Peasant Market to feature many treasures pg. 7
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Middlebury’s annual market this Saturday, July 7
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COMMUNITY
NEWS
TAKE ONE July 7, 2018
Serving Addison, Rutland & Chittenden Counties
‘Trust but verify’ when officials come knocking
TRUCK ACCIDENT SHUTS DOWN ROUTE 17
VERMONT
By Lou Varricchio
V ERMONT EAGLE EDITOR
ADDISON | On June 28, at approximately 3 a.m., the Vermont State Police responded to a motor vehicle crash on Route 17 in the town of Addison involving a commercial truck. A preliminary police investigation indicated that the operator of a 2018 Kenworth truck, Kevin Bradford, 45, of Ferrisburgh, was traveling in rain westbound and encountered a fallen tree blocking the highway near Country Club Road. Bradford attempted to swerve to avoid striking the tree and his vehicle left the roadway. As Bradford’s truck left the roadway, it struck a utility pole and overturned in the ditch. According to Trooper Brett Flansburg of the VSP in New Haven, Bradford sustained no injuries as a result of the crash. Both lanes of Route 17 were shut down during the investigation. Vermont State Police troopers were assisted on scene by members of the Addison Fire Department, the Vermont Department of Motor Vehicles, as well as Vergennes Rescue. Neither alcohol or drug impairment appear to be contributing factors to this crash. ■
HOW DOES YOUR GARDEN GROW? “With silver bells and cockleshells. And pretty maids all in a row.” Former Nederlander Anneke Oranje of Middlebury has a green thumb; she helped grow this amazing garden at Vermont Shade and Blind located at 298 Maple St. in Middlebury. Oranje lives in a nearby condominium and enjoys indulging her botanical hobby by planting ornamentals and edibles at the Marble Works-based business. Photo by Lou Varricchio
A property valuation lawsuit involving the town and the owner of a popular Vermont retail outlet center has provided all taxpayers with an example of the old Russian proverb, “Trust, but verify.” When Marcraft Realty Corp., owned by the Zimmerman family, decided to put its 39,000-square-foot Brattleboro Outlet Center up for sale in Vermont 11 years ago, it had no idea how long it would take to find a buyer, let alone an agreeable selling price. To compound the problem of this real estate sale in Brattleboro’s depressed local economy, town officials assessed the Outlet Center property at $2,012,170 — more than half a million dollars above what the Zimmermans believed they could expect a buyer to pay for the former women’s handbag factory turned shopping center. Convinced that the town’s assessment — from which property taxes are based — was way off, the owners appealed. After two independent appraisals put the value at $1,300,000 and $1,360,000, the parties agreed to settle on $1,350,000. While neither Marcraft Realty nor the firm’s attorney Jean Brewster Giddings of Fitts, Olson & Giddings are bitter about their lawsuit against the town, they uncovered a valuable lesson: Vermont property owners need to do their homework before blindly accepting a municipality’s word on their property’s value. “The town wanted to use the income method to calculate the value of this property, not what an actual willing seller and a willing buyer could work with,” Giddings said. » Trust Cont. on pg. 7
Vermont health care costs: How transparent? By Lou Varricchio V ERMONT EAGLE EDITOR
MONTPELIER | While Vermont made an early, pioneering bid to make health care costs more transparent via its VHCURES and Health Care Price Transparency database, how has it fared in the wake of the state of Colorado’s big leap forward in transparency this year? As of Jan. 1 of this year, Colorado hospitals were required by law to publish prices of their most common medical procedures. In the case of Vermont’s progress on healthcare costs transparency, data sourcing is as limited as it is revealing. A 2016 report-card study published by Catalyst for Payment Reform and the Health Care Incentives Improvement Institute revealed that Colorado,
Maine and New Hampshire were the only states to receive an “A” grade when it came to price transparency laws. Vermont, however, received only a “C” grade that year... . According to the Montpelier-based Vermonters for Health Care Freedom (VHCF), a non-profit organization supporting health care reforms, the Green Mountain State hasn’t done too badly, but it has more to do in the way of free market reform of health care. Vermont has been an innovator and leader, which is both good and bad, according to VHCF Executive Director Meg Hansen. And since few health care advocacy groups ever look at the transparency issue from a free-market perspective, VCHF has a offered an unique analysis of the issue. “On the good side, tthere’s Act 165, the nation’s first drug transparency law which enables the Green
Mountain Care Board to identify drugs that the state is spending money on and to find the wholesale pricing,” Hansen said. “But you have to do more that just present price data... .” In the case of reimporting prescription drugs into Vermont, a newly passed yet potentially illegal initiative in Vermont, Hansen and VCHF members see this kind of reform effort as bad — it’s neither free-market based nor without risks. “The Vermont legislature, by approving the reimportation of U.S. prescription drugs from Canada, passed an illegal measure; it will not lower drug prices as promised,” Hansen said. “In fact, it will subject Vermonters to publichealth risks as well as new taxes to defray what will be an inevitable federal lawsuit.” If implemented, Hansen added, the legislation will end up undermining U.S. drug
sales and thus induce American drug manufacturers to limit their product exports. On the health-risk side, Hansen noted that other drug reimportation schemes have ended badly with “counterfeit drug operations peddling expired, subpotent, contaminated, or counterfeit products.” She also warns that with reimportation, Canadian doctors will be left with reduced amounts of the drugs they need; thus, they will prioritize the stocks for their own patients, not for Vermonters looking for savings. Hansen attended President Trump’s May 11 Rose Garden federal drug-pricing policy speech. She’s certain any new FDA policy changes will possibly influence Vermont’s future course in this area of health care reform. ■ Editor’s note: This report first appeared on True North Reports online.
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