Vermont
Vermont Legislature is deciding who should be allowed to do surgery on your eyes
Vermont’s optometrists and ophthalmologists are battling over who is allowed to do surgery on your eyes.
A bill being considered by the Vermont Legislature would allow optometrists to perform certain surgeries that are currently the exclusive purview of ophthalmologists. Ophthalmologists are medical doctors and surgeons, while optometrists are primary eye care providers.
Dean Barcelow, president of the Vermont Optometric Association, explained optometrists complete four years of undergraduate training, followed by four years of graduate training on the eye, earning a Doctor of Optometry.
Dr. Jessica McNally, president of the Vermont Ophthalmological Society, said all ophthalmologists are physicians and surgeons, completing four years of an undergraduate degree program followed by four years of medical school. After medical school, ophthalmologists spend four to six years of residency and fellowship training that can include specialties such as general surgery, emergency medicine and internal medicine, but focuses primarily on advanced medical and surgical treatment of the eye, according to McNally.
Historically, optometrists have handed off to ophthalmologists for procedures including surgeries, injections and lasers, but that line is being blurred by legislation like that now being considered in Vermont. Recently, South Dakota became the latest state to expand the scope of work for optometrists − as the terminology goes − to include surgeries that previously only ophthalmologists could perform. The argument made by optometrists is that it expands on the in-office procedures they already do, increasing access and lowering costs for patients. The counter-argument made by ophthalmologists is that it’s dangerous, because optometrists don’t have the training or experience required.
What are the procedures and surgeries optometrists would like to do that they can’t do now?
The surgical procedures Vermont optometrists want to add to their wheelhouse can be broken down into three “buckets,” Barcelow said. The first bucket is injections into the “superficial eye,” or the eyelid, not into the eye. Optometrists also want to be able to inject dye into a patient’s veins to look for leaky blood vessels in the eye.
The second bucket is the removal of small, benign lesions, such as skin tags on the eyelid or close to the eyelid. The third bucket, Barcelow said, contains three “very well-defined laser procedures.” The first is related to cataract surgery.
“When you have cataract surgery they put a new lens in the eye and take the cloudy one out,” he said. “Sometimes six months, sometimes 10 years later a film will grow on the back of that lens and we’ll zap it off with a laser. It takes two to three minutes, or longer if the film is thick or the patient is jumpy.”
The second procedure involves using a laser to add an “emergency drain” to the eye when the natural drain closes up and fluid begins to build up. The third laser procedure also has to do with improving draining by stimulating the tissue that drains the eye to become more efficient, which is particularly useful for glaucoma patients in early stages of the disease, or who can’t take drops, according to Barcelow.
“This isn’t something that’s a giant deviation,” Barcelow said of the procedures. “We already use sharp and scary things around the eye.”
Barcelow accused ophthalmologists of “saber-rattling” to make people nervous.
“Name anybody you would like to come near your eye with a scalpel,” he said.
Ophthalmologists say the surgeries optometrists want to do are not as easy as they would have you believe
McNally addressed each of Barcelow’s buckets. First bucket: injections into the superficial eye − the eye ball − and the ability to inject dye into patients’ veins to check for leaky blood vessels in the eye.
On the subject of injecting dye to check for leaky blood vessels, called a “fluorescein angiogram,” McNally said the injection often causes nausea and sometimes vomiting and potentially anaphylaxis, a life-threatening allergic reaction.
“I don’t do them in my office,” McNally said of fluorescein angiography. “There’s testing equipment − a camera − that provides similar if not the same results and is widely used by optometrists. We don’t understand why they want to do angiograms.”
With regard to the second bucket, removing small benign lesions in the eye, McNally said the question of whether a lesion is benign is fraught with uncertainty.
“Optometrists would say they are trained to figure out whether a lesion is benign or malignant and make a decision whether or not to take them off,” McNally said. “Our specialists who take care of eyelid lesions will tell you they’ve been surprised and taken off lesions they thought were benign and were malignant. We’re very concerned about misdiagnosis. One of the things that concerns us is the simplicity with which (Barcelow) presents these lesion removals.”
McNally also contends optometrists underplay the significance of cutting off a lesion near the eye.
“Removing lesions and cysts requires using a scalpel, with sutures afterward, and the potential for unexpected bleeding,” McNally said. “We’ve discussed with the Office of Professional Regulation and legislators that it’s very difficult to anticipate whether or not you’re going to need to place sutures and you have to be ready for that.”
And finally, lasers. McNally said she is very disturbed by the prospect of optometrists, who don’t have the extensive training and experience of using lasers on patients that ophthalmologists have, doing the procedures in Barcelow’s third bucket.
“The reason these lasers seem quick and easy, as optometrists claim, is because we’re trained to use them, and it’s supposed to be easy for the patient,” McNally said. “It’s not easy for the surgeon doing it. You could do a lot of damage if you don’t do it right because you don’t have the experience.”
State report gives both sides victories, but should the report have been written in the first place?
The Office of Professional Regulation issued a 258-page report requested by legislators on Oct. 31, 2023, that recommended expanding optometrists’ scope of practice to include specific injection and laser and non-laser surgical procedures. OPR qualified that recommendation by saying only optometrists with a “specialty endorsement license” should be permitted to perform these advanced procedures.
To get the specialty endorsement license, optometrists would have to complete a post-degree “preceptorship” − essentially instruction − in performing the advanced procedures on “live, human patients.” Optometrists would also have to pass examinations showing they know how to do the laser and non-laser surgeries and injections.
Finally, optometrists performing these advanced procedures would be required to report the outcomes to OPR biennially, and to report “adverse events” to OPR immediately.
On the questions of improving access and lowering costs for the procedures optometrists would be able to do, OPR said it was unable to determine whether expanding the scope of practice for optometrists would do either, undermining a key argument optometrists make for taking this step. As a result, both sides claimed victory after the OPR report was issued.
McNally sees a bigger problem with the OPR report. She doesn’t think OPR should have been put in the position of creating the report in the first place.
“How do you assure patients are safe when there’s no standardized surgical training?” she said. “OPR has been forced into this position. They had to make a recommendation based on what they were asked to do. This is what they came up with. I don’t feel they have the medical expertise to make recommendations. Clearly they don’t think optometrists are trained to do these surgeries, or they wouldn’t require them to go for more training.”
Contact Dan D’Ambrosio at 660-1841 or ddambrosi@gannett.com. Follow him on X @DanDambrosioVT.
Theme parks: Plus-size visitors worry about this ‘walk of shame’
While theme parks across the country post height requirements, plus-size customers are often left to figure out if they will physically fit in.
Staff video, USA TODAY
As the weather gets warmer, it’s almost time to return outdoors to some of your favorite summer attractions, including beaches, festivals and theme parks.
While a summer day at the amusement park is typically associated with fireworks and kettle corn, Vermont’s one true theme park, Santa’s Land USA, celebrates the season with visits to Santa and dancing elves. While the park is known for its holiday cheer, it also has a storied history, dating back to 1957.
Here’s the story of how the oldest theme park in Vermont came to be, as well as how to visit this summer.
History of Santa’s Land USA
According to Santa’s Land’s website, the park was founded in 1957 by Jack Poppele, a New York City radio pioneer who dreamed of building a roadside attraction in Putney after vacationing in Vermont.
On August 10, 1957, Santa’s Land USA officially opened, featuring attractions like the original Santa’s Sweetheart Bridge. Both locals and travelers celebrated Poppele’s idea for Christmas in July, and the park became a success for many decades.
However, in 2014, the park fell into disrepair, ultimately closing and sitting abandoned for multiple years. In 2017, Santa’s Land was saved by David Haversat, who dreamed of owning the park since he was a child. After lots of hard work painting, polishing and building, Haversat reopened the park, with much of the original 1950s architecture and artifacts restored to their original beauty.
Since its reopening, Santa’s Land has served as a favorite New England family tradition. One of the last standing roadside attractions in the region, the park stands today with attractions like antique car rides, a carousel, mini golf, Christmas displays and visits with Santa and his elves.
How to visit Santa’s Land USA
Santa’s Land USA is not yet open for the season and hasn’t yet posted an opening date. In 2025, the theme park was open for the holiday season.
Two empty seats
The leaders of both the Vermont House and Senate will not be running for reelection. So who will fill their shoes?
Senate Majority Leader Kesha Ram Hinsdale, D-Chittenden Southeast, said she’s running for Senate president pro tempore.
Ram Hinsdale has served in the legislature for 14 years and is the first woman of color to serve in the Senate.
“I have seen so many types of leadership, so many tools in the toolbox that you can use to move people in the same direction,” she said.
While spending more than a decade in the Legislature, Ram Hinsdale said she’s lived through many crises and charted the state’s path through them. She was a lawmaker during the Great Recession, the Covid-19 pandemic and two years of record breaking floods.
With multiple long-serving legislators retiring this year, Ram Hinsdale said she thinks she will bring needed institutional knowledge and experience, along with a willingness to rally new people.
Along with Ram Hinsdale, lawmakers have eyed Sen. Andrew Perchlik, D/P-Washington, who currently chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee, as a future pro tem.
Perchlik said Friday that he’s considering running for the position, though he didn’t want to definitively say until after the primary election in August.
“I’ve been approached by many senators asking me to do it,” Perchlik said. And he said he thinks it makes sense, given his past leadership roles as the whip for the majority party in the Senate and his former role as chair of the Senate Transportation Committee.
Perchlik has chaired the appropriations committee for the last two years, receiving bills from every committee and managing the state’s funds. That role has allowed him to work with lawmakers across the chamber and different parts of the executive branch, he said.
“You get a really broad picture of the entire government,” Perchlik said.
Just a day after House Speaker Jill Krowinski, D-Burlington, surprisingly announced that she won’t seek reelection, a handful of likely Democrats to succeed her said they were mum on their plans to run for speaker.
House Majority Leader Rep. Lori Houghton, D-Essex Junction, said it’s too soon to say if she will run, though she didn’t rule out the possibility.
“She just announced yesterday,” Houghton said, adding that she’s trying to focus on finishing out the session.
Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, D-Brattleboro, who chairs the House Ways and Means Committee, similarly said she’s considering running, but right now she’s focused on finishing legislative work, too.
Rep. Charlie Kimbell, D-Woodstock, said, “I haven’t made up my mind about it.” Kimbell previously ran for speaker in 2020 before dropping out of the race to endorse Krowinski. He also ran for lieutenant governor in 2022 before losing in the primary.
Rep. Laura Sibilia, I-Dover, who challenged Krowinski for speaker at the beginning of 2025, said, “I have not ruled it out.”
In the know
At the eleventh hour, lawmakers let the law enforcement masking bill supported by immigrant rights activists, S.208, die.
“I’m very disappointed with what has happened to S.208,” said Sen. Nader Hashim, D-Windham, the bill’s lead sponsor, on the Senate floor Friday.
The decision comes after a committee of lawmakers from the House and Senate agreed on a version of the bill that would have largely banned all law enforcement operating in the state — including federal agents — from wearing masks or failing to visibly identify themselves.
Committee members decided to make that provision of the bill go into effect March 15, 2027, rather than upon passage, reasoning it would give the state time to see how similar laws in other states play out in the courts.
The bill the committee approved would have given the Vermont attorney general’s office the responsibility to enforce it, bringing a civil lawsuit if officers violated the law.
Upon passage, the bill also would have required a Vermont law enforcement board to create a statewide policy on masking and identification for local and state police.
All members of the conference committee signed on to support the newest version of the bill except the committee’s lone Republican appointee, Sen. Chris Mattos, R-Chittenden North. During a committee meeting Thursday, Mattos said he was unsure he could support the bill because the committee hadn’t heard from the attorney general’s office about whether it was on board to enforce the policy.
After the conference committee approved the bill, it sat on the House’s calendar Friday but was not taken up on the House floor.
For the bill to pass before adjournment, lawmakers would have needed three-quarters of the House to suspend legislative rules, which would allow lawmakers to speed up the legislative process. That would have required Republican support.
Lawmakers on the Senate floor decided to adjourn around 5:50 p.m., giving up on the idea of receiving the bill from the House.
“It was barely a year ago that I watched Mohsen Mahdawi be taken by masked men in unmarked vehicles,” said Sen. Becca White, D-Windsor, expressing her frustration that the bill didn’t pass.
— Charlotte Oliver
Lawmakers on the House floor Friday made a failed attempt to override the governor’s veto of a bill, H.727, that would have set strict guardrails for any future huge data centers in Vermont.
The bill contained provisions that would prevent any large data centers in Vermont from increasing electricity costs for average ratepayers. The bill also contained provisions that would restrict how data centers discharge chemicals and use water to stay cool in an attempt to limit environmental impacts.
Gov. Phil Scott vetoed the bill Thursday. In his letter to lawmakers, Scott said he believes Vermont’s existing regulations would prevent harmful impacts from data centers.
Lawmakers voted 83-52 in favor of overriding the veto, but they needed 90 votes to do so.
— Charlotte Oliver
On the move
Vermont’s House and Senate budget writers reached a deal Thursday night on a state spending package for the upcoming fiscal year, which starts in July.
Agreement on the budget bill, H.951, came with likely just a day left in this year’s legislative session. Overall, the joint House and Senate conference committee’s version of the budget totals $9.38 billion, close to the amount of spending Gov. Phil Scott proposed at the start of the session in January.
The bill was expected to get a final sign-off on the House floor Friday after weeks of both public and closed-door negotiations. The conference committee signed off on the bill around 11 p.m. Thursday.
Among the last pieces of the nearly 150-page legislation to get resolved in the committee was a controversial plan to take money out of a state-run college scholarship fund to help pay for a long-stalled athletic complex at the University of Vermont instead. The fund, called the Higher Education Endowment Trust Fund, saw a historic infusion of cash last year from Vermont’s tax on the estates of high-wealth individuals.
Read the full story here.
— Shaun Robinson
Say cheese
“A crime has been committed, and we do need justice by the end of the day.”
Rep. Conor Casey, D-Montpelier, told his colleagues on the floor Friday morning that he was set on getting to the bottom of a putrid predicament that has been vexing him and other members of the House Corrections and Institutions Committee for weeks.
As he told it: Casey walked into the committee room a couple of months ago to “a rancid smell.” After weeks of searching high and low, he realized that the desks making up the committee’s table had small drawers underneath that he had never noticed before. He opened his drawer, only to find “a moldy, disgusting, offensive glob of cheese,” with a note that read, “say cheese.”
Casey is well known around the Statehouse for pulling pranks on his colleagues, so the cheese may have been an effort to get back at him before he steps down from the House. He then pulled open the drawer of his seat-neighbor, Barre Town Republican Rep. Gina Galfetti, to find yet another glob of cheese.
“It was a bipartisan cheesing, Madam Speaker,” he exclaimed Friday.
If the person who lodged the offending dairy did not come forward by the end of the day, Casey said, he would subject his colleagues to a full recitation of James Joyce’s mammoth novel, “Ulysses,” on the floor. Coming from the man who recited part of a play he wrote during a floor session last year, that seemed far from an empty threat.
As of this newsletter’s deadline, at least, the mystery remained unsolved.
“The craven still hides in the shadows,” Casey wrote in a text. “But rest assured they will be brought to justice. The session may end, but my lust for vengeance will endure…”
— Shaun Robinson
Nearly 1,000 Vermont students will bring live jazz to downtown Burlington this June as part of the 2026 Discover Jazz Festival, with dozens of school ensembles scheduled to perform free concerts on Church Street.
According to a community announcement, 44 ensembles from 36 schools, representing 993 students from across Vermont, will take part in the festival’s 43rd year.
The student concerts are organized by The Flynn, which produces the Burlington Discover Jazz Festival and oversees its education and community programs. All student performances are free and open to the public.
Student performances highlight statewide participation
Participating schools span Vermont, including Chittenden, Franklin and Grand Isle counties, central Vermont, Addison County, Lamoille Valley, the Northeast Kingdom and southern Vermont, along with visiting ensembles from New York, according to the announcement.
Chittenden County schools listed include Burlington High School, Champlain Valley Union High School, Charlotte Central School, Colchester High School and Middle School, Edmunds Elementary and Middle schools, Essex High School and Middle School, South Burlington High School, Winooski Middle High School and Vermont Commons School, among others.
The student performances will take place during the Burlington Discover Jazz Festival, which runs June 3–7 and features free outdoor concerts alongside ticketed performances by internationally recognized artists curated by MacArthur fellow Jason Moran.
Featured collaboration includes Vermont Youth Orchestra musicians
A featured performance during the festival, “My Heart Sings: Jason Moran Plays Duke Ellington”, will include musicians from the Vermont Youth Orchestra Association jazz ensemble, according to the announcement.
The concert will also feature guest vocalist Rachel Ambaye, a South Burlington native studying with Moran at Berklee College of Music. Ambaye will join the student ensemble for a collaboration tied to one of the festival’s signature performances.
Flynn Executive Director Jay Wahl said in the announcement that bringing student musicians into the center of the festival highlights jazz as a living tradition shared across generations.
This story was created by Dave DeMille, ddemille@gannett.com, with the assistance of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Journalists were involved in every step of the information gathering, review, editing and publishing process. Learn more at cm.usatoday.com/ethical-conduct.
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