Vermont News Updates For Wednesday, August 26

Vermont reporters provide a roundup of ongoing local coverage of the coronavirus, protests against police violence and more for Wednesday, August 26.

Want VPR's daily news in podcast form? Get up to speed in under 20 minutes with The Frequencyevery weekday morning. How about an email newsletter? Add our daily email briefing to your morning routine.

The latest coronavirus data:

The Vermont Department of Health reported four new cases of COVID-19 today, bringing the total number of cases identified in Vermont to date to 1,577.

There are currently four people hospitalized with confirmed cases in the state, and ten people are hospitalized with symptoms under investigation.

So far, 58 people have died. No new deaths were announced today.

The state has now tested 122,841 people for active cases, and 65 people are currently being monitored as close contacts of confirmed cases.

- Abagael Giles

The chancellor of the Vermont state college system says a once-abandoned plan to shutter two college campuses will be back on the table if elected officials don’t provide emergency funding before the end of fall.

Sophie Zdatny is asking lawmakers and the governor for thirty million dollars in bridge funding for the college system.

“If we don’t get the funding we’ll obviously have to take significant action, and I would anticipate it would be action comparable to what was proposed back in the spring. We very much hope that won’t be the case,” Zdatny said.

The plan proposed in the spring would have resulted in the closure of state college campuses in Johnson and Randolph.

Under a budget plan unveiled by the Scott administration last week, state colleges wouldn’t receive any additional funding unless Congress revises the rules that govern use of federal coronavirus relief funds.

- Peter Hirschfeld

Vermont Labor Commissioner Michael Harrington is urging Congress to pass a long term plan to provide supplemental unemployment benefits to people who have lost their jobs due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The initial Congressional plan that provided an additional 600 dollars a week expired after three months. President Trump's proposal for $300 a week in supplemental benefits will run for only 3 weeks.

Harrington says the system needs more certainty.

“I think in all fairness to claimants the best thing that Congress can do is find a long term solution and program that provides supplemental benefits to folks, so that we can implement it once and it can carry us through the duration of the pandemic," Harrington said.  

The Scott Administration is also asking Vermont lawmakers to add a payment of $100 per week to the new short term federal program.

- Bob Kinzel

A steep decline in enrollment this fall has exacerbated revenue problems at Vermont state colleges.

Sharron Scott is the dean of Administration for the Vermont State College System.

Scott said enrollment at individual colleges is down between 11% and 23% over last year.

She said the number of students paying for room and board has also fallen sharply.

“We have participation in room and board that’s between 66% down from the prior year to about 45% down from the prior year,” Scott said.

The state college system is seeking thirty million dollars in emergency bridge funding from the Legislature.

College officials say if they don’t get the money, they may have to close down campuses.

- Pete Hirschfeld  

The Scott Administration is expecting wide fluctuations in Vermont's unemployment rate in the coming year.

The rate last month was 8.3%, compared to a high of 15.6% at the start of the pandemic in April.

Over the last five months just over 40% of Vermont's labor force has filed for unemployment benefits.

Labor Commissioner Michael Harrington said he doubts the current rate will fall much lower in the coming months.

“What does it take for our businesses to come back, fully opening? Is there a vaccine that comes out in the near future? Again, [there are] just so many variables that I think it's really hard to project anything at this time,” Harrington said. “I think it will remain high."

The August unemployment rate will be released in the mid-September.

- Bob Kinzel

Kimball Union Academy, a small, private secondary school in the Upper Valley town of Meriden, New Hampshire, has just reported its first confirmed case of COVID-19.

The school won't say if the person is a student or an adult, but quarantine and contact tracing measures have already been taken, as outlined in the school's COVID response plan.

Kimball Union's Melissa Underhill is Director of Health Services.

“We expected this; bringing, you know, all of our employees back from vacation, our faculty and our students from around the world,” Underhill said. “And what we hope, is that we get through this heightened period of monitoring and that the cases will be down to zero and we will not have any more cases on campus.”

Once everyone expected back for the fall term has arrived, faculty, staff and students will be required to minimize contact with residents in surrounding communities.

- Betty Smith

Racial justice advocates have renewed calls for three Burlington police officers involved in high-profile use-of-force cases to be dismissed. The calls come following the shooting of Jacob Blake by police in Wisconsin over the weekend.

Blake was shot multiple times at close range by police.

On Tuesday evening, about 300 people marched up Burlington's Church Street in protest.

Credit Abagael Giles / VPR

/

VPR

The demonstration was organized by The Black Perspective, a Burlington-based racial justice organization.

Demonstrators marched to the police station, where Black Perspective leaders called for further criminal justice reform in Vermont.

The activists cited the December death of Kenneth Johnson in a Newport prison as an example of institutional violence against Black men in Vermont.

Zanevia Wilcox is an organizer for The Black Perspective. Speaking through a megaphone while standing on a parked car in the department parking lot, she told the crowd the officers should be terminated.

Wilcox said the officers "have displayed a pattern of violence without provocation, or just cause, particularly against Black men."

Organizers called for protesters to rally through the night, camping at Battery Street Park, so they could return to the police station to call for the officers' dismissal.

- Abagael Giles

More from VPR: Defender General Details Failures Leading to Inmate's Death

The Vermont Department of Health is working on a plan to make certain that any COVID-19 vaccine is distributed on an equitable basis once it becomes available.

Commissioner Mark Levine said it's likely that there will be a federal priority list at the outset that includes health care workers and the elderly.

"But once those priority groups are taken care of, that still leaves a huge segment of the population," Levine said. "And that's where we need to make sure that we can provide this, no matter where you live, no matter what age you are, no matter what sex you are, no matter anything, just to be sure that everybody has an equal chance."

Levine said it's important to have a distribution list because it's unlikely that Vermont will receive one huge shipment of vaccines.

Instead, he thinks a smaller number of vaccines will be sent to the state over a period of weeks.

More from Vermont Edition: Weighing Risks Amid A Pandemic

- Bob Kinzel

One more Vermont inmate being held at a private out-of-state prison has tested positive for COVID-19, bringing the total to 185.

That’s more than 80% of the 219 inmates the state has housed at Tallahatchie County Correctional Facility in Mississippi.

Two inmates are in the infirmary and none are hospitalized, according to the Vermont Department of Corrections. 153 of the prisoners are considered in recovery because they’ve been without symptoms for 10 days.

- Liam Elder-Connors

Have questions, comments or tips? Send us a message or get in touch with tweet us @vprnet.

We've closed our comments. Read about ways to get in touch here.