WAMC Northeast Report on WAMC

Entergy has announced that the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant will be refueled this spring, despite the company facing negative financial analyses.

Entergy will not release the cost of refueling the Vernon reactor, but Vermont Business Magazine is reporting that the last process, done in October 2011, cost nearly 100-million dollars.  Vermont Yankee Spokesman Rob Williams explains that the plant is on an 18-month refueling cycle and they continue to operate based on federal licensing and favorable court decisions.

The recently appointed Massachusetts Secretary of Education visited with school superintendents and local officials in the Berkshires today to hear suggestions for improving the state education system.

County legislatures around New York state have been mulling over the Secure Ammunition and Firearms Enforcement Act - or SAFE act - some taking up resolutions against it.

Many listeners of this radio station awakened recently to the news that the teachers union has gone to court seeking to have New York State’s property tax cap declared unconstitutional.

The property tax cap is, understandably, very popular.  And, as president of New York State United Teachers, I suspect our decision to challenge it will be unpopular.

A county executive in the Hudson Valley is launching an initiative as a response to December’s Newtown, Connecticut mass school shooting. It’s called “Safer Communities”, and it kicks off next week with a symposium on school safety.

Vermont Congressman Peter Welch was at the Vermont Student Assistance Corporation - known as VSAC - this morning to announce new legislation intended to ease and simplify the college financial aid application process.

Advocates for low-income families in Massachusetts are calling on the state and federal governments to increase funding for fuel assistance programs in the shadow of sequestration.

In a few short days, members of Congress must vote to avoid the series of across-the-board spending cuts known as sequestration, but if not; many programs that benefit the neediest families will have their budgets slashed mid-year.

A long shot bid by the city of Chicopee to get into the casino competition in Massachusetts has failed. But, the city’s mayor says Chicopee does not need casino money to survive

It’s been the best of times, and the worst of times for the University of Miami athletics. On the one hand, the Hurricanes have the number two men’s basketball team in the country, which is quite something for a school that usually sees basketball as simply a bridge between bowl season and spring football.