How Can Vermont use Local and Regional Councils to Inform its Strategic Planning?

The Vermont Council on Rural Development(VCRD)’s deep dive into the issues facing Vermont is informed by interviews with and input from thousands of Vermonters. Proposition 8 was of particular interest… Read More

Punt and Study?

House Speaker, Jill Krowinski’s difficult decision to do a punt-and-study of the looming pension crisis, about which we have effectively been advised for almost a decade, forewarns us of some… Read More

How To Spend a Windfall

I’m not one to look a gift horse in the mouth… …but the $2.7B one-time federal tsunami of cash coming into a state of 624,000 people is a big deal,… Read More

When the State Takes A Child

The most extreme authority Vermonters have accorded their government is the taking of a human life. This ended in 1972, 18 years after the last Vermonter was electrocuted in Windsor… Read More

Vermont: Reactive or Reactionary?

To our detriment, we’re largely a reactive state. Our ship of state is captained from the stern. We scan our wake for bad signs. A corpse floats by… we need… Read More

Social Media, Free Speech, & The Right to Bear Arms

The term “social media” has never made linguistic sense to me. It seems like an oxymoron. To me “social” implies my predigital childhood, where people I knew walked and talked… Read More

Christmas Wish List or New Year’s Resolutions?

It’s the end of what has been for many a devastating year. 2020 has magnified and amplified the damaging toll that our persistent socio-economic and environmental inequities have exacted on… Read More

Vermont Politics

A friend from California recently asked me about two televised electoral charts she’d seen showing Vermont’s electoral voting response. She pointed out that the presidential chart was blue, mottled here… Read More

The Broadband Imperative: Where’s the leadership?

A few years back, I remember attending an author event at Bixby Library in Vergennes. It was after hours and the library was closed except to guests. As I entered,… Read More

Vermont’s Nonprofit community: Winds of Change

Pandemics force behavioral change. Foresighted leaders explore and initiate strategic change – or not. While the business and government sectors struggle to understand what changes are needed to secure their… Read More

Ethics and Wealth

On Tuesday, the 21st. The Guardian newspaper reported that Jeff Bezos’s wealth increased on the prior day by some $13B. … twice Vermont’s budget. His net worth now is some $189B. Bezos… Read More

Lest We Forget: The Economic Engine is Powered by People

It’s a bizarre dichotomy in current national politics that pits the health of Americans against the health of the economy, as if the two were wholly separate entities. Many local… Read More