Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger will return Tyeastia Green, the city’s director of racial equity, to her role in overseeing a study of the Burlington Police Department, he said in a statement Wednesday afternoon.
Weinberger had announced to a joint committee of city councilors and members of the police commission on Monday evening that he was removing Green from the role, and Darren Springer, general manager of the Burlington Electric Department and a white man, would instead be overseeing the assessment. The move prompted a wave of backlash.
Weinberger initially stood by his decision, telling VTDigger on Tuesday that Springer would be “seen as neutral and not bringing pre-existing positions to the report.”
In his statement Wednesday, however, he said he had realized he had “made a mistake.”
“In not asking Director Tyeastia Green to manage this assessment, I belied the deep respect and appreciation that I have for her,” he said. “This decision was wrong and reveals my own bias.”
Green will begin managing the assessment effective immediately. Weinberger said he had informed her last night that he would give her the role, and that she had agreed to do so.
Yet, VTDigger has learned Weinberger’s initial decision to remove Green came despite multiple warnings from Black leaders in the city who told the mayor that the decision would be harmful and insulting to Green, and to Black, Indigenous and people of color in Burlington.
Weinberger first insinuated that he would be walking back the decisions at a virtual coffee with the public on Wednesday morning, which the mayor holds weekly. There, Weinberger was questioned on the move, according to police commissioner Melo Grant, who was in attendance. The meeting was held via a Zoom conference, which was not recorded.
Grant said Weinberger acknowledged that he “got it wrong,” and would be speaking on the issue further. “He seemed contrite,” she said.
Green did not immediately return requests for comment to VTDigger. Skyler Nash, a public policy and research analyst in the Racial Equity, Inclusion and Belonging Department, also declined to comment.
The assessment of Burlington’s police department will guide how the city continues to reform its public safety, and is expected to inform the department’s future staffing levels, which the City Council reduced by 30% last summer.
Weinberger has advocated for reversing the cuts, citing warnings from Police Chief Jon Murad that the city would have to reduce proactive overnight police shifts as staffing declines. The city has contracted with CNA Corp., a Virginia-based nonprofit, to conduct the assessment.
Weinberger said in his Wednesday statement that the resounding criticism had prompted him to reverse course.
“I hope that you will see my actions today as a sign that I am listening, that I am willing to admit when I have gotten it wrong, and that I will seek to make it right,” he said.
Black leaders warned Weinberger
Multiple Black leaders in Burlington reached out to Weinberger to express their concerns about Springer’s appointment weeks before the decision was formally announced.
CD Mattison, Weinberger’s campaign treasurer, said that when she heard Weinberger was thinking about appointing a white person to oversee the study, she contacted him to express her concerns. Specifically, she wanted Weinberger to know how appointing a white man to lead this study would center white neutrality as the default perspective in Burlington.
“What I did warn against was putting a white man in charge of this portion, and what it was saying,” Mattison said.
“Personally, in my gut, of course it hurt when the implication was that it would take a white man to be neutral, to have a neutral stance,” she said.
Mattison had considered running against Weinberger in this past mayor’s race, but she ultimately decided he was the right person for the job because of his track record in stabilizing the city’s finances. She said she did not feel pressured by him not to run.
She added that she would continue holding him accountable, specifically when it comes to police reform, which is why she said she’s “stepping up.” “This is definitely an area where he needs a lot of help and growth,” she said. She said she was insulted by the action and it made her angry.
Did Weinberger’s ultimate decision make her feel ignored? “That’s a good question,” she said. “I will tell you this, he’s listening now.”
Mark Hughes, executive director of the Vermont Racial Justice Alliance, told VTDigger he too had warned the mayor against the decision.
Last summer, the Racial Justice Alliance advocated fiercely for a restructuring of the city’s public safety, which led to the staffing cuts in the police department and to the operational assessment. Since then, Hughes has been meeting with the mayor regularly to discuss the work. “So of course we had this conversation,” he said.
Hughes said he advised the mayor against the move. And he sees the mayor’s rejection of that advice as part of a broader pattern — one he has encountered frequently, he said, in his work on racial equity in the city.
The problem, Hughes said, was not only that the mayor had ignored the warnings of Black leaders and leaders of color — but that others, particularly white people in positions of power, frequently “don’t have the intestinal fortitude” to speak up.
“What [Weinberger] might want to consider doing, in moving forward, is listen to the people speaking to him and advising him, especially the voices of Black and brown people,” Hughes said. “Because we told him not to do this before he did it.”
“What he’s doing right now is really part of a larger circus,” Hughes said.
Weinberger had emphasized that he consulted City Councilor Zoraya Hightower before deciding to give Springer the role. “She persuaded me that the work would not have that kind of trust if it was done by the police department. By similar thinking, I tried to find a department head that had not been identified with one argument or another around the staffing question,” he told VTDigger Tuesday.
Yet, Hightower said at the joint committee meeting Monday that she had also expressed opposition to Springer taking the role in consultations with the mayor. “I was really hoping that this would stay in the REIB,” she said.
City Councilor Jane Stromberg said Tuesday she was frustrated by Weinberger claiming Hightower’s backing, saying he was “hiding behind Councilor Hightower’s name.”
“My colleagues, Councilor Hightower and Councilor Freeman, have really been trying to connect with Miro on this issue,” Stromberg said. “And he’s just been icing them out to some extent.”
Weinberger also received criticism from leaders outside of Burlington.
“I am beyond outraged and fed up with this mayor,” former state representative Kiah Morris tweeted Tuesday night, linking to VTDigger’s reporting on Green’s removal from the assessment. Morris is also the movement politics director for Rights and Democracy and has been a vocal leader in the state about racial discrimination.
“She is the racial equity director. Her JOB is to check racism in municipal government INCLUDING law enforcement,” Morris wrote.
Vermont’s first woman of color to serve in the state Senate, Kesha Ram, D-Chittenden, also criticized Weinberger’s decision-making. In a commentary sent to VTDigger, Ram compares Weinberger’s actions to Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” which argues that the white moderate who doesn’t work toward change for people of color is just as dangerous as the Ku Klux Klan.
Ram had worked for Weinberger during his 2012 transition into the mayor’s office. She wrote that Weinberger’s decision has done considerable damage to people of color in Vermont by prioritizing a neutrality that “values some lives over others.”
“While Springer is a thoughtful and respected energy leader, this change not only questions Green’s ability to be neutral, it installs someone who has little to no expertise in policing or racial justice,” Ram wrote. “It is insulting to Green and to our community, and it can only leave us to presume that the decision gives comfort to those who are opposed to systemic change.”
In an interview with VTDigger, Ram said she doesn’t think Weinberger’s decision can qualify as a mistake, given that he was advised by multiple leaders of color that this action would be damaging.
“I have not heard him really examine the impact that he’s had and acknowledge that,” Ram said. “It’s hard to call it a mistake. If people had been telling you for weeks that this would be an insulting and painful decision, that’s not a mistake.”
Clarification: This story has been updated to more precisely describe the thinking behind CD Mattison’s decision not to challenge Miro Weinberger for mayor earlier this month.