A long-running effort to establish a single agency for all of Vermont’s state-level public safety and law enforcement entities is moving forward but not with the sweeping changes that have been contemplated for years by the Legislature.
At least not yet.
The Senate on Wednesday, without debate, approved a bill by voice vote to create an Agency of Public Safety. The legislation, S.155, now advances to a final vote in the Senate before moving to the House for consideration.
Speaking before the vote Wednesday, Public Safety Commissioner Mike Schirling called the legislation a “first step” following discussions on the “unification of public safety assets” that has been ongoing in some form for decades.
The latest measure, he said, sets up a framework to determine what makes sense to roll into an Agency of Public Safety and what does not.
The legislation would establish such an agency and charge it with overseeing a Department of Fire Safety & Emergency Management, a Department of Law Enforcement, and an Office of Community Collaboration and Empowerment.
The Vermont State Police, Vermont Emergency Management and Division of Fire Safety all currently fall under the Department of Public Safety — which is led by Schirling — with other law enforcement agencies spread across state government.
The legislation stops short, at least for now, of placing additional law enforcement agencies and public safety entities under the Agency of Public Safety, as had been discussed over the years.
Instead, the proposal calls for the agency secretary — a new, cabinet-level position — to study and report back to the governor and Legislature by October 2023 on the “feasibility of and advisability” of transferring to the agency the operations of the law enforcement officers in the Department of Motor Vehicles, the Department of Fish & Wildlife, the Department of Liquor and Lottery, and the Capitol Police Department.
The agency’s secretary, appointed by the governor, would be charged under the legislation with supervising the commissioner of fire safety and emergency management as well as the commissioner of law enforcement.
The secretary would also oversee the Division of Support Services and the Office of Community Collaboration and Empowerment.
That office, according to the legislation, would work to “engage public safety stakeholders” in the development of agency policies and create ways to allow for community feedback about the operations of the public safety system.
Sen. Jeanette White, D-Windham, said on the Senate floor Wednesday that the legislation calls on the agency to come up with the best possible organizational structure for that to happen and report back to lawmakers on its progress.
White is the sponsor of the bill and chair of her chamber’s Government Operations Committee, which approved the legislation on a 5-0 vote.
“Periodically,” White said, “we need to take a look and examine and reassess the structure of our government agencies and departments to make sure that they are organized in the best possible way to serve Vermonters.”
She told her colleagues on the Senate floor that over the years, there have been concerns that by creating an Agency of Public Safety it would put in place one large, or “super,” police agency.
“In fact, the opposite is actually true,” White said of the legislation up for a vote Wednesday. “It elevates emergency management and fire safety to the same level as law enforcement in the agency.”
The Legislature rejected an executive order issued last year by Gov. Phil Scott to create an Agency of Public Safety. Lawmakers contended that the matter should be taken up in the legislative process and not by executive action.
As a result, lawmakers discussed legislation to accomplish some of the same initiatives, leading to consideration of S.155.
Schirling, speaking before the Senate’s vote, called the effort to bring more state-level public safety entities under one umbrella part of a “modernization of the organization” of state government.
“What it’s not doing right now, but stages for, is better coordination, asset sharing, simplification of some of the complexities that have evolved over time in state government,” he said.
For example, Schirling said, various state law enforcement and public safety entities might all have their own boats.
“Where I’d like to see things go is, why don’t we just have a truck or boat, or whatever it is, and just write State of Vermont on it, and it gets signed out of fleet services,” he said.
Read the story on VTDigger here: Senate signs off on creation of scaled-back Agency of Public Safety.