Every 10 years, as lawmakers consider how to redraw the boundaries of Vermont’s state senate districts, the same old question arises: What to do with the juggernaut that is Chittenden County?

Since it was created in 1836, the 30-member Vermont Senate has been divvied up, more or less, along county lines. But since 1965, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that state legislative districts had to closely reflect population, the decennial redistricting dance has grown more challenging.... Read more

A Middlebury company that received more than $500,000 in economic development loans from the state is on the verge of bankruptcy. Workers haven’t been paid in weeks, and the Vermont Department of Labor is investigating the company. ... Read more

Two state employees spent a year on paid administrative leave while their bosses apparently investigated their handling of millions of dollars in public grant money. ... Read more

In the fall of 2010, when the chance discovery of an out-of-sequence check revealed what turned out to be the biggest embezzlement in Vermont history, its victims kept quiet. The paper trail led straight to the criminal: Joyce Bellavance was filching massive amounts of cash from the Hardwick Electric Department, where she’d worked for 12 years. The numbers emerged — $1.4 million (later raised to $1.6 million) over 10 years’ time — as well as details about the loot: Pottery Barn furniture, Basin Harbor Club wedding, a Boston condo worth nearly $400K.... Read more

Vermont is fast becoming the epicenter of the national grassroots movement to repeal Citizens United. That’s the 2010 Supreme Court decision that obliterated federal campaign-finance laws and opened the floodgates for the sleazy, Super-PAC-funded attack ads clogging airwaves in primary states. ... Read more

Over the years, climate change has gone by many names: weather disruption, climate destabilization, global warming — or global weirding — even “atmospheric cancer.” In Vermont, we might dub it the death of winter. Call it what you will, this inconvenient truth is undeniable and cannot be ignored — even if you still believe that human behavior is not the culprit. ... Read more

If James Maroney had his way, we wouldn’t be writing about him at all.

We’d be discussing, instead, the state of agriculture in Vermont, the crisis of floundering dairy farms and pollution in Lake Champlain — all issues that Maroney thinks should stand on their own, beyond the matter of his polarizing advocacy. These are causes near and dear to the former organic dairy farmer’s heart, and which he has addressed for years at local farm bureau meetings, at Statehouse hearings and in the pages of Vermont newspapers.

So far, not many people are listening.... Read more

Is Sen. Patrick Leahy losing his sense of political timing? For most of his 37 years in the U.S. Senate, Leahy, 71, has been a defender of civil liberties, earning praise from First Amendment advocates and right-to-privacy groups.

But lately, Leahy has ignited outrage across the nation — and among Vermonters — for supporting two bills that critics say give the government too much power.... Read more

1/14/12: Eva visits Waitsfield for the 9th annual Mountaintop Film Festival at the Big Picture Theater.
Sam Mayfield is raising funds for her film "Wisconsin Rising" here.

Miro Weinberger wants everyone to know: He is not “The Donald.”

“People think of Donald Trump when they hear you’re a developer,” Burlington mayoral candidate Weinberger says of the job title the local media has bestowed upon him. But unlike the Republican builder of casinos and luxe cribs for the 1 percent, “my whole career has been about equity issues and green building,” says the Democrat who wants to lead Burlington.... Read more