Defying the predictions of abortion advocates, providers and state lawmakers, the number of out-of-state patients who traveled to Vermont to obtain abortions did not increase, but in fact dropped, in the year after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade case precedent, according to preliminary data from the state Department of Health.

When the court’s conservative majority issued its Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision last June, the country became a patchwork of disparate reproductive health laws. In states with so-called trigger laws, abortion was severely restricted or outright banned once the decision was issued. Other state legislatures, emboldened by the court ruling, worked quickly to impose new restrictions on the procedure in their respective states.

Vermont lawmakers had seen a post-Roe future coming, and proactively worked to expand access to abortion within Vermont’s boundaries — not only with Vermonters in mind, but also for out-of-state patients who they foresaw traveling from their respective states to obtain the procedure.

Experts never expected a tsunami of out-of-state patients, largely because Vermont is a remote, rural state that can be difficult or cost-prohibitive to travel to from far distances. When the high court issued its Dobbs decision, Planned Parenthood of Northern New England predicted a modest 10% increase in out-of-state patients.

But according to preliminary data that VTDigger requested from the Vermont Department of Health, even that didn’t come to pass. As of this week, the department reports that from June 24, 2022 — the day of the Dobbs decision — through early June 2023, a total of 925 abortions were completed in Vermont. Of those, 154 were performed on non-Vermont residents — roughly 17%. (Due to reporting lag time, the department was unable to provide data from the latter portion of June 2023.)

By comparison, in all of 2021, 215 out-of-state patients obtained abortions in Vermont, representing nearly 21% of the 1,033 abortions completed in the state that year.

Since 2018, the proportion of out-of-state patients who obtain abortions in Vermont has remained relatively stable, hovering between 17 and 22% every year. But mirroring national trends, the total number of abortion patients in the state — both those who hail from Vermont and those who don’t — has trended downward.

In the year since Roe fell, a handful of patients traveled to Vermont from far-flung states where an abortion is difficult to obtain: Alabama, Louisiana, Tennessee and Texas, to name a few. But most out-of-state patients traveled from nearby states, where access to abortion is, in theory, about on par with Vermont: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York and Rhode Island. More than half of all out-of-state patients came from New Hampshire, mirroring past years’ trends.

Vermont’s clinics had anticipated such a trend, according to Lucy Leriche, vice president of Vermont public affairs for Planned Parenthood of Northern New England. “There are a lot of reasons why people from out-of-state are getting an abortion in our region,” she said, speaking of Vermont as well as New Hampshire and Maine.

Sometimes northern New England is where the patient has a family member or support system to assist in the process, Leriche said. Perhaps they are fleeing a domestic violence situation. They could be attending college here, but a legal resident elsewhere. Maybe they just want more privacy. Or perhaps, if they hail from a nearby state that has more patients, such as New York or Massachusetts, they couldn’t get an appointment at home. A domino effect in appointment availability can ensue, Leriche said.

Planned Parenthood — the largest provider of abortions in Vermont, and nationwide — declined to provide state-specific data on its own out-of-state patients, citing concerns over patient privacy and safety. But in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont combined, the organization earlier this month reported a 12.5% increase in out-of-state patients “seeking abortion at our health centers,” according to a June press release.

Beyond patient data, Leriche said the impact of the Dobbs decision was palpable in other ways. Planned Parenthood of Northern New England’s call center was “inundated” immediately after the ruling was made, she said. Online, the organization’s website had its largest one-day spike in web traffic on June 24, 2022, the day of the court’s ruling. “That is, I think, a really strong indicator of the response,” Leriche said.

The Dobbs decision “is very destabilizing and very anxiety-producing, and causes a lot of confusion and anxiety and fear and panic,” Leriche said.

Leriche said the organization is trying to keep its messaging on target, emphasizing that abortion remains legal in Vermont. This legislative session, state lawmakers passed landmark shield laws protecting Vermont-based abortion providers — and to some extent, patients who travel to the state — from out-of-state abortion prosecutions or investigations.

Read the story on VTDigger here: In the year after Roe fell, out-of-state abortion patients did not flock to Vermont.

This story by Patrick Adrian was first published by the Valley News on July 5.

WEST LEBANON, New Hampshire — With berry season underway, Upper Valley farmers said their pick-your-own patches could use more sunshine to offset June’s rainy days and cool temperatures. A mid-May freeze also killed or damaged many fruit blossoms.

While the impact may not be as noticeable to customers, the problems have been especially acute for strawberry growers. But a lack of sunlight and warmth also is causing delays to the start of raspberry and blueberry picking at many farms, as well as some anxiety about the weather to come.

“This has been a spring and early summer to forget,” said Becky Nelson of Beaver Pond Farm in Newport, New Hampshire. “We, like everyone else, are waterlogged. … We are hoping for some sunshine soon to sweeten the berries, as too much rain and not enough sunshine affect the taste.”

Newport saw nearly 5 inches of rainfall in June, the most for that month since 2015, which recorded 5.7 inches.

This amount of rainfall is not unprecedented, several farmers said. Since 2010, there have been five years where the Upper Valley accumulated at least 4 inches in June.

However, this past June the rain mostly occurred during the final two weeks — the heart of the strawberry-picking season.

On Tuesday, Wellwood Orchards in Springfield, Vermont, announced a sale on its PYO — or pick-your-own — strawberries of $1.99 per pint, a discount of 60%.

Linda Friedman, co-owner of Wellwood, said the end-of-season strawberry sale is intended to “clean up” the harvestable berries that remain in the patches.

“There are a lot of soft or rotting berries because of the rain, but there are a lot of good ones, too,” Friedman said. “And if people are making jam, they don’t care if some berries are soft.”

In previous summers, the strawberry picking might have continued an additional week, though the wetness and the lack of sun are limiting the season to three weeks, which is just within the low end of the average season duration, according to Friedman.

What has most impacted Upper Valley fruit growers this year was the brutal cold snap in May, which not only impacted early varieties of raspberries and blueberries but fruit trees including apples, peaches and cherries.

Wellwood, whose PYO apple orchard is a popular tourist destination during the fall, lost nearly all its apple blossoms — as well as its peach, plum and cherry blossoms — when the low temperature on May 18 plummeted to 23 degrees.

As a result, Friedman said that strawberries, raspberries and blueberries are Wellwood’s only pick-your-own fruits this year.

“That’s the really serious storyline,” Friedman said. “We’ll be lucky to have enough apples to put on our store shelves. We will have to try to be creative with our events in the fall.”

Friedman partly attributed the freeze’s impact to bad timing, in that it struck right when many fruit trees and bushes were blossoming.

“If it had happened a few days earlier or a few days later,” the freeze might not have such an issue, Friedman noted.

Keith and Kristy Brodeur, owners of Bascom Road Blueberry Farm in Newport, New Hampshire, said the freeze killed the blossoms on their early-variety blueberry bushes.

“Farmers in the last 50 years haven’t seen it get that cold that late into the season,” said Keith Brodeur, who researched historical records to determine the rarity of the freeze.

Brodeur said on Monday his opening date for pick-your-own blueberries will be about “a week to 10 days” later than past years.

“We were tentatively hoping to open this (coming) weekend, but we will need multiple days of sun (to fully ripen the fruit),” Brodeur said.

Pete Bartlett, of Bartlett’s Blueberry Farm in Newport, New Hampshire, also said his opening this year will be later than his “average” start date in recent years, which has usually been around the second week of July.

Bartlett noted that blueberry production in recent years has been ramping up slightly earlier than 30 years ago due to warmer temperatures in the growing area.

Nelson, of Beaver Pond Farm, who hopes to open her pick-your-own raspberries later this week, said the cold snap did some damage to her early-variety raspberries.

“The blueberries look good, and the raspberries seem to be starting out OK,” Nelson said. “We are beginning to see some frost damage, or ‘winter kill,’ in the raspberries where they seem to be forming a full crop, but then the vascular structure can’t keep up with the vascular damage. They look great at first, but then they wither and die before the berries are pickable.”

Pooh Sprague, owner of Edgewater Farm in Plainfield, New Hampshire, noted that the impacts of this season’s weather — including the cold snap — will differ from one farm to the next, based on their crops and operation.

While Edgewater provides pick-your-own strawberries, the majority of Sprague’s strawberries are harvested for wholesale — which relieves some of the stress about leaving berries exposed in the field to heavy amounts of moisture or about rain driving away customers to pick the berries.

“Pick-your-own is nice, but it’s not a dependable way to get rid of your crop,” Sprague said.

The rainfall has its benefits, Sprague noted. It helps the blueberries “size up,” for example. And despite the rain, the strawberries this year have been surprisingly flavorful.

But the rain needs to be balanced with sunshine, growers said.

“The biggest problem with the excess wet in any fields that have swales or dips is the potential for a waterborne fungal disease called phytopthora root rot,” Nelson said. “We lost an entire planting to it in the past, so we are hoping it doesn’t make a resurgence, as it can destroy entire raspberry plantings and affect other crops planted in that space down the road.”

“There is no amount of cultivating practice or chemical spray as a remedy when you’re dealing with this much wet and mugginess,” Sprague said.

The current weather forecast looks more promising than previously anticipated, with several fully or partly sunny days projected between today and July 14.

“I think it’s going to be an average year for us,” Brodeur said.

“But it’s hard to say until the season’s over.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Slim pickings: Little sun, too much rain slowing Upper Valley berry season.

The Bennington Rescue Squad and the Turning Point Center of Bennington have launched a new kind of partnership to reach people with substance use disorders who have so far been falling through the cracks. The Vermont Office of Emergency Medical Services calls it the first collaboration of its kind in the state.

Whenever the rescue squad responds to a substance-related call – many of them nonfatal opioid overdoses – emergency responders offer to take patients to the local emergency room, where volunteer peer coaches with the Turning Point Center are on standby to talk about paths to recovering from substance abuse.

But of the 20 to 30 emergency calls the squad receives every month, at least 25% of the patients refuse to be taken to the hospital, said squad director Bill Camarda. For those five to 10 people, emergency responders can only leave them with opioid antidote kits and printed information about where to seek help.  

“They really don’t want to have anything to do with the health care system,” Camarda said. “But at the same time, they’re not in the right mindset to be like, ‘I really need some help right now.’”

He said those patients are deterred by several factors: the stigma attached to drug use, a belief that nothing can help them, or preoccupation with getting their next dose, which will get rid of withdrawal symptoms.

After seeing dozens of local residents with substance use disorder fall through cracks in the system each year, the two Bennington nonprofit organizations decided to partner on another way to reach them. 

Starting June 9, when someone who shows signs or a history of substance use disorder refuses to be taken to the emergency department by the Bennington Rescue Squad, Camarda said paramedics on scene ask for written consent to share the patient’s name, contact information and case summary with the Turning Point Center.

If patients agree, peer coaches will visit them within 24 to 48 hours and discuss the resources available in combating substance use disorder. 

“We have the opportunity to potentially get ahead of some of these crises,” said Margae Diamond, executive director of the Bennington Turning Point Center.

Like they do at the hospital emergency room, the coaches may discuss medication-assisted treatment, psychotherapy, recovery coaching, support group meetings and organizations that can help with finding work or a new home.

During these home visits, Diamond said, recovery coaches will pair up with a local mental health professional from United Counseling Service, in recognition that substance use and mental health are often closely linked.

On top of the growing number of opioid overdose deaths, the Bennington recovery center is also concerned about the pervasive use of alcohol. The state Department of Health has reported that last year in Vermont, excessive alcohol use was associated with nearly one in four deaths among people ages 20-34 and nearly one in five deaths of those ages 35-49.

ALCOHOL-RELATED DEATHS AMONG VERMONTERS

“The ricochet of problems that develop from long-term alcohol use is something that we’d like to be able to identify earlier and provide some connection to resources,” Diamond said.

Since the partnership’s launch in June, however, only three patients have allowed the rescue squad to share their information with the recovery center. The leaders of both organizations say they’re working on strategies to increase participation, such as fine-tuning how their staffers communicate with patients.

Still, the state EMS Office lauds the initiative, saying it’s a model for other Vermont communities. 

“The seriousness of the opioid crisis and increasing number of overdoses and deaths necessitates innovation and locally developed solutions,” said Bambi Dame, the state health department’s emergency medical services chief.

She said some groups in Chittenden County are already discussing setting up a similar partnership.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Bennington ambulance service and recovery center team up to reach drug users.

Susan Ladmer first wrote to a reporter in early June, asking for help.

“I am currently housed in a homeless motel. I am a 77 year old woman who suffered a stroke in December. Despite tremendous efforts to find out where I will be in July, at the end of the emergency housing program, no one can tell me,” she wrote at the time. “Just the stress of trying to find out and of trying to make certain I have somewhere to live is presently life threatening.”

Ladmer would not get clarity until last week. Two days before she was initially set to be booted from a pandemic-era program sheltering homeless people in motels, Gov. Phil Scott signed a measure that gives her and nearly 2,200 other people the option to stay where they are until April. (Participants will need to leave sooner if the state can identify alternate shelter for them.)

That extended help comes with new strings, including the requirement that motel residents begin paying 30% of their incomes toward the cost of their stays. The rule mirrors one that was included in the state’s pre-pandemic shelter program, as well as the federal standard for Section 8 vouchers. 

Sen. Jane Kitchel, D-Caledonia, who played a key role in negotiating the new law, argued it’s only fair to ask households to begin paying in.

“There has to be some reciprocity here between the household and their responsibilities and the publicly funded benefit,” she said.

But this latest news, which Ladmer received only days before she was told she would have to pay, has left her panicked and infuriated. She said a state worker calculated that she’ll owe about $300 a month, a third of her monthly Social Security check.

“I’m out of money now. I mean, I’m at the end of the month, and that was with the $300,” she told VTDigger last week. “I don’t see how I can manage without it. I mean — I know I can’t.”

Ladmer noted that those who are eligible for vouchers until April, such as herself, qualified for the help in part because they met certain special criteria. They are elderly, receive federal disability benefits, have children, are pregnant, or are fleeing domestic violence, for example. 

The state is “putting the load of handling the motels on the vulnerable people,” she said, “as if that answers the money problem, when the money problem is created by the overpayment to the motels.”

Back when the federal government was picking up the tab for the program, Vermont did, for some time, allow motels to name their price, although state officials later capped the monthly rate at $5,250. The state is now paying for the program, and the latest legislation instructs the Agency of Human Services to negotiate further reduced rates with motels.

But motel owners don’t necessarily have to accept lower rates. Ladmer, on the other hand, is now required to give a third of her income to maintain her shelter. She filed an appeal but predicted it will be an “exercise in futility.”

Ladmer’s road to the Rutland Quality Inn where she now lives with her two dogs has been long and winding. Born in New York, Ladmer once worked as a museum administrator and, later, a horse trainer. But a chronic pain condition called complex regional pain syndrome largely took her out of the workforce in the late 1990s. 

She found a doctor who helped her manage the pain through hypnosis, and, after relocating to New Hampshire, tried to find work again. But employers wouldn’t hire her, she said, because her medical condition threatened to spike their insurance premiums. 

Struggling to finish paying off her home and property taxes, and seeing no other options, she took out a reverse mortgage — a move she said she knew was a bad deal, even at the time she made it. She tried to supplement her income by selling antiques, but couldn’t make enough, and lost the house.

“I have accomplished things in my life, many things I’m very proud of. And it’s hard now to be stripped of everything,” she said. “I thought I could get out of it.”

Last spring, she moved to Vermont with her dogs, attempting to make it work in an RV on land in Cavendish. But then came the fall’s cooler temperatures, and in November friends insisted she move into a local hotel, where the state was sheltering people experiencing homelessness.

Her initial plan had been to return to the camper after the winter. But it has no running water, no electricity, no sewer hookup, and no cell phone service. Still recovering from a stroke, which struck her in December and hospitalized her for nine days, Ladmer no longer thinks she could survive in the RV.

But neither does she think she can afford what the state wants her to pay. Between car payments, financing on the camper, credit card debt she took on during the move, insurance, and food, all of her money is already budgeted.

“Believe me, I tried every which way to make this thing work out. And as I’m sitting in this situation, I just wish there was some other way to make it work out because I hate this,” she said. “I truly, truly hate this.”

As she spoke to a reporter over the phone, a friend’s husband stopped by to drop off forms she needed to fill out to apply for housing and services. She paused for a moment to begin leafing through the stack of paperwork.

“God. You know, I used to write grant applications for the museum. And I swear they weren’t as involved as these applications are,” she said. “They were for a lot more money, too.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: ‘I don’t see how I can manage’: In Rutland, a motel resident struggles with uncertainty.

This story by Tommy Gardner was first published by the Stowe Reporter on June 29.

“Rush hour” has long been a grossly inaccurate way to describe making a left turn off West Hill Road during the afternoon commute. Now, drivers have the green light.

Last week, workers finally flipped the switch on Stowe’s very first tri-colored traffic signal, located at the corner of Route 100 and West Hill Road, one of the town’s worst intersections.

“All the feedback I’m getting from locals has been positive, although I do wonder how some of the people from the northern part of the county are feeling,” Stowe public works director Harry Shepard said this week. “There’s no doubt that the people on West Hill can more practically make a left-hand turn.”

Stowe police Detective Lt. Fred Whitcomb said Wednesday shortly before press deadline that, in the traffic light’s first week in operation, there hadn’t been any vehicle crashes. Police did nab one person for running a red light, but Whitcomb said no one has been busted doing it on purpose.

“We’re just trying to make sure people stay patient with the biggest traffic pattern change in Stowe in some time,” he said.

Years of increasingly large traffic buildups on West Hill Road caused by people trying to make a left turn onto Route 100 spurred the town in 2016 to hire a consulting firm to study the best way to solve problems at the intersection, and it was determined a traffic light was the best way.

According to the 2016 study, there were 17 crashes at West Hill Road and Route 100 during the five prior years. Six were broadside crashes, the type most linked to sight-line restrictions.

The traffic light construction started last year, but only included the road work necessary to widen Route 100 — also known as Pucker Street — north of West Hill Road and Maple Street south of it. That’s because supply chain problems caused a backlog on the actual signal components.

Shepard, an engineer by training, said traffic signal technology has evolved over the years. Gone are the days of waiting for a traffic light on a static timer to change when you’re the only one at the intersection.

“Pre-emption is an important part,” Shepard said.

Whitcomb said he has already seen one promising change in traffic patterns — more people are abiding by the 25-mph speed limit on Maple Street. He thinks that’s because drivers who get stopped at a red light are not approaching the village at 40-plus mph. Now, they are accelerating to reach 25 mph, not having to brake to do so.

“That’s the other thing I’m looking at, the constant pressure on Maple Street,” he said. “Hopefully, they won’t have that running start anymore.”

Now that the latest state highway project in Stowe is finished, Shepard is looking forward to the next big one on the list: the intersection of Luce Hill Road and Route 108. There, the state Agency of Transportation plans on widening the highway, adding a left-hand turn lane, and doing away with the Y-shaped intersection.

The state over the winter fast-tracked the project, with legislators in January citing in part the increased traffic along Mountain Road in recent winters caused by skiers and riders bound for Stowe Mountain Resort.

“This (traffic light) has been a long process, and hopefully Luce Hill can be done quicker,” Shepard said.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Stowe flips the switch on its first traffic light.

On the very first day of summer, many of Vermont’s top politicos gathered on the Statehouse lawn for a cheeky kind of bill-signing ceremony. They were there to celebrate H.217, which will inject more than $120 million annually into Vermont’s child care system, getting enacted into law.

Gov. Phil Scott had vetoed the bill — he objected to the 0.44% payroll tax that will partially fund the measure — but lawmakers overrode him by comfortable margins the day before Wednesday’s photo op.

And so, since the governor would not sign it, the children would. A large-scale printout of the bill was propped up on a tripod, and, after the speeches wrapped up, Senate Majority Leader Alison Clarkson, D-Windsor, stood at the ready, colored markers in hand.

“Anybody who is under four feet tall, please come forward,” her colleague, Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Baruth, D/P-Chittenden Central, instructed the small crowd of lawmakers, lobbyists, advocates and their children. “We have markers for you. You have to finish the job today.”

Advocates and Democratic lawmakers, who had made child care one of their banner priorities for the session, had reason to celebrate. Taking into account regular federal funding and the state money Vermont already spends on prekindergarten vouchers, the measure will roughly double the public dollars spent on early childhood education in the state. Just weeks before, the wonky online outlet Vox had declared the new law would make Vermont “a national leader on child care.” 

But in America, the bar is low. The U.S. is an outlier among rich, industrialized nations in how little it invests in early childhood education. And advocates and experts alike say that while Vermont’s new law will make significant progress, it will not, by itself, actually fix a broken child care system.

“This is a great downpayment on a child care system that works for parents and providers. It is not the full investment,” Elliot Haspel, a national expert who testified before lawmakers about the bill, told VTDigger.

“If all there ever is, is $120 million — maybe a little bit more — if we ask ourselves 10 years from now, ‘What’s the child care system in Vermont going to look like?’ It’s not going to look radically different than it does today. It’s going to be moderately more affordable. It’s going to be moderately better paid,” he said.

The problem of child care is simple math. Because it requires very low adult-to-children ratios, it is enormously labor-intensive to deliver. But because most families must pay out of pocket for the service, providers set their tuition far below the true cost of care. The result is prices that families still struggle to pay — and wages that leave child care workers unable to make ends meet. Basic benefits, like health insurance, remain out of reach for much of the workforce.

Vermont’s new child care measure is designed to mitigate that problem in two ways: by dramatically expanding which families are eligible for child care subsidies, and raising the rate (by 35%) at which the state reimburses providers who participate in the subsidy program.

The new subsidy system will be enacted in several phases, but by October 2024, families making up to 575% of the federal poverty level — that’s $172,000 for a family of four — will be eligible for partial subsidies. That will extend state aid to an estimated 80% of families, offering help to a greater share of the population than any other state in the country.

“The fact that Vermont has the subsidy going up to over 500% of the federal poverty level makes it very unique,” said Diane Schilder, a senior fellow in the Center on Labor, Human Services, and Population at the Urban Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank.

But how those new subsidies actually impact a family’s bottom line will depend on whether, or how much, a provider chooses to raise their tuition to match the state’s increased reimbursement rates. If providers increase their prices at the same rate as reimbursements, the new subsidies were designed to basically hold families harmless — not make out-of-pocket costs much cheaper.

And while Vermont will extend help to more families than anywhere else, one state has it beat when it comes to how many families will receive entirely free care. New Mexico, where voters in 2022 approved a constitutional amendment guaranteeing access to child care, offers no-cost care to anyone making up to 400% of the federal poverty level (that’s $120,000 a year for a family of four). A family making that much in Vermont will still pay estimated co-pays of $1,000 a month. 

Advocates and, in a 2021 law, legislators themselves set the goal that families receiving state aid would not pay more than 10% of their household income on child care. This year’s measure “does not achieve that,” Rep. Theresa Wood, D-Waterbury, the chair of the House Human Services Committee, matter-of-factly told VTDigger. 

“We are in fact raising the cost of child care in the state because we are addressing something that has gone unaddressed — which is payments of fair wages to people in the early care and learning sector,” Wood said.

But the new subsidy structure will nevertheless provide a dramatic improvement in affordability to one set of families: those with more than one child in care.

“The second child is free. If you have a second child, you don’t pay (another) copay. And I think that is something that is not widely understood,” Wood said. “That could make a huge difference.”

On the other side of the equation, Vermont’s latest measure may not necessarily raise workers’ wages as much as advocates had hoped. H.217 significantly raises reimbursement rates — but not by as much as was recommended in a study commissioned by lawmakers and completed this winter. That same report found that Vermont faced a funding gap of up to $279 million to meet its child care goals. This year’s bill invests a little less than half of that.

The new law also doesn’t require providers to raise wages, although it does state that lawmakers may do so in the future, and a report on child care worker wages is due back to the Legislature in January 2026. For Sen. Ruth Hardy, D-Addison, that’s a key part of this year’s unfinished business.

“I think the workforce question is another one that remains open,” she said. “Will this be enough infusion to really solve the workforce problems that we’re seeing in early childhood education or will we continue to struggle to find high quality people to take these jobs and stay at these jobs?”

Hardy also advocated strongly, at the outset of the session, to move Vermont to full-day pre-kindergarten. She was unsuccessful, but the bill does create an “implementation committee” tasked with setting out a plan for getting Vermont to full-day, publicly funded prekindergarten for 4-year-olds by July of 2026.

Most stakeholders agree that the 10 hour-a-week voucher Vermont currently offers to the families of 3- and 4-year-olds for prekindergarten isn’t enough. But setting aside the question of finding additional funding, changing the system might still be tricky politically. 

The vouchers have become a key source of revenue for private child care providers, who are anxious that expansions in public school-based prekindergarten programs could mean an exodus of staff to better-paid settings, and who argue that schools don’t offer the year-round care that families need. But further investments in a mixed-delivery system also make certain lawmakers nervous in light of recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings that complicate the guardrails states can impose on such vouchers.

As Vermont contemplates further work on early childhood education, Schilder said lawmakers need to think seriously about how to help providers navigate the complicated patchwork of state and federal programs that currently fund the sector, including by building out state-level capacity to smoothly administer such programs. And she also argued Vermont will have to think seriously about how to meet the needs of parents who work nights and weekends.

“If you have a fully funded system that provides full day care, it doesn’t necessarily meet the needs of the more than a third of young children who have parents who work non-traditional hours,” she said. 

Like Haspel, she’s also emphatic that while Vermont should celebrate what it has done, this measure invests only a fraction of what’s needed. To offer a child care system that looks like what’s generally offered elsewhere in industrialized nations, she said, a low-end estimate of the state’s total spend would have to approach $700 million.

“This is making a dent and not necessarily addressing the entire problem,” she said.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Vermont’s new child care law makes the state a national leader — but falls short of the movement’s goals.

As predicted, lawmakers on Tuesday easily overrode Gov. Phil Scott’s veto of H.217, a bill set to invest well over $120 million annually into Vermont’s ailing child care sector, enacting the measure into law. 

The only surprise, at the end of the day, was how quickly it all happened. The House voted early in the day, 116 to 31, to override Scott. (It takes a two-thirds majority to override a gubernatorial veto.) And as of early afternoon, the plan remained for the Senate to take up the measure on Wednesday, followed by a noontime celebration with advocates, parents, and child care workers on the Statehouse lawn. But as the whirlwind day wore on, the upper chamber decided to conclude its business ahead of schedule, and voted 23 to 7 to override Scott.

“The child care bill which we overrode today is, I believe, a historic achievement,” Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Baruth, D/P-Chittenden Central, told his colleagues after the vote.

He encouraged senators to attend the event with advocates, still planned for Wednesday. “It will be, I think, a joyous celebration,” he said.

The child care legislation is intended to help mitigate twin problems in the labor-intensive sector: poverty wages for many workers, and sky-high prices for families.

Starting on Jan. 1, 2024, the state will reimburse child care providers at a rate 35% higher than they did this year — enabling them to significantly raise wages.

Currently, families living at or below 150% of the federal poverty level are not charged a co-payment to receive a full subsidy from the state. The bill would eliminate co-pays for those making up to 175% of that metric, increasing that threshold from $45,000 to $52,500 for a family of four. And the bill would extend partial child care subsidies to families up to 575% of the federal poverty level — $172,000 for a family of four.

The bill is the culmination of nearly a decade’s worth of advocacy from Let’s Grow Kids, a well-funded nonprofit that has led the charge on child care in Montpelier. But the cause was also strengthened by the Covid-19 pandemic, which underlined both the sector’s fragility and importance to the state economy, and a new Democratic supermajority in the House and Senate, which moved aggressively to enact several new expansions to the social safety net. 

But while Democrats and Progressives universally supported the bill, votes did not fall entirely on party lines — a few Republicans and independents also backed the measure.

“This is a historic, celebratory moment for Vermont, one that child care advocates, parents, employers, and lawmakers have been working towards for years,” Aly Richards, CEO of Let’s Grow Kids, said in a statement. “The 2023 Child Care Bill will change the lives of thousands of Vermonters and is a monumental step forward for our state in addressing the ongoing child care crisis.”

The bill will be funded in part by a new 0.44% payroll tax, which is why Scott objected to the legislation. The Republican governor has long supported additional investments in early childhood education, but has always drawn the line at raising taxes to do it. The draft state budget he presented to lawmakers in January included $50 million to boost child care subsidies, a proposal legislators incorporated into their own financing mechanism. 

Read the story on VTDigger here: Lawmakers override Gov. Scott’s child care veto.

Sugar-makers Arnie Piper and George Cook had two very different seasons. 

Piper’s Umbrella Hill Maple, a 10,000-tap operation that he co-owns, had its worst season on record. Cook and his wife Dorothy’s 175-tap farm had its best. Their properties are only 6 miles apart, both in Hyde Park.

“People ask me how my season was and I say, ‘Relaxing.’ That’s not what you want to say,” said Piper.

“I cannot complain at all. I feel very fortunate,” said Cook. “The weather cooperated, the trees cooperated and we were able to take advantage of the runs.”

The two starkly different experiences are the perfect microcosm for a roller-coaster sugaring season.

That is exactly what Mark Isselhardt, University of Vermont Extension maple specialist, means when describing this year’s sugaring season as “microclimate dependent.” In general, northern farmers were hit harder than their southern counterparts due to temperature differences. But Cook’s and Piper’s situations typify the erratic nature of turning sap into syrup.

Both producers put out taps and boiled the earliest they ever had. But Piper’s taps dried up within the week, while Cook’s kept flowing.

After two boils on Feb. 17 and 20, Piper wouldn’t see another until March 20. His taps froze up because of a drop in temperature and a snowstorm, causing him to be out longer than the usual week in between boils. At that point, half the season had gone by.

Cook, on the other hand, boiled 20 times, the most he ever had and higher than the typical 15 boils per season. He harvested 65 gallons of syrup, 10 gallons more than the previous year, and got an efficient 0.37 gallons of syrup per tap — 13.5% higher than Piper’s yield. 

The biggest difference, despite size, in the two sugarbushes is elevation. Piper’s sits at around 1,400 feet above sea level while Cook’s is roughly 750 feet. 

Cook’s also faces southwest and sees sun in the early morning through the evening. After the two friends compared notes, Piper estimated that Cook had three to four more hours of sap collection each day because of the small degree of difference between the two locations.

“The temperature was off almost every day by a couple of degrees for us,” said Piper. “If it had been something like three degrees warmer six hours earlier, we would have had a good run. It’s a couple of degrees that will kill you.”

‘Challenging to compare’

In Vermont, 2023 maple syrup production totaled 2.05 million gallons this year, a 20% drop from the previous season, according to the National Agricultural Statistics Service. But fear not, pancake lovers; the decline comes after a record-breaking 2022 that now appears to be more of an outlier than the start of a trend.

“It’s really challenging to just compare it to one year unless that year you’re comparing to happens to be average, which last year was not,” said Isselhardt, the UVM Extension maple specialist.

Compared to the 2021 season, 2023 marked a 300,000-gallon increase in production. But compared to the five year averages, he said, this year’s yield is just 2.5% more. 

Those numbers “seem pretty typical in an industry that is prone to quite a bit of variability,” he said. “It doesn’t take a whole lot of sap flow days that just don’t present themselves because of the weather and then have people be struggling.”

In a standard six-to-eight-week season, producers could make upward of 20% of their crop in only a few days if they get a plentiful sap flow from their maple trees. But conditions have to be “really right,” and a few degrees might be the difference between a successful year or a dry one. 

Last year had a favorable stretch of warm weather throughout the season that kept the sap flowing, leading to a historic crop. But this year featured a historically warm January, followed by a cool stretch February through March.

Like Piper, many producers reported their earliest harvests and boils on record, but the taps dried up soon after the cold weather set in. By the time April rolled around, it got too warm too fast, and many sugarers ran out of time to reach their targets, according to Isselhardt.

Future remains unpredictable

The variability, even within a town, makes it difficult to model future climate outcomes, particularly without consistent data collection. 

The survey used in previous years to collect maple syrup yield data was roughly four pages long, but a low response rate and a growing industry caused the U.S. Department of Agriculture to make changes before sending out this year’s form. 

Experts noticed production numbers across North America and Canada were being severely underreported, maybe in the ballpark of 25%, Isselhardt said. The discovery came after they compared over 10 years worth of USDA data and the numbers that syrup delivery companies reported they were moving over the same period.

Isselhardt and his UVM colleagues were enlisted to help make the process more producer-friendly. Alongside the USDA, they brought the survey length down to two pages. Though it will never be perfect, the recent data is a step in the right direction, he said, and hopefully will paint a more accurate picture over time.

Though he remained positive about the current state of Vermont’s maple syrup industry, which provides almost half the total maple syrup production in the United States, Isselhardt acknowledged several factors pose a threat to sugar-makers. 

A key one is storms that bring high wind and ice, which damage maple trees and thin out sugarbushes. 

The other major factor is the “existential threat of climate change,” but those worries are more difficult to grasp because of the peaks and valleys that define sugaring, he said. 

“It’s just too dangerous a game to try to say this will happen and that will be the effect,” he said. “It’s really hard to characterize, which makes the work of predicting and modeling how future climates might impact (the industry) really, really challenging.”

Isselhardt also said that worldwide demand for maple syrup has been increasing as consumers desire more natural products. The main way producers have kept up is with more advanced technology, which allows them to get a better vacuum seal on the tree tap to maximize the extraction potential of any given tree. Over the last 25 years, yields have actually increased, he said.

“There’s way more people in the world that have never had maple than have, so the opportunities are there when they get a taste,” he said.

Piper, also vice chair of the Vermont Sugar Makers Association, remained upbeat about the industry’s past season and future prospects.

“I think that if you’re in agriculture, not just sugar, you have to be optimistic,” he said. “You have to think, ‘Hey, it’s always going to be a good hay season. It’s always gonna be a good sugar season.’ And when it doesn’t, then you just kind of figure out what to do next.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Though maple syrup production dipped this year, experts and producers aren’t worried.