Vermont, challenged and stimulated

Now, when recovery from the worldwide recession is beginning, Vermont has an opportunity to emerge with a stronger economy, a cleaner environment, a broader tax base, and better jobs than we had before the downturn.

We also face the enormous challenges of far too many Vermonters out of work, a state budget which was expanding at an unsustainable rate even before the recession, declining state revenues which will not return to bubble highs anytime soon, unfunded pension liabilities, the looming loss of hundreds of millions of dollars of budget bandaid from the Stimulus Bill (aka American Reinvestment and Recovery Act or ARRA), and a country whose national debt won’t allow it to bail out the states (or anyone else) much longer. Oh yeah, our dominant telecom carrier is in bankruptcy too...