted to convince Judge Martin Maley to vacate a plea deal the former lawmaker agreed to last month in the sex case.
McAllister said his then-lawyers pressured him into accepting the deal, under which he pleaded no contest to two counts of prohibited acts and a felony lewd and lascivious charge, which prosecutors agreed to reduce from sexual assault. The lewd and lascivious charge carries a sentence of up to seven years in prison, while a sex assault conviction carries a maximum sentence of life in prison.
Tags: Norm McAllister , Brooks McArthur , Bob Katims , Image , Web Only
Mental health providers panicked after a Vermont Supreme Court ruling last May, which, in their interpretation, drastically expanded their “duty to warn” when releasing patients from their care.
Before the so-called Kuligoski case, providers had to warn people when there was an imminent threat to an identifiable victim. The court ruling expanded the obligation to also apply to “foreseeable victims or to those whose membership in a particular class ... places them within a zone of danger.”
The Senate voted to restore the previous standard — essentially voiding the court’s ruling. According to Sen. Jeanette White (D-Windham), who presented the bill, an “identifiable victim” doesn’t have to be a particular person. She noted that it could extend “to a situation where a patient says, ‘I hate barbers. I’ve got a gun. And I’m going to go kill a barber.’”
Tags: Vermont Senate , Kuligoski , Vermont Supreme Court , Image , Web Only
Gov. Phil Scott is headed to visit President Donald Trump, a day after the state’s Senate unanimously voted for a bill that would insulate Vermont from enforcing controversial immigration edicts touted by the commander in chief.
Scott, who has said he didn’t vote for his fellow Republican, enthusiastically joined legislative leaders in backing the Vermont immigration bill, which his staff helped write.
“This is about what I see as federal overreach in terms of our Constitution,” Scott said of the bill. “I feel this puts us on a pathway to giving some relief to Vermonters and to calm down the rhetoric and anxiety.”
Tags: Donald Trump , Phil Scott , Vermont legislature , immigration , National Governors Association , Image , Web Only