Wednesday, September 28, 2016
Shumlin rode the Cessna 182 to or from public events three times in September, according to spokeswoman Sue Allen. He was scheduled to take a fourth trip last Friday, as WCAX-TV first reported, but it was canceled due to inclement weather.
The governor, who moved in August from East Montpelier back to his hometown of Putney, used the plane just four times in the year prior to his relocation.
At an unrelated press conference Wednesday, Shumlin defended his frequent flier status. He said that taking the plane from Hartness State Airport in nearby Springfield saves his Vermont State Police detail from having to make the 220-mile roundtrip from Montpelier to Putney to pick him up and drop him off. But he conceded that the plane has its limitations.
"It can only fly when it's blue sky," the governor said. "It can't fly at night."
Tags: Peter Shumlin , state plane , Image , Web Only
In the seven weeks since Lt. Gov. Phil Scott won his party’s gubernatorial primary, a super PAC funded by the Republican Governors Association has been flooding the airwaves with positive television advertisements.
On Wednesday, the national GOP group went negative — releasing a tough new ad labeling Democratic nominee Sue Minter as a protégé of retiring Gov. Peter Shumlin, whom it refers to as a failure. The spot features bobblehead dolls loosely resembling the two Democrats.
The size of the ad buy was not immediately clear. But according to a disclosure filed Monday with the Secretary of State’s Office, the super PAC, called A Stronger Vermont, spent $244,362 last Friday on media placement. That same disclosure indicated that the RGA had transferred another $600,000 to its super PAC in September, bringing its total investment in the race to $1.2 million.
Tags: Republican Governors Association , Sue Minter , Phil Scott , Peter Shumlin , Image , Video , Web Only
Tuesday, September 27, 2016
A southern Vermont man is at the center of a bizarre story involving a doomed fishing trip off the coast of Rhode Island.
Nathan Carman, 22, who lives in Vernon, made it ashore alive after spending a week adrift in the ocean aboard an inflatable life raft. His mother, 54-year-old Linda Carman, remains missing — and is presumed dead.
On Monday, police searched Carman’s home, looking for evidence that he knew the boat was unseaworthy before he took his mother out on a deep-sea fishing expedition, according to a warrant obtained by WVNY/WFFF-TV. Such evidence would support a charge of “operating so as to endanger, causing death,” the warrant says.
Carman was once a suspect in the still-unsolved 2013 murder of his 87-year-old grandfather, who was gunned down in his Connecticut home, according to the Hartford Courant. Carman was the last known person to see John Chakalos alive.
Tags: Nathan Carman , Vernon , missing boat , Coast Guard , Image , Audio , Web Only
"Notice Trump sniffing all the time," he wrote on Twitter. "Coke user?"
Rather than apologize for the off-color tweet the next day, the former practicing physician doubled down on it Tuesday afternoon in an appearance on MSNBC.Notice Trump sniffing all the time. Coke user?
— Howard Dean (@GovHowardDean) September 27, 2016
"Well, you can't make a diagnosis over the television," he said. "I would never do that. But he has some interesting — that is actually a signature of people who use cocaine. I'm not suggesting that Trump does, but—"
"Well you are suggesting it, actually, in a tweet," MSNBC host Kate Snow interjected.
"No, I'm suggesting we think about it," Dean said. Then he rattled off a list of symptoms he said Trump shared with cocaine users, ranging from "grandiosity" to "delusions" to "trouble with pressured speech."
Tags: Howard Dean , Donald Trump , Image , Video , Web Only
When Vermont Supreme Court Justice John Dooley announced his retirement last Thursday, several news outlets reported that Gov. Peter Shumlin’s successor would name the long-serving judge’s replacement. Dooley’s term expires next March — two months after Shumlin is scheduled to leave office.
But according to the governor’s spokeswoman, Sue Allen, “The governor plans to interview qualified candidates and name a successor to Justice Dooley this fall.”
Since last Thursday, Allen dodged repeated questions from Seven Days about Shumlin’s intentions. On Tuesday, she said that the governor’s staff had been researching the matter and consulting with legislative leaders about the process.
“As it turns out, the statute and [Judicial Nominating Board] rules are clear: when a Supreme Court justice announces they will not be a candidate for retention, the nominating board — upon notification by the governor of the vacancy — ‘shall’ initiate the process to send candidates to the governor,” she said.
Allen added that the board, which includes members appointed by the governor, the House, the Senate and the Vermont Bar Association, is “prepared to accept applications and make recommendations to fill the seat on the Supreme Court.”
Tags: John Dooley , Vermont Supreme Court , Peter Shumlin , Phil Scott , Sue Minter , Image , Web Only
Monday, September 26, 2016
A diverse sea of students, and even faculty, at the University of Vermont gathered Monday afternoon on campus to express solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement — at the very spot where a flag with the group’s motto was stolen.
More than 200 people, most dressed all in black, turned out for the “UVM Blackout,” an event planned before the weekend theft of a Black Lives Matter flag from where it flew outside the university’s Davis Center.
Student organizers Haydee Guadalupe Miranda and Akilah Ho-young set the tone of the rally by urging a message of peace. The group held a moment of silence and offered condolences to the families of victims of gun violence such as Trayvon Martin and Keith Lamont Scott, who was killed by police last week in Charlotte, N.C. The crowd went on to take pictures with the Black Lives Matter flag fluttering in the wind beside the Vermont and American flags on campus.
Tags: University of Vermont , Davis Center , Black Lives Matter , Black Lives Matter flag , Kesha Ram , Image , Video , Web Only
In a letter to embattled Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) on Friday referred to allegedly fraudulent business practices at the bank as "outrageous."
But Leahy does not appear outraged enough to return the $2,000 contribution he received from a Wells Fargo political action committee in September 2015, nor the $1,000 donation he received in May 2016.
"Support for his campaign does not affect his policy decisions and never has," Leahy campaign spokesman Jay Tilton said Friday when asked whether the senator would return the money. "He does what he thinks is right for Vermonters, and [the letter] shows it."
Asked again Friday whether that meant Leahy would keep the cash, Tilton said, "I'll let my earlier statement stand for itself."
Earlier this month, Wells Fargo agreed to pay $185 million in fines after federal regulators accused the bank of fleecing its customers. According to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Wells Fargo employees opened as many as 2 million unauthorized credit card and bank accounts in their customers' names over five years and charged millions in fees.
Tags: Patrick Leahy , Wells Fargo , Scott Milne , Jay Tilton , Image , Web Only
Saturday, September 24, 2016
“Should the people of our state hire me for this important job, I will sell my portion of the company before taking office and will therefore be completely separated from DuBois Construction,” Scott said, standing alongside his co-owner and cousin, Don DuBois.
Scott and DuBois have co-owned the company for 30 years. Founded by DuBois’ father and uncles, it celebrated its 70th anniversary Saturday.
The move comes after Scott faced criticism from opponents that a previous plan to create a blind trust would be insufficient to wall him off from a company that bids on state contracts.
“At first, I thought a blind trust would work,” said Scott, who currently serves as lieutenant governor. After his Republican rival, retired Wall Street banker Bruce Lisman, slammed Scott over the issue during the primary election, he said he reconsidered.
Tags: Phil Scott , Don DuBois , DuBois Construction , Sue Minter , Bruce Lisman , Peter Shumlin , Image , Web Only
Thursday, September 22, 2016
"Despite what you'll hear from my opponent's party and my opponents at large, I'm pro-choice. I support marriage equality. And I support equal pay for equal work," the GOP nominee said.
But despite his best efforts, Scott was at an obvious disadvantage throughout the Statehouse forum, which was sponsored by the Vermont Commission on Women, the League of Women Voters, and Business and Professional Women/Vermont. Put simply, his Democratic rival, former transportation secretary Sue Minter, had a bit more experience with the subjects at hand.
"Like a majority of Vermont women, I've lived this," she said, referring to the gap in wages between men and women. "I've worked hard — probably harder than many of my male counterparts — and known that I was probably earning less."
Tags: Sue Minter , Phil Scott , Bill Lee , Vermont Commission on Women , Image , Web Only
An off-duty Vermont National Guard airman crashed a small private plane on a Lake Champlain island around noon Monday and left the scene with his passenger — another airman — apparently without calling police.
Local authorities found out about the badly damaged Piper PA-11 on Savage Island only after the pilot of another small plane noticed the wreckage six hours later while flying over the 207-acre island, according to Grand Isle County Sheriff Ray Allen.
That pilot radioed the tower at Burlington International Airport to report it. The tower staff contacted Vermont State Police, who in turn patched in Allen around 6 p.m.
Allen mobilized a massive response to what he thought was an active crash scene.
Tags: plane crash , Savage Island , Vermont Air National Guard , Image , Web Only