Tuesday, June 30, 2020
Fueled by recent community pushback on police spending, the council debated the budget for more than five hours Tuesday as the July 1 deadline drew closer. A majority eventually approved the spending measure by a 9-3 tally, with councilors Jack Hanson (P-East District), Perri Freeman (P-Central District) and Jane Stromberg (P-Ward 8) voting no.
"In a time of a pandemic, to be able to pass a budget that has no layoffs, no furloughs of permanent employees and no tax increase, and largely keeps intact most of the city services is actually pretty remarkable," Councilor Brian Pine (P-Ward 3) said. "I think it's really important for us to ... put aside our own personal issues or grievances we may have and look at what in totality is being accomplished here."
Councilors traded barbs during Tuesday's debate, with some accusing others of being unprepared and of micromanaging the budget process. Councilor Zoraya Hightower (P-Ward 1) called many of the exchanges "petty."
Before the roll call, Mayor Miro Weinberger chided the councilors who had announced they'd vote against the spending plan.
"A no vote is a vote for government shutdown," the mayor said. "A no vote is a vote to put everybody out of work tomorrow."
The budget vote came less than 24 hours after a bipartisan council majority voted to reduce through attrition the police force to 74 sworn officers, a 30 percent cut from the Burlington Police Department's maximum roster of 105. There are currently 90 cops on the force.
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Vermont’s senior senator, it turns out, has been hunkered down in the Capitol even longer.
According to spokesperson David Carle, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) has not set foot in Vermont since January 4. “Never in my life have I been gone this long. Both Marcelle and I are homesick,” Leahy said in an interview, referring to his spouse.
So what’s kept him from his native Green Mountains? Leahy, who is 80, cited a busy congressional schedule, Marcelle's health concerns and, most of all, a dearth of broadband at his house in Middlesex.
“Some of this time I might’ve just spent at home, but the internet service — even though we pay for the premium one — in Middlesex is not reliable and [is] extraordinarily slow, and I’m doing Zoom calls and meetings,” he said.
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The ad, titled "Betrayed," features a one-minute presidential takedown from Dan Barkhuff, a former Navy SEAL who is now an emergency room doctor at the University of Vermont Medical Center.
"Any commander in chief with a spine would be stomping the living shit out of some Russians right now — diplomatically, economically or, if necessary, with the sort of asymmetric warfare they're using to send our kids home in body bags," Barkhuff says in the video, which has amassed more than 214,000 views since it was published on Tuesday.
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Daugreilh, 34, pleaded not guilty Tuesday to a misdemeanor count of simple assault. He was charged Monday, the result of an about-face by Vermont Attorney General T. J. Donovan, who had previously declined to bring charges for Daugreilh's November 2017 conduct.
A police affidavit filed in state court reveals new details about the mysterious case. Daugreilh resigned from the St. Albans Police Department during an internal investigation into whether he used excessive force, but the episode was not made public for more than two years. It came to light shortly after another former St. Albans cop, Sgt. Jason Lawton, was charged in September 2019 with assaulting a shackled detainee in a department holding cell.
When Vermont Public Radio sought records from the Daugreilh investigation, Donovan instead reopened the case, telling the news outlet in January that he'd discovered "new information." The footage has yet to be publicly released.
Multiple cameras captured the encounter between Daugreilh and 18-year-old Nathan Willey, according to a state trooper who reviewed the tape in 2017 and described the contents in a criminal affidavit.
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The resolution, which also includes a wide range of police reforms, was sponsored by nine councilors, all of whom voted to approve it; only councilors Ali Dieng (I-Ward 7), Chip Mason (D-Ward 5) and Joan Shannon (D-South District) voted no.
It's unclear what impact, if any, the resolution will have on the budget for the next fiscal year, which begins Wednesday. During a Board of Finance meeting on Monday, Mayor Miro Weinberger said the city doesn't know when officers will leave or retire, which makes it difficult to calculate how much the police budget would be reduced in the next year.
"It is possible there will be savings beyond the cuts already assumed in the budget, but I don't believe those cuts are bankable as of tonight," he said.
Given that the discussion surrounding the resolution went until 1:45 a.m., councilors agreed to postpone a vote on the mayor's budget until Tuesday at 5:30 p.m.
The vote is the culmination of weeks of activism calling for police reform. Hundreds of people had called in to recent public meetings to demand that the city cut police spending in favor of social services. The Burlington protests and speak-outs were sparked by the death of George Floyd — a Black man who was killed by Minneapolis police in May — and by Queen City cops' own violent interactions with young Black men.
Introduced by Councilor Zoraya Hightower (P-Ward 1), the resolution was driven by the advocacy of the Vermont Racial Justice Alliance, a group led by people of color who have demanded that the city cut the department's maximum police force by about 30 percent, or about 30 officers. The alliance had asked for an immediate cut, whereas the resolution passed early Tuesday achieves the goal over time.
"The past few weeks have reminded, or in some cases taught us, to reexamine our own biases and privilege and be as brave as this moment calls for," Hightower said. "The resolution has flaws — one of them being that we are still overfocused on police reform rather than holistically addressing systemic racism ... but I think we have a solid plan for moving forward."
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Monday, June 29, 2020
The Vermont Attorney General's Office on Monday charged a former St. Albans police officer with assault for pepper-spraying a handcuffed man in a holding cell in 2017.
Vermont Attorney General T.J. Donovan initially declined to prosecute former corporal Joel Daugreilh in 2018, but he reopened the case in January when Vermont Public Radio requested video of the incident.
By that time, St. Albans police were facing public scrutiny over a different case in which a former sergeant, Jason Lawton, punched a handcuffed woman in a holding cell. Donovan's office charged Lawton with assault in November 2019. That case is pending. Daugreilh resigned from the St. Albans force during an internal investigation into the pepper-spraying incident. Faced with a request for public records about the case from VPR, Donovan told the news outlet that he'd discovered "new information" about the incident and would hire a use-of-force expert to review it.
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"The most demanding challenge posed by the pandemic is uncertainty," said Thomas McHenry, president and dean of Vermont Law School, in a press release. "We want to provide as much notice to our students, faculty, and staff, in order to plan appropriately and deliver the high-quality course content and access to faculty that VLS is known for."
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Saturday, June 27, 2020
Throughout the day and into the evening, the House and Senate took turns finalizing an array of policy and spending bills in one Zoom room after another. Just after 9 p.m., lawmakers wrapped up a session that had already gone nearly two months longer than usual. Even then, they made plans to return on August 25 to finalize next year's state budget.
"It's farewell, not goodbye, for this session," Senate President Pro Tempore Tim Ashe (D/P-Chittenden) said just moments before the quasi-adjournment. "No rest for the weary."
The focus of the day was wrapping up a trio of bills appropriating nearly $577 million of the $1.25 billion in federal Coronavirus Relief Fund money Vermont received as part of the CARES Act. The legislature had previously agreed to another three bills with a combined $249 million in aid. And Gov. Phil Scott, working with the legislature's Joint Fiscal Committee, had spent or obligated an additional $177 million.
"Together, we got over a billion dollars out the door for Vermonters," House Speaker Mitzi Johnson (D-South Hero) told her members late Friday.
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Friday, June 26, 2020
The HRC released the finding June 25, more than three years after Abdullah Sall first filed his complaint. The parties have six months to settle, after which the commission could decide to take the case to court.
The unanimous finding names the Department of State's Attorneys and Sheriffs and the Chittenden County State's Attorney's Office as respondents in the case. But much of the report focuses on George's role in terminating Sall.
"This case is really important because it really reflects what people of color have always known to be true about racism," said Bor Yang, the HRC's executive director. "It isn't always the white supremacist. It shows up in very subtle ways."
Sall announced his intention to sue George in February 2017, a month after George dismissed him. George had been appointed Chittenden County state's attorney just eight days before she fired Sall, a receptionist.
In his May 2017 HRC complaint, Sall alleged that he was subjected to a hostile work environment and was harassed about his accent. He claimed that one reason George fired him was because people couldn't understand what he was saying. Sall's attorney, John Franco, told Seven Days at the time that his client faced “disparate treatment” in George's office because he's a Muslim immigrant from Liberia.
Though the investigation didn't find enough evidence to support Sall's hostile workplace claim, the HRC did conclude that Sall was treated differently based on his race — specifically because George terminated Sall but let two white employees with similar performance issues stay on the job.
"One of those women was completely failing at her job and was given probation and support," Yang said. "She made the same mistakes [as Sall], the same serious mistakes, and she had been kept on. She had been given a chance over and over and over again."
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The bill, S.219, also commits lawmakers to consider further reform measures in the years ahead in recognition of the societal awakening that has occurred since the death last month of George Floyd.
The Senate unanimously approved the bill last week and — after some last-minute jockeying with the House before adjourning for two months — concurred with the lower chamber's version late Friday night. The bill now heads to Gov. Phil Scott, who has signaled his support for police reforms.
"We're living in tumultuous times, and we all know there have been sweeping calls to drastically change law enforcement," said Rep. Nader Hashim (D-Dummerston), a former state trooper, as he virtually presented the bill on the floor.
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