Vermont senators have revived a long-stalled effort to limit corporate cash in state elections. Last week, the Senate Government Operations Committee advanced a bill that would prohibit corporations from donating directly to candidates, clearing the way for a vote before the full Senate this week.

“It’s a significant step to try to at least address the issue of corporations having direct influence over candidates,” said Paul Burns, executive director of the Vermont Public Interest Research Group, which has long pushed for such a measure.

The federal government has prohibited corporations from contributing directly to candidates since 1907, and more than 20 states have enacted such bans. But Vermont politicians had been reluctant to follow suit. In 2013, the Vermont Senate voted to impose a ban, only to reverse its decision days later.

Since then, "I think there has been more and more concern about money in campaigns," said Senate Government Operations chair Jeanette White (D-Windham). To avoid confusion about the definition of a corporation, the bill would simply prohibit donations from anyone other than an individual, a state party or a political action committee.

Updated at 11:30 p.m.

A group of University of Vermont student protesters spent much of Monday occupying the Waterman Building, where leaders met with school deans and even university president Tom Sullivan to discuss the group's demands related to racial justice on campus.

Students started streaming into the Waterman Building shortly before noon, quickly filling up the lobby as well as the stairways and balconies. A line of people also started to form outside the building. Organizers estimated that the crowd at its height contained nearly 400 people.

Those in the building, lead by the NoNames for Justice group, chanted familiar slogans calling for the resignations of Sullivan, provost David Rosowsky and vice provost Annie Stevens.

Another contingent waited outside the office of Thomas Scott, dean of the College of Education and Social Services, as he met with group leaders.

The sides emerged shortly after 1 p.m. Scott explained to the crowd that he wouldn't join William Falls, dean of the College of Arts and Social Sciences, in signing the list of demands.

"I can't mandate faculty to attend diversity training," said Scott. He said he'd continue to have talks with members of the student group. "This group has my support," he said.
Sophomore Nyria Stuart-Thompson, a member of the university's Womyn of Color Coalition, was one of those who met with Scott. "I really wished he would just sign it," said Stuart-Thompson. "If the dean of the biggest college said yes, I feel like we should all follow."

Nancy Matthews, dean of the Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources, was the other dean who did sign the list.

Earlier Monday, Sullivan sent a memo to the campus community in which he outlined the steps the university would take to "expand [its] longstanding commitment to building a diverse, equitable and inclusive" community.

Among his pledges: to provide and require professional development to all faculty who teach diversity-related courses, and to provide funding to recruit, hire and retain diverse faculty and staff.

"Every school and college is fully on board with these additional steps," Sullivan wrote in a statement. "We are re-energizing our continuing commitment to these issues, putting these initiatives in concrete terms, and requiring systematic implementation throughout the university."
But those vows did not appear to appease the students. A smaller but still sizable crowd remained by early afternoon Monday and began putting up posters in support of the Black Lives Matter movement inside — and outside — of Waterman.

"This is Oakland," read one sign attached to columns in the front of the building, paying homage to the California city where the Black Panther Party was founded. "Our house!"

More students began streaming into the building again by 4:30 p.m. as NoNames for Justice leaders prepared to meet with Sullivan at 5 p.m. Those assembled chanted support for the student leaders during the negotiations.

For the next two hours or so, well-wishers sent the students pizza, snacks, fruit, soda and water. An employee from Leonardo's Pizza said the Peace & Justice Center had paid for $200 worth of pizza.

Shortly before 7 p.m., the students left a first-floor lounge, where a previously scheduled talk on the Holocaust by a guest lecturer from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln was to take place. That event was eventually moved to a different location.

The students, meanwhile, relocated to classrooms where they did homework, talked or watched movies as they waited word on the negotiations.

By 9 p.m., campus police told students that they'd be arrested for trespassing if they didn't leave Waterman within the hour.

About twenty minutes later, NoNames for Justice leaders emerged to address the remaining crowd of about 100 students, telling them to take down the banners and posters before leaving.

Harmony Edosomwan announced that the student leaders would have another meeting with the administration on Wednesday. She declined to give more specifics because negotiations are ongoing. "A lot of things that I wanted them to do tonight, they didn't do," including using a mediator to oversee the discussion, Edosomwan said.

"I feel really supported by our faculty of color and people of color around us, and a lot of our white allies," said organizer Angelica Crespo. "But in terms of administration, it's still really difficult to try and get through [to them] and try to pass on these [demands]."

Around 10 p.m., university vice president for executive operations Gary Derr sent out an email describing the negotiations as "good, constructive discussions." But he described some of the protests as a "significant disruption" to campus.

"We are prepared to take all appropriate disciplinary and legal steps to address the situation should it continue," Derr wrote in his statement.

Monday's protest was the latest in what's become several days of on-campus agitating.

UVM staffer John Mejia started a hunger strike February 16 to protest racial inequality on campus and to demand the university address the issues. On February 20, students and Mejia occupied the Waterman Building in protest. Two days later, protesters blocked traffic at Main and South Prospect streets for three hours, calling on Sullivan to meet with them. Last Friday, Mejia — who uses the pronouns "they" and "them" — announced the end of their hunger strike as students assembled inside the Davis Center.

Updated at 6:48 p.m.

An innocent bystander was seriously injured early Monday after a man fired two gunshots into a crowd on Main Street in Burlington shortly after bars closed for the night, according to police.

Officers on patrol just after 2 a.m. heard the shots and caught 37-year-old Rashad Nashid not far from the shooting scene outside of Nectar's, police said in a statement. Nashid, a convicted felon, was allegedly intoxicated and armed with a .38-caliber Ruger pistol when a Burlington police sergeant arrested him on South Winooski Street.

“The chief of police would like to commend the sergeant for his bravery and restraint in confronting an armed, intoxicated suspect in the direct aftermath of a shooting, and the other responding officers for safely bringing order to a dangerous and chaotic crime scene,” the department said in a statement.

Burlington mayoral candidate Carina Driscoll earned a $1,000 campaign donation from her stepfather, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), but it wasn't enough to match Mayor Miro Weinberger's hefty war chest.

The two-term incumbent tallied $107,000 by Saturday's campaign finance filing deadline, more than double the $46,000 Driscoll raised. Infinite Culcleasure has $10,500 in his campaign coffers, including $5,500 amassed since the last filing deadline three weeks ago.

Weinberger, meanwhile, raked in $26,000 during that same time period, mostly in larger donations. With 10 days remaining until the March 6 election, he's on pace to come close to — or even surpass — his 2012 fundraising total of $118,000.

The Senate Judiciary Committee on Friday unanimously approved legislation to create a judicial process that would allow police to take guns away from those ruled to be an “extreme risk” to themselves or others.

The bill, known as S.221, now advances to the Senate floor with support from domestic violence prevention and gun-control groups — and even grudging acceptance from some gun-rights groups.

The legislation would allow law enforcement officials to file for an “extreme risk protection order” even at the scene of an incident. If a judge approved such an order, police could take guns away from a subject for up to 60 days.

Friday's vote represented the first legislative action since Democratic leaders and Republican Gov. Phil Scott called for an aggressive response to last week's school shooting in Parkland, Fla., and a foiled plot in Fair Haven. At press conferences Thursday, Democrats committed to passing S.221, among other measures, and Scott implored lawmakers to send it to him for signature before Town Meeting Day.

John Mejia, the University of Vermont staffer who vowed to refrain from eating until the university and the city of Burlington addressed a list of demands, ended their hunger strike Thursday after nearly a week of a water-only diet.

"I started this hunger strike because I wanted people who are supposedly our leaders to care. I wanted them to stop for a second, and they haven't," Mejia told a group of students at UVM's Davis Center late Friday morning.

"The unfortunate side effect is that I've negatively impacted my own community. There are plenty of people who are distraught at the thought of me dying ... who could not eat knowing that I was starving," said Mejia, who started the strike February 16.

A crowd of approximately 100 University of Vermont anti-racism protesters, waving signs, chanting and forming a human chain, caused rush-hour havoc Thursday in Burlington by demonstrating in the middle of Main Street.

Police shut down the busy roadway near the South Prospect Street intersection after students set up a roadblock around 5 p.m. and refused to leave until they met with UVM president Tom Sullivan. Diverted traffic flooded side streets in an effort to get to Interstate 89 after the demonstration began.

Many of those protesting said they stood in solidarity with John Mejia, a UVM staffer who has vowed to refrain from eating until the university and the city of Burlington address a list of nine demands.

After years of deadlock and division, a majority of the Vermont Senate now supports legislation to require background checks for all gun sales in the state, according to a survey conducted by Seven Days.

Senate President Pro Tempore Tim Ashe (D/P-Burlington) promised Thursday that the proposal, which died in committee in 2015, would come to a vote next week on the Senate floor — likely as an amendment to related firearm legislation. In interviews around the Statehouse that day, 17 of Vermont's 30 state senators told Seven Days they would definitely vote for the measure, which would close the so-called "gun show loophole."

Six senators said they would vote against it: Joe Benning (R-Caledonia), Brian Collamore (R-Rutland), Alice Nitka (D-Windsor), John Rodgers (D-Essex/Orleans), Dick Sears (D-Bennington) and Bobby Starr (D-Essex/Orleans).

Gov. Phil Scott said Thursday that Vermont officials are exploring alternatives to its current prison deal with the state of Pennsylvania, which houses more than 200 Vermont inmates.

Secretary of Human Services Al Gobeille didn’t specify exact issues with the current arrangement, but he said Vermont officials aren’t happy with how it’s working. Officials plan to solicit proposals for a new deal.

“I think that issuing [a request for proposals] is an indication that we’re looking for something different than what we have,” Gobeille said. “We’re in the process of doing that. It has not been issued yet.”

The Vermont Fish & Wildlife Board gave preliminary approval Wednesday night to issuing 14 moose hunting permits for the coming season — a mere fraction of last year's number and a reflection of the declining herd.

State biologists proposed the dramatic drop from 70 permits issued last year. Since 2005, the moose population has shrunk from about 4,800 to 1,700. Tick infestation, warmer winters and other factors are believed to be harming the population of the lumbering creatures.