[A] Senate bill that would have created an independent body to address systemic racism in state government has taken on a new, and more cooperative, shape in the House Committee on Government Operations.
The latest draft of the bill, S.281, now outlines a position that is appointed by the governor and without the investigative or subpoena powers in the initial version. The bill has not been voted out of committee.
Under the new version, the Racial Equity Advisory Panel, made up of appointees from all branches of government, will select three candidates for Executive Director of Racial Equity. The governor will select from those choices, and have the ability to dismiss that person.
The Senate version of the bill said the director would be selected by the panel and “operate independently of the Governor’s Cabinet.” The new version says that person will “work collaboratively” with the Cabinet, with the support of the Agency of Administration.
The Senate bill said the head of the new body would have the power to “issue subpoenas, administer oaths and take the testimony of any person under oath, and require production of data, papers, and records.”
That section of the bill has been struck from the House version. The body will instead advise the administration on strategies to advance racial equity.
Rep. John Gannon, D-Wilmington, a member of the House Government Operations committee, said the changes made it more likely that the new panel would be able to accomplish their stated mission. 
“If we really want to address systemic racism in state government, it needs to be a collaborative approach,” he said. “Rather than pointing the finger at state agencies that may not be doing things properly, the better way is to look at how to adopt best practices.”
Curtiss Reed, executive director of the Vermont Partnership for Fairness and Diversity, agreed with that assessment. He said creating an adversarial body was a “non-starter.”
“The original bill, where you have subpoena power, the focus seemed very litigious — and I think the role of the Executive Director of Racial Equity is to focus on what’s going well in state government,” he said.
“You can’t legislature leadership,” he said. “So having this come from the governor’s office sends a signal that the executive branch is taking care of government operations.”
No all advocates felt that way. Chloé White, policy director at the ACLU of Vermont, called the change a “big mistake.”
“It’s a tough thing if you’re trying to root out systemic racism in an administration — not just this one, but any administration — and then have that executive with the ability to fire you,” she said. “That’s worrisome.”
Reed said that the director’s findings and recommendations would still be part of the public record.
“If voters and constituents don’t feel as if the governor is moving with all deliberate speed to enact these recommendations, then voters have the option to vote him out of office,” he said. 
There is a lot of work to do. In fiscal year 2017, there was only 3.7 percent minority representation in the state workforce. That was a slight improvement from fiscal year 2014, when the percentage was 3.2 percent.
State workers and government agencies have also been the subject of 35 formal complaints of racial harassment or discrimination in the past five years, according to a VPR report earlier this year.
Racial minorities make up about 5 percent of Vermont’s total population, making it almost even with Maine as the whitest state in the country.
Gannon said that he hoped the new body would get all state agencies to appoint someone who is in charge of researching and implementing changes that address racism as it exists in each agency, whether that’s by adopting best hiring practices or figuring out how to retain people of color throughout their careers.
He said it would be futile to create a body that did not have the ear of the administration. “If the administration doesn’t want this to work, they can make that happen,” he said.
House members also said that the state’s Human Rights Commission already investigated cases of discrimination, so it was not necessary for the racial equity panel to also do that work.
Human Resources Commissioner Beth Fastiggi said that although the administration was already making efforts to improve its hiring, data-collection and management practices, it would be helpful to work with someone specifically focused on race-related issues.
“Having that be their primary responsibility, with support of leadership, will help move the state forward on all of these issues,” she said, adding that she felt the changes to be bill would make the proposal more effective. 
“If you want to effect organizational change, you need to have the backing of leadership,” she said.
Sen. Jeanette White, D-Windham and chair of the Senate Committee on Government Operations, said she still preferred the Senate version of the bill, but was amenable to the changes that had been made in the House.
“The way it was before, they [the Executive Director of Racial Equity] sat over there, but they weren’t really part of the administration. Now they have the authority of the governor and secretary of administration behind them,” she said. “In fact, there may be more cooperation.”
If the governor did not respond to the recommendations coming from the appointee, or the person were not allowed to do their job, White said lawmakers would have to deal with that down the road. “We can hope for the best,” she said.
S.281 is part of a two-pronged legislative response this session, spurred partly by a report in December from the Human Rights Commission and Office of the Attorney General, which said greater effort needed to be made across government to combat racism.
The report notes that people of color are the fastest growing population in the state, and recommends “that the State prioritize initiatives to reduce and eliminate racial disparities across state systems much has we have prioritized the opiate crisis.”
Rep. Kiah Morris, D-Bennington, introduced bill H.868, which seeks to address racial disparities and other forms of prejudice specifically in the area of education.
Another provision of S.281 that also drew scrutiny in the Senate — a requirement that three members of the panel be persons of color — was also struck from the bill and replaced by a less specific requirement that members “shall be drawn from diverse backgrounds to represent the 15 interests of communities of color throughout the State.”
