As we tick ever closer to the end of the year, many of the biggest news stories of 2023 are still unfolding.

To have this happen to our children here in the United States, where we sent them to study thinking that they're safe, is you know, it's just absolute horror for us.

It's every mother's nightmare and that has just come true.

Three Palestinian and Palestinian American college students shot in Burlington over Thanksgiving weekend continue to grapple with physical and emotional wounds as investigators work to determine the alleged shooter's motives.

And in some parts of the state, home and business owners are still cleaning up from historic flooding last summer.

I've never seen anything quite like this.

This is really horrific.

We'll count down the top stories of the year with a panel of thoughtful reporters on a special edition of Vermont this Week.

From the Vermont Public Studio in Winooski, this is Vermont this Week.

Made possible in part by the Lintilhac Foundation and Milne Travel.

Hello and welcome to our end of year special episode.

I'm Jane Lindholm.

Each December, Vermont this Week adds to the mental load of the reporters, editors and producers who've joined the show over the last 12 months.

And we ask them to rank the top news stories of the year.

Not surprisingly, big shocking news stories often top the list.

But even within some of the big one off events, you can see the through line of some of Vermont's most vexing long term issues.

Joining us today to offer some context and discuss what topped the headlines are Mikaela Lefrak, my colleague here at Vermont Public.

Colin Flanders from Seven Days.

And Sara Mearhoff of VTDigger.

Thanks to all three of you for joining the panel today.

Let's begin by going backwards through the top stories of the year, starting with the news that pulled number ten in our ranking.

In May, Vermont became the first state in the country to explicitly protect access to medication widely used to induce abortion, even if the US Food and Drug Administration withdraws its approval.

The Vermont law, signed by Governor Scott, protects health care providers from legal ramifications for offering mifepristone to patients.

Sarah, can you remind us why this legislation was so important?

Absolutely.

So this was really the Vermont legislature's direct response to the Supreme Court's recent Dobbs decision, which struck down Roe v Wade case precedent which previously protected the nationwide right to an abortion that is no longer the case.

Abortion is a state by state issue.

And so these laws that were signed by Governor Scott and crafted by the Democratic state legislature protect both patients and doctors for abortion care, as well as gender affirming care for transgender patients as well.

And this actually goes farther than the modification we've made to our Constitution.

We already had an amendment.

Yes.

Yes, exactly.

And that was the intent of the legislature, really, was to take it a step further and send the message nationwide, really, that Vermont is a place where folks can not only residents can obtain this care, but also if someone so chooses, they can travel to Vermont to obtain this care.

And there have been questions about whether Vermont will become a safe haven or almost a tourist area for abortion moving forward.

But I think the landscape in the nation is still so fluid that it remains to be seen what will happen there.

Yeah, also, Vermont is a difficult place to get to compared to, say, a place like New York or California, but you never know down the line.

I mentioned that some of the stories in our top ten are stories with a long tail that are sort of trend stories or have a through line.

And one of them is our number nine story.

Earlier this year, lawmakers convened a special committee on impeachment inquiry, which is a very long name, but it's a way to look into the conduct of Franklin County Sheriff John Grismore and Franklin County State's Attorney John Lavoy.

Sarah, we'll go to you again because you are all the time in Montpelier.

Looking at these things, can you remind us why they were looking into the conduct of these two elected officials?

Sure.

So the questions around Sheriff John Grismores ability to serve as sheriff have dated back even before he was elected to office, which is a really interesting dynamic.

He there is a video found of him kicking a shackled man in the groin.

And that raised a lot of questions over whether he has the wherewithal to serve as a law enforcement officer.

And in addition to him, separately, but it just so happens to be from the same county.

State's Attorney John Lavoy was found in an exhaustive investigation to have harassed, allegedly employees at the state's attorney's office and craft a toxic work environment, particularly for minorities and women.

Well, the state's attorney, John Lavoy, resigned in September, which ended that inquiry into him.

Recently, Franklin County Sheriff John Grismore was actually stripped of all of his law enforcement credentials, but he has told that inquiry panel that he has no plans to resign.

And Colin, you think this story in particular speaks to transparency?

In what ways?

Yeah, what I've been most fascinated about is watching this process unfold over the last seven or so months.

A lot of these meetings have been held behind closed doors, even portions of any witness testimony.

And it's really been it's been interesting to see how lawmakers are navigating this.

I mean, obviously, we don't have impeachment hearings all of the time.

This isn't all on the level of, say, a governor, but it's still these are very important, powerful positions.

News organizations have come out against the decision to hold a lot of this testimony behind closed doors.

Their position is that this is one of the most important, consequential decisions you can make stripping somebody of an elected position.

We should be able to see how these proceedings are carrying out what the cross-examination looks like.

People should have a chance to respond publicly.

Lawmakers meanwhile, say that this is the only way that they can do it to protect the not only the elected officials from facing rumors and false accusations, but also the witnesses to testify, feeling safe that they're not going to be exposed.

And it's been a really interesting tension point.

Hopefully we won't be seeing too many of these impeachment proceedings moving forward.

But I think it is it's going to be really fascinating what happens at the end.

Are we going to know everything that was said behind closed doors?

Some of it will depend on whether they move forward.

But I think we're going to it's going to be playing out.

Yeah.

Ongoing story for sure.

Something we'll have to look at in 2024.

In May, Vermont was hit hard by a late frost that impacted a lot of growers, but particularly crop growers who have big farms or those who grow fruits which are much harder to protect against a late frost.

We saw in the harvest time that there was a really sort of up and down result for apple growers in the state where some were fine and some were not.

Mikaela, you've done a lot of reporting about climate change and I'm curious what you're hearing from farmers and agricultural people about how to try to plan for really unpredictable weather moving forward.

Right.

It's a it's a tough nut to crack.

And, you know, I think anybody who maybe even had a fruit tree in their front yard noticed harvests were were completely different this year than what farmers were expecting at the beginning of the growing season.

It's kind of impossible to mention the May Frost without also jumping ahead to our list to the historic flooding that occurred in July.

It was a real one two punch for farmers, but we'll get to that later.

But yeah, talking to farmers throughout this year, it has just been a year of unprecedented events that many researchers say are connected to climate change.

So we're going to be expecting more and more of these.

And I know a lot of farmers and groups that represent farmers like NOFA Vermont are trying to think of ways to help farmers protect themselves against future change.

Yeah, that old saying don't like the Vermont weather, give it 30 minutes is a little bit too close to home now.

In September, the mayor of Vermont's largest city announced that he won't be running for reelection.

Mayor Miro Weinberger has served the city of Burlington for close to 12 years now, and there was immediate jostling for position among left wing candidates once Weinberger's decision was announced, call.

And we know now who the Democratic candidate for mayor will be, and they're going to be putting that candidate up at town meeting day in just a few months.

But they're not going to be alone.

Yeah, that's right.

So for the Democrats, they have put forward Councilor Joan Shannon and she is going to be running against progressive candidate Emma Mulvaney Stanak.

I think we're still waiting to hear a little bit about the plans of the other Democratic nominee who she has yet to say whether she might plan to run as an independent.

CD Mattison as well as Karen on the city council.

I've been really fascinated, though, just to see what the mayor's plans are.

The mayor has had a really complicated tenure.

I mean, in some regards he has really turned the city around.

The city finances the investment status on the other hand, he's presided over some pretty tenuous times police scandals.

The state of Burlington right now is a big conversation.

I think he has yet to really reveal what his future plans are.

I think there are some rumors that he might be thinking of a political run as well, maybe for governor one day.

It'll be really interesting to see how his tenure is looked back on maybe three or four years from now.

Yeah.

So Karen Paul still deciding what to do, whether to run as an independent.

So there may be independents in the race, but what about the Republicans?

We haven't even heard from the city Republicans.

Yeah, that's right.

And I think that's probably for good reason.

And that the city it's a tough place to be a Republican in Burlington.

I think the expectation at this point is that Joan Shannon probably has a bit of an edge right now, but time will tell.

I mean, it's a short campaign season, so there's not a lot of time to jostle for position.

If you're a Republican, I think you're going to have a tough battle.

And Mikaela, a tough time to be a mayor in Burlington, no matter who takes that job.

That is right.

Yes, we have done a lot of reporting about just the issues that are facing the city from the opioid crisis, which is affecting towns all across Vermont, not just Burlington.

A reported rise in crime.

And I know there's also been a lot of debate over the expansion of the airport, the F-35 contract, which was extended many more years.

And I know that's that's really affected a lot of climate activists in the state.

So, yeah, lots, lots to see.

Plus, the ongoing housing crunch, a never ending problem in Burlington.

Number six on our list is a veto override.

Governor Scott has become notorious in Montpelier for overriding the legislature, but the legislature, dominated by Democrats, often has enough votes to override his vetoes.

And that was certainly the case for the Affordable Clean Heat Act.

The aim of that legislation is to reduce climate pollution and help Vermonters transition to cleaner, more affordable heating practices.

Sarah, That's something Governor Scott broadly supports.

So what was it about this legislation that he didn't like?

Well, the intent of the the clean heat standard is to really pass the cost of climate change on to fossil fuel companies.

That is really the intent with it.

And it's a principle of the legislature to say fossil fuels, by and large, have contributed largely to climate change.

Y'all should pay the price.

The question then is will they just shirk the cost back to consumers?

And that is the real conflict at hand with the clean heat standard.

Is will fossil fuel companies by at turn just raise prices on everyday Vermonters who are already paying exorbitant heating costs.

Maybe just say.

And so Governor Scott has been really outwardly skeptical of this plan.

Democrats have a storied history, actually, with this bill.

In the previous legislative session, they failed to override Scott's veto of a very similar bill by just one vote.

And then this year they did move forward.

But the bill doesn't actually take effect for a number of years still, which was another one of Governor Scott's oppositions to it is he didn't like that so much was put onto regulators rather than legislators laying it out right at the beginning.

Right, right, right.

And then the other big thing that he the sticking point for him is he said there should be a quote unquote check back provision to essentially be able to undo the bill in a couple of years if it's just not tenable at that point.

That was included in the final version of the bill.

But he still vetoed it.

Number five on our list is a string of murders that rocked the state, seven homicides and one suspicious death just in the month of October in Vermont.

That's our number five story.

As I said, law enforcement officials and the governor have stressed that these were unrelated incidents and have tried to calm the anxiety that many around the state have been feeling.

But Governor Scott did say he saw a pattern in some of these incidents that was emerging around opioid use disorder.

Colin, what can you say about that, that feeling that Vermonters may have about a loss of a sense of safety or security?

Yeah, I think the important point is that these do not appear to be connected at least by the same people carrying them out.

But many of them do appear to be drug related.

And I think that is adding to a sense that we're feeling in some of our downtown areas.

We're seeing more public drug use.

We're hearing about more overdoses, add into the violence.

And it isn't surprise that a lot more people are feeling a little more unsafe.

And I will say as well that not all of them have been drug related.

Some of them have appeared to be random, which I think in itself is a really scary prospect for people.

And while they're not connected, this is still a huge strain on the state's resources.

It is pretty rare to be investigating this many crimes of this magnitude.

And I know that people are working really hard to figure it out, but it's really taxing.

Yeah.

The murder of Honoree Flemming in the Castleton area, one that I think has really hit that region particularly hard.

A well-loved person there and well-known.

You know, Mikaela, we do hear people and I think you probably have on Vermont Edition saying, you know, this is not the Vermont I thought it was or this is not the Vermont I knew or this stuff doesn't happen here.

And it clearly it does.

It does.

Yeah.

We've had a number of conversations about these different crimes.

And as Colin said, you know, they are not interrelated, but it's hard to not have a broader conversation where they're happening in such quick succession.

One thing that I've noticed people continue to come back to is the debate over access to guns and gun safety, how some folks say it's too easy to gain access to a gun in this state, and perhaps that is contributed to this string of crimes.

And, you know, other folks say that's not the case.

And what we need to be focused on is gun safety and training people, what to do if they do encounter a gun.

There's certainly more we could talk about within this story.

A lot of threads to pull around.

Isolation, community feeling, opioid crisis.

But we can't dwell on any one story too long on this roundup.

And our number four spot is another veto and another legislative override, this time on a bill to support early childhood education and how to pay for it critically.

Here's Allie Richards, CEO of the advocacy group Let's Grow Kids in May.

What we're going to see from this bill is new sustainable revenue into a field that has been starved for resources.

And we've all seen what that's done.

You don't have enough supply.

It is not available, affordable for families, and early educators cannot stay and do the work that we need them to do.

So, Mikaela when are we likely to see the results of this legislation and what are the highlights?

Well, they are starting to slowly pay out some allocations, but the big changes are still to come.

So the legislature has decided they're basically going to be funding about $120 million annually into the state's early childhood education system.

As anybody with a little kid knows, it's extremely hard to find affordable child care and as anybody who works in early child care knows, it's hard to make a living doing that very important job.

So the goal of this bill is to fix that.

Now, the legislature and Governor Scott, I think, agree that this is an issue.

As you said, the problem is how are we going to pay for it and how quickly are we going to make these investments?

I think Governor Scott said, you know, we are making some investments.

Let's do this slowly.

And the the legislature decided, no, this needs to happen more quickly, than that.

So the plan is to have a payroll tax of 0.44%.

That's going to kick off in July of next year.

And yeah, it's going to be really interesting to see how this changes the state.

And I believe it will make Vermont the I think the first state in the nation in terms of how much we're funded per capita for for kids in early childhood.

You know, when Governor Scott vetoed this legislation, he said, quote, I know some headlines will probably read Scott vetoes child care.

And there were but quote, I'm not vetoing child care.

I'm vetoing the payroll tax.

You know, Sarah, that is a common source of conflict among the legislature and Governor Scott.

This is one area, but only one of many where he said you are just shifting the burden from the individuals who need this kind of access to the entire tax base.

But you're not lessening the burden.

I mean, that's going to continue in this next legislative season as well.

Oh, absolutely.

That's a dynamic that I think we're going to continue seeing until Scott leaves his office, quite frankly, or there's a wildly radical shift in the state legislature that I don't foresee any time soon.

What I find really interesting about this topic, though, is that it's such a chicken or the egg situation in terms of without affordable child care, we're not going to have a healthy workforce.

We need young people, young families to be living in Vermont.

And you're not going to get that without access to affordable child care.

And so you have to dump money into it, but then you raise taxes on the folks who are here and you increase their tax burden.

And it's just this unending cycle.

So I am very eager to see how this plays out next year.

And, Mikaela, this is yet another area where there has been some speculation that there could be in-migration to Vermont because of our very generous child care policies, that perhaps that could lessen some of the the tension that we're hearing from Sara on that, but remains to be seen.

That's right.

And it also is a recruiting tactic for some businesses here.

I'm thinking of beta technologies, for example, I believe is building an early child care center.

There's a number of other companies that have decided to take this in-house because it's the only way that they can recruit a workforce.

Yeah.

So moving on to story number three.

Again, this is really a fast assessment of some of the top stories of the year, but our number three story is not so much a headline, but a trend line.

Opioid overdoses continue to move in an upward direction in the state.

The latest monthly report from the Health Department notes that through September, the rate of opioid related deaths is a little bit higher than the three year average, though it appears to perhaps be a little bit lower than the last two years.

This is such an intractable problem, and it's certainly one that's gotten a lot of attention in the state, which seems like we're always talking about what to do.

And yet here we are again, Colin, with rising opioid overdoses, what do we do as a state to work on this issue?

Yeah, I think that is the multi multi-million dollar question that we are grappling with right now.

This was a very bad year for the drug crisis.

I did a lot of reporting on this this year.

I spent a lot of time with people who work in this field, people who are actively struggling with addiction.

I think everyone agrees that it is worse than it has ever been.

And I do fear that once we get to the end of the year, we'll have seen perhaps another record breaking year and fatal overdoses.

I think there's a few things to note.

And one is that the landscape of what we consider the drug crisis or the opioid crisis has completely shifted beneath us over the last five or so years in ways that we are just now finally starting to realize.

And that's important because we can't respond to what we don't understand.

There is now a conversation about rolling out new innovative treatments, things that don't have as much evidence beside them or behind them.

But that might make a difference because I think there's an agreement that what we're doing right now isn't working.

It is very insidious.

The drug supply right now has reached a point where people don't know what they're taking.

It is harder to reverse overdoses.

People have to use more often.

Treatment methods that have proven very successful over the last couple of decades are no longer as effective.

It is a really scary time to be a person who uses drugs and also to be a person who tries to work with people and help them because there's not a lot of options out there.

There's not a lot of places people can go for help, for housing, even just to get warm.

And so I think moving forward, what we're looking at is the opioid settlement money.

We have tens of millions of dollars coming into the state that is specifically geared towards people who got caught up in the opioid crisis and some really tough conversations are going to have to be had, I think about how do we best target that money?

I know the Scott administration is always talking about prevention, wanting to make sure that people don't get wrapped up into addiction.

But right now we're seeing that people are actively struggling.

Some of the most vulnerable people, you step outside anywhere in Burlington, you're seeing it.

People need help now.

And I think that there is going to be a really strong push in the legislature this year to do something that's going to make a difference.

Well, vying for the top story this year was the ferry fresh news about three young people visiting the state of Vermont for the Thanksgiving holiday getting shot.

Two of them are Palestinian Americans and one is a Palestinian.

All our students at U.S. colleges.

Elizabeth Price, the mother of Hisham, our Tony, expressed her dismay after arriving in Vermont to be with her son in a current emotional state where people are all there very easily, it is easy to make a link between the actions that dehumanize Palestinians in general and the actions of someone who used his gun to express his opinion.

Mikaela, You can see her choosing her words very carefully there as prosecutors and investigators continue to look into whether the alleged shooter should be charged with additional hate crime offenses on top of the charges he's already being charged with.

You spoke with Elizabeth Price.

I mean, this is certainly a situation that has rocked the individual families involved, but also really shook Vermont.

Again, another story where people said, I didn't think this could happen here.

That's right.

I mean, and it comes amidst this time that I think a lot of people in the United States and here in Vermont are watching what's going on in Gaza with the war between Israel and Hamas and and wondering how how to participate in that dialog, wondering where to place their emotions.

And then this tragic event occurs.

And as you said, you know, federal officials and local authorities have not deemed it a hate crime.

There has been a lot of conversation about that locally.

But, yes, I spoke extensively with Elizabeth Price, the mother of one of the shooting victims who is recuperating now at a spinal cord rehabilitation facility in Massachusetts.

He's currently paralyzed from the waist down.

And one thing that she kept saying again and again in our conversation is how grateful her family is.

And all three of those families are, young mens families are for the support that they received right here in Vermont.

Yeah, a little bit of a silver lining in that.

Elizabeth Price talking a lot about the really wonderful parts of the Burlington community and Vermont community.

And our number one story for the year was the flooding that spread across Vermont in mid-July and then more flooding in August that impacted other communities.

And certainly now, almost every time there's rain in the forecast in Vermont, you can see a lot of people in Vermont flinching what might happen this time.

Many places, I'm thinking of, particularly downtown Barre and Montpelier really affected, still visibly in repair mode, even as we round out the end of the year.

Here's Kathy Dacoteau.

Devastation is like what we're experiencing right now.

And it's very depressing actually going through all the stuff that we're throwing away.

It's been surreal and a nightmare that I wish to wake up from.

You know, the rate of recovery is always uneven and you can see that in places like downtown Montpelier.

Sarah, what kind of steps either are being taken or need to be taken?

Again, as we think back to that frost in May to accommodate really changing landscapes and weather patterns?

You know, I think there's a question of how much is up to the state and also the federal government.

Vermont is a small state with a small tax base, and there's only so much that we can do ourselves.

And there's a really big question that I'm curious to see is how much the feds are going to step in to help out, because we simply cannot bear this brunt alone to recover from this flood and also the ones that are sorry to be a pessimist, but are surely going to come.

But that's a problem the feds are facing, not just in Vermont.

And certainly the federal government also can't support this many events in this many communities.

Right.

I mean, but they have to at a certain point.

Right.

I mean, what what else is there to do?

Yeah.

Well, boy, I mean, this is, as we said, one story that's going to continue as we move forward.

It will continue in 2024.

I want to thank all three of our guests today, Mikaela Lefrak, Colin Flanders and Sara Mearhoff.

Thank you for being with us in 2023.

And we look forward to 2024.