https://fyivt.comNews That Affects You!https://fyivt.com/vt-hospital-costs-part-1/https://fyivt.com/vt-hospital-costs-part-1/Sat, 08 Aug 2026 08:00:00 +0000In 2025, commercial insurers paid Vermont hospitals 453% of what Medicare would have paid — 503% for outpatient care, and above 5,700% for some chemotherapy drugs. Hospitals want $4.4 billion next year. The Green Mountain Care Board decides by September 15, and public comment stays open through September 11. Here's what's actually at stake.https://fyivt.com/burlington-public-safety-loop/https://fyivt.com/burlington-public-safety-loop/Fri, 07 Aug 2026 08:00:00 +0000Nine years ago, Burlington officials described a revolving loop: crisis, arrest, court limits, no treatment beds, release, repeat. The council sent a repeat-offender ordinance to committee. This week it sent Burlington Forward to committee — as a familiar name turned up in a confrontation on the same downtown street.https://fyivt.com/vt-weekend-guide-08062026/https://fyivt.com/vt-weekend-guide-08062026/Thu, 06 Aug 2026 08:00:00 +0000Field Days closes out in New Haven, Rutland's Art in the Park turns 65, SolarFest gathers in Brandon, and the Sound of Music lands in a Stowe meadow. Add free concerts from Bennington to St. Johnsbury, a Jay Peak Dead festival, and a covered bridge tour out of Rockingham. Here's your August 7-9 rundown.https://fyivt.com/vermont-crime-this-week-08052026/https://fyivt.com/vermont-crime-this-week-08052026/Wed, 05 Aug 2026 08:00:00 +0000A shooting in Newbury leaves two injured and sends detectives hunting a yellow truck, Brattleboro police sweep the town and arrest twelve, a federal fentanyl indictment reaches St. Albans and Milton, and courts from Bennington to Rutland close out serious felony cases. Twelve of Vermont's fourteen counties reported verifiable criminal activity this week.https://fyivt.com/lithium-battery-fires/https://fyivt.com/lithium-battery-fires/Tue, 04 Aug 2026 08:00:00 +0000E-bikes, power banks, and tools keep showing up in flames on social media — often while sitting unplugged. The mechanism isn't random: a damaged cell can smolder toward thermal runaway long before anything looks wrong. What UL, the CPSC, and fire officials say about why lithium batteries ignite, the recalls reaching name brands, and the warning signs worth knowing.https://fyivt.com/lift-the-bar-act/https://fyivt.com/lift-the-bar-act/Mon, 03 Aug 2026 08:00:00 +0000Vermont's entire congressional delegation has signed onto the LIFT the BAR Act, which would open Medicaid, SNAP, SSI, and housing assistance to DACA recipients and other noncitizens. The pitch says taxpayers who pay in should get benefits. The arithmetic — per-enrollee costs, exemptions already in law, and a missing CBO score — tells a more complicated story.https://fyivt.com/thirty-years-is-long-enough/https://fyivt.com/thirty-years-is-long-enough/Mon, 03 Aug 2026 08:00:00 +0000Thirty years of Democrat-Progressive majorities have written Vermont's budgets, laws, and priorities, argues Gregory Thayer — and affordability, education, housing, and public safety show the results. His case for a common-sense Republican majority under the Gold Dome this November 3rd.https://fyivt.com/who-will-be-todays-robespierre/https://fyivt.com/who-will-be-todays-robespierre/Sun, 02 Aug 2026 08:00:00 +0000The American and French revolutions both rose against tyranny — and unfolded in opposite directions. H. Jay Eshelman reaches for Santayana, Robespierre, and the classic essay "I, Pencil" to ask which revolution's habits our own planners have picked up, and what to weigh when voting this November.https://fyivt.com/vt-nonprofit-board-toolkit/https://fyivt.com/vt-nonprofit-board-toolkit/Fri, 31 Jul 2026 08:00:00 +0000Vermont runs on volunteer nonprofit boards — and when one goes off the rails, almost nobody knows the rules. A plain-language map of Title 11B: the quorum law most boards get wrong, why public money buys zero transparency, and the levers directors, members, and taxpayers can actually pull, from records demands to the town meeting warning.https://fyivt.com/vt-overdose-cdc-sudors/https://fyivt.com/vt-overdose-cdc-sudors/Fri, 31 Jul 2026 08:00:00 +0000Newly finalized CDC data show Vermont recorded 207 overdose deaths in 2024 — real improvement from the 2022 peak, but still 17 percent above 2020, while 27 comparison jurisdictions dropped 18 percent. Cocaine involvement doubled, xylazine surged, and a rising share of the dead had already touched the treatment systems positioned to catch them.https://fyivt.com/vermont-crime-this-week-07292026/https://fyivt.com/vermont-crime-this-week-07292026/Wed, 29 Jul 2026 08:00:00 +0000A county-by-county look at verifiable Vermont crime for the week of July 21-28, 2026, including an attempted-murder charge in Bennington, a $70,000 embezzlement case at Jay Peak, a violent overnight robbery in Burlington, a domestic-assault arrest in Monkton, and a Rutland County couple indicted in a teenager's 2024 death.https://fyivt.com/vermont-wordpress-security-threat/https://fyivt.com/vermont-wordpress-security-threat/Tue, 28 Jul 2026 08:00:00 +0000Thousands of Vermont websites were exposed in mid-July to a WordPress flaw that lets attackers seize a site with no password. WordPress pushed a forced update — but it only reaches sites whose automatic updates still work. CISA confirms active exploitation. Roughly 8,159 Vermont sites run WordPress. Check yours: 7.0.2, 6.9.5, or 6.8.6.https://fyivt.com/vermont-just-got-its-own-search-engine/https://fyivt.com/vermont-just-got-its-own-search-engine/Mon, 27 Jul 2026 08:00:00 +0000Today FYIVT launches the Finder, a search engine built exclusively for Vermont, and the Bill Wrangler, which assembles votes, testimony, lobbyists and state actors on one page per bill. It is free, requires no account and tracks usage rather than users. Public records should be public, searchable and private to access.https://fyivt.com/the-headline-is-finch/https://fyivt.com/the-headline-is-finch/Sun, 26 Jul 2026 08:00:00 +0000When Finch Paper announced it will stop buying roundwood from Northeast suppliers, a Vermont forester with fifty years in the working landscape saw a structural collapse decades in the making — and a Connecticut private-equity firm quietly positioned at both ends of the region's fiber market. A Vermont Investigative report.https://fyivt.com/does-efficiency-vermont-cut-power-a-readers-question/https://fyivt.com/does-efficiency-vermont-cut-power-a-readers-question/Sat, 25 Jul 2026 08:00:00 +0000A reader asked three sharp questions about Efficiency Vermont: has it ever said how much electricity it actually saves, would that number survive the businesses that have left Vermont, and doesn't using less power push rates up? All three are fair — and the public record answers some cleanly while going noticeably quiet on the rest.https://fyivt.com/capitalism-vs-socialism-questions-thayer/https://fyivt.com/capitalism-vs-socialism-questions-thayer/Sat, 25 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000Gregory Thayer poses open questions to Vermont's Democratic Socialists of America members. Writing from a conservative perspective, he argues that history's verdict on centrally planned economies is clear, and that free-market capitalism, private property, and limited government — not expanded state control — remain the primary engines of prosperity and opportunity for Vermont and America.https://fyivt.com/vermont-environmental-benefits-report-151-million/https://fyivt.com/vermont-environmental-benefits-report-151-million/Fri, 24 Jul 2026 08:00:00 +0000A new Vermont Public Utility Commission report tallies more than $151 million in residential "environmental benefits" spending — but never says who paid for it. The answer, buried in the underlying records: Vermonters themselves, through utility rates, embedded Tier III costs and out-of-pocket project contributions totaling roughly $480 per household over four years. Spending counted, savings unproven.https://fyivt.com/vermont-crime-this-week-07222026/https://fyivt.com/vermont-crime-this-week-07222026/Wed, 22 Jul 2026 08:00:00 +0000A road-rage arrest on Interstate 89, a Woodford vehicle-theft case with $50,000 bail, an aggravated domestic assault in Stockbridge and a string of state police citations across the state headline this week's Vermont crime and public-safety roundup, spanning Bennington, Chittenden, Orleans, Rutland, Windham and Windsor counties plus barracks reports statewide.https://fyivt.com/windows-10-security-updates-extended-2027/https://fyivt.com/windows-10-security-updates-extended-2027/Tue, 21 Jul 2026 08:00:00 +0000Microsoft has extended Windows 10 consumer security updates through October 12, 2027—but a computer must be eligible and properly enrolled. Here is how to check the Windows version, confirm current security updates, enroll without necessarily paying, avoid upgrade scams and decide whether an older computer truly needs replacing.https://fyivt.com/study-that-built-a-policy-never-answered-its-own-question/https://fyivt.com/study-that-built-a-policy-never-answered-its-own-question/Mon, 20 Jul 2026 08:00:00 +0000Chittenden County State's Attorney Sarah George is seeking a third term partly on a 2022 policy built on a study that never established why Black drivers were searched at 4x the rate of white drivers. Her opponent wants it reversed. Vermont still hasn't measured what the policy actually did.https://fyivt.com/vermont-cheapest-expensive-electricity-new-england/https://fyivt.com/vermont-cheapest-expensive-electricity-new-england/Sun, 19 Jul 2026 08:00:00 +0000Vermont households paid 24.56 cents per kilowatt-hour for electricity in April—30 percent above the national average and the tenth-highest in the nation. Yet every other New England state charged more, leaving Vermont with the region's lowest rates. Nationally expensive, regionally enviable: the cheapest expensive electricity in New England.https://fyivt.com/as-hawaii-burns-oil-vermont-gets-gwsa/https://fyivt.com/as-hawaii-burns-oil-vermont-gets-gwsa/Sat, 18 Jul 2026 08:00:00 +0000Vermont has the cleanest electricity in America and among the highest rates in New England. Hawaii, blessed with tropical sun, ocean wind and volcanic geothermal heat, still burns imported oil for most of its power—at the nation's steepest prices. Both cases suggest that renewable mandates alone cannot deliver cheap, reliable electricity to ratepayers.https://fyivt.com/vermont-unsolicited-ballot-machine/https://fyivt.com/vermont-unsolicited-ballot-machine/Fri, 17 Jul 2026 08:00:00 +0000Vermont mails a ballot to every active voter automatically — but its own 2024 numbers don't add up. 522,600 registered, 460,415 "active," only 441,666 ballots sent, and just 240,375 counted as mail returns. Over 200,000 packages unaccounted for. Now the state's suing to block federal verification of that very system.https://fyivt.com/vermont-crime-this-week-07152026/https://fyivt.com/vermont-crime-this-week-07152026/Wed, 15 Jul 2026 08:00:00 +0000A Burlington octogenarian pleads not guilty after firing a handgun over a parking dispute, a Montpelier music festival ends with an arrest, and a St. Johnsbury man is caught napping on a stolen backpack. Our county-by-county roundup of Vermont crime and public safety news from the past week, plus the latest from the state police barracks.https://fyivt.com/vts-climate-leadership-paying-the-price/https://fyivt.com/vts-climate-leadership-paying-the-price/Tue, 14 Jul 2026 11:15:00 +0000Vermont’s climate policies burden residents with costly mandates for negligible global impact. With emissions contributing just 0.13% of the U.S. total, the state’s sacrifices under the Paris Accord resemble a "Nigerian prince" scam: high costs, empty promises. It’s time for pragmatic, sustainable solutions. #ClimateJustice #VermontEconomy #SustainableEnergyhttps://fyivt.com/orange-county-high-bailiff-defending-iran-in-tehran/https://fyivt.com/orange-county-high-bailiff-defending-iran-in-tehran/Mon, 13 Jul 2026 08:00:00 +0000Vermont's Orange County high bailiff remains publicly listed in office while appearing in Russia and Tehran, invoking his elected title abroad, claiming U.S. No Fly List status, praising Iranian resistance, and posting from events tied to hostile governments. The question now is whether he resigns, voters replace him, or lawmakers consider impeachment.https://fyivt.com/do-cows-predict-the-weather/https://fyivt.com/do-cows-predict-the-weather/Sun, 12 Jul 2026 08:00:00 +0000Vermont farmers have trusted the barnyard forecast for generations. The science says the cows are guessing — but the swallows, the bees and the red sky are onto something real.https://fyivt.com/your-house-is-worth-whatever-vermont-says-it-is/https://fyivt.com/your-house-is-worth-whatever-vermont-says-it-is/Sat, 11 Jul 2026 08:00:00 +0000Vermont believes residential property is collectively worth billions more than current assessments reflect, and a new reappraisal system is designed to close that gap. While higher assessments don't automatically mean higher taxes, they can shift who pays more. Here's what every Vermont homeowner should know before the next reappraisal arrives.https://fyivt.com/vt-cant-afford-to-live-here-cant-afford-to-leave/https://fyivt.com/vt-cant-afford-to-live-here-cant-afford-to-leave/Fri, 10 Jul 2026 08:00:00 +0000More for-sale signs, prices still rising, and two-thirds of young Vermonters saying they want out. Vermont's housing market isn't crashing — it's trapping people. We built an interactive dashboard tracking every moving part, from the signs on the lawn to the money underneath. The verdict, you can't afford to live here, and you can't afford to leave.https://fyivt.com/vermont-crime-this-week-07082026/https://fyivt.com/vermont-crime-this-week-07082026/Wed, 08 Jul 2026 05:26:04 +0000A Fourth of July weekend roundup of verifiable Vermont crime across a dozen counties: impaired-driving and domestic-assault arrests, a dramatic late-night shooting in Derby, two child-exploitation arraignments announced by the Attorney General, a stolen truck and speeding stops, and the recovery of a man who drowned trying to save a young relative at Arrowhead Mountain Lake.