The Vermont Library Board is recommending that state librarian Scott Murphy remove author Dorothy Canfield Fisher's name from a children's book award created in her honor long ago.

The board voted 7-0 Tuesday on the recommendation after board president Bruce Post cited concerns including Fisher's association with the eugenics movement, which pushed for "better breeding."

"I felt honor bound to bring up this subject of eugenics," Post told Seven Days Thursday.

Murphy has not taken action in response to the vote. He did not immediately return a call for comment Thursday.

The board has been discussing the matter since April.  Fisher's defenders say the famed author, who died in 1958, stood up for prison reform, adult education and war relief. They say she is being judged unfairly over a minor association with the now-vilified eugenics movement.

Meanwhile, critics contend that she stereotyped Native Americans and French Canadians in her work and quietly endorsed the "better breeding" goals of eugenics.

Fisher was a member of the Vermont Commission on Country Life, an outgrowth of the Vermont Eugenics Survey directed by University of Vermont professor Henry Perkins in the 1920s and early 1930s.

The survey championed Vermont's original Anglo-Protestant "seedbed" and targeted French Canadians, Native Americans and "gypsy" families in pedigree studies that were designed to identify "degenerate" and "feeble-minded" Vermont residents.

The Library Board passed a resolution Tuesday that urged the state librarian to rename the award in a way that recognizes and encourages authors of children's literature, especially those with a Vermont connection.

The top editor of the Burlington Free Press drew heavy criticism on Twitter Friday and Saturday for a post suggesting that Vermont’s proposal to offer a third gender option on government identification “makes us one step closer to the apocalypse.”

Awesome! That makes us one step closer to the apocalypse. https://t.co/Fux34w61B8

— denisfinley (@denisjfinley) January 6, 2018

In his Friday night Tweet, Freeps executive editor Denis Finley was responding to a Vermont Public Radio story about the proposal and a comment from Rights & Democracy spokesman Shay Totten that the policy move was "awesome!"

Community members quickly excoriated Finley, who joined the Free Press in 2016. Totten, a former Seven Days political columnist, questioned whether Finley was "transphobic, bad at Twitter, or both." Vermont Democratic Party chair Terje Anderson called it "another reason not to subscribe to the Burlington Free Press."

Finley responded to several of his critics in real time.

A Vermont legislator sang a heartfelt a cappella rendition of "Over the Rainbow" Friday morning on the House floor during a stirring tribute to an activist.

Rep. Kiah Morris (D-Bennington) belted out the tune for the House's devotional, a daily formality that usually consists of the state song or the national anthem. Friday's change-up to the classic Wizard of Oz song — sung by a legislator, no less — was part of the remembrance for Paij Wadley-Bailey, who died in 2016.

The House honored Wadley-Bailey with a resolution. Morris' performance held members' rapt attention from beginning to end.

“Paij contributed a lot to our community on so many levels and in so many ways,” Rep. Brian Cina (P-Burlington) said Friday. “She was an educator and an activist and a community organizer.”

Gov. Phil Scott on Wednesday appointed Swanton resident Randy Brock to the Vermont Senate seat formerly held by Dustin Degree of St. Albans. Brock will join fellow Republican Carolyn Branagan in representing Franklin County when the legislature reconvenes next week.

Brock is a stalwart of the Vermont Republican Party. He served as state auditor from 2005 to 2007 and spent two terms in the Senate, from 2009 to 2013. He won the Republican gubernatorial nomination in 2012 but lost the general election to incumbent Peter Shumlin. He ran for lieutenant governor in 2016, losing to Progressive/Democrat David Zuckerman.

Degree, a two-term senator, resigned his seat in November after Scott appointed him to a senior post in his executive office, coordinating workforce development programs.

With congressional Republicans on the verge of approving major tax cut legislation Tuesday, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) deployed a procedural tactic likely to delay its passage until Wednesday.

After the House passed the bill on a largely party-line vote of 227 to 203, Sanders and Wyden objected to the inclusion of three provisions with no budgetary impact. In order to approve legislation through the budget reconciliation process — with just 51 votes instead of the usual 60 — senators are barred from considering unrelated policy matters.

The violation of the so-called Byrd Rule will force the Senate to strip those provisions from the bill and vote on a different version than what passed the House. That, in turn, will require a second vote from the House, likely on Wednesday, before the legislation can advance to President Donald Trump's desk.

“In the mad dash to provide tax breaks for their billionaire campaign contributors, our Republican colleagues forgot to comply with the rules of the Senate,” Sanders said Tuesday in a written statement. “We applaud the [Senate] parliamentarian for determining that three provisions in this disastrous bill are in violation of the Byrd rule.”