Howard Fairman, a native Vermonter, likes to study official public documents and presentations, research their backgrounds and implications, document what's really happening, then share food for thought with fellow grassroots Vermonters.
PUTNEY-What happens when consultants from afar "with decades of experience in large, urban settings," as they claim on their website, offer their professional advice to rural Vermont towns?
Putney is an example.
Town of Putney Selectboard chairperson Aileen Chute is running for reelection to a second three-year term. I am voting for her because: • Her forthright public statements affirming affordable housing and its residents have proven that she is a leader in Putney: Leaders do what is principled. • She...
Friends of Putney clearly believe that they have rightly appealed thrice to Vermont Environmental and Supreme Courts in opposition to Windham & Windsor Housing Trust's Alice Holway Drive affordable-housing project. Let's consider what is already approved, what Friends of Putney oppose and propose, why they lost two appeals, how...
I was a Hotel Pharmacy prescription customer who experienced examples of how they were forced out of business. Hotel Pharmacy told me that my Medicare Part D insurer has contracted with the manufacturer to cover the brand-name version of a common medication and deny coverage of generic equivalents. Moreover, the distributor requires a minimum order. Despite having generics in stock, Hotel Pharmacy had to advise me to switch this prescription to local Rite Aid or Walgreens, unless I could wait...
Retired Brattleboro Police Department Captain Mark Carignan's premier novel Out from Under: George V. Higgins would have admired it. If you know who he was, that's my review. If you don't, read both.
Vermont Senate candidate for Windham County Tim Wessel avoided primary-election campaigning and spending by running in the general election as “independent.” If elected, will he caucus in Montpelier with Democrats? Progressives? Republicans? Let's ask him. We Windham County voters have the right to know with which party Tim Wessel will caucus before we vote for him.
Nader Hashim of Dummerston is the experienced candidate to replace retiring Windham County Senators Becca Balint and Jeanette White. A former Windham-4 state representative (Dummerston, Putney, Westminster), Hashim knows firsthand how our Legislature works and how to work in our Legislature. A former Vermont state trooper, Hashim knows firsthand real-life Vermont and real-life Vermonters. A law clerk becoming a lawyer, Hashim knows firsthand how laws that our legislators pass work in practice as he prepares to practice law. I have...
Rescue Inc. charges the same per-capita annual fee to 15 member towns: subsidizing uncollectible accounts and partially subsidizing lower Medicaid and Medicare reimbursement rates compared to those of commercial health insurers, as is clear from its public IRS Form 990 financial statements. According to data from Rescue Inc. member towns from the U.S. Census Bureau's latest American Community Survey: • Brattleboro's median household income is lowest. • Brattleboro's poverty rate is highest: an indicator of Medicaid eligibility and reimbursement rates.