The Burlington City Council last month approved a contract for a long-awaited assessment of the city’s police department. Tyeastia Green, Burlington’s director of racial equity, was slated to oversee the consultants’ work.
On Monday, however, Mayor Miro Weinberger announced he was removing Green from that role — a move that has drawn outcry.
Darren Springer, general manager of the Burlington Electric Department, will take her place, as Seven Days first reported. Weinberger informed city councilors and police commissioners of the change in an email Monday evening.
Officials aired their concerns about the decision during a lengthy joint meeting of the City Council’s Public Safety Committee and the Police Commission Monday night. They said the decision to remove Green — a Black woman and the city’s first director of racial equity — from the key role undercut the city’s work on racial justice. Springer is a white man.
The move, police commissioner Melo Grant said, was “really beyond the pale.”
“I think it’s a terrible decision. It’s hard to even wrap my head around it,” City Councilor Jack Hanson told VTDigger on Tuesday. “Racial justice is so central to what we’re trying to do here.”
Councilors first called for a comprehensive study of the Burlington Police Department in a resolution on racial justice last June, with the backing of many local activists. The study is to be a “full operational and functional assessment” investigating “who, what, where, and how the department polices.”
The study is intended to guide the city’s work on restructuring its public safety apparatus — another commitment set forth in the June 2020 resolution — and will likely help determine future action on the department’s staffing levels. The city has contracted with CNA Corporation, a Virginia-based nonprofit, to conduct the assessment.
In an interview Tuesday with VTDigger, Weinberger said the pushback was “greater than I frankly hoped and anticipated” and that he was discussing the decision further with councilors.
“I’m continuing to talk with folks about whether this is a workable way forward,” he said when pressed on whether or not Springer’s appointment was final. “That’s, I think, the limit of what I can say about that right now.”
Still, Weinberger defended the decision. His intention, he said, was to select someone for the job who would “be seen as neutral and not bringing pre-existing positions to the report.” He said he believed Springer fit that bill, given his role with the electric utility.
Yet many took issue with Weinberger’s emphasis on neutrality — and the implication that the racial equity office could not serve as an objective body.
“I completely disagree with this idea that rather than having a racial equity lens, we should have a neutral lens,” said Hanson. “The goal here isn’t to be neutral.”
Activist Jess Laporte voiced similar concerns at the meeting. “I would hope that this person would have a vested interest in this being a really thorough and comprehensive review,” she said.
Furthermore, some are skeptical of Springer’s independence, seeing him as politically aligned with Weinberger.
“I think Miro and Darren have a really good rapport and working relationship,” said city councilor Jane Stromberg. She said she saw him as someone who could “help carry out Miro’s agenda.”
“I see this as being very strategic,” Stromberg said.
The mayor has for months advocated for a reversal of the police staffing cuts that racial justice activists and the council’s Progressives pushed through last summer. The CNA study is expected to inform further action on staffing levels.
Weinberger denied that he chose Springer to influence the study. He told VTDigger that he had selected Springer as “someone who is seen as having worked well across partisan divides. That was my hope.”
For his part, Springer has promised to act independently of the mayor. He said Tuesday he planned to include the chairs of the joint committee on public safety — city councilor Zoraya Hightower and police commissioner Shireen Hart — on all his communications related to the project, and would exclude the mayor.
He also defended his lack of experience on policing and racial equity issues.
“My role here is very narrow and limited,” he said. “I don’t think that the narrow task that I’ve been asked to do in managing this contract requires me to be an expert in the substance of the work that CNA is going to do.”
Weinberger told VTDigger he had spoken with Green “extensively” about his choice before announcing it more widely.
When asked her opinion at Monday’s meeting, however, Green was succinct. “This was the mayor’s decision to make,” she said. “And this was the decision that he made.”
