Yesterday, I signed an executive order directing state agencies and departments to prioritize local news businesses for state advertising. This makes sure that the taxpayer dollars we use to communicate important information to Vermonters are always used in the best possible way. Having strong regional news outlets is especially important here in Vermont. As I’ve talked about many times, I believe a big contributor to the harmful policies that come out of Montpelier is the fact that rural Vermont is under-represented and far too often, gets entirely ignored. Just look at Act 181 as a prime example. Throughout the 2024 legislative session I must have held a dozen press conferences, and issued dozens of statements, pleading for the supermajority at the time to understand the harm it would do to rural Vermont. I believe I called it a “death knell” for rural Vermont at one time. And I vetoed the bill for that reason, but it was overridden and became law. As we saw this session, once those impacts were seen and felt by rural communities, they rose up. And their voices couldn’t be ignored, so the worst parts of the bill were repealed. If we had more local news outlets in those rural communities with the resources and staff to regularly cover what happens in Montpelier, maybe we could have saved ourselves two years, and the worst parts of the bill could have never passed in the first place. That’s how important good, straightforward, informative local news coverage is for our small communities.