Vermont’s Roman Catholic Diocese, now seeking to reorganize its depleting finances in U.S. Bankruptcy Court, has received permission to sell its former Loretto Home senior living facility in Rutland.

In a ruling this week, Judge Heather Cooper said she’d allow the state’s largest religious denomination to accept a $1 million offer from Rutland’s nonprofit Cornerstone Housing Partners, which wants to transform the Meadow Street building into transitional and long-term affordable apartments.

“The proposed sale represents the highest and best offer for the property,” church lawyers argued in court papers, “and the proceeds of the sale will assist the diocese in funding the administration of this bankruptcy case and ultimately paying creditors.”

Cornerstone said it had a $3.9 million commitment from the state Agency of Human Services to help it buy and rehabilitate the 20,000-square-foot facility.

The nonprofit could immediately launch its first-phase plan for 16 units of emergency family housing under a new state law that expands locations for shelters. But the $1 million sale is contingent on receiving a Rutland zoning permit for a second-phase plan for at least 20 long-term apartments.

“We’re not going to purchase the building if we can’t create affordable apartments there,” Mary Cohen, the nonprofit’s chief executive officer, told VTDigger. “The goal is to create permanent housing.”

Cornerstone already has heard questions from neighbors as it seeks a zoning permit from Rutland’s Development Review Board.

“I think it’s a lack of understanding,” Cohen said. “We’re good landlords. We house people and take good care of our property. The application process will allow a public conversation about what our plans are.”

The Vermont Catholic Church filed for Chapter 11 protection a year ago after a series of clergy misconduct settlements reduced its assets by half, to about $35 million. Since then, 119 people have submitted new child sexual abuse allegations — almost double that of an earlier 67 accusers who previously settled cases over the past two decades.

To raise money, the diocese enlisted Pomerleau Real Estate to market the Loretto Home after the facility closed in 2023. The property, under the control of the church since 1904, was initially listed at $2.25 million before being reduced to $1.95 million and, by this year, $1.3 million, court records show. The diocese received an unspecified number of offers before accepting Cornerstone’s $1 million bid this summer.

Under the Chapter 11 process, the Vermont church must receive court approval for all major purchases and sales until a judge decides on its call for a reorganization plan.

An appellate court found on Monday that Alina Habba is unlawfully serving as the top prosecutor in New Jersey, delivering a blow to President Donald Trump as he fights to keep his preferred nominees in charge of U.S. attorneys’ offices in blue states.

A three-judge panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit said in a unanimous order that a lower court was correct to disqualify Habba, a fiery Trump loyalist who previously served as the president’s personal defense lawyer.

The Trump administration’s argument would “effectively [permit] anyone to fill the U.S. Attorney role indefinitely,” the panel wrote, adding that “this should raise a red flag.” 

The administration could ask for a full panel of 3rd Circuit judges to reconsider the decision, or it could turn to the Supreme Court to weigh in. Fox News Digital reached out to the Department of Justice and a Habba spokesperson for comment.

TRUMP APPOINTS HABBA AS ‘ACTING’ US ATTORNEY AFTER JUDGES OUSTED HER

The three-judge panel heard arguments on Habba’s appointment in October and grilled a DOJ lawyer over the unconventional way Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi reinstalled Habba as U.S. attorney after her initial, temporary appointment expired.

Habba is one of several names who became jammed up in court proceedings over allegations that Trump sidestepped the Senate and improperly exploited loopholes in federal vacancy laws to keep his preferred prosecutors in place.

Habba’s case was the furthest along in the court process, but Lindsey Halligan and Bill Essayli, temporary U.S. attorneys in Virginia and California, respectively, are among those also facing high-stakes court challenges to their appointments. A federal judge found last week that Halligan was unlawfully serving in her role, but the administration has vowed to appeal the decision.

The panel that heard Habba’s case comprised two appointees of former President George W. Bush and an appointee of former President Barack Obama.

TRUMP’S US ATTORNEYS IN BLUE STATES FACE LEGAL CHALLENGES THAT COULD UPEND KEY PROSECUTIONS

The judges had voiced skepticism of DOJ lawyer Henry Whitaker’s claims that Bondi had authority to fill the vacancy for the U.S. attorney of New Jersey after Trump fired the court-appointed one. Whitaker said the administration simply took advantage of “overlapping mechanisms” afforded to it by Congress.

“In this case, the executive branch admittedly took a series of precise and precisely timed steps not to evade or circumvent those mechanisms but rather to be scrupulously careful to comply with them,” Whitaker said.

One of the judges said during the oral arguments that he viewed Habba’s case as unusual and possibly unconstitutional.

“Would you concede that the sequence of events here, and for me, they’re unusual, would you concede that there are serious constitutional implications to your theory here, the government’s theory, which really is a complete circumvention, it seems, of the appointments clause?” the judge asked.

Veteran D.C. lawyer Abbe Lowell, known for his involvement in lawsuits challenging the Trump administration, represented the defendants contesting Habba’s appointment.

Two sets of defendants facing run-of-the-mill charges brought the challenge to Habba, saying she should not be allowed to prosecute them because she was an invalid U.S. attorney.

TRUMP NOMINEES SQUEEZED BETWEEN ‘BLUE SLIPS’ AND BLUE OBSTRUCTION

Habba had no path to Senate confirmation, in part because New Jersey’s Democratic senators, Cory Booker and Andy Kim, did not approve of her through the Senate’s blue slip tradition.

That precedent has drawn Trump’s ire as Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, stands firmly behind blue slips, which require home state senators to approve of U.S. attorney and district judge nominees.

Trump recently conveyed, through his firing of former U.S. Attorney Erik Siebert, that earning Democratic senators’ approval could be disqualifying in his view, setting up a stalemate with the upper chamber over his nominees in blue states.

The Boston City Council unanimously backed a resolution that calls for the Wu administration to release updated cost estimates for the city’s taxpayer-funded half of a public-private plan to rehab White Stadium for a professional soccer team.

The Council voted, 12-0, Wednesday for a resolution put forward by Councilor Julia Mejia “in support of demanding updated cost estimates for the White Stadium project” — a figure the mayor during her reelection campaign committed to disclosing by the end of the year but has not yet provided.

“This resolution is to ensure that the City Council and the people of Boston know the exact financial commitment the city is being asked to take on,” Mejia said. “The last public estimate was over $100 million, and we have every reason to suspect that the number has changed as construction costs continue to rise.

“Yet no updated cost breakdown has been presented to this body or the public. We cannot govern responsibly without real numbers. We cannot ask residents to trust a project with a price tag that is still unclear, and we cannot move forward with a proposal of this scale without a full transparent process that lets us know what the city is on the hook for.”

Mejia held a press conference with opponents of the White Stadium project and Councilors Ed Flynn and Erin Murphy, who co-sponsored the resolution, ahead of the day’s Council meeting.

Flynn said the resolution’s request was for the city to provide “basic and transparent information on how much the White Stadium plan is going to cost the residents.”

“I think residents do want to know how much it will cost and what impact that will have on taxes in the city,” Flynn told the Herald. “I support the development of White Stadium, but I don’t want to see it privatized.”

Melissa Hamel, a Jamaica Plain resident who attended the press conference and is part of a group of Franklin Park neighbors who have joined with the Emerald Necklace Conservancy in suing the city to stop the plan, said she was happy that the Council passed the resolution, but was “skeptical” that the city administration would follow suit and release updated cost projections.

“For me, as a taxpayer who’s lived in Boston for over 40 years and paid their taxes happily, I’m outraged that they want to continue to pursue this,” Hamel told the Herald. “For me to spend $100 million-plus … for a project that would primarily benefit a private enterprise, it’s just insanity to me.”

Hamel said the situation was particularly fraught given that the resolution was taken up by the Council on the same day it voted to set tax rates that will bring a projected 13% tax increase for the average single-family homeowner next year.

“For them to take money that is designated for the Boston Public School children and the facilities to spend it on a project that really primarily benefits wealthy investors who don’t even live in our community is insulting to me, and then to find out that I’m going to have to pay more taxes, 13%, to fund these projects is just outrageous,” Hamel said.

“The city is already too expensive for most people to live in,” she added.

Mayor Michelle Wu in July laid out a timeline for the city to release an estimate for what the roughly $200 million and counting public-private plan would cost taxpayers by the end of the year, but the final price tag has still not been disclosed.

Flynn said he anticipated that, based on the mayor’s stated timeline, the Council would have already had those figures by its last meeting of the year on Wednesday.

Wu’s office on Tuesday did not specifically respond to Mejia’s comments in her resolution — where she wrote that the city’s “significant fiscal pressures” heighten “the need for accurate cost estimates before committing substantial public resources” — but did provide a partial cost update which appears to mirror estimates that have been provided since last year.

“As the mayor outlined earlier this year, the complete bid packages for White Stadium were published in October. Under the timeline laid out by Massachusetts public construction laws, the responses will be evaluated and awarded in early 2026,” the mayor’s office said in a statement.

“As of Dec. 9, the city’s project expenditures include $12 million on demolition and construction, and an additional $76 million in subcontracts have been awarded,” Wu’s office said. “After more than 40 years of failed starts, White Stadium is being rebuilt as a state-of-the-art facility for BPS student-athletes and the community, open year-round. We are excited to be underway.”

The project has doubled in cost since it was announced by the city and its private partner, Boston Unity Soccer Partners, and the mayor said last summer that costs would likely increase again due to federal tariffs driving up expenses for steel and other construction materials.

The last estimated cost to taxpayers was $91 million, which was revealed late last year by the Wu administration and represented a significant jump from the city’s initial projection of $50 million for its half of the contentious project.