• Burlington code enforcement director Bill Ward runs a tight ship, holding landlords' feet to the fire to keep the city's housing stock up to snuff. And check out the sidebar to see tips for renters.
• Studies have shown racial bias in Vermont traffic stops. A police academy class is teaching new cops to overcome their internalized prejudices. 
• Public water is public water, right? Not in Essex or Shelburne — these towns are keeping nonresidents away from their beaches.
• No more dodgeball targets! Vermont gym teachers are reforming physical education to make it better for body and mind — for everybody.
• And in Fair Game: Vermont's congressional delegation is split on whether to cut off aid to Egypt amidst turmoil. Plus, Lt. Gov. Phil Scott's worries over the health care exchange, and media news from the Times Argus and Burlington Free Press.

Grab this week's issue in print, online or on the iOS app.

You know the drill — another Wednesday, another Seven Days. No epic website outages here today (knock on wood!), so here are the news and politics stories you can read right now:

• More than 2000 low-income Vermonters could lose their housing due to the federal sequester.
• University of Vermont researchers are testing an experimental cholera vaccine by, well, giving people cholera.
• One Burlington Telecom advisor, claiming that Al Jazeera is "spreading Sharia," wants the service to carry conservative pundit Glenn Beck's TV station.
• Drones aren't just used for dropping bombs and spying! Here in Vermont, hobbyists are building their own remote-controlled flying machines for fun — and they swear these drones are innocuous.
• In this month's Poli Psy column, Judith Levine writes about the vagina, which has had a pretty up-and-down year so far.
• This week in Fair Game: Gov. Peter Shumlin jets to D.C. on the state's dime while asking workers to travel less. Plus, the gov talks pot decriminalization and the less-than-savory donors giving money to the DGA.

Grab it on newsstands, online or on the app.

Today's Seven Days is worth picking up just to see our writers in adorable little cartoon form on the cover, as illustrated by Rob Donnelly (right). But if you're looking for actual news, here's what we've got this week:

• Jasper Hill Farm isn't named for a place, but for a guy who was actually named Jasper Hill. But Hill's son calls the farm owners "grave robbers" and says they've cut off his access to water.
• Al Gobeille owns four restaurants. What makes him the right choice to be head of the Green Mountain Care Board?
• In Fair Game: One week after laying off 13 at the Burlington Free Press, is Gannett slowly killing its newspapers? Plus, Sen. Patrick Leahy rolls in the dough from special interests.
• And finally... Seven Days writers have been called many things, but "outdoorsy" is rare. We sent the team outside of their comfort zones. Worth a click to see Ken Picard riding a kiteboard.

Pick up your copy in print, online or on our app. And BTW, Northeast Kingdom-ites, did you know we now distribute more papers than ever in your neck of the woods?

The founder of the Vermont Health CO-OP is stepping down as board chair as part of an effort to convince skeptical state regulators to reconsider a recent decision denying the CO-OP a license to sell insurance.

Mitchell Fleischer, the CEO of private insurance and investment firm Fleischer Jacobs Group, says he's ceding his position to minimize distractions as the federally funded CO-OP tries to bounce back from a scalding decision issued by the Department of Financial Regulation last month that accused the fledgling CO-OP of mismanagement and financial instability.

In that decision, DFR commissioner Susan Donegan rejected the CO-OP's application to sell insurance on the federally mandated health care exchange set to launch in January. Using federal funds allocated by "Obamacare," the CO-OP would offer a member-owned alternative to the only two companies currently licensed to sell insurance on the exchange: Blue Cross Blue Shield of Vermont and MVP. 

For now, those plans are on hold. Donegan has said the CO-OP has two choices — submit a new application for licensure, or appeal DFR's decision to the Vermont Supreme Court. Neither could realistically happen quickly enough to let the CO-OP join the health care exchange this year. So the CO-OP's leaders are banking on a third approach: convince Donegan to reopen her decision. 

But the CO-OP needs to make significant changes to have any chance of winning over Donegan. The questions CEO Christine Oliver and Fleischer (pictured) found themselves asking themselves, Fleischer says, boiled down to: "What can we fix? ... And can we get all of this done in the next month?"

Fleischer's resignation — which came officially on June 13 — is part of that plan.

In this week's wood pulp-and-ink edition of Seven Days:

• Burlington's Parks and Recreation Department has struggled with management and morale problems for years. Can the new director, Jesse Bridges, right the ship?
• Following last week's cover-story exposé on prostitution in Asian massage parlors in Chittenden County, two of the establishments closed their doors, while a third is still accepting customers. Police have yet to visit any of the parlors, and seem uncertain about how to respond to what could be human trafficking. (Curiously, the adult site that listed the sexual services available at these parlors, Rubmaps.com, appears to be down).
• As downpours intensify, Burlington's storm-water system is fast becoming overwhelmed. Public works employees are working on a fix, but it could be expensive.
• And in Fair Game: U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy is cosponsoring legislation in response to the NSA phone records scandal that would make public rulings by a secretive surveillance court. U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders takes on ... the Vermont ski industry? And Gov. Peter Shumlin's real-estate troubles take a political turn.
• Need something lighter? How about a Segway tour, little free libraries, Revolutionary War reenactors or eating without a gallbladder?  

Pay your taxes!

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, April 15

• At 10 a.m., Burlington bigwigs (mayor, police chief) and law enforcement will hold a press conference at the U.S. Attorney's office in Burlington on the "heroin epidemic," which has rather suddenly replaced prescription opiates as the scourge of Vermont. 
• That whole assault-weapons ban in Burlington thing? The city council's charter change committee takes it up today. At the very convenient time of 11:30 a.m. in city hall.
• Vermont's health care reform is important — but damn confusing. Hear Mark Larson, director of the Office of Health Care Access, explain it live at 5:25 on Channel 17.

Rest of the week after the break...

William R. Milnes Jr. won't be getting any more money out of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Vermont. At least, not anytime soon.

A federal judge has dimissed a lawsuit filed by the HMO's former chief executive officer that sought an additional $575,000 in retirement pay.

Readers will remember Milnes as the Blue Cross exec who departed the company with a jaw-dropping $7.2 million golden parachute in 2008. State insurance regulators ruled in 2009 that the pay package was excessive under state insurance law, and ordered Blue Cross to reimburse $3 million of that sum to subscribers in the form of lower rates.

In the aftermath, Milnes moved to Florida. But he resurfaced in Vermont last year when he sued Blue Cross in federal court for another $575,000 in retirement pay — plus $200,000 in interest — that he said the company still owed him.

Last week, U.S. District Judge J. Garvan Murtha ruled that Blue Cross doesn't have to pay it. The company would be in violation of that same insurance law barring excessive compensation if it awarded the $575,000 to Milnes, the judge ruled. Murtha also said the "impracticability doctrine" excuses Blue Cross from meeting its contractual obligation to Milnes.

"Mr. Milnes would have BCBSVT pay him additional compensation above and beyond the amount already ruled excessive," Murtha wrote in the 18-page decision. "Although due to Mr. Milnes following his retirement, these payments reward work performed during the same years BISCHA ruled he received excessive compensation."

The first round of noise studies is in from Kingdom Community Wind, the contentious wind-energy development straddling a ridgeline between Lowell and Albany.

The verdict?

For the most part, the 21 Vestas turbines strung along the spine of the Lowell Mountains did not generate enough noise to violate the conditions under which the Public Service Board approved the Green Mountain Power project. But in a few instances, noise at the remote Northeast Kingdom wind project did spike high enough to violate GMP's permit. 

That’s according to a report GMP filed yesterday (PDF) with the PSB. Wind opponents and neighbors, however, aren’t satisfied with the study, and say the noise generated by the 400-foot-tall turbines is still loud enough to disrupt the quality of life for nearby residents.

“I don’t call it that we have a quality of life anymore,” says Shirley Nelson, who along with her husband, Don, lives on more than 580 acres on the eastern slope of the Lowell Mountains. Their property borders the Lowell project, and the Nelsons have been vocal opponents of it. The Nelsons and GMP are entangled in a lawsuit over disputed ownership along a section of the ridgeline.

“I sometimes wake up with headaches, and can’t sleep the night through anymore. My ears ring almost constantly when the turbines are going,” says Shirley Nelson.

Don Nelson likened the noise inside the couple’s farmhouse to the sound of rushing water. Outside, he says, the turbines sound like “a jet plane on the horizon.” The noise isn’t steady, the Nelsons say, but pulses in and out. Nearby neighbors, they say, have to run a fan at night in order to block out the turbine noise and get to sleep.

One condition of GMP's permit to operate the wind farm is that sound levels not exceed 45 decibels outside of any existing homes near the project and 30 decibels in interior bedrooms. (GMP equates 45 decibels to the ambient noise level inside a library.) The utility must collect noise measurements from the project for at least two weeks, four times a year, for the first two years of operation. GMP hired White River Junction-based Resource Systems Group, Inc., to collect and analyze the first round of noise data, and submitted the data to a third party for confirmation that it was sufficient for a thorough analysis.

In this week's issue of Seven Days, starring local musician Jim Rooney on the cover...

• A loophole in Vermont law means downloading child porn is illegal, but merely viewing it is not. Lawmakers are looking to change that.
• Two contests for the South Burlington City Council could determine the future of a number of big issues there, from the F-35 to a development freeze.
• Some local students are attending high school in Québec, with tuition assistance from Vermont.
• Trouble sleeping? Maybe you need to have someone watching you sleep at the Sheraton Burlington.
• In Fair Game: Doug Racine made his career on fighting poverty, but now he's the unlikely lead pitchman selling Gov. Peter Shumlin's welfare cuts. Plus, how can you fight the influence of super PACs? Give more money to the parties themselves, of course. 

Find your copy on newsstands, at sevendaysvt.com or in the App Store.

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.