https://fyivt.comNews That Affects You!https://fyivt.com/online-tricks-designed-to-get-you-to-spend-and-keep-spending/https://fyivt.com/online-tricks-designed-to-get-you-to-spend-and-keep-spending/Tue, 18 Aug 2026 08:00:00 +0000The countdown clock, the prechecked box, the subscription that takes one click to start and six screens to escape — regulators call them dark patterns, and a sweep of 642 subscription sites found them on three out of four. What federal law couldn't hold, Vermont law partly covers — and two bills to expand it stalled in committee.https://fyivt.com/police-removed-prosecutor-declined-protesters-returned/https://fyivt.com/police-removed-prosecutor-declined-protesters-returned/Mon, 17 Aug 2026 08:00:00 +0000Protesters occupied a privately owned Williston business park to pressure ICE's landlord. Police removed them. State's Attorney Sarah George declined all 13 trespass cases — while warning in writing that coming back would change the calculus. They came back in May. And again in July. A look at what Vermont's trespass law actually says.https://fyivt.com/vt-taxpayers-covering-the-cost-of-police-defunding/https://fyivt.com/vt-taxpayers-covering-the-cost-of-police-defunding/Sun, 16 Aug 2026 08:00:00 +0000Burlington once paid Vermont more than $100,000 for State Police patrols downtown. This time the state is footing the bill — troopers plus DMV and liquor enforcement, no invoice to the city — while Burlington's own police-and-fire tax revenue has roughly doubled in three years. FYIVT follows who is writing the checks.https://fyivt.com/burlington-vt-6-years-post-defunding-their-police/https://fyivt.com/burlington-vt-6-years-post-defunding-their-police/Sat, 15 Aug 2026 08:00:00 +0000Six years ago Burlington voted to cut its police force by a third and redirect the savings to social services. FYIVT went through six years of budgets and audits — the first-year cut was 4.85 percent, overtime ran $2.75 million over, and no ledger ever shows where the freed money went.https://fyivt.com/vt-state-spend-o-meter-launches/https://fyivt.com/vt-state-spend-o-meter-launches/Fri, 14 Aug 2026 08:00:00 +0000The VT State Spend-O-Meter launches today — a live counter on Vermont's $9.38 billion budget: $297 every second, $25.7 million a day, $14,489 per resident. It follows the money to its destination and measures it against what Vermonters earn, what things cost, and what they hand back in taxes and fees.https://fyivt.com/vt-weekend-guide-08132026/https://fyivt.com/vt-weekend-guide-08132026/Thu, 13 Aug 2026 08:00:00 +0000Bennington throws its Battle Day weekend with a 5K, an encampment and a Sunday parade. Stowe fills every bar and lawn with three days of free jazz. Carly Pearce plays the Paramount, Brownington's Old Stone House turns 190, and Bristol shuts down Main Street. Thirteen counties, most of it free, August 14-16.https://fyivt.com/vermont-crime-this-week-08122026/https://fyivt.com/vermont-crime-this-week-08122026/Wed, 12 Aug 2026 08:00:00 +0000Edged weapons drove the week's headlines, with machete and knife cases in Barton, Burlington and Fairlee. Brattleboro police ran a twelve-arrest sweep, a Manchester teen died in a Mt. Tabor crash, and a Franklin County deportation has a sheriff's deputy under review. Troopers logged DUIs, a burglary and an animal cruelty citation.https://fyivt.com/vermont-water-system-cyber-checklist/https://fyivt.com/vermont-water-system-cyber-checklist/Tue, 11 Aug 2026 08:00:00 +0000No one hacked anything this summer — the doors were unlocked. Most of the fix isn't a purchase order, it's an afternoon. What's exposed, how to close it, and the free help almost nobody in Vermont knows exists.https://fyivt.com/vt-cyber-security-report-says-it-wont-work/https://fyivt.com/vt-cyber-security-report-says-it-wont-work/Tue, 11 Aug 2026 08:00:00 +0000Attackers took over U.S. water systems this summer without exploiting a single flaw — the doors were simply unlocked. Vermont, to its credit, asked the right question two years ago; it surveyed its critical infrastructure and found a third had no cybersecurity program at all. Then came the plan, the presentations, the reprinted plan — everything but the help itself.https://fyivt.com/vt-hospital-costs-part-3/https://fyivt.com/vt-hospital-costs-part-3/Mon, 10 Aug 2026 08:00:00 +0000Central Vermont Medical Center reports 8.6% expense growth — or roughly 1%, depending which year it compares against. Porter shows inpatient days down 0.2%; measured against actual 2025, they're up 21%. Rutland Regional asks regulators to set $16 million outside its benchmark. None of the numbers are false. The baselines do the work.https://fyivt.com/vt-hospital-costs-part-2/https://fyivt.com/vt-hospital-costs-part-2/Sun, 09 Aug 2026 08:00:00 +0000UVM Health reports operating losses. Its bottom line is positive — $105.2 million in fiscal 2026. Pharmacy revenue beat budget by $129.8 million and operations still lost money; investment income produces the surplus. Its Medical Group loses $320 million a year, subsidized — the state's oversight team says — by higher prices charged to Vermonters.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/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.